Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 591: Patterning Bucks During the Rut and Beyond with Jeff Sturgis

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Ep. 591: Patterning Bucks During the Rut and Beyond with Jeff Sturgis · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, home of the
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: modern white tail hunter, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon, and this week on the show, I am
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: joined by Jeff Sturgis to discuss this perspective on patterning
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: bucks during the rut and his process for dialing in
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: a plan at all other times of year. All right,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: by First Light, and we are wrapping up the month
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: of patterning bucks. You heard about how I pattered a
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: buck in early October. We talked to Mark Drewy about
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: his art form of patterning deer. We talked to Jake
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Bush about patterning deer on public land. And now we've
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: got an other mastermind, Mr Jeff Sturgis. And if you're
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: not familiar with Jeff, he's been on the podcast a
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: number of times. He's one of the best out there.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: He's written a number of terrific books on hunting mature
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: deer and habitat management. He runs the Whitetail Habitat Solutions
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: YouTube channel and website. He does consulting, he has online classes.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: He has so much incredible content helping folks fine dear
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: pattern deer, hunt deer, managed for deer, improved dear habitat
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff. Jeff is is truly um
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: I said, all right, he's a mastermind. He's one of
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: the people I respect most in this uh sphere. He's
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: one of the folks I've learned the most from and
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: just really really excited that he's here today to discuss
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: this topic and to talk about patterning bucks during the rut.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: How we can do that here in the pre rut
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: at the end of October, how that plan needs to
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: adjust as we move into November or wherever it is
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: that you have, you know, running activity, if that's January
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: and Alabama or just member in Texas, whatever. We'll talk
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: about what a pattern during the rut might look like,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: how to do that, and then we actually just dive
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: into the details of Jeff's entire process to patterning deer,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: whether that's in September or October, December, all points in between.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: We get into the nitty gritty, which I love doing
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: with Jeff. We talked through how to use historical data
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: and trends, history of what you've learned these deer do
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: in the past. We talked about how he uses sign
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: to put together the puzzle pieces, and of course you
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: can't talk about patterning deer without trail cameras, so we
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: dive into that. He's got a really great mock scrape
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: strategy that helps him get pictures and really get clear
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: data inputs to make these plans. So that is, Uh,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: that's what's in store for today. I'm excited when this
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: podcast drops. It is the end of October. The rut
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: is staring us right in the face. Man, I mean,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: is there any better time of year to be a
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: deer hunter? This is what we dreamed of. We're about
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: to step foot into the super Bowl. Friends. This is
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: what we've worked for. This is what we've dreamed of.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: This is what we've planned for all these days out
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: in the spring and summer. It's all let up to now.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: So let's do this. How about you bear with me
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: here for a couple simple kind of leading into the rut.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Words of wisdom from your old friend Mark Kenyan. Uh.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Number one, you heard me say this before. If you
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: listen to the podcast, You've heard me say all of
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: these things before. If you listen to the podcast, but
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: I want to you know touch on some of the
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: greatest hits. If you are hunting over these next two,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: three or four weeks and you're in the rut, and
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: you personally get into a rut if you find yourself
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: like torn, kind of confused, paralysis by analysis, stuck, not
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: sure what's going on, not sure why you can't get
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: on the deer, not sure why you can't find that buck.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Things aren't going the way you expected them to, and
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: you're kind of stuck trafficker out. What should I do?
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Remember at that point in your trip, in your week,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: in your weekend, whatever it is, step back to the
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: basics and remember the pillars of rut hunting success. Always
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: go back to this whenever you're stuck. Always go back
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: to the pillars and think to yourself, well does my
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: plan fit into the pillars of rout hunting success? Number
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: one one of these pillars hunt the does either dough
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: betting areas or dope food sources in the evenings, if
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: you're near one of those, if you're in it, if
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: you're just downwind of it, that is always a great
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: place to be during the rut. These are those locations
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: where bucks are gonna be traveling to, so are you
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: in or near a dough hotspot? Number two? If you're
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: not one of those places, are you in or near
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: a funnel something that concentrates deer movement. Maybe that's a
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: thin piece of timber. Maybe that is a piece of
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: high ground between two ponds and you've got a bridge
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: in between the two. Maybe this is a little, I
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: don't know, ditch with brushy cover that goes between two
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: big fields. Anywhere we're that buck traffic, which is increased
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: this time of the year. Anywhere that can be narrowed
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: down into a narrow sliver a smaller section is going
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: to help you find a buck as they are traveling
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: throughout the day trying to find those doughs ready to breed.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: So that's number two. Funnels, and then finally number three.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: During the rut, get your button one of those kinds
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: of places, and then give it time. Get out there
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: for as many hours as you can during the morning
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: through the middle of the day, if you can through
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: the evening. You gotta be there for the magic to happen.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: That's it. There's so many of the things we can
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: talk about during the rut, but if you can always
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: remember those three pillars, you're gonna give yourself a good chance.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: And I want to give you one other thing, one
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: other thing here. When it comes to the mental side
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: of the rut, stuff's gonna go wrong. Remember that, except
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: that be ready for it. You're gonna be thrown for loop.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Your plans are gonna fall apart. Something bad's gonna happen.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: You're gonna miss you're gonna get lost in the woods.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: You're gonna have trail cameras don't work, you're gonna have trespassers.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: You're gonna have something. Be ready for that. And when
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: it arrives, if you have already thought through these things,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: if you've already come to terms that there's gonna be
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: tough stuff ahead of you, you'll be better prepared to
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: push through that stuff, because now is when mental toughness
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: kills deer. So be ready and just push on through,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: grind on through the crap, because good things always lay
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: on the other side of those speed bumps, and finally,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: have fun, enjoy this stuff. We've waited all year. We
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: talk ourselves up, we we dream about these moments. Like
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: I said, already, it's a shame if you let the
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: rud arrive and then just stress out about the whole
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: time because you're out there all day and then you
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: were miserable because you haven't taken a break where you're
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: miserable because you haven't shot a deer yet, or you're
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: miserable because everybody else seems to be shooting a deer
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: and you can't find a single buck. Whatever it is.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Trying not to let that stuff ruin this thing for you.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Keep it fun. This is about fun. Enjoy the process.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: And if you ever find yourself kind of leaning towards
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: that over stress, I'm not enjoying this kind of feeling
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: and vibe, that's a clear warning. Son, Maybe you gotta
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: take a step back. Maybe I've taken night off, take
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: the family out to dinner. Maybe you need to go
