Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Wired To Hunt Podcast #123: North American Whitetail’s Gordon Whittington Discusses the Challenges of Hunting October Bucks

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Wired To Hunt Podcast #123: North American Whitetail’s Gordon Whittington Discusses the Challenges of Hunting October Bucks · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
0:06
Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
0:11
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. I'm
0:16
Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan. In this episode number one. Today
0:20
Speaker 1: the show, we're joined by Gordon Whittington of North American
0:23
Speaker 1: Whitetail Magazine, and we're discussing the challenges of hunting October
0:26
Speaker 1: bucks and a whole lot more. All Right, welcome to
0:50
Speaker 1: the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by sit Gear.
0:54
Speaker 1: And today in the show, we're joined by the editor
0:56
Speaker 1: in chief of North American Whitetail Magazine, Gordon Whittington, and
1:01
Speaker 1: we're going to be discussing a number of different interesting topics,
1:04
Speaker 1: including some things related to the challenges of hunting during
1:07
Speaker 1: the month of October, and a lot of stuff actually
1:10
Speaker 1: related to the fact that Gordon has had a wide
1:12
Speaker 1: variety of experiences hunting all over the country. So we're
1:16
Speaker 1: gonna dive into some of these different regional specifics to
1:19
Speaker 1: maybe some stuff about hunting in Texas, maybe some stuff
1:21
Speaker 1: about hunting in the Southeast, how that all compares with
1:24
Speaker 1: the Midwest, and different stuff along those lines. So it's
1:26
Speaker 1: going to be interesting. But before we get Gordon on
1:29
Speaker 1: the line with us, it's been a long while actually
1:31
Speaker 1: since Dan and I have been able to catch up
1:34
Speaker 1: and fill all of you in on how our seasons
1:36
Speaker 1: are going so far. So Mr co host Daniel Johnson,
1:41
Speaker 1: it's good to have you back. Yeah. Have you ever
1:44
Speaker 1: been so busy that you forget to go to the bathroom.
1:48
Speaker 1: It's not you go with your pants or anything, but
1:50
Speaker 1: you're like, holy cow, I haven't p today, I haven't
1:55
Speaker 1: poop today, I haven't had water in like a day. Like,
1:58
Speaker 1: have you ever been that busy? You know, I've been
2:00
Speaker 1: close to that busy, but usually that's a high priority
2:03
Speaker 1: for me, So no matter what, I still still make
2:05
Speaker 1: it happen. But I know you're a different type of
2:08
Speaker 1: You're different animals. So yeah, that's right, one of those day.
2:11
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's one of those things where it's
2:14
Speaker 1: like I'm really, really, really busy, and then I'm trying
2:17
Speaker 1: to fit bow hunting into into the mix. So we
2:21
Speaker 1: have not talked since the beginning of hunting season, or
2:23
Speaker 1: at least not at the beginning of your hunting season. Um,
2:27
Speaker 1: how many times have been out? Uh, Well, I went out,
2:30
Speaker 1: say Friday morning, Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday night, and
2:36
Speaker 1: then looked for a deer on Sunday morning and couldn't
2:42
Speaker 1: find her. Now that's this past weekend, though, did you
2:44
Speaker 1: hunt it all opening weekend? I got out Wednesday or
2:48
Speaker 1: I got out Sunday night and that was it? Okay,
2:51
Speaker 1: So walk us through because today is October, I think
2:57
Speaker 1: right to October eleventh, so there's been a lever of
2:59
Speaker 1: ten days of hunting so far from you in Iowa.
3:02
Speaker 1: So you went on Sunday night anything studying that night.
3:05
Speaker 1: Let's see, here's what happened. Um, I first night in
3:09
Speaker 1: the stand, and I don't know if you know the
3:13
Speaker 1: very I don't know how you are, but the very
3:15
Speaker 1: first night in the stand for me is almost like
3:19
Speaker 1: a decompression chamber where you're just trying to get back
3:24
Speaker 1: into like the hunting mindset. You know. I did my
3:26
Speaker 1: first running gun set up. UM. I took it slow.
3:30
Speaker 1: I made sure I was doing everything right. Um. And
3:33
Speaker 1: then once I was set up, I you know, tried
3:36
Speaker 1: to clear my mind of everything else except what was
3:41
Speaker 1: currently in front of my face. Right, So I was
3:44
Speaker 1: just trying to decompress. And UM, I had had a
3:48
Speaker 1: fairly good night. Um, I saw three deer um. One
3:52
Speaker 1: of them was a three year old that I didn't
3:56
Speaker 1: get the opportunity to pass him, but I would have
3:59
Speaker 1: probably passed him. How how big of a three year
4:02
Speaker 1: old are we talking from? From a headgear standpoint? I
4:05
Speaker 1: think he's going to be sitting around like the high
4:08
Speaker 1: one twenties, lowe one thirties. Um, he's a he's a
4:11
Speaker 1: nine pointer. He's kind of got a weird, funky uh
4:15
Speaker 1: left side. But uh but yeah, you know nothing, you
4:20
Speaker 1: know nothing that made me personally jump out of my seat.
4:24
Speaker 1: It was cool seeing the first buck of the year,
4:26
Speaker 1: though for the triestan um and then he was it's funny.
4:31
Speaker 1: So right now you're thinking, Okay, they're eating acorns or
4:34
Speaker 1: they're eating I watched him clear out an entire bush
4:38
Speaker 1: of out right now there's these there's it's a bush,
4:42
Speaker 1: it's green, and they got these red little berries on them.
4:46
Speaker 1: I don't know if you ever know if you know
4:48
Speaker 1: what those are. But yeah, you know, I I even
4:51
Speaker 1: know the name of him. But I'm struggling right now
4:53
Speaker 1: to think of what is it choke cherries? Maybe I
4:56
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm not sure. I feel like but I know,
4:59
Speaker 1: I can't think of that, right, but he he cleared
5:03
Speaker 1: out an entire bush, I mean along along this field edge,
5:08
Speaker 1: and uh, I'm so. I was like, man, you know
5:11
Speaker 1: those are a field edge. Yes, don't tell anybody, don't
5:16
Speaker 1: tell anybody field but listen, I think you got it
5:22
Speaker 1: mixed up because I I do hunt field edges when
5:26
Speaker 1: I'm in an observation set because I want to see.
5:29
Speaker 1: I want to see. But but when I go in
5:31
Speaker 1: for the you know, dive in, I'm not hunting field edges. However, this, uh,
5:37
Speaker 1: you know, I I saw him clear out this entire bush.
5:41
Speaker 1: Three dose or two dos came out, and he starts
5:45
Speaker 1: pushing them like he's putting his nose to the ground
5:47
Speaker 1: sniffing and you know, doing a half as type of chase,
5:51
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. They weren't having it. He
5:54
Speaker 1: knew it wasn't time, so um, they just all kind
5:57
Speaker 1: of mingled around this this little inside corner of a
6:00
Speaker 1: field for a while and then right at last light,
6:03
Speaker 1: another deer stepped out. It was a dark bodied, bigger body.
6:06
Speaker 1: I couldn't see the head on it, um, but it
6:11
Speaker 1: pushed that other buck out of the picture, and the
6:15
Speaker 1: does kind of just started working their way away and
6:19
Speaker 1: this other deer. By the time it kind of got
6:22
Speaker 1: to where I could see they were, it was too dark,
6:24
Speaker 1: So I don't know what that was. Could have been
6:27
Speaker 1: a you know, one of the bucks, the bigger bucks
6:29
Speaker 1: on the property, but nothing, you know, I couldn't I
6:34
Speaker 1: couldn't tell what it was. Interesting, So pretty good first
6:37
Speaker 1: sip though, So then what the week passes. We got
6:39
Speaker 1: the big cold front that came through this past weekend,
6:42
Speaker 1: so you took took Friday off, hit the stand. Uh
6:46
Speaker 1: Friday morning saw three Larri's or dinks and uh then
6:53
Speaker 1: one dough They all four came out at one time
6:56
Speaker 1: and just kind of milled around this slow spot in
6:58
Speaker 1: the field before they headed into the timber. Um. I
7:02
Speaker 1: checked trail cameras, came back home for a little bit,
7:05
Speaker 1: then headed down to my main farm and uh for
7:09
Speaker 1: for Friday nights hunt and had an absolutely awesome hunt. Uh.
7:15
Speaker 1: I was kind of doing another I was doing another
7:19
Speaker 1: observation type of set, but knowing what works their way
7:23
Speaker 1: through there. Um and after consulting deer lab. I don't
7:27
Speaker 1: know if you use that or not, so you know
7:31
Speaker 1: I'm using I'm using my dear lab. I'm going up
7:33
Speaker 1: and I'm saying, okay, last year at this time or
7:36
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen or two thousand thirteen, let's just check
7:39
Speaker 1: my trail camera pictures that I've had I have uploaded
7:41
Speaker 1: on there, and they they are, you know, saying that
7:46
Speaker 1: I have some activity at this certain this certain fence crossing.
7:50
Speaker 1: All right, So I'm gonna go sit there. It's not
7:51
Speaker 1: only a good observation stand I can see everything coming in,
7:55
Speaker 1: but statistically it's a it's a high spot because my
7:58
Speaker 1: goal was to shoot a dough. Well, the short story
8:04
Speaker 1: is I had to. I have five does come from
8:06
Speaker 1: the south, three does come from the north, and they
8:10
Speaker 1: they're walking through this bean field that has been cut
8:13
Speaker 1: blown over by wind, and it's making a lot of noise,
8:17
Speaker 1: almost the sound like me walking through it. So the
8:20
Speaker 1: does to the south get scared and start blowing at
8:24
Speaker 1: the uh dose to the north, which ends up scaring
8:28
Speaker 1: the dose to the north, and they all kind of
8:31
Speaker 1: run away, so they spooked each other. Now after a
8:34
Speaker 1: while they all came out back again. Um. I ended
8:38
Speaker 1: up passing uh a really big bodied three year old
8:42
Speaker 1: with like a hundred non typical. He may have been
8:47
Speaker 1: a little bigger than nine thirty, but he had like
8:50
Speaker 1: a uh four point side and then he or yeah
8:55
Speaker 1: before it was a five point side, real small, and
8:58
Speaker 1: then it's like a crazy non typical double brow with
9:02
Speaker 1: like a twisted kind of a drop type of deal.
9:06
Speaker 1: But that's awesome. But yeah, it was pretty pretty decent buck.
9:09
Speaker 1: And then um passed two more four corns and then uh,
9:15
Speaker 1: probably with about thirty minutes thirty five minutes left in
9:20
Speaker 1: the night, I start hearing what I thought was rattling
9:23
Speaker 1: in the distance, So I put my binose up into
9:26
Speaker 1: this uh you know, through the tree line, and I
9:28
Speaker 1: can see two bucks sparring. They weren't fighting, but they
9:32
Speaker 1: were tickling each other's antlers, and one of them was
9:35
Speaker 1: I believe. I couldn't tell because there's so many leaves
9:37
Speaker 1: still on the tree, but I believe one of them
9:41
Speaker 1: was a buck that I have put on my hit list. Um,
9:44
Speaker 1: kind of an eight pointer with his brows are split
9:50
Speaker 1: like banana peals, Like they don't split and go up,
9:53
Speaker 1: they split and both kind of peel down. So um,
9:57
Speaker 1: that's a four year old, I believe. And other than that, then, uh,
10:02
Speaker 1: you know, the does never did get close enough to
10:05
Speaker 1: within shooting range because they got spooked. And then they
10:09
Speaker 1: all came out further down the fence line into this cornfield.
10:13
Speaker 1: Uh so that was over. Um. Then the wind shifted,
10:16
Speaker 1: so I wasn't able to hunt in that area for
10:19
Speaker 1: the following day. Um. The next morning, I went to
10:24
Speaker 1: what I thought was going to be a historical travel
10:27
Speaker 1: pattern travel corridor back to the um betting area in
10:33
Speaker 1: a different area. Didn't see any deer. I heard him
10:36
Speaker 1: across the ravine, but I couldn't see them they were
10:39
Speaker 1: too far down. And then, um, what a Saturday night.
10:44
Speaker 1: I went to this little back pocket where I had
10:49
Speaker 1: we're in the past when the corns in there, they
10:52
Speaker 1: feel very comfortable coming into this this corner of this
10:56
Speaker 1: different corn field and they just hang out there. I
10:58
Speaker 1: bumped one dough at two thirty or one buck to
11:01
Speaker 1: thirty in the afternoon, walking in who was already in
11:05
Speaker 1: this cornfield, and then I set up, he came back
11:09
Speaker 1: out and what else? Oh? Um, so I'm sitting there, I'm,
11:14
Speaker 1: you know, just kind of hanging out waiting for it
11:17
Speaker 1: to get to the good, good time of the night.
11:20
Speaker 1: And a dough and a buck. A buck's already following
11:22
Speaker 1: this dough and it's a maybe a hundred inch buck,
11:26
Speaker 1: maybe an eight pointer, and he's kind of following this
11:30
Speaker 1: dough real close, and I'm I'm by this time, I'm
11:33
Speaker 1: standing up looking down in the The dough looks at
11:37
Speaker 1: my bottom stick on my tree, on the tree, my
11:42
Speaker 1: bottom bottom lone wolf stick follows every stick up and
11:46
Speaker 1: looks at me and blows and runs into the timber.
11:52
Speaker 1: She didn't know what I was, so she blew and
11:54
Speaker 1: she I'm talking thirty minutes of blowing, and by this
11:58
Speaker 1: time I'm just like, oh my god, do I get
12:00
Speaker 1: down right? Well? She she gets close again, she stopped blowing,
12:06
Speaker 1: She gets close, she blows and blows and blows again,
12:09
Speaker 1: and then she goes back into the timber. And then finally,
12:12
Speaker 1: I don't know why, why dear do this? If they're
12:15
Speaker 1: afraid of something, but they get curious because they don't
12:18
Speaker 1: officially know what it is, because she never had my scent.
12:21
Speaker 1: She steps out in the field and I draw back
12:27
Speaker 1: and I ranged the spot where she stepped out at.
12:32
Speaker 1: I had a gap between the field edge and a
12:34
Speaker 1: tree limb right, and she came out fairly fast, and
12:37
Speaker 1: I ranged the spot and the spot was thirty thirty
12:41
Speaker 1: five yards and she stepped out a little bit further
12:45
Speaker 1: than that. So I put my forty yard pin on
12:46
Speaker 1: her and I set the you know, I you know, settled,
12:52
Speaker 1: let the arrow fly, and I hit her. But I
12:57
Speaker 1: couldn't see really where because she was right in line
13:00
Speaker 1: with a corn row. So then she she jumps out.
13:03
Speaker 1: She goes into the cornfield and she stands there for
13:07
Speaker 1: twenty thirty minutes, and she every step she took, it
13:10
Speaker 1: looked like she was getting ready to fall over. So
13:14
Speaker 1: I said to myself, you know, I think I hit guts.
13:18
Speaker 1: I think I hit a little bit low and a
13:20
Speaker 1: little bit back, but there's a chance I got liver,
13:23
Speaker 1: all right. So I said, okay, I gotta treat this
13:27
Speaker 1: like any deer if it was a big buck, what
13:29
Speaker 1: would I do? Back out? We give it time. So
13:32
Speaker 1: I went home. The next morning, I come back with
13:36
Speaker 1: my stepdad and we started with where she was standing, right,
13:42
Speaker 1: I mean it, if she took a step, she was
13:44
Speaker 1: almost getting ready to fall over. And we go there.
13:47
Speaker 1: We find a little bit of blood and I'm talking
13:50
Speaker 1: maybe ten fiftt of blood and nothing, and we we
13:56
Speaker 1: ended up gritting probably close to forty acres of cornfield
14:01
Speaker 1: and timber, and I ended up not being able to
14:05
Speaker 1: find her and it it basically ruined my weekend. Yeah, jeez,
14:11
Speaker 1: I was gonna say it sounds like a great weekend
14:12
Speaker 1: and then you really ended on a downer. Yeah, And
14:16
Speaker 1: you know, it's one of those things where it was
14:20
Speaker 1: a forty yard shot in an open corn field. You know,
14:24
Speaker 1: I don't know, I've I felt confident enough to take
14:27
Speaker 1: the shot and it didn't work out. I was off. Um,
14:34
Speaker 1: it sucks that I ended up wounding a deer and taking,
14:38
Speaker 1: you know, a shot. You know, some people out there
14:41
Speaker 1: probably would say, hey, you don't you shouldn't be able
14:44
Speaker 1: to you shouldn't take a shot like that. Well I
14:46
Speaker 1: look at it this way. If that buck was two,
14:50
Speaker 1: I would have taken the shot, just like I would
14:51
Speaker 1: take the shot on the dough, you know what I mean,
14:54
Speaker 1: Like you have to just because of it's a giant
14:57
Speaker 1: buck doesn't mean you should change your you know, change
15:01
Speaker 1: your your range. Right. You have to be and and
15:05
Speaker 1: ethically I felt that I was good at forty yards
15:09
Speaker 1: and I pulled off a shot that was not as
15:11
Speaker 1: good as I hoped it to be. And unfortunately, Um,
15:16
Speaker 1: you know who knows if this uh, this dough is
15:20
Speaker 1: a lib or not. And it really it really sucks. Sorry, man,
15:25
Speaker 1: I know when we've talked about this type of thing
15:27
Speaker 1: happens and it's uh, it's the the worst part of
15:31
Speaker 1: hunting is when something that goes wrong and we do
15:35
Speaker 1: everything we can possibly do to have you know, as
15:38
Speaker 1: quick an ethical kill as possible, but as as you
15:41
Speaker 1: and I both know it, no matter what you no
15:44
Speaker 1: matter how hard you try sometimes or how much of practice,
15:46
Speaker 1: sometimes just stuff happens. Well, And it's crazy, right because
15:51
Speaker 1: you can practice on a target all day long, you
15:53
Speaker 1: can practice from a tree stand at a target. But
15:56
Speaker 1: the hunting not to make excuses for a poor shot.
15:59
Speaker 1: But you don't practice for a deer that you have
16:02
Speaker 1: to stop, you don't have to have. You don't practice
16:05
Speaker 1: for a deer that's already been spooked. You don't practice
16:07
Speaker 1: on um, you know, all these different scenarios because in
16:13
Speaker 1: the timber, some of these scenarios are almost un unpracticable,
16:18
Speaker 1: if that makes sense. So you know, and don't I'm
16:22
Speaker 1: the last guy to make excuses. I feel bad that
16:25
Speaker 1: I end up winning this deer um, So you know,
16:29
Speaker 1: I gotta keep doing what I do, and that's practiced
16:31
Speaker 1: in my off time. So yeah, keep on keeping on. Yep. Well,
16:37
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to hear about how that first weekend went.
