Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 972: Debating Aggressive VS Conservative Approaches to the Rut with Zach Ferenbaugh

Transcript

Ep. 972: Debating Aggressive VS Conservative Approaches to the Rut with Zach Ferenbaugh · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the white tail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast.
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: This week in the show, Zach Bahrenbaugh and I are
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: debating and discussing the pros and cons of an aggressive
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: versus a conservative approach to hunting common whitetail rut scenarios.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast,
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: brought to you by First Light. Today, we've got a
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: great show for you, another unique one and one that
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: kind of came about totally by good luck. It's kind
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: of a funny story how it came together. So I
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: want to tell you how that story came together, but
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: very briefly here just so you know what you're getting
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: yourselves into. What you are about to hear is a
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: head to head discussion, debate kind of analysis of two
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: different ways of hunting deer, a conservative approach and a
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: aggressive approach. And Zach and I both put on the
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: hat of one of those teams and then kind of
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: make the argument for why this tact might be better
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: for such situation, or why this approach might be better
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: for the situation, and then we discuss back and forth.
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: Now this all came together though, because, as some of
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: you maybe remember, about a month ago, I released a
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: podcast about you know, how the Experts hunt October? And
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: in that podcast, I tried to point out incite the
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: many different ways you could hunt deer in October. One
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: of those ways was kind of the conservative approach, which
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: is kind of sitting back watching scouting from afar and
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: waiting until you adjust the right condition for a really
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: careful tactical strike.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: And I published a little short, like a little.
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: Real from that on Instagram and YouTube that that had
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: just that little excerpt, and Zach heard that, and all
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: he heard was me saying the way to kill Bucks
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: in October is to not hunt too much and be
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: careful and wait for just the right moment and then strike.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: And Zach heard that and thought to himself, Man, that's
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: not the only way to do it.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Why is Mark.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: Saying that he didn't hear the whole podcast. He didn't
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: hear me say, you know, this is just one of
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: many different approaches. But he heard that, and it kind
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: of stuck with him, and he decided to give me
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: a call about it, and he said, hey, man, I
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: heard this thing was curiously, do you really think that's
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: the only way to do it? Or you know, is
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: there you know what about this and this? And so
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: we start talking about it, and I explained the context
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: and explained, hey, this was just an excerpt of this
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: larger discussion. Me and Zach got to think and they're like, man,
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: there is a full conversation to have here that people
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: would probably really enjoy and benefit from hearing, because there are, like,
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: as me and Zach are going to discuss here, there's
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: millions of different ways to skin this cat. There are
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: so many different ways to have success hunting deer or
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: trying to kill a mature buck. There's no one single
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: way you have to do it. You can do it
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: in a conservative kind of tactical way where you wait
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: for those moments, or you you play your cards right
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: and try to make sure that deer don't know you're
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: around and then just ever once in a while slip
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: in for that strike. That's one way to do it.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: And that's something that you know, guys like Mark and
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: Terry Drury or Bill Winky. Those folks Lee Lakowski, they've
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: really fine tuned and really mastered that. And then there's
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: a more aggressive approach, which is something that guys like
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: Zach and the hunting public and others have now really
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: mastered as well. I found myself kind of bouncing all
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: around in between there.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: So we got this.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: Idea though, to take There was a there was a
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: show a long time ago. This is gonna date me
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: back in the nineties. I think it was called, oh Gosh, Crossfire,
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: I think it was called. And the idea of this
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: show was to have one hard line Republican and one
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: hard line Democrat and then they'd throw an issue in
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: the middle and then the two of them would debate
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: it from those two perspectives. And so me and Zach
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: got the idea of what if we did that for
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: white tail hunting. What if we'd throw out a specific
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: deer hunting scenario during the rut, since it's November right now,
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  Speaker 3: And what if Zach would argue for the aggressive approach
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  Speaker 3: and I would put on my conservative hat and argue
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: for the conservative approach, and then talk through our mindset,
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: talk through what this type of person would do, what
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: we might personally do how we might actually meet in
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: the middle on a lot of these things, or maybe
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: even though I would have to argue for the conservative
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: approach because that's the team hat I was wearing in
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: this episode, why I personally might actually prefer the more
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: aggressive approach in certain scenarios or vice versa. How Zach
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: is actually more conservative than many people realize in certain scenarios.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: So that's the plan, that is what we discuss. Of course,
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: Zach is a thin nominal deer hunter. You've hopefully seen
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: him on the hunting public. You know he has a
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: lot to share here. Hopefully my perspective here can be
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: valuable as well, So please tune in for Zach and
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: Mark putting on the conservative versus the Aggressive hats to
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: discuss and detail and debate and consider when an aggressive
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: approach might be right, and when a conservative approach might
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: be right, and who the right person might be or
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: what the right scenario might be or the right set
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: of circumstances to maybe flip flop and try the other thing.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: That is our podcast today.
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: That's what I hope you will enjoy here in the
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: coming minutes, and without any further ado, let's listen all
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  Speaker 3: right with me on the line now is mister Zach Fahrenbaugh.
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  Speaker 2: Zach, thanks for being here.
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  Speaker 4: Thank you, thanks for having me.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: Well, I also want to thank you. You know, I
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: just set it off air, but I want to thank
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: you again for coming to me with this idea, or
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: at least with the spark of this idea, because I
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: think it's a good one, and I'm glad that you were.
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: I don't know if it was peeved off, but triggered
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: enough by the social media clip yourself from me the
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: other day enough to call me with this really good idea.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: So it worked out great.
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, oh yeah. It's funny because I was I watched
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: it and I was just sitting there thinking about it.
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: Wait for like, I caught myself thinking about it for
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: like multiple days, and I had just come off of
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: like hut where I was extremely aggressive, and so what
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: I caught out of the clip at least, you know,
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: and admittedly it might have been out of context as
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: you kind of cleared up later, but it was like, man, like,
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: there's definitely more than one way to go about it,
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: and sometimes that is a little bit more aggressive, even
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: when I don't know there's there's a lot of folks
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: that are extremely successful with a more I guess conservative approach.
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: They are telling you that maybe that's what you should
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: be doing, and I guess it's just fun to look
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: at it from both ways. Yeah, Well, you and I
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: when we were talking about this on the phone the
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: other day, you know, I think we both could relate
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: to the idea that we've been able to be around
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: so many people that are really good at this. We've
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: been able to hear from so many people that are
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: really good at this, or even like hunt with them
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: or watch them hunt, and you can't do that for
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: a long time and not realize that there's a lot
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: of ways to skin this cat. There's so many different
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: ways to do it. So that's that's you know, where
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: this idea came, you know, came from. And as you know,
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: after we chat it, I've kind of sat and thought
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: about a little bit more too, and in my thought
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: for what we could do today to kind of take
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: this idea of considering both the aggressive approach and the
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: conservative approach, the idea was, let's like put your aggressive
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: hat on and just consider like the most aggressive perspective,
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  Speaker 3: and then I'm going to put the conservative hat on
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  Speaker 3: and I will try to represent the most conservative perspective.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: And then I'm gonna present nine different hunting scenarios. So
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: I've got nine scenarios I thought of, and if you
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: think of any more as we go, we can do more.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: But I've thought like nine scenarios that a lot.
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: Of people will probably be able to relate to, and
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: most of them are relevant to stuff that might be happening,
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: you know, when people are listening to this or in
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: the coming weeks.
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  Speaker 2: So it should be helpful, you know, right now this season.
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  Speaker 3: But yeah, so my thought our I'll present a scenario
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  Speaker 3: and then you tell me, Okay, if if I'm being
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: uber aggressive guy, this is what I would do, This
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: is why I would do it, this is how I
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: would do it. And then I'll jump in and I'll say,
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  Speaker 3: if I'm wearing the super conservative white tail tactician approach,
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  Speaker 3: this is what I would do and why and how,
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  Speaker 3: And then you know, I think there's probably some like
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: discussion back and forth about you know, actually, even though
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  Speaker 3: I told you the conservative approach, in my real life,
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  Speaker 3: I would probably do the aggressive or vice versa, whichever.
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  Speaker 2: I think that'll be really interesting too. So does that
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  Speaker 2: sound good.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah. The other thing too that I think will be
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  Speaker 4: kind of a I want to try to accomplish as well.
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: When I've been thinking about this is talking about how
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: in the act of the hunt it might be super aggressive,
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: but then also in ways that I might try to
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  Speaker 4: pull out of an area that way if I'm not successful.
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  Speaker 4: For example, like let's say I'm making an aggressive move
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  Speaker 4: but then okay, it didn't work out or it's not
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: working out. Talking about how, you know, I may go
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: about you know, switching in the last a little bit
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: of daylight or after it gets you know, after shooting
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: hours or over, how I then go into this still
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: ultra conservative or you know, careful approach to not mess
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: it up for the next time, which is something that's
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: the thing is maybe kind of like not always presented
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: in like our videos for example, because you know, it's
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: not really that interesting to watch, you know, me and
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: whoever I'm with walk out of the woods for you know,
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: an hour in the dark being super cool. I try
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: not to spook anything, you know, because we were aggressive earlier.
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: So I don't know, I think that'll be kind of
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: fun to touch on as well.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a really interesting point that you can be
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: both ultra aggressive and ultra conservative in the very same hunt.
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: That's really a really interesting idea. Okay, I'm excited about this.
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: This is gonna be good, Zach. Let's just jump into
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: this first one and see where it takes us. So
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: imagine you are hunting in late October or early November,
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: right in that time frame. You know, we're coming up
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: on that period of time here. So imagine you're doing
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: that and you're hunting a shared spot with a buddy.
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: Let's say, and I know you're not super hot to
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: trot on cell cameras, but let's say your buddy has
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: a cell camera and he gets daylight photos of a
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: big old shooter buck in daylight in the morning yesterday, Okay,
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: and so he comes to you today he's like, hey man,
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: this buck was in daylight yesterday.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: Great, dear.
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: Is he can't hunt. He's got some other stuff going on.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: So he's like, Zach, you should get after this deer
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: if you want. But the problem is, he tells you
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: it's a totally different wind direction today than yesterday, and
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: the weather kind of stinks.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Yesterday was pretty nice and cold. Today it's it's hot.
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: Tomorrow's hot the next day is hot kind of this
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: this kind of less exciting weather system. You hear that,
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: he says, see as that come off, Go do whatever
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: you want with that. I'm not gonna be around for
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: the next week. Have at it if you want or whatever.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: What would your what would the aggressive take be with
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: that piece of information, given the kind of wrinkles there.
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: I think the first thing would just be how well
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: do I know the area? You know, that's obviously going
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: to play into probably all these scenarios to a degree.
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: I would say that going though to the point and
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: in the deer's movement where he was captured on that
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: camera in daylight, that's kind of like the starting point,
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: I would say, you know, if I were to go there,
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: and let's just say that was on a scrape that
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: was back in the timber on the way to a
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: known betting area where maybe wind direction isn't going to
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: be a factor, and where that deer beds. For example,
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: I think if it was like maybe a marsh betting
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: area where it's pretty flat and maybe not as as
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: much terrain based as like edge based, maybe we suspect
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: that deer's betting on the edge of that marsh and
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: the picture that we got of him is kind of
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: in the transition area between betting in the food source.