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: meet up with your hunting buddies and just get back
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: to the commune and camaraderie of this. Maybe you need
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: to sleep in for one hour in the morning, get
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: your head right, have a good breakfast, take your kids
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: to school, remember why you do this thing, and then
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: get back out there. Have fun, be a human being,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: push through the tough stuff, stick to the principles. Did
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: you do those things? My friends, is going to be
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: a great Rutt, and I think Jeff has got some
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: other great advice for you as well. Today. I'm excited
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: for you tune in. I'm excited to hear from you
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: all in the coming weeks. I hope we all have
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: a lot of success stories to share. Uh. Speaking of that,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: make sure you're following me on Instagram at wired to
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Hunt if you want to see how my trips are going.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: I'm about take off for the big one week in
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: November trip. I'm gonna be heading to uh the ne Bbraska,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: and Ohio. So I can't wait to share those experiences
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: along the way. Check them on out over on I
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: G and UH. I will have the stories here in
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: the podcast as soon as I can as well. So
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: without any further ado, let's get in today's show with
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Jeff Sturgis. All right with me now back on the
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: show is one of our all time favorite guests, Mr
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Jeff Sturgis. Jeff, thank you for being here. Yeah, thank you, Mark.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: It's always great chatting with you and Uh. It has
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: been a long time. I don't remember how many times
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: have been on your podcast, but uh, I know the
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: years have flown by, but it's been a few years.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: It has been. I mean, you're one of the O
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: G s. Jeff. I think that I think you were
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: within our first five episodes, if I'm if I'm thinking right,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: I think you were within those first couple ever recorded.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: And I know you and I were talking and you know,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: doing stuff even well before the podcast even started. So
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: um oh yeah, yeah, I think well that my food
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: plot book was two thousand and fourteen and you wrote
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: the forward for that. Yeah, I forgot about that. That
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: that was a little that was eight years ago, just
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: right there, and we had been talking, you know, for
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: years before then too. Yeah. Man, well I've learned a
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: ton from you, and uh, I've always appreciated you coming
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: on here, and I always know this is going to
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: be like one of our best of the year, maybe
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: selfishly because I just love the way you think like
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: you you think about things, you process things, you approach
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: things in a way that very much jives with with
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: me and how I like to go about it. You're
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: you're super analytical with it, which which just fascinates me
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: the way you go about it. And that is why
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: I thought this series we're doing this month, that you
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: would be one of the perfect people for it. So
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: the series is you know, we're we're focusing all on
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: patterning bocks. Like the month of October. Everyone we've talked
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: to has been all about patterning deer and and this one, Jeff,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: that we're gonna do is going to drop at the
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: end of October. So when people send into this, yeah
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: it is, they'll they'll be hearing this, you know, hopefully
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: end of October or beginning of November. And I think
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: there will be some people who might say patterning bucks, Well,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: it's November. Nobody can pattern or buck in November, and
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: they might be thinking that this isn't for them at
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: this point. So my question for you is this to
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: kick it off, Jeff, can you pattern a buck during
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: the run, because a lot of people say you can't. Um,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: I sure do think you can. Now you know that
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: being said to me to really lock into a core
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: home home range, um, from whether it's mid October and
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: of October and then all the way through a lot
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: of times in early December, and and they'll spend the
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: majority of their time what I see in that location.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: And so in that respect, yes, you can pattern them. Um.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: You know, it's a little bit different than I think
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: every one thinks about patterning is these these bucks are
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: going to an evening food source in September and October,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: and you can pattern them that way. They might even
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: have them locked into their going to this betting area,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: which is a little bit more risky hunt. But you
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: know they're going there and they're betting there, they're feeding there,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: and they get locked into that pattern. But um, that
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean that they don't have rutting patterns and that
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: you can capitalize on and that they repeat every single year. Yeah,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: So how would you define a rutt pattern? Then? I
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: mean you used to give great examples of what a
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: September October pattern might look like. What can we realistically
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: call a rutt pattern or what's an example of something
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: like that. I still think they hit, They hit their
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: afternoon evening food source. That's a priority to them. And
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of people look at the rut
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: as a little bit more random just because you know,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Preussures applied hunting pressure in September and October and then
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Box seemed to find a way to gravitate towards those
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: food sources and habitats that they want to hang out
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: during that specific time and really hunting pressure, changing food sources,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: changing the quality of bedding, or the security of the betting.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: They'll move a long ways and I always look at
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: I call it the five percent club, but it's really
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: those properties five of all properties that really attract mature bucks.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: And so a lot of bucks are leaving their September
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: early October areas and going to these locations. There are
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: those locations that are capturing them. And then they're still
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: hitting their afternoon food sources on a somewhat regular basis.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: If there's water holes that they want to hit, often
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: they're hitting those water holes, uh, foods or water hole sources.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: And then at the same time, you really see the
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: same box being in the same smaller location between dough
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: betting areas and buck betting areas, so you really see
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: I'm hunting more and and really during this time some
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: of those patterns almost referred to it as vertical um
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: perpendicular for where you're looking at bucks are going straight
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: from not straight, but they're going from a betting area
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: to a food source. And then that can rely flips
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: around this year, this time of year where they're more
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: paralleling those food sources, paralleling those betting areas and and
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: so trails that you didn't hunt in September October now
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: become a very pattern of mole because they're they're flipping
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: around and they're going between those betting areas, between those
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: food sources. It's it's completely different game, you know, stands
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: that we don't even use the rest of the year. Yeah,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: that's a great point. I really like that that vertical
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: versus parallel or horizontal type movement is so true. Um,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: I kind of want to do I'm gonna do a
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: weird kind of chronological thing. I want to focus kind
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: of first on, you know, these rut ideas and the
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: I'm probably going to bring us back and ask about
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: some of the things that you're doing outside of the rut.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: But but real quick, if you had to pick like
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: the best time of year to have a buck pattern
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: and kill a buck on a pattern, what would that
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: window be where it's like the primo time to have
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: this kind of success. Is it like late October? Is
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: it right now or is it that early season time period?