16:39
Speaker 1: I I now have forty five seconds to give you
16:42
Speaker 1: an update on how my last eleven days run hunting. Dude,
16:46
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. I just you should have said shut up.
16:52
Speaker 1: I'll give you the really, really quick, cliff notes version
16:54
Speaker 1: of what's going on. I just want to know if
16:57
Speaker 1: you had any encounters with holy Field. I've hunted holy
16:59
Speaker 1: Field four times. I've yet to see him. I saw
17:02
Speaker 1: one other potential shooter at one of my other stand
17:05
Speaker 1: locations while I was hunting one spot. I saw him
17:07
Speaker 1: like four hund yards away. And then I hunted a
17:10
Speaker 1: couple of new properties in between during the week and
17:13
Speaker 1: I saw a potential shooter on one of them, didn't
17:15
Speaker 1: get a shot. That's basically my season so far. So
17:20
Speaker 1: do you think you know where he's stepping out? Holy Field? Yeah?
17:24
Speaker 1: I don't know what holy Fields doing anymore. I saw
17:26
Speaker 1: him the last night. I don't have any trout, although
17:29
Speaker 1: I've I've no I've got two cameras i've checked since
17:33
Speaker 1: opening night. He's not on them. The one camera that's
17:36
Speaker 1: in the middle of his core area. I have not
17:38
Speaker 1: checked since opening night, so I'm going to do that
17:40
Speaker 1: in the next day or two. Drive the fore wheler
17:42
Speaker 1: out there. Check that um. But last time I saw
17:45
Speaker 1: him was the night before the season, and since then,
17:48
Speaker 1: like I said, I went and hunted four different times.
17:50
Speaker 1: I was obsessively care the first three times I hunted
17:53
Speaker 1: in that little core area, once in the ground blind
17:56
Speaker 1: where I had to put waiters on and walked up
17:58
Speaker 1: a stream for like a hundred fifty yards to get
18:01
Speaker 1: into this little spot. Then I crawled on all hands
18:04
Speaker 1: and knees to get into the back of this ground
18:06
Speaker 1: blind so that no possible way anything could hear me,
18:08
Speaker 1: see me, smell me, etcetera. I didn't see anything that night.
18:11
Speaker 1: Then the next day the next two hunts, I hunted
18:13
Speaker 1: a tree stand in that area, and I took like
18:15
Speaker 1: this crazy roundabout route that I've never done before. But
18:18
Speaker 1: I'm just like trying to take every possible, every possible
18:21
Speaker 1: thing I can do to reduce the chances of this
18:23
Speaker 1: buck seeing me or hearing me when I sneak in.
18:26
Speaker 1: If he was betted up there in the front there
18:28
Speaker 1: and still didn't see him, I mean, everything was pretty
18:31
Speaker 1: darn great. I didn't spook any deer and never at
18:32
Speaker 1: least that I heard or saw. I never spooked any
18:35
Speaker 1: deer um, but just he was he wasn't moving, So
18:39
Speaker 1: there could be a million different reasons why. Maybe he
18:41
Speaker 1: still did hear me or saw me or smell me.
18:43
Speaker 1: Maybe other neighboring property hunters spooked him and kind of
18:47
Speaker 1: caused him to go nocturnal. But it's kind of how
18:49
Speaker 1: it is here, at least where I'm hunting in Michigan.
18:51
Speaker 1: It's like you've got the first day or two maybe,
18:53
Speaker 1: and then these bucks just on a dime switch it
18:56
Speaker 1: up because there's literally there's probably twenty guy is within
19:02
Speaker 1: yards probably of where I'm hunting, maybe last I mean,
19:05
Speaker 1: there's a lot of maybe not twenty, but a lot,
19:07
Speaker 1: a lot a lot of hunters, and that changes things.
19:10
Speaker 1: So have you now switched your attention over to this
19:13
Speaker 1: other shooter that you show that you saw. I still
19:17
Speaker 1: focusing on Holy Field. I'm basically pulling out there, and
19:20
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna hunt again until either I get daylight
19:22
Speaker 1: trail camera pictures or laid October cold front happens. Otherwise
19:25
Speaker 1: I'm just laying off this property completely now. Um. Now
19:29
Speaker 1: that said, if I get to that time period and
19:31
Speaker 1: it starts getting good and I go in to hunt,
19:33
Speaker 1: and if I see this other buck and I actually
19:35
Speaker 1: saw another buck from the road one night I didn't hunt,
19:38
Speaker 1: I still was able to scout just at last light,
19:39
Speaker 1: and I saw a different buck that was super crazy wide.
19:42
Speaker 1: I've never seen a buck this wide and this property before.
19:45
Speaker 1: He might be a four year old or three year old,
19:46
Speaker 1: I don't know. Um. So if one of those two
19:49
Speaker 1: other bucks shows up and presents me a great shot opportunity,
19:53
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have a decision to make. I don't know
19:55
Speaker 1: what I would do right now, because I'd love to
19:57
Speaker 1: kill holy Field. But at the same time, in Michigan,
20:00
Speaker 1: if you get your shot at a three year old
20:02
Speaker 1: or four year old buck, um, and if it's you know,
20:04
Speaker 1: one twenty or something like that, I mean, that's a
20:06
Speaker 1: really really really rare dear here. And if you get
20:10
Speaker 1: one opportunity year, you're in the top five percent. So
20:12
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can pass up that opportunity. Um.
20:16
Speaker 1: If I did end up shooting one of those bucks,
20:18
Speaker 1: then I would lay off the property the rest of
20:20
Speaker 1: the year, and I would let holy Field hopefully just
20:23
Speaker 1: create a sanctuary again and hopefully hunt him again at five.
20:26
Speaker 1: So maybe that will happen, or maybe I'm just gonna
20:28
Speaker 1: focus on holy Field. That's my number one best option.
20:31
Speaker 1: I hope that's what happens, but I'm just gonna see
20:34
Speaker 1: how plays out. I guess how many how many trail
20:36
Speaker 1: cameras do you have right now surrounding where you think
20:39
Speaker 1: holy Field lives? I have three on that property right now.
20:43
Speaker 1: I'm going to add a fourth here in the next
20:46
Speaker 1: day or two when I go out. I'm gonna go
20:47
Speaker 1: out and take the four wheeler and just check these cameras,
20:51
Speaker 1: um that I haven't been able to get to because
20:53
Speaker 1: I've been so careful not to go in there. But now,
20:55
Speaker 1: since I'm not gonna hunt it for like another three weeks,
20:57
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take the four whiller and drive up to
20:59
Speaker 1: these edges where I can just easily change out the
21:01
Speaker 1: cards and batteries on these cameras and just get them
21:03
Speaker 1: ready to be, you know, hopefully collecting some intel from
21:06
Speaker 1: me all these next three weeks, and then um, you know,
21:09
Speaker 1: once we get to that late October time period, then
21:10
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try again all right man, well, good luck,
21:14
Speaker 1: thank you sir. So I know, uh, we need to
21:18
Speaker 1: we need to pause here a second before we get
21:20
Speaker 1: gored on the line and take a break to thank
21:23
Speaker 1: our partners at Sick of Gear, and then we will
21:26
Speaker 1: start talking with Gordon Whittington. So as we do every week,
21:30
Speaker 1: we have a sick story today, and we're joined again
21:33
Speaker 1: by Sick of Gear employee Brad Christian, who sharing me
21:36
Speaker 1: a pretty awesome story of an unexpected hunting role reversal
21:40
Speaker 1: between him and his wife. Now set the stage quickly.
21:43
Speaker 1: Brad's away from home and he gets this text from
21:45
Speaker 1: his wife asking he'll come back home and watch the
21:47
Speaker 1: kids for the night because she wanted to go hunting. Now,
21:50
Speaker 1: Brad is all about his wife getting on in the woods,
21:52
Speaker 1: but he knew this could be a little bit tricky
21:54
Speaker 1: as she had a flight to catch at five am
21:57
Speaker 1: the next morning. I said, absolutely, draw home, you know,
22:01
Speaker 1: jam back, and kind of past each other in the driveway.
22:04
Speaker 1: I five, you know, and wished her luck, and you
22:07
Speaker 1: know she makes up the tree and and you know,
22:09
Speaker 1: I'm getting the play by play if you know sawbird,
22:12
Speaker 1: you know, here's the here's the weather, you know, here's
22:14
Speaker 1: the wind. Here's you know, the selfie you know in
22:17
Speaker 1: the SI caface mask, you know that that kind of thing,
22:20
Speaker 1: and and uh, you know, she's she's a planner, I think,
22:23
Speaker 1: you know, like like a lot of us. She's texting
22:26
Speaker 1: me like, hey, what if I you know, what if
22:27
Speaker 1: I kill a buck? You know what what you know
22:29
Speaker 1: in terms of processing and and everything, And I'm thinking, goodness,
22:33
Speaker 1: like probably statistically right, just you know, not trying to
22:37
Speaker 1: be Debbie down a room. Probably not something you know,
22:40
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not not real worried about it, you know.
22:42
Speaker 1: And she's like, I gotta leave. I mean my fight
22:44
Speaker 1: leaves at five am, so I gotta be gone. And
22:46
Speaker 1: I'm just like, hey, but that would be an awesome
22:48
Speaker 1: problem to have. Let's just well we'll cross that bridge,
22:51
Speaker 1: you know when we get there. Um so I I
22:54
Speaker 1: you know, kind of forget about it. And then you know,
22:56
Speaker 1: the saft fox and then you know, a little bit later,
23:00
Speaker 1: out of buck and I'm like what text her back.
23:03
Speaker 1: She goes and I'm sorry, so sorry, my battery is dying.
23:06
Speaker 1: And I'm like, oh my gosh, of course your battery
23:08
Speaker 1: is dying, because your batteries always dying and she's like, sorry,
23:11
Speaker 1: this is gonna be it. I'm like, did you hit
23:13
Speaker 1: him good? She's because, yeah, I think so. But I'm
23:14
Speaker 1: my girlfriend. You she she saw the butt to go by,
23:17
Speaker 1: so I'm questioning and my battery seriously gonna die. And
23:20
Speaker 1: then she's gone, and I'm like, awesome. Great. She's like,
23:23
Speaker 1: I don't know, a couple of hours away, you know, leaving,
23:26
Speaker 1: you know, in you know, at three in the morning.
23:29
Speaker 1: I got the kids, and I'm just like, well, that's that.
23:32
Speaker 1: So I try to stay up for I was exhausted,
23:35
Speaker 1: and eventually I I passed out on the couch and
23:38
Speaker 1: just you know, that was it. And I wake up
23:40
Speaker 1: in the morning and I'm like, oh my goodness, what happened?
23:43
Speaker 1: You know, I'm still okay. I'm like running around. She's gone.
23:46
Speaker 1: She's not in our bed. I look out my trucks
23:48
Speaker 1: in the driveway, and so i'd be line it out
23:51
Speaker 1: there and I dropped the tailgate down and there's this
23:54
Speaker 1: buck laying in the bed of my truck. With it,
23:56
Speaker 1: there's a piece of computer paper that's like pierced by
24:00
Speaker 1: the G two. It's just hanging there that says thanks
24:02
Speaker 1: Mr Mom, I'll text you my processing and instruction. That's awesome,
24:08
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. Indeed, that was a sickest story. And if
24:13
Speaker 1: you'd like to learn more about Sick of Gears technical
24:15
Speaker 1: hunting apparel, you can visit sick of gear dot com.
24:19
Speaker 1: And now let's get back to the show and give
24:21
Speaker 1: Gordon a call. All right, with us on the line
24:24
Speaker 1: now is Gordon Whittington. Welcome the show. Gordon, glad to
24:28
Speaker 1: be here, guys. Yeah, we appreciate you taking the time,
24:31
Speaker 1: especially you know during hunting season. I always feel bad
24:35
Speaker 1: trying to get people to come on the show during
24:37
Speaker 1: hunting season in an afternoon when I know a lot
24:40
Speaker 1: of people are thinking about hunting at least, So appreciate
24:42
Speaker 1: you doing that, Gordon. And I guess before we dive
24:46
Speaker 1: into talking about that topic hunting right now, I guess
24:51
Speaker 1: it would be I think helpful for all of us
24:52
Speaker 1: to hear a little bit about who you are, some
24:54
Speaker 1: of your background. You know, we I briefly introduced you
24:56
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the show. Folks, I'm sure familiar
24:59
Speaker 1: with what you've done North American white Tail, But I
25:01
Speaker 1: guess how did you get to this point? Well, that's
25:05
Speaker 1: an interesting question. I grew up on a cattle ranch
25:07
Speaker 1: in central Texas. UM killed my first deer when I
25:12
Speaker 1: was seven. That was nineteen sixty three. I was sitting
25:15
Speaker 1: on my grandfather's knee shooting an open side at thirty
25:19
Speaker 1: to twenty Model ninety two Winchester car being UM there
25:24
Speaker 1: was only a few hundred serial numbers apart from the
25:26
Speaker 1: one John Wayne used in True Grit. So I guess
25:30
Speaker 1: that's my I guess that's my earliest claim to fame.
25:32
Speaker 1: If there was such a thing. There was the dough.
25:34
Speaker 1: And I've told I've told many people. I say, you know, look,
25:37
Speaker 1: I shot that dough through the heart and at the
25:39
Speaker 1: same moment, deer hunting shot meat through the heart. Because
25:42
Speaker 1: I absolutely never after that I could think of anything
25:45
Speaker 1: cooler than deer hunting. And and I'd grown up. I'd
25:48
Speaker 1: grown up in a ranch, like I say, and and
25:51
Speaker 1: and my parents were in the meat processing business. So
25:54
Speaker 1: they not only was in the cattle business, but every
25:56
Speaker 1: fall they would take in eight hundred to a thousand
25:59
Speaker 1: deer process And this is GOLLI fifty years ago now.
26:03
Speaker 1: And and so I grew up around that and hunters
26:06
Speaker 1: bringing in deer and just being around all that, and
26:09
Speaker 1: and my talents such as it was, I knew was
26:12
Speaker 1: never going to be an engineering or mathematics or anything
26:14
Speaker 1: like that. And I wasn't going to play in the
26:16
Speaker 1: NBA a little old me, so I kind of figured,
26:18
Speaker 1: you know, I need to figure out something that I
26:20
Speaker 1: can do with language, and my love was to deal
26:22
Speaker 1: with what was was to write and dealing with images
26:27
Speaker 1: and just trying to convey and communicate information. And it
26:31
Speaker 1: turned out that deer hunting was a perfect entree into
26:34
Speaker 1: that for me, As it turned out to be at
26:37
Speaker 1: a time when the white tail population was starting to grow,
26:40
Speaker 1: we were starting to get more specialized media, and I
26:44
Speaker 1: came aboard North American whitetail just as that wave was
26:47
Speaker 1: starting to swell in the early eighties, and I put
26:50
Speaker 1: my surfboard up on top of it, and I've been
26:52
Speaker 1: writing it ever since. But I'm I know, I'm getting
26:54
Speaker 1: close to shore now because I'm sixty years old, but
26:56
Speaker 1: I'm still having a good time. That's awesome. So given
27:00
Speaker 1: you have a unique perspective, I think compared to a
27:03
Speaker 1: lot of us, and that you got to observe this
27:06
Speaker 1: rise in this in this wave of deer hunting media
27:10
Speaker 1: and excitement and the I don't know, this big buck
27:14
Speaker 1: hysteria of sorts maybe that we're living and now I'm
27:16
Speaker 1: kind of curious, what are your thoughts and where things
27:19
Speaker 1: have gone from that time that North American White til
27:21
Speaker 1: first started to where we are now today. Well, if
27:25
Speaker 1: you look back in the early eighties, North American white
27:28
Speaker 1: Tail his very first issue came out in the fall
27:31
Speaker 1: of nine two, so we've we've been at it a
27:34
Speaker 1: little over three decades now. And I came aboard and
27:38
Speaker 1: I wrote two articles for the third issue of the
27:43
Speaker 1: magazine that was an early eighty three and I was
27:46
Speaker 1: still living in Texas at the time, and the magazine
27:48
Speaker 1: was founded here in the Atlanta area, and in summer
27:52
Speaker 1: of eighty four, I moved over here to actually work
27:54
Speaker 1: on the magazine, and I've been here ever since. So
27:57
Speaker 1: if I have kind of been here through you know,
28:00
Speaker 1: the long haul of it, if you will. Certainly there
28:03
Speaker 1: were a lot of people very interested in white tail
28:06
Speaker 1: deer long before I was born, and certainly the white
28:08
Speaker 1: tail has been important in American hunting, in North American
28:11
Speaker 1: hunting for for you know, centuries now. But but the
28:15
Speaker 1: restoration that was really just you know, coming on strong
28:19
Speaker 1: in the sixties and seventies, and obviously eighties and nineties
28:23
Speaker 1: all the way up into early two thousand's across much
28:25
Speaker 1: of North America, particularly the Midwest and in some parts
28:29
Speaker 1: of the Northeast. I think we saw that there was
28:32
Speaker 1: just this latent interest in big game hunting that otherwise
28:36
Speaker 1: was not available for people, and so it was such
28:38
Speaker 1: a rush for them to get to go out and
28:40
Speaker 1: hunt something beside squirrels and rabbits you know, we're ducks,
28:43
Speaker 1: and really go out and feel like there were big
28:45
Speaker 1: game hunting in part of the country where that had
28:48
Speaker 1: been absent for a while. And so I think that
28:50
Speaker 1: was part of the mystique and the allura that that
28:53
Speaker 1: really got people chummed up and interested in not just
28:57
Speaker 1: shooting deer, but as they as they started to find
29:00
Speaker 1: doubt that there were giant deer at least had existed
29:03
Speaker 1: in the past, whether they still did or not, people
29:06
Speaker 1: were fascinating. Body's big here? And who doesn't want to
29:09
Speaker 1: shoot a big deer after you know they exist? I mean,
29:11
Speaker 1: you you know that old six pointer, you know that
29:14
Speaker 1: hangs out behind the farm pond. It looks pretty good
29:17
Speaker 1: to you until you've been to the Deer show and
29:18
Speaker 1: seeing the hole in the hornbuck hanging there, and all
29:21
Speaker 1: of a sudden you realized, there's a different world out
29:23
Speaker 1: there than I live in, and yet it's here in
29:26
Speaker 1: North America, and regular people sometimes with the guys shooting
29:30
Speaker 1: these mega giant deer. Well, I think that that dream
29:34
Speaker 1: and fantasy of being one of those guys and and
29:37
Speaker 1: having a chance to really kind of live out that fantasy.