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: Maybe I would go to that transition area to start,
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: and let's just say that's like a midday scenario. You
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: kind of go in there and you're looking at that
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: area where he had come through, and then just looking
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: at the sign from there, like for example, if you're
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: standing there at the camera and from there you can
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: see a whole bunch of different trails kind of coming
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: from that point A, which would be the betting area
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: in this case, going to point B the food It's like, well,
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: there's a chance that he's just been coming through here
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: every day, and you know, even though yesterday he was
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: here in daylight and where confirming that he might have
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: just been passing just behind the camera or you know,
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: just out of range of the camera. And so in
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: a situation like that, I would say just starting looking
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: at that sign and what's right there around it, still
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: not necessarily pushing into the betting area yet or getting
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: to where you're I guess hitting that edge or screwing
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: around too much right on that edge, just kind of
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: making that first assessment there and then slowly starting to
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: work back if you want to get clar So for example,
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: let's say we're two hundred yards from an edge, It's like, okay,
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: there's pretty good sign here, but you know, assuming that
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: he's actually laying in that in March, that I can't
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: even see yet because the weather's not as good and
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: I don't have you know, maybe maybe you don't even
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: have good weather for the next week. It's like, I'm
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: gonna just keep sneaking my way in there and kind
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: of using the middle of the day where you got
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: some wind. Generally just I think, you know, you're a
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: little bit you have an easier time getting away with
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: stuff if you're kind of doing these things in the
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: middle of the day. What mostly just because wind, honestly,
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: like that makes so much more noise, and you know,
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: you start waiting around too long, you get other deer moving,
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: they might start busting you. So kind of utilizing that
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: middle part of the day to find the sign and
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: then just slowly working the way your way in is
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: generally the approach that I would take in a situation
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: like that. But you know, with that being said too,
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: like I think it's a fine line between like, Okay,
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: there's a ton of good sign here at a certain point,
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: you do just want to trust that, so you know,
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: maybe you push in a little bit closer and maybe
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: you get all the way to that edge, but essentially
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: looking for sign that's telling you that he's been kind
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: of using this route from that point A to point
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: B and just trying to get as close as possible.
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: And I think, let's say I decided that I do
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: want to go all the way to where it's like
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: I'm set up within twenty yards of that edge. I
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: think the things that would be important and kind of
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: like what we were talking about with how can you
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: be aggressive while still kind of having a conservative approach.
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: This isn't a situation where I'm just like, all right,
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: I'm going to get closer and it's just like two
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: hundred yards of just crashing through. It's more like painfully
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: slow moving in, taking a step, stop and listen glass,
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: looking for things out ahead of me that I don't
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: even put my grounds in on to where I'm still
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: getting closer and closer, but I'm doing it in this
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: way that's I guess, really slow and methodical, I guess
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: would be the word.
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: You know, I feel like I feel like a lot
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: of people that are on the conservative side of white
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: tail hunting obsess over access and exit, right, Like, they
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: obsess over that, and I think a lot of people
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: would assume that you don't because of your style. But
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: I think, you know, the more I hear from you,
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: the more you really kind of do, just in a
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: slightly different way, right.
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's definitely just a different way. Because if there
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: was a situation too, where let's say, you know that
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: that starting point where that picture was taken is actually
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: pretty open timber and flat, you know, I might start
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: getting ultra paranoid that he's laying there on that edge
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: and it's eventually going to start to see me walk
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: through the open timber. Yeah, So if there's a situation where,
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: you know, I could find a little depression like an
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: old maybe like a dried up creek channel, where I
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: can put my feet on dirt rather than leaves, you know,
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: to draw less attention from the noise I'm making, or
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: ideally get in a situation where I'm walking on just dirt,
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: not making any leaf noise. But I'm also like under
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: a bank, so he can't just necessarily lay there and
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: see my whole body walk across the open timber. You know,
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: to your point, the access is still really important here
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: because it's not. I think the interesting thing with hunting
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: aggressive is when it works, it looks like it's just
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: super smooth, sound like, yeah, just go right to where
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: they are. But it's rarely that simple. I mean rarely.
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: I mean most of the time it's you're just I guess,
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: trying to find the best route kind of on the
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: fly to continue to move in. But like you're saying,
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: the access and in the route that you take and
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: the timing and everything with conditions is also really important.
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: And I mean there's a whole bunch of different variables
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: that could contribute to how you go about it, But
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: kind of trying to find that best time of the
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: day to move and kind of scout your way in
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: I think is really important in all this.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so true.
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: Okay, that's really interesting, And something you said trigger to
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: something I'm going to bring up here because I'm curious
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: on your take on this too. But let me put
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: my like very conservative white tail tactician heat on here
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: and present the opposing view. I think I think that
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: if someone was of the mind like they've got to
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: managed property.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: They are very careful about how they hunt it.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: They are you know, very risk averse because they want
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: things to line up just right and then they take
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: that careful strike. I think in this scenario, if they
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: had this daylight picture but then they saw funky wind,
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: hot weather, I think that person might say, Okay, great
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: that he's there, but I'm not gonna get too overly
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: excited about it. I think that person would say that
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: just tells me that the buck is still around. Great,
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: but I'm not going to try to dive right to
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: that spot because maybe the conditions don't set up for
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: that spot to actually kill him given the wind change,
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: Given it's not that great a weather right now, that person,
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: i think might say, Okay, it's confirmation that this buck
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: I want to hunt is still in the area. I'm
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: guessing this person would say, all right, it is pre
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: rut or rut timeframe, so I'm going to go to
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: a low risk, still decent general rut area. I think
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: this type of person would be looking at the rut
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: as as a little of a roller coaster. With a
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: managed property, you can't pound the very best stuff over
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: and over and over and over and over every every
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: single time, right, you kind of have to say, Okay,
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: there's gonna be some days where I go to my
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: A plus stands, and there's some days I'm gonna hunt
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: my B minus stands, And you know, maybe there's other
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: days outside of the rut when you're hunting your D
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: R E stands. But I think this person would say,
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: all right, I'm gonna hunt my B level stands knowing
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: that he's there somewhere, but I'm not gonna plunge into
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: that very best spot because of the fact that, you know,
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: some of these other things aren't lining up just right
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: at a high level. I think that's you know, what
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: this person might do. And then he's gonna wait for
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: five days and then the or the fourth day, when
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: temperatures cool down a little bit and the wind is
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: just right, then he knows, okay, I can punch into
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: whatever my A level stand was nearest to that possibly,
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: or you know, during the rut, anything can happen, and
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: a trail camera picture five days ago doesn't tell you
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: a whole lot other than other.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: Than that he's there.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: But you know you mentioned this hot one. I mean,
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: there's two different takes on weather, right, and everyone loves
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: to debate how weather should impact your hunts and whatnot.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: One take would be what I just described, which is
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: like the conservative approach, which would be, Okay, it's hot.
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: That means there's not going to be as much movement,
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: which means you should not be as aggressive because the
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: deer aren't going to move as much, so it's not
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: worth being aggressive. Right. But on the flip side, and
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: I think you kind of alluded to this, on the
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: flip side, let's believe that hot weather does reduce movement.
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: If that's the case, then that buck isn't going to
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: want to move as much. Therefore, if you do want
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: to see him, you've got to get closer to where
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: he's betted or where he's spending time to cover. Therefore,
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: you actually maybe should be more aggressive to get closer
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: to that smaller area of movement, right, m.
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: Hmm, Yeah, I think that like the one down or
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: the major downside. And I guess when I when I
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: think of the more play it safe type approach, like
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: if him coming to that camera was already kind of
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: a result of a better weather day, like you got
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: the cold front day and he showed up on the
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: camera going back into bed late that morning, let's just
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: say eight o'clock in the morning. Yeah, and it was
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: obviously different weather, you know, different weather than what you're
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: going to have the day that we're talking about going
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: into hunt. It's like, if you're going to go to
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: a place that is a be level stand or setup, like,
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: to me, you're kind of just signing up to na
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: see him, Like you're kind of just going out there
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: to maybe observe from the distance, which may still be beneficial.
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: And I'd definitely like to do that in a lot
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: of situations. I would say that's a thing that I
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: really prefer to do if I don't know one exists.
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: So in a situation where I do know one exists,
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: I would always personally try to lean on the aggressive side,
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: just because I think that's one of the hardest parts
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: about hunting. Now, again, you mentioned I'm not a trail
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: camera guy, so I don't necessarily have like the same
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: type of inventory as some other hunters might have. So
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: I know that could be hurt or just is hurting
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: me to a degree as far as you know, knowing
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: where deer are. But the part that I spend the
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: most time on is finding one. Once I find one,
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: I want to be all in. I want all you know,
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: hunts from that point on in that area to be
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: more aggressive, because I don't want to necessarily just say well,
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: i'll get him later. A lot of times I don't
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: have time for that. I may be on a trip
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: that's just a small window anyway, so I may not
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: have time to wait for good weather. So I think
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: that's a big part of it. And not to say
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: though either, because this example is a situation where it
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: sounds like we probably do have the whole season. But
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: on that same note, it's like if I've only got
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: one day, like let's say that's on a Monday, I've
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: got Monday off, my buddy doesn't, but I'm not gonna
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: be able to hunt again until, you know, maybe the
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: next Monday or later. I think one aggressive hunt probably
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: isn't gonna mess anything up. I would say it's more
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: likely that the deer himself messes up his own pattern
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: that we've created in our mind. Like there's probably a
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: better chance that he's just like, man, we'll go over
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: to this food source, end up on the neighbors anyhow,
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: just because he wants the acorns there that he can't get.
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: You know in this property that we're talking about, So
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: it's like, I don't know. I guess I would say
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: leaning to that aggressive approach, especially when you have that
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: limited time, just feels like you're more likely to strike
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: and then you can reset for that week, you know,
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: go home to you know, go to work, and then
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: you know, kind of revamped your plan once you're ready
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: to hunt again.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: Anytime that I have a forced break, like where I
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: know I have to leave for a week or I'm
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: not gonna be able to hunt here again for two
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: weeks or whatever it is, anytime that's like a mandatory,
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: I am always like, all right, send it, Like if
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: you're going to swing, this is a great time to
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: do it.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because I think, you.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: Know, many of the things that I read early on,
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: and some of the voices that I listened to early on,
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: preached such a level of paranoia about ever making a
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: mistake that.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: It paralyzed me for a while.
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: But you get enough time out there in the worst, Yeah, sure,
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: all of us, And no doubt about it. You can
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: screw things like we can screw things up like bucks
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: do catch on. But at the same time, you can
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: make a mistake here and there, and still get you know,
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: another chance down the road. You don't have to act like, man,
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: if you make one mistake, your season's done. I think
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: that is something that I, you know, thankfully learned this
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: is not the case.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: And once you get past that, it opens up so
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: many hunting onties.
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I guess one one final thing on that
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: note is one thing that I think, no matter what
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: type of situation I was hunting in, whether it was
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: like private land that I was controlling a bunch of
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: factors on, or public land, at this point, I really
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: value being mobile, which is like something that's so it's
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: almost annoying to hear. I think if you're listening, you're like, oh, yeah,
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: we've all heard mobile hunting.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: You know, cool, pretty trendy these days.