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: What do you think or something else entirely? Oh boy,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: that's a tough one. Well, we're talking about the rut,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: so do we need to talk about the early season.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of like the early season. You
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: have a short window, meaning that um, it seems like
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: those early season patterns are fleeting, especially in your home
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: state of Michigan where the openers October one. Well, those
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: box change your pattern. It might not any have anything
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: to do with hunting pressure, but think about all the
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: hunting pressure that's applied. Well, when they get locked into
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: their fall range where they're really going to hang out
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: for late October, November, December. Then to me, that late
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: October pre rut time where those aren't necessarily ready but
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: the bucks are is just such an outstanding time because
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: they'll move a lot more. To me, they move a
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: lot more during daylight. They finally moved during the morning
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: hours sometimes to me, uh, several times more than they
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: do in the afternoon evening where they're more relating to
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: that food source movement. In the morning, it's still cool.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: They're still making rob scrapes moving around you the betting areas,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: and they still might not leave a ten acre area,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: but they're really active within that area. So to me,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: for a longer window of time, you have more of
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: a predictable amount of time that you can actually pattern
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: a box during that pre rod time, and then when
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: he gets into the rot he still could hold some
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: of those same patterns. But you know, let's stacey, he
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: could be on a dough mile oy that he's just
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: some ringandom chance that he's over there. Um, you still hunt,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: you know, you still can hunt those same patterns. You
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: can still kill that target buck um. But to me,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: he's in that window a little bit less time. He's
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: really consistent at the end of October, which might be
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: more like early November for someone in Kansas, Tennessee, Arkansas,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: West Virginia. UM, a little bit further song. Yeah, I've
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: definitely seen that myself in some places where you even
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: though there is the crazy rut stuff going on, there's
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: still a general kind of cycle that's that's happened that
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: you can kind of pattern, like like you mentioned that
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: doe betting area, checking doe betting to doe betting. You know,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: I've seen bucks repeat like Okay, they're gonna hit this
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: betting area and then they're gonna hit this next one,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: and then they hit that next one, and they're gonna
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: come through and hit it again sometime in the next
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: day or two or whatever it is. Of course there's
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: the chance to get on a dough and disappear for
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: two days. But you know, you can kind of develop
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: that predictive capability based on some of those observations. So
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: I guess that that is relevant because I'm I'm curious
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: what specific things are you doing that are unique to
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: this time period when you're trying to pattern and buck
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: during the rut, that that's different than what you would
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: do in September or October. Like, what's what is unique
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: to your rut pattern in development or execution for this
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: time of year. Boy, there's a few things, mark Um
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: I wish I had to lift, But there's one one
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: of the things that I think is really critical. And
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: we'll just start off in the early season. I'll notice
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: when it's really hot, when it's really windy, it just
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: doesn't seem like those boxes are moving during daylight. They
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: don't have to. Their big bodies, they have a lot
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: of fat on them. They're just putting on fat, and
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: they seem to be a lot more doscile. They're just
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: they're just kind of you know, you can catch them
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: in that pattern. But to me, when that weather really
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: plays an important role on how far they're going to
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: move during daylight and and and it's not that they're
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: you know, they're they're moving that much more. It seems
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: like it's just they might move ten minutes a half
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: hour before dark instead of ten minutes a half hour after,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: same movement, same amount of time, and it's just just
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: a little bit different timing where when it gets into
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: closer to the pre rod an evening hunt. For example,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: last night was about forty nine degrees when we came
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: in from hunting, and that's a really cool temperature. Um
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: it was it was after three days of warm up.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: We had some really cool temperatures earlier in the week. Um,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: I think a low of twenty seven in the morning.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: But deer are really active in the evening. And it's
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: almost like I don't really need to have that giant
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: cold front to go sit on a nice cool evening.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: I'll place more of an uh of a priority on
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: hunts in the evening that I wouldn't, you know, say,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: an average temperature day to the average highest fifty two,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: and so we have a day that's fifty four. Well,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: let's not that far off. And when you get into
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: the pre roun th box are active and unless it's
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: really hot, really windy, there something extreme going on. I
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: find that they're moving more during daylight, and so I'll
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: focus on more average days during the pre rod where
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't have sat those average weather days um during
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: September October. If that makes it so, that's one big thing.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: I'll start hunting a little bit more frequent. Those mornings
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: are really key on those cold mornings, and so I'll
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: start to flip the morning stands during this time of year.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: I've sat one morning now unless I have a box
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: pegged in the early season where I I really believe
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: that he's betting in this location. And I'll give you
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: an example. Let's say, uh would it's surrounded by agg
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: fields and one side is planted maybe in corn. Let's
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: say they're hitting the bean side. That's where they're at
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: every night. Do you think you can sneak in that
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: corn side? There's a ditch bank pack there, there's a
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: little mound or something where you think those bucks bad
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: and you can sneak in. Law you're sitting back in
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: the corn because they're not eating that corn. And on
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: October five and you're waiting for those bucks to come
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: back to you. That's an example of a really good
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: morning set up. Maybe you're walking through brush, non deer area,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: swamp water, you cross the creek, river, you get into
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: the back of the wood lot, and you wait for
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: those bucks to come back in the morning. That's that's
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: just a really defined use for a lot of people
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: don't have that opportunity. And I normally don't even around
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: here on the properties that hunt, So I don't hunt
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: a lot of mornings because evening can be so predictable.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Like we talked earlier, that's just they're doing this, they're
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: moving from here to here. But when it comes to
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: this time of year in the pre rod, we even
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: see on our trail cameras that that the box are
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: very active in the mornings. I saw one of the
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: five year olds this morning and moving across a small
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: food plot about an hour and a half after daylight.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: He hasn't done that all year. We haven't seen that,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: And so right now is when it really starts picking
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: up where morning opportunities are great. I'm placing a little
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: bit more priority on those average sets in the evening,
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: but I'm still looking at it that this is a
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: morning stand here, and this is an evening stand here.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: I think it's very important as people getting into November
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: in the rout that they talk about, you know, really defined,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: this is a morning stand, this is an evening stand,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: because if you spend all day in the morning stand
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: back in betting areas, those bucks are going to focus
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: on food in the afternoon, even if they're moving for
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: dos that's where the dolls are going. Then you're going
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: to spend half of your day in an unproductive stand.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: So I like to really focus on morning and then
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: flip around to hunt that evening hunt, even if I'm
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: sitting all day. Yeah, that makes sense. One thing that
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: I often think about is is, you know, when it
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: comes to the rut, is the speed maybe that's beat,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: it's the the duration of a pattern during the rut. So,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: for example, the opposite of this might be a September
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: pattern where or in October, let's say like late September
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: in early October. Here in Michigan, I had some bucks
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: that were, you know, very frequently mature bucks moving in
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: the evening in daylight out of a swamp into a
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: green bean field. And they would do it almost nightly
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: or every other night or something like that. And that
