Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 951: Debunking Conventional Whitetail Wisdom with Thermal Drone Research

Transcript

Ep. 951: Debunking Conventional Whitetail Wisdom with Thermal Drone Research · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the show, I'm joined by Derek Dixon to discuss how
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: his year long thermal drone study has helped him better
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: understand white tail deer behavior and how it's debunked some
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: of the conventional white tail wisdom that he grew up with.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: All Right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: brought to you by First Light and their Camo for
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Conservation Initiative. And today we have a very interesting different
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: kind of conversation because we're going to be looking at
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: a number of you might call it whitetail wisdom, conventional wisdom,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: you might call it like hunterisms, the typical things that
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: we've heard over the years about how dear behave, how
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: they move, how they bed, all that kind of stuff.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: And oftentimes, you know, expert deer hunters have these deep
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: foundational beliefs based on our anecdotal observations, based on things
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: we've heard from other PEP people about what deer do
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: and why they do it and when they do it.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: But a lot of times that's just based on our
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: you know, what we've seen from the tree, or what
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: somebody in a podcast said. Maybe it's based off of
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: GPS collar studies that have some real science and data
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: behind them, but that's kind of rare. Today, we're going
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: to have a set of insights that are backed up
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: by something pretty different. Our guest today is Derek Dixon,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: and what he brings to the table is the very
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: unique perspective of somebody who has watched deer from above
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: or days and days and days and days with a
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: thermal drum. Now, if you're not familiar, Derek Dixon launched
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: a YouTube channel this summer called white Tail Research. It's
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: taken the Internet by storm. A lot of people have
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: seen these videos. A lot of podcasters have been scrambling
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: to get Derek on the show. I did as well.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: I reached out to him August and we've finally gotten
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: around to having this chat. But I'll be honest with you,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: I originally was not sure that I wanted to have
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: this conversation because I was concerned about the Pandora's box
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: that could be opened with this technology. Because well, let
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: me explain. If you're not familiar with one of thermal drones,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: I want to explain to you exactly first why they
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: are so incredible of a research tool, Why Derek has
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: been able to see so much interesting stuff and bring
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: it back to tell us about. But then number two,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: the really concerning fair chase implications of this technology too.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Now.
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  Speaker 1: I actually got to see a thermal drone in use
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: for the first time this summer, and let me tell
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: you about that. I went visited with a friend and
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: he said, I've got this thermal drone. It's pretty incredible.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: It allows you to see what's out there in a
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: way that nothing else ever has before. Told me the
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: story about how he showed up on this property the
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: day before, and the landowners said, well, you know, last
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: year I had this booner that made it through the
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: hunting season. So I'm thinking he should still be out here.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: I'm hoping he's still here. And my friend said, all right,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: I'll find him. He throws his drone up in the sky.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Within I believe it was ninety seconds he had found
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: that buck, zoomed in and was filming it so close
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: that you could see like the flies buzzing around the
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: steer's head. What a thermal drone allows you to do.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: These are very very high powered drones. These are different
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: than you know, the little dji things that some of
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: us have flown to take pictures and cool videos and stuff.
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  Speaker 1: This is next level technology. These drones have, as the
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: name would indicate, a thermal camera, so it will actually
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  Speaker 1: show the heat signature of an animal on the landscape.
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  Speaker 1: So you throw this drone I don't know how many
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: feet up, three hundred feet up or five hundred feet
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  Speaker 1: up or whatever the max is, You flip on that
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  Speaker 1: thermal and then the animals just light up and show
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: on the screen right away. You see where all the
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: deer are right away. And then these cameras, these next
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: level drone cameras have I'm not sure what the optical
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  Speaker 1: zoom is, but it's ten x or one hundred x
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: or something crazy. Just tap on that screen, double tap,
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  Speaker 1: and it zooms right into that animal, and all of
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  Speaker 1: a sudden, it's like you're hovering ten feet above this buck,
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  Speaker 1: right over his shoulder, watching everything he's doing, as if
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  Speaker 1: you are I don't know the CIA on a military
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  Speaker 1: emission watching a target. It was, you know, to see
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: that firsthand was fascinating, I guess to say the least,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: but also scary, like what this could mean if somebody
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: tried to use this technology to change how they hunted.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: So if you have this technology in the right hands,
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  Speaker 1: though in the hands of somebody like Derek Dixon, who
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: is using this tool for research purposes, it's pretty incredible.
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  Speaker 1: Because what Derek was able to do last year, he
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: took the year off from hunting. He decid, I'm not
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: gonna hunt while I have this tool, and while I'm
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: using this technology, and I'm just gonna wake up every
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: day and I'm going to follow deer. I'm going to
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: watch deer from above and track and kind of measure
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  Speaker 1: and take notes of everything they do, where they go,
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  Speaker 1: how they do it, when they do it, why they
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: do it, and film all this and track all of this.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: And he did that for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: and hundreds of hours. He you know, we didn't get
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: into it here in this conversation, but as I understand it,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: he lost his job and he had this free time
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: and he decided to devote it to this research project.
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  Speaker 1: So he basically took this research project on as a
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: full time job and study these deer all day, every day,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: all fall, for hours and hours. And so he has
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: a level of insight. He has a window into the
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: world of white tails that's different than almost anything else.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: You're able to see things. He was able to see
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: things and watch things and see how deer behaved throughout
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: a day, watch a single mature buck or multiple mature
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: bucks through many many different days, and watched how they
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: moved through a landscape, watched how they betted, when they betted,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: how they chose to bed, how they got to their bed,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: what wind conditions helped them choose where to bed. But
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: about how they approached a feeding hear how do they
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: do that? Do they coming straight in? Do they jayhook in?
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Do they curve around the downwind side? How do they
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: impact to hunting pressure? How did other deer move in
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: through the area change their behavior. There's a million different
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: questions that Derek was able to answer with this tool.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Absolutely incredible and those are the things we talk about
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: today on our podcast. We cover the many different Aha
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: moments he had as he watched these forty four different
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: deer that he studied, these forty four different bucks. I
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: believe that he studied extensively throughout this project. We're going
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: to get insight into what kind of impact he saw
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: when it came to cold fronts. We're going to get
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: into the impact that he saw from hunting pressure from
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: different access route strategies. We're going to talk through how
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: bucks bed, how they travel in the wind, how they
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: utilize wind, how they utilize funnels. We're going to talk
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: through how effective trail cameras actually are or are not.
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  Speaker 1: This and much much more was illuminated for Derek while
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: using this thermal drum. So that is why it's such
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: a wildly interesting technology and tool to use in this context.
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  Speaker 1: On the flip side, though, can you imagine how inappropriate
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  Speaker 1: and unethical it would be if you had this tool,
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  Speaker 1: Let's say on October first, and you were going to
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: go out for the opening day hunt of bo season,
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  Speaker 1: and you decide, Okay, I don't know where to hunt tonight,
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  Speaker 1: so I'm going to throw out my drum and I'm
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: going to send it over my property and within a minute,
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  Speaker 1: it's going to tell me where every single deer is
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  Speaker 1: on the property. And with this camera, it's going to
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: be allowed me to zoom right in and identify every
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: deer and then I can say, oh, yep, okay, the
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  Speaker 1: one buck I'm after is betted right here in this spot.
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  Speaker 1: I'm going to go sneak within sixty five yards of
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  Speaker 1: him get down when set up, wambam, Thank you, ma'am.
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  Speaker 1: That's your hunt. Can you imagine that? Is that hunting?
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  Speaker 1: Is that what our forefathers trained us, taught us, built
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  Speaker 1: this tradition around. Is that what we want to leave
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  Speaker 1: to our kids. Is this kind of hunting? As far
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  Speaker 1: as I'm concerned, the answer is no. That is not hunting.
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  Speaker 1: That is not what we want to pass down to
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  Speaker 1: our kids. That is not an appropriate fair chase method
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  Speaker 1: for pursuing game in any in any kind of way.
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  Speaker 1: So my hope is that by having these conversations, by
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  Speaker 1: sharing this technology, it will hopefully bring greater awareness to
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  Speaker 1: the fact that this is out there and that it
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  Speaker 1: needs to be carefully regulated and managed. I've already been
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  Speaker 1: working with the National Deer Association on their position statements
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  Speaker 1: around drones and have actually talked with them about the
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  Speaker 1: implications of thermal drones and how our position statement might
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  Speaker 1: need to evolve in the future given this new technology.
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  Speaker 1: I hope and I expect that our state game agencies
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  Speaker 1: will continue to monitor this technology and take the appropriate
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  Speaker 1: steps to make sure it's not being abused. I know
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  Speaker 1: that there is a real case to be made for
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  Speaker 1: using this technology to recover deer, and I think that
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  Speaker 1: is a great use of it to make sure that
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  Speaker 1: we are recovering wounded and mortally hit game, making sure
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  Speaker 1: that that meat is being utilized. Absolutely, but we need
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: to make sure that in season use outside of that is,
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  Speaker 1: if it was up to me, it would be banned.
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  Speaker 1: I don't think these should be used in season other
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  Speaker 1: than recovering game. That's my take. Smarter people than I
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  Speaker 1: will debate this and determine what the appropriate regulations and
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  Speaker 1: rules are. But I would ask you, if this is
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  Speaker 1: something that you have access to, to think really long
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  Speaker 1: and hard about what the appropriate way is to use
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  Speaker 1: it so as not to lose the soul of what
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  Speaker 1: we are doing as hunters. So that is a long
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  Speaker 1: winded on ramp here to our conversation. We're going to
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  Speaker 1: get into this conversation around fair chase and the ethics
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  Speaker 1: of using drones with Derek at the end of the conversation,
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  Speaker 1: and he has some strong opinions on it as well
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: that I really appreciated hearing about. So without any further ado,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: let's get to my chat with Derek Dixon about the
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: many fascinating AHA moments he had as he studied forty
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  Speaker 1: four different bucks over the course of last year. With
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: this incredible thermal drone technology, We're going to learn a
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: lot about how dear actually behave what he saw these
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  Speaker 1: deer actually doing. It's going to maybe confirm some things
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: we believe, but also upend some of them as well.
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  Speaker 1: Without further ado, my chat with Derek Dixon of White
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Tail Research. All right with me now on the line
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  Speaker 1: is Derek Dixon. Welcome to the show. Derek.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, thanks for having me on, Mark.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you making time to do it. You are
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: a hot commodity right now. I ran across your first
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: video probably a day or two after it came out
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: on YouTube, messaged you right away back in August, and
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: so we started talking then and then life got crazy
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: and we just now got to recording this. But I'm
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: glad we're doing it. I've got to ask you, in
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: the month or so, or maybe it's been a little
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: bit more a month or two since you kind of
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: started releasing your findings in your first videos, how have
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: you felt about the feedback, about the commentary, about the
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: interest in your work so far.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that was something that I was actually pretty impressed
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: with it. Took quite a long time to start finding
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: the people that were a little more negative towards it.
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  Speaker 3: And I feel like the group of individuals that were
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: being negative towards it, they hadn't actually watched anything that
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: I'd done yet, So it was just kind of seeing
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: a guy with a thermal drone and potentially applying it
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: to a hunting situation, and you know, hysteria hit and
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: other than that, though everyone that's actually well not everyone,
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: but like ninety nine percent of people that have actually
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: watched the videos that have commented on it and made
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: their their opinion vocal, they're they're really positive about it.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: And that was something that going into it I wasn't
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: one hundred percent expecting. I kind of felt like I
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: was throwing myself into the fire a little bit by
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: introducing the capabilities of these drones in a research application,
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: but I was hoping that I could do so in
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: a way that everyone would be able to immediately gain
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: respect from it and be like, Okay, like this guy's
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: intentions are really really pure in what he's attempting to do,
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: and you know, kind of kind of run with that,
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: And that's exactly what happened definitely had a massive, amazing
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: amount of feedback and beyond anything that I was prepared
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: for for sure.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well it's it's fascinating stuff. And I know folks
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: have told you this already, but you've done a really
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: good job with it, so kudos for that. But the pushback,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: I could see there being two angles of pushback, one
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: being you know, fair chase implications of this kind of tool,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: which we're definitely going to talk about. But the second,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: and I'm curious if you've seen this, if you've heard
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: from people in this, one of the pieces of pushback
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: I've wondered about might be related to your methodology, like
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: the sample size and the process you've gone through to
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: you know, accumulate your findings. I could see some kind
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: of wonky research expert coming in and saying, well, you know,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: this is an end of one. This is too small
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: a sample size, you're basing your findings off of something
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: that's too anecdotal. I'm curious what your response is to
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: that possible pushback. And then if you could walk us
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: through in more detail, you know exactly what your process
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: has been here, How did you you know what's the
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: scale of what you've done here. What kind of you know,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: time and sample size have you explored here to come
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: to your fund Yeah.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: No, And actually to that with with the experts kind
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: of contacting and reaching out and being a little bit
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: potentially skeptical. I've heard from many many of the experts
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: in the field already, and a lot of them highly
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: respect what I've done so far and they think that
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: I've done in a really good manner. So that was
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: definitely a massive pat on my back whenever. It took
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: a while for any of them, you know, the people
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: that I would recognize in that field, to reach out
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: to me, But then they finally did and we started
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: talking about it, and they definitely had a lot of
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: really positive things to say about it. So, you know,
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: I have heard from the experts in that field, but
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: my methodology is going into it. Last season, I was
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: really heavily focusing on mature bucks during daylight activity, and
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: I was just going to gather as much data collection
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: as possible.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: There really wasn't.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: There were a few times, and you'll see this in
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: future videos, where I had like a couple individual topics
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: that I went into it really harping on. But for
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: the most part, my goal was to find as many
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: mature bucks as I possibly could and track them for
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: as long as I possibly could until I lost them
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: in that timeframe, and that's exactly what I did. And
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: then across the board, like say I found one particular buck,
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: this kind of gets into what I was actually doing
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: and what I was actually collecting. Say I went out,
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: I found a buck early in the morning, then I
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: would document quite a few variables about the day, just
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: basics about the day, thirty to forty variables that across
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: every single year that I was researching per day. But
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: then whenever I would finally locate him, whether he was
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: standing or he was betting, then I would mark that
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: as an event. So let's in this story, let's say
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: that he was betting, because oftentimes I could find them
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: betting in the morning. Then I would mark twenty five
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: to thirty variables based off of what he's doing in
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: that particular bed, so and everything in relation to it,
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: so wind direction, wind speed, temperature.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: Time of day, time spent in bed, all.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: These different things, and then I would mark all those
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: down and as soon as he would stand up, I
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: would time stamp it and then that would be his
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: movement pattern from then on, and then I would document
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: twenty five to thirty variables depended upon all of his
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: movement patterns and what he was doing throughout that time frame.