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: It's trendy. But it's like I think of that as
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: I rarely, rarely, rarely hunt the same exact setup two times. Rarely.
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: I mean, the only reason I might do it even
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: is just because it's easier. And then from you know,
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: to start the day, and then from there I'm going
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: to continue to advance deeper into the you know, into
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: the cover or the danger zone, I suppose, And so
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: even if the wind switches day to day, or or
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: maybe my access changes. I'm always thinking about it. Okay,
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: how do I mix this up? Because, like you said,
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: you can allow them to pattern new I think that's
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: one of the most overlooked things in all of hunting.
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: But I also think that you can kind of trick
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: them into thinking that you're doing something and you're really
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: just mixing it up every time, and they don't even
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: they can't predict that.
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: You know, now now I got to run. Now we're
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: getting we're you know, this will just be whatever it's
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: going to be. Maybe we don't get through nine scenarios
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: because I've got a question for it. Because there's something
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: that's been that I've been thinking a lot about because
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: I have over the last decade, like every year more
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: and more I get more and more like that moving
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: around a lot, trying to make sure a deer can't
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: pattern me first sits the best sit and all of
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: that has proven successful in many cases and is a
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: great way to approach things. On the flip side, though,
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: I've also found some times where I'm trying to make
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: those decisions based on trying to predict where this deer
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: is going to be tomorrow and the next day, and
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: then I end up like kind of chasing my tail,
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: Like I think the buck's going to be in X place,
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: even though I was in A today. So then I
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: go to X and then he's at A. And then like, okay,
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: well I think he's going to be at X again
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: tomorrow because he was there yesterday. So then I go
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: to X and instead he's at B or whatever. And
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: so another approach which you hear about being done, And
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: this is harder to do on public and shared land.
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: This is easier to do where you have control. But
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: let's say you have like a solo permission, like I'm lucky,
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: I've got a spot that i have, Like I'm the
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: only one with permission on one.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: Of these pieces.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: Now there's all sorts of pressure on the neighbors, but
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: at least I know on this lake, this twenty acres
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: or this forty acres here, it's me or me alone there.
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: And so in that situation, what do you think about
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: this scenario? If you have a spot that you have
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: really good access and really good exit so you can
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: get in and out and you can almost feel certain
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: that you're not gonna blow things up, you also have
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: like a dynamite wind situation where you're gonna blow your
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: wind over a lake, or you're gonna blow your wind
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: over a dirt field or something, so you can go
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: in there knowing with like ninety six percent certainty. Stuff
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: should not know you were there, right. If you have
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: a situation like that, does it ever make sense to
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: camp out in a spot? And if it's a really
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: good spot, like if you know, like, man, this is
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: a spot that if I give enough time and I
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: don't educate deer, he will cycle through here. Because I
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: could go chase my tail or, I could go to
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: A to to c D, and every time I'm at
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: A he might be the other one. And one of
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: the things I guess what I'm getting at here is
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: we might be not as good at predicting where deer
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: will be as we think we are because they're so random.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: I think they're much more random than we sometimes like
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: to think. We like to try to say, you know, oh, well,
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: if it's a west wind and a rising barometer, he's
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: going to be here, right, And we're right maybe five
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: percent of the time. The best of us maybe are
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: right five percent of the time. So sometimes if you
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: had that scenario, should you just do something that sounds
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: kind of stupid when I say it out loud, but
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: should you hunt that spot four days in a row
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: because you know that twenty five percent of the time
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: he probably will cycle through there, and you just have
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: to be there that much time.
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: I say, I, I mean, did I tell people this
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: all the time that I'm hunting with. It's like if
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: I had the personality in which I could just sit
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: in the spot, like I feel like every single trip
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: i'm on, I find multiple of those spots that I
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: believe if you camp out or black alli, you'd get
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: an opportunity. But I don't personally have that sort of
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: like discipline when it comes to Like I'm patient in
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: different ways, Like I can do the like walk slow
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: through the woods for two hours and make it one
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: hundred yards. I can do that all day. I enjoy that.
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: But you make me sit in one spot for even
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: a full day, and I'm gonna really struggle to be sharp.
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: I'll just start drifting off thinking about daydreaming about all
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: the things that I could be seeing on the ground.
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: So it's like, depending on who you are, I think
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: the answer is yes, you definitely I believe you should
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: do that. It's just really hard for me to do that.
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: And I think, like, for example, in our group, the
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: person that I think is the best at that is Greg.
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: Like Greg does a really good job of just finding
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: a spot and believing in it and just being patient.
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: And so there's been times where, you know, I'm on
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: a trip where Greg isn't there. He might be somewhere
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: else hunting, and I'm like, man, if you know a
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: guy like Greg was with us, we could do all
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: this moving around all we want and hunt in our style.
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: But then it's like I would love to be like, hey,
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: sit right here for you know, you know, we found
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: this spot moving around. You know, maybe you've been sitting
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: at this spot, but this is better, Like this has
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: got more signed, this is a better funnel, this has
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: got more deer around it, and just.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: Sit there because I couldn't do it right, Yeah, exactly.
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: I might be able to give it a morning or
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: you know, there are times where I sit in a
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: spot all day, even for a couple of days, but
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: it's usually about two or three days max that I
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: can be in an area. And and even in those
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: situations that I think back on, I've been bouncing within
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: an area. I may hunt it three days straight, but
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: I'm not just right in the same tree or in
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: the same set up on the ground. I'm kind of
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: maneuvering around just because I really just can't sit still
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: for that long. And that's something that I had to
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: learn about myself and just honest and be honest with
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: myself about It's like, all right, dude, you are not
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: that good at this, so you should like thing else
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: you make.
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: You make a really good point though, for for anyone,
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: you know, choosing which of these sides of the spectrum
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: you want to take when hunting shouldn't just to be
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: out about what will kill the most deer. It should
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: also be about like what's the most fun for you,
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: which of these is actually a good fit and makes
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: the experience. Like for some people like you, like it's
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: just gonna be more fun to be out there again
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: about and for other people it's like, hey, that.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: Sounds like not my thing.
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: But I love to sit and watch the and then
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: the morning kind of sun come up, and I just
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: like to watch and see what happens throughout the day.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: And they're happy campers.
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: So yeah, you know, this is a little bit about
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: just figuring out what kind of experience you want.
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's a huge part of it.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, here's another scenarios. Ach.
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: This is one that I can point to so many places,
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: like over the years, I'm sure you can too, And
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: I'm always in the debate over what to do. And
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: I think this could be a this could be a
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: private land thing, this could be a public land thing.
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: I think we've both found it in both scenario. So
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: imagine this. Imagine this is a place that you have
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: hunted in the past. You know this area, and it's
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: one of those spots that you find that is just
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: the the hub of the wheel, the spot like let's
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: just say it's like a marsh grass or just kind
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: of a nasty little betting zone that's got some sightlines
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: through it.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: There's like some autumn.
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: Olive in there and tall grass and so you can
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: see stuff, but it's it feels very safe to deer,
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: and there's betting all around.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: It's a pretty big betting area.
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: And so over the years, this is un I should
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: let me should add one caveat here. This is on
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: a neighbor's property, So this is a property you can't hunt,
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: but you've been able to see for years. So so yeah,
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: all right, my scenario here will be a little bit
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: different because I want you to apply it to public too,
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: But I'll stop qualifying and just explain so amazing betting.
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: You've been able to watch it over the years. You
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: haven't hunted it in the past, but you've always thought,
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: whoa how would you ever hunt that? Because deer come
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: from every single direction. There's deer all around you, there's
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: betting and cover all around you. But that one tree
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: along the ditch is where like every buck eventually passes through.
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: So there's like an X where that's the spot. But
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: at the same time, it seems like there's deer everywhere,
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: So how would you ever hunt it without all sorts
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: of deer winding you or seeing you come in in
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: and out or spooking them in some kind of way.
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: So now, for whatever reason, either you get permission on
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: this private or you finally realize it's actually public land
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: or whatever, now you can actually hunt it.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: So here's the real question.
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: What would the aggressive take be on a spot like
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: that where you know, man, the is an unbelievable spot.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: There's all sorts of deer in bucks coming through here,
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: But how do you hunt it without getting busted? What
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: would the super aggressive uh swing at this situation be? Well,
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: I guess kind of picturing this is a spot that
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: you've observed kind of this time of the year, late
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: October into November, and you know that it's kind of
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: the hot spot that time of the year consistently. I personally,
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: I can actually think of a couple of examples specifically
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: where I have hunted these types of spots, and I
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: would say that for the most part, they are those
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: examples where I go in for these like three day
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: chunks and just hunt them right exactly where I think
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: that X is now. Depending on how the wind may
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: change in that three day timeframe, you know, I may
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: end up maybe, for example, I set up in that
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: tree one time, maybe the next day I set up
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: and I'm you know, it's a different wind.
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: So now from that tree, your wind would be blown
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: right to that X where the main trails are. So
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: I may then go sit on the ground on the
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: other side and just kind of be a little bit
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: more risky putting sent on you know, that main trail.
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: But I suppose I'm kind of picturing an area too,
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: where you know it's bedding and there's a bunch of
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: does in there, and then the bucks are there as
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: a result of those does. Yeah, in those types of places,
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: it's hard to do. And I struggle to actually execute
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: this sometimes because I do get that little bit of
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: paranoia where I'm like, I'm gonna screw it up, and
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: I start worrying about that too much. But the times
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: that I think me and you know, buddies that I've
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: been hunting with have executed it well, is we just
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: go for it, and you know, if you're gonna if
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: you bump a few, it's probably fine because those bucks
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: have it so locked into their head. Well my whole life.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: I go right there and there's always does there. You know.
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: It almost seems like they're inevitably just going through those
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: types of spots to check where they know dose are
• 38:14
  Speaker 4: likely going to be. And it may not even matter
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: that you spook them. I mean, I've been in some
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: hot spots before where it's like, all of a sudden,
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: it's nine am and we've already spooked three pretty nice bucks,
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: potentially even shooter bucks.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: As soon as you.
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: Start moping about it, here comes number four. He's the
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: biggest and you mess that up. So it's like it's
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: almost like, you know, once you find those hot spots,
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: just believing in them because you know that it's always
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: been that good, or you've seen the highest concentration of
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: deer in general. It's like this time of the year
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: they know that is true as well. And there's this
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: certain point in the season where even the biggest, oldest
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: bucks just let their guard down just to get to
• 38:58
  Speaker 4: where those does are. And so I guess my approach there,
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: like I said, is just being smart enough to where
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: with it that you're not just reckless. Like I do
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: believe there's a difference between aggressive and reckless. Reckless would
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: be I'm sitting in that tree no matter which way
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: the wind's blowing. Well, if your only shots are right
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: where the wind's blowing, that's reckless, you know. But I
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: don't think it would be reckless to maybe one day
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: hunt that tree and then the next day just hop
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: twenty yards down, set up against one of those autom
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: olive bushes on the ground where your wind is better
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: for those particular trails that are that X. And so yeah,
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: I guess I just think that more than anything, it's
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: about believing that they're in there for a reason, and
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: just about no matter what, you're not going to completely
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: roun them out of there. And even if you do
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: run one out, if it's that hot of a spot,
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: there might be one that you know yesterday was three
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: miles away, and all of a sudden, now he's on
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: his way. And again, if you start I'm saying this
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: because I've been there, you start moping about the one
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: you messed up earlier that day or yesterday, Well then
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: all of a sudden, here's the bigger buck, and then
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: you mess that up too. So I think believing in
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: it is a big part of that. And when you
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: find that hot spot, they're usually pretty consistent. So that's
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: what I take.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: It's really interesting. Would you have any.
