Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 728: Post Rut Strategies For Success! (Stagnent Weather, 2nd Rut, And Late Season Food Sources 12.6.23 RFR)

Transcript

Ep. 728: Post Rut Strategies For Success! (Stagnent Weather, 2nd Rut, And Late Season Food Sources 12.6.23 RFR) · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Wired to Hunt's rut Fresh Radio, bringing you
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the latest reports from the whitetail woods, presented by first Light,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: First Light Go farther, stay longer, and now your hosts
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Case Smith and Tyler Jones.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Refresh Radio. I'm your host k C. Smith,
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: and it is full fled December right now.
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: Guys.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: That means late season patterns and all the good cold
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: stuff that comes with that. But there is still opportunity
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: to kill the buck of your lifetime. This is Retfresh.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Let's go.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: What is happening in all my woods people?
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: This is Retfresh Radio, brought to you by first Lot
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Gear and I've got my favorite just first Light apparel.
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: Where on the phone right now? Tyler Jones, what are
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: you doing?
• 1:03
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, in Oklahoma?
• 1:07
  Speaker 5: Trying hard with it ain't half anyboy man.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Let me just ask you a general question because we're
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: gonna get into some some ret freshness here in a bit.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: But does it work to try harder into your hunting? Tyler?
• 1:23
  Speaker 6: Uh?
• 1:24
  Speaker 7: It can?
• 1:25
  Speaker 4: It can't.
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: Good answer.
• 1:29
  Speaker 5: In fact, it usually does if you just say try harder.
• 1:32
  Speaker 5: If you're talking about going in further. It's not always
• 1:36
  Speaker 5: that way.
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: Now, got you? Got you, and that's something you're experiencing
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: at the moment.
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah, good, yes, dude.
• 1:44
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I've been a hunted last night a mile and
• 1:47
  Speaker 5: a half like straight line. There's no telling how much
• 1:50
  Speaker 5: I actually walked because I went further than that in
• 1:54
  Speaker 5: and found out there wasn't a tree. According to the
• 1:58
  Speaker 5: aerial there was, but there wasn't a tree when I
• 2:01
  Speaker 5: got in there. So since the grass is I don't know,
• 2:04
  Speaker 5: seventeen eighteen foot, I decided to not hang out there
• 2:09
  Speaker 5: too long. Went got in a tree actually near some bag,
• 2:13
  Speaker 5: and had three dos and a spike come out within
• 2:18
  Speaker 5: bow range on me.
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: I picked the right tree. I just didn't see the
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: buck I wanted, So I don't know. I'm making a
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: I may try.
• 2:25
  Speaker 5: To get in further and deeper into the nasty, nasty
• 2:30
  Speaker 5: grass that is the Plain States.
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: This year, after all the timely rain they had.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: Good golly man, that's uh.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: You know, it's like rich people problems, you know, like
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: we all complaining about the drought and then we have
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: this year, which we'll find out later from some of
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: our guests that the drought there is some drought in
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: the country, but the plane's got a lot of rain
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: and with that comes a ton of cover.
• 2:54
  Speaker 5: Yeah, well that's what happens when you get rain in June.
• 2:57
  Speaker 5: But I don't think it's rained a whole lot sinse, Yeah,
• 3:00
  Speaker 5: cause I'm seeing the same thing. It's pretty they got
• 3:02
  Speaker 5: they had some snow and rain last week. So now there,
• 3:05
  Speaker 5: you know, it looks like it rained recently, and in fact,
• 3:08
  Speaker 5: I think it might have.
• 3:10
  Speaker 4: There's not many fresh tracks to be seen, so you
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: know what's fresh. I guess that's an upside to it.
• 3:16
  Speaker 5: But it has been pretty dry, I think since since
• 3:20
  Speaker 5: this summer and until just recently.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: So you're gonna do kind of a guest to interview
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: kind of at the end of this thing, right, Uh,
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: but it's gonna be a little extended because you and
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: I have been hunting together some and we're apart right now.
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: So I'm interested in what you got going on.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: But you're in Oklahoma, And would you say that in
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Oklahoma you are still in the rut right now or
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: the deer are Maybe you're always in the rut, Tyler,
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: but what are the deers?
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: Man?
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: It's I just actually.
• 3:57
  Speaker 5: Just bombed into a spot that's remote and not super
• 4:01
  Speaker 5: far in, but it's just like hard to get to.
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: There's a bunch of beaver sloughs and stuff around.
• 4:05
  Speaker 5: And the grass is super tall, and you're like backtrack
• 4:09
  Speaker 5: and try not to go, like it's too deep here,
• 4:11
  Speaker 5: so you.
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: Got to cross over there, you know.
• 4:13
  Speaker 5: But I guess what I'm saying is I had this
• 4:18
  Speaker 5: little high spot that had like I don't know, five.
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: Or six elm trees in it and one seed, and
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: there was.
• 4:24
  Speaker 5: A rub on the seed pretty high, and then there
• 4:27
  Speaker 5: was like several scrapes in there around those elms, and
• 4:33
  Speaker 5: then it crosses this slow and goes into some hag
• 4:36
  Speaker 5: and I man, I think I saw a fresh track
• 4:40
  Speaker 5: in one of the scrapes. I don't know if there
• 4:42
  Speaker 5: was a fresh track outside of that in any of
• 4:44
  Speaker 5: the scrapes that that I looked at, which I only
• 4:46
  Speaker 5: looked at a few, like really close, probably three, but
• 4:50
  Speaker 5: then the other three or however many I saw, you know,
• 4:53
  Speaker 5: I would look at from eight foot ten foot away
• 4:56
  Speaker 5: or whatever, and just didn't look like anything fresh in there.
• 4:59
  Speaker 5: So and then the rub also wasn't you know, for
• 5:02
  Speaker 5: a cedar, it should be pretty orange if it's fresh,
• 5:05
  Speaker 5: and it was more on the brown side. It's wild,
• 5:08
  Speaker 5: like I would expect the deer to still be running
• 5:12
  Speaker 5: right now here in Oklahoma, but it is not really
• 5:17
  Speaker 5: appearing that way. In fact, I saw the spike come
• 5:21
  Speaker 5: out behind those and did not once acted ready. And
• 5:24
  Speaker 5: then I saw another buck probably eight hundred yards away,
• 5:29
  Speaker 5: and he sat and fed in ag food bagfield for
• 5:34
  Speaker 5: the whole evening forty five minutes probably, and did not
• 5:37
  Speaker 5: one time like do anything else, not cruise, not you know,
• 5:42
  Speaker 5: look up and try to see something. I mean, there
• 5:44
  Speaker 5: was another deer with him over there. I don't know
• 5:46
  Speaker 5: what it was, but he never got frisky of.