29:40
Speaker 1: I think that was a big part of the allure
29:42
Speaker 1: of of the megabuck, if you will. Back in the
29:45
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties in particular, some people feel like, now, well,
29:50
Speaker 1: you know, we've seen so many giant deer. There's so
29:52
Speaker 1: many farm deer now, there's so many videos, there's so
29:55
Speaker 1: many sheds, there's so many everything out there, collections and stores,
29:59
Speaker 1: replica as you name it. That there is a certain
30:01
Speaker 1: amount of what I think Dr Dr Crowe has often
30:05
Speaker 1: references antler fatigue. We don't have any less interest in
30:09
Speaker 1: shooting these mega giant deer. We're still excited about the
30:12
Speaker 1: idea of it. But seeing these giants deer that are
30:16
Speaker 1: that thirty years ago, we're totally unknown and now somewhat
30:20
Speaker 1: somewhat more common, whether through social media, whether through just
30:24
Speaker 1: the general blitz of media in general, including us here
30:26
Speaker 1: at North American whitetail. I do think that's taken some
30:29
Speaker 1: of the mystique, if you will, off the off the
30:31
Speaker 1: world class buck. But nonetheless, hunting those deer is still
30:35
Speaker 1: as magical as it ever was, and maybe more so. Yeah,
30:39
Speaker 1: what is it about? What is it about a giant
30:43
Speaker 1: buck that has guys like us daydreaming all year around?
30:49
Speaker 1: You know? What's what's? What do you think that draw is? Well,
30:53
Speaker 1: you have to there are several things I believe, I mean,
30:56
Speaker 1: as impressive as a giant pronghorn antelope or a mountain goat.
31:00
Speaker 1: Is they all pretty much look like the same animals.
31:05
Speaker 1: Some are a little bit bigger than others, but white tails,
31:08
Speaker 1: even a hundred and twenty class nine pointer, they don't
31:12
Speaker 1: all look alike. They don't all Uh, they aren't all
31:16
Speaker 1: taken by the same method, in the same way and
31:19
Speaker 1: exactly the same kind of habitat. There's all sorts of
31:22
Speaker 1: different situations. Uh, you know, the land holdings. Sometimes they're small.
31:27
Speaker 1: We understand that the odds are against us getting a
31:29
Speaker 1: shot at the monster versus making the guy across the
31:32
Speaker 1: fence or two farms over, so we've got that. We
31:36
Speaker 1: felt like there's a massive challenge to that number one
31:39
Speaker 1: because we know it. You just don't shoot these big
31:41
Speaker 1: deer every day. Uh and and sometimes you go with
31:44
Speaker 1: fifty years and you never get a chance at a
31:46
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty deer. And yet you could be the
31:49
Speaker 1: best hunter in your county, but you just don't have
31:52
Speaker 1: big deer to hunt. And so I think knowing how
31:55
Speaker 1: rare it is, and how special these animals are and
31:58
Speaker 1: how difficult they are to hunt, I think all of
32:00
Speaker 1: that contributes to this fantasy that man, will I ever
32:04
Speaker 1: be the guy that shoots a deer like that? Or
32:07
Speaker 1: can I make it happen if a deer like that
32:09
Speaker 1: comes by me? Can I keep it together? Can I
32:11
Speaker 1: get the job done? I think I think there's so much,
32:14
Speaker 1: if you will, just an aura about these mega giant
32:17
Speaker 1: deer that it's in some ways they're intimidating. And in fact,
32:20
Speaker 1: I've heard the writers say one time, you know, this
32:24
Speaker 1: is the only animal that can intimidate you without even
32:27
Speaker 1: knowing that you're in its presence, because he can just
32:31
Speaker 1: walk by your spand and you fall apart, and he
32:33
Speaker 1: just walked by blissfully not even know when you were
32:36
Speaker 1: in a tree trying to kill him. If you turn
32:38
Speaker 1: to Jolo and he never was even threatened by your presence.
32:41
Speaker 1: Yet that's why you were there, was to kill that deer.
32:44
Speaker 1: And so when you realize that, that's the effect they
32:47
Speaker 1: have on us. And sometimes the more you yearn for
32:50
Speaker 1: that opportunity, the harder it is to make it happen
32:52
Speaker 1: because you put so much pressure on yourself and sometimes
32:55
Speaker 1: a deer just blissfully goes on its way and doesn't
32:58
Speaker 1: even know that it was close to die thing, and
33:00
Speaker 1: yet you you almost sell out the treaty. So you know,
33:04
Speaker 1: I don't know how many big game animals can do that,
33:06
Speaker 1: but a white tailed deer can do that. Do you
33:09
Speaker 1: still do you still feel that, Gordon, You've You've killed
33:12
Speaker 1: a lot of deer in your day. Do you still
33:14
Speaker 1: fall apart and turn to jellow one when some of
33:16
Speaker 1: these big boys roll through. Well, you know, to be
33:20
Speaker 1: honest with you, you know, I I can keep it
33:24
Speaker 1: together pretty well myself, And I think one of the
33:26
Speaker 1: reasons is that because I'm so often now basically there
33:31
Speaker 1: with a cameraman and we're trying to shoot TV footage
33:34
Speaker 1: and while internally, of course you're a wreck sometime because
33:38
Speaker 1: it's the tense situation, a lot of anticipation and adrenaline,
33:42
Speaker 1: You're you're having to focus pretty hard to make sure
33:44
Speaker 1: you do your part because you are there to shoot
33:47
Speaker 1: TV footage. At the same time, at its basic level,
33:51
Speaker 1: this is still hunting, and if you don't have any emotion,
33:55
Speaker 1: you really do need to look for something else to do,
33:57
Speaker 1: because it's too much time and trouble and effort and
33:59
Speaker 1: money to go hunt big deer if you don't get
34:01
Speaker 1: anything out of it in terms of a thrill or
34:04
Speaker 1: an elevated pulse rate, I mean, otherwise, why even bothered? Yeah,
34:09
Speaker 1: that the day that I don't get that elevated pulse rate,
34:13
Speaker 1: it will be the day that probably I, like you said,
34:15
Speaker 1: consider some other hobbies or easier ways of acquiring my
34:18
Speaker 1: food maybe, because that definitely is an important part of it,
34:22
Speaker 1: and it never it has yet to get old for me,
34:24
Speaker 1: Thank goodness. Um I guess so speaking of that, right, uh,
34:28
Speaker 1: For the fifteen minutes actually before you came onto the
34:31
Speaker 1: show with us, me and Dan, we're just talking about
34:34
Speaker 1: our October hunting woes. All things have gone wrong for us,
34:37
Speaker 1: and how we have not killed a deer yet. Um.
34:40
Speaker 1: And that's kind of what I wanted to start our
34:42
Speaker 1: conversation with Gordon was just about some of the challenges
34:46
Speaker 1: of hunting this time of year we're entering, and we've
34:49
Speaker 1: all heard a thousand times, we're entering this period of
34:51
Speaker 1: the season that many people referred to as the October
34:55
Speaker 1: lull Um. I guess maybe what do you think about that, Gordon?
35:00
Speaker 1: Is there such a thing Do you believe that the
35:01
Speaker 1: October law is? Is that factor fiction? Well, I think
35:07
Speaker 1: there is no question that at various times of the fall,
35:09
Speaker 1: and really year round obviously, but during the time of
35:12
Speaker 1: year when hunting is legal, we all know there are
35:16
Speaker 1: times a year when your probability of seeing a mature
35:19
Speaker 1: buck on his feet in legal shooting light are better
35:23
Speaker 1: than others. It depends on habitat, weather, moon phase, but
35:28
Speaker 1: mostly hunting pressure, to some extent, habitat type. There's all
35:32
Speaker 1: these different factors involved, deer densities, so many things. But
35:37
Speaker 1: I would say that in general, if you if you
35:41
Speaker 1: talk to the guys who have let's say, like in
35:44
Speaker 1: Michigan October one bowl opener of Illinois, that way, you know,
35:49
Speaker 1: right around October one, at least you've got you know,
35:52
Speaker 1: the deer have been out of velvet for three weeks
35:55
Speaker 1: to a month. The bucks are you know, of course,
35:58
Speaker 1: somewhat reclusive and solitary. Really when they come out of velvet,
36:02
Speaker 1: they come out of their bachelor groups, they really go
36:04
Speaker 1: into a short travel pattern. They don't move much in daylight,
36:08
Speaker 1: even if they're not spook or being hunted, they're not
36:10
Speaker 1: moving a long way to food. And you know, maybe
36:13
Speaker 1: out in the prairie of Wyoming you've got deer walking
36:15
Speaker 1: two miles from alfalfa fielding back, you know, even in
36:18
Speaker 1: early season. But for the most part, in most habitats,
36:21
Speaker 1: you have deer on a very short travel pattern. And
36:25
Speaker 1: that's you know, compounded by the fact that then suddenly
36:28
Speaker 1: we get the acorns and the other fall masts that
36:30
Speaker 1: starts to come into play. And that's a that's mostly
36:33
Speaker 1: back in the woods, and we're trying to kill these
36:36
Speaker 1: deer on the edges because we don't want to penetrate
36:38
Speaker 1: their sanctuaries, and yet their sanctuaries might literally have acorns
36:42
Speaker 1: dropping into their bedding areas as those deer lying there
36:45
Speaker 1: waiting for dark, well that deer's got very little incentive
36:48
Speaker 1: unless he's really thirsty. He's got very little incentive to
36:51
Speaker 1: get up and move much in daylight. And I think
36:53
Speaker 1: if you look at Reggio telemetry and you look at
36:55
Speaker 1: all the different GPS studies that have been done on
36:57
Speaker 1: while deer, you'll see that mature bucks just have a
37:00
Speaker 1: very short travel pattern at this time of year. So
37:03
Speaker 1: there aren't if you have the terminus, let's say, is
37:06
Speaker 1: a food plot, and it may be the best food
37:08
Speaker 1: plot in the county, and you may have the best
37:10
Speaker 1: bedding area two hundred yards away from there in a
37:13
Speaker 1: swap or something. If that buck is in that swamp
37:17
Speaker 1: and he's going to that food plot at night, he's
37:19
Speaker 1: got very little ground to cover to get there, and
37:21
Speaker 1: he can get on his feet right at dark, you know,
37:25
Speaker 1: stretch a little bit, rub his rack a couple of times,
37:28
Speaker 1: and then prance right out of the food plot, and
37:29
Speaker 1: he's already too late for you to kill him. Now,
37:32
Speaker 1: that's just the fact of life that, you know, hunting
37:34
Speaker 1: pressure didn't necessarily cause that. It might have accentuated that pattern,
37:38
Speaker 1: but it didn't really cause it. He's just got no
37:40
Speaker 1: incentive to get there early. He's also got no incentive
37:44
Speaker 1: to stay there after daylight in the morning. By the
37:46
Speaker 1: time you got daylight coming over a food plot, he's
37:49
Speaker 1: normally back in a place where you can't get him killed.
37:52
Speaker 1: So these are just realities, and he's not very responsive
37:55
Speaker 1: to rattling or calling. Generally speaking, you don't want to
37:58
Speaker 1: do a deer drive. There's all sorts of things that
38:00
Speaker 1: you're not going to do an early season that otherwise
38:03
Speaker 1: might compensate for that lack of mobility on his partners,
38:07
Speaker 1: a lack of a daytime pattern. You put all that together,
38:11
Speaker 1: and that's a really long winded way of saying, Uh,
38:14
Speaker 1: they're hard to kill now, but but we understand why
38:17
Speaker 1: they're hard to kill. They're just not on their feet
38:19
Speaker 1: much in daylight. And and I don't know what you
38:22
Speaker 1: can ultimately do to change that pattern very much. Trail
38:26
Speaker 1: cameras clearly have made it easier for us to pinpoint
38:29
Speaker 1: those locations where they're spending time, but you have to
38:32
Speaker 1: be very careful not to blow the deer out either
38:35
Speaker 1: checking cameras or going in to hunt that spot. And
38:38
Speaker 1: a lot of guys just get so impatient, and early
38:40
Speaker 1: season there's like, oh, man falls finally here, I've been
38:43
Speaker 1: waiting all all year to get in the tree. I'm going, well,
38:46
Speaker 1: when is not quite right, I'm going anywhere, you know,
38:48
Speaker 1: I gotta go. It's Saturday. I'm going, Well, you can
38:52
Speaker 1: go and blow him out and not see him again
38:54
Speaker 1: for three months and have your neighbor killing three weeks later.
38:56
Speaker 1: And that's a lot of times. It's just the reality
38:58
Speaker 1: of what happens is that we just don't have the
39:01
Speaker 1: discipline to wait for better conditions. So would you typically
39:08
Speaker 1: recommend Let's say we've got someone who's hunting in that
39:11
Speaker 1: type of scenario you just listed there where he's not
39:15
Speaker 1: getting daily trout camera pictures of a buck. He's not
39:17
Speaker 1: seeing daily activity from a buck yet because of that situation, right,
39:21
Speaker 1: he's this buck doesn't need to travel very far. Maybe
39:23
Speaker 1: he hasn't been overly pressured yet, but he just doesn't
39:25
Speaker 1: have that incentive to move during daily So that's our scenario.
39:29
Speaker 1: Would you tell this person, I guess, would you typically
39:33
Speaker 1: think this type of person should wait until the run
39:35
Speaker 1: or are there some things that they should do now
39:37
Speaker 1: to try to still make it happen. I would I
39:42
Speaker 1: would go to a separate area and try to get
39:44
Speaker 1: my dough shot. That's the first thing I would focus
39:46
Speaker 1: on if I can't get him shot in the in
39:49
Speaker 1: the setup that I feel is most likely to produce
39:52
Speaker 1: an opportunity in the first time or two or three
39:56
Speaker 1: that I sit there during the earliest days of season
40:00
Speaker 1: and catch him unaware and possibly get him shot before
40:03
Speaker 1: he knows the season it's even open. If I can't
40:05
Speaker 1: do that, I'm gonna pull out. I'm gonna go somewhere else.
40:08
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to get my doze shot, or to
40:12
Speaker 1: be honest with you, for many of us, it's I'm
40:13
Speaker 1: gonna try to get all my jobs done around the
40:15
Speaker 1: house so that when prime time gets here, I can
40:18
Speaker 1: spend more time in the woods. And I do think
40:20
Speaker 1: that's some of It's a function of time allocation. We
40:24
Speaker 1: all have limited time, even those of us who hunt
40:27
Speaker 1: quote for a living. We all still have other things
40:29
Speaker 1: in our life we have to do. And the worst
40:32
Speaker 1: thing in the world is to put all those off.
40:34
Speaker 1: Hunt hard in October, mess up your spot didn't come
40:37
Speaker 1: to sifth and November, and realize you're behind on your
40:39
Speaker 1: honey dues, and then have to spend three days in
40:42
Speaker 1: prime time catching up so you can then go and
40:44
Speaker 1: chase deer again. I mean, I think sometimes we just
40:47
Speaker 1: don't have a really good game plan. And because of that.
40:50
Speaker 1: That's not to say people don't kill big ones in
40:52
Speaker 1: October or even mad October. They certainly do. I mean,
40:55
Speaker 1: there's been some big ones kill the last couple of
40:57
Speaker 1: weeks all over North America. But the number of people
41:01
Speaker 1: hunting relative the number of big deer opportunities is with
41:04
Speaker 1: a pretty skewed ratio. Yeah, definitely, I mean, I think
41:09
Speaker 1: it's hard to argue with that. It's definitely possible, but
41:12
Speaker 1: at the same time as challenging, at least from everything
41:14
Speaker 1: I've ever learned and from all the different people we've
41:16
Speaker 1: talked to on this podcast, I think, you know, one
41:19
Speaker 1: of the big things that comes down to is, you know,
41:22
Speaker 1: there's certain types of conditions, or certain little weak spots
41:26
Speaker 1: in a big box armor of sorts that you can
41:28
Speaker 1: take advantage of if you have that perfect scenario for it.
41:31
Speaker 1: But eight times out of ten, you know, either you
41:34
Speaker 1: don't have that scenario or you don't have all the
41:36
Speaker 1: intel that you need to make a smart move or
41:38
Speaker 1: whatever it might be. Eight times out of ten, usually
41:41
Speaker 1: the smarter bet is to wait until those right conditions,
41:44
Speaker 1: because to your point, when you start pushing in there
41:46
Speaker 1: and doing things before the times, right before the scenario
41:49
Speaker 1: is right, you're just gonna muck things up before you
41:52
Speaker 1: ever even had a chance. And then when you might
41:54
Speaker 1: have had that better chance, maybe in late October or November,
41:58
Speaker 1: whatever it is, or when the cold front comes through,
42:00
Speaker 1: you know, now you can't take advantage of that because
42:02
Speaker 1: you've already educated that buck. And that's a tough lesson
42:05
Speaker 1: to learn. Yeah, it's difficult, and and I could never
42:09
Speaker 1: blame anybody for saying, Look, I just flat enjoy being
42:14
Speaker 1: in the deer woods, and even if it messes up
42:16
Speaker 1: my chances of killing the big one, I want to go. Well,
42:21
Speaker 1: how on earth could you tell a guy that you
42:23
Speaker 1: shouldn't go. I mean, I you know a deer. Deer
42:26
Speaker 1: hunting is supposed to be to be fun, and if
42:29
Speaker 1: that's fun to him and he's legal and safe and ethical,
42:33
Speaker 1: then good for him. I mean, I hope he shoots one,
42:36
Speaker 1: but if he doesn't shoot one, I at least know
42:38
Speaker 1: that he was out there, you know, exercising his right
42:40
Speaker 1: and the privilege to go hunting and be part of
42:43
Speaker 1: the American hunting force that we're also proud of. So
42:46
Speaker 1: I don't really and it's hard for me to bash
42:48
Speaker 1: that guy and say, oh, you're crazy or you're not
42:51
Speaker 1: being smart. I mean, I would like for him to
42:53
Speaker 1: see the payoff for doing things a little different way.