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: And really during movement you potentially get more because there
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: might be a scenario where he hits a rub or
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: he hits a scrape, and he's doing these types of
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: activities while on his feet or he's feeding, and you
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: can document that as well and also time stamp every
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: single one of them. But then as soon as he
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: beds back down, then you mark that variable as again
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: it's an event, and then the time stamp it, and
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: then twenty five thirty variables once again. You just repeat
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: that over and over and over every single day and
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: crossed every single buck, and in the end you end
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: up with over one hundred and fifty variables per day
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: per year that you research, and it gets pretty overwhelming.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: But all of that stuff becomes filterable in a spreadsheets
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: where it just kind of automates itself and kicks out,
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: and then you have like a master sheet where you
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: have deer one, two, three, four all the way. I
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: think I think I have forty four bucks that I
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: researched last season, and then they all have filter bowls
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: based off of like yards per hour, So this buck
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: travels at an average yards per hour in the early
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: season kind of in October, November, December, January. If I
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: was able to watch him that often at this rate
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: of speed in terms of yards per hour, here's like
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: his general tendencies here. Did he have any injuries? Did
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: those injuries seem to have an effect on the way
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: that he was behaving? All these types of things, literally
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: anything that you could possibly think of. I was attempting
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: to document it across the board, but I wasn't entering
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: it with an individual goal in mind except for just
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: document as much as you possibly can, and then later
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: on after the season's over. And obviously there's a few
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: things I noticed during the season where it's like, okay,
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: maybe maybe start focusing on that a little bit more.
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: But in the end, I was trying to just get
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: as much data as possible so that way, whenever season
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: was done, I can go back and I can really
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: harp on it and kind of like phone in on
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: those individual topics like deer betting on the leeward side
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: of the ridge, deer moving and coordinates with wind, and
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: all these types of things and see if there was
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: a correlation with any of that. And in the end, yes,
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: my sample size isn't crazy large, but still there's forty
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: four deer that I recorded, and I recorded mature bucks
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: moving for over twenty one hundred hours, which it's quite
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: a long timeframe. I don't know anyone else that has
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: visual movement of twenty one hundred hours on mature Bucks.
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: If you do, then contact me. I'd love to see it.
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: But that's quite a bit of time. And I think
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: that the experts also agree that, like, that's a pretty
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: big sample size, especially for my area, and that's where
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: that's where you can start getting into the where maybe
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: it's not as applicable a lot of the things I
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: talk about.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: It's very very applicable for my area.
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: But you know, maybe going down into Florida or southern Alabama, Mississippi,
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: those areas or big agg country where there's little pockets
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: of timber and it's just flat as can be and
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: you can see forever. You know, it might a lot
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: of the topics I talk about may not apply in
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: those areas, and I would love to go to those
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: locations and do research on them. But there's also only
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: one me, So I'm trying to figure that out in
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: terms of how we can kind of expand this a
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: little bit more in a really healthy way.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, have you heard from any institutions yet about wanting
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: to take this idea and scale it? You know, has
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Mississippi State University reached out or any one of these
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: deer programs said hey, this is a great idea, how
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: can we do this within our program?
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: I've had a couple of universities reach out, But my
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: problem with teaming with a university is I don't personally
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: want to get involved in a situation where you have
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: to rely on government funding because at the moment that
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: you do that, then you kind of have to fine
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: tune your ideas and projects towards what they're wanting because
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: they're the ones providing the funding. So I have been
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: been in talk, like I said earlier, with some pretty
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: big names. I feel confident being able to.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: Throw one out. We're going to collaborate later in the season.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Bronson Strickland.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: I think everyone probably knows his name, so so yeah,
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: we're going to be collaborating later in.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: The season, and we have some ideas going to the future.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: But really the big, the big goal is going to
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: be trying to gain private funding for large scale research
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: projects over government funding, so that way we can choose
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: what we're going to be researching and really make it
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: a little bit more applicable for our space, and also
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: still retain that science side of things, like we're really
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: it's going to be science based, but in the end
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: it'll be able to spin off better for the hunting
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: community and really just to allow people to.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: Gain more confidence and what they're doing.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great, so wonderful. Segue Bronson has done a
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: great job of discussing many of the different studies around
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: deer movement and how various atmospheric weather, moon factors, different
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: things like that all may or may not impact deer movement.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Just came out with a report last year looking at
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: the moon in quite great detail and kind of breaking
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: down some of the different myths and whatnot. And I'm
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: curious when you consider what you've seen compared to GPS
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: collar studies, the conventional wisdom, the popular science out there
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: right now, I'm really interested about what you have seen
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: that's diverged from what those studies have shown. Because the
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: big thing that comes up time and time and time again.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Is that when you talk to serious deer hunters, you
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: hear wow, cold fronts man, they get deer moving. Or
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: there's everyone's got a favorite moon theory about how this
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: thing or that thing might impact deer movement, or a
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: high and rising barometric pressure. There's all of these different
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: variables that such and such expert deer hunter says, well,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: that's the thing that's really going to get a mature
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: buck on his feed and moving. But every GPS color
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: study to date has never found a statistically significant impact
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: on movement. None of those things have lined up in
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: a statistically significant way. So you watched forty some different
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: bucks for twenty one hundred hours over the course of
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: so many different days. Have you found anything different than
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: what those studies indicated? Is there some variable, Is there
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: some factor that did have a statistically significant difference make
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: a statistically significant difference on the chure buck movement?
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And in relation to all the topics you just mentioned,
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: like moon and temperature and whatnot, I have not found
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: anything that correlates kind of similar basically, like you said,
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: a statistically big enough difference that it was worth worthy
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: of being able to, you know, kind of parp on
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: and talk about I haven't seen anything, but the one
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: thing I have seen is wind shifting in the middle
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: of the day. That's been one variable that actually had
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: you know, they mature bucks in particular, seemed to stand
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: up very, very consistently with a mid day wind shift.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: And that was the first time I recorded.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: I actually started kind of freaking out because I went
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: out there with the intention of recording that, and then
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: as it was it was sprinkling a little bit, and
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: as the wind kind of started wrapping around him from
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: the south off to the west, then he just stood
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: up like right right on whenever my phone kind of
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: I had documented where I thought he was going to stand,
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: and he stood within five minutes of that. And I
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: remember just like spam texting.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: My wife like he's up, He's up. He actually staid
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: and so watched him do that.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: But I watched that across the board multiple times, and
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: over time I started trying to piece together why why
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: are they getting up out of their bed whenever the
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: wind is shifting in And this is kind of a
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: it's a really interesting topic because you initially would think
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: it's it's it's because of the wind, and they're wanting
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: to reposition their bedding location because with that wind shifting,
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: it's putting them at a potential disadvantage in their current location,
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: so thus they need to relocate. But I don't think
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: that's exactly why, and maybe maybe some scenarios that's why
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: they're doing it, But I think the reason that they're
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: shifting dependent on wind. And the reason for this before
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: I say it is I've recorded multiple times in mature
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: Buck bed it kind of in like a thermal hub
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: type situation on a south facing slope with a south
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: facing wind. He's betting on the windward side of the
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: ridge and the wind wraps all the way around to
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: a north wind ten to fifteen miles per hour to
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: the cold front moving in, and he decides to get
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: up and move based off of that. But in that scenario,
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: he would have been in a perfect betting location for
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: that because he's in a thermal hub, he's on the
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: leeward side of the ridge. Why why are you getting
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: up and moving out of that scenario? And the only
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: thing I've been able to piece together from that is
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: I think they have a predetermined idea as to where
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: they want to spend that evening movement period, and whenever
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: the wind shifts based off of that, then it kind
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: of makes that location that they were going to be
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: going to not as viable in their mind. So therefore
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: they have to shift dependent upon where they want to
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: be that evening and not so much as where they
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: need to be betting for safety and to have everything
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: to their advantage. I think that it's really dependent upon
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: where they're wanting to be in that evening time frame.
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: And that was pretty veastinad.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Interesting. So you in some of the videos and some
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: of the conversations I've heard you had in recent weeks,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: one thing that has come up a lot is is
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: how deer use wind. And this is something that I
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: think there's a lot of conventional wisdom around. There's a
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: lot of beliefs. You know, some people have got hard
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: set beliefs around how bucks use the wind to bed.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: Other people have hard set beliefs around how deer use
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: wind when they're traveling. So I want to throw a
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: couple of these pieces of conventional wisdom at you, and
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: I would love to hear some detail around what you've
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: seen in real life when you're watching these deer right
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: So a big one is that, as you mentioned just
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: a second ago, deer prefer to travel into the wind.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: If they're going to approach a food source or if
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: they're going to approach somewhere of importance to them, maybe
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: a betting ear, they want to smell what's there first,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: So they're going to try to move into the wind
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: in some way, whether that be right in their face
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: or quartering two. Does that Does that track true as
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: you've watched all these deer, Yeah, no.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: Movement and betting in relation to wind is something that
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: I have not been able to see much of a
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: correlation to. And that's actually the second fascinating thing that
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: I found, And I started kind of having to force
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: myself to ask why and what, Like why am I
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: seeing these weird scenarios? And I'll give you one of
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: my favorite scenarios, and I've used it before, but it's
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: just it's such a fascinating one where I had recorded
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: a mature about betting on the leeward side of the
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: ridge pretty consistently. He'd been doing it for maybe three
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: or four days in a row, and it was like, okay,
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: maybe there's maybe you know, percentage wise, we're starting leaning
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: towards leeward side of the ridge here, which is is becoming,
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: you know a little bit more like what people had said.
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: And then one day there was a cold front that
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: was moving in. It was twenty five mile per hour
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: north wind. It was spitting ice. It was like five
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: degrees think it felt like negative one. It was disgusting
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: that day, and he was betted on the windward side
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: of the ridge facing the storm. And he's just laying there.
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: His antlers and everything are just getting piled with ice,
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: and he's just facing the storm. And as soon as
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: I saw that, I just kind of took everything about
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: leeward sides of the ridge and I just like threw
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: it out the window because I had no idea and
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: I still to this day really that particular example, I
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: have no idea why he was there. I don't know
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: if maybe he was moving back towards his evening bed
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: and he got tired and he just decided this is
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: where I'm plopping down, and it's like, well, there's a
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: storm too bad, like I'm just going to stay here,
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: or really why he decided to.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: Bed in that location. But I've seen that multiple times.
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: Where they bet on the windward side of the ridge
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: with a storm kind of coming in and it didn't
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: make much sense. And then in coordination with moving up
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: to a feeding area in the evening timeframe and kind
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: of trying to wrap the downwind side of it prior
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: to entering up nearby it or kind of into a
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: staging area location. I haven't seen that correlation hardly at all,
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: and I think that the reason why is because thermals
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: are kind of king. I think thermals are number one
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: for what a deer is attempting to utilize in terms
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: of how they're moving and whenever they're gaining access to
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: an area that they want to be able to smell,
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: if the wind is not volatile enough to be able
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: to actually disturb the thermals at the top in that area,
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: then I think that they're really trying to position themselves
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: at a thermal advantage way more often than they are
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: in a wind advantage. I think a scenario like from
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: a hunter's perspective, where you're going to see and I
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: didn't record this much because I didn't record hunters a
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: lot across last season, but everybody's seen it where you
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: rattle out of buck and he just completely ignores you
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: who walks away wraps down.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: Wind of you, and then he moves in.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: So like, they will attempt to use wind to their
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: advantage whenever there's something that is outside of the norm
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: that occurs and they need to go out and check it.
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: But in terms of wrapping dough bedding to go and
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: get down wind of every dough bed and every single
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: food source, you have to think about it from the
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: efficiency mindset of how efficient and how inefficient actually a
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: mature buck would become if say, on a morning travel route,
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: he wanted to scent check I don't know, eight groups
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: of doughs all the way across a mile on a
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: high stretch that he's going to walk of train diversity,
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: and in that stretch he's going to try to wrap
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: downwind of every single group of doughs along the way.
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: He's not going to that would be extremely inefficient for
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: him in terms of how many steps he's going to
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: be taking. So for him in that scenario in the
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: morning travel, he's going to try to intersect every single
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: dough trail along the way and he's just going to
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: scent check the ground versus wrapping downwind of every single group,
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: and that makes him extremely efficient at that point, and
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: it allows him to stay back further and cover away
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: from where those dough groups are. So yeah, And in
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: the end, the answer to that is, I think they
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: utilize thermals far more often than they do the wind.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: So tell me, then, let's talk thermals. You've emphasized that
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: numerous times as being maybe the big aha. Is that
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: accurate to say, like the thermal impact was maybe even
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: bigger than you thought originally?
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think definitely a big aha moment.
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: And also it's it I'm not one hundred percent on
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: it still, but I think that it's really dependent upon
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: the wind and how volatile that wind is. So if
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: you have a really harsh wind that's kind of eight
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: to fifteen twenty miles per hour that's going to shove
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: and swirl and mess with everything, then I think in
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: that scenario, wind might become a little bit more important.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: But I'm not one hundred percent sure, but I do.