• 5:48
  Speaker 7: That or anything.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: So shooting monkey man, Well, it is kind of kind
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: of tough whenever you start encountering and stuff like that.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: And I think that this is something that a lot
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: of people around the country might start seeing, because you know,
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: two thirds of the country. He has a rut that
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: is based around November, right, And that's an arbitrarin number
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: I'm throwing out there, but that's kind of where it
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: comes to my mind. And so a lot of guys
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: focus their efforts on hunting during those times, and then
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: some guys tag out, some guys don't, and then there's
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: guys that are left trying to kind of, you know,
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: pick up the scraps and try to steal kill a
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: deer post rut. But there's it's like you're dealing with
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: the leftovers of a ton of pressure. So I kind
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: of think that you know, you're hunting public ground, and
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: that's the thing that could be happening. How does the
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: dude just circumvent Like maybe there's not pressure now, but
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: there had been.
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: What do you look.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: For in a situation like that, Well, don't give me
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: a scar sarcastic answer.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: I can tell it's what you're trying not to do.
• 6:51
  Speaker 5: Okay, it's uh, it's thick and it's remote, and those
• 6:55
  Speaker 5: are those are two places. It's the same things I
• 6:57
  Speaker 5: always look for though, Yeah, are thick and remote and
• 7:00
  Speaker 5: then like also just the overlook spot. So it's the
• 7:04
  Speaker 5: three spots that you always look for. But the problem
• 7:07
  Speaker 5: is you just have to look harder. I think right now,
• 7:09
  Speaker 5: you got to the idea is just to strap the
• 7:12
  Speaker 5: boots on and go after it, man, I mean, and
• 7:14
  Speaker 5: That's what I'm doing. And I'm dude, I'm telling you.
• 7:16
  Speaker 5: Last night I was like my my calves are on
• 7:19
  Speaker 5: the brink of cramping, and I don't cramp very easy, man.
• 7:22
  Speaker 5: And I mean it was just like, you know, just
• 7:26
  Speaker 5: ridiculous amounts of just you know, and it's hot.
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: That's that's another thing. It was it's pretty cold this morning.
• 7:33
  Speaker 5: In fact, it was cold enough that you know, when
• 7:35
  Speaker 5: I tried to separate my sticks, I just ripped my entire.
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: You know, all my skin off.
• 7:40
  Speaker 5: But it's it was like probably twenty eight this morning.
• 7:46
  Speaker 5: So for us in you know, I guess the South Oklahoma,
• 7:51
  Speaker 5: you know, it was it was cold, but like during
• 7:53
  Speaker 5: the day it's getting up into like mid sixties, and
• 7:57
  Speaker 5: you know, it's it's hard to go and walk in
• 8:01
  Speaker 5: six miles in an afternoon when it's that hot. You know,
• 8:05
  Speaker 5: you're just gonna sway. You can't carry enough water. So
• 8:10
  Speaker 5: I don't know, you just gotta you just gotta be
• 8:12
  Speaker 5: the guy who's meaner than the rest of the people.
• 8:14
  Speaker 5: I guess, and uh, you know, wants to go out
• 8:17
  Speaker 5: there and try to find find something, or uh you
• 8:21
  Speaker 5: just use your map expertise and you know, you just say, okay,
• 8:25
  Speaker 5: well this should work.
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: It's overlooked.
• 8:27
  Speaker 5: Whatever I'm gonna, I'm gonna give her a shot, which
• 8:30
  Speaker 5: is what I just did. I tried to do and
• 8:33
  Speaker 5: I found scrapes, and I found a rub I found
• 8:35
  Speaker 5: some pretty.
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: Fresh trails, and I bumped three doughs.
• 8:39
  Speaker 5: Out of a spot pretty like probably two ind of
• 8:42
  Speaker 5: yards from the road.
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: So I mean, it can it can't work.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: It's just so you know, we don't always we tend
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: to be running gunners like all the time. I don't
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: really think about it that way. It's just kind of
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: the way we hunt. I'm not like I'm gonna run
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: a gun guy, you know. But I've been thinking about
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: it some in the last couple of weeks, and that's
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: kind of how we operate, no matter what timing.
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: Year it is.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: But I think that that might not always be the best.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: I think that if it's the heavy rut, then you
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: could be better off just sitting that pinch point for
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: a while and he'll come by, you know.
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: But we tend to not do that.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: We uh, well, if we want to be completely honest,
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: it doesn't make very good video of when you just
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: sit in the thing spot all the time. And that's
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: one of the things that one of the things that
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: we move around for. But I personally, I always feel
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: like if I ain't moving, I'm not trying hard enough,
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: you know, I need to be trying to figure it
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: out the whole time. And so do you think that
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: right now kind of in your situation that moving around
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: is the way to find a deer to get on
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: or at least are they kind of are those bucks
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: drawing back into their core areas or they still out
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: on the move?
• 9:45
  Speaker 5: Roaman see this is I feel like we're getting back
• 9:50
  Speaker 5: into like our early seasoned pattern where rut's not raging.
• 9:55
  Speaker 5: I did see one buck yesterday, probably three quarters of
• 9:59
  Speaker 5: a mile from the maybe not quiet, and he looked
• 10:03
  Speaker 5: like a decent frame buck, and he just stared into
• 10:05
  Speaker 5: the grass and his ears pinned, you know, pinned forward
• 10:08
  Speaker 5: for like five minutes, and then he finally like took
• 10:12
  Speaker 5: off with his head down like he was running.
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: So I thought yesterday things were different.
• 10:16
  Speaker 5: But now I'm looking at sign and stuff and I'm
• 10:18
  Speaker 5: actually on the ground, it just looks different.
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: And I based off of.
• 10:23
  Speaker 5: Sign and what I saw last night and didn't see
• 10:28
  Speaker 5: you this morning, it just seems like it's more like
• 10:31
  Speaker 5: a really season pattern. So to me, it feels like
• 10:33
  Speaker 5: a guy to bounce if you're not seeing it, like
• 10:36
  Speaker 5: I mean, the only time, I don't know, and I
• 10:39
  Speaker 5: might end up hunting the.
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: Same tree tonight.
• 10:41
  Speaker 5: There's actually probably like nearly a fifty percent chance that
• 10:43
  Speaker 5: I hunt the same tree to night that I hunted
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: last night, And you just kind of hope that, you know,
• 10:48
  Speaker 5: a buck is still doing a little bit of stuff
• 10:51
  Speaker 5: where like last night he ended up in a different spot,
• 10:54
  Speaker 5: and so he's going to come out into the week,
• 10:56
  Speaker 5: you know, a little bit, or not initially into the wheat,
• 10:59
  Speaker 5: but you know, to the edge of the week, you know,
• 11:03
  Speaker 5: in the.
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: Time that I can get a shot. So that's I mean,
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: I feel like I have to bounce around. I don't know,
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: what do you think.
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: I think you probably have to as well, unless you
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: have some weather changes, you know.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: I think we're gonna hear from our guests around the
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: country here in a bit about like what the weather,
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: because weather's really big right now.