42:56
Speaker 1: But I'm never going to bash him because he made
42:58
Speaker 1: a quote poor decision and educated the buck that he
43:01
Speaker 1: might have otherwise shot. I mean, that's that's his call,
43:04
Speaker 1: not mine. Yeah. Now, given your position, you know, with
43:10
Speaker 1: North American Whitetail magazine, you get to hear a live
43:13
Speaker 1: different perspectives from other writers and hunters who do sometimes
43:16
Speaker 1: push a little bit more in October and have success.
43:18
Speaker 1: Are there any I don't know any standout tactics that
43:22
Speaker 1: you have seen from some of these other guys who
43:23
Speaker 1: do like to focus on October that either intrigue you
43:26
Speaker 1: the most or that you think have the most merit. Well,
43:30
Speaker 1: I think if you, I thank you, You've got control
43:32
Speaker 1: of your land and have attack to where you can
43:34
Speaker 1: have number one, a very relaxed deer herd, you know,
43:39
Speaker 1: and and and go out of your way to minimize
43:41
Speaker 1: the pressure on those deers so that you can wait
43:44
Speaker 1: for that little cool front. That really gets the buck
43:47
Speaker 1: a little bit more active, you know, a little earlier
43:49
Speaker 1: in the evening, coming out to the plot, and you've
43:52
Speaker 1: got a plot set up so that you've got places
43:55
Speaker 1: between bedding and feeding where you can get him shot.
43:59
Speaker 1: I do feel like if you can, if you can
44:01
Speaker 1: almost landscape your proper or your hunting areas that way,
44:05
Speaker 1: or or put the scouting in to find those situations,
44:09
Speaker 1: that clearly that's going to give you an advantage over
44:11
Speaker 1: the guy who's just randomly going to go say, well,
44:13
Speaker 1: there's acorns falling here and there's some deer pellets, I
44:16
Speaker 1: think i'll set here. Um, yeah, he might kill a
44:19
Speaker 1: many world record, but the chances are better for the
44:22
Speaker 1: guy who's actually got a plan, as we all know.
44:24
Speaker 1: So so I look at it and say, yeah, if
44:27
Speaker 1: you can find that you know, a place where deer
44:30
Speaker 1: or pushed a little bit more into a travel pattern
44:33
Speaker 1: because the topography changing crops possibly, Um, you know you've
44:38
Speaker 1: got isolated food sources as opposed to widespread food sources.
44:42
Speaker 1: If you can find those little honeyholes, if you will
44:45
Speaker 1: and really be super careful with the wind, be be
44:49
Speaker 1: very disciplined about how you go in there. And get
44:51
Speaker 1: out of them and and hunt them lightly, but give
44:54
Speaker 1: yourself a chance on the periphery of that dear's travel
44:57
Speaker 1: pattern to get a crack at him if he makes
44:59
Speaker 1: a little little bit of a slip up one afternoon
45:01
Speaker 1: or one morning. But you know, day and day out,
45:05
Speaker 1: you're just going to have to be very disciplined and
45:06
Speaker 1: how you approach it, because again it's it only takes
45:11
Speaker 1: one slip up on our part and the buck is
45:14
Speaker 1: totally educated to at least that particular hunting set up.
45:18
Speaker 1: Now he might continue to run widely across the area
45:21
Speaker 1: and get shot by somebody else. But but his knowledge
45:24
Speaker 1: of that one particular ambush site that you've set up,
45:28
Speaker 1: we want to minimize that. And we and you know,
45:30
Speaker 1: whether it's you know, because we've hunted it sloppily. You know,
45:34
Speaker 1: we we went in there wrong wind, or we threw
45:37
Speaker 1: trash on the ground, or we didn't you know, we didn't.
45:39
Speaker 1: We went in bad conditions, and we basically left a
45:42
Speaker 1: lot of of of of tell tale of knowledge for
45:46
Speaker 1: him to pick up by our presence. Even if he
45:49
Speaker 1: didn't come by the stand when we were in it,
45:51
Speaker 1: he still knows we were there and what we got
45:54
Speaker 1: to just continue to go back to is minimizing the
45:57
Speaker 1: possibility of that. But I do think that the guys
46:00
Speaker 1: they are most successful most often or really just crowding
46:04
Speaker 1: in as far as they dare on the downwind side
46:07
Speaker 1: of a travel pattern that they have reason to know
46:10
Speaker 1: is they're either because of sidings, you know, sign or
46:15
Speaker 1: more often anymore, it's just simply trail camera images that
46:18
Speaker 1: tell them that they're on the right pattern. You still
46:21
Speaker 1: have to be careful about how you hunt it. Yeah,
46:24
Speaker 1: And speaking of that whole topic of you know, just
46:27
Speaker 1: being particularly careful about everything related hunting pressure. UM. You
46:31
Speaker 1: might remember I actually wrote an article for North American
46:33
Speaker 1: Whitetail a few years ago about how I personally have
46:37
Speaker 1: decided to minimize almost completely the number of mornings that
46:41
Speaker 1: I hunt during early to mid October UM. And it's
46:45
Speaker 1: a long running discussion that me and Dan here have
46:47
Speaker 1: with between ourselves and other guests and stuff. And I
46:49
Speaker 1: guess I'm just curious about your take on that. What's
46:51
Speaker 1: your perspective on morning hunts in early to mid October. Well,
46:56
Speaker 1: I have shot some some books in the morning in
47:01
Speaker 1: let's say, the third week of October somewhere, and there where,
47:05
Speaker 1: of course, but later you get in October the generally
47:08
Speaker 1: speaking to better things were going to get. Um. I
47:11
Speaker 1: have had a little bit of luck on some bucks,
47:14
Speaker 1: some early bucks starting to cruise small isolated food plots
47:18
Speaker 1: and sometimes even coming into a to a buck decoy,
47:22
Speaker 1: and I've had I've had pretty good luck doing that.
47:25
Speaker 1: I do feel like that kind of minimizes my disturbance
47:29
Speaker 1: of any real security cover because I'm out there on
47:31
Speaker 1: the edge of an opening, and uh, you know, I
47:34
Speaker 1: can hunt that way. And if he if he comes
47:36
Speaker 1: out and he sees a decoy and he's responsive to it,
47:38
Speaker 1: then he comes around, gives me a shot, he's the
47:40
Speaker 1: right buck, then then I'm golden. If it doesn't happen,
47:43
Speaker 1: I've not have at least not disturbed any significant security
47:47
Speaker 1: cover in the process. I can back out, take my
47:50
Speaker 1: decoy and go home, so I have seen. You know,
47:54
Speaker 1: sometimes you tend to think, well, I've got to be
47:56
Speaker 1: back in the deepest, darkest swamp to kill one, you know,
47:58
Speaker 1: during this low period. Maybe not, but you do need
48:01
Speaker 1: a little bit of weather or something to get that
48:04
Speaker 1: buck a little bit more interested in what's about to
48:08
Speaker 1: come in November, and if you get that set of conditions.
48:11
Speaker 1: I do think that's a great time to get to
48:14
Speaker 1: get a shot at, you know, at some relatively mature buck.
48:19
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts on all us, Dan, I just
48:22
Speaker 1: have a question, you know, I always like to learn
48:25
Speaker 1: from how I fail? What do you think from from
48:30
Speaker 1: a hunter standpoint? Or you know, what do we fail
48:32
Speaker 1: at the most? And then how how should we fix
48:36
Speaker 1: that failure by learning? Well, here's the thing. You know,
48:41
Speaker 1: if you ever run into to some guy who's bragging
48:43
Speaker 1: about how smart he was or what a great hunter
48:46
Speaker 1: he was because he finally killed the big buck, you
48:49
Speaker 1: know what I like to do is turn it around
48:51
Speaker 1: the other way and say, look, if you want to
48:53
Speaker 1: take credit for every time you kill a big one,
48:56
Speaker 1: you also have to take the blame for every time
48:59
Speaker 1: you don't kill one. And that ratio will not be
49:03
Speaker 1: favorable for anybody. We're all going to fail dozens and
49:08
Speaker 1: dozens and dozens of times. And when I say failed,
49:11
Speaker 1: I mean fails to fill a tag with a mature buck.
49:14
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that we did anything wrong. And maybe
49:17
Speaker 1: he just didn't come by that day, and maybe we
49:19
Speaker 1: hunted him on the only place in our hunt, our
49:21
Speaker 1: potential hunting area where we had a chance, and he
49:24
Speaker 1: just didn't walk by that day. We can't make him
49:26
Speaker 1: walk by, So sometimes you have to understand that this
49:29
Speaker 1: is a if there's a lot of patients involved here.
49:33
Speaker 1: I believe it was Jane Winsle who said, many years ago,
49:36
Speaker 1: the great Jeane Winsle who said, you know, if you know,
49:40
Speaker 1: for us to have a successful season, we've only got
49:43
Speaker 1: to be right one time. We hunt a hundred days,
49:46
Speaker 1: but we only got to be right one time and
49:48
Speaker 1: we won the buck. To have an unsuccessful season only
49:52
Speaker 1: has to be wrong one time. So you know, if
49:56
Speaker 1: you look at it that way, then he ends up dead.
49:59
Speaker 1: So if look at it that way, you realize our
50:01
Speaker 1: steaks are much much lower than his. And the fact
50:05
Speaker 1: that we didn't see him does not mean that we
50:08
Speaker 1: messed up. It might mean that he just wasn't there
50:11
Speaker 1: that day. We couldn't hunt where he was. It might
50:14
Speaker 1: mean that he never got out of his bed that
50:16
Speaker 1: day and we were unwilling to push him out of
50:18
Speaker 1: his bed to see him so we could say, hey,
50:20
Speaker 1: we saw a big buck. Doesn't do any good to
50:22
Speaker 1: say you saw a big buck. You don't get a
50:23
Speaker 1: good shot. All you did was mess up your spot.
50:26
Speaker 1: So a lot of times what people terms failure, Oh
50:30
Speaker 1: too bad, you had a bad hunt. You didn't kill one. Hey,
50:32
Speaker 1: some of the best hunts I've ever been on, I
50:35
Speaker 1: never even saw a big deer, you know, I just
50:37
Speaker 1: I just loved the people I was with the time
50:40
Speaker 1: I was there at the countryside. It challenged the whole
50:44
Speaker 1: field of the trip was it was a great trip,
50:46
Speaker 1: and yet I totally got skunked. So I quote failed.
50:49
Speaker 1: And other times I've killed a big deer, but I
50:51
Speaker 1: just didn't particularly like the experience because there were people,
50:55
Speaker 1: problems or something about it wasn't it just wasn't that
50:59
Speaker 1: much fun. And so while I have a nice here
51:01
Speaker 1: on my wall, I don't look at that is necessarily
51:03
Speaker 1: a quote overwhelming success either, because a big part of
51:07
Speaker 1: what I was going for was fun and and the
51:10
Speaker 1: chance to just to be out in creation and to
51:13
Speaker 1: enjoy myself. So so some of it comes down to
51:16
Speaker 1: success and failure. Frankly is goes beyond the whether or
51:19
Speaker 1: not you feel the tag. So we have to we
51:22
Speaker 1: have to be realistic about even why we're out there.
51:24
Speaker 1: And I think once we take a little pressure off ourselves,
51:26
Speaker 1: I think we just enjoy the hunt more, and frankly
51:28
Speaker 1: sometime we hunt better. Do you think that you think
51:32
Speaker 1: that a lot of hunters are putting pressure on themselves too,
51:38
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, maybe they're hunting for the
51:41
Speaker 1: wrong reasons. I don't think there's any question that that's
51:45
Speaker 1: the case. If we if we could get you know, ego,
51:49
Speaker 1: which is of course, is just a you know, just
51:51
Speaker 1: a basic human frailty, if you will, I mean, I
51:54
Speaker 1: think that everybody's got some ego, and yet when we
51:57
Speaker 1: let it dominate, I want to kill a big deer
52:00
Speaker 1: because I want to kill eleven pointer, because old Joe's
52:04
Speaker 1: never killed an eleven point. I want to kill a
52:05
Speaker 1: deer bigger and Joe's killed. Or I want to dear
52:08
Speaker 1: that scores more than so and so, or I want
52:10
Speaker 1: people to think I'm the great hunter instead of so
52:13
Speaker 1: and so. Well, why are you even out there? Then?
52:15
Speaker 1: Because only one guy is gonna kill or one woman
52:18
Speaker 1: is going to kill the biggest one. Everybody else then
52:21
Speaker 1: theoretically as a failure. You know, if you don't kill
52:23
Speaker 1: the biggest one, that I guess you're you're all losers. Right, Well,
52:26
Speaker 1: I'd hate to think that that's how we gauge deer hunting.
52:29
Speaker 1: But yet some people are that way, and I think
52:32
Speaker 1: perhaps the emphasis on score and ranking and perhaps pro
52:36
Speaker 1: staffing television, all the perception by the quote regular person
52:42
Speaker 1: that you know, the people out in front of the
52:44
Speaker 1: cameras or in the ads or in the TV, in
52:46
Speaker 1: the magazine articles, perhaps they're um, you know, they think
52:51
Speaker 1: they're better than us. Or you never know how people's
52:54
Speaker 1: minds work, and everybody's different. We know that, but I
52:57
Speaker 1: do think there's a lot of people that there's a
52:59
Speaker 1: there's just inherent in the factor here, and and I
53:03
Speaker 1: don't blame them for being an envious of the opportunity
53:05
Speaker 1: for other people have. I think that's it goes without
53:08
Speaker 1: saying that they see somebody on TV shooting a monster
53:11
Speaker 1: buck out in beautiful country, they say, gohly, I wish
53:14
Speaker 1: that was me. Um, But I think that's human nature.
53:17
Speaker 1: But but at the same time, I do think if
53:20
Speaker 1: you let it control you and and drive you, you
53:23
Speaker 1: can that's where we end up, frankly, with some real
53:26
Speaker 1: legal issues. We certainly end up with ethical problems, and
53:29
Speaker 1: I think we get just a lot of bad blood
53:31
Speaker 1: and none of that is productive for deer hunting. Yeah,
53:35
Speaker 1: very true. It's a it's something that I think that
53:39
Speaker 1: social media and something. We actually had an episode about
53:41
Speaker 1: this relatively recently. We were just talking about this and that.
53:44
Speaker 1: I think social media sometimes is like a compounding factor
53:47
Speaker 1: on all these things. Right when you now have the
53:49
Speaker 1: ability to everyone can share, everyone sees what everyone else
53:53
Speaker 1: has done or has killed, or is doing or whatever
53:55
Speaker 1: it might be. Everyone can comment, and it sometimes creates
53:58
Speaker 1: a uh a nasty situation at times that I think
54:03
Speaker 1: seems to then continue this vicious cycle. That is a
54:07
Speaker 1: challenge I think today maybe more so than it ever
54:09
Speaker 1: has been. Well, you know what, you know what, you
54:12
Speaker 1: know what you're run into sometimes. I mean, if a
54:14
Speaker 1: buck is too big, if a buck is so big
54:17
Speaker 1: that you just have a hard time believing that he's
54:19
Speaker 1: even real. You know, if you put it on Facebook,
54:23
Speaker 1: there will be a response sooner or later, usually within
54:26
Speaker 1: the first hour. Well it looks like it's out of
54:28
Speaker 1: a high fence to me, or I think that was
54:30
Speaker 1: poached or so and so bought that off the game
54:33
Speaker 1: farm or fill in the blank. I mean it'll be
54:35
Speaker 1: something negative. Now, Now, I don't think very awesome, to
54:39
Speaker 1: be honest with you that there's any real fire whore
54:42
Speaker 1: the smoke is in this case. I think most big
54:44
Speaker 1: deer are killed the way that people say, and I
54:47
Speaker 1: think they're killed fair chase and ethically. But there have
54:50
Speaker 1: been enough outliers, if you will, that we know it's
54:54
Speaker 1: possible that somebody could try to pull one. And even
54:59
Speaker 1: if the deer is not killed illegally in the high fence,
55:01
Speaker 1: I mean the perception that you're trying to pull something
55:05
Speaker 1: by by bragging about a high fence deer and not
55:08
Speaker 1: saying that it's high spence. I think that that has
55:11
Speaker 1: got people pretty leary of some of the really big
55:13
Speaker 1: deer that we're legitimately taken. And so, you know, I
55:17
Speaker 1: told somebody one time, I said, man, I said, my
55:20
Speaker 1: my dream is to have shot so many giant bucks
55:22
Speaker 1: that everybody thinks I'm a poacher, you know. But but
55:26
Speaker 1: but it's a joke, but in some ways it's almost true.
55:29
Speaker 1: It is like, if you've killed very many really big deer,
55:32
Speaker 1: there is somebody that thinks you must be doing it
55:34
Speaker 1: wrong with as well. After all, they lived there their
55:36
Speaker 1: whole life and they've never killed one that big. And
55:39
Speaker 1: the only alternative to you being a poacher is that
55:41
Speaker 1: you're a better hunter than they are and they can't
55:44
Speaker 1: handle that, so they'll that's impossible. Yeah, you know, and
55:48
Speaker 1: so that's just that's just how people are. I guess again,
55:51
Speaker 1: human nature is explains a lot of these problems, but
55:54
Speaker 1: social media has only made it easier for bad human
55:57
Speaker 1: nature to be to be evidence to other people. Yeah, yeah,
56:01
Speaker 1: that's the truth. Well, um, pivoting off, pivoting off of
56:05
Speaker 1: us back to a brighter topic, I suppose, back to
56:08
Speaker 1: back to killing deer. Um. You mentioned trail cameras a
56:12
Speaker 1: little bit as one of the pieces of the puzzle
56:14
Speaker 1: sometimes for people in October. Just kind of curious to
56:17
Speaker 1: hear about your overall take on how you're utilizing trail
56:20
Speaker 1: cameras throughout the year. We always like to kind of
56:22
Speaker 1: hear everyone's different perspective on this as it's, of course,
56:24
Speaker 1: you know, one of the most commonly used and probably
56:28
Speaker 1: um positively used tools out there for helping deer hunters.
56:32
Speaker 1: Is that a big piece of what you're doing, you know.
56:36
Speaker 1: I I don't use them as religiously as some people do,
56:40
Speaker 1: and part of that is because I tend not to
56:43
Speaker 1: hunt the same locations as nearly as often as the
56:46
Speaker 1: average person does. I U. For instance, this year, I
56:50
Speaker 1: was in Wyoming a few weeks ago. Dr Carol and
56:52
Speaker 1: I were hunting out there. It was a ranch I've
56:55
Speaker 1: never been to before. I don't know if I'll ever
56:57
Speaker 1: be there again. Uh. They were used trail cameras heavily,
57:01
Speaker 1: and they certainly played into our taking a couple of
57:04
Speaker 1: beautiful bucks. Um that said, you know, so it isn't
57:08
Speaker 1: always you know me personally, it's actually running the cameras
57:13
Speaker 1: as much as people I'm hunting with or hunting on
57:15
Speaker 1: their property or their operations. So in many cases, of course,
57:19
Speaker 1: that is playing directly into where we where we have
57:23
Speaker 1: been set up, and where we end up killing deer.