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: I do definitely see quite frequently bucks utilizing thermals to
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: their advantage in a scenario where there's just really low
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: winds that are steady and they're not volatile, You're not
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: having gusts up into the fifteen mile Prower range. Ever,
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: they're just kind of like in that two to eight
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: mile Prier range and just very very steady. I think
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: at that time frame, that's whenever mature buck is the
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: most confident to be able to get up on its
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: feet and be able to utilize thermals to his advantage.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: So, how have you seen mature bucks do that? What
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: does that actually look like in real life?
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, one of the first times I started noticing
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: that there was definitely a correlation with thermals and when
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: mature bucks were moving was in the evening timeframe. I
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: was seeing whenever the thermals switch. And whenever I say
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: thermal switch, I don't particularly mean that they were rising,
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: you know, all day long with the sun and then
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden they just switch and out now
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: they're dropping. It's more so whenever the thermals switch, and
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: thermals in that particular location that their betting area or
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: that they're betting in should start to start swirling. And
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: that swirling effect can take quite a long time before
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: it actually switches and it starts to drop. And in
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: that particular instance, I think that they realize that they
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: are at a massive advantage whenever thermals are swirling in
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: the section that they're going to be moving in, because
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: they're able to gain intel from everywhere around them in
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: that setting. And that's whenever I've noticed that, whenever thermals
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: switch in that area kind of based off of my estimation,
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: But my estimation for that was really where they were
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: betted at, because really you have the sun that rises
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: in the east and then it kind of wraps in
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: the wintertime kind of on the south side, and then
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: it moves back over in the west, and you can
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: depict where the sun is going to be hitting. You
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: can also see it with thermal drone fun fact, but
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: you can depict where the sun is hitting on those
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: ridge systems in relation to where they're bedding, so what
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: ground is potentially being heated, So that way, the thermals
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: can start rising in those areas, and then whenever the
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: sun leaves that location and it starts to become shaded,
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: and then that you know, at that moment it might
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: take a while, but then everything's going to start swirling
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: in those locations. And I was seeing whenever you related
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: it to temperature as well, kind of within five to
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: fifteen minutes of the peak temperature for the day as
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: it kind of just started to get back off. You
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: could just look at your weather app and see it.
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: For whatever reason, they were standing within five to fifteen
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: minutes of that range, or five to ten minutes somewhere
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: in there, and it didn't particularly mean that they were
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: going to move off of that. Sometimes they would just
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: stand and they would just browse around, kind of clean themselves,
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: ruminate a little a little bit, and then all of
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: a sudden they would just kind of head off and
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: decide to move on with their evening pattern. And then
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: in some scenarios they would get up and they would
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: immediately move off with their evening pattern. I don't really
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: know that correlation between why one or the other, but
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: there was definitely something in relation to the thermals starting
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: to switch in that area and swirl and then deciding
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: to get up.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: Did anything you saw from a thermal impact standpoint change
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: the way you would hunt one of these deer?
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean probably quite a bit.
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: I think there's a different There's a ton of scenarios
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: that you could come up with, but I think the
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: number one thing that you need to start trying to
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: pay attention to as a hunter is how those thermals
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: are going to play into not you know, really a
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: lot of times whenever you traditionally, for me, especially whenever
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: I would try to place the stand location, even in
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: hill country, I was always trying to think of ways
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: to position myself with an advantage with the wind. But
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: there are some scenarios where you can have a disadvantage
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: with the wind, but you can have a thermal advantage
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: in that particular location because you're going to be getting
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: heated by the sun still kind of late into the evening,
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: and your thermals are going to be able to potentially
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: rise out of the area. And there's there's quite a
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: few very depend on that.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: If you're in a situation where it's early season and
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of green foliage, and it's a south wind,
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: and you're kind of hunting off the off down towards
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: the bottom of this kind of southwest facing slope, and
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: that south wind is going to be kind of it's
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: gonna be edging you you're scent up that ridge, but
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of green foliage, then your sen is
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: going to probably roll up underneath the green foliage and
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: start swirling up the ridge and at some point it's
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: just going to become a kind of a big ball
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: of nastiness where yeah, mature Buck's gonna be able to
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: sent check you still because your thermals never actually left
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: the canopy, they got trapped underneath it. So there's a
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: lot of ways to apply it. That's it's going to
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: be probably my biggest video that comes out someday, and
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: it's gonna be like forty five minutes or more long,
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: and it's going to get really nerdy and that pickular topic,
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: but just because there's so many different variables that can
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: take place across the season in relation to thermals, but
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: definitely trying to find ways to not just look at
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: wind direction to put yourself in an advantage with the
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: wind direction, which is a massive thing to be able
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: to do if you can put the wind to your advantage,
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: because that that just helps shove your scent in that
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: particular direction. I do think that as a hunter we
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: can utilize wind more potentially more than a mature baccan
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: to your advantage. But trying to position yourself at a
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: thermal advantage, and you know, for me, one of the
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: one of the coolest things that you can do is
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: try to find locations where there's pockets of like a
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: really steep drainage that's impassable for a white fild deer,
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: especially in hill country, and you're you're always trying to
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: push your scent into a location that's impassable by white
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: tailed deer or it's very very very unlikely that they're
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: going to be moving by that location. And if you
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: can find a scenario where you can do that, where
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: you can shove your scent in an area where they're
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: not going to pass through, but you're also in a
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: high traffic zone, then you're pretty much undetectable that entire
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: hunt if you're able to get your scent to go
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: down there, and then they can just move past you,
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: and yeah, et cetera. So the hardest part for a
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: lot of those areas that is gaining entry and exit.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: That's yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: You talked about this entry and exit thing a few
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: times as well, and I heard you you mentioned this summer.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: I can't remember where I heard this, but you mentioned
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: that you had been studying a little bit of the
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: impact of different kinds of entry and exits and that
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: you found that the well, let me let me take
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: a step back and describe two approaches. And you guys
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: were discussing this, but I have often thought to myself, well,
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: should I try the really sneaky and slow way to
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: get into my tree stand? Or should I try to
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: rip the band aid approach off? Which is like, you know,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: imagine a frosty cold morning in November when there's no
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: wind and the leaves are so crunchy, and every single
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: step you take seems to echo for a mile. I
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: just hate those mornings getting in because you just know it.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: It seems like every deer in a mile or two
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: must hear you walking in. So I've sometimes thought, on
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: those days, maybe I should just sprint to my tree stand,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: rip the bandit off, be loud, but get it done
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: with in five minutes, rather than a slow and still
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: kind of loud forty five minutes. I heard you say
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: that you think the rip the band aid approach might
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: be better. Can you hear that right? Can you describe
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: what you saw and what you've learned about that?
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: So I've done a lot of research worth prefacing on
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: private land, and on a lot of the private lands.
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: A lot of these guys, they're gaining entry in it,
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: or you can gain entry an exit by use of tractor, truck, UTV,
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: et cetera. And in a private land scenario, the best
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: way to gain entry an exit, just a super fast
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: answer for it, is by whatever means you use to
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: travel that property. So if you use an ATV all
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: the time, have someone drop you off with an ATV.
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: Do you use a truck all the time, have someone
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: drop you off of the truck, And in that scenario,
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: you're you're gonna have extremely minimal impact. But if we
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: kick it back over to public land where maybe you
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: can't have a truck drop you off for a UTV,
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: then you're gonna have to be walking in And in
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: that scenario, I haven't documented it enough. I'm not sure
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: which podcast. Maybe i'd misspoken on it, but I haven't
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: recorded either of these events take place a lot. But
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: I have gone in and intentionally bumped here multiple times
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: by use of giving them your scent, or by use
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: of showing them that you're a human and really letting
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: them know that you're a human, or just kind of
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: trying to sneak up on them and bump them that way.
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: And I think I think that the brip the band
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: aid off approach is going to be the best because
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: you're running in, you're giving them something audible to hear
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: at that moment, so they're going to hear it, and
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: then they're going to kind of get a little bit
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: interested in it, and then they just see a blazing hunter,
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: you know, darting through the woods and kind of ducking
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: and dodging timber.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: They're really not able to piece together that's human.
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: And if they're not able to piece together that's human,
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: they're just going to bump back off one hundred and
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: fifty to two hundred and fifty yards. And this is
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: in a scenaria where you would actually bump them. And
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: then by the time you get to your tree stand,
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: coast is clear, and then they'll they'll they'll they'll wrap
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: away for thirty minutes to an hour, and they're going
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: to be on super high alert and high high edge,
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: and they're going to be looking back in the direction
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: that the event had just taken place. But after thirty
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: minutes to an hour, if nothing's chasing them from what
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: I've seen, they cool right back down and it's as
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: if nothing ever happened. And then they just go right
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: back to kind of normal activity. And one of the
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: things that we're going to be studying this year actually,
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: we've all probably seen the Zach Barrenbaugh kind of joke
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: of darting through the woods and popping a pop grun
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: trying to sound like a deer essentially running through the woods,
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: and we're going to try to record that this season
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: and see if that could be potentially the best way
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: to gain Andrey nexit. I think it would be hilarious
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: to see like fifteen guys on public land all running
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: out the same time trying to sound like a deer.
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: That might not be the most applicable setting for this,
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: so hopefully, you know, I don't know how that's going
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: to work for public but I think if you were
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: to run in and try to sound like a deer
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: and you're on the ground and you just immediately get
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: set up with your bow and you're able to actually
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: kind of sound like a mature buck running through the woods,
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: then I think you're gonna have to get ready to
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: shoot within like the next five minutes, because I would
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: I feel like I feel like at least he's going
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: to move in on you and see what the crap's
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: going on so interesting.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: So speaking of deer moving around and and moving from
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: where they were to where you are, I want to
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: I want to rewind just a little bit back to
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: some of the conventional wisdom of like what hunters believe
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: versus what the studies believe. And let's talk cold fronts.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: Cold fronts are something that just we all seem to
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: experience it. We've we've felt those days that just seem
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: to be on fire, and oftentimes it's it's with that
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: cold front moving through. But the studies don't back it up.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: I've seen in your work you described the numbers that
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: you are measuring maybe are different, and I'm curious that
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: they're different than what many of these other studies have
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: because I've often thought to myself, well, these studies aren't
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: finding something statistically significant about the total amount of distance traveled.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: But maybe you know a little bit more movement a
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: little bit earlier is enough for it to matter for
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: a hunter, but it wouldn't show up in these studies.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: I've seen you take a look at two different things,
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: one being like the total distance a deer has moved
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: in daylight. But then you've also looked at something you
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: call net displacement and how you've maybe value that as
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: a more important variable. Can you describe what net displacement
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: is and what you've seen with that. And I'm curious, like,
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: is there a higher net displacement when a cold front
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: does come through, or the day or two after a
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: cold front or anything like that. Might that showcase? Oh yeah,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: there is an impact here possibly. I know you mentioned
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: you still haven't quite seen the correlation, but I'm just
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: curious if you've looked at that.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: And one thing also to think about prior to mentioning
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: net displacement in relation to people seeing a higher priensity
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: of deer moving in a cold front and over the
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: cold front hents. It's if all you do is you
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: go out and you hunt those cold fronts, then naturally
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: you're going to see deer activity on cold fronts because
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: that's the time from that you're hunting. But as a hunter,
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: and probably likewise for many other people, you've hunted those
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: days prior to the cold front and not seen a
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: lot of activity, and then all of a sudden, the
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: cold front moves in, and that that's kind of where
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: that the idea comes from and stems from a little
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: bit more but still just worth noting. Is like, I
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: think there's a lot of hunters out there that are
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: probably trying to fine tune themselves around those high you know,
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: those high odd situations because they don't have the time
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: to go and hunt, and then they go out on
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: a cold front they see really peak in their mentality
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: activity and it's like, well, yeah, it's because that's the
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: day that you went out in the woods, so you're
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: gonna definitely yeah. And then you make that correlation with
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: it was the cold front or maybe maybe you were
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: waiting for that perfect moon phase or whatever and you
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: went out on that you know, that particular day and
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: then you saw deer movement, so it's like it was
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: because of the moon.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: It's like, no, it's because you were in the woods.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: But anyways, back to well.
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: You said with net displacement, Yeah, net displacement I started
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: focusing on in the morning. In the morning, it's really
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: whenever you locate them where they're bedding, and then where
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: they move to and then bed back down. What's the
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: displacement between those two locations just in a straight line.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: The straight line distance from point A to point b.
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: From point A to point B and then Likewise, for
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: the evening movement, what I was doing is whenever they
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: get out of their bed in the evening, so that's
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: point A, and then where they were shooting light ends
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: in most cases because a lot of cases they're still
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: on their feet going to the dark. So I would
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: mark all the way unto where shooting light ended for me,
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: and then that would be point B. And for this
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: to make it more appable for a hunter, I also
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: did continue to document until they bedded down in most cases,
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: but that's not appable for hunters, so I didn't I
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: don't include that. But anyways, Yeah, what I was noticing
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: was that in the morning time frame across the board
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: pre rut, post rut, late season, that morning activity, especially
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: in some individual characteristic bucks, but really the average, the
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: average out from all forty four year that I studied,
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: it's almost four times greater the amount of distance from
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: a net displacement versus their evening net displacement, and in
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: terms of total hours traveled and total total time traveled,
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: the morning is a little bit greater in my scenario,
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: but it's not a great enough difference worth talking about,
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: but it is. It is a little bit. You know,
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: they are traveling for a little bit longer during daylight
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: hours from what I've seen in the morning. And then
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: the last thing is total yards traveled. That where they're actually,
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: you know, every step they're taking and in total and
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: in terms of total yards travel, that numbers actually really
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: similar in the morning and the evening, because in the
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: evening they're still traveling that entire time, they're just walking
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: back and forth and browsing, and it just seems as
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: if they're a little bit more lazy. But their yards
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: per hour is pretty similar, and their total yards travel's
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: pretty similar, but their net displacement is way closer to
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: their to their betting location, whereas the or in the
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: morning it seems very missional driven, really very missional mindset,
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: where they had a determined location where they wanted to be,
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: and they're they're trying to intersect dough trails all along
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: that travel route and scent check as many as they can,
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: and then oftentimes for whatever reason, And I don't know
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: if there's a correlation with this yet, I don't think
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: I have a large enough sample size to really speak
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: and say that it's true. But for me, I was
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: seeing a lot of bucks hitting their scrapes, in particular rubs.