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: If you have this hot spell.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: It's tough to kill deer, just straight up, especially if
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: you're hunting public ground where the mornings are better because
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: it's cooler and you have to walk, like access is difficult,
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Like you you just feel like you're bumping deer, right,
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: So it's like you're just condemned either direction, you know,
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: it's and that's pretty pretty tough to to to stomach, really,
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: so maybe you know, a still hunt might be the
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: thing to do. I don't know, I'm just kind of spitballing,
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: you know, as far as like what to do right then.
• 11:52
  Speaker 5: So it's hard to sell film still hunting though, That's
• 11:56
  Speaker 5: that's the one thing, you know, I would be on
• 11:58
  Speaker 5: the ground right now calling think if it, you know,
• 12:02
  Speaker 5: if we're being honest, like if I'm if I'm listening
• 12:04
  Speaker 5: to this right now, I think that's probably more what
• 12:07
  Speaker 5: I would be doing. That's my advice, I guess, is
• 12:10
  Speaker 5: get out there and call make some racket. I think
• 12:12
  Speaker 5: they still are going to be interested and have been
• 12:15
  Speaker 5: here in a little bit of that in the last
• 12:16
  Speaker 5: few weeks, and I'm hoping that I can find a
• 12:20
  Speaker 5: way to pull it off out of a tree, because
• 12:23
  Speaker 5: it feels like that's the way to do it right now.
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: I just I can't film it by myself, you know.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: You know, I don't know if it was you or
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: gregor Michael or somebody made the point the other day
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: that they felt like rattling worked better like late rud
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: or post truck because those deer have like heard that
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: quite a bit already. And I never thought about that
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: that way, you know. I kind of always thought that, uh,
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: you know, they know what rattling is, but they might
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: have to relearn it every year. And there's always like
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: a three year old that i'd probably shoot that probably
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: doesn't know what the inks Mortenohugh know what that is,
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean. So that's that's a good point, man.
• 12:59
  Speaker 5: I never it's like the It's like when you go
• 13:01
  Speaker 5: fly fishing and a huge hatch happens and then it
• 13:04
  Speaker 5: and then it goes away and you can still throw
• 13:07
  Speaker 5: that a fly down there and there they're still familiar
• 13:11
  Speaker 5: with it, you know, like a salmon fly hatch or
• 13:14
  Speaker 5: something that moves up the river real quick.
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so got to just catch one the right mood
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: man mm hmm. Yeah.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: Well, so as far as Oklahoma goes, if you wanted
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: to give just a bonus and an auxiliary statement as
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: far as what you think Buckman is going to be
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: like over the next week, what do.
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: You think man scale of one to two?
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, one to two or zero to one good or not?
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: Oh?
• 13:41
  Speaker 7: Man?
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: Over the next week.
• 13:42
  Speaker 5: Well, I know what the weather looks like for the
• 13:45
  Speaker 5: rest of the days I got up here.
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: And for my hunt.
• 13:50
  Speaker 5: I'll just talk about that because I don't know what
• 13:52
  Speaker 5: happens after this weekend uh too much. But I would
• 13:57
  Speaker 5: say we're looking at probably a three until we get
• 14:05
  Speaker 5: some Really, if we can get some quickly, get some
• 14:09
  Speaker 5: pretty harsh weather, I think things could change.
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And so I had a three. How confident are
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: you that you're going to come home with a deer?
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: Oh?
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: Is that also a three? Oh?
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: It's a negative three. Oh No, I feel like, See,
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: I'm just I'm not going to shoot anything.
• 14:31
  Speaker 5: I'm probably gonna try to hold out for like I
• 14:35
  Speaker 5: don't know, a deer with like either a big eight
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: or like a small nine or ten, not a small,
• 14:42
  Speaker 5: but like a you know, medium size nine or ten.
• 14:45
  Speaker 7: I don't know.
• 14:46
  Speaker 5: That's kind of what I'm thinking, Like, I'm not coming
• 14:48
  Speaker 5: home with a dough. So I feel like I felt
• 14:51
  Speaker 5: like when I was coming up here, I felt like
• 14:53
  Speaker 5: I was going to have a really good shot at
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: shooting a deer, And now that I'm here seeing stuff,
• 15:01
  Speaker 5: I feel like I really don't have.
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: A very good chance of shooting a deer.
• 15:05
  Speaker 5: But this is a particular piece of property that's it's
• 15:09
  Speaker 5: got a lot of tall grass.
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: I can't see anything.
• 15:12
  Speaker 5: I mean, I had I legit the dough, the first
• 15:15
  Speaker 5: dough I saw last night.
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: I could not see her until she was at thirty yards.
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: So and that's I mean.
• 15:22
  Speaker 5: And I felt like that I would have been able
• 15:24
  Speaker 5: to see her one hundred and fifty out there, but
• 15:28
  Speaker 5: I couldn't.
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: So, yeah, it's tough, man, it's stuff.
• 15:31
  Speaker 5: But I think, you know, if I'm going to give
• 15:33
  Speaker 5: somebody some hope, is that, ay, the weather is nice
• 15:37
  Speaker 5: enough that like it's comfortable to be out here and hunting.
• 15:40
  Speaker 5: It's not you know, like a chore, you know, especially
• 15:45
  Speaker 5: if you've got excuse me, especially if you've got some
• 15:48
  Speaker 5: private you know, it's uh, it makes it nice. But
• 15:51
  Speaker 5: I think, like if you I would, if I had to,
• 15:55
  Speaker 5: you know, take some time away from the family or whatever,
• 15:57
  Speaker 5: I would probably sit on the next big coal front
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: and be, you know, looking for a bed to food pattern,
• 16:05
  Speaker 5: and I would assume that there's gonna be some bucks
• 16:08
  Speaker 5: that are killed on that next big coal front.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Cool man, Well, hopefully that is in the forecast. I
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: don't know that it is in our soon forecast. I
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: haven't seen one, but you know, those things can pop
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: up at any time, so we all got something to
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: look forward to until they don't let us go hunting
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: for anymore. So then it see the season is truly
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: over at that point in time. But anyways, let's uh. Actually,
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: this week we're gonna hear from our buddy Dudley Phelps.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Dud the stud down in Mississippi. Tony Peterson has been
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: after the deer in.
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: The cold north of Minnesota. And our friend Matt Die
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: has been hunting and observing over in Missouri.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: He's got a good report there. And then Jordan Hotchkiss
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: from Timber Ninja is gonna round us out in South Carolina.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: Right here, I've got Dudley Phelps with Masio gamekeepers and
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: if you have everybody thing from Natives nurseries, he is
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: the guy.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: His fingerprint is on it. What's going on, dude, man.
• 17:07
  Speaker 7: Not much. It's always good to hear from you. I've
• 17:10
  Speaker 7: always been a big fan of the Element guys, so
• 17:14
  Speaker 7: glad to hear from you.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: It's been a while, thanks man. Yeah, we exchanged text
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: message every once in a while, but I hadn't talked.