57:25
Speaker 1: Um that said, I mean, I do still think that
57:29
Speaker 1: the greatest advantage of trail cameras is not so much
57:32
Speaker 1: indirectly leading to a kill of a certain deer that
57:35
Speaker 1: was on camera. I still believe the greatest advantage, if
57:40
Speaker 1: you will. Number one, they're fun. People love, you know,
57:44
Speaker 1: It's like Christmas. Every time they get to their trail camera,
57:47
Speaker 1: it's like, well what's on my camera? Well, that frankly
57:50
Speaker 1: might be more fun to them than actually sitting in
57:53
Speaker 1: a frozen tree, waiting for a buck that never comes by.
57:56
Speaker 1: And that's what that's what the reality of hunting itself
57:59
Speaker 1: often is. We know that the anticipation of deer season
58:02
Speaker 1: is quite often more interesting and enjoyable than hunting itself.
58:06
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's just the fact of life, based
58:08
Speaker 1: on the conditions we deal with. So so if you
58:11
Speaker 1: can extend throughout the whole year, whether it's shed hunting,
58:14
Speaker 1: whether it's trail cameras, in particular, the study and the
58:18
Speaker 1: observation and and the sense of wonder you get from quote,
58:23
Speaker 1: watching your dear at two o'clock in the morning over
58:26
Speaker 1: a bait station, which you could never see that yourself
58:28
Speaker 1: with your own eyes, and yet you get to observe
58:31
Speaker 1: nature in a way that thirty years ago we simply
58:35
Speaker 1: could not do. Well. Is that a bad thing? And
58:38
Speaker 1: certainly I look at that as a very positive thing. Um,
58:42
Speaker 1: And yet I would say that that's why I say
58:44
Speaker 1: that in many cases guys have got deer on trail camera,
58:47
Speaker 1: but they never they never see the deer in daylight,
58:50
Speaker 1: or the neighbor killed it three months later, two miles
58:52
Speaker 1: away chasing the dough. But yet they know what dear
58:55
Speaker 1: it was so their involvement with specific deer, and their
58:58
Speaker 1: ability to manage their land and and understand their buck
59:01
Speaker 1: do ratios and all these things, the fawn crop and
59:04
Speaker 1: predator problems and so many things. Even trespassing, obviously security
59:09
Speaker 1: is a big, a big boon of trail cameras. So
59:12
Speaker 1: I look at all of this and say, it has
59:14
Speaker 1: added tremendously to our enjoyment of the deerwoods. Whether it
59:18
Speaker 1: has resulted in us pinpointing Old Smokey and getting him
59:21
Speaker 1: shot the third morning he comes down that trail, that's
59:24
Speaker 1: another matter. But just enjoying what we do as deer
59:27
Speaker 1: hunters and deer managers, I think that's been a tremendous boon.
59:30
Speaker 1: So I looked at it like, even when I'm not
59:33
Speaker 1: running them myself, I'm a I'm very much in favor
59:37
Speaker 1: of their use, and and honestly, when I have a
59:40
Speaker 1: chance to use them myself, I certainly do. But when
59:42
Speaker 1: we jump around hunt four days here on the place
59:45
Speaker 1: we've never been, and then and then a month later
59:47
Speaker 1: we're a thousand miles away hunting five days with somebody
59:50
Speaker 1: we've never never placed, we've never been before. Uh, it's
59:53
Speaker 1: a little difficult to use them for patterning per se
59:56
Speaker 1: in our hands, but we do utilize the knowledge that
59:59
Speaker 1: they they have provided to the landowner before we ever
1:00:02
Speaker 1: got there, So in that sense, we do use them
1:00:04
Speaker 1: quite a bit. So, you know, on the topic of
1:00:07
Speaker 1: the fact that you are traveling all across all across
1:00:09
Speaker 1: the country, you've hunted in in many different areas compared
1:00:12
Speaker 1: to probably the average hunter um and I'm kind of
1:00:16
Speaker 1: curious about it's picking your brain about some of those
1:00:18
Speaker 1: regional differences. You know, one thing we've never talked about
1:00:20
Speaker 1: on this show is hunting Texas. And it sounds like
1:00:24
Speaker 1: you grew up in Texas. Imagine you've hunted there a lot.
1:00:26
Speaker 1: Can you speak at all about some of the unique
1:00:29
Speaker 1: aspects of hunting in Texas, whether it be the culture
1:00:32
Speaker 1: or strategies you know, To be honest with you, it is,
1:00:38
Speaker 1: you know, almost everything about hunting white tails in Texas
1:00:42
Speaker 1: is a little different in some way. A white tail
1:00:46
Speaker 1: is still a white tail. I mean, we we understand
1:00:48
Speaker 1: the animal is still the same whether he's in South Florida,
1:00:50
Speaker 1: whether he's in Northern Alberta. It's still the same animal,
1:00:53
Speaker 1: but he lives in such a different world that in
1:00:57
Speaker 1: many ways, it's it's like hunting a different spe see.
1:01:00
Speaker 1: But nonetheless it's you know, people are the same in Ethiopia, Argentina, Canada,
1:01:07
Speaker 1: you know, fill in the blank. A person is still
1:01:09
Speaker 1: a person, but their lifestyle and what they've dealt with
1:01:12
Speaker 1: in their cultural everything about their their existence is tied
1:01:16
Speaker 1: to where they're from and and who they're surrounded by. Well, dear,
1:01:19
Speaker 1: the same way so Texas, Dear, I've often said, are
1:01:25
Speaker 1: if until you've been to Texas and hunted white tails,
1:01:30
Speaker 1: you can't really say that you've checked all the boxes
1:01:33
Speaker 1: as a white tail hunter. And I say that knowing
1:01:36
Speaker 1: that a lot of people will never get that opportunity.
1:01:38
Speaker 1: And I don't I don't demean people who never go.
1:01:40
Speaker 1: Believe me, I've blessed to been born there and hunted
1:01:44
Speaker 1: there many times. But this is it's a different world. Um.
1:01:48
Speaker 1: You see a lot of deer. Generally speaking, the deer
1:01:51
Speaker 1: are not terribly you know, running over the farthest mountain
1:01:56
Speaker 1: as soon as they see somebody stick their head up
1:01:58
Speaker 1: over the horizon. They the deer acting like deer. They're
1:02:01
Speaker 1: acting like deer should everywhere. But many cases, deer hunted
1:02:04
Speaker 1: so hard they don't get to act that way, and
1:02:07
Speaker 1: yet in Texas you kind of see them act the
1:02:08
Speaker 1: way deer want to act. Well, that's that's a good thing,
1:02:11
Speaker 1: because that's really that's part of the appreciation of the
1:02:14
Speaker 1: animal is seeing their natural behavior. You see a lot
1:02:17
Speaker 1: of bucks. Um, yeah, the dear, smaller body, but you
1:02:20
Speaker 1: see so many of them who cares and the bigger
1:02:23
Speaker 1: deer still impressive. But it's the culture. It's the people,
1:02:27
Speaker 1: it's the size of the land holdings, it's the unique habitat,
1:02:30
Speaker 1: it's the hunting methods. Almost anything goes in Texas. You
1:02:34
Speaker 1: can ride around in a motor vehicle, don't even have
1:02:36
Speaker 1: to turn the motor off on private land, roll the
1:02:38
Speaker 1: window down and shoot one you feel like shooting one
1:02:41
Speaker 1: that way, you can't. Well, if it's run deer hunting
1:02:43
Speaker 1: in Texas, it's you know, I can't tell that there
1:02:47
Speaker 1: they've got three million deer left. I mean, you know,
1:02:49
Speaker 1: it doesn't look to me like it's exactly wipe them out.
1:02:51
Speaker 1: That said, I understand that that's a foreign way of hunting.
1:02:54
Speaker 1: It's a foreign way of looking at the at hunting
1:02:57
Speaker 1: uh in a general sense to a lot of people
1:02:59
Speaker 1: who never been exposed to that. But you don't get
1:03:02
Speaker 1: a lot of deer drives down there. You don't get
1:03:04
Speaker 1: a lot of people shooting it running deer. You get
1:03:06
Speaker 1: people hunting, you know, relatively calm deer acting naturally on
1:03:12
Speaker 1: private land. Uh in nice habitat. That is that is
1:03:16
Speaker 1: different from almost anywhere else. And and and that to
1:03:19
Speaker 1: me is just you know, if I can only hunt
1:03:23
Speaker 1: one state from now, I would hunt Texas. But it
1:03:25
Speaker 1: isn't because the size of the deer. It's just that,
1:03:28
Speaker 1: you know, Texas is in my home state, and I
1:03:30
Speaker 1: just feel like there's so many different kinds of hunting there. Um,
1:03:34
Speaker 1: you know, it's seven hundred miles across the state, So
1:03:38
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there's a lot of different habitats
1:03:40
Speaker 1: to hunt there. You'd never run out of different ways
1:03:42
Speaker 1: to hunt. And there's a lot of big bucks. And
1:03:45
Speaker 1: you can hunt them with a rifle and the rug,
1:03:47
Speaker 1: you can hunt them with the bow, you hunt with
1:03:48
Speaker 1: a cross bow. I guess you could do whatever you
1:03:50
Speaker 1: want to. And basically, you know, it's just one of
1:03:54
Speaker 1: those special places in the deer universe. I you know,
1:03:57
Speaker 1: I'm I'm blessed to have grown up there. I'll put
1:04:00
Speaker 1: it that way. Now, what's the public I'm sorry, go ahead, Mark, No, Danny,
1:04:04
Speaker 1: it's it's all you. What's the public land presence in Texas? Well,
1:04:11
Speaker 1: there isn't much of it, of course, if you look
1:04:13
Speaker 1: at you look at you know, Illinois has almost none either, uh,
1:04:18
Speaker 1: Iowa doesn't have much. A lot of states don't have
1:04:21
Speaker 1: very much. But in Texas what makes it different is
1:04:24
Speaker 1: that the private land is not only overwhelming, but very
1:04:28
Speaker 1: but not very much of it can be hunted for free.
1:04:31
Speaker 1: And it's been that way though since before I was born.
1:04:35
Speaker 1: I remember back to the early sixties of deer hunting
1:04:37
Speaker 1: in Texas and it was the leasing already existed in
1:04:40
Speaker 1: Texas then. Um so when it came to the Midwest.
1:04:43
Speaker 1: In other places, of course, it was closer shock because
1:04:46
Speaker 1: people just, oh, my goodness, this is the end of
1:04:48
Speaker 1: the world. Well seem normal to me because I've grown
1:04:51
Speaker 1: up around it. But you know, so there wasn't There's
1:04:54
Speaker 1: never been much of it in terms of public land
1:04:57
Speaker 1: or free access compared to most states. However, Man, last year,
1:05:02
Speaker 1: I mean a guy took a bow and killed the
1:05:04
Speaker 1: deer over I think he gross about to fifteen in
1:05:08
Speaker 1: central Texas on public land on core of Engineers land,
1:05:12
Speaker 1: and yet that's an area that people say, we can't
1:05:14
Speaker 1: kill a big buck there, Well, this gotta kill one,
1:05:16
Speaker 1: you know, big, non typical, and so so there's opportunity
1:05:20
Speaker 1: there North Texas upon Lake Texoma. You know, to deer
1:05:24
Speaker 1: over to fifty have been killed in that county with
1:05:26
Speaker 1: a bow. So I mean, it's not like there's no opportunity,
1:05:30
Speaker 1: it's just that you know, it's spotty and you have
1:05:32
Speaker 1: to know what you're looking for. So on that topic,
1:05:37
Speaker 1: why why is it? And maybe it's just I don't
1:05:40
Speaker 1: know the fate of history order, but why is the
1:05:42
Speaker 1: culture in Texas in relation to hunting and with access
1:05:46
Speaker 1: so different? I mean, why is it that leasing took
1:05:48
Speaker 1: place so early on? And then secondarily, why is the
1:05:52
Speaker 1: fenced hunting culture high fence, low fence, whatever. Why is
1:05:56
Speaker 1: that so prevalent in Texas compared to everywhere else based
1:05:58
Speaker 1: on your experience and we've heard and seen sure. Now
1:06:02
Speaker 1: now of course you know right up front we even
1:06:05
Speaker 1: with the fencing thing, most most land in Texas is
1:06:07
Speaker 1: not high fenced. Um. In fact, even most land in
1:06:10
Speaker 1: South Texas I would say probably is not high fence.
1:06:13
Speaker 1: It's just that defenses. When you drive down a road
1:06:15
Speaker 1: in Texas, I mean, if there's high sense that's right
1:06:18
Speaker 1: next to the road, maybe it's on both sides, and
1:06:20
Speaker 1: you just think, goli, I'm in the middle of a
1:06:22
Speaker 1: you know, some kind of a prison compound or something.
1:06:24
Speaker 1: Then it goes on for thirty miles, you know. But
1:06:27
Speaker 1: but sometimes sometimes there's you'll have large areas that are
1:06:30
Speaker 1: all high fence, all individual rants is all fenced apart
1:06:33
Speaker 1: from each other. Now, now, of course, sometimes you're talking
1:06:36
Speaker 1: about a place that is U thirty tho acres and
1:06:42
Speaker 1: all of the brush has thorns on it, and it's
1:06:44
Speaker 1: so thick you can't see twenty ft unless you're on
1:06:46
Speaker 1: a road or on a fence line, and so you
1:06:50
Speaker 1: have to practically have a helicopter to see the deer
1:06:52
Speaker 1: that are in it. Yet they're surrounded by a high fence.
1:06:56
Speaker 1: And so you know how that began. I mean there
1:07:00
Speaker 1: were people there that had their resources. I mean, there
1:07:02
Speaker 1: were some very wealthy ranchers there that had resources, and
1:07:05
Speaker 1: they either you know, we're having neighbor problems. That's generally
1:07:09
Speaker 1: what causes fencing problems. UH fences to be built is
1:07:14
Speaker 1: the problem with neighbors. It isn't so much that. In fact,
1:07:17
Speaker 1: I know people would have built fences because they had
1:07:20
Speaker 1: food plots, and they were low fence with their neighbors,
1:07:23
Speaker 1: and their neighbors made no effort to control their dear number.
1:07:26
Speaker 1: So every time the neighborhood, this guy would plant a
1:07:28
Speaker 1: food plot, especially if you irrigated it. Well, here came
1:07:32
Speaker 1: all these deer will come to dear season. You shoot
1:07:34
Speaker 1: all these those and you think, okay, I've got my
1:07:35
Speaker 1: dear number done. And next year here comes in other ways,
1:07:39
Speaker 1: because there's nothing to stop them from coming off the
1:07:41
Speaker 1: neighbor So in some cases fences were literally built to
1:07:44
Speaker 1: keep deer out more so than to keep deer in. Nonetheless,
1:07:49
Speaker 1: when they are confined, I understand, you know as well
1:07:51
Speaker 1: as anybody, the rule of fair chase with would be
1:07:53
Speaker 1: in c N T N L I as you just
1:07:55
Speaker 1: can't have them, you know, inside an artificial confinement of
1:07:59
Speaker 1: that nature. Um, you know they call it fair chase.
1:08:02
Speaker 1: But I have also said, look, if I were if
1:08:05
Speaker 1: you told me, I could be a buck chasing a
1:08:08
Speaker 1: dough and I could be in a fifty thousand acres
1:08:10
Speaker 1: pasture of head, high brush and cactus. In South Texas
1:08:15
Speaker 1: surrounded by a high fense. Or I could be in
1:08:19
Speaker 1: a snowfield in Alberta and the one wood lot that's
1:08:24
Speaker 1: in this whole half a county, and I've I've gone
1:08:26
Speaker 1: in there with this dough into this wood lot in
1:08:29
Speaker 1: in knee deep snow, and there's two sets of tracks
1:08:31
Speaker 1: going into it and none coming out. And there's twenty
1:08:34
Speaker 1: five guys in orange lined up in the circle around
1:08:36
Speaker 1: that wood lot. Which buck would I rather be? I'd
1:08:40
Speaker 1: way rather be the buck in the highest fence, then
1:08:43
Speaker 1: I would that quote free ranging buck in Canada, you know,
1:08:47
Speaker 1: because which one's got a better chance of escaping? I mean,
1:08:50
Speaker 1: and so so you. It's hard to define high fence
1:08:54
Speaker 1: as good, bad, or otherwise. I think it's just another
1:08:57
Speaker 1: management tool. I understand the people that say, oh, look, well,
1:09:00
Speaker 1: that's not fair chaise. The fact of the matter is
1:09:04
Speaker 1: that most people, in my opinion, who complain about fair chaise,
1:09:08
Speaker 1: they're not worried about fair to the animal. They're worried
1:09:11
Speaker 1: about fair to them, quote competing with the guy that
1:09:14
Speaker 1: gets the hunt inside of one. That's the reality of it.
1:09:18
Speaker 1: I don't believe any of these people are concerned about
1:09:20
Speaker 1: animal welfare. I don't think that's why they oppose high fence.