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: Let's imagine you've got just a seven day hunt that
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: you can hunt this area right you're you're you're on
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: a state trip. Let's say yep, and you knew of
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: this hot spot.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: Would you have any concern about weather?
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: Would you be like, well, I'm gonna wait till the
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: best three days of weather, or would you just manage
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: the best spot.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: It's the rut I'm going in. I'm gonna I'm gonna
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: pound it no matter what.
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: I would say that if if it's the Rut, I
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: probably wouldn't worry too much about the weather, just because,
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: like you know, I think, I think we're probably visualizing
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: it the same. It's like, this is that spot where
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: it's like, you know, maybe from a distance hunting on
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: the property that you could hunt before, before you were
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: able to get you know, on that X. It's like
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: every time I've been there before, it's like every few
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: hours here comes one and.
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: Those spots and you sit there the whole day just like, oh,
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: if only I could hunt there.
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. And so now that you have that opportunity,
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: I think that if you probably does not matter too
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: much if the weather is maybe a little or even
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: way warmer than you know what you would hope. You know,
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: obviously everybody loves a really nice cold day. I mean,
• 41:53
  Speaker 4: if I could hunt every day and it be about
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: you know, forty eight degrees as high and you know
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: upper twenty says hello, that would be ideal. But there's
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: been a lot of days, you know, in the in
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: the rut where I'm hunting and it's seventy five degrees
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: as high and it's going to be that for the
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: next seven days. So you know, I would say for
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: the most part, just finding that hot spot and then
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: just trust in that time of year or two, you know,
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: it's sometimes hard, but if you've been seeing them do that,
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: they're probably not going to just up and stop, especially
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: if there's a ton of doz there. Like there's one
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: hunt in particular that keep There's several, but there's one
• 42:32
  Speaker 4: hunt in particular that comes to mind. It was actually
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: like the last few days of October. I can't remember
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: if I think I shot the buck finally, you know,
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: I ended up shooting above on the thirtieth. But we
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: had been hunting a whole bunch of different areas and
• 42:49
  Speaker 4: when we finally found this one, I guess it was
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: one specific area on the bigger piece of public we were hunting.
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: It was like, we've been to all these different places
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: through October and we have not even seen close to
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: this many deer. We're also now in here and seeing
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: mature bucks. We were seeing multiple of them, and so
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: basically for two days in a row we were really
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: close to two mature bucks. On the third day, we
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: saw one of those mature bucks in the morning and
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: he stayed out of range, and then that evening we
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: shifted our setup slightly, nothing crazy, but maybe a couple
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: hundred yards we shifted it and ended up shooting a
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: different mature buck that we hadn't even seen yet. So
• 43:37
  Speaker 4: that was an example where it's like we're in that
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: hot spot. It just felt like. And also I was
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: supposed to be meeting my buddy Ben for a different
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: hunt and I'm texting him. I'm like, dude, like we
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: can't leave here. This is on fire. Are you cool
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: with me being like a day or two late? And
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: He's like, yeah, man, just keep hunting and if you're
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: on him, And ultimately we got one doing that. So
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: that's a situation where it's like one, two, three days
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: in a row, we're just hitting that spot hard, and
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: I just think, you know, it almost felt like we
• 44:12
  Speaker 4: couldn't have done anything wrong, Like there was obviously something
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: going on, likely a hot no or two where everywhere
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: else was kind of still in the pre rut. We're
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: giving you pre rut vibes, but when we found that spot,
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: it's like, no, it's on here. I mean, you couldn't
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: have drugged me away from there. I don't think you know,
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: it's like we got here because we'll get a chance,
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: and we did so.
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: And when I find when you find that, it's a
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: special thing, when you find yourself in the right place
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: and the right at the right moment, that kind of one, and.
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: It's pretty rare, really yeah.
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, very true.
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: Okay, So the alternative angle on this, though, the alternative
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: approach to that would be that if you were to
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: go into the X every time you sit there, every
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: hour you're sitting there and you're having a dough family
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: group blow, and then another dough family group blow, and
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: then a two year old buck comes by and wins you,
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: and then a three year old buck come. If you
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: are getting winded by deer, you know, all throughout the day,
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: the conservative tactician would say, well, yeah, you might get
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: lucky and have the big guy happen to come out
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: the right way and happen to not be there during
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: the fifteen minutes that dough is blowing, and then it's
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: happening every hour, so you got to hope he happens
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: to come on one of those gaps when there's not
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: some other deer getting biggered out by. The conservative person
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: would say that's just too high a risk, you're asking for.
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: Too much luck.
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: The better approach, they would say, would be to not
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: hunt the X at all. They'd say, Yeah, the X
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: might be a great spot for deer, but it's not
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: a great spot for deer hunting. And so I think
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: what they would say, what you know, I've got spots
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: like this that I've thought about, and I've asked people about,
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: and I've had this debate, and I've done both things.
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: I've dove right there and hunted the X, and I've
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: done the other thing. And the other thing would be
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: find somewhere adjacent that's close ish to that but sets
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: up actually to your advantage. So maybe you can't be
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: on the X, but you can be ninety yards off
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: the X, but something about that position protects you from
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: a wind perspective, or forces deer in front of you,
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: or has better access. Maybe there's a ditch you can
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: walk in, and the ditch gives you this great access
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: route into the middle of it, and then your wind
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: blows off to an area where there just isn't as
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: much deer. So you're not going to be on the X.
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: You're not going to get one hundred percent of the buck.
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: Traffic.
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: But maybe you get fifty percent of the buck traffic,
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: which is pretty good, but none of it. You're not
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: blowing up anything or you're you know, you're getting five
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: percent of the deer being spooked rather than ninety percent
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: of the deer being spooked. And so that approach would
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: hypothetically give you more time to hunt that area for
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: a good thing to happen before you know, things get
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: so blown up, or before every single buck that comes
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: through wins you and boogers. That would be the ankle
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: on that one. I think, like I said, I've tried both,
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: I've I don't know which one's better in all situations.
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: I do know that I like the situation I described
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: to you is actually one like an exact real life scenario.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: And the first year.
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: I got access to this spot, I decided to go,
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: like try it, and I just know, like exactly what
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: you said, like you know, this.
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: Is the spot.
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: It's it could be a disaster, but also maybe it
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: would work. And the first time I tried it, there
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: was one buck in particular, I was hoping to get
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: a crack app and the very first time I want
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: and hunted the X like five minutes before shooting light.
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: I hear, and that buck walked right past my tree
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: fifteen yards but five minutes too early, and it even
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: came from the upwind side, So like if it had
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: been ten minutes later, it was perfec If he came
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: on the safe side, I would have smoked him, And
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: instead he came in a little bit too early.
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: It walked from the.
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: Upwind side to the down wind side, winded me booked
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: out of there. So you know, it was one of
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: the situations where I got to see both sides of
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: the coin. I saw how it could have worked, so
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: it did work almost so well. And then I also
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: experienced the downside possibility too, so well, no, no perfect.
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: Answers, No, no, And I've had I've actually had the
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: same exact thing happened one time. We were in a
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: spot thought it was the X just based off of sign.
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: Had one come in six minutes before legal, and it
• 48:35
  Speaker 4: was like he's making he's hitting the scrape that we're
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: like on and all I can see, you know, I
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: can see his big ass frame, you know, head up
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: in the in the branches, and it's like, you know,
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: what are the odds of this six minutes? You know,
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: and then we never saw another deer the whole rest
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: of the time, the whole rest of the day. We
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: stayed there in there all day, thinking all he never
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: smelled us because he came in, hit a scrape, went
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: right back out, and it just, you know, one of
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: those situations where like, I can't believe that worked out
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: that way because you know, what are the odds that
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: he's six minutes early? But I didn't want to mention one.
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: Here's an idea where this kind of meets in between,
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: maybe in kind of a different look. So you were
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: talking about kind of finding that fifty percent movement spot,
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: the spot where you feel like you could kind of
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: back off and you know, still catch some of that movement.
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: Another way you could kind of play both sides of
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: it is you could sit back, especially if you've been
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: able to sit in a location where you've been able
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: to hunt previously and see that. So, like let's say
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: you had a stand where you've always been able to
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: see that area. You could just kind of play it
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: as an observation stand. And when the rut's really cranking,
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: that's when I like to do the majority of the
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: calling and you know, more on the ground aggressive approach
• 50:00
  Speaker 4: basically calling them in with your own sounds as you're
• 50:03
  Speaker 4: moving in, so you can almost let them. You can
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: hang back, wait for that type of buck that you're
• 50:11
  Speaker 4: after to come through. And if especially if you're seeing
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: this trend where they're getting in there and they're kind
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: of milling around really moving slow. Now ideally too, you'd
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: have some sort of route to get there quick that
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: you knew of already, but essentially let them get there,
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: especially if you can't predict like like for example, maybe
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: there's one hundred yard like rough edge. It's not a
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: hard edge. It's more of like a you know, you
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: know I'm thinking of, like you use the example of
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: automol of Now, those don't always have that like you know,
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: hard edge. They're sometimes kind of feathered out yep. So
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: maybe that deer or you're seeing deer typically kind of
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: meandering through that that might be a situation where it's like, okay,
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: he's there. Now I can kind of read that wind
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: that's going to work for me and just make an
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: aggressive stalk essentially to cut him off. And maybe you
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: utilize a little bit more calling as you start to
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: get close and you know conditions are going to play
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: a factor in that. You know, you might approach it
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: differently depending on how the conditions are. Like you got
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: a super windy day and he's got his nose on
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: the ground smelling for doze, and he's really moving slow
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: through there, and all you got to do is make
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: a fifty yard move. That might be the perfect situation
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: to get in there tight to him. On the other hand,
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: if you've got a really calm day, that might be
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: where you can sit back and just be like, you
• 51:42
  Speaker 4: know what, he's one hundred yards up there. I'm going
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: to hit the antlers together and see if he doesn't
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: just come over here. And I think that's kind of
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: like maybe in between where you're just kind of using
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: you're just playing it smart in some of the in
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: a situation like that, but still able to be a
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: great if if the situation starts to play out in
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: certain ways. Yeah.
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: Well, I think what you're describing is is exactly what
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: we talked about in the first scenario, which is that
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: even in one single hunt, you can do both of
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: these things. Yeah, totally, Okay, here's another one.
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: This is fun. By the way, I enjoy this.
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: It's got my mind racing, all right. So imagine you're
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: sitting in a dynamite rut spot. It's a kind of
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: place that, you know, let's just assume it's the perfect situation.
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: It's downwind of a dough betting era and it's a funnel, right,
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: So this is like, man, it should be a killer
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: rut spot. And on one side of you there's there's
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: some kind of opening. It could be a cut crop
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: field or a meadow or something, but it's open enough
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: that you can see several hundred yards away, and one
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: hundred and fifty is two.