• 17:20
  Speaker 7: To you so in a good while, and I've been
• 17:23
  Speaker 7: following y' all. You guys have just had a stellar
• 17:25
  Speaker 7: season and most importantly having a lot of fun. Y'all
• 17:30
  Speaker 7: seem to be really good at that point. Yeah.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, if any having fun, you ain't living, man.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: So that's what it's what we try to make happen
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: around here. And I know you're the same, and people's
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: fun is different paced a little bit. You've been hunting
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: down in Mississippi, and we were talking beforehand about just
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: kind of how our hunts go and different things, and
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: you very much embrace kind of a more traditional way
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: of hunting. I would say, you kind of do the
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: still hunting thing and walk around and take things in
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: which you're a very observant guy.
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: So I bet you're pretty good at it.
• 18:02
  Speaker 7: I'm I'm I'm decent. I you know, I feel the freezer.
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: That's not good.
• 18:07
  Speaker 7: That's that's my trophy.
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: So that's cool, man. Uh.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: Mississippi is a is a southern rut state, right, so
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: we want to talk about some of that stuff a
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: little bit, uh in general on the white Tail calendar.
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: Where are y'all at there in Mississippi?
• 18:23
  Speaker 7: I would say, we are you know, early pre rut.
• 18:27
  Speaker 7: You know, it varies across a lot of the state.
• 18:31
  Speaker 7: The Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks puts out
• 18:34
  Speaker 7: a rut date map that people can check out, like
• 18:37
  Speaker 7: if they're ever coming to visit and it's it's spot
• 18:42
  Speaker 7: on around here. I would call it early pre rut.
• 18:46
  Speaker 7: The you know, I think most people are going to
• 18:49
  Speaker 7: be shifting their cameras from like feed to to scrapes,
• 18:52
  Speaker 7: you know about now. You know, scrape activity probably started
• 18:56
  Speaker 7: about a week ago, and in a lot of places
• 18:58
  Speaker 7: in the state, the butts are ready, the doze are not,
• 19:03
  Speaker 7: so it's not crazy chasing time yet. But you know
• 19:09
  Speaker 7: we're starting to see you know, more photos in daylight
• 19:12
  Speaker 7: and you know that early scrape activity. That's so what's
• 19:15
  Speaker 7: going on?
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: So right now your tactic you were telling me a
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: little bit about earlier, but you're moving a lot right.
• 19:22
  Speaker 7: I am. I probably hunt public, I don't know, sixty
• 19:26
  Speaker 7: or seventy percent of the time, and I move around
• 19:28
  Speaker 7: a lot there and then when I hunt private, I
• 19:32
  Speaker 7: kind of do the you know, keeping the pressure low game.
• 19:37
  Speaker 7: But you know, I've been looking for feed trees We've
• 19:40
  Speaker 7: had a really poor acren year around here, and I
• 19:45
  Speaker 7: have found a rare species of oak called swamp laurel oaks.
• 19:51
  Speaker 7: They drop their leaves really late. So like I can
• 19:54
  Speaker 7: get on on X right now and look at that
• 19:58
  Speaker 7: recent imagery and I can find little pockets of green
• 20:02
  Speaker 7: trees down in the river bottoms, and that's gonna probably
• 20:06
  Speaker 7: gonna be those slump laurel oaks that are just starting
• 20:09
  Speaker 7: to drop.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: That's pretty sure.
• 20:10
  Speaker 7: There's no other acrons in the woods right now, so
• 20:13
  Speaker 7: that's gonna been my strategy. How about that, I'm still
• 20:16
  Speaker 7: hunting food.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's cool, dude.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: Then that's a high level tip right there, as far
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: as like finding the trees that might have leaves on
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: them still, and there's a good chance it's those trees.
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: That's that's pretty good.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: So that tree is a lot like a water oak too,
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: from what I have seen, just what you think. It's
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: almost impossible to tell apart, okay, and what differentiates it
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: outside of like.
• 20:36
  Speaker 7: The leaf a little bit. The leaf is just a
• 20:40
  Speaker 7: little bit different. They're tardily deciduous, so that you know
• 20:45
  Speaker 7: the leaves. It's not a true evergreen, but they stay
• 20:48
  Speaker 7: on a lot later than your regular water oaks that
• 20:53
  Speaker 7: typically drops acrens in you know, like mid to late October.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: Got you and and so guys kind of across the
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: south off you can kind of paint a little bit
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: broader stroke and say that those high tanning you know,
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: water oaks, laurel oaks, willow oaks, those are going to
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: be pretty key things to target on a low acron year.
• 21:14
  Speaker 7: Huh oh, yes they will. They'll gobble them up. They'll
• 21:18
  Speaker 7: walk right fast a corn pile to go to acorns,
• 21:21
  Speaker 7: even if they don't taste as good to us that
• 21:26
  Speaker 7: they need them.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: I ain't trying to eat those, that's for sure.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: Well, what do you think is going to be going
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: on in the woods on the upcoming week as far
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: as rut movement goes.
• 21:35
  Speaker 7: Well in the in the areas I hunt, it's probably
• 21:39
  Speaker 7: my favorite time of the year to hunt. You know,
• 21:41
  Speaker 7: it's it's typically like what you know, we refer to
• 21:44
  Speaker 7: as the second weekend of Muzzloder season in Mississippi. Uh,
• 21:47
  Speaker 7: in a lot of areas, that's when you start seeing uh,
• 21:51
  Speaker 7: you know, chasing beginning. You know, bucks are gonna randomly
• 21:55
  Speaker 7: come out into a food plot when they normally wouldn't
• 21:59
  Speaker 7: you know, but it's it's before the chasing gets just
• 22:02
  Speaker 7: absolutely crazy to where it's almost hard to make a
• 22:05
  Speaker 7: shot on one. But yeah, this next week is where
• 22:08
  Speaker 7: it's going to pick up a good bit in a
• 22:11
  Speaker 7: lot of areas of the state.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Well that's exciting, man. So if you had to rank
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: what you predict the buck movement to be like on
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: a scale of one to ten in your part of
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: Mississippi there, what would you say it for the next week.
• 22:24
  Speaker 7: I'd probably say a six. You know, it's not quite
• 22:27
  Speaker 7: as much movements as we want, but they're not moving
• 22:31
  Speaker 7: so much that it's hard to get a bead on
• 22:32
  Speaker 7: them when they're chasing, if that makes sense. I would
• 22:36
  Speaker 7: almost call it a searching phase and the younger deer
• 22:40
  Speaker 7: chasing if that makes sense.
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that makes me.
• 22:43
  Speaker 7: Quite full on. But it's easier to get it get
• 22:47
  Speaker 7: them in the scope, you get them in the crossairs.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah that's cool. Duh.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Appreciate the information, man, and I hope you have a
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: great risk of the season.
• 22:57
  Speaker 7: Well, you all do the same, and I'll I'll look
• 22:59
  Speaker 7: forward to seeing more from you guys.