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: They just make rubs all the time. There was really
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: no especially in staging areas, rubs are extremely common, but scrapes.
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: I was seeing those being made, oftentimes at the end
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: of that morning travel route. And the only thing that
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: I've started thinking about off of that is maybe that's
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: why some guys try to You know, if you're hunting
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: near a scrape or over a scrape and you kill
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: a buck kind of like around ten am or ten
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: thirty am, and then you start placing it in your
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: brain that like, you killed him on a midday movement pattern.
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: In my opinion, you killed him at the end of
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: his morning travel route. You just picked him up at
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: the very tail end of it in that scenario. So
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: I think that's a lot more common than some people
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: might think, where bucks are moving deep into the morning
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: nine am to ten thirty am. And there's a lot
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: of people for me from like conventional hunting wisdom just
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: where I grew up, particularly in how I was taught.
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: You go out the morning, you hunt, that kind of
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: light comes up, et cetera all the way until about
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: eight eight thirty and it's like, all right, get out
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: of your stand and head back to the cabin. And
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: I think that's a pretty bad idea, and just based
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: off what I've seen, because I'm seeing a lot of
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: bucks almost always moved past nine am, but I've seen
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: them move all the way into like ten thirty ten
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: forty five am before betting back down. And like I said,
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: a lot of times those scrapes that were being made
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: happened to be And I don't know if there's a
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: correlation with that or as the orphan's just this particular
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: property but happen to be at the very end tail
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: end of that travel route.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: Did you have any ability to under to know about
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: pre existing scrapes and if they were ever going to
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: visit scrapes? Like I guess what I'm getting at is
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: sometimes we think like bucks will go where, we wonder
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: will Bucks go out of their way to check a
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: scrape or are they going somewhere because they already want
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: to go somewhere, And if there happens to be a
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: scrape right there, they'll hit it or they'll happen to
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: swing down wind of it. I'm curious if you've found
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: anything related to that.
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's actually a really good question.
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: I haven't had anybody asking that question yet, and it's
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: probably something I need to bring up more often, because
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: I think that I have noticed mature bucks. And once again,
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: I think the sample size is probably too small to
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: say for sure, but there are some bucks that I
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: have where I know their home range probably too will
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: like I really know where they bed, I know where
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: they move, I know where they frequent and then all
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: of a sudden, I would be going out to find
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: this particular buck and he would be outside of that
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: home range, kind of off in a different direction, and he's
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: kind of walking this and oftentimes it happened in the morning,
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: but he would be walking this somewhat semi straight line,
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: just a more missional morning travel route, and at the
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: end of it, he would make it to a scrape
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: where you had to think he knew where that scrape was.
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: He didn't just run into that scrape.
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: He walked out of his way, like you said, to
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: get to that particular scrape location, hit the scrape, moved
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: off of it, betted down for a while, and then
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: moved right back into his home range after that. So
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: I definitely think there's something to be tapped into on
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: that topic.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: Interesting. So you were just discussing how there's maybe more
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: morning movement than a lot of hunters. Give these bucks
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: credit for two questions for me coming out of that One,
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: was that consistent throughout the year or was that just
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: during their rut or during a certain portion of the year.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: That's that's question number one.
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, No, that was consistent from really whenever bucks split
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: from their bachelor groups all the way unto the end
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: of season. And I think whenever you make it into
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: late season kind of from my area, that would be
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: December twentieth, twenty fifth and then onward into January. I
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: think whenever you make it into late season, it starts
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: to become a bit more of an individual characteristic. Because
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: I had some bucks, some mature bucks that would just
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: settle back down and they became really calm, and their
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: home ranges shrunk dramatically, and they were really focusing kind
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: of on themselves, browsing on acorns, drinking water, not really
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: going out and sent chicking does. And then I had
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: some bucks that were lunatics the entire season, and they
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: just continue to travel all the way across the property
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: every single day in the morning, and they never cooled off.
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: So I think that in the late season in particular,
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: that can become really an individual characteristic. But across the
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: kind of pre rut timeframe, peak rut, post rut, and
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: even into that like maybe lateish late rut time frame,
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: then you're you're still gonna see more movement in the morning.
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: And even on the bucks where they did shrink their
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: home range, it's like, for I have one really good
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: example where he shrunk into an eighty acre home range,
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: and he was very consistently inside of that eighty acre
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: home range. The only time he left that eighty acre
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: home range was in the morning, and in those morning
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: travel routes, it was just as if he was making
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: a pre rep you know, post rep peak ret type
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: of movement. His yards per hour traveled was identical. They met,
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: the type of terrain that he was walking, and how
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: it was trained driven in the semi straight line and
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: path that he was taking. It was almost identical to
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: those early season or to the you know, kind of
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: pre rep post rut peakret timeframes. But he was doing
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: it in the late season and he was being marked
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: by me as a very sedentary Bucks. He's living in
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: such a tight range, but he still did every once
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: in a while. I think I think I recorded him
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: doing it four or five times, leave that small home
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: range to go out and check for intersect dough trails
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: all along that way, and it every time it happened
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: in the morning.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: When it came to you know, outside of this uh
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: checking for does the long morning movements of the late
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: morning movements is this My first instinct was like, Oh,
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: this must have all happened in deep like sanctuary bedding
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: cover and people just don't see that because they're usually
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: not hunting in that back there in the thick stuff. So, yes,
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: these deer are still moving, but it's you know, deep
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: in these safe places. Is that true? Or was this
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: late morning activity happening in maybe surprising places.
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, most of the times it was happening in surprising places.
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: But I think that a lot of the properties for
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: my area where I'm researching, there's a ton of mature timber.
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: And it's like, in terms of thinking from the mindset
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: of like deep thick, you know type cover, we don't
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: really have a lot of areas that have deep thick
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: type cover because there's not a lot of a lot
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: of guys going out and doing a you know, heavy
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: TSI and then you know, doing controlled burns in the
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: timber to be able to make those areas really and
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: green and thick. We just have a ton of really old,
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: mature timber in this area. So you know, I guess
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: that's probably a bad question for me to be able
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: to answer at the moment because I just haven't been
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: able to be in a type of train where there
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: is truly that you know, betting sanctuary type thing. But
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: I definitely have properties this season where I'll be going
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: in different states that are going to.
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: Have that type of habitat interesting.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, after having watched forty four different Bucks for hundreds
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: of hours, do you lean more towards oh Bucks or
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: all individuals and they do a lot of things that
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: are just unique personality type things or is it more well, yeah,
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of things that are almost like rules.
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: They do this, they do that. There are strong trends.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: Where are you leaning more towards now or what's that
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: percent split if you had to say, well, it's like
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: forty percent predictable and sixty percent. Man, every Buck's different. Yeah,
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: do you have any sense of that after looking at
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: this data?
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say that it really heavily leans towards
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: the individual buck characteristics. I think that in particular, mature bucks,
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: if you backed it off from ature bucks and you
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: started looking at younger deer kind of two three year
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: old bucks, maybe even four year old bucks, but I
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: think that they're going to get shoved off into the
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: mature side of things in terms of individual behavior, especially
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: during pre rut and peak rut and post runt and
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: then dough groups and whatnot. I think dough groups, for sure,
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: you can lean that back towards the side of like
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: they're not really that individual they all kind of do
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: the same thing. And then younger deer they're kind of
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: leaned on the they all kind of do the same thing.
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: And it seems like they're really curious into mature bucks,
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: by the ways, which is maybe something if you want
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: to do, we could get into. But mature bucks in particular,
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: they seem to all be very individualistic in terms of
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: how they behave, and I'd seen that across the board,
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: and I think almost every GPS color study that's been
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: done in the past it kind of backs that as well,
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: saying that individual buck behavior is extremely common and that's
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: kind of the standard for mature bucks.
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: So what have you seen with these young being curious,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: because I've seen a few of your videos where there'll
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: be these bachelor groups of young bucks that go and
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: like almost seek out the big old buck and kind
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: of bump him or butt or bug him. Is this
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: is this a consistent thing you've seen and b having
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: If that's the case, is there any way to take
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: advantage of that? Is there anything that a hunter can
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: use with that knowledge?
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I haven't thought about it from the hunter's perspective,
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: where if you're seeing young bucks move through the timber,
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: how they might be potentially trying to seek out that
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: mature buck for you, I haven't thought of that yet.
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: That's a pretty good idea, but yeah, now I've definitely
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: seen them intentionally seek out mature bucks, whether it's in
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: the peak rut time frame, post rut late season, like
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: a in a peak rut time frame, you'll have a
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: scenario where a buck has mature buck has a dough
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: kind of vetted, and she off down and what would
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: be a thicker area from my area, and then he's
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: betted within fifteen to twenty yards of her, just kind
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: of pending and waiting and backed off from him. Thirty
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: to fifty yards away, there's like three or four younger
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: bucks all just kind of like waiting in line or
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: sitting back to observe and watch what event's about to
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: take place. I don't know if it's like a if
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: it's a learning situation, or what all they're exactly doing.
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: But I've also heard from some perspective, and I haven't
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: recorded this yet, and I would love to, or if
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: somebody else could, where there's an idea whenever there's there's
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: twins in a particular dough, that it's actually two bucks
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: breeding that one dough, And in this scenario, it would
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: potentially make sense where the mature buck would move in
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: and breed that particular dough at that time and then
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: move off, and then one of those younger bucks, potentially
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: the most dominant out of that group that's kind of
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: sitting back on the bench waiting, they step up to
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: the plate and they kind of went out the fight,
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: and then they take over and then they potentially breed
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: that exact same doe again. And that's how sometimes twins
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: are able to come from that. And that's something I've
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: heard from guys like Bronson and others that have asked
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: me whether or not I've recorded that, and no, I haven't,
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: but I think that would be a really cool thing
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: to be able to capture, and that might be what's
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: taking place there. But I've also seen the peak rut
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: where a mature buck will be bedded in his kind
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: of in his morning bed at the end of his
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: travel house, so there's his midday bed, and a younger
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: buck will move in on him, and in my opinion,
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: in that scenario from what I've seen a lot, the
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: mature buck generally doesn't like to be messed with, but
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: sometimes and take their bucks. I've seen where they let
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: the younger buck move in next to him and he'll
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: bed down five yards away, and they'll just stay bedded
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: next to each other for that entire midday time frame,
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: and then they'll get up together and oftentimes the mature
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: buck gets him up, which is a really fascinating thing
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: to watch where and some people have probably seen this
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: in the early season whenever bucks are bachelored up where
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: if they're all bedded out, you know, kind of beyond
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: an aggfield, the big one will get up and he'll
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: kind of walk over and get the other bucks up
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: onto their feet. I've seen this in peak rut timeframe
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: with a mature buck and a young buck, where the
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: mature buck will walk over to him, get him up
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: on his feet, and then they both kind of sit
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: there for fifteen to twenty minutes and just clean one
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: another in the middle of peak rut. And I watched
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: that and my brain just kind of is, like, what
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: relation do you guys have in the past that's causing
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: you to be able to have You know, he is
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: very uncommon from what I've seen, but I have seen
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: it happen multiple times. And then going to the end
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: of the late season, you have a scenario where a
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: mature buck like the main one that I recorded last
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: season that I call Winter Big Main Forrin ten, he's
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: six or seven years old, where he traveled individual on
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: his own almost all the time, and there were quite
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: a few scenarios where he would be bedded next to
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: a staging area next to food or food source or
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: something where he's going to make his evening travel route
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: and bucks that are down wind of him will move
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: in on him in a bachelor group of like five
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: to ten bucks in some cases.
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: I think the biggest one I seen.
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: Was nine or ten, and they will move right up
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: into his bedding area and get him onto his feet,
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: and then oftentimes, for this particular year, he didn't enjoy
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: that at all, Versus the other one where he kind
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: of seemed like he was being a teacher. This one
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: was kind of a jerk, and he'd pin his ears
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: back and let them all know that he was about
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: to plant them all but if they didn't.
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: Move out of his way types of situation.
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: But yeah, no, it seems like younger bucks are even
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: four year olds, are highly curious into what that most
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: dominant buck in the area is doing.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: Did you notice anything unique about how the dominant buck
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: in the area would bed or travel compared to the
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: whole rest of the buck herd in that zone. Was
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: there anything like, oh, yeah, the top buck would always
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: get this spot where the top buck would always come
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: in last, or any of those things that sometimes we believe.
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I, as a hunter, I feel like there has
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: to be something in relation to that, but I haven't
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: been able to see a massive correlation. I mentally, I
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: feel like he since he is the dominant buck, he's
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: probably claiming the best zones that in that particular area.
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: But then I've seen him in situations where quite a
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: few mature bucks will bed down in an area that
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: puts them at a complete disadvantage from a me being
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: a hunter perspective, and it's like, why are you in
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: that location? Maybe maybe he's not in as much of
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: a disadvantage as I think, but from what I see,
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: I think that he's in a complete disadvantage based off
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: of where he's going to probably move in that evening
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: travel route. And uh, that's that's one thing I've seen.
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: But no, I would like to think that mature bucks,
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: definitely the dominant buck in the area kind of gets
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: to pick the best location that he that he wants
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: to be in. But I think there's some scenarios where
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: whenever they're moving back into their evening bed or to
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: their midday bed or whatever, where they just sometimes they
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: just get kind of exhausted, kind of in that post
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: rud or late red timeframe, and they just bed back
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: down wherever they are. It's like, screw this, I'm getting
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: off my feet.