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: Hundred yards away.
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: In the late morning, you see a dough kind of
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: run across the corner of that field and off into
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: the timber again.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: She's running, you know.
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: Tail flapping a little bit funky, and then behind her
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: you see a shooter buck, and then five minutes later
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: you see another like.
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: Two year old buck.
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: Okay, so you've seen two bucks chasing a dough that's
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: obviously feeling it about two hundred yards away from you.
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: But over there, you know, there's never been anything in
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: that zone that's ever been like too terribly attractive to you,
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: at least not compared to the spot you are hanging
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: out right now. You could be sitting on the ground
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: or in a tree stand whatever. So what would the
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: aggressive person do in that scenario where you're sitting in
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: an awesome spot but you see this hot dough and.
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: A couple bucks go running off two hundred yards away?
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: What would you do?
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: I think in a situation like that, I like that
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: there's bucks on their feet distracted. That's gonna work to
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: the aggressive hunter's advantage in this case. I think two reasons. One,
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: let's say that, so you've got two non target beer
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: the dough and the younger buck, and then you've got
• 54:18
  Speaker 4: the sugar buck. So there's a bunch of noise on
• 54:21
  Speaker 4: the ground as is, So that's going to kind of
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: help confuse them to you know, being able to say, oh,
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: that's definitely a hunter. Like, for example, if you're dealing
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: with an early season buck bettered by himself and he
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: starts hearing something, he's more likely to be like what
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: is that? And I'm going to pay super close attention
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: to that. Where if he's been trailed by this punk
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: two year old satellite buff all day, he's already kind
• 54:44
  Speaker 4: of just got that mentality of like, dude, get the
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: hell out of here, Like I've been telling you all
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: day get out of here. So I think that works
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: to your advantage. And then you know, if it's a
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: rut type spot and they kind of go out into
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: an oddball location depending on how the wind is, I
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: think you can kind of predict like why they may
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: or may not be doing this. So when we worked
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: at Midwest Whitetail, I met Justin Sime who was a
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: pro staff guy in Wisconsin and he owned property in
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: Iowa close to where we lived, and I was hunting
• 55:19
  Speaker 4: with him one time out there in November when he
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: had had a tag, and he told me one of
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: the things that kind of changed the way I look
• 55:25
  Speaker 4: at like lockdown time frame. We were sitting in this
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: stand and it I'll be honest, it didn't totally make
• 55:34
  Speaker 4: sense to me while we were there. It was kind
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: of like close to the road, it was in a corner,
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: and the wind was blowing kind of generally to that corner,
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: which kind of made sense. But then all of a sudden,
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: he throws me this total curve ball. That was what
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: changed my perspective on this. He's like, you know, I
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: like hunting this spot this time of the year because
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: bucks tend to push does into this corner of the woods,
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: and I think they're doing it because their wind goes
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: to the road where no other deer are going to be,
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: And I'm like, like, damn, that's that's pretty deep. And
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: I mean it wasn't you know. A couple hours later,
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: here comes a buck going right to that spot with
• 56:14
  Speaker 4: a dough, exactly like he talked about. And so ever
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: since then, I've been paying close attention to where a
• 56:21
  Speaker 4: buck locks down the dough, even if it's on a
• 56:25
  Speaker 4: place like I'm driving down the road and I just
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: randomly see any old buck with a dough, I always
• 56:30
  Speaker 4: try to take note of where they are and how
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: the wind's blowing. And one thing that seems to be
• 56:36
  Speaker 4: pretty dang consistent is they go to these oddball locations
• 56:40
  Speaker 4: where they're blowing their wind in a spot where other
• 56:45
  Speaker 4: bucks aren't going to necessarily easily get down one of
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: them and start harassing them. So, in this case that
• 56:51
  Speaker 4: we're talking about here, if they are going to this
• 56:53
  Speaker 4: oddball location, even though I know that this spot that
• 56:57
  Speaker 4: I'm in is the cruising spot, if they're with that dough,
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: there's probably a good chance that they're kind of going
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: up and away from where the majority of the deer are,
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: and that shooter buck may not come through there until
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: he loses that dough, which may be in two hours,
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: it may be in three days. And that's where this
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: is tricky and there's not necessarily a right or wrong.
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So I.
• 57:19
  Speaker 4: Think my approach, if I was taking the aggressive one here,
• 57:23
  Speaker 4: would be pick up, get the win in my favor,
• 57:27
  Speaker 4: and start moving to where I think the likely spot
• 57:31
  Speaker 4: that he may try to lock down with that dough
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: is going to be, and try to do it swiftly
• 57:36
  Speaker 4: enough to where I can still catch them on their feet.
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: You know, maybe that bigger bucks still making a bunch
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: of noise because he's shown off trying to get the
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: smaller buck intimidated. Maybe he's making rubs, Maybe he's you know,
• 57:50
  Speaker 4: chasing that other buck off, and they're making a bunch
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: of ground noise that will tip me off but also
• 57:56
  Speaker 4: cover my own noise and make it a little bit
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: easier for me to get in and just get tight
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: to him, because then I do believe once you're in
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: tight to him. There's certain situations where me and other
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: guys in our you know, friend group in general, it's
• 58:15
  Speaker 4: like had these hunts where there is a satellite buck,
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: the bigger bucks so focused on running him off that
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: he does at once. You slip in there with the
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: perfect time grunt one time, and here he comes right back,
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: you know, wanting to fight. And that's happened to a
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: bunch of us a bunch of different times, specifically during
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: that time where they're lockdown with does. So I would
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: be trying to hopefully execute that, But obviously there's risk
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: in that as well, because what if all of a sudden,
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: that big shooter Buck was actually just chasing some random
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: do and he pulls off of her and he's like, hash,
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: he's not hot. I'm gonna move on now. I'm moving
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: towards him with my grunt call, and I'm thinking, oh,
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: this is a done deal. Well, then he goes right
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: through where I just was. Yeah, and I would have
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: been better off to set up there. I think that
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: happens too.
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: So yeah, and so that's a perfect segue then to
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: the conservative approach, which that person would say, uh, I'm
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: guessing probably they there's a high chance that that chasing
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: over there was random, and that that dough could lead
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: him anywhere, and either they could be you know, running off,
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: Lord knows where next way out of here, or you know,
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: maybe they'd do what you used to said, which is
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: that buck breaks off the dough because she actually wasn't
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: ready and then he comes right back through. And so
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: the conservative hunter would say, I'm going to trust my spot.
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: I'm going to trust that this really is the cruising
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: spot down one of the dough betting your head.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: That is the funnel.
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: It's well prepared, and I just need to put my
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: time in here, and there's maybe a ten percent chance
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: that I could catch up with that deer over there,
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: but maybe there's a thirty percent chance that him or
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: another buck will eventually come through here, because this is
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: the rut X and that you know, puts your faith
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: in your prior work, would be I think that approach
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: and and there I mean, like you said, it's six
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: to one way half dozen another, because I've done this
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: where I've sat in the spot, where I've sat and
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: debated and I thought to myself, Okay, I know a
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: hot dough is just there, and I know that she
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: has that ground scent, and so I will sit there
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: and be like, okay, man, there's gonna be other bucks
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: that walk that trail and I should move over there
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: and be within shooting range of that trail, because there's
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: gonna be another deer.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: It could be the one I'm after.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: But of course if I do that, then I'm gonna
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: leave this amazing spot that I know has been historically good.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: And so I'll go about.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: I'll just pull all my hair out and then I'll
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: go and I'll sit this. I'll stay where I'm at
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: because eventually I'll say, Okay, you know what, I'm gonna
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: trust my spot. I'm you know, believe in that and
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: let the rut play out the way you know it's
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: gone on and they'll come through. And then of course
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: an hour later, another deer comes cruise in that hot trail,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: and then you should have been there. So you know,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: there's no right answer, either one to work. And that's
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: why we like the deer hunt, I guess is because
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: it's a complete mental disaster at times trying to figure
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: out what the right choice is.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think, you know, it would be easy
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: to assume, like I don't know, I guess, like you
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 4: could be listening to anyone talk about this and it's like, oh,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 4: they're sitting there saying they got all this confidence in this.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 4: But it's like, even though I like to be aggressive,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 4: and I think, you know, I think that I tend
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: to lean on the aggressive side. I go through the
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 4: same exact thing where it's like pulling my hair out
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 4: just sitting there. I mean, ask anybody that I hunt with.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: I mean, I probably go through the scenarios and pros
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: and cons list about as much as anyone where it's like, well,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: on one hand, we could be doing this, on the
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: other hand, you know, and end up being pissed off
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 4: if we don't do this. And then he goes right
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: through there, and I you know, it's like you're always
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: playing that. Yeah, you're just kind of making that pros
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: and cons list and then trying to guess, even though
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: usually you can come up with just as many pros
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: as you can cons for any scenario. And I think
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 4: the one thing though about that that I try to
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: or why I try to avoid it even though I don't.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 4: I try to avoid it because it starts to make
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: it not fun at a certain point. And that is
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: the biggest regret is when you get done and you're like, man,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: I was just worrying about that too much, and then
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: nothing happened no matter what decision I made. So I
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: should just have fun first, enjoy the situation no matter
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 4: what it is, and then you know, the outcome is whatever.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: But if I'm sitting here stress and you know, I've
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 4: even had times where I've had to just like take
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 4: a like it could all be going down and I'm
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 4: so stressed that I have to like bail and like
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 4: just go reset my brain because it's like stressing, I'm
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 4: starting to not have fun. And if that's the case,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: then you probably should take a little breather, you know, probably,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 4: I think your mental health.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: And it's so true.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: So so I had a hunt that was kind of
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: you know, it wasn't exactly like this, but I had
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: this mental anguish, like you're describing where I've got a
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: piece of property that I can hunt, where there's one
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: buck that's probably four or five this year, like there's
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: only one mature buck. Yeah, So I was really helping me, man,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: that's that's the day I'm after, and was getting pictures
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: of him over the course of the end of September
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: and into early October. My typical kind of if I'm
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: hunting this his own, I usually like take a swing
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: the first hunt of the year maybe, but then after
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: that I'll be relatively careful and then I'll start getting
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: more aggressive later in October. But this year it usually
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: remember like October six, seven, eight, somewhere around there, we
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: got that cold front right and I thought to myself, Okay,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: we've got this big cold front moving through. I've been
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: getting daylight pictures of him, and I had this rain
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: and wind one day where we had rain and wind,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: and I thought to myself, there's no other day in
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: the next two and a half weeks that I could
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: push in there close to his bedroom except for this
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: one day because of the rain the wind. Otherwise it'd
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: be you know, really hard to get in there without
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: spooking deer because there's a lot of deer. But I
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: saw this window, I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: take a swing. I'm going to punch in right to
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: his doorstep in the rain. The rain was supposed to
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: die off, it was gonna be perfect. It was a
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: situation where it's like that wind that the deer likely
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: if these bucks were gonna get this buck and other
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: deer were gonna come out, they were likely going to
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: you know, hit this timber that I was going to be,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: and where there should be acorns dropping, and then they
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: could continue on and hit either a green field or
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: a cornfield. So he had like all sorts of great
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: food options out going up wind of me. Ahead of me,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: there was a cornfield to the south of me. So
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: if for some reason they were gonna head just straight
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: to the corn I had a straight north wind that
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: should blow like straight behind me, and based on where
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: they'd be, they should either walk across in front, or
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: they should walk parallel to me, parallel to my wind
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: on the right. So I thought, man, it's aggressive, I'm
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: gonna punch in there, but it's it's just barely gonna work.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: So I convince myself I should try it. I sneak
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: in there, get right on the doorstep, hang my saddle
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: like right on the edge of his bedroom the whole time,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: you know, all my tippy toes, just like on pins
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: and needles. But also in my head thinking like you're
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: kind of the man mark, like you waited for the
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: perfect You waited for the perfect day. They're not gonna
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: hear you with this wind. The rain's perfect, Like man,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: they have no idea that you are gonna be sitting
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: right here and he's gonna come walking by. So I'm