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: Now, I've got my friend Tony Peterson who is a
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: deer slayer. If y'all didn't know, I'm sure you do.
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: He's with meat eater. What's happening in Tony.
• 23:11
  Speaker 8: Not much, man, I don't. I don't feel like a
• 23:14
  Speaker 8: real deer slayer lately. I feel like a deer looker
• 23:16
  Speaker 8: for kind of guy.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: Isn't that weird how it goes? Like you and I
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: were just talking beforehand. We both had very nice seasons
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: where we killed some deer. But it's like, it's the
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: what if you've done for me lately?
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: Thing?
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: You go two weeks with that, I having a good encounter,
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: and you're like, man, I'm terrible with this, right.
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, dude, I've been.
• 23:32
  Speaker 8: I've been dividing my time between some public land in
• 23:35
  Speaker 8: western Minnesota and some private land here by my house
• 23:37
  Speaker 8: in eastern Minnesota. I can't even see a deer here
• 23:40
  Speaker 8: on the east side, and the ones they see on
• 23:42
  Speaker 8: the west side are in eight foot tall cot or cattails.
• 23:46
  Speaker 8: So I'm like, it's almost like I'm hunting ghosts right now.
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: Well, that's probably what the problem is.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: They probably put on Mark's white sheet and they look
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: like ghosts south there running around and just can't flatching
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: it into the snow, and they're hard to find. If
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: do you ever figure out that trick, we're toast.
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: I don't. They don't need to.
• 24:02
  Speaker 8: I mean, the deer that I've been hunting in those
• 24:05
  Speaker 8: cattail slews, it's like we've had a dry year, so
• 24:09
  Speaker 8: there was a real growth in those cattails. And when
• 24:13
  Speaker 8: I walk in there a pheasant hunt, some of those spots,
• 24:15
  Speaker 8: they're like ten feet tall. And so even where the
• 24:19
  Speaker 8: growth wasn't that great if you put a deer in there,
• 24:21
  Speaker 8: I mean you could hide an elk in there, yeah,
• 24:23
  Speaker 8: let alone a white tail. And so it's like they're
• 24:26
  Speaker 8: they're you know, it's almost like they're underground. It's like
• 24:29
  Speaker 8: it doesn't do you any good until they step out.
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: You know, how are you how are you finding like
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: specific either deer or areas to target.
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: Well.
• 24:39
  Speaker 8: The good thing about that, you know, you guys know
• 24:41
  Speaker 8: this is those areas you can observe pretty well. And
• 24:44
  Speaker 8: so I mean you lose them when they get into
• 24:46
  Speaker 8: the cover, but you can kind of.
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: Predict a pattern.
• 24:49
  Speaker 8: And the cool thing about it is is you get
• 24:52
  Speaker 8: an aerial view of those cattail slews. They look kind
• 24:56
  Speaker 8: of like mono habitat but then you see a little
• 24:58
  Speaker 8: patch of willows in there, or a little vein of fragmighties,
• 25:01
  Speaker 8: which is that tall invasive grass, and those bucks follow
• 25:06
  Speaker 8: that stuff. It's unbelievable. In fact, two weeks ago we
• 25:10
  Speaker 8: had a little bit of fresh snow when I was
• 25:12
  Speaker 8: down and I started tracking just tracks in the slough,
• 25:16
  Speaker 8: and I got on seven different sets of tracks and
• 25:19
  Speaker 8: jumped seven deer out of their beds, including three bucks
• 25:22
  Speaker 8: close within like twenty thirty yards, and following a buck
• 25:27
  Speaker 8: track through. There was like a education that was just
• 25:30
  Speaker 8: amazing to me. How they stick to those lines of cover,
• 25:34
  Speaker 8: and how they travel with the wind in there and
• 25:36
  Speaker 8: everything and where they bed. It's just it's so cool.
• 25:40
  Speaker 8: They have so many advantages and they know how to
• 25:44
  Speaker 8: use them.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you were, I guess it sounds like you
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: were kind of doing the old just track them up
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: and try to shoot them thing.
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: Huh.
• 25:52
  Speaker 8: Well I did that because I was I had posted
• 25:55
  Speaker 8: up for three sits and had had some really close
• 25:59
  Speaker 8: oppertunities I should say they were.
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: They could have broke my way, they just didn't.
• 26:05
  Speaker 8: And then when I was leaving, because it's a couple
• 26:08
  Speaker 8: hours to get out there for me, when I was
• 26:09
  Speaker 8: leaving one morning, I had I had blanked, and I
• 26:12
  Speaker 8: knew those deer made it back into the cattails and
• 26:14
  Speaker 8: they didn't go buy me, And so I just happened
• 26:17
  Speaker 8: to have a lucky set of circumstances where there was
• 26:20
  Speaker 8: fresh snow and I started getting on the tracks, and man,
• 26:24
  Speaker 8: it was like the most fun I've had all season,
• 26:27
  Speaker 8: even though I knew the odds are getting a good shot.
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: Were real low.
• 26:30
  Speaker 8: But man, when you can when you can follow how
• 26:33
  Speaker 8: a deer walked into a cattail slew, the route he
• 26:36
  Speaker 8: took to get to his bed, and then see where
• 26:38
  Speaker 8: his bed is and when he was in it, it's
• 26:41
  Speaker 8: just it was cool, man.
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: Man, When I think of cold weather, I think of
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: trying to hunt deer that are actively headed to food
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: sources because they just got to eat when they get cold.
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: Ride. Is that something you're targeting or is there just
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: food everywhere in that country?
• 26:55
  Speaker 8: There's there's enough food, but the pressure is everything. The day,
• 27:00
  Speaker 8: the day before I did that little track in Festival,
• 27:04
  Speaker 8: I saw a fourteen deer go into that cattail slew
• 27:07
  Speaker 8: in the morning, and I saw twenty hunters on that property.
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: Throughout the day.
• 27:11
  Speaker 8: Wow, So their whole thing is they've got nine hours
• 27:15
  Speaker 8: of daylight or whatever, however much daylight we have, they
• 27:17
  Speaker 8: go lay low and then they have all night to
• 27:20
  Speaker 8: feed and not get harassed. And so the deer I'm
• 27:23
  Speaker 8: hunting anyway, it's all tied to pressure. You can kind
• 27:27
  Speaker 8: of predict and go, they're going to go to that cut,
• 27:29
  Speaker 8: cornfield or whatever, but they're not going to get anywhere
• 27:32
  Speaker 8: near that until dark.
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: Well it seems like at least looking at kind of
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: the weather forecast for your area up there, you have
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: very very consistent days ahead, like even there's not there's
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: like one day in the fifties, but it's really like
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: forties and thirties and lows that are all pretty similar.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: So with that like just looming on the horizon, there's
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: no fronts to kind of hunt. What do you think
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: is going to be going on over the next week.
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: I don't think it's going to be very easy.