1:09:23
Speaker 1: They just feel like that guy's got an edge on
1:09:25
Speaker 1: them and they don't like it. And I don't, and
1:09:28
Speaker 1: nobody will ever convince me otherwise. And so I just
1:09:31
Speaker 1: think if people look deep in their hearts, that they
1:09:33
Speaker 1: will realize that's why they don't like high fence. They're
1:09:36
Speaker 1: not worried about the deer. Deer inside of high fence
1:09:38
Speaker 1: are probably better taking care of than a lot of
1:09:40
Speaker 1: low fense there are. And I say all this as
1:09:42
Speaker 1: a guy who doesn't I've hunted high fence many, many
1:09:45
Speaker 1: years ago, but I don't do it anymore. But I
1:09:47
Speaker 1: have no problem with it as a management tool because
1:09:49
Speaker 1: I know most of the people that have high fences
1:09:52
Speaker 1: also really love their ranches and they love their land
1:09:55
Speaker 1: and are trying to grow big deer even though they
1:09:58
Speaker 1: know they can't go on the record book. They us
1:10:00
Speaker 1: want to do the best they can with their land
1:10:02
Speaker 1: and offensive wells and to do that, so it isn't
1:10:05
Speaker 1: I don't put it out there. It's a polarizing topic
1:10:07
Speaker 1: as much as I just think it's it's poorly understood
1:10:10
Speaker 1: by people who have never been around it. Yeah, it's
1:10:13
Speaker 1: definitely something very foreign to so many of us who
1:10:16
Speaker 1: have never been exposed to anything like that. And I
1:10:17
Speaker 1: can understand how there's definitely some shades of gray, especially
1:10:20
Speaker 1: large properties like that. But I'm curious, would you would
1:10:25
Speaker 1: you make the same defense for one of these situations
1:10:29
Speaker 1: where it's the small areas, like a twenty acre enclosure,
1:10:33
Speaker 1: where they are micro breeding with you know, artificial insemination
1:10:37
Speaker 1: of these bucks and you know, creating these gargangelan animals, etcetera, etcetera,
1:10:42
Speaker 1: and then selling off, you know, one of those deer
1:10:43
Speaker 1: to be shot in there for fifty dollars. Is that
1:10:46
Speaker 1: something that is different than what you're describing. Yeah, that's
1:10:51
Speaker 1: animal husbandry, and that is basically you have converted there
1:10:54
Speaker 1: into livestock at that point, Um, I have no interest
1:10:58
Speaker 1: in hunting livestock. I don't ink that's a positive image
1:11:01
Speaker 1: for hunting. Now. That said, you know, it's of course
1:11:07
Speaker 1: up to every I guess the public or the leaders
1:11:11
Speaker 1: in every state or province to decide what's legal and
1:11:14
Speaker 1: what's not in terms of uh, you know, enclosures and
1:11:17
Speaker 1: and and commercialized hunting inside high fences and all this
1:11:20
Speaker 1: sorts of things. I really don't. Don't look at it
1:11:24
Speaker 1: as having a blanket statement on it's saying okay, there's
1:11:28
Speaker 1: a definitive if it's if it's six acres, it's okay.
1:11:32
Speaker 1: If it's five nine, it's not. Well, I think we
1:11:35
Speaker 1: all know that, you know, there's a lot more variables
1:11:37
Speaker 1: than that, um and so I can understand the taking
1:11:41
Speaker 1: the high road on it as the as the record
1:11:43
Speaker 1: books have and just saying simply, we're not going to
1:11:46
Speaker 1: get into this shades of gray routine. We're going to
1:11:49
Speaker 1: just say you've either got a fence, a hunme it
1:11:50
Speaker 1: or you don't. If it's it's half a Texas inside
1:11:53
Speaker 1: of one fence and you have access to all of
1:11:55
Speaker 1: it as a hunter, then it's high fence, you know.
1:11:58
Speaker 1: And so again there's all the different shades of gray
1:12:02
Speaker 1: sometimes because we have the uh, you know, we do
1:12:05
Speaker 1: have the people that are saying, well, mine is almost
1:12:08
Speaker 1: all high fence, except I left the gate open on
1:12:10
Speaker 1: one end, and if I sit there long enough, I'll
1:12:13
Speaker 1: kill a buck that comes through that gate. Well, in effect,
1:12:16
Speaker 1: you have altered the habit at and you've altered the
1:12:18
Speaker 1: deer's opportunity to escape. But your quote legal perhaps by
1:12:23
Speaker 1: Boone and Crockett poping young. I mean, people are always
1:12:26
Speaker 1: going to look for the loopholes. But I would say
1:12:28
Speaker 1: that in general, if you start breeding animals specifically almost
1:12:33
Speaker 1: if you start calling it put in take hunting, let's say, um,
1:12:37
Speaker 1: you know, you know, we don't look at you know,
1:12:40
Speaker 1: game birds is like, well, what's the state record rooster
1:12:43
Speaker 1: for Minnesota? Which one had the longest tail? Well that
1:12:46
Speaker 1: one was shot in a while, but this one was
1:12:48
Speaker 1: a release bird, so he doesn't count well. Same with
1:12:51
Speaker 1: stock fish. I mean, we have different attitudes sometimes about
1:12:54
Speaker 1: big game being stocked and released and you know, putting
1:12:57
Speaker 1: tag versus hunt small game birds or fish something of
1:13:01
Speaker 1: that nature. We we kind of differentiate that in our minds,
1:13:04
Speaker 1: I think, But when it comes to big game, I
1:13:07
Speaker 1: just don't think you can have an animal that was
1:13:09
Speaker 1: ever handled by man and really and then release back
1:13:13
Speaker 1: into an enclosure at any point. It's one thing to
1:13:16
Speaker 1: say you had a faun that you got out of
1:13:18
Speaker 1: a fence, he turned him loose, and five years later
1:13:20
Speaker 1: out in a while he became a boon and Crockett, well,
1:13:22
Speaker 1: that's different from saying you you bottle fitting you know,
1:13:26
Speaker 1: or you you gave him a name, or you tattooed
1:13:28
Speaker 1: something a number in his ear. He was walking around
1:13:30
Speaker 1: with the yellow ear tag him and he shot him.
1:13:33
Speaker 1: You know, all these are different shades of livestock and
1:13:36
Speaker 1: animal husbandry as opposed to pure wildlife management in my opinion,
1:13:40
Speaker 1: I mean, my opinion doesn't account from us, but that's
1:13:42
Speaker 1: just my opinion. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I tend to tend
1:13:46
Speaker 1: to agree with you on that. I don't personally think
1:13:48
Speaker 1: that I would not call that hunting um and I
1:13:51
Speaker 1: think that there in lies some of the issues I
1:13:54
Speaker 1: take with with some of those practices. But I've I've
1:13:57
Speaker 1: talked plenty about my things, not all that on past
1:14:00
Speaker 1: past conversations and everything. But I think you bring up
1:14:02
Speaker 1: an interesting point, and it's one that sometimes I I
1:14:05
Speaker 1: sometimes fail to think through because of just not having
1:14:10
Speaker 1: that context, you know, having experience in Texas where I
1:14:13
Speaker 1: think it's easy for some of us to put to
1:14:14
Speaker 1: throw that blanket negativity on high fence, when to your point,
1:14:19
Speaker 1: you know, there's very different shades of gray when it
1:14:21
Speaker 1: comes to that whole issue. But back to back to
1:14:25
Speaker 1: killing dear, if I'm in Texas and this is a
1:14:29
Speaker 1: horrible question, I know this is a horrible question. But
1:14:32
Speaker 1: like I mentioned, we've never really talked about Texas hunting
1:14:34
Speaker 1: on this show before. And I apologize to everyone who
1:14:37
Speaker 1: hunts in Texas and who listens and who's thought, why
1:14:39
Speaker 1: why don't you guys care about us? So I'm gonna
1:14:41
Speaker 1: put a lot of pressure on you right now, Gordon.
1:14:44
Speaker 1: For someone hunting in Texas, that's okay, I don't I
1:14:46
Speaker 1: don't mind. I'll talk about Texas all day. It's so
1:14:50
Speaker 1: so for somebody hunting in Texas, you know, on their
1:14:54
Speaker 1: own in like, can you give me a cliff Notes
1:14:58
Speaker 1: version overview of your best ice for killing mature deer
1:15:01
Speaker 1: in Texas? Handful? You had to pick a handful of things.
1:15:07
Speaker 1: If if if the thing about it in Texas, it's
1:15:10
Speaker 1: all about access. If you have access where the habitat
1:15:14
Speaker 1: is good, it probably has a stable and relatively dense
1:15:20
Speaker 1: population of white tails already there. I mean, there are
1:15:24
Speaker 1: some marginal habitats in northwest Texas. You get out in
1:15:27
Speaker 1: some real open, dry country with very little habitat. It's
1:15:30
Speaker 1: a little bit of linear habitat, but very fragmented. Some
1:15:33
Speaker 1: of that country doesn't have many deer in it. But
1:15:35
Speaker 1: if you get anywhere in the eastern half or two
1:15:39
Speaker 1: thirds of the state. And what I would tell somebody
1:15:42
Speaker 1: is if you were going to go to Texas and
1:15:44
Speaker 1: you said, look, here's because we all have a budget.
1:15:47
Speaker 1: You know, we may not adhere to it, but we
1:15:49
Speaker 1: all have some idea of what we can spend to
1:15:51
Speaker 1: go deer hunting every year. If somebody says, look, I've
1:15:53
Speaker 1: got a thousand dollars, I've saved it for two years
1:15:56
Speaker 1: and a coffee. Can I want to go Texas? To
1:15:58
Speaker 1: Texas and at least say I went hunt? Okay, well
1:16:02
Speaker 1: and dollars, that's going to cost you your license. So
1:16:05
Speaker 1: already you're down to pretty much gas money and eating
1:16:08
Speaker 1: free toes, you know. But okay, where can you go
1:16:11
Speaker 1: and have a chance to kill a deer? Well, yeah,
1:16:13
Speaker 1: you can put in for some of these corps of
1:16:15
Speaker 1: engineer hunts. They're mostly bow hunts. There are some probably
1:16:19
Speaker 1: you can knock on enough doors, if you had enough time,
1:16:22
Speaker 1: you you probably could get somebody in a little not
1:16:25
Speaker 1: in the prime areas, but some of these fringe areas
1:16:27
Speaker 1: you probably get somebody say yeah, I'll let you hunt
1:16:29
Speaker 1: for fifty dollars or whatever. You know, go out and
1:16:32
Speaker 1: sitting on that stump and see if one comes by,
1:16:34
Speaker 1: you might kill a big buck doing that. I mean,
1:16:36
Speaker 1: in general, if you really want to take it seriously,
1:16:39
Speaker 1: most outsiders are going to end up either hunting with
1:16:41
Speaker 1: family or they're going to to to in many cases
1:16:46
Speaker 1: actually do a seasoned lease of land the way a
1:16:48
Speaker 1: lot of people now do in the Midwest. They may
1:16:51
Speaker 1: not live there, but they may say, look, we're, you know,
1:16:54
Speaker 1: four of us going to go together in lease this
1:16:56
Speaker 1: little farm or wrench. And that's how most guys end
1:16:59
Speaker 1: up doing it. But finding that place is difficult no
1:17:03
Speaker 1: matter where you go, your place of inequality. And so
1:17:06
Speaker 1: I would say myself, based on the size of some
1:17:09
Speaker 1: of the deer killed around some of the public reservoirs,
1:17:12
Speaker 1: the Corps of Engineers land, I probably would look at
1:17:15
Speaker 1: that first and say, that's my best shot at killing
1:17:19
Speaker 1: a really nice deer at quote bargain prices in Texas.
1:17:23
Speaker 1: That that would be my that would be my approach personally. Interesting,
1:17:27
Speaker 1: and this is another thing that I've read a lot
1:17:30
Speaker 1: about in the past, just a tactic that I've heard
1:17:33
Speaker 1: that works remarkably well in Texas compared to a lot
1:17:35
Speaker 1: of places. And that's just rattling, right. We all rattled
1:17:38
Speaker 1: all across the country with varying levels of success. But
1:17:41
Speaker 1: from what I understand, it's different in Texas. Is that true?
1:17:47
Speaker 1: Well it probably you know, who's to say where it
1:17:49
Speaker 1: really started. I do think it was. It was popularized,
1:17:52
Speaker 1: no question in South and central Texas, probably back in
1:17:55
Speaker 1: the fifties and even into the sixties. Early practitioners in
1:18:01
Speaker 1: Texas circles Bob Ramsey's He's dead and gone now, but
1:18:04
Speaker 1: he was considered one of the uh truly the founding
1:18:07
Speaker 1: father of modern rattling in Texas, and he caught a
1:18:10
Speaker 1: lot of the outdoor riders. He and they have then
1:18:13
Speaker 1: get proliferated from there, long before television or anything of
1:18:17
Speaker 1: that nature. But I will say that there's something about
1:18:22
Speaker 1: Texas when you when you start rattling in Texas and
1:18:27
Speaker 1: things are right, you'd better have your gun ready and
1:18:31
Speaker 1: you'd better be looking because literally, I mean, I've killed
1:18:35
Speaker 1: deer that what that jumped out of the brush within
1:18:37
Speaker 1: ten seconds, mature deer and just said here, I am
1:18:40
Speaker 1: shooting me, okay, And I shot him. Now, I didn't
1:18:44
Speaker 1: I didn't argue with him, I just shot him, okay.
1:18:46
Speaker 1: So uh and sometimes sometimes it's just that magical. Sometimes
1:18:51
Speaker 1: you can sit in one spot in the brush have
1:18:53
Speaker 1: and say that I saw ten or more bucks, and
1:18:58
Speaker 1: there you're You're on the ground and the brother you're
1:19:00
Speaker 1: not even in a blind, you're not a tree, you're
1:19:02
Speaker 1: not You're just in the brush, okay, and you saw
1:19:05
Speaker 1: ten bucks that you could identify differently come in and
1:19:08
Speaker 1: kind of have circle you like sharks almost, And then
1:19:11
Speaker 1: they'd leave and get down wind and they'd run off
1:19:13
Speaker 1: or whatever. Then someone would come back and then a
1:19:15
Speaker 1: little one would run into the middle of them. Say
1:19:17
Speaker 1: what's going on, guys? I mean sometimes it's just that's
1:19:20
Speaker 1: a nuthouse sometimes. So does it work like that in
1:19:24
Speaker 1: most other places? Absolutely not, Um Texas, there's something about
1:19:29
Speaker 1: it that's just magical. It must be the herd dynamics.
1:19:33
Speaker 1: That may be the habitat type, but South Texas in particular,
1:19:37
Speaker 1: if you if you hit the antlers, you need to
1:19:40
Speaker 1: have your gun loaded, you need to be looking around,
1:19:43
Speaker 1: you need to be ready, ready to shoot something, because
1:19:46
Speaker 1: then literally before you can get settled in, you might
1:19:49
Speaker 1: have the biggest buck you've ever seen in twenty yards
1:19:51
Speaker 1: from your looking right down your throat. Now why if
1:19:55
Speaker 1: that why it's that way? I wish I could tell you,
1:19:57
Speaker 1: because I'd make it that way everywhere, But and I'm
1:20:00
Speaker 1: not that smart. You know, that would be nice. What
1:20:03
Speaker 1: is the right you said, like, when the timing is
1:20:05
Speaker 1: right or something along those lines, What are the right
1:20:07
Speaker 1: conditions at the right time to actually pull off that
1:20:10
Speaker 1: type of scenario in Texas? Is it just the rut?
1:20:12
Speaker 1: When is that? I don't know, is this something different?
1:20:15
Speaker 1: You know? It's funny. I've I've rattled in a lot
1:20:18
Speaker 1: of places. I think the earliest I've ever seen deer
1:20:20
Speaker 1: come to rattling was like tinkling antlers was like early
1:20:23
Speaker 1: September in Kansas. And the latest I've ever seen them
1:20:27
Speaker 1: relative to the rut was like January ninth in Iowa,
1:20:30
Speaker 1: where I've seen a deer commenced say clarity that deer
1:20:33
Speaker 1: is responding to rattling. The latest I've killed the deer
1:20:36
Speaker 1: that I could say was coming into quote rattling, although
1:20:40
Speaker 1: in this case it was an actual live buck fight
1:20:42
Speaker 1: that he was responding to, was February the twenty in
1:20:46
Speaker 1: South Texas, um we heard the deer fighting in the brush.
1:20:51
Speaker 1: The sixth and a half year late, pointer there's like
1:20:53
Speaker 1: two thirty on the hoof big big Texas deer. He
1:20:56
Speaker 1: goes rushing over there. I whistle, let him stop him
1:20:58
Speaker 1: and shot him before we got to the fight. But
1:21:01
Speaker 1: we could hear the fight in the brush. This was February,
1:21:03
Speaker 1: but that's also about two months past peak rut in
1:21:07
Speaker 1: that area. Those deer normally rut in December, so it
1:21:11
Speaker 1: wasn't like February in Arkansas or something, but it but
1:21:15
Speaker 1: it was definitely way, way way late in the year,
1:21:18
Speaker 1: and that was one of those places. Yet you know,
1:21:20
Speaker 1: you could one of those ranches you could hunt through
1:21:22
Speaker 1: the end of February with the you know bucks and
1:21:24
Speaker 1: does because of a special permit situation. But we literally
1:21:27
Speaker 1: killed a buck on February twenty two running to an
1:21:29
Speaker 1: actual buck fight. So you know, if I look at
1:21:32
Speaker 1: it and I say, you know, what are the conditions
1:21:35
Speaker 1: that it takes. Um, I've tried it early, I've tried
1:21:39
Speaker 1: it late. You know, mostly you're gonna kill him in between. Uh.
1:21:43
Speaker 1: Some people say, man, I just don't like I don't
1:21:46
Speaker 1: like peak rut because that's you know, all the big
1:21:49
Speaker 1: bucks with those Well, there are times during peak road
1:21:52
Speaker 1: even granted that's a little bit later than you normally
1:21:55
Speaker 1: get the best response. Normally late free road is when
1:21:58
Speaker 1: you get the best response all so when you get
1:22:00
Speaker 1: the best response to like bug de coin. But I
1:22:04
Speaker 1: would say that you can rattle in some really big
1:22:06
Speaker 1: deer during the absolute peak of the rudd because they
1:22:09
Speaker 1: happened to be between those. Um I rattled in a
1:22:13
Speaker 1: big hundred fifty something is nine pointer in Alberta one
1:22:16
Speaker 1: time on the ground at seventeen steps in the middle
1:22:18
Speaker 1: of a ball field swamp November the eighteenth. That was
1:22:22
Speaker 1: as peak rudder as you could get. And yet he
1:22:24
Speaker 1: came walking in at living thirty in the morning and
1:22:26
Speaker 1: just walk up and see what I was, and I
1:22:28
Speaker 1: shot him, So you know it. You know, they don't
1:22:32
Speaker 1: swarm around you in Alberta maybe the way they do
1:22:34
Speaker 1: in South Texas, but it still works. It's just a
1:22:36
Speaker 1: function of lower deer densities. Sometimes they have to travel
1:22:40
Speaker 1: farther to get to you. But you know, if you're patient,
1:22:44
Speaker 1: if you can't rattle the man, if you don't try
1:22:46
Speaker 1: to rattle them, that's the one thing about it. You know,
1:22:48
Speaker 1: you'll never rattle in the deer you don't try to rattle.