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: was going on for for weeks on end. I was
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: getting relatively consistent daylight pictures of mature buck doing this thing,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: and I knew, you know, until those beans changed or
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: someone went there and blew it out, he was going
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: to keep doing that. And so that was a pattern
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: I knew had some time on him. But on the
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: opposite side of things, when I see something pop up
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: during November, Let's say a buck shows up on my
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: cell camera and he's in a bean field tonight, or
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: a buck shows up on a scrape back in some
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: transition cover or something like that. My question to you
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: is how fast do you need to jump on a
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: pattern if you see something happened twice in a row
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: or two times in a week or something. How fast
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: you need to jump on something like that during the
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: rut or how long will it last? Because my my
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: assumption has always been like these things are very fleeting
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: during the rut um. Has that been your experience or
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: how do you look at the speed of taking advantage
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: of something you're observing during that time period. I think
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: it depends on the box. So now you you're talking November.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Let's say it's November five and you have a box
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: that you haven't seen all year. You maybe even knew
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: he was alive. You made it through the season at
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: trail camp Pitchers in February or whatever it might be,
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: you're waiting for him to show up. All of a sudden,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: he's there. Well, it's almost like he's told you at
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: that point of the season that hey, you're not you're
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: not right in the middle of my wheelhouse house, but
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: you're part of my wheelhouse. And I look at it
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: like you need to jump on that immediately. So if
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: you see him, he's there, he's cutting through this funnel um.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: Maybe you see him from a distance. You need to
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: jump on him right then, because he's going to go
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: back home eventually. He's going to spend the majority of
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: his time at home. And he's already told you're only
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: a part of my wheelhouse. You're not my wheelhouse, you're
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: not in the center of it. So you're you're on
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: the fringe area of his On the flip side. You
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: have this buck that you've been watching, and he's consistently
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: started to go hone in on your property more. October tenth,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: October fifteenth, he starts seeing him more often. There's more
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: sign popping up that he believes him pictures, whatever it
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: might be. That's that box that he's going to be
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: in your area half the time. So I'm not saying
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: you don't jump on that sign. I'm always looking at like,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: if he just was there this morning, I better get
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: there this evening if I think he's coming back. I've
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: watched five six year old buck go up with a
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: dough assumingly breeder in a certain betting area that he
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: went in one way because of the wind. I just
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: sit on the other side of that betting area, but
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: I waited for him to come back, and you know,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: come out, and he comes out that evening, so you know,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: you just have to jump on that right away. And
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: he might have been in back in that betting area
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: three days later or four days later. But that's a
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: case where a day, you know, the same day matters.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: So really, some of those bucks are there consistently. But
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: then you have some of those giants. There's one in
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: uh in Wisconsin I'm waiting for I've had one picture
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: of them so far. I know he's alive. I knew
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: we made it, he made it through the season, but boy,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: i'd love to see him and so when he all
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: of a sudden starts to be more consistent on the land,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: I don't want to miss out on that opportunity. Yeah,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: so that's that's not an uncommon thing to have, like
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: a a rut buck, like a buck who you never
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: see except for a handful of times during the rut um. Yeah,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: how do you how do you handle that kind of situation,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Like how do you plan or put together a plan
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: to hunt that buck or develop some kind of pattern
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: or idea for how to kill that buck when you
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: know that's the situation, Like let's say, like last year,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: this buck did that thing. You now see, Okay, he's
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: a rut buck. He list somewhere else, but he's gonna
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: come through, you know sometime in this window. Now it's
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: two you're expecting that to happen again. What was the plan?
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Maybe you can tell me about the specific buck, or
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: if not, just give me a generic example of what
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: you're specifically doing to a watch for him for when
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: he shows up, and then be how do you approach
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: it like in those following days, are you just gonna
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: hunt what he did last year? Or are you gonna
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: put out more cameras in the area? To try to
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: pick up on what he's specifically doing, or how would
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: you go after one special deer like that in that scenario?
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: What's I love that um type of scenario because a
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: lot of people look at it like um. They could
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: look at it like, well, I'm gonna sit every day
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: and I'm gonna shoot him or I'm gonna have an
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: opportunity yet and then and then wonder why they never
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: see him, and then other folks who might look at
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: like it's just a shot in the dark, you know,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: needle in the haystack. You know, how how are you
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: going to get a chance in a box that's just
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: a ghost and you're never on your lane? And I
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: would say about half of my amateur box the oldest
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: ones are have been those kind of box where they
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: live somewhere else. And the thing about those boxes for
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: two or three years, you might have two years of
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: pictures maybe even three that they you might have fifteen
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: pictures total, but they've told you that I'm gonna be
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: there in this window, be seen November three. He might
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: have had one picture. You might add another picture in
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: November tenth or twelve, and you know they're going to
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: be there during that window, they're going to move a
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: lot because they're already they're already moving wherever they're coming from.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: If those bucks are shown up in the middle of
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: the night once or twice in October, they're telling you,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: I live a mile away or a mile and a
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: half away. So when he gets to you, he's already
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: moving a lot, so you can count on him not
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: to just sit around. He's there for a purpose. He's
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: looking for dose. And so that makes me think that
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: I can sit on funnels in that area, whether it's
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: joining wood lots or a swamp edge in that area,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: areas that I can blow my scent safely somewhere else,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: and I can pick around and have a reasonable chance
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: of of shooting that buck because he's told me for
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: two or three years he'll be there, even if it's
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: just twelve fifteen pictures. And then when I look at
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: that window, he's there. During the peak rod, he's already
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: bred a dough or two back home, and so in
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: the pre rod he finds it. You know, all the
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: bucks get invited to the party. He gets to find
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: a dough. Every other buck gets to find a dough,
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: and then that second or third one comes a little
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: bit harder. They only breed two to four I think
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: in that first primary run, and that's any buck. So
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: that second or third buck he starts ranging out a
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: little bit more, and that's when you start to see
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: those trail camp photos. And in our area that would
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: be November two, third through the tenth, twelveth somewhere home there,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: maybe even the fourteen fifteen be towards on the on
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: the back back side of that window. Well, then if
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: he's coming a long ways and he's coming a long
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: ways from home to be there during that time, and
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: he's told you that for two or three years because
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: you just had a handful of pictures, maybe a couple
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: of sightings, well then he's not going to move over.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: When it's let's say northern Ohio, I don't know what
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: the average high is in early November, but I would
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: guess that it's low fifties to mid fifties, just just
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: a guess, maybe high forties, but somewhere around in there,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: let's say it's seventy five and thirty five hour winds.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: I just don't think he's gonna make that long track.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: It's too windy, it's too stressfully, can't hear can't see
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: as well. I just don't think he makes that that
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: long trek over to the land. If it's really really windy,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: thunder lightning, extreme temperatures, extreme wind, extreme snow hail, sleep,