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: So these bucks that you got to know over the year,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: would you say that most of them you could eventually
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: like write a bio of, like a summary of like Okay, winter,
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: he likes to do X, Y and Z, and pretty
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: consistently he's gonna do X Y or Z, and then
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: the six by five he's usually going to do X
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: Y or Z. And you kind of know that. Is
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: that the case with all the bucks that you studied
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: very well, that eventually you could pattern them to some
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: degree or were there some deer that were just random
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: deer like their personality trait was they throw a dart
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: at the wall and they're going to do something different
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: every day. You can never correlate it to anything. Was
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: there one of those or other one or the other
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: of those more common?
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that is something that I tried to do pretty
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: consistently throughout the season because I actually have a video
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: idea going into this season where I'm going to try
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: to pattern the buck and then go out and hunt
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: him with my wildlife camera and see if i can get,
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: you know, within sub thirty yards of him in a
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: hunting situation and take pictures of him in video them,
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: et cetera. And I think that it's actually going to
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: be a lot harder than most people think. Andre where
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: the advantage comes in more for the hunter side of things,
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: isn't as much being able to predict these deer, because
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: very few times was I was I able to see
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: where a buck was betted and then say, for sure
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: he's going to be making this move, which I all.
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: I mean, I st trying to do that a lot
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: of bed for if it's what's that you start now?
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: Oh I just said, I'd imagine that I would be
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: tempted to do that a lot, Like you walked with
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: the steers and like, Okay, where's he gonna go? I
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: think he'll be here. Did you play that little game
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: with yourself a lot?
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: Sorry you cut out again on that. You're really e
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: stat Okay, I think you're better now though.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: Sorry. I was just I was asking if you had,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: you know, played that game yourself, like Okay, he's betted here,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess he's gonna go to this field tonight
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: or whatever.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I played that game all the time because whenever
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: you sit there and you watch a buck bed for
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: four hours, like you constantly thoughts are going through your
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: head that entire time. And sometimes I'd put on a
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: podcast or something so I could learn something else other
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: than sitting and thinking about why this year is betted
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: in that particular location. But oh yeah, every single time
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: I watched one bed throughout the middle of the day,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: I would I would try to make guess as to
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: what he was going to be doing. And I feel
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: like in most cases I was probably wrong, I just
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: but and also even in the scenarios where I was right,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: oftentimes I would be wrong in terms of how he
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: was going to do it and the specific route that
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: he was going to take to get there. So yeah,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: I think I think even even with a thermal drone
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: patterning one and trying to really narrow down on exactly
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: what he's going to do every single day and every
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: single move, I think it's still a pretty difficult thing
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: to do. But in terms of utilizing that scenario where
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: you watch a buck for as much as I have
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: and then being able to position yourself in a high
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: odds hunting situation, I think you can definitely do that
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: because of train driven type features where you see he's
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: being forced to travel, and whenever you start to piece
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: together those areas where he's being forced to travel, then
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: you just go hit hunt these areas on high high
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: odd situations and oh yeah, no, it'll make you it
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: dramatically better. Hunter. I think there's a couple of spots
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: on the property that I could one hundred percent guarantee
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: if I sat there for five days undetected in these
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: locations during the kind of pre rut or post rut timeframe,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: that there's no way I wouldn't kill mature buck in
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: those areas, which is actually kind of sad because to me,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: it makes it to where I can't hunt that property
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: that I grew up on my whole life, and that's
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: the main property I did research on.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: But that's just the way that I feel.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: I don't I don't think that it's ethical at this
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: point because I've seen with the drone exactly how these
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: deer are train driven on this property. I don't feel
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: like it's ethical at that point to go out and
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: sit in those locations. But in terms of actually truly
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: patterning one, I think it's a lot harder than people think.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: So if you were, well, when most people think about
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: trying to pattern a deer, I think they are usually
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: thinking about two different things, or using two different sets
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: of variables. One they're going to take like their own
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: observations of that deer and trying to learn something from that,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: and then Number two and probably the thing most people
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: lean on the most these days, it's trail cameras. People
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: love to look at trail camera data and use that
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: to pattern a deer or attempt to pattern a deer,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: especially these days with sell cameras and people getting a
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: picture of a buck in there this morning, they make Okay,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: I'm going to hunt them tonight there, et cetera. You've explored,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: at least preliminarily in some of your videos how effective
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: trail cameras may or may not be with patterning deer.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: Can you walk me through what you found as far
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: as like what the actual efficacy of these cameras actually are.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: Are they really as effective of patterning tools we think
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: or maybe not?
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think they're near as effective as a
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: lot of people think, especially in the way that it's
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: at least the people that I know personally that utilize
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: them and the level at which they rely on them,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: I don't think that they're near as effective as they believe.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: In that that probably correlates with why, you know, when
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: they were younger and they were going out and just
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: hunting these high odd scenarios and high odd situations and
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: really good locations they were having more success, and then
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden they started becoming reliant and really
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: emotionally driven off of these trail cameras and what they're
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: being what's being sent to you in the morning, like
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: you think about it from the perspective of a hunter.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: And this is one thing I started noticing with this
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: trail cam study that I did where you know, in
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: the evening timeframe of particular, I saw this a lot
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: because we had a lot of acorns and deer were
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: browsing in the woods a lot where I had the
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: trail cameras where I would see with my drone thirty
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: plus deer all moving through the timber in right next
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: to this camera, within one hundred yards of it, and
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: I would get a trail cam picture of two, three,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: maybe four deer but in that scenario in and none
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: of them were mature, none of them were even bucks.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: And often cases there were just groups of dose because
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: we have a kind of does But from a hunter's perspective,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: if you receive that trail cam picture, especially me in
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: the past, I would view it and go, Okay, well,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: the woods are kind of dead this evening, like not
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: that much activity, but if you were out in the
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: woods that day, you would have seen almost thirty deer
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: if you were if you went undetected, and it would
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: have been like the woods were popping off that entire timeframe.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: And that kind of goes back to the you know,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: the cold front idea of cold front moving in, then
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: you only hunting those peak timeframes, and that's whenever you're
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: seeing a lot of activity. It's like it's just because
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: you put yourself in the woods and you saw a
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: lot of activity. It's really hard to really narrow that
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: down on one particular variable that's causing that than to
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: take place. So yeah, in terms of trail camera effectiveness though,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: I just I think people really especially on a private
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: land scenario, but kind of across the board, you need.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: To take it for what it is.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: Is So if you get a picture of a mature
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: buck then and maybe a target animal that you're wanting
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: to really go out and potentually hunt, then take it
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: for the fact that he is alive and he's out there,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: he's kind of in that area and maybe that's part
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: of his home range, and kind of hunt based off
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: of the fact of all the variables that you know
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 3: as a hunter, and from infield scouting and from infield
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: you know, activity that you're able to find versus that
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: individual trail camp picture, I think the only scenario that
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: you can really and there may be some more, especially
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: if you're on like fifty on one ridge, and then
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: I think in that scenario, like sure, yeah, you might
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: you might be able to start patterning a deer at
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: that point, because your bank account might not like it,
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 3: but you might be able to start pattern on. But
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: is trying to utilize the trail camera to determine buck
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: behavior because, like we talked about earlier, bucks are individuals
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: and that's kind of across the board.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: Everyone's seen it.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: And if you can utilize a trail camera to get
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: pictures of a deer say a mile and a half apart,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: or even if you just have neighbors, so like say
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: you have forty acres and you get in the know
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: with all of your neighbors and they start getting pictures
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: of that buck on their property, but they're a mile
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: away and you guys are getting pictures pretty consistently. That
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: buck probably falls into a very highly mobile, highly active
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: kind of category. And you can use that to your
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: advantage by knowing that you can go and hunt these
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: situations that are potentially terrain driven if you have terrain
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: and get lucky at some point. But if you're only
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: getting a picture of a buck and you're really small
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: core area and it starts to seem like you know,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: you might start narrowing down on his home range. A
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: great example I've seen this with was Bill Wink, which
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: not only did he utilize trail cameras, but he also
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: was in the field all the time because it's what
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: he does. But still he was able to narrow down
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: that this one particular buck lived in such a small
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: home range, and once he realized that, he used it
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: to his advantage. Instead of going in and hunting right
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: in his core area and pushing him out and stressing
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: that deer out, he was able to fringe hunt that
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: particular deer's location. And at some point, kind of like
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: I said with the it was a six by five,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 3: he lived in that core eighty acres. At some point
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: he decided to move outside of that small home range,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: and whenever he did, Bill got lucky and he was
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: in the right spot and he was able to get
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: a shot on him. So and he probably moved out
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: more often than what Bill had seen. He just that's
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: kind of in that particular location that Bill happened to
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: position himself. But that's a I think that's a use
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 3: case where you can use one is trying to identify
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: the individual, characteristic type behavior of that vigor.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: So it seems though that if we were to break
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: two overall schools of thought, if we were to break
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: kind of the hunting community into two schools thought on
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: killing bucks, there's one school of thought that is, like
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: they want to aggressively punch in and take a killing
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: strike on a buck when they think it's the right moment,
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: Like they think this special set of circumstances, the cold front,
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: plus I got a trail camera picture of him in
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: here last night, plus the winds just right, so I
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: think he's gonna take this route. He's going to be
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: at this little inside corner on this night, so I'm
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: gonna punch in there and kill him. That's one approach
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: that some people take, and they might be very selective
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: about how many days they hunt because of that. So
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: they're gonna hunt the four perfect days in the four
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: perfect spots. That's guy A, Guy B is what I
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: think you're describing, which is someone who says, well, actually,
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna hunt a lot because these deer are pretty
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: darn random, so I'm gonna have it's a numbers game,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: So I've got to be out there fifteen times to
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: finally get one time when our paths intersect. But I'm
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: gonna do it in a place that I know is
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: a very safe for me as a hunter, so I'm
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: not detected, so I can get away with hunting fifteen
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: times and be in a place where terrain of some
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: kind is going to disproportionately funnel deer traffic through here.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: So eventually, you know, even though I can never predict
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: what this buck's going to do on any given day,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: I can predict that at least once within these fifteen
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: days he will come through here. And if you can
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: do that, you will kill that buck that might be
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: Guy B. Do you think that A or B is
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: the better approach based on what you have seen with
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: your own.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: Rise, Yeah, I think it's I think it kind of
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: depends on you and the properties that you're hunting. If
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 3: if your Guy A, then you probably know your area
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 3: like the back of your hand.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: You know you've hunted that area before.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: You know, how do you have to travel it and
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 3: you can position yourself in those scenarios that you believe,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: in your opinion, you know, make you the highest odd hunter. So,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: whether it's in relation to moon phase, cold front, et cetera,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: then you go out and hunt on those particular days,
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: and being that you know that property so well, it's
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: probably going to position you in a pretty good location,
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 3: especially since you're going to fine tune when you're hunting,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 3: Like say you're they want to hunt that area kind
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: of a you know, late October early November from my area,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: so pre rut. Anytime you can be in the woods
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: in a pretty undetectable location in a high travel area
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: in the pre rut, it's probably going to be a
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: good time to be in the woods. So I would agree, Yeah,
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 3: going out on that high odd situation, maybe even correlating
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: it with a cold front and the moon phase, et cetera,
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: you're gonna put yourself in a great spot. But I'd
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 3: like to think the guys that are having success with
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: that strategy of only going out four times, et.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: Cetera, they really have their system dial.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 3: And then the other side of that is if you're
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: somebody that's just very aggressive, and you're going into these
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 3: public land scenarios where maybe you're only going to be
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 3: able to hunt that state for a couple of days
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: or five days, maybe two days, and you have to
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: go in and just be hyper aggressive in that scenario.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: I think that it makes sense to be able to
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: do that as well. And in that situation, you're probably
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: going in and you're looking for extremely fresh buck sign
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: and then you're hunting over that extremely fresh buck sign.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 3: But I guess in that scenario, you're really not waiting
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: for the correct conditions. You're just you're just kind of
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: full seen. So it's really not you're you're kind of
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: like a guy see. I think maybe yeah, but yeah,
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: and then then guy B I think is the greatest,
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 3: greatest hunting approach if you have the time availability to
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: do it, if you can, I mean, yeah, the more
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 3: times you get out in the woods and that you're
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: undetected consistently and you're hunting in these really good locations,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: you're you're going to just continue to up your percentage
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 3: of seeing that mature back every single time barring that
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 3: you're undetected, you know, pretty consistently. I do think that
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: there's a room for you know, the whole idea of
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 3: being undetected on entry and exit. I like I said
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: with utilizing UTVs on private land or trucks, et cetera,
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: that that's definitely a great way of doing it of
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: constantly pushing out the deer of the area that you're
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: in so that way you can gain entry and exit
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: without them really knowing that there's a human in there.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: But I think that's the most important part is is
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: trying to be even if like say you're walking into
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: your tree stand and there's a dough just bedded like
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: ten yards in front of your tree stand and you
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: spot her before she spots you, trying to get her
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: to bump out of that spot, or maybe just don't
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: go hunt that tree stand, but if you feel like
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: you have to be in that spot for whatever reason,
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: try to bump her out of that spot without her
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: knowing that you were a human. Just act like anything
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 3: in the woods and just crawl around on the ground
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 3: and try to look like a gigantic armadillo or something
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: to where she has no idea what you were, and
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: she'll bump away fifty to one hundred and fifty yards
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: for doze, especially because they seem to be a little
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: more curious than bucks in some cases. But and then
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: you just rush to your stand and get up, and
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: she'll probably be back in the area and try to
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: figure out what you were. But if you were an
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: advantage where you have thermost your advantage or the wind
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: to your advantage in an area that she's not gonna
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: be able to detect you, then you should be able
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: to remain undetective in that scenario. But now I think
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of different situations that you can craft
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 3: up in your brain.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: I can run down a rabbit hole pretty quick on that.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: So this gets me thinking about another topic, which is,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: you know how dear movement and behavior changes throughout the season.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: And we have a whole set of kind of conventional
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: wisdom around this. Like I could tell you, I could,
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: I could give you a one minute. I'll tell you
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: right now. If I were to say, if a new
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: hunter came to me and they're like, hey, how does
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: a buck behave? How does buck behavior change throughout the year?