1:22:51
Speaker 1: So a lot of people say that, well, it just
1:22:53
Speaker 1: doesn't work. I try it one time, it didn't work. Well,
1:22:55
Speaker 1: it's like saying I try to green, you know, jitterbug
1:22:59
Speaker 1: one time and I didn't catch a big bass on it,
1:23:01
Speaker 1: so it's not a good bass lure. Well that's that's
1:23:03
Speaker 1: that's crazy. But yet that's if you don't have confidence,
1:23:06
Speaker 1: you can you can fake yourself out of almost any
1:23:09
Speaker 1: kind of success if you try hard enough. And a
1:23:11
Speaker 1: lot of people just don't have the confidence because they think, oh,
1:23:14
Speaker 1: this is silly, this isn't gonna work. Well, your opinion
1:23:17
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. The deer's opinion is what matters, you know,
1:23:20
Speaker 1: And if you do it right and you give it
1:23:21
Speaker 1: a chance a lot of times, you'll you'll realize, man,
1:23:24
Speaker 1: this this stuff works. And that's true of almost any tactic.
1:23:27
Speaker 1: You gotta give it a fair chance. All right. Well,
1:23:30
Speaker 1: before we move on to my next question for Gordon,
1:23:32
Speaker 1: we need to pause briefly for word from the sponsors
1:23:35
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Speaker 1: Arrows dot com. And now back to the show and
1:25:29
Speaker 1: now and now. A lot of these aggressive tactics like
1:25:32
Speaker 1: that kind of rattling and stuff. I feel like these
1:25:33
Speaker 1: are assumptions, but I feel like that's something you know
1:25:36
Speaker 1: that that works particularly well in a spot like Texas,
1:25:39
Speaker 1: where you mentioned there's some kind of unique herd dynamics,
1:25:42
Speaker 1: or maybe in a spot like Iowa, Kansas, where you
1:25:45
Speaker 1: know there's a disproportionate high number of older deer and
1:25:49
Speaker 1: lower numbers of hunters relatives to a lot of spots
1:25:51
Speaker 1: in the country. But I'm curious Texas, it's a southern state. Now,
1:25:55
Speaker 1: compare that to one of these other southern states, one
1:25:57
Speaker 1: of the south Southeastern states like Alabama, Georgia where you live,
1:26:01
Speaker 1: or anything along those lines. How does it differ from
1:26:03
Speaker 1: Texas to those parts of the country. Is are aggressive
1:26:06
Speaker 1: tactics like rattling and everything, you know, on average something
1:26:10
Speaker 1: that are going to be on par with their neighbor
1:26:12
Speaker 1: in Texas or is it totally different in that part
1:26:14
Speaker 1: of the country. I think you're I think relative to
1:26:18
Speaker 1: the number of bucks within hearing range, good property is
1:26:22
Speaker 1: good property. I think. You know, I can't say this
1:26:26
Speaker 1: because it's never hunted New Hampshire, but I suspect that
1:26:28
Speaker 1: if you're in New Hampshire and you're in a bus
1:26:31
Speaker 1: in the right frame of mind, and you rattle to
1:26:33
Speaker 1: him and he hears you, that there's a very good
1:26:36
Speaker 1: chance that he's coming. Now the habitat type, his particular
1:26:42
Speaker 1: aversion to moving, you know, through openings and things like that,
1:26:45
Speaker 1: based on hunting pressure and all that. I mean, I
1:26:48
Speaker 1: do think that obviously all that comes into play, much
1:26:51
Speaker 1: as it does with you know, does a big bull
1:26:53
Speaker 1: elk on public land it's it's heard five thousand bad
1:26:57
Speaker 1: bugles from hunters or kirkey yelps hunter, you know whatever.
1:27:02
Speaker 1: Do all these animals get educated and do they get
1:27:04
Speaker 1: you know, call shy and all that. Well, absolutely they do.
1:27:07
Speaker 1: You know, the older ones have heard this routine before.
1:27:10
Speaker 1: But in general, if you say, I have not over
1:27:13
Speaker 1: rattled or called or decoyed or whatever the tactic is,
1:27:17
Speaker 1: but I'm going to apply it at the right time,
1:27:20
Speaker 1: let's say, late pre run early breeding period, the right
1:27:24
Speaker 1: kind of habitat. You know, where do you feel comfortable
1:27:27
Speaker 1: moving in daylight through this habitat to get to the
1:27:31
Speaker 1: to the sound of the fight or or the ground
1:27:34
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. And I do think that on
1:27:36
Speaker 1: an individual basis, the deer in here in the southeast
1:27:41
Speaker 1: or just about as likely to respond. They might not
1:27:44
Speaker 1: come in acting like you know while that act like
1:27:47
Speaker 1: they want to fight, but they do come in to
1:27:49
Speaker 1: check it out. And that's really, frankly, about all you need.
1:27:52
Speaker 1: You know, ideally, he just wanted to come in where
1:27:54
Speaker 1: you can get him shot. You don't care if he
1:27:55
Speaker 1: comes in with his hair on fire. But but I
1:27:59
Speaker 1: would say that you don't tend to see the response
1:28:01
Speaker 1: here as much because, frankly, the landholdings are smaller, the
1:28:06
Speaker 1: hunting pressure is higher, the deer is somewhat more educated
1:28:09
Speaker 1: in general, and frankly, there's so much cover here that
1:28:12
Speaker 1: they're very difficult to see. Uh, they're very difficult see
1:28:15
Speaker 1: in Texas too, But you just set up where they
1:28:17
Speaker 1: have to cross the sendero or a cactus flat or
1:28:20
Speaker 1: something where you've got to fighting chance to at least
1:28:22
Speaker 1: get a look at them before they smell you and
1:28:24
Speaker 1: run off. And so and there you've got so much
1:28:27
Speaker 1: more land to work. I mean, if if you rattle
1:28:29
Speaker 1: right here in Texas and you say, well, we didn't
1:28:32
Speaker 1: rattle in but a couple of two year old, let's
1:28:34
Speaker 1: let's walk three yards cross wind and go over there
1:28:36
Speaker 1: and set up by that stock pond, and we'll rattle again.
1:28:38
Speaker 1: Where you go over there and there's seven different bucks
1:28:40
Speaker 1: and you and you shoot one of them, and then
1:28:41
Speaker 1: you walk half mile over here and then you see
1:28:43
Speaker 1: another big one. Okay, well that's that's a different world.
1:28:46
Speaker 1: And almost anybody can you can relate to in whitetail hunting,
1:28:50
Speaker 1: because that's just not quote normal. Uh. But yet down
1:28:54
Speaker 1: there you have you may have thousands of acres one pasture,
1:28:57
Speaker 1: so you don't you're not limited to one tree space.
1:29:00
Speaker 1: I'm sitting up on one two week of food plot.
1:29:02
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got your your hunting a very big world. Yeah,
1:29:06
Speaker 1: that's so so different. So in that in that situation
1:29:09
Speaker 1: in the southeast where there's so much cover and a
1:29:12
Speaker 1: lot more hunters. Um. I guess, reverting back to what
1:29:15
Speaker 1: we originally talked about at the beginning of our conversation,
1:29:18
Speaker 1: let's say that's our situation. I'm hunting the southeast, lots
1:29:21
Speaker 1: of cover, lots of hunters, and it's October. Is there
1:29:24
Speaker 1: anything different than I'm doing down there than I would,
1:29:27
Speaker 1: you know, for me up here in Michigan, like the
1:29:28
Speaker 1: stuff we talked about early, is there anything unique to
1:29:30
Speaker 1: that part of the country that you know, I could
1:29:32
Speaker 1: possibly apply if I was trying it out done there. Well,
1:29:36
Speaker 1: here in Georgia, you tend to get in November rut um,
1:29:40
Speaker 1: places like South Carolina low country, the coastal plains there
1:29:45
Speaker 1: that parts of South Georgia that are adjacent to that
1:29:48
Speaker 1: you tend to get into October rut um. The low
1:29:51
Speaker 1: country of South Carolina right now is pretty much peak
1:29:54
Speaker 1: rut So you could you could definitely, you know, ramp
1:29:57
Speaker 1: up your aggressive tactics, um, whether it was calling or
1:30:01
Speaker 1: just hoping to catch bucks out, cruising food plots, and
1:30:04
Speaker 1: and and cutovers and things like that. Looking for a dough,
1:30:07
Speaker 1: you get a lot more daytime movement. You come up
1:30:09
Speaker 1: here to Georgia right now, and the movement's not nearly
1:30:12
Speaker 1: as high. A lot of these places were restocked with
1:30:14
Speaker 1: totally different geno types of deer over a long period
1:30:18
Speaker 1: of time, and those genotypes have tended to hold in
1:30:21
Speaker 1: terms of rutting dates. So Georgia, even parts of Georgia,
1:30:26
Speaker 1: one part of one county was restocked with Texas deer
1:30:29
Speaker 1: they run at a certain time, and another part of
1:30:31
Speaker 1: that same county was restocked with Michigan deer. One well,
1:30:34
Speaker 1: they they have still had two separate kind of ruts
1:30:37
Speaker 1: in that one county even fifty fifty years later. And
1:30:41
Speaker 1: that's that's roughly fifteen generations of deer. Let's say that
1:30:47
Speaker 1: they still have basics and those deers not totally homogenized.
1:30:50
Speaker 1: And so you really do have to know when you
1:30:52
Speaker 1: say October in the southeast, well, that could mean if
1:30:55
Speaker 1: that means Alabama, Mississippi, where they have a December a
1:30:58
Speaker 1: Christmas rut, or in Black Belt of Alabama where you
1:31:02
Speaker 1: have when I shot a buck chasing a dough January thirtieth,
1:31:05
Speaker 1: A few years ago. It's a fully mature buck and
1:31:08
Speaker 1: next to the last day of the season. And so
1:31:11
Speaker 1: you know where else could you find that? Not many places,
1:31:14
Speaker 1: but yet so but that's just the deer they have.
1:31:17
Speaker 1: They have very late running deer. Other places, like say
1:31:20
Speaker 1: South Carolina, they happen to be early. So it's a
1:31:24
Speaker 1: broad you know, it's a broad topic to try to cover.
1:31:28
Speaker 1: To say, any given date in the Southeast is uh,
1:31:31
Speaker 1: it's not like the Midwest, whom you say, Gali November
1:31:33
Speaker 1: tenth is a magical day. It's always going to be.
1:31:36
Speaker 1: I don't care what the weather is, whatever else. Some
1:31:38
Speaker 1: big bucks looking for a dough or November the tent somewhere, Uh,
1:31:42
Speaker 1: but maybe not, maybe not in Alabama, maybe not in Louisiana,
1:31:46
Speaker 1: maybe not in South Carolina. So you know, it's difficult
1:31:50
Speaker 1: down here. A big part of what it is is
1:31:53
Speaker 1: you have so much food hit the ground all at once.
1:31:55
Speaker 1: You've got so many acorns and they're so widespread, and
1:31:58
Speaker 1: the deer scattered out a huge amount of cover. A
1:32:02
Speaker 1: while that cover in pine wood there's evergreen cover, so
1:32:05
Speaker 1: good luck to you. And you can't bait in most
1:32:08
Speaker 1: of these areas. Some of them you can, but not
1:32:10
Speaker 1: all of them. So what are you going to do
1:32:12
Speaker 1: to pull him into this one spot? I mean, you
1:32:14
Speaker 1: better have a really hot food plot. You better really
1:32:18
Speaker 1: you know, have some really uh you know, be be
1:32:21
Speaker 1: dialed in with trail cameras on exactly which trails a
1:32:24
Speaker 1: big buck is using. If you had that advantage, you
1:32:26
Speaker 1: know that you work for. I do think you'd have
1:32:29
Speaker 1: a fighting chance, but it's still going to be better
1:32:31
Speaker 1: in general down here you should get later in the year.
1:32:35
Speaker 1: Switching up questions just a little bit. You've been to
1:32:40
Speaker 1: a lot of state, different states to hunt, and aside
1:32:43
Speaker 1: from your home state of Texas, do you have a
1:32:46
Speaker 1: favorite state that you like to go hunting. Well, yeah,
1:32:53
Speaker 1: there's many places that I would you really love to
1:32:57
Speaker 1: just just hunt, you know, any time I got an
1:32:59
Speaker 1: offer tunity, I have not hunted. If you talk to
1:33:03
Speaker 1: most people that grew up in open country as I did,
1:33:06
Speaker 1: most of those people feel somewhat coustrophobic as you get
1:33:09
Speaker 1: into the woods. I mean, I'm kind of that way.
1:33:11
Speaker 1: I grew up in in Brushew hilly ranch country, where
1:33:14
Speaker 1: if you saw a deer half mile way just went
1:33:17
Speaker 1: over there and shot him, or try to shoot him. Uh.
1:33:19
Speaker 1: You know, that's three farms away here in Georgia, you know,
1:33:22
Speaker 1: I mean, and it's all flat pine woods. So so
1:33:25
Speaker 1: there's certain kinds of habitat that I don't feel as
1:33:28
Speaker 1: comfortable in and as proficient in, uh and in heavy
1:33:33
Speaker 1: bottom land, swamps and things of that nature. Not really
1:33:35
Speaker 1: in my cup of tea. I've hundred New Brunswick. I've
1:33:39
Speaker 1: hunted Nova Scotia, you know, I've hunted a lot of places.
1:33:42
Speaker 1: But some of that country is very good deer hunt
1:33:44
Speaker 1: deer country, and but it is not particularly suited to
1:33:47
Speaker 1: my way. I like to hunt. Um. I like to
1:33:50
Speaker 1: be able to get out on foot. I like to
1:33:52
Speaker 1: be able to cover some ground. I like to be
1:33:54
Speaker 1: able to find a good set up and then and
1:33:56
Speaker 1: then work that set up. And I like to have
1:33:58
Speaker 1: some roll to the land. I like to have a
1:34:00
Speaker 1: little bit of openness so I can kind of see
1:34:02
Speaker 1: the land in three dimensions, because I don't want to
1:34:05
Speaker 1: have to be living off my GPS to tell far
1:34:07
Speaker 1: I am. I'd like to just be able to get
1:34:08
Speaker 1: out in the country and just kind of go. Now. Naturally,
1:34:11
Speaker 1: some type of some parts of the world don't lend
1:34:14
Speaker 1: themselves of that at all. Uh, you know, good luck
1:34:16
Speaker 1: in eastern North Carolina. You know, you can't see twenty
1:34:19
Speaker 1: feet and it's all a swamp. However, if I get
1:34:22
Speaker 1: into central Montana, if I get into western South Dakota,
1:34:27
Speaker 1: if I get into Texas Panhandle on up through really
1:34:30
Speaker 1: all up into North Dakota, all that country on the
1:34:34
Speaker 1: western Great Plains, I would say, in general, is a
1:34:38
Speaker 1: little bit more my cup of tea. And that could
1:34:41
Speaker 1: be from Texas all the way north clear up into
1:34:43
Speaker 1: the prairie provinces of Alberta. But I do think some
1:34:46
Speaker 1: of the more overlook stuff is really you know, western
1:34:50
Speaker 1: Dakota's uh, you know, parts of Nebraska. They don't get
1:34:54
Speaker 1: talked about much, but man, that's that's some good deer
1:34:57
Speaker 1: country up there where your shot. Like I say, Dr
1:34:59
Speaker 1: Crol and I will to you know, northeastern Wyoming and
1:35:02
Speaker 1: you know last month and we sawt a couple of
1:35:04
Speaker 1: beautiful deer up there, and that country is is very
1:35:08
Speaker 1: scenic and productive. I just feel like that kind of
1:35:11
Speaker 1: country is what I enjoy hunting, regardless of what's there.
1:35:14
Speaker 1: But it also tends to have some really nice deer
1:35:16
Speaker 1: in it as well. Yeah, I just hunted Montana for
1:35:20
Speaker 1: the first time, which was my first western white tailed trip,
1:35:22
Speaker 1: and that was just incredible, both as you mentioned, scenery
1:35:26
Speaker 1: and the actual deer and deer hunting element of it,
1:35:29
Speaker 1: um Man. I could see myself getting pretty quickly addicted
1:35:33
Speaker 1: to that hunting well. And the thing about it is
1:35:36
Speaker 1: that you know, we understand, we're we're we're blessed to
1:35:39
Speaker 1: get the travel, and we understand that I've hunted. I
1:35:41
Speaker 1: think I don't know if I've ever totally counted them up,
1:35:44
Speaker 1: but I think I've hunted close to forty states and
1:35:46
Speaker 1: provinces four white tails, and that you know, I have
1:35:50
Speaker 1: not hunted South America, but I've hunted been one of
1:35:52
Speaker 1: hunter New Zealand, of Hunter Canada, Mexico, most of the US.
1:35:56
Speaker 1: I mean, at least been there long enough to say, hey,
1:35:58
Speaker 1: I was here, I see what the hunting here is like.
1:36:01
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean I've shot deer in all those places,
1:36:02
Speaker 1: but you know, I've gone out of my way to
1:36:05
Speaker 1: go to a lot of places because I feel like
1:36:07
Speaker 1: that educates me and helps me understand what's relevant to
1:36:11
Speaker 1: a reader or two of you or the TV show.
1:36:13
Speaker 1: So I look at that as you know, it's a
1:36:16
Speaker 1: I won't say as a job, but it or a duty.
1:36:18
Speaker 1: But it is certainly helped me to come up with
1:36:22
Speaker 1: what I think is relevant content because I see what
1:36:24
Speaker 1: people have to deal with here in Georgia. George is
1:36:27
Speaker 1: hard state to hunt, but they have some big deer.
1:36:30
Speaker 1: None of less, it's hard state to hunt. You know, Kentucky.
1:36:33
Speaker 1: Everybody wants to go to Kentucky. Kentucky is not the
1:36:35
Speaker 1: easiest state to hunt, but they do have big deer um.
1:36:39
Speaker 1: You know, some of those parts of northwestern Montana, Idaho,
1:36:41
Speaker 1: eastern Washington. A lot of that country up and there
1:36:44
Speaker 1: is beautiful and has big deer. But the deer don't
1:36:46
Speaker 1: just run out and say here, I am shooting me.
1:36:48
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, big deer hard to kill pretty
1:36:51
Speaker 1: much wherever you go. But I would say that clearly.
1:36:55
Speaker 1: You know, some places are hot spots for a reason.