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: whatever was, I just don't think he makes that track.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: So you look at that ten day forecast around there,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: from the second in November to the fourteen in November,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: and you say, you know, these are three or four
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: really solid cold front days, or these cold fronts passed.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: This cold fronts passed through, nice morning lows. The winds
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: are subsided, not necessarily, kind of like when there's a
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: little bit of wind, but instead of being thirty five
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: November winds, they're now twelve or fifteen hour winds or
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: eight miles and and so that that front has gone by.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: So I'm looking at like you could take that ten
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: day window and say, you know what, I bet if
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: he's here, it's going to be on one of those
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: three days. So then I put a priority on hunting
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: those funnels where I know that he's been around in
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: the past, making that assumption he's going to be through
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: that funnel, And it's amazing how you show up the hunt.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: One rolls on a good cold front evening or morning,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: and he falls right into your lap. Here a bucket
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: only after twelve pictures of over a two to three
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: year period, and you haven't even seen that year um
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: yet on the land. And then you check. You might
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: check the trail Cameron here. There's three or four pictures
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: on there that he's been around. But to me, it's
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: not that much of an needle in a haystack when
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: he's told you for two or three years you're a
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: part of my wheelhouse. When you can narrow down to
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: those good cruising days for him with the assumption he's
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: traveling a little ways to get there, and then you
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: can sit on some known rut funnels in that area
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: that are a little bit thick might be inviting to him.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: You know, he's actually probably be out through an open
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: hardwood wood lot or open field. He's going along a
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: thick edge somewhere, and then you're going in and popping
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: in for him and you shoot him, and it's it
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: makes it sound easy, but it's almost like you you
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: plan on that happening. He's told you he's going to
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: be there. You watch the weather, if you look for
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: the good days of set you go sit on a funnel,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: and you've done everything to prepare for that moment, and
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: it's really he hasn't told you he's going to be
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: there the seventeenth of December, or mid December, or even
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: mid January, or August or September, early October, even the
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: end of October. He's told you he's gonna be back
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: during that window in early November. He's gonna be there
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: during daylight. And you just narrow it down and pick
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: the right stands and you hunt. You can hunt three
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: or four steps for that box if you're just picking
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: around on those funnels, and you might find that you
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: moved by two of your other stand locations that day too,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: because he's moving around so much. So to me, you
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: hunt a buck like that and it becomes a lot
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: easier than you might think. Yeah, so you touched on
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: one of the topics I was curious about, and I'm
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: wondering if your perspective on it is different outside of
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: the rut. So one of the things I was curious
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: about is what happens in your mind when a historical trend,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: like an annual pattern, those dates arrive, but the conditions
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: don't match. So his window of of showing up for
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: you is usually like the seventh of the twelfth, let's say,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: And this year, though, the seventh of the twelfth comes
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: up and you've got high creddy weather. Um, so what
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: you just told me during the rut would be, well,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: you're gonna try to find the best cold weather days
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: within that window or close to it, because he won't
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: make that move on the hot weather day. Um. What
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: about if this situation, if this was a historical trend
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: we were trying to take advantage of not during the rut.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: So if this was like man for whatever reason, he
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: always shows up mid October and he hangs out for
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: a week or something like that, or maybe same thing
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: but December. Um, does the match between dates and conditions
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: matter more or less outside of the rut? Yeah, that's
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: a good question that to get depend on. You always
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: have to ask yourself why is he's showing up at
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: that time? Um. For example, we had a spot in
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin that we would have some odd box show up
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: in mid October. Well, then we found out the neighbors
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: from Chicago were coming over and that's when they would
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: go into their cabin and they had a big hunting
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: weekend and they were in the middle of a hunter
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: and sixty acres mostly open hardwoods or cabins in the middle,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: and they gross uh, side by side ATVs to their stands,
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: and it was just a big moment to push deer
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: off their land. And so if you knew that they
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: were there, we got to where we would actually drive
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: over and see if their date was open or not
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: to know what stands to sit in, because we would
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: make the assumption they're gonna push deer off their land
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: as soon as they came, as soon as they showed up,
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: as soon as they went hunting. And then in December,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: I see a lot of cool boxers. A buck last year,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: I was really hoping to hunt him, you know, shoot,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: even though I only had two or three pitchers of
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: them throughout the entire season. I shot him during the
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: middle of muzzleloader season in early December in Wisconsin, and uh,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: it was the first time I saw him in person,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: and I was just hunting late season food sources and
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: I was making sure that it was with muzzleloader. I
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: shot him at like a hundred nine yards. It was
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: a little ways away, but it was a spot where
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: I could let those food sources sit not disturb them,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: and uh, and just wait for that buck to show up.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: And there's one other one I would have liked of
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: shot too, But between the two of them, you're just
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: waiting for one of them show up. And so I
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: guess you'd have to ask for the conditions. And in
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: those conditions right there where they're on feeding conditions, Yeah,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: it's really windy and stormy, they're probably not out there.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: And um, and then in that early season, um, whether
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe they're making a transition from their their
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: summer range to their fall. Um, maybe they only stick
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: around because you know, there's a lot of people to
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: overpressure their lands. So this box shows up, they come
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: in and get a couple of sits in there and
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: spook them off. Um. You know, so there's a lot
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: of When I go to clients, it's always interesting because
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: it's kind of an interview of yeah, we have this
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: big buck that shows up now, And so you start asking, well,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: when do you hunt? When do your neighbors hunt? When
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: your food sources peak? Are your food sources dwindling at
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: that time? Do your food sources run out the end
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: of October? Um? You know, there's there's a lot of
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: conditions that you could you could really discuss and explore
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: with that, and that's part of the you know, like
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: you like to geek out that stuff too. It's kind
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: of like not just accepting that he's doing that, but
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: why he's doing that. And when it comes to that
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: that early November time, you know, I look at it
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: like you have about a ten day window, and and
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: you're gonna have about three really good days during that
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: ten day window. You're probably gonna have three or four
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: average days. I'd still hunt those average days, of course,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: and then you're gonna have probably two or three dud
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: days and not say you don't hunt. A lot of
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: people have a rudcation and they need to get out
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: in the woods. So but I would slant my best
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: efforts are best fans towards those best weather days, and
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: us you're just constantly picking around and and kind of
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: going in making like jabs, kind of looking at like,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: well this is uh, even though it's ten days, it's
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: still a marathon, not a sprint, and you're still making
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: smart decisions. So yeah, I guess we touched on a
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: few few things there. But I always ask yourself why
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: there's That's the fun part about it, is why why
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: is he showing up and leaving? Why is he not?
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: So speaking of one of those wise and a condition
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: of sorts that I'm always wondering about when I'm looking
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: at pictures or observations and I'm trying to ask why
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: was he here? And do I think he'll come back again,
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: you know, tomorrow or whatever day I'm trying to plan out.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: One of the factors that I always wonder how important
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: is is is the wind direction? So like, was he
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: here because it was a south day? A south wind day?