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: I might say, well, uh, you know, in the summer,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: he's on the standard bedding to feeding pattern, he's pretty comfortable,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: he's going to move in daylight in the evening, you know,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: as he goes out to feed, they're pretty visible. That
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: might continue into the first handful of days of the
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: hunting season. That's a great time to kill a buck.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, the hunting pressure has
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: an impact on him. They they start being much more
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: you know, risk averse. They're going to be back in
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: the cover more. They're not gonna move quite as much
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: in daylight. Uh. Some people might tell you there's an
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: October lull. Some might say it's a hunting pressure impact.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: Some might say it's changing habitat. But things tend to
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: slow down a little bit. And then we ease into
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: late October and the pre rut gets closer and closer,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: and then that ramps up, and then he gets to November,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: then there's the rut, and then there's all the chaos YadA, YadA, YadA,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: And then we go into the late season and deer
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: get back on their feeding patterns. But they maybe are
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: more risk averse because they've been hunted for three months.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: But when you get that really good cold front or
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: big snow event or whatever it is, man, they can
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: really get out there on those good food sources. So
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: that's like my sixty second over generalized over bee of
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: deer movement, right, a buck activity. What have you seen
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: as you watched forty four different bucks live out a
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: hunting season themselves that was either right in line with
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: the conventional wisdom on buck behavior throughout the season or
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: surprising from that, Like, was there a period of the
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: year where like, oh wow, everyone says that in mid
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: October their movement goes down, but it didn't, or everyone
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: says that in the early season, whatever, did anything like
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: that stand out that was a surprise.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that one thing that is really useful
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: to apply to conventional wisdom is what took place throughout
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 3: the summer and the spring in your particular area. So
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 3: if you went through a heavy drought like my areas
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: this year, that's going to dramatically affect the way that
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: deer act throughout that you know, the course of the
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: generalization that you just made. Whereas last season we had
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 3: a lot of rain, so they had a lot of
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 3: available forbs and a lot of a ton of acorns,
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: which that's kind of seasonal dependent, but still there was
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 3: a ton of acorns last season, and we had a
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: lot of native brows on the ground, and that kind
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 3: of dramatically changes the way that they're going to go
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 3: throughout the early season. And then you know, during the
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 3: during i'd say right up against the peak rut and
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 3: then peak rut and post rut. I think you're going
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 3: to see consistent types of movement patterns. But the one
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 3: interesting thing about the peak rut is that even though
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 3: form my area, you know, experts kind of state that
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 3: peak rut happens November tenth to November twentieth, a lot
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 3: of hunters know that that is a constantly shifting variable
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 3: and GPS collars have also back to that where you know,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 3: for my area, one season, I could have peak rut
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: starting on November two, and then the next season it
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 3: could start November eighteenth, and it's just completely shifting around,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 3: and you really have to be active in the woods
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 3: or maybe just have a ridiculous amount of trail cameras
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 3: to be able to identify. I win that peak red
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: is going to actually take place in your area, But
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: I think the number one factor in terms of what's
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 3: going to change what you're doing throughout that season. And
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 3: I'll be super excited to see this year with the
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 3: drought that we had is the amount of rainfall that
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: you get across spring and summer and if you don't
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 3: have available native forage going into October and November. Because
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: this season I think we have just from what I've seen,
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 3: I can make an estimation that we have like a
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: quarter to a half of the amount of acorn mass
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 3: on trees that we did last season, So that means
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 3: we're gonna have dramatically less acorns. We already don't have
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: native brows. They've already picked native brows pretty much clean.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: There's a sweetheen field that I've been scouting in person
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 3: where a month and a half ago I have pictures
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 3: of This might include in my next video because it's
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 3: that amazing where this twenty acre field was just flush
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: and green and beautiful and there's been over one hundred
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 3: and fifty deer in that field every single evening, and
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 3: that field now it looks like a wasteland. I mean,
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: they have eaten that entire field off nothing, and they're
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 3: kind of, you know, barring any other little native brows
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 3: out there, they're kind of out of native forbes and
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 3: anything that's green and moisture rich. And because of that,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 3: it gets me into a whole thing with microbiome. I
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 3: can get into that if we want to, but basically, yeah,
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 3: why not, I'll get into it.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 3: Basically, throughout the summertime frame, they're browsing on moisture rich,
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 3: kind of easy to digest types of food sources, especially
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 3: if you have some moisture in the area. But whenever
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 3: they convert that and they start browsing on acorns, then
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 3: there's a microbial transition that has to take place in
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 3: their gut. Because deer have four chamber of stomachs, they
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: have a room in and basically they have micro microbes
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 3: that digest the food for them and convert it into energy.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: That's the basic way of putting that.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 3: But in this situation where you have summer greens, like
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 3: these deer that were just eating on the soybeans, now
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 3: they're out of summer greens. So when acorns start falling,
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 3: which they're probably going to start falling earlier, and I
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 3: think today's first day of season for my area, I
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 3: think acorns have already been on the ground a little bit.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: But as they transition in eating acorns, it's a completely
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: different style of food. It's a lot more woody, and fibrous,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: and it's going to cause their microbiome their gut, they're
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 3: going to need a different form of microbes to be
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: able to.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: Process that food.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 3: And what takes place is when they start eating acorns,
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 3: their body starts realizing they need different microbes and it
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 3: takes seven to fourteen days you look this up. Take
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 3: seven to fourteen days for this for their gut, for
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 3: their women to be able to switch and change the
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 3: types of microbes that are inside of it, and across
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 3: that timeframe, whenever they start browsing on acorns, they're not
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 3: extracting near as much energy initially as they were whenever
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 3: they were eating the moisture rich.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: Easy to digest food.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 3: So you have a period where when deers start making
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 3: that transition and they start hitting acorns, they have to
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 3: do it at a much higher frequency. They have to
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 3: fill their roomen much more so that way, since since
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 3: their body is unable to extract as much energy, they
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 3: need more food intake. And then if you start mixing
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 3: that in with a mature buck in this setting where
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: he just sheds his velvet simultaneously, that means his testosterone
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 3: is going to start increasing. As testosterone starts increasing energy
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: output starts increasing and his metabolism starts increasing. Therefore he
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 3: needs more food. But he's also changing his brows at
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 3: the same exact time. So not only is he going
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 3: through a microbial transition in his roomen where he's changing
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 3: the type of food he's trying to digest and extract
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 3: energy from, but he's also shedding velvet and having higher
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 3: testosterone rates, which is going to cause him to go
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 3: out and browse more frequently and really hyper focus in
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 3: the first two weeks of season in most cases just
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 3: dependent upon when acorn when they make that transition, but
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 3: really hyper focus for around two weeks on one individual
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 3: food source as their gut makes that transition. So I
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 3: don't know if that has to do with anything we
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 3: were just talking about, but I.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: Well, as I hear that, it sounds almost like hyperphasia,
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: which is something that bears go through when they're preparing
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: for hybernation for a different reason and in this case,
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: but does that has that I'm curious if that leads
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: to like an increased opportunity or maybe that explains why
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: we see a better opportunity in the early season because
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: you have this transition occurring. Have you observed that yourself
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: last year when you watched deer doing this.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 3: As I feel like, yeah, I feel like I've observed
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: it myself, and I feel like I'm definitely observing it
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 3: right now with the drought that's taken place and how
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 3: they're having to make a pretty quick transition from because
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: they just haven't had much available green forbes, and I
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 3: think that that will definitely cause him ature buck to
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 3: be more active to try to get out and get
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 3: his brows. But we're also simultaneously being hit, you know,
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 3: opening day of season in Missouri right now, the fifteenth,
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 3: it's it's ninety degrees outside. It's hot, So I think
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 3: that I haven't flown today, but I would assume I
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 3: did see on trail cameras. I would assume that a
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 3: lot more activity is going to take place kind of
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 3: in the really really early morning timeframe where it's seventy
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 3: seven degrees outside, whereas a lot of guys in the
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 3: early season they're kind of waiting to go and hunt
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 3: the evening time frame, kind of that late evening whenever
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 3: they're going to be moving. But I think they're going
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 3: to move kind of at the start of dark or
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 3: really really close to the end of shooting light in
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 3: these really hot days, and then in the morning timeframe,
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 3: they're going to be pretty active because it's just so
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 3: much cooler. And whenever you have a mature buck running
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 3: around in eighty five to ninety degree weather and his
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 3: body's trying to put on a new coat to prepare
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 3: for the winter for the Midwest area, then that's not
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 3: a good situation.
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: It's actually kind of.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 3: Dangerous for them to try to move around a lot
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 3: in these peak heat timeframes. So you're going to see
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 3: a lot more activity in the morning while this heat's
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 3: still here. But in five days, it's going to change
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 3: because a little bit of weather's going to come in.
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 3: It's going to be seventy seven degrees outside. Evening movement
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 3: might start to ramp up at that time frame where
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 3: they're consistently going to acorns or woody brows. And yeah,
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 3: but there's so many variables across the board for all
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 3: this type of stuff, So to be able to give
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 3: like a blanket answer on anything, it's very difficult because
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 3: things change season by season basis, and you have to
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 3: realize that as a hunter.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so, so I believe I heard you mentioned somewhere
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: that you're going to be releasing a video soon about
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: the early season to some degree and making the claim
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: that the early season might be the best time to
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: kill a mature buck. Is that right? Is that how
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: you feel? And what have you seen in your research
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: that makes you feel that way?
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 3: And the heavy distinction on that is, I think it's
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 3: the best time to kill a specific target mature buck,
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 3: not just immature buck. I think that if you're wanting
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 3: to target an individual animal, then the early season is
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 3: the best time frame. And that's that has to do
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: with a lot of the stuff that I just talked about,
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 3: with how he's going to have to be forced into
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 3: browsing on these really hyper focused scenarios, which in the
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 3: Midwest is oftentimes on white oak corns in the early season.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 3: But it also has to do with one their visibility
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 3: is pretty easy in this timeframe, and they're betting locations.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 3: It seemed everything just seems to be a little bit
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 3: smaller and a little bit tighter, and they're oftentimes still
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 3: bachelored up for this first like especially the first week,
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 3: some of them have already split. I mean, I don't
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 3: know if that comes down to an individual characteristic thing.
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 3: But some bucks have already split from their bachelor group.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 3: But oftentimes the ones that are still bachelored up, especially
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 3: they I just think they're a lot easier to hone
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 3: in on where they're bedding and where they're moving to
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 3: in the evening, and it just it makes that it
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 3: opens them up to a lot more availability to be hunted.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 3: Whereas you start getting into the pre rut and post
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 3: rut timeframe, everything starts getting haywire a little bit and
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 3: all the bucks are moving all over the property every
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 3: single day.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: And in terms of just killing a mature buck, yeah,
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: I would say in my.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 3: Opinion, I think be rut or the post rut is
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 3: the time frame if you're hunting with a bow, if
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 3: you're hunting with a rifle, wait until light late season
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 3: on a drought season, have a food plot of something
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 3: that's slightly green outside, Go sit in a tower, you know,
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 3: hide in the bottom of the tower until the last
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 3: thirty minutes of shooting light, pop up with a muzzleloader
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 3: and fling a bullet at the first thing you see.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 3: I think that's the best way to kill mature buck
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 3: if you want to do it with that.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: That why that means.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 3: But as a bow hunter, I think pre ret and
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 3: post rets really the best time frame if you're just
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 3: trying to kill a mature back. But early season, if
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 3: you're targeting an individual one, I think it's I think
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 3: it's the best time.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: Did you see when watching these handful of individual mature
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: bucks last year in the early season, were they more
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: consistent with the food source they would choose? And I
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: guess by that, I mean sometimes we might say, well, man,
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: this is the best food plot in the area. I
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: really think this buck's bed in here, So I bet
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: you he's coming and hitting this food plot every night,
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: or something like that. Maybe we overgeneralize or we make
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: an assumption like that. Did that hold true in any case?
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: Or were these deer man one day it's here, one
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: day it's there. They weren't as locked in as we
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: maybe wish that they were.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you were relating that to early season.
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: Early season food. Yeah, but I'm curious if that applies
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: anywhere else.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 3: No, I mean for early season, especially whenever acorns start
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 3: dropping and they make that transition and they're going to
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 3: be hyper focused on it. And that's where the whole
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 3: ideology of finding the feed tree comes from if you
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 3: can find the feed tree, then you can hunt the
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 3: feed tree, et cetera, which is a really difficult thing
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 3: to do. In big timber settings where there's thousands of trees,
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 3: good luck finding the first one that's dropping acorns. So
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 3: in that scenario, I think it's going to be harder
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 3: this season for a lot of people to be able
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 3: to find the feed tree. But oftentimes, from my perspective
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 3: and what I've seen with the drone and what I've
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 3: seen in the past of the hunter is finding those
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 3: trees that are isolated outside of timber, kind of on
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 3: a field edge location. If you have that, and if
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 3: you do, then that isolated tree that's allowed being allowed
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 3: to get more sunlight and put on a higher amount
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 3: of acorn mass. Oftentimes, I believe they drop acorns sooner
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 3: from what I've seen, And in that case, that's why
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 3: I've seen a lot with the drone and in person
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 3: of mature bucks and in just deer in general moving
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 3: out into these field edges and browsing underneath these these
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 3: acorn trees. And I think another thing you can potentially
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 3: mix in whether you're in big timber or not big timber,
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 3: is areas where there's a tree positioned in a bit
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 3: of a depression. So if you have a field edge
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 3: and it's in a little bit of a depression, then
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 3: that area is going to naturally retain more moisture and
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 3: it's going to put on more acorns. So, especially in
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 3: a drought season like we are now, that particular tree
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 3: in a depression might be able to put on a
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 3: higher acorn mass. But in a scenario where you only
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 3: have big timber and you don't have pialle edges, try
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 3: to look for those natural types of drainages and in
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 3: types of depressions where there's oak trees in that particular location.