• 27:58
  Speaker 8: Yeah, we are unseasonably warm here, and you know, we
• 28:03
  Speaker 8: got a little bit of snow this morning, it'll be gone.
• 28:05
  Speaker 8: And you know this happens like once every I don't know,
• 28:09
  Speaker 8: five or ten years, where I'll be bow hunting like
• 28:11
  Speaker 8: Christmas Day or Christmas Eve and there'll be no snow,
• 28:16
  Speaker 8: and you know, other years we'll have snow that starts
• 28:18
  Speaker 8: in the beginning of November, and so we don't They're
• 28:20
  Speaker 8: not stressed like this is a great winter so far
• 28:22
  Speaker 8: to get them like recovered from the rut and not
• 28:26
  Speaker 8: have a big die off in the winter. But it
• 28:29
  Speaker 8: makes it a heck of a lot harder because they
• 28:30
  Speaker 8: don't have to work that hard right now, and they're
• 28:34
  Speaker 8: they're not going to risk it.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: I don't blame him, man, he it can't be too
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: risky up here in the North Country. So if you
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: had to give the next week a rating on the
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: scale of one to ten for buck movement, what would
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: you think he would be?
• 28:49
  Speaker 8: Man, I'll give it a three, but I'll qualify it
• 28:53
  Speaker 8: by saying you should still hunt anyway.
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: I like it.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: The optimism is good, Man's. That's what you gotta have.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you're looking at a three, you gotta
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: be optimistic. So that's good stuff, man, Tony. I really
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: appreciate it, dude. I hope you find one more big one.
• 29:07
  Speaker 9: Awesome things, buddy.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: I've got my brother Matt Die on the phone. He
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: is with landing legacy and you might have seen him
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: on TV with a show called hunt Works. Matt, what's
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: happening man.
• 29:35
  Speaker 10: Not much, dude, just rolling through, uh, rolling through season
• 29:39
  Speaker 10: and trying to keep trying to keep my head above
• 29:42
  Speaker 10: water with work and everything like that. But that's just
• 29:44
  Speaker 10: the norm. That's one on your word.
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: Well, right now I'm watching two road runners posture to
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: one another, which is a pretty fun thing. Oh, there's three.
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: There's a he's chasing a grasshopper. It's going down around here.
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: Which Oh, he's.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: Running under my car right now. Goodness, gracious, Okay, back
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: to deer. Sorry, I'll get distracted. Yeah, but uh yeah,
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: I'm just home from a hunt Man and trying to
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: figure out what's going on around the country. You're in Missouri,
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: and you've got.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: Kind of an interesting take as to what's been happening
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: in the woods lately, right.
• 30:17
  Speaker 10: Yes, it's such an interesting time with the season for us.
• 30:21
  Speaker 10: You know, Missouri's got a rifle season that is short
• 30:26
  Speaker 10: and sweeten eleven day season, but it hits right in
• 30:30
  Speaker 10: the smack down the middle of the rut and there
• 30:34
  Speaker 10: is an incredible amount of pressure that happens during that timeframe.
• 30:38
  Speaker 10: I think this year's totals were somewhere around one hundred
• 30:41
  Speaker 10: and seventy thousand deer that were harvested in the state
• 30:43
  Speaker 10: in that eleven day period, and so there is just
• 30:47
  Speaker 10: an incredible amount of just all of a sudden, just
• 30:52
  Speaker 10: random pressure that just hits the deer woods. And at
• 30:55
  Speaker 10: that same timeframe, deer are most active, and so as
• 31:00
  Speaker 10: you like rebound after and the following few weeks, you've
• 31:04
  Speaker 10: got the post rut that happens, and then now we're
• 31:07
  Speaker 10: kind of in this weird tweener stage of there's a
• 31:10
  Speaker 10: little bit of running activity. There's a whole lot of
• 31:13
  Speaker 10: deer that just feel like they're almost coming out of
• 31:15
  Speaker 10: the holes in the ground after all of that pressure.
• 31:19
  Speaker 10: That's kind of that scenario of finding ourselves in right now,
• 31:22
  Speaker 10: from both in the field observations as well as trail
• 31:26
  Speaker 10: camera observations, it's like, who made it through? And is
• 31:31
  Speaker 10: there any pattern to what you're doing right now? It's
• 31:34
  Speaker 10: kind of the mindset.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: And so right now you're fixing go out on the
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: evening hunt because you've been kind of following show camera data, right.
• 31:41
  Speaker 10: Yes, yeah, so you know, the ven to food pattern
• 31:47
  Speaker 10: is really beginning to take its place after that post
• 31:50
  Speaker 10: run activity has really started to subside. Deer still bucks
• 31:54
  Speaker 10: are still hitting scrapes and checking those on the way
• 31:56
  Speaker 10: out too, some of the larger food sources, which is
• 32:00
  Speaker 10: great place obviously from the camera to get kind of
• 32:02
  Speaker 10: an inventory of what's happening. But started to see quite
• 32:06
  Speaker 10: a few of the bucks from kind of the pre
• 32:09
  Speaker 10: rut really November swing starting to settle back into kind
• 32:12
  Speaker 10: of that evening pattern of bed to food, which is
• 32:17
  Speaker 10: great and to see inventory wise who actually just made it.
• 32:22
  Speaker 10: So that's kind of what the tactic is for right now.
• 32:26
  Speaker 10: We've actually got a pretty cold day here for us today.
• 32:30
  Speaker 10: Then we kind of getting this little warming trend for
• 32:32
  Speaker 10: the next four or five days, but we've got high
• 32:35
  Speaker 10: pressure northwest wind and it's going to kind of push
• 32:39
  Speaker 10: some deer to feed. And a lot of this is
• 32:42
  Speaker 10: honestly clover in a large secluded hayfield, and so it's
• 32:48
  Speaker 10: not like it's a big crop field or anything like
• 32:50
  Speaker 10: that in my region that we're hunting, but some recent temperature,
• 32:54
  Speaker 10: some recent rain, the clovers popped and the deer are
• 32:58
  Speaker 10: heading to it.
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: For sure.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to give you opportunity to just showcase
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: your skills, man, because you land management is your business
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: is what you do, and you're really good at it,
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: and you approach it from such a unique holistic approach
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: it and I really appreciate it. So I would imagine
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: that your properties that you get to hunt, you do
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: your best, at least within your limitations to be able
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: to kind of make them places that deer would like
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: to be riding in. That clover, I'm guessing is a
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: big part of that.
• 33:26
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 33:27
  Speaker 10: Absolutely, And for us being in the southern half of Missouri, Sir,
• 33:32
  Speaker 10: we absolutely get cold. But a lot of people overlook
• 33:36
  Speaker 10: overlook clover and in a good stand of perennial white
• 33:39
  Speaker 10: clover into late season. But if you get these warming
• 33:44
  Speaker 10: trends and there's moisture, whether it's from frost or whatever,
• 33:48
  Speaker 10: that clover is going to live and back up. And
• 33:51
  Speaker 10: as soon as that happens, deer respond to it. And
• 33:54
  Speaker 10: that may be it could be winter week in your area.