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: And do all my pictures of him in this spot
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: end up being south wind days? Or is there some
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: kind of correlation between direction and him showing up in
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: these places or not? Um? Do you look at wind
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: direction as being one of those big things that dictates,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: you know, if a buck will show up in a
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: certain place or bed in a certain place, or travel
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: in a certain way? Um? And how important is that
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: to you? And looking at a historical trend if the
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: wind direction you have coming up doesn't match even though
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: the dates match in history or something like that. Yeah,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: I love that question. One of the things I really
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: look at it. I look at it very methodically, meaning that, um,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: there's a buck moving in a certain area, whether it's
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: historical patterns that you've seen or you see current patterns.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: And I have two stands in that location, I feel
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: like I can get in and out to one a
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: little bit better from morning, want a little bit better
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: for evening. Maybe I get into them both from morning
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: and evening, and I'm going to pick out. Okay, I
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: want to hunt Thursday. It's a decent day, and I'm
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: going to go hunt to stand that's best for the
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: wind and hope to see him. And I'm not gonna
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: look at it like he's only moving in that area
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: on a south wind day or north one day. I'm
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: gonna look at more of the absolute or lowest hole
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: in the bucket, meaning that I only have those two
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: stand locations. I'm only going to hunt him when the
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: wind is good for each stand. I want to try
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: to shoot that box, So I'm gonna go in and
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: try to shoot him regardless of what that wind direction
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: is that I think he's moving on. I want to
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: just go hunt the stands based on those winds. So
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: then I just I never even consider that, um, that
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: he's only moving in the spot in the north wind,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: because I'll see the same buck moving the same spot
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: with even betting area locations. You'll move in or out
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: of that with different winds. And so I think you
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: get kind of into a trap where almost overthinking or
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: over analyzing that he's only gonna move on this wind.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: He's moving somewhere during the other wind. And so I
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: want to make sure that I have a south wind stand,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: and that means i'd hump this side of the betting area,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: and if I have a north wind stand, I'm gonna
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: hump the other side. You know, they're they're different conflicting winds,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: and that's what I got. You know, it's kind of
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: like these If I mean he's in the betting area,
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to miss the stop spot to hit
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: him because I only think he's moving on north winds.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: And uh, I'm gonna try to have stands for alternate
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: winds and just just chip away at him. And that's
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: what I've found. Just you chip away at him two
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: or three times and you get lucky. I feel like
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: I need to bring us back to the beginning a
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: little bit too, even better understand how you're getting some
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: of this information because I got ahead of myself a
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: little bit because of the rut. But but probably to
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: get the information that you're talking about, this historical information,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: these real time pictures, these observations, we got to talk
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: about how you get that data, um, because that then
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: gives you the tools you need to make a decision
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: on November one or October, November twelve, whatever it is. UM,
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: So can you walk me through what your process looks
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: like when you are trying to pattern a deer. Let's
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: just say the previous season had ended, it's the last
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: it's the first day of a new season, UM, and
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: in your mind, you know, hey, there's there's a buck
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: I know made it and I really want to kill
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: him in whatever so you want to be in. Can
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: you talk me through what you're doing throughout the year
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: to build or to determine what that pattern is. Everything
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: from what scouting matters in this patterning process to what
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: camera work you're doing matters for this process. Two, if
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: you do any observation stuff that might build this out. UM.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: You know, I know you're doing lots to have a
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: test that there's tons of other things you're doing, but
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: just specifically to the trying to develop a data set
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: to help you pattern on this deer. What does that
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: part of your process look like leading up to this season. Yeah,
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: that's a good question. There's um I again, I love
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: talking about this stuff with you, Mark, It's fun. But
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: the uh, there's you could fast forward that all the
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: way to write current in the season and all the
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: way to the last day. You know, the day after
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: this season ends. You know, for one thing, you're knowing
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: that he's there, and you know, knowing it easy or
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: whether whether it's by personal observation, troll camera or signed
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: and so you know a lot of times when we'rend
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: privately and around here, we know what bucks made it
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: through the season. You know, neighbors might share a picture,
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: you might see them, you might get your own picture.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: You might find a shed you always around. Then you
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: start thinking about all the places that you saw and
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: you really start to narrow down. Now, some people will
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: go to a go to a map, you know, I
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: use hunt Wise, I use Onyx, and you know whatever
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: someone uses. But you can start placing pins for those box.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: Some people take a paper map and they'll actually put
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: it on a whiteboard. Almost they're marking where they think
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: that Buck is I I just remember my head, you know,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: where where we've had pictures where we've seen them before,
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: and then I'm making a reasonable estimation when I'm out
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: shed hunting, walking the property in the off season, you know,
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: especially right after season ends, is what kind of sign
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: am I seeing to back that up? And you're looking
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: at like me and that you know, I've gotten pictures
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: of buck this certain buck here, and here, I found
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: a shed here, I got pictures here, and then I'm
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: finding this really good sign in between, and you start
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: to like put the pictures together. When he comes through
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: this area, he's moving in this location. And then you're
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: going into the season with how can I have a
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: plan of attack where I can hunt here, here, and
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: here with different winds. Maybe a morning stand here that's
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: closer betting, an afternoon stand here that's closer to food.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: You have that stand assemblance for that box, and then
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: you're actually going in and just chipping away at him
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: at that time where your pictures, your personal observations, the
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: signs popped up that you think is his, and then
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: you're just going and for me, I picked those better
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: weather days. So if I was going in for a
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: buck like that, then I want to make sure that
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: the wind is perfect, that the weather is decent, and
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: then I'm going in with all that leading up to it.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: I think he's moving through this funnel. I think I
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: can hunt this stand, and I'm not so much worrying about,
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: you know, what the wind direction is or anything like that,
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: other than I have these these three stands I have
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: set for this book. He moves through this area and
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: it's that time of year where he's around the signs
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: popping up. I'm getting pictures on whatever or historical and
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: so then I'm just making that methodical decision. While it's
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: a southwest wind, it's the evening stand I have. I
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: can hunt this one stand, So I go in on
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: it and I don't put much thought into it. I
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: kind of go at it a little bit more black
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: and white so that it doesn't cloud my my thoughts,
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: you know, you just just what I have. I'm gonna
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: go on them, and and that can even apply to uh,
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: Like there's a real nice buck to the shot. I
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: think it's going back to a little boy two thousand
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: eleven on public Land in the up of Michigan. I
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: went to scout for opening day of gun season, and
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: I'm way out in the swamps, raised to hunt on
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: public land, going about forty five minutes. My son Jake
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: and I were actually their last chant opening day in Michigan, UM,
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: which was a different story, but uh that. Uh. I
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: went in there and there are some giant rubs. And
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: when you find rubs out in the public lane in Michigan,
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: you start looking for bait piles. And if there's no
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: bait piles, then in these rubs are a few and
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: far between. You start to think, man, this is a
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: daytime pattern. You know, it's way out away from bait piles,
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: other people, other access points. You start to think, man,
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: this I could be onto something. So here I'm hunting
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: sign I'm hunting big robs, a couple of big scrapes.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking, okay, I can go through this marsh, I
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: blow my scent out. I can sit in here in
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: a little cluster of conifer. I actually took the boys