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 3: And oftentimes you can actually see it on topography where
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 3: if you look at the imagery from a top down
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 3: perspective and the leaves are on in your imagery, then
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 3: you can see the leaves are greener in that location
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 3: where there's depression, and that's because it's naturally retaining more moisture,
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 3: which allows the leaves to retain more floor fill. Acorns
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 3: are going to be bigger, potentially healthier, et cetera. And
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 3: I would like to think that you're going to funnel
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 3: those particular areas over anywhere else. But I don't know
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 3: about the big timber setting, but definitely field edges. That's
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 3: a that's a big thing. If you can find trees
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 3: just outside of the outside of timber, it seems to
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 3: be that they really like walking into those fields and
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 3: browsing on those larger mature oak trees.
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: Makes sense. You bring up topography a lot, and at
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: some point in our conversation, I think you alluded to
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: the fact that you know that can sometimes be more
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: dependable for predicting or patterning deer than anything. In being
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: able to watch all of these deer over the course
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: of the season, I know that you have seen them
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: use a whole slew of different kinds of topographical features.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: You've watched them use saddles, us benches, use thermal hubs,
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: use points, use ridge lines, whatever. Is there any one
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: particular topographic feature that was more important than you realize
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: or maybe the very most important? And was there anything
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: that ended up being a dud which you were like, Ah,
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: I would have thought that this would have been much
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: more important for how these deer use their world, and
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: they just didn't.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I think I have good, pretty good answers
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: for those.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 3: Two one, saddles or saddles are really good. But in
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 3: my opinion, from what I've seen, if you can position
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 3: a saddle right up against a habitat transition where there's
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 3: maybe a clear cut and then maybe some mature timber,
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 3: like a thin stretch of mature timber, and then a
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 3: field edge, and they're all kind of up against or
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 3: next to a saddle, that little thin stretch of timber
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 3: or by thin stretch of timber. It could be two
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 3: hundred and fifty yards wide, or it can be fifty
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 3: yards wide, but that thin stretch of timber I think
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 3: is going to be heavily active by especially mature bucks
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 3: right up against the clear cut edge, and not especially
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 3: not up against the field edge, but right up against
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 3: the clear cut edge. I think they utilize those clear
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 3: cut edges kind of wrapping nearby saddles very very consistently
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 3: from what I've seen. And in terms of the dud,
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 3: I've seen some areas where I mentioned in a video
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 3: where there's a topographical feature where it from a map
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: it looks like an extremely amazing funnel for like a hunter.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 3: You see it and it's just like, oh my gosh,
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 3: every single deer in the area that crosses this area,
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 3: I'm going to be undetected all the time, and there's
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 3: no way it's going to smell me. And it's such
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 3: a tight funnel thirty yards or something, and like you
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 3: just you're going to have a shot everything that walks
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 3: by you. And I had one of these, and I
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 3: don't know the exact term for this particular topographical feature.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 3: It was more of like a if you had two
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 3: large sections of land on either side, and then there's
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 3: this thin thirty yards light thirty yard like bridge that
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 3: connects the two together. And in this case the one
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 3: that I had, it was a little over one hundred
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 3: yards wide. I think it was one hundred and twenty
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 3: to one hundred and fifty yards wide, this thin stretch.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 3: Deer would not walk on that thin stretch, this bridge
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 3: that connected these two pieces of land.
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: Versus walking on it.
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 3: And I have seen them walk on it before, but
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 3: more often than not, they would take the travel route
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 3: that went down into a drainage over to a clearcut
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 3: edge and then on the other side, essentially four xing
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 3: the amount of distance that they were going to have
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 3: to travel to avoid the thin stretch of a bridge
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 3: that connected these two pieces of land and too tight.
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: Too tight of a funnel.
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was too tight of a funnel. I think
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 3: in this scenario maybe it was too long as well.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 3: Maybe if it was shorter and it was like twenty
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 3: or thirty yards, they'd be willing to take the risk.
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 3: But since it was such a long funnel and there's
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 3: a bluff on one side and there's a cliff on
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 3: the other side, it was pretty much like a suicide
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 3: mission where if you get on it and then you
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 3: have two I guess it's not good terminology to utilize.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 3: But and you have two predators come on either side
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 3: of you in that scenario, then the only place that
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 3: you can go to is right off the cliff, and
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 3: then you know, good luck have fun with that. So
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 3: I think they avoided those scenarios more often than not
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 3: because of just how tight that they were.
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: It was too good to be true type of situation.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: That's really interesting. You have put out five videos now,
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: I think, unveiling some of your findings. You have been
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: on for five different podcasts talking about all of these
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: different things you've seen. You've had ostensibly hundreds of comments
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: with people kind of looking at what you've shared from
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: your observations and giving them you know, they're sharing with
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: you their thoughts on it or their questions. I'm curious
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: when you take everything you've heard so far, all the
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: questions you've gotten, all the comments you've gotten, what is
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: the one thing that people are missing? So you've you've
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: shared all this information about your observations, about what you've seen,
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: about what you're learning about these trends that maybe you're identifying.
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: What are people getting wrong after they've consumed everything you've shared.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: Either they're just not they're not understanding you correctly, or
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: they're just ignoring You've you've said this important thing, but
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: nobody seems to bring it up, or no one seems
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: to be remembering it. Does anything stand out as that
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: thing that you wish people we're paying more attention to
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: from the you know, this thing you've put out into
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: the world.
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm it might not be a perfect answer for it,
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 3: But the person that comes to my mind is kind
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 3: of people that are a little more woodsmanship, kind of
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 3: you know, outdoorsy mentality. They really like hunting like it
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 3: used to be type situation, a little bit borderline anti technology,
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 3: and they see what I'm doing, and they immediately dive
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 3: in on it like he's utilizing technology. This is unethical, unethical, unethical,
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 3: like this needs to be banned across the board and
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 3: for hunters and everything like that. And I think that
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 3: they're missing the fact that this is scientific research for one,
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 3: but two, really the main one of the main goals
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 3: for what I'm doing and the way that I'm pitching
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 3: it and showing it to people is that you don't
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 3: need to be heavily reliant on technology. It's actually a
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 3: disadvantage in most cases to become heavily reliant on technology
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 3: and to be able to kill mature but consistently year
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 3: after year, you have to become a woodsmanship type hunter.
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 3: You have to be able to go out and apply
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 3: yourself on the property and do a lot of research
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 3: and study topography prior to going in and map all
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 3: these certain variables, and then go in person and verify
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 3: all these variables, and then take all the infield activity
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 3: and scouting and everything that you've been able to apply
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 3: and apply it at a whole picture setting to be
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 3: able to hunt property as a hunter should and especially
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 3: how hunters used to hunt, so literally exactly what they're
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 3: wanting to be able to do. My work is showing
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 3: why you have to do that. If you want to
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 3: be able to consistently kill mature buck barring, you know
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 3: in states where you can pour out corn piles, et cetera, etc.
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 3: Stuff like that, you need to become this woodsmanship time
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 3: intell They literally exactly what these people are wanting if
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 3: they see the technology and they initially just jump on
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 3: it in the fact that like, oh, how dare he
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 3: in this unethical setting? And I understand it from like
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 3: a hunter's perspective. If you're buying a thermal drone and
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 3: you're going out and you're attempting to utilize one to
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 3: hunt with in that situation, then that is the most
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 3: unethical thing that I think you can do in the
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 3: hunting community right now. I think that that is a terrible,
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 3: terrible thing because you can go out and you can
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 3: locate exactly where a deer is betting, and then you
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 3: can position yourself directly off of that location, and yeah,
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 3: you're going to increase your odds dramatically In terms of
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 3: patterning one, I think it's difficult, But in terms of
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 3: going out and locating one and hunting directly off of
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 3: that intel. Oh that's one hundred percenter, Like, yeah, you're
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 3: going to have a much higher odds of getting a
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 3: shot on them. I still think it's difficult. A mature
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 3: buck is still mature buck. It's not going to be easy,
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 3: especially if you're using a bow. In fact, most people
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 3: are probably still going to fail if they're using a bow,
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 3: But if you're hunting with a rifle or etc. You're
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 3: probably going to start succeeding. And I know I've heard
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 3: things of people already attempting to use them in hunting situations,
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 3: and it's really I like to get my opinion out
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 3: there on how I feel about it. And in my opinion,
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 3: if you're willing to go and spend ten thousand dollars
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 3: on a thermal drone to go out and locate mature
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 3: bucks and hunt them directly based off of what you're
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 3: seeing and field, then I would highly highly recommend you
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 3: to go and find a high fence property. And I
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 3: don't mean a high fence property that's where the animals
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 3: are still wild on it and they're actually like still
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 3: difficult toun.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 2: I highly recommend finding the ones.
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 3: Where they release one out of a pin around fifty
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 3: yards in front of you, and they pour kind of
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 3: like a corn pile, or they have some type of
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 3: food source within twenty yards of your stand location, and
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 3: that deer walks. You can see the fence still, you
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 3: know where you're sitting. That deer walks a straight line
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 3: to the food source and you take a shot on it.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 3: I would highly recommend you utilize that style of hunting
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 3: versus buying a thermal drone and going and ruining everything
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 3: for everybody else on public lands or even your private land.
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 2: So yeah, that's my feeling. It's a pretty strong opinion, but.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you sharing that. I have had similar concerns
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: when I have started to see how these tools can
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: be used. Scare the heck out of me, honestly to
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: see it and to imagine how somebody could use this
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: during the hunting season. And so the first thing I
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: started wondering was, Okay, how do we put guardrails on this?
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: How do we reckon with this? Because it's it's not
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: like this is just going to go away. These tools
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: are only going to become more affordable and more widespread,
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: and so how do we as a hunting community figure
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: out where this lives within our world. We've kind of
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: figured out where trail cameras lived within the fair chase world,
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: although technology keeps on changing there. But I'm curious if
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: you were to sit with the Missouri State Game Commission
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: and they would say, Hey, Derek, you've been using these
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: thermal drones. You know what they can do. You know
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: how incredibly effective they are at finding deer so quickly
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: and zooming right in on them and seeing everything they
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: do all day. If you or us, how would you
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: recommend managing this, regulating it in some way to preserve
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: fair chase hunting in the future of our tradition here?
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: What would you tell them?
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 3: Recommending Yeah, I would think that from a hunter's perspective,
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 3: they need to be tamped down completely, pretty much banned
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 3: across the board from a hunter hunter's perspective, And I
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 3: know you start getting into a kind of iffy error
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 3: whenever you apply that private land. It's like to my
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 3: private land, and I can do what I want to
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 3: on it. So that would be something that maybe they're
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 3: going to have to figure that one out, because I
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 3: don't know the answer in relation to public and private.
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 3: But one hundred percenter for public land, absolutely no use,
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 3: no use case policy. I do think that they are
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 3: extremely effective and should remain used for deer recovery activities.
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 3: I think that that is a very good way to
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 3: utilize one, and and I think dogs are equally effective
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 3: and in some cases they're even more effective in a
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 3: situation where you have extremely dense foliage on trees. But
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 3: I think that especially going to the late season where
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 3: if you've got a you know, a single lung or
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 3: a or a gut shot on one and they're going
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 3: to be living for a long time, a dog could
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 3: potentially bump that deer up in some situations, and thermal
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 3: drone you're not having any impact on that particular deer.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 3: So it's actually a very very ethical way to go
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 3: about tracking one. I know that my state in particular,
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 3: if you track one and you locate it, you're not
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 3: allowed to go in and finish it off at the moment.
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 3: And I don't know what, you know, what application you
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 3: could do for that. I've previously thought the idea of
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 3: like being able to contact a conservation agent as a
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 3: pilot and then kind of narrow out the fact that
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 3: like this deer really is shot, this deer really is
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 3: wounded and we should be able to go out and
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 3: finish it, and then they accept that. But at the
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 3: same time, most conservation agencies are underemployed, and like the
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 3: idea of that is just not something that's applicable. So
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 3: I don't know where that falls in line. But as
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 3: someone who has tracked a deer before, and I've seen
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 3: one wounded laying there in a position that you could
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 3: go and finish it off, but legally you're not allowed to.
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 3: You have to sit back and wait. That kind of
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 3: hurts me mentally from an ethical standpoint. And the reason
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 3: that's put in place is because somebody could hire a
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 3: pilot to go out and locate a buck that they
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 3: just shot, and then they never actually shot them, and
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 3: then you give them that pin location and then they
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 3: go and hunt based off of that. So that's why
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 3: it's in place, which makes complete sense. So I don't
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 3: know where you know that that needs to be fixed,
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 3: but I do think it's unethical to locate one that's
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 3: clearly wounded and more mortally wounded and just watch him
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 3: die over the course of six eight hours. I think
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 3: it'd be cool if you could go finish one off
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 3: but I just don't know the application for that.
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, from the what I'm doing perspective, I think.
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 3: It needs to be heavily regulated, especially on public land,
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 3: and in a similar way like think about how you
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 3: can't buy a GPS color and go out and trank
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 3: your deer and track them with a GPS CARR.
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 2: So it needs to be sanctioned to the point that
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 2: it's it's really utilized by groups.
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 3: And organizations in a controlled fashion for scientific research purposes,
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 3: and it's not really something that's publicly available at that level.
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 3: And that's once again where you get into the public
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 3: land versus private land, and you know, people, if there's
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 3: still something that you can buy and you want to
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 3: utilize it on your on your private land to go
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 3: and do dota buck I think that's a great application
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 3: as well, dota buck analysis and whatnot for private land
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 3: properties where they're potentially overpopulated but they really don't know
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 3: how how much overpopulated they are.
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 2: Thermal drones an extremely.