• 33:57
  Speaker 10: But just for us and our general resources in this landscape,
• 34:03
  Speaker 10: that's kind of what we key into now. If we
• 34:06
  Speaker 10: have a big bumper crop of red oak acorns, we're
• 34:08
  Speaker 10: also go to key into that at this time of
• 34:10
  Speaker 10: the year. If there's any more left over, but between
• 34:15
  Speaker 10: clover that starts to pop back as well as the
• 34:18
  Speaker 10: red oaks, than man, we're definitely keen to that. From
• 34:22
  Speaker 10: a food source standpoint, two weeks from now, I'll be
• 34:25
  Speaker 10: in western Iowa, kind of northwestern Iowa, and it's completely different.
• 34:30
  Speaker 10: Like that's we're hunting standing grain, standing soybeans on a
• 34:33
  Speaker 10: couple of different farms, and that's the game there. But
• 34:37
  Speaker 10: for us in this region, you gotta hunt where you
• 34:41
  Speaker 10: gotta hunt the resources that they're after. And for us
• 34:44
  Speaker 10: right now, weather temperatures, they're hitting clover.
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, for sure, it makes a lot of sense, man.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: And so if we look at that warming tree and
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: you're talking about it's kind of a thing at least
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: here in the South and the Midwest. It's just what
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: we're looking at, and it makes it for kind of
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: I don't know what you feel like, might be stagnant
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: to deer activity, but there's always a move right, there's
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: always something to do. So if you if you looked
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: at at kind of our weather in the time and year,
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: and you have it to give it a rating on
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: a scale of one to ten, of which you think
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: buck movement will be like over the next week, what
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: would you rate it.
• 35:18
  Speaker 10: I'm gonna go with the I'm gonna go with the five. Okay,
• 35:22
  Speaker 10: for two reasons, which is about just as plain jane
• 35:25
  Speaker 10: as possible. So the reason I give it like, hey,
• 35:29
  Speaker 10: there's some chance there is because of just the the
• 35:34
  Speaker 10: biology of the animal, Like they're coming out of the
• 35:35
  Speaker 10: rut where they've expended a ton of energy, so they're
• 35:38
  Speaker 10: gonna hit food sources for sure. If you get a
• 35:42
  Speaker 10: high pressure day, despite temperatures being maybe a touch warm
• 35:46
  Speaker 10: or something, they're probably gonna move within daylight. So there
• 35:49
  Speaker 10: are some decent chances that you might get a swing
• 35:52
  Speaker 10: or a crack out of buck. But if not, if
• 35:57
  Speaker 10: it just gets warm and you don't have you know,
• 35:59
  Speaker 10: decent wind or or that pressure situation, then you can
• 36:03
  Speaker 10: be sitting there twiddling your thumbs and see a bunch
• 36:05
  Speaker 10: of fawns and doze and not your target till after dark.
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: Right, So.
• 36:11
  Speaker 10: It's really that hit or miss. And I'd say that
• 36:13
  Speaker 10: for the just the time of the year itself. I'm
• 36:17
  Speaker 10: really gonna start keen into as we get to mid December. Okay,
• 36:22
  Speaker 10: are any fawns coming in to heat any any If
• 36:25
  Speaker 10: I's coming into estrus. But then also, when when are
• 36:28
  Speaker 10: we going to get those two to three day cold
• 36:31
  Speaker 10: snaps that just kind of set in here. I want
• 36:33
  Speaker 10: to hunt the front of it, and I will have
• 36:34
  Speaker 10: the back end of it, but for us the next
• 36:36
  Speaker 10: couple of days, it's pretty pretty stagnant. So I'm gonna
• 36:40
  Speaker 10: give it a five.
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: Hey, man, five's better and zero, that's for sure. Matt
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: appreciate it, dude, Thanks so much for the report. No problem.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: Then, Jordan Hotchkiss is here. He's been hunting North Carolina,
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: probably out of a timber ninja. If I had to
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: imagine Jordan, what's happening?
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: Man?
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: Just getting after it? How about you, buddy, He's.
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: About the same.
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: Actually, I'm in a little bit of a lull here.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: I've been on the road for a good portion of
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: the month in November, and I've got five or six
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: days here at the house to to just soak up
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: some family time. And it's actually well appreciated, it's and
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: it's a it's a good time you do that weather
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: it's still nice and all, you know. So what's it
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: like for your neck of the woods.
• 37:20
  Speaker 6: Yeah, about the same, man, I got a I got
• 37:22
  Speaker 6: three little kids. So if I'm not working or spending
• 37:26
  Speaker 6: time with the family, I'm trying to be in the
• 37:28
  Speaker 6: woods as much as I can. But right now it's
• 37:30
  Speaker 6: a little bit of a loll out there, so it's
• 37:32
  Speaker 6: a good time to try to get it in while
• 37:33
  Speaker 6: I can before I hit it hard.
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: The last three weeks the season.
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: I got you, so, can you explain that we were
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: talking a little bit off air about the lull.
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: That we're all kind of experiencing right now.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: But in you're part of the country there in North Carolina,
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: how does the rut lay out?
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: Usually?
• 37:48
  Speaker 6: Yeah, so I'm in in the Appalachian Mountains in western
• 37:50
  Speaker 6: North Carolina. As I mentioned earlier, it's it's it's very sporadic, really.
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: I mean that first week.
• 37:57
  Speaker 6: In November could be hit or missed, depending on really
• 38:00
  Speaker 6: what holler you're in. But usually we'll have an uptick
• 38:03
  Speaker 6: there around Thanksgiving. This year, Thanksgiving was really good, a
• 38:07
  Speaker 6: lot of bucks hit the ground, some real good cruising activity,
• 38:10
  Speaker 6: and then right now is starting to die off. They're
• 38:15
  Speaker 6: they're hard on food right now, and then the last
• 38:18
  Speaker 6: the next I'd say next week it'll start ramping up
• 38:22
  Speaker 6: a little bit.
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: But those last two weeks of.
• 38:25
  Speaker 6: Season is really one of the best times for rut activity.
• 38:28
  Speaker 6: It seems like those yearland dos come finally coming to heat,
• 38:31
  Speaker 6: and those bucks just really get back on the move
• 38:34
  Speaker 6: trying to catch those young.
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: Does, gotcha?
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: And you know, in North Carolina, as far as latitude goes,
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: it's pretty far north, but it's still like what I
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: would consider the South, especially, we have similar accidents. And
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: then also, you know, like the climate there is probably
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: going to be more like that.
• 38:49
  Speaker 6: Right, Yes, I'm not I'm not exactly sure about what
• 38:53
  Speaker 6: your climate is, but I mean it's in the thirties
• 38:56
  Speaker 6: here in the mornings, next week's home from the twenties.