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: out on opening day with me, drug them back there.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: They were like eight and ten chairs and pop up
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: and everything. Sit there all day. Dante, my stepson, thought
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: he saw a giant bucket one o'clock in the afternoon.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: I didn't see it other than a body. He said
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: it was really big, and he's not one to make
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: things up. We said we had a four point walk
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: right bias. And so that was a Tuesday opener, I believe.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: And then two days later on Thursday, I went out
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: there and went out for a morning hunt, and he
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: ended up walking right into my lap. And I'm sure
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: that was the buck that was making that sign, ended
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: up being close to hunter point. He's beautiful. If that
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: was an example where I'm hunting sign, I'm hunting funnels,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: I'm hunting. This is what I have. I can hunt
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: with west winds. I don't care what you know. It
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: doesn't I don't know what windy's moving on, but I
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: can only hunt with westerly winds on the edge of
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: that swamp. I'm not gonna walk through this funnel where
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: I think he's moving through. So it worked out on
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: Thursday that happened to be a pretty good co front
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: that moved through Tuesday night Wednesday, so I went out.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: It was chili frosty and and uh, he ended up
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: coming right through to me, and that was I didn't
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: I didn't know what do you look like? Until literally
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: I walked up to him, and he was dead, you know,
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: other than partial mature antler big buck, you know, at
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: forty yards or whatever it was and shot and and
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: I got lucky and fun so kind of the same scenario.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: This is what I have for stands in that area.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: That's where I think he's moving. This is the time
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: of year. I have evidence these there, whether it's i'm pictures,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: personal observation. And then you're going in with your planet
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: of attack, being careful. You're not going in too soon,
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: You're not going in too often. Meaning I have some
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: people someone asked you that are day on YouTube. They said,
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: what what happens you want to hunt this box certain
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: stand location? What happens if the wind's wrong. I just
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: don't understand. I don't even consider it. It's it's just
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: something that I have. These three stands are good for
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: these winds. This one, these two are evening. This one's
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: morning wind, you know morning stands. And UM, and I
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: look at like, okay, when I get that wind and
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: that's a decent day, I'm going in for him. I
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: can't remember if we've talked about this, Jeff. If we did,
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: it's been a while. Um, what's your take? I mean,
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: you sort of answered this when I asked you about
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: that wind direction correlation or not correlation to whether they
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: moved there or not. But but a lot of folks,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: you know, talk about hunting spots where the wind is
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: right for the buck, where the buck can quarter in
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: or have the wind in his face, and then the
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: hunter tries to set up with a just off win
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: like a wind that's just gonna cut off the corner
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: of where they think this buck's coming. Do you do
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: you what do you think about that? Is that something
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: you I think we've talked about that. Now. If if
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: I had my preference, it would be a little bit
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: um in the buck faver where they have that assumption
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: of you know, it's kind of like when we're hunting
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: in the hills around here and we're hunting high in
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: the morning. He's got those thermals rising from below, and
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: I think he's walking because he has that advantage of
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: scent checking down down below him. Um. You know, he's
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: walking to a purpose like that, um and uh. And
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: so for the rock this ideal, he's walking between embedding
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: areas you can send check down below for a hundred
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: hundred fifty yards. But again I'm looking at that um.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: You know, a buck I shout out here two years ago,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: Kermit um there was. I went out to that stand
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: a day or two days earlier, and it's a stand
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: we called the Kermit Stand now. But I went out
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: to the Kermit stand. Had a reasonable expectation that he
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: would in this area based on trail cameras. I hadn't
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: seen him personally, and uh, we had trail cameras starting
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: the end of June, but I he wasn't. We didn't
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: have a lot of pictures of him, but enough to
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: know he was in this area. I was in his
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: wheelhouse and went out to that stand. And the wind
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: so imagine I'm looking into the woods, not even thinking
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: about direction or anything. I'm looking into the woods, and
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: the wind was kind of light, and it was going
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: like from left to right, a little bit of an
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: angle out behind me, if that makes sense. I'm looking
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: straight downhill into the woods. The problem is is because
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: it was forecasted to let's say, three or four miles
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: an hour at dark and then getting calm two to
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: three hours after dark, the wind always basically foreshadows what's
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: going to happen, and so I'm sitting there three hours
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: before dark, and I'm looking at like, Okay, this wind
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: is really good for favorable for him if he comes
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: from the right side. Where he comes from the left side,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: I'm on a bench point. There's a deep steep drawings
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: in front of me about thirty yards, so he comes
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: through this pinch. The problem is the closer it got
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: too dark. I knew as I sat there. I'm sitting
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: there three hours before and when the wind let up,
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: my sons starting to go right back downhill because the
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: carminals were gonna eventually pull it right downhill. So I
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: actually left that stand and went to another stand where
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: I could count on the wind in a better location.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: Went back two days later, and now the winds right
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: in my face, blowing right out to the field behind me.
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: So in that case, it's a ninety degree wind. Um
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: it's he would have had to move through ninety grees.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: He has zero, um zero benefit of that wind. But
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: I went in there and I ended up shooting him
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: that night. So it's kind of one of those where
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: if I got too hung up, but I needed to
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: hunt that quarter wind where it's kind of a grangle
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: and it's coming into his face a little bit. What
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: happened is after I shot him went down there, we
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: pulled that camera card on that scrape mock scrape that
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: I have right there. He came in that night where
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: I first sat. He came in from that direction of
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: the wind, and I think more than fifty chance he
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: would have winded me and I would have never shot
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: that buck. That would have been my opportunity. So if
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: I would have held on too much to that quarter
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: wind instead of just making sure that it's a safe
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: wind mostly and just hunt with what the stands I
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: had available, that I think, uh, I think I would
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: have ruined that hunt if I would have placed too
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: much for a priority on that. So um, again it
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: goes back to these are my stands. And you know,
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: of course, if I could move in and set up
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: you know, hanging hunt really quick and get that done.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: I've done that in the past, um and and had success.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: You know, it's crazy they did that in the past.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: And it was two thousand three, shot a real nice buck,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: and and it was I did a hanging hunt and
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: he came from the exact opposite direction. I thought it
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: all worked out. But you know, it sounds so smart
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: that I saw him go in here. I saw him
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: fight in the morning. I tried sneaking up on him
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: with my socks on, and frosty Grass got close and
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: didn't realize how close he was. He ran off on
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: another buck and the dough. They weren't a certain to reaction.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: I thought he'd come out a one betting area. It
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: came out the exact opposite. I happened to be on
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: the downwind side of both, you know, kind of that
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: barbell in between, and uh, and it worked out. But um,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: you know again, it was more this is the wind
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: I had for the conditions, and you just go go set.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: So you mentioned with that public land buck that you
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: had really used that sign to key in on him,
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: because you know, rubs are not a super common thing
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: in that big woods public land kind of stuff, So
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: when you see a concentration of him, it's it's it's
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: a particularly good sign. That brought to mind the question
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: for me of how helpful physical sign is to patterning
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: specific bucks, Like I know, like general sign will tell you, oh,
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: I'm in an area with with good deer, maybe like
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: if you're just trying to shoot a deer, but if
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: you're trying to shoot like the deer you mentioned. You
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: mentioned that sometimes you'll try to you signed to clearly
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: tell you something. But I guess what I'm trying to
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: get here is is what kind of sign or how
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: what level of detail have you ever been able to
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: get with sign tying it to a specific Bucks pattern?