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 3: Effective way to go out and locate how many deer
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 3: you have on a property at that exact moment in time,
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 3: and then you can kind of manage your dough population
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 3: based off of that. In most situations, people are highly
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 3: overpopulated and they don't realize that. So I think that's
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 3: a that's a really good use case. And I know
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 3: a lot of conservation agencies are trying to get people
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 3: to kill more does because they just don't realize how
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 3: many are actually out there, and a lot of people
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 3: just kind of they don't really want to and they
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 3: want to focus on antlers, but they just don't realize
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 3: the implications that they're having. So maybe there's a way
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 3: to still be able to apply that at a at
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 3: a private level. But yeah, no, in the end, it's
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 3: a it's a tough question to be able to ask
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 3: and to really narrow down on what to do. But
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 3: from a from a hunting perspective, especially a public land
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 3: hunting perspective, I think it needs to be harped on
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 3: and really narrowed down and tightened as to the capabilities
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 3: of these things and people's availability to go out and
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 3: do them, and and actually the ramifications if someone's caught
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 3: doing one, utilizing a thermal drone hunting on public land,
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 3: et cetera.
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 2: I think that needs to be hype dramatic.
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 3: You need to be getting held accountable at a very
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 3: high level or if you're going to be doing that
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 3: in my opinion, yeah, well, like.
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: You said, you can't be tranking deer and putting collars
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: on them and tracking them, So why should you be
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: able to track them even more closely with video camera
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: all day throughout the year and then hunt them right then?
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: I think that's raises incredible red flags. I would love
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: to see the use of them in season banned, with
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: the exception of recovery. It seems like in season use
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: of this tool is just full of really, really dangerous implications.
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: I have a friend who has one of these, who
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: has said that he is going to lock his thermal
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: drone in a safe and give the code to his
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: wife so he is not tempted to get it out
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: in season and look at deer because it's it seems
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: like so fascinating to do it and so tempting. And
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: then honestly, he said, it's like addicting, just like every
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: day you want to go and see where they are,
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: see what they're doing, watch them, and we love deer.
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: We love watching deer. It's so interesting, so it's very tempting.
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: I would imagine if you had this power that you
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: would want to use it, but I think that I
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: think we have to be really, really, really careful about it.
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: And I'm glad that you are, that you proactively chose
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: to not hunt while using this tool, and that you
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: are speaking out so firmly on the concerns sitch. I
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: think that's that's that's very admirable and I appreciate that,
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: so thank you. Derek.
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I definitely have had scenarios where like I'm
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 3: human as well, right, So, like I've had situations where,
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 3: in particular, I see some of the bucks that I
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 3: love hunting are like a like one hundred and twenty
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 3: to one hundred and forty inch kind of gnarly mainframe
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 3: seven or eight, just like a disgustingly massive, mature dominant fact.
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 2: I love.
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 3: I love those deer, and I would see one with
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 3: drone and it's like, man, you'd be fun to hunt.
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 3: Like if I could go out and like actually just
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 3: sling an er at you, I would I would really
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 3: enjoy that. But then at the same timeframe, I kind
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 3: of recollect myself and it's like, you don't be really
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 3: fun to research and observe and see how you behave
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 3: versus this one hundred and seventy inch mainframe ten that
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 3: I've been observing as well, and because he had a
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 3: lot more aggressive and dominant tendencies to just be.
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 2: Able to analyze that.
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 3: So you kind of had to reel yourself in whenever
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 3: you'd see stuff like that and realize, you know what
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 3: you're doing. And I think that one thing that started
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 3: hitting me as well was a couple of months into
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 3: the research, it became a normal thing for me, like
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 3: analyzing deal with this thermal drone because no one knew
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 3: about it. It was just me, and analyzing deer with thermal
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 3: drone became a very normal event for me.
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 2: It was just it was what I did.
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 3: Every day, and I had to like re realize what
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 3: I'm doing and how important and how amazing it actually was,
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 3: and how this was like the first time anyone's done
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 3: this at this level, and just continue to remind myself that, like,
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 3: this is why you're doing this, this is why you're
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 3: focusing on research and in an extremely ethical way, and
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 3: don't go beyond that boundary, like stay within your realm
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 3: of possibility.
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 2: And that's that's exactly what I did. So, yeah, it's fun.
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: So how do you plan on navigating this in the future,
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: like are you are you going to hunt this year?
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: Are you going to set aside the drone so you
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: can hunt again? Are you going to do something different
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: in the future, Like what does that? What does your
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: future look like?
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 3: No, I've been asked as well, like if I had
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 3: to have the drone or bow hunt, which one would
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 3: I do? And at the moment, for me personally, I
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 3: would I would throw the drone away and I would
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 3: just focus.
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 2: On bow hunting for the rest of my life.
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 3: But being that I still can't have the drone and
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 3: I can fly it, I'm going to focus on really
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 3: individualistic kind of scientific research and I'm going to use
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 3: that research from this season in coordination with some other
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 3: people and some other names in the industry, and be
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 3: able to pitch larger scale, privately funded research projects moving
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 3: into the future. And as for me hunting, I've already
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 3: mentioned that I don't believe it's ethical for me to hunt,
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 3: especially the property that I researched probably seventy percent of
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 3: the time, which makes me sad from the perspective that,
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 3: like I grew up on that farm, That's where I
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 3: did a lot of my hunting growing up, and now
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 3: I'm I'm I don't think, especially until a massive habitat
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 3: change happens, like say we go in and do some
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 3: big per cuts, et cetera. In the next ten years.
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 3: I think at that point it might become viable for
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 3: me again. But even then, in my heart of hearts,
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 3: like I know some terrain driven locations where there's it's
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 3: just a what, like, there's no way I wouldn't kill
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 3: mat your buck no matter what the habitat changes. We're like,
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 3: they are just that good of a location. And then
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 3: that's another thing, you know, moving beyond me, Like I
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 3: have a son and a daughter, but especially my oldest
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 3: son whenever he hits age to start hunting, and I
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 3: want him to be able to go and enjoy that
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 3: property at the same level that I did whenever I
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 3: grew up. It's like, how do I how do I
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 3: feel that do it? Definitely can't give him the you
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 3: know these locations that I know, so in my brain
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 3: it's kind of as if I'm just going to have
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 3: to let him figure it out and we're going to
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 3: go in, We're going to rifle hunt in the middle
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 3: of a food plot in a field and a tower
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 3: in the beginning, and then we're going to kind of
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 3: start expanding beyond that if he's interested, and start you know,
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 3: maybe helping him position himself and learn those locations. But
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 3: I can't just give the keys to the kingdom and
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 3: be like, go sit in this spot everything like that,
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 3: because you're going to kill a big buck. So you
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 3: have to kind of like feel that for not only myself,
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 3: but future people as well. And there's also other people
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 3: that watch the channel that still hunt that property and
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 3: kind of safeguarding how de youer actually utilizing it, but
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 3: still making it extremely accurate for the video and not
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 3: giving away those locations that, in my opinion are those
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 3: like top three locations across the property, so that way
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 3: people aren't able to take advantage of it. So, ye know,
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 3: it's a very interesting err And that's one thing I've
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 3: thought about going to the future as well with research
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 3: is researching a property and then finding a similar property
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 3: in terms of terrain features, and then mimicking the types
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 3: of travel routes that the buck was doing on the
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 3: property that I was researching, especially if it's private land,
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 3: and displaying it on YouTube in a different format on
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 3: a different property, so that way, the people that hunt
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 3: that property aren't able to gain any extra edge for
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 3: their hunting strategy. Thankfully, the main properties I've been researching,
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 3: the guys hunt like two to three days during rifle
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 3: season in their food plots, over a tower and in
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 3: a tower, and that's that's also it's not going to
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 3: have that big of an effect for them. They're not
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 3: going to go out of their way. They're they're kind
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 3: of old men and they just got they.
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 2: Go sit in a tower.
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 3: But still there's just a lot of things to kind
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 3: of keep in the back of your brain as you're
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 3: giving out this information. That's especially in a private land
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 3: setting where people can go out and access it, that
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 3: that might have access to hunt property.
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I don't.
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 3: I don't know, But for me as a hunter, I
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 3: think that I'll start focusing more on public land and
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 3: then there might be some other private land, you know,
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 3: situations where I haven't I haven't done research before or
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 3: hunted in the past, where it'd be fun to go
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 3: out and hunt those maybe least properties or hunting clubs
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 3: or something. But definitely kind of leaning more towards public land,
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 3: and in terms of my personal hunting that I do.
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 3: And then still on the private lands that I've hunted,
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 3: you know, my whole life. I think I'm fine to
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 3: go out and manage those on those properties, like going
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 3: out and shooting them with my bow or a rifle
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 3: in that setting. But yeah, positioning myself in a location
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 3: and where I know mature buck is going to be
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 3: forced to travel on that area, I just don't think
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 3: that's I don't think that's acceptable.
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So on this these future places you hunt, public
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: land or other private what is the single biggest change
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: you and vision making to your hunting strategy based on
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: what you've learned so far?
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, the number one thing that I'm going to
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 3: look for is habitat diversity. If I can find habitat
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 3: diversity on any public land or new private land that
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 3: I'm going to be hunting, then I will start immediately
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 3: hyper focusing on that area. And then if I can
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 3: put that habitat diversity in correlation with potentially a small
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 3: micro thermal hub or a large thermal hub or saddles,
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 3: et cetera, in these locations where deer are going to
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 3: be more likely than to travel, then I'll continue to
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 3: hyper focus on that more than anything, and where those
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 3: habitat diversity areas are. And then on top of that,
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 3: that's whenever you start getting into the train driven type features,
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 3: especially if I'm still hunting a train I'm not hunting
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 3: in like hill country terrain, I think I become like
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 3: a seventy five percent worse hunter automatically. But if I'm
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 3: like in my hill country type stuff, I think that
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 3: I'm pretty stink and lethal right now. But yeah, no,
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 3: I would be focusing on habitat diversity and in relation
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 3: to terrain features and kind of you know, thermal hubs, saddles,
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 3: et cetera. These really high hot areas. And also it's
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 3: highly dependent upon season. You know in early season that
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 3: where I'm going to be hunting is not where I'm
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 3: going to be focusing on during the post rut, et cetera.
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 3: So kind of finding that that balances to where I'd be.
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 3: But really, the main thing that I would be focusing on,
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 3: especially where mature bucks are going to be moving, is
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 3: areas with habitat diversity, especially if you can find a
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 3: clear cut for an edge, because it seems like when
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 3: they're moving through the timber and heading into location, if
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 3: say he walks through a funnel that's two hundred yards wide,
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 3: and he walks up this ridge, which in my opinion,
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 3: a two hundred wide section where he's forced to travel.
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 3: That's still funnel. It doesn't have to be thirty yards wide.
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 3: Anywhere where he is forced to travel, in my opinion,
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 3: is a fumbel is a funnel. And in this in
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 3: this case, let's say's two hundred yards wide, and he
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 3: walks up that ridge anywhere within that two hundred wide section.
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 3: But every single time when he makes it to this
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 3: habitat edge, it's as if he just like walked into
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 3: a brick wall and he made it to his destination
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 3: and then he moves based off of that. So he's
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 3: kind of using these habitat features and edges as kind
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 3: of key like things to focus on and be able
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 3: to kind of re engineer his brain as to where
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 3: he's located and then move based off of that.
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 2: If that makes sense. So that's why I would be
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 2: looking for habitat adversity.
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: Very interesting. Well, there where can folks go to see
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: these videos you've shared so far and everything else is
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: to come?
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, White toil research across the board. Actually, if you
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 3: google mam. I'm at the top now, so I made it.
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 3: I'm at the top for white Tail Research gradulations, So yeah,
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 3: I feel great about that. I bragged to my wife
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 3: every day about that topic. But so yeah, white Tail
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 3: Research across the board. My main platform is going to
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 3: continue to be YouTube. I might start posting for talk
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 3: because I am a wild life phtographer, might start posting
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 3: photography and stuff to Instagram and whatnot in the future.
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 3: And then I also have a website, white Tail Research
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 3: dot net. It's actually going to be changing here soon
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 3: because I've made a new one that might have merchandising
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 3: and I might be able to sell drones, et cetera.
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 3: And then I have a Patreon coming out soon white
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 3: Tail Research as well, where I'll kind of give because
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 3: as you've seen, I haven't put many videos out across
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 3: the time. Permit's because I'm really particular about the style
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 3: of videos that get put on white Tail Research. They
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 3: have to kind of be a little bit of research oriented,
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 3: and if they're not, I don't want to put them
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 3: in that application. So the Patreon ideas, it's going to
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 3: kind of focus on things in the background that I'm
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 3: doing and actively so that way the people that are
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 3: wondering where I've been for the last month, it's like, well,
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 3: you can go there and that's where that's what I've
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 3: been doing. So it's going to and there's going to
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 3: be more stuff like live poals for research ideas and
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 3: all sorts of randomness. But yeah, white tail research across
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 3: the board though, for everything that I've got, and in
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 3: terms of socials, I think I have every one of them.
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 2: I don't really like social.
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 3: Media, so like TikTok and all that type of stuff,
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 3: I'm not very active on.
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 2: But maybe someday I will be. I don't know, we'll see.
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: So you're not missing out, yeah, I think so. Well, Derek,
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you sharing all this. I appreciate the work
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: you've done so far, really really interesting stuff, and we're
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: looking forward to seeing what else you'll be sharing in
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: the coming weeks and months, and whatever new research projects
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: you and Bronson get into this year or next year
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: we will be particularly excited about. So thank you and
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: best of luck this year with the next version of
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: the research.
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for having me on, man. I appreciate it.
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: All right, And that's a wrap. Thank you for tuning in.
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you listening to this episode, joining me for
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: this conversation. Really really wild stuff. It's going to be
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: interesting to see how further studies expand on our understanding
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: of deer another game. I love the fact that Derek
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: is going to be working with you know, respected well
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: trained researchers such as Bronson Strickland. I think that's going
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: to really give us further depth of understanding of what
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: we're dealing with here, and I can't wait to see
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: what they uncover. So until next time, thank you, and
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: stay Wired to Hunt.