1:36:57
Speaker 1: They just got more big deer. The regulation and that
1:37:00
Speaker 1: season timing, the weapon restrictions, whatever, they just make it
1:37:05
Speaker 1: easier to kill. And that's why we tend to think
1:37:07
Speaker 1: of those as the hotspots. But you know, a great
1:37:10
Speaker 1: deer hunting probably can be had almost anywhere you have deer,
1:37:14
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's what we make of it. It's it's
1:37:17
Speaker 1: our expectations have to be tempered, what's realistic, and if
1:37:20
Speaker 1: they're not, then we're quite often going to find ourselves frustrated.
1:37:23
Speaker 1: I don't care if you're in the business or not.
1:37:25
Speaker 1: I mean, you're not going to shoot what's not there.
1:37:27
Speaker 1: And if you don't give yourself a fighting chance to
1:37:29
Speaker 1: stay there long enough to kill one figure one out,
1:37:32
Speaker 1: your chances aren't very good either. I don't care how
1:37:34
Speaker 1: good the place is. So so every situation has its
1:37:38
Speaker 1: own challenges. Is just that some have a much greater
1:37:41
Speaker 1: payoff than others. Yeah, yeah, that's that's such great advice there.
1:37:46
Speaker 1: I got a question and it kind of it kind
1:37:48
Speaker 1: of goes back to your profession of of being a writer.
1:37:52
Speaker 1: When when you do write an article about maybe strategy
1:37:57
Speaker 1: or um of we're hunting in general, how do you
1:38:03
Speaker 1: how do you approach your writing that will allow someone
1:38:07
Speaker 1: from Texas or someone from New England or someone from
1:38:10
Speaker 1: the Dakotas to all read it and maybe take something
1:38:13
Speaker 1: away from that. Well, I don't know that there is
1:38:17
Speaker 1: any universal advice that equally applies. I guess if if
1:38:20
Speaker 1: every article started with go where there's a lot of
1:38:23
Speaker 1: big deer hunt a lot and be able to shoot.
1:38:27
Speaker 1: You know. In fact, I've said that in seminars before.
1:38:30
Speaker 1: I said, look, I can tell you in ten seconds
1:38:32
Speaker 1: you know how to kill big deer, and said, now
1:38:34
Speaker 1: I'm going to spend the next fifty nine minutes and
1:38:36
Speaker 1: fifty seconds explaining what I just said in ten seconds.
1:38:39
Speaker 1: But that the reality of it is is that you're
1:38:44
Speaker 1: always and that's that's part of the advantage of traveling
1:38:47
Speaker 1: now anymore, we all feel like we get to travel
1:38:49
Speaker 1: because if we stay on Facebook or Instagram or whatever
1:38:53
Speaker 1: long enough, or watching enough outdoor TV or read the magazines,
1:38:57
Speaker 1: will feel like we just went on a world tour
1:38:59
Speaker 1: every time we every half hour and and maybe just so,
1:39:03
Speaker 1: in some ways, the world has gotten smaller UM, and
1:39:06
Speaker 1: people that don't even hunt outside of their home county ever,
1:39:10
Speaker 1: may feel like they know what it's like to hunt
1:39:12
Speaker 1: in Illinois or Alberta or or Florida because they've just
1:39:16
Speaker 1: been exposed to it now, which is a good which
1:39:19
Speaker 1: is a very good thing. I think that's I think
1:39:20
Speaker 1: that's great. People enjoy doing that. UM. But when it
1:39:23
Speaker 1: comes time to talk about what really works in all
1:39:26
Speaker 1: these places, there is no universal tactic that I could say, oh,
1:39:31
Speaker 1: just this is the magic being. I mean, all you
1:39:33
Speaker 1: gotta do is either plant this and you know and
1:39:35
Speaker 1: get your gun ready, or you gotta rattle a certain
1:39:38
Speaker 1: way and here they come, or you know, if you
1:39:41
Speaker 1: use this scent or this cameo or whatever else. I
1:39:44
Speaker 1: think I think most of us are smart enough to
1:39:45
Speaker 1: know that there's a lot of different ways to kill deer. Okay,
1:39:49
Speaker 1: and not everybody in the same area that successful uses
1:39:53
Speaker 1: the same equipment or hunts in the same way. But
1:39:57
Speaker 1: they may all kill for knife deer occasionally, well that
1:40:00
Speaker 1: that's because myths deer lived there, you know. But but
1:40:03
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean it just cause you kill one big
1:40:04
Speaker 1: deer one time in your life that that you even
1:40:07
Speaker 1: hunted the best way that day. Maybe you killed him
1:40:09
Speaker 1: despite yourself, you know. So so sometimes I think we
1:40:12
Speaker 1: have to take these individual, isolated cases of success and
1:40:17
Speaker 1: be and be honest with ourselves about it and say, look,
1:40:21
Speaker 1: you know this was you know, just cause some and
1:40:23
Speaker 1: so kill a big one doesn't mean that everybody needs
1:40:25
Speaker 1: to hunt the way he did. So I take all
1:40:28
Speaker 1: of these, you know, monka buck kills to some extent
1:40:31
Speaker 1: with a grain of salt. I mean, I know most
1:40:33
Speaker 1: of the guys that kill most of the very biggest
1:40:36
Speaker 1: deer they have ever been documented, at least that we
1:40:38
Speaker 1: can identify the hunter. I know most of the guys,
1:40:41
Speaker 1: and very few of them are Daniel Boone. Okay. They
1:40:45
Speaker 1: were in the right place, right time to kill a
1:40:46
Speaker 1: great deer, and they made it happen. They didn't blow
1:40:49
Speaker 1: it when he when he came out, they shot him.
1:40:51
Speaker 1: They got him killed. Okay, so good for them. But
1:40:54
Speaker 1: most of them don't put themselves forth as Daniel Boone either.
1:40:58
Speaker 1: They just say, look, you know, I did what seemed
1:41:01
Speaker 1: to work, and one day it was magic and it
1:41:03
Speaker 1: was my turn. Okay. So so when I look at
1:41:07
Speaker 1: my own tactical approach, I say, what the first thing
1:41:10
Speaker 1: I want to do is look for common denominators. I
1:41:12
Speaker 1: wrote an article a few years ago in fact, is
1:41:14
Speaker 1: that I think it's a good example of this. I
1:41:17
Speaker 1: look back at one season and I said, you know,
1:41:19
Speaker 1: in the last year, I killed four or five mature
1:41:24
Speaker 1: bucks on food plots or right next to food plots
1:41:27
Speaker 1: in the morning. Now, most people would say that can't
1:41:31
Speaker 1: be done. Okay, you can't. At no point, even hunting
1:41:34
Speaker 1: the food plot in the morning. However, I killed almost
1:41:36
Speaker 1: all these deer around the rut. And my take on it,
1:41:40
Speaker 1: whether I kill one, I kill one in Maryland, I
1:41:42
Speaker 1: kill one in South Dakota, I kill one in Wyoming,
1:41:46
Speaker 1: another one in Texas, another one in Kansas. I think
1:41:49
Speaker 1: that was it. And one year I killed mature bucks
1:41:52
Speaker 1: on food plots and all those places hunting in the morning.
1:41:56
Speaker 1: And most people would say that's a lifetime of morning
1:41:58
Speaker 1: food plot success. And I at it in like two months. Okay,
1:42:02
Speaker 1: now I'm not saying I did that, cause I'm Daniel
1:42:04
Speaker 1: Boone either, but I am saying that when I saw
1:42:06
Speaker 1: that pattern evolving in front of my eyes, I said,
1:42:10
Speaker 1: you know, there might be an article here. And what
1:42:13
Speaker 1: made me think it was an article is not that
1:42:14
Speaker 1: it was just one isolated, oddball incident of killing a
1:42:18
Speaker 1: nice beer. But in three different time zones over two months,
1:42:23
Speaker 1: you know, halfway across the continent, the same pattern held.
1:42:27
Speaker 1: And so I said, look, there may be something to
1:42:29
Speaker 1: this pattern. And here's what I think there is to
1:42:31
Speaker 1: the pattern. And I talked about the fact that running
1:42:33
Speaker 1: activity bucks coming back to circle back to food feeding
1:42:37
Speaker 1: areas in mid to late morning sometime looking for that
1:42:40
Speaker 1: last though, h etcetera, etcetera, And these were this all
1:42:44
Speaker 1: played into my success that one year. Um, And I
1:42:47
Speaker 1: didn't say, look, you can do this anytime you want to.
1:42:49
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, look, in one year, I saw this
1:42:52
Speaker 1: happen in a wide variety of situations, and these I
1:42:55
Speaker 1: think with the common denominators. So to me, that's the
1:42:58
Speaker 1: essence of the advantage of travel and the advantage of
1:43:02
Speaker 1: seeing all these different habitats is sometimes you do get
1:43:04
Speaker 1: to compare and contrast in fairly short order one place
1:43:09
Speaker 1: sources another, and you do see what the common thread
1:43:12
Speaker 1: seems to be of either success or failure. If you
1:43:15
Speaker 1: can do that, you might can help somebody that's hunting
1:43:18
Speaker 1: in one of those kind of places. And again you're
1:43:20
Speaker 1: talking about a number of different habitats and number of
1:43:22
Speaker 1: different latter cudes and launch cues. So then we're coming
1:43:28
Speaker 1: up on time here, Gordon. So I want to ask
1:43:30
Speaker 1: you one final question, and I want to kind of
1:43:32
Speaker 1: push you to answer the impossible as you just described that.
1:43:36
Speaker 1: You know, there's so many different ways that people can
1:43:38
Speaker 1: go about it. There's so many different things across all
1:43:41
Speaker 1: these different locations. But just hypothetically We've got a reader
1:43:45
Speaker 1: of North American Whitetail magazine who's hunted his whole his
1:43:48
Speaker 1: or her life, reading these stories, seeing these great big bucks,
1:43:52
Speaker 1: and they still haven't got it done. They've not been
1:43:55
Speaker 1: able to kill whatever it is that they're trying to shoot.
1:43:58
Speaker 1: So for this person, it wants to take that jump
1:44:02
Speaker 1: to now be targeting and actually successfully killing let's say
1:44:05
Speaker 1: the top ten of bucks in their area, so it's
1:44:08
Speaker 1: relative to where they're at. Is there one common dominator
1:44:13
Speaker 1: you could share, one common concept that no matter if
1:44:15
Speaker 1: you're hunting in Texas or Maine or Iowa or Michigan,
1:44:19
Speaker 1: is there one concept or a couple of concepts that
1:44:22
Speaker 1: you could share that could help that person make that
1:44:26
Speaker 1: next step up. Well, if if I make the assumption
1:44:30
Speaker 1: that the person will cash in on their opportunity when
1:44:33
Speaker 1: they get it, that what's not holding them back is
1:44:36
Speaker 1: the inability to shoot or to hold it together under pressure,
1:44:39
Speaker 1: But they just are not getting the opportunity. If that's
1:44:42
Speaker 1: if that's what's holding them back, you know, the one
1:44:45
Speaker 1: thing I would tell you is you have to be
1:44:47
Speaker 1: sure that what you're hunting is where you hunt. I mean,
1:44:51
Speaker 1: if you say that you know I'm just I'm a failure.
1:44:54
Speaker 1: I haven't killed at one fifty here in Georgia. Most
1:44:58
Speaker 1: guys in Georgia I don't care. And there's some lers
1:45:00
Speaker 1: here in Georgia they just there's not a one fifty
1:45:02
Speaker 1: where they hunt. Okay, So you have to and sometimes
1:45:06
Speaker 1: that means breaking away from where you your comfort zone.
1:45:10
Speaker 1: I think that's one thing that a lot of guys
1:45:12
Speaker 1: are unwilling to do because of whatever the scenario. They
1:45:16
Speaker 1: just feel like, well, this is my hunting club. I've
1:45:18
Speaker 1: been a member here for so long. I don't want
1:45:20
Speaker 1: to find a new club. I don't want to go
1:45:22
Speaker 1: to a new place. I don't want to quit hunting
1:45:23
Speaker 1: with Jerry, even though he smokes in the truck on
1:45:25
Speaker 1: the way up to the woods. I used, buddy, it's
1:45:27
Speaker 1: my brother in law Kent. You know, at some point
1:45:30
Speaker 1: you have to just weigh what's holding you back and
1:45:33
Speaker 1: if you really feel like, hey, there's one thing holding
1:45:35
Speaker 1: me back. The one thing we know is that if
1:45:37
Speaker 1: we keep doing what we've been doing in the same places,
1:45:40
Speaker 1: the chances are we're gonna get the same results. Right,
1:45:42
Speaker 1: So we've got to try something new, and sometimes new
1:45:45
Speaker 1: is it will scare people. You know, I don't want
1:45:48
Speaker 1: to go look for more land to hunt on. I
1:45:50
Speaker 1: don't want to go knock on doors. I don't want
1:45:52
Speaker 1: to do blah blah blah blah blah. Well, sometimes you
1:45:55
Speaker 1: just have the man up and say, you know, if it,
1:45:57
Speaker 1: if it means that much to me, I gotta what
1:46:00
Speaker 1: it takes to break out of the mold. And the
1:46:02
Speaker 1: mold is probably holding you back in ways you don't understand.
1:46:05
Speaker 1: So I really think sometimes you just have to say, man,
1:46:08
Speaker 1: I gotta be a lone wolf. I gotta go do
1:46:10
Speaker 1: it my way. I gotta hunt harder. I can't let
1:46:13
Speaker 1: my brother in law hold me back. I gotta go.
1:46:15
Speaker 1: I gotta push the envelope harder. And you know, and
1:46:19
Speaker 1: then but still hunting really really smart and be disciplined.
1:46:22
Speaker 1: I think if you do that in good country, you're
1:46:25
Speaker 1: gonna get a chance. Now what the deer is and
1:46:28
Speaker 1: as he busted up when he walks by, you know,
1:46:31
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, as he stopped behind a tree and
1:46:32
Speaker 1: you can't shoot him. I don't know, you know, those
1:46:35
Speaker 1: things happen, But I do know if you put yourself
1:46:37
Speaker 1: in close proximity to a mature deer, you've got a
1:46:40
Speaker 1: better chance than if you don't. And if you just
1:46:43
Speaker 1: if you'll just break free of what's been holding your
1:46:45
Speaker 1: back in some cases psychologically, but but often its location. Uh,
1:46:50
Speaker 1: you just got a better chance. I am twice as
1:46:53
Speaker 1: good a trophy hunter where there are twice as many
1:46:56
Speaker 1: big deer. I know that. That's the one thing I
1:46:59
Speaker 1: know about sophy. I am. I am just better when
1:47:02
Speaker 1: there's more to shoot, and so go where they are,
1:47:06
Speaker 1: and if they're not where you are, either grow them
1:47:09
Speaker 1: or go somewhere else. Those the things that in the
1:47:12
Speaker 1: end you'll be glad you did. Yeah, I can't argue
1:47:15
Speaker 1: with that. And I really like your advice when it
1:47:17
Speaker 1: comes to just breaking out of the mold. Um. That's
1:47:20
Speaker 1: one of those things that I think, even if you're
1:47:22
Speaker 1: stuck in the same spot, even let's just say hypothetically,
1:47:25
Speaker 1: for whatever reason you only have this one place to hunt,
1:47:27
Speaker 1: even if you just totally look in new ways of
1:47:30
Speaker 1: going about things, you're gonna learn something new. You're going
1:47:33
Speaker 1: to break out of the same patterns that maybe your
1:47:36
Speaker 1: local deer have patterned you on. I mean, there's some inherent,
1:47:39
Speaker 1: immediate benefits to just breaking outside of the daily routine,
1:47:43
Speaker 1: trying new things. Um, I think that's a that's a
1:47:46
Speaker 1: great thing for all of us to try to do
1:47:47
Speaker 1: a little bit more, because it is really easy and
1:47:50
Speaker 1: comfortable to stick with the same old, same old. I
1:47:53
Speaker 1: think all of us probably fall into that sometimes. So, Gordon,
1:47:56
Speaker 1: this has been This has been a lot of fun,
1:47:58
Speaker 1: it's been interesting. Um, some different perspectives here that I
1:48:02
Speaker 1: think are really helpful for us to hear about. So
1:48:04
Speaker 1: thank you for sharing all that. And then if people
1:48:06
Speaker 1: want to learn more about what's going on with North
1:48:09
Speaker 1: American White Tail the magazine or the website or the
1:48:12
Speaker 1: TV show or anything like that, where where can they
1:48:14
Speaker 1: go to to get that? Well, the simplest place would
1:48:17
Speaker 1: be North American Whitetail dot com. We certainly you know.
1:48:22
Speaker 1: Obviously the magazine is out there on newsstands and most
1:48:25
Speaker 1: people subscribe to it of our readership, And obviously the
1:48:28
Speaker 1: TV shows itself is on Sportsman Channel several times a week.
1:48:31
Speaker 1: So wherever you find us, we welcome you and I
1:48:34
Speaker 1: hope everybody has a fantastic season. Awesome. Well, thank you, Gordon,
1:48:39
Speaker 1: and we wish you the best of the luck of
1:48:40
Speaker 1: the rest of your hunts too. Thanks so much guys
1:48:43
Speaker 1: have a good one too, and with that we are
1:48:46
Speaker 1: going to shut this one down, so thank you all
1:48:50
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. And before we go, of course,
1:48:53
Speaker 1: we do need to thank our partners who helped make
1:48:54
Speaker 1: this podcast possible. So big thank you to sit Gear,
1:48:57
Speaker 1: Redneck Blinds, Hunter Ta Maps, Yetie Coolers, Ozonics, Carbon Express,
1:49:02
Speaker 1: Maven Optics, and the White Tailed Institute of North America.
1:49:06
Speaker 1: Also little uh, I guess favor to ask. I suppose
1:49:10
Speaker 1: if you haven't yet, if you could give us a
1:49:12
Speaker 1: rating or review on iTunes. That is a huge, huge, huge,
1:49:16
Speaker 1: massive help. It takes like thirty seconds to a minute,
1:49:18
Speaker 1: and we'd love to hear an honest review from you.
1:49:21
Speaker 1: Same thing goes for the Wild podcast, which we're continuing
1:49:25
Speaker 1: to produce. Is our Q and a shorter form show
1:49:27
Speaker 1: with the guys over at Drury Outdoors and they've really
1:49:29
Speaker 1: been having some good ones lately, so be sure to
1:49:32
Speaker 1: check that out and if you have any feedback, we'd
1:49:33
Speaker 1: love to see your review too. All that said, thank
1:49:37
Speaker 1: you again for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed
1:49:39
Speaker 1: this conversation with Gordon. I hope your hunts are going well,
1:49:42
Speaker 1: and I hope you will stay wired to hunt,