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: Like have you ever found a unique thing on a
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: Bucks track and use that? Or have you ever looked
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: at rubs and said, okay, anytime I find a rub,
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: this got this super huge guage right down the middle.
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: That's got to be this one buck with a sticker
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: point or is there anything like that that you look for? Yeah,
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: I guess you know. With um just sign in general.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: I love historical sign and so when I'm looking for
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: where he might go through a funnel, UM, I want
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: to find old robs, new robs, and just something about
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: sign in general. When you're hunting public land, like I
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: I'm hunting big public land in southeast Ohio, um Shawnee
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: State Forest, Wayne National Forest, or uh, you know something
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: big like that, the rubs can be few and far
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: between unless you're near private land and they have food plots,
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: and so you you might be out there looking for
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: sign and you need to realize a big rob on
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: a funnel might be every two yards, like it wasn't
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: the Up of Michigan, where it's big, big open wilderness area.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: It might not be concentrated, meaning concentrated for that area,
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: where on private land that might be really clustered. In short,
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: I had a buck in the up of Michigan, um
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: going back early two thousand's maybe, and he had a
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: broken track, so on one of his tracks you could
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: tell his toe had had broke off, So it was
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: kind of blunt and uh and short, you know, half
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: instry corn. It was very distinguishable. And so I actually
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: kept scrapes opener patches on the land we owned and
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: out on the public land, so that I could when
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: he came through that area. It was very easy to
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: tell whether it was on our sand trails, on a scrape,
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: or on an open patch on a trail that was
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: in front of a tree stand that I had made
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: a patch. It wasn't even necessarily a scrape. Then I
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: could tell when he came through, and it was interested
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: him because when he came through, he'd come from the east.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: He'd go into the property, and then he'd go north
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: and and then i'd lose them. So it's almost like
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: an l of movement. And that l was half mile
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: that way in three quarters a mile to a mile
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: to the north, and so the pretty long area. It
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: was interesting when he came through, he kind of make
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: that whole loop. So I'd find this track here here here,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: and so again it was okay, I can hunt him
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: with this wind and this stand, this wind, with this
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: stand maybe more morning here. I thought he was coming
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: from the north, moving south and then cutting east, so
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: I consider that, and it was in the evening. I
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: shot him on the northernmost most trail right made a
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: clearing and I just found his track and I shot
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: him right on that same spot. Um with a bow.
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: I was a December time, and he ended up having
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: that broken track. And that's the first time I actually
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: knew what buck he was. You know, that was him
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: with the track, and it was a medium sized track.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: I would say that he was a two and a
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: half to three and a half year old buck. Um.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: In fact, I would I would lean or towards two.
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: Um at that time was about twenty years ago. So
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: but um, he was a you know, that was a
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: fun one. Gouges. What I really like is is looking
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: behind the rub and above, so you have the face
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: of the robb, i'd call it, and then you can
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: his antlers are angled, and so that upper beam that's
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: on the back side. That can tell you a lot too,
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: because you can start to guestimate about how wide that
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: buck was that made that rub. You can see if
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: there's any stickers or kickers. And when you're in an
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: area like some of the big wilderness, serious public land
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: that might not have as good a habitat or food sources,
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: then it's it's uncharacteristic to have non typical genes expressed.
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: When they're younger, they don't have a lot of stickers, kickers,
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: little forks. And so when you start seeing that in
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: some of those areas that are kind of remote, you think, man,
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: this could be a this could be an older box
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: just because it's got some stickers and kickers that aren't
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: that common and on those cleaner racks when they're younger,
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: and so something like that too, or I'm really I like, like,
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: I don't take a lot of I don't put a
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: lot of credibility and that that same box is gonna
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: go right back by that same rob. But it lets
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: me noise in the area, and then I'm back down
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: to hunting funnels and how can I get in and out?
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: I think people can get wrapped up and Okay, he's
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: got to be moving through here. But then you forced
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: to stand location because um, there's really not a good
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: spot to sat or you have to walk through that
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: area and leave your scent when you could shoot him
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: just as easy on a funnel nearby. Yeah, this is
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: this is kind of an interesting thing. I just realized
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: we've been talking about patterning deer for like forty seven
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: minutes give a take, and and we have almost not
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: talked about trail cameras at all, Like it's been kind
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: of referenced a little bit lately, but we haven't really
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: hammered it yet. That's kind of incredible that we've talked
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: for forty seven minutes and not gotten into cameras because
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: so many people rely on cameras almost for their scouting
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: and patterning. Um, so I'm glad that's actually been the
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: case because I think it's important to point out to
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: folks that patterning deer is not just a trail camera game. Right.
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: There's there's all these other things. There's the observations. There's
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: the history, there's what are gonna say, Well, yeah, you
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: know what's interesting. You might have trail camp pictures from
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: two or three years ago, but if you know that
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: box around you, for whatever reason, you've had the historical
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: movement and patterning, you just neem to always there to
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: go and kill him. I was gonna mention though, is
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: it's interesting you'll see uh, you know public land hunters
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: that do something a certain way privately and hunters that
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: do something and and I know, Mark, you've flunted a
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: lot I'm privately and on public land, and I know
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: you it's I know you know, it's darned hard on
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: both for different reasons. It's interesting. I saw a mean
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: going around where, you know, someone had eight camera locations
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: on a forty acre property or a d acre property,
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: and someone that public land hunts was saying, you know,
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: you know something making fun of that kind of like, yeah,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: let's let's pattern this spot. This is gonna be difficult.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: And you know, eight cameras on forty acres, you know
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: how many cameras ruin it for people? Meaning that they
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: go back, they can't leave them alone. They're they're going
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: in and checking them all the time, they're changing batteries,
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: they have too many a box TM, it can spook
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: them away. And it's really hard on forty acres because
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: if you mess up on forty acres for a particular
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: buck and you're using trail cameras and you're really pushing
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: things too hard, you have nowhere else to go. You
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: might not be back. You might not be back that
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: season where I'm publicly and you can at least go
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: a half mile away over here, quarter mile away over here.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: I mean how you can drive fifty miles away and
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: hunt some other