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: Then high's probably forties, fifties, things like that.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: Okay, got you a little a little cooler than I expected,
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: are y'all? Uh, do you experience the fronts that kind
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: of come in from the Rockies or I know, the
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: East Coast stuff. You get a little bit different weather
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: patterns over there.
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and we do.
• 39:15
  Speaker 6: I mean, we get some some pretty good fronts, but
• 39:18
  Speaker 6: all it just depends on how it hits these mountains.
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: But yeah, I mean we can we can get some
• 39:23
  Speaker 4: you know, single digit tempts.
• 39:25
  Speaker 6: I mean the other morning I went hunting, it was
• 39:27
  Speaker 6: eleven degrees, but then you know, it could we could
• 39:31
  Speaker 6: get up a heat spike and it'll be seventy in December,
• 39:34
  Speaker 6: so kind of up and down.
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: But in the mountains here it does get pretty cold.
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what have you been doing here? You know, as
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: this low approaches, like, what's your tactic? You're going to
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: to try to kill a big buck?
• 39:44
  Speaker 6: Still focusing on you know, travel corridors, uh saddles ahead
• 39:48
  Speaker 6: of hollers, things like that, because you know you still
• 39:52
  Speaker 6: have some roamors. But right now, like we talked about earlier,
• 39:57
  Speaker 6: I'm kind of just taking some time, spend time with
• 39:59
  Speaker 6: the family, and then I'll hit it hard the.
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: Next three weeks.
• 40:03
  Speaker 6: And really that late later season is kind of an
• 40:06
  Speaker 6: oddity as well. I don't know if you experienced this,
• 40:08
  Speaker 6: but it's like, you know, the dose are still they're
• 40:10
  Speaker 6: starting to get hard on food because it's late, it's
• 40:13
  Speaker 6: getting cold, and.
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: Some of the bucks are on food.
• 40:16
  Speaker 6: But at the same time they're checking those food sources
• 40:20
  Speaker 6: for dose coming in heat. I mean, I killed a
• 40:22
  Speaker 6: seven year old buck last year on December seventeenth. Before
• 40:25
  Speaker 6: I saw him, I was watching a two year old
• 40:27
  Speaker 6: ten point run a dough for an hour. So it's
• 40:31
  Speaker 6: really sporadic, but I think it's one of the best
• 40:33
  Speaker 6: times to hunt on.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: Oh that's great December action. Are you still having acrons
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: in December or are those all dried.
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: Up for you?
• 40:39
  Speaker 6: No, man, this year they are. We had a bumper
• 40:42
  Speaker 6: crop this year. It's made it Yeah, it's made it
• 40:45
  Speaker 6: tough hunting. Honestly, there's just every acren tree has been
• 40:48
  Speaker 6: loaded at least where we're at, so there definitely are
• 40:52
  Speaker 6: still some acrons on the ground. I have a lot
• 40:54
  Speaker 6: of buddies that you know that feed corn and stuff,
• 40:57
  Speaker 6: and they told me that they're not even get getting
• 40:59
  Speaker 6: picked on their corn because there's just so many acrons.
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: But so so as we look forward for the next week,
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: there are you going to continue on just hunting those
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: pinch points? Are you gonna get more aggressive with any
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: calling or any that kind of stuff.
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: I'll hunt pinch points, but then also try to hone
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: in on some of those food sources because while we
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: did have a bumper.
• 41:18
  Speaker 6: Crop, it's now starting to get to where there's definitely
• 41:21
  Speaker 6: some spots that are going to be hotter.
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: You know, they cleaned up.
• 41:25
  Speaker 6: I think a lot of those acrons, uh, you know,
• 41:27
  Speaker 6: through now, but trying to find those late season spots
• 41:30
  Speaker 6: where they haven't got them all cleaned up, mainly red oaks.
• 41:34
  Speaker 6: Just finding those areas and then finding those close to
• 41:37
  Speaker 6: you know, cruising spots, saddles and like I said, the
• 41:40
  Speaker 6: head of drainages things like that.
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: Shoot, man, it sounds like things are far from over
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: and your neck of the woods is pretty exciting that
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: you can still hunt good action in December.
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: It is, man, it's it's uh, it's uh.
• 41:51
  Speaker 6: It works out good for for my schedule because you know,
• 41:55
  Speaker 6: having three young kids, I don't really get to go
• 41:57
  Speaker 6: on that many trips.
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: I usually do either a Elkhun or rut hunt, and I.
• 42:01
  Speaker 6: Try to hit that Midwest time frame out of state,
• 42:04
  Speaker 6: you know, the first two weeks in November, and then
• 42:07
  Speaker 6: it's like, if I'm not successful, I still have the
• 42:10
  Speaker 6: latter season here to look forward to, because that's when
• 42:12
  Speaker 6: it's best in my opinion.
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Man's that's a great way to look
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: at it.
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: For sure.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: If you had to look at the next week, I
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: know you kind of already gave us a little anticipation here,
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: but the next week, if you had to rank buck
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: movement on a scale of one to ten.
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: What would you call it?
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: I would say five.
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: That's a good number.
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean middle, you know, middle of the road.
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: I think it just depends on where you're at.
• 42:33
  Speaker 6: But I'm starting to get a few more pictures during
• 42:35
  Speaker 6: the day of bucks moving. You know that nine ten
• 42:39
  Speaker 6: o'clock range. It seems like more than anything. But I
• 42:42
  Speaker 6: think it's still a little lullish. I think you still
• 42:44
  Speaker 6: have some mature deer there that are on dose locked down.
• 42:48
  Speaker 6: But I think it's just gonna get better. But next week,
• 42:50
  Speaker 6: probably about a five.
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: I'd say, man, that's cool, dude. Five is way better
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: than a zero.
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: So that's right.
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: Good time in the woods. I appreciate the info, man,
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: thank you absolutely, there is still a lot of reason
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: for deer hunters around the country to be optimistic. Thank
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: you for tuning in to Refresh Radio this week. Guys.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: I hope the information that we got from all our
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: contributors helps you make a good decision this week to
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: get out there and get after the deer. If you
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: need some more content, you need some more stuff, to
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: check out, some things, some inspiration, whatever it may be,
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: you might go check out the Wired to Hunt feed
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: because Mark, as you remember we alluded to earlier, he
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: in fact killed.
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: The Wide nine and he has a podcast about how
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: that went down.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: And then also Tony Peterson, a guest on today's show,
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: tells us asks the question how many deer are there really?
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: On the latest Foundations episode.
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: Also check out the description below because there are some
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: cool videos from the Element crew that just went out
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: on the Meat Eater feed that you for sure need
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: to take a look at.
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: Some big pigs go down.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: And also Tyler Shott a really nice buck in South Dakota.
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: I hope you all have a great rest of your season.
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: We still have more rout action around the country to
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: tune into, so tune in next week for another episode
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: of ret Fresh Radio. This has been rut Fresh, Keep
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: it Fresh.