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: feeling all cocky, feeling.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: Good about it.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: As I get set up, and within like fifteen minutes
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: of sitting there, it's still early.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: I see it. Deer start moving early. So I'm like,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: all right, like this is it.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: Here comes a dough, Here comes a doll, Here comes
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: a little buck, And every single one of them comes
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: within shooting range of me. They come walking right by.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, man, problem is as they come they come,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: they're all coming from upwind. They all pass by within
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: shooting range. I could have smoked every one of them.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: But for whatever reason, what was supposed to be a
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: north wind blowing like straight behind me that should have
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: been parallel to where all these deer went, something.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: With the.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: Cover or something made the wind hook a little bit northwest.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: So as soon as those deer got past me, like
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: ten yards past me, that wind curled just enough that
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: they caught my wind as soon as they got ten
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: yards past, So that first dough family group comes through
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: wins me. When they get past me, they just kind
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: of trot off quietly, and I'm like, oh, And then
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: another doll family group comes in and gets downwind of
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: me boogers this time of doll blows.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh no, this is not good.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 3: And then a group of two bucks comes by again,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: comes right within shooting range. Awesome, but they go curl
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: down where the wind is they bugger out, and now
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking, like more and more of the ops like,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: oh man.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: You stupid idiot.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: You took this aggressive swing too early. You know you're
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: gonna there's no way this is going to work out.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: Every single deer has come through and winded you. And
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: so then I spent I don't know how long half
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: hour then debating what do I do? And my two
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: options were you could just sit it out here in
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: this way. I had three options I was considered.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: I was like, I could.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 3: Stay here, knowing that likely more deer gonna come through
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: and they're gonna wind you, and you're just gonna have
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: to cross your fingers and hope and pray that that
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: doesn't happen when this buck maybe miraculously does come through.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: And if miraculously there's no other deer around and this
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: buck does come through, I can kill him before he
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: gets my wind, so I can hope for that. I
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 3: can stay where I'm at take like the conservative approach
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: at that point would be to like to stay where
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: you're at and hope, or I could take the ultra
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: conservative approach, which was to yank down my set and
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: just get out completely, just like bail on the whole thing.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 3: And then the third approach was to basically say, well,
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: I went for it, I might as well send it
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: even more, which was to yank down my set and
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: then move forty yards closer to the cover, which would
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: get me on the correct side of the wind curl,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: and then I would be able to not get winded
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: by deer and maybe have something work out the rest
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: of the night. So I spent thirty minutes pull my
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: hair out on that twenty minute whatever it was, debating
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: and making my head hurt, and then I finally decided
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: at like five point thirty in the evening to yank
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: down my set and then move the forty yards and
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: rehang my set on the other side of where the
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 3: wind curl was, because at that point I realized why
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 3: I came in here. I made you know, I did
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: the damage. I screwed it up probably one way or
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: the other. I might as well try to maybe get
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: lucky and have the rest of the hunt work out.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: So I did that, and I did have more deer
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: come through that did not win me.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: That was great.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: I had a couple like nice at at least one
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 3: nice up and comer buck come through and not win me.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: That was fun to see.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: And then after dark the wind completely died, so as
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: I was just about rightists next slip out, the wind
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: completely died, and then I hear a deer blow on
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: the upwind side and I pull my bios.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: It's a big frame deer running away.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: So that's my story of the mental anguish that can
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: go through your mind as you try to figure out
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: what's the right move, when to be aggressive, when not
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: to be aggressive. All in one hunt that did not
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 3: work out for me, but but you know it could have.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, well, and that's there is this element too, where,
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 4: like I think you said earlier, like we predict where
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 4: they're going to be, and sometimes we think that we're
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 4: like on a roll with that, and we're just not,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 4: you know, we're just not We're not ever going to
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 4: be super consistent at guessing the randomness of a wild animal.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 4: There's so much luck still involved, and I think that
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 4: we can all go through these runs too where we're
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 4: doing really well, you know, like hunt after hunt, every
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 4: decision we're making, then decisions get way easier. It's when
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 4: you're not on a very good run when these decisions
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 4: make start getting really hard, where it's like, damn, it's
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 4: been you know, I haven't seen a buck that I
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 4: want to shoot, or or every time I do, you know,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 4: I'm messing something up in the last minute, or you
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 4: know I can't quite you know, I'm spooking them when
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 4: I'm drawn, or whatever it may be. I mean, there's
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 4: all these different factors that could be what kind of
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 4: screw you up? But it's like every situation still like
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 4: you can have a smidge more luck and it just
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 4: all works out perfect. Like for example, what if he
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 4: would have been with that nice you know, up and
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 4: comer buck slam dunk and you're like, dude, I made
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 4: the best decision I've ever made, And I think then
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 4: the next time you're more likely to do that with confidence.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 4: Where on the flip side, having what happened happened now
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 4: you're going to be thinking about that. Where I think
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 4: the reality is is what we should do, and I'm
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 4: definitely not always good at this. I mean, hell, I
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 4: get in some bad runs of just being like spinning out,
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 4: you know, same same, I'm sure the same thing you
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 4: and tons of other people do, like we almost should do,
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 4: is just clear your mind and be like that it
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 4: almost didn't even happen. I mean, I don't want to
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 4: say I don't want to say every single single situation
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 4: you can totally erase it. But for example, if that
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: was you know, you said that was like that first
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 4: cold front like sometime early as October, like two weeks ago, hunt, Yeah,
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 4: it's like, if you're not going to go back to
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 4: that particular spot for a while, it probably doesn't matter
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 4: that much, especially if he really likes that area. Because
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 4: that's that's another take that like I feel that I've
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 4: seen enough to believe in. It's like if one really
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 4: likes anario, you know, you can mess it up, like
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 4: we've said, but you can also run into deer that
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 4: like you kind of can't mess him up. Like they're
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 4: going to be in there. They love the area, whether
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 4: it's the does or the food source or the security
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 4: of the betting that they're utilizing. It's like, how do
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 4: we keep getting away with this. I mean I've asked
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 4: myself that many at times, because just like everybody, we've
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 4: all been fed a lot of the same media over
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 4: the years where it's like, don't ever spook one. If
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 4: you spook one, he's going to the next county, or
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 4: he's going to run to the neighboring property, or you're
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 4: never going to see him there again. And I mean,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 4: there's just been so many examples where I've seen that
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: not to be true that I guess nowadays I try
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 4: not to let it get in my head too much
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 4: because you know, if there's something that he likes there,
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 4: he's probably coming back. And if you start getting into
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 4: the rut, man, it's like it seems like all that
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 4: stuff kind of can just get tossed out the window.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 4: I mean, I've seen us bump a deer and then
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 4: get right back on him, and it's like he it's
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 4: it's a race from his mind. Might as well be
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 4: a race from our mind, you know. So anyway, it's
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 4: just a little way to look at it.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 3: It's it's a it's a really valid way and something
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: I don't remember who told me this or where I
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 3: picked this up, but it stuck with me. Similar to
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: what you were saying. It's just basically like a buck
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: is he has a core area or a betting area
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: for a reason. Like they don't do things randomly. So
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 3: if he really likes this betting area or this little
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: zone that he's in, he's there for a reason. And
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 3: you going in there and boogering up one time and
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: he catches you, that is actually confirmation for him that
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: he picked the right spot. Because he smelled you or
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: he picked you off when you were walking in, he's
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: he won. Yeah, So he was like, all right, yeah,
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: my setup here worked. I know there was someone around here.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: I picked him off or I smelled him and said,
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 3: you know, confirmation that I survived, and this is a
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: safe spot.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 3: If I were to go and walk in there every
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: single day, then eventually he'd be like, Okay, my safe
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: spot not so safe anymore. But I think if it's
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: you know, if it's you know, on, if it's still
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 3: surprising him every once in a while and he's feeling
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: like he's got the upper hand, I think that we can.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: You can get away with more than more than sometimes
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 3: we think you can. But one thing that I always
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 3: I you know, I think is worth pointing out is
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 3: everything we've talked about and trying to decide like where
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: on this spectrum you should plant your flag on any
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 3: given day or on any given hunt. I think a
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 3: lot of it depends on you know, what are your alternatives.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: So if if all you have is access to the
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 3: ten acres behind your house and that is where the
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 3: entirety of your hunting season is going to be, you
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: might want to think about, well, if this goes wrong
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: five times, then it really might might impact the rest
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 3: of my season. So in that case, maybe you want
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 3: to be a little bit more on that conservative side,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 3: not always, but maybe more often on the flip side.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 3: You know, if you're hunting public land, or if you've
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: got tons of spots where it's like, man, let's say
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: I go aggressive and a ghost sour. Whatever my alternatives, Well,
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: I have twenty seven other places that I can go.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 3: Try this again. In that case, pretty low risk. I
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: think that's like a really key thing is to keep
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: in mind through all of this.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: I completely agree. I think a lot of what you
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 4: know plays into whether or not you're going to be
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 4: aggressive kind of depends on like one, how much you
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 4: how much time you even have to go and then,
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 4: like you said saying, like how many options do you have?
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 4: Because if you've got a whole bunch of options, then
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 4: like I'm going to always be aggressive if I got
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 4: a bunch of options, because I'm just not going to
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 4: hunt the same area really for more than like two
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 4: or three days. And that's if it's like on fire,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 4: because at a certain point I do start to even
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 4: be like okay, I mean to just break from hearing it,
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 4: go do something else. And I think that that's like
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 4: another side of it that's it's so hard to explain.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 4: And I think if you're somebody that's listening to this
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 4: and you're trying to kind of figure out your style,
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 4: like just keep in mind that No, I've thought about
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 4: this for a lot of years now. It's like there's
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 4: literally not two hunting situations that are exactly the same,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 4: Like nobody, it doesn't look exactly the same for any
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 4: two people. Every single situation is different. Every single person's
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 4: ability to go time they can get off work, time
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 4: they can you know, be away from their family, time
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 4: that they can travel to hunt or whatever. It all
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 4: looks different. I mean, even like within THHP, right, it's
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: like we all have the same job. It's like hit done,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 4: look the same at all for one person of the
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 4: deck next like not even close. It's crazy when you
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 4: just compare like people that are doing the same thing
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 4: and they don't even have situations that look alike. That's
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 4: when it's pretty telling that you really have to just
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 4: kind of make your own style and make that work
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 4: for you because nobody's going to be able to tell
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 4: you the right or wrong answer for your situation because
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 4: they're never going to fully understand it.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so true, And I think tagging onto that, that's
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 3: another great reminder for all of us about why we
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 3: should not compare our success to anybody else's right, just
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: hunt your own hunt and don't worry about anybody else.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 4: Do you do you have any scenario? I'm sure you
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 4: got more scenarios right.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: Well, I do have more.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 3: Of the question is how much more time do we
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: have to go through this? Because we've spent a lot
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: of time talking through just a few of them. But
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 3: I feel like really good stuff. So do you want
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 3: to try to do one more? Do you want to
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 3: do one more?
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: Should we wrap it up?
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: What's it?
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 4: Let's do? Can we do two more? We'll do one
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 4: more that you got, and then I maybe have one too,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 4: just depending on depending on what you or I can
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 4: go first too if you want, If you want, let's
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 4: let's do yours. Okay. So the scenario that I'm thinking
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 4: of would be like you just flat out like bumped
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 4: the buck, like the one you know, whether that be
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 4: one you you knew before the season you were going after,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 4: or it's like, oh, that's a that's a big buck,
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 4: like that's something that I'm willing to dedicate you know,
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 4: the rest of this trip or time or season two.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 4: Even So you're kind of moving into an area and
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 4: let's just say this is like a public land or
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 4: like a big private land piece where you kind of
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 4: assume that you know that he's not going to leave
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 4: that area that you can hunt, and so you bump one.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 4: And that initial feeling I feel like, is that, oh, no,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 4: I've just messed it up. But you're also now in
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 4: a situation where you know he was there, you know
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 4: which direction he went. So within today and then the
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 4: following days that you're going to hunt, assuming that's all
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 4: within let's just say a four day span, what would
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 4: what would be the approach be moving forward, if you know,
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 4: you just bumped him, like I got that confirmation visually
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 4: that he's he's out of there, and you can if
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 4: you if you want it to be something specific as
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 4: far as how he bumped, you could make it that.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 4: But I guess I'm just thinking almost like he just
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 4: heard and then saw you. The wind was always good.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 4: You know, some people have an opinion that that matters.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 4: I don't know that I do. But you know, he's
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 4: he's definitely run out of there, but you know which direction?
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 4: So how do you play that from there?
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: And what time of year is it? In your mind?
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 4: I was thinking maybe like October. You know, twenty third
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 4: is today, So let's just say, like nackle twenty third.
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, so pre rut ish time period. Okay,
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 3: So do you want me to present like the conservative
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 3: approach first.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: Or do you want to run with your thoughts.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 4: Maybe the Yeah, I want I want you to. I
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 4: want you to go with either the concern either the
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 4: conservative or what you would do yourself, or maybe kind
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 4: of a combination of those two things.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, all right.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 3: So so I'll present like the super conservative approach I think,
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 3: and then I would and then I'll share my own thoughts,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 3: I guess, which are kind of in between. So I
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 3: think that if your typical, you know, private land management,
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 3: conservative hunter had that situation happened, I think that that
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: perspective would be Okay, I just educated this buck.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: I just crossed this spot off the map. I just
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: spooker that deer.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 3: My next move is I'm going to back out of
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 3: here and think about how that deer is going to
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 3: act differently because of what I just did. So if
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 3: you maybe you were talking into the edge of where
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 3: he thought his betting was, and you bumped him out
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 3: of his betting area and you came from the south,
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 3: that guy might think to himself, Okay, well I just
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 3: what I just presented danger from the south to that deer.
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 3: So that deer is definitely not going to come back
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 3: this way and head south to go feed where I
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 3: was hoping he's gonna. So now I'm thinking about what
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 3: is he going to do differently based on that. Maybe
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 3: I would say, I think this guy would go and
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 3: hunt somewhere else, anticipating that this buck would either avoid
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 3: that that whole next day, or maybe he would still
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 3: move that day but go in this different direction.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: So I think at a high level, that's what that
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: approach would be.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 3: It would be the leave this place alone, assuming it's
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 3: screwed up, and it would be what's the safe place
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 3: now that this buck's going to redirect too? For me specifically,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 3: it would depend on what that deer was doing in
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 3: the moment. So like if that deer was coming back
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 3: in and or I if I bumped that deer off
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 3: of bed and I thought that he was betted there,
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 3: I just boogered him out of that spot, you know,
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 3: I would definitely in that case try the try something
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 3: similar to the bump and type scenari. I mean, I
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 3: if it happens, you might as well roll with it.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: So if I.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 3: Bumped that deer out of his bedding area, and if
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 3: I think I just pushed him off with site and sound,
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 3: and if I have a mobile set with me or
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: something I can do it, I would try to think,
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 3: okay that if it's you know, morning time, and he's
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 3: gonna probably come back and bet again, he very well
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 3: might circle back through the general area, So I would
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: set up somewhere like that and try that. But if
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: it was a different kind of bump, which I had
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 3: this exact thing happened two years ago where I bumped
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 3: a deer that was cruising, And so what happened was
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 3: that I was actually it's kind of funny. It's similar
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 3: to the scenario that I just told you the other
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 3: day where I set up for a morning hunt and
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 3: then the wind started getting a little wiggy on me
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 3: and was not doing what I was supposed to do.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 3: Like an hour and a half into the morning, I realized, Man,
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 3: my wind is shifting worse and worse and worse. If
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 3: I stay here, I'm gonna really ruin this thing. And
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 3: so I decided to pull down my set mid morning
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 3: and go reposition. And as I was like starting to
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 3: climb out of the tree, the big shooter buck came
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 3: out and comes down winded me.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: Spooks.
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 3: So now I know, Okay, I bumped the deer. He
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 3: winded me, but he was cruising, so I knew he was.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: He was on the move.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 3: It was right around this It was like October twenty
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 3: seventh or something, and so because of that, I thought
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 3: to myself, Okay, what's that deer gonna do.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 3: I think he's you know, he winded me. He's not
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 3: gonna like this zone, but he's definitely on the move. Still,
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 3: he's definitely still gonna be cruising. He's not going to
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 3: leave the neighborhood. So I just thought to myself, if
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 3: he's in general cruising through this set of betting areas
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 3: in this area, where can I get that's just far
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 3: enough away from this that you know, I'm not, you know,
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 3: too worried about him thinking about like that X was
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 3: a danger zone, but you know, still in the same
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 3: general region. So I just yanked on my set and
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 3: circled about one hundred and fifty two hundred yards away
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 3: to get on the right side of the wind, to
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 3: the other side of this betting area. And six hours
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 3: later he came cruise and throw on that side and
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 3: I got shot him. That's so that those are the
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 3: two different approaches. I guess I would take, Yeah.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 4: No, that's that's good stuff, and I I think that
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 4: they're both. I do think they're both good approaches, depending
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 4: on on the situation. Right. The one other thing that
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 4: kind of came to my mind then if I were
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 4: looking at something like that is in kind of to
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 4: elaborate a little bit on what he was doing and
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 4: maybe throw a different I guess activity that he might
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 4: have been doing in that area. Into the mix is like,
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 4: let's say you bump him and you can tell he
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 4: was laying there, but he was laying there in the
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 4: edge of some thick where he was actually feeding on
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 4: something specific, Like we'll just use a specific oak stand
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 4: at the time. It doesn't really matter what type of
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 4: oaks that he's feeding on, but he's feeding on the
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 4: acorns that are dropping there, So maybe you identify whatever
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 4: type of tree that is. You're like, Okay, these are
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 4: definitely the only ones that I've been seeing dropping in
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 4: this area. It kind of seems like he's here for
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 4: a reason. One other I guess a conservative approach could
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 4: be I'm going to bail for now. I'm want to
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 4: know that this is where he was. Then I'm going
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 4: to look ahead in that three or four day timeframe
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 4: that I've got to hunt to try to find a
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 4: similar condition, and then I'm just going to go in
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 4: there and let's say I think we said that we
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 4: bumped him in the morning. Maybe I'm just going to
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 4: go in there super early two three days from now
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 4: and just hope that he's going to come back and
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 4: do that same thing. And that's kind of like it's
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 4: a less quick bumping dump act, but it's still kind
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 4: of a long, long play of the bump and dumb
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 4: dump while still kind of playing it conservative because you're
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 4: not necessarily at risk of bumping him again if you
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 4: know that he went that way and you're going to
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 4: bail that way, and you know, kind of keep things
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 4: pretty safe. There has been times where we've done something
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 4: like that and it's been really effective. And I guess,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 4: you know, that may sound aggressive to some folks, like, well,
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 4: you already bumped him once, Like what if you bump
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 4: him again? I guess that's that is maybe where it
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 4: does get aggressive. But I almost see that as conservative
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 4: because you're not going right for him right now, because
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 4: on the flip side, we've had a lot of luck
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 4: going right for him. Kind of thinking of it like,
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 4: you know, yeah, it sucks, and it sure doesn't. It
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 4: still makes your heart saying, but it's like we actually
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 4: saw him right here at exactly this time going that way.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 4: You know. I do think that especially white tail hunters
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 4: more than any other, like big game species, white tail
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 4: hunters tend to forget that like just because he bumped
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 4: them doesn't mean he doesn't exist. Anymore. I mean, he
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 4: literally went that way. You know, it's like he's he's
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 4: over there somewhere. No, Yeah, they can circle, they can
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 4: you know, be pretty crafty as well. But if you
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 4: know the area really well, maybe you can predict that
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 4: next location that he's going to go to. Maybe there's
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 4: a similar ridge that has you, like, you know what,
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 4: he's under these white oaks right now, betted on this edge.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 4: I know there's another edge that has white oaks up
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 4: against it, just a couple hundred yards over there. Maybe
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 4: for that evening, you kind of swing around, get the
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 4: win in your favor, and you get tighter to him
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 4: and set up maybe you maybe you just straight follow
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 4: the thing. I mean, there are situations, depending on what
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 4: the cover looks like, where you can do that too,
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 4: and just you know, try to get a read on
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 4: his tracks or you know whatever that I guess ground
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 4: type is, like that might be enough to kind of
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 4: help you confirm or advance, like the location in which
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 4: you know he's been or has crossed through. So like
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 4: you know, if he left this white oak ridge and
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 4: then he crossed a creek, he might be able to
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 4: work that creek and try to kind of intercept where
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 4: he may have ran down, and if you cut big
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 4: fresh tracks on that same line then he was running,
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 4: he might be able to say, Okay, well he's at
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 4: least gone this far, and so that might help you
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 4: kind of make that educated yes as to where he's
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 4: going next. And I think that's that's actually ended up
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 4: becoming one of my favorite things to do. Is just
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 4: I mean, it sucks in the moment, but there's a
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 4: whole bunch of examples that I can think of, you know,
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 4: within you know, my friend group of like guys having
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 4: something like that happen and then staying on it and
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 4: all of a sudden it's like, well, right there is
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 4: whether that be that day, the next day, or you know,
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 4: in that two or three day timeframe, and it's it's
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 4: kind of wild, you know, like when they have those
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 4: comfortable those areas that they feel comfortable, they may come
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 4: right back to the same spot, or they might just
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 4: barely move and be two, three, four hundred yards away,
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 4: maybe a thousand yards away. But if you know the
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 4: area well and you know those areas that they already use,
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 4: you know, there's probably a dang good chance that that's
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 4: just where it went, Like like literally that simple. So
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 4: I don't know, I find that to be a just
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 4: a kind of a unique thing that I didn't anticipate
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 4: feeling confident in doing when I was you know, not
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 4: really that long ago. But in the last like five
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 4: six years, it's like, man, there's a lot of examples
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 4: where you know, we've done this and we've like actually
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 4: got the buck that same day or within you know,
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 4: a few days. So I don't know, I think it's
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 4: all fun.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 3: No, Yeah, What's what's so frustrating though, sometimes with white
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 3: tails is that because of the habitats that we often
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 3: hunt them in, you know, they're just typically not as
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 3: visible as you know, maybe elk where you can watch
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 3: them for thousands of yards off in the distance. And
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 3: so on the flip side of what you're saying, you
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 3: could do something like this and screw it up and
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 3: that buck bumps, or you walk through a spot and
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 3: you a deer smells your ground scent or something, or
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 3: a deer wins you whatever, and then you might not
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 3: see him again the rest of the day or the
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 3: next week. And you know, as you know, you might
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 3: have all sorts of cameras up all over the place,
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 3: and that buck might be all around and you never
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 3: get pictures, so you could have this kind of thing
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 3: happen where you truly just don't see that buck again
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 3: for two weeks and then you're sitting there thinking, holy crap,
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 3: did I just destroy.
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: My hunting spot because of this?
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 3: And on one hand, maybe it did, because sometimes these
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 3: bucks do get really wiggy, or sometimes you do something
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 3: three times the wrong way and that buck's the act
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 3: and not loving it, and he shifts over just just
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 3: even one hundred yards shift and where he likes to
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 3: bed maybe could keep you from seeing him out or
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 3: like I just said, maybe he is still around and you.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: Just don't happen to see it.
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 3: So it's so hard to get that confirmation, you know,
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 3: to understand like is this right?
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 2: Is this wrong? Like what were the repercussions.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 4: It's that's a tough game, I think, where you know
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 4: you could like you could do one of those things
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 4: and like like the aggressive approaches that we've talked about,
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 4: where it's like you bump him then maybe you know,
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 4: kind of make a move and you guess his next spot.
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 4: You set up on there and you don't see him,
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 4: and it might have literally been the difference between you know,
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 4: him being on the top of the ridge or him
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 4: just being on the back side of the ridge. He
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 4: might have been, i mean, within one hundred yards of you,
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 4: and if you don't see him, like you're saying, yeah,
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 4: you might just lose complete confidence. And I think though
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 4: that's why, you know again, just kind of staying which
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 4: is hard, is the hard part of it. It's like
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 4: staying positive and continuing to believe in like the stuff.
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 4: You know, like if you know that they like using
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 4: an area and you're going in there and you're seeing
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 4: just blown up sign telling you, well, there's a mature
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 4: buck or multiple using this area. Like trust in that
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 4: gut too. It's like I think sometimes we you know,
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 4: I mean, I know I do this where it's like, okay,
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 4: there's there's like three huge scrapes here. Well it's probably
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 4: at night. It's like, I mean maybe, and maybe up
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 4: to that point it has been the majority, but like
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 4: all of a sudden, now you know it would be
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 4: silly not to sit there and they're coming, but you
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 4: just go right on by because you're thinking, well, you know,
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 4: you start doubting it. And I think one of my
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 4: one of my favorite terms is like the hundred out,
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 4: you know, where you start convincing yourself that something's true
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 4: and it like may just not even be close to true.
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 4: You're just letting the hundred out get the best of you.
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 4: Now you're just overthinking it. It's like I kind of
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 4: think at all costs you should avoid the hundred out.
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 4: I don't always do that, but I think if you
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 4: can avoid it and just believe in the fact that,
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 4: like I guess, let's put it this way, it's like
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 4: you are good enough. And I said, I'm saying that
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 4: to every year hunter out there. It's like, if you
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 4: get something in your mind that you want to do,
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 4: you're good enough to pull it off. You may have
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 4: to really slow yourself down and check yourself a few
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 4: times throughout that plan as you're executing it, but like
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 4: you can do it. Everybody can, you know, take the
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 4: aggressive approach if they want to. It's just a matter
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 4: of like believing in it and not letting the hundred
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 4: out get the best of you and then make you
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 4: not believe all of a sudden, because like I see
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 4: sometimes people be like leave a comment and they're like, man,
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 4: I don't know how, Like how you guys, do you
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 4: know this and go after these bucks and stop them,
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 4: or you know, be aggressive and move in on one,
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 4: knockdown with a dough and try to call them in.
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 4: I could never It's like, well yeah, yeah, absolutely, Cay,
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 4: And I mean, it just takes a different type of
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 4: like you just have to believe in it, and then
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 4: you're gonna have to probably change your pace and everything.
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 4: Like obviously you can't just go crashing in there every
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 4: time and it's going to just work out perfect. But
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 4: depending on the conditions, as long as you believe in it,
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 4: I think anybody can pull these types of aggressive strategies off.
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 4: It just I guess isn't as simple as just walking
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 4: to you from the truck to your stand. Like that's
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 4: really the difference.
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 3: You know well, and you know, I think a funny
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 3: way that all this kind of comes together is that
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 3: whether you are taking the aggressive approach, in which you
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 3: are like going out there and getting it, or you
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 3: take the conservative approach, which requires you pre plan and
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 3: then wait and believe and wait and believe and wait
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 3: and believe.
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 2: Both of those.
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 3: Right, Like the essence of it just requires confidence. Yeah,
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 3: you just need to have confidence. And more important than anything,
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 3: it's confidence in your decision making, right, right, because like
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 3: because the results you know, are to a degree outside
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 3: of our hands, right, and.
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 4: The results are almost always going to be super low
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 4: percent that it works, Yeah, exactly.
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 3: So it almost is like we have to force ourselves
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 3: to only judge ourselves by virtue of our decision making. Like,
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 3: can I sit here today and I let's say I
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 3: choose to do the aggressive thing today? And I think
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 3: if you could, this is easier said than done. But
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 3: if you choose to do the aggressive thing and then
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 3: that day say to yourself, Okay, I'm gonna do this,
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 3: and we're gonna do it because of this reason and
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 3: this reason, and I'm gonna do it this way in
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 3: this way, because of this situation, and you know, results
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 3: be damned. My idea here, my plan here, my decision
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 3: making is sound, and let's just see what happens and
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 3: be confident in the approach and then stop worrying from
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 3: that point.
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 2: And then the same thing for the conservative.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 3: I'm going to say, Okay, you know what, I know
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 3: that my access and exit is bulletproof here. I know
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 3: this is a good spot. I know that if I
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 3: just believe in it and give it some time and
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 3: be smart. This can work. I know my decision making
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 3: is sound, the strategy is sound. I'm going to trust
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 3: and stop stressing. Then you also have that confidence. I
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 3: think both of those hunters will be more successful, regardless
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 3: of the actual tactic, just because of that belief and
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 3: focus on the actual decision making process.
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, I think that. That's one of the things
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 4: I've tried to remember in something I've tried to kind
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 4: of like it's actually very much a thing I've been
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 4: thinking about the last cupule of seasons is no matter
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 4: what I do, make a damn decision and believe in it,
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 4: and then if it didn't work out, then go again tomorrow. Like, yeah,
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 4: it's never worked out one hundred percent of the time,
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 4: So like quit expecting that, you know, or not even
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 4: expecting that, but even hoping for that, Like you should
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 4: almost be expecting. Well, I think about this. I think
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 4: of it this way. It's like, when it starts to
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 4: play out, expect that you're going to execute the plan,
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 4: you're going to draw at the right time, You're going
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 4: to settle the ten, you're going to make the shot
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 4: where you know where your best opportunity is. But you
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 4: almost have to expect that you're not even going to
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 4: see the buck that you're after, or the caliber buck
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 4: or whatever, because you probably aren't. You know, Like I
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 4: think if you're hunting and you know, it was like
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 4: if one out of every ten hunts you're you get
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 4: a crack at a buck that you're after, like that's
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 4: pretty insane success, actually crazy good success. So you know,
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 4: that's pretty telling them how like it doesn't usually work out.
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 4: So just being confident in the decision you made and
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 4: then being okay with that and then just playing the
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 4: game again tomorrow, I think is the best thing you
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 4: can do. But it's really hard, and I think sometimes
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 4: you get in the loop where you're just like, I
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 4: don't every decision I make is wrong. But you know,
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 4: as the season progresses, and even if it gets past
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 4: the rut, it's still like anything could happen, you know,
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 4: Like I've been out on hunts and it's into December
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 4: and all of a sudden, here comes a hot now
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 4: in all the bucks. You know, it's like, well that
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 4: didn't that didn't meet the criteria typical rut timeframe. But
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 4: I just saw what I saw and it was, you know,
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 4: pretty wild. So I just think. Yeah, it's it's a
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 4: hard thing to do, but it's definitely some keep in
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 4: mind and no matter what you do, be confident.
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 3: I think that's a good place to uh, to wrap
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 3: it up, Zech, I Uh, I appreciate this chat. This
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 3: is fun, this was This is a good thing to
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 3: set my mind up properly for the RUT too. So
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 3: I think I needed this just as much as anybody else.
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, well, I appreciate you having me, and I
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 4: think it was a good time. And I'm sure we
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 4: could go on about a million different you know, tangents
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 4: through different examples, but hopefully what we did cover will
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 4: help somebody be confident in whatever decision they make at
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 4: some point.
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred.
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 3: Uh anything anything we should be keeping tabs on watching
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 3: four over on the TSP YouTube channel or anything anything else, Well, I.
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 4: Would say that we got a couple. We got a
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 4: couple of awesome hunts that we just filmed last week
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 4: coming up on the channel that I'm working on. I'm
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 4: working on one, Jake's working on one, Brett's working on one,
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 4: and then Ted is out el coming, so he's on
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 4: ELK as of today. You just got there yesterday, So
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 4: that's exciting. And then this time of the year, WARP
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 4: generally starts getting pretty he starts going from more of
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 4: his scouting type moves to his more aggressive sets. So
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 4: I'm feeling pretty confident coming up here that things are
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 4: going to be pretty fun. So I mean in the
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 4: videos that we got like that we're working on right now,
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 4: should be some good ones, so cool, It'll be a
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 4: good time.
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 2: It's a great time of year.
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 3: I'll be crossing on my fingers and toasts for zech
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 3: good luck out there and looking forward to hearing some
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 3: stories again soon.
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah, man, stop to you later.
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 2: And that's gonna be a wrap.
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 3: Thank you for tuning in, appreciate you being a part
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 3: of this community or listening to this podcast. I hope
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 3: your white Tail rut Extravaganza, your rut cation, whatever it
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 3: is you've been able to pull off so far, I
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 3: hope it's been great. I hope you've had some success,
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 3: had some fun, been safe out there, and let's meet
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 3: in the freezer.
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 2: So until next week, best of luck in the field
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 2: and stay wired to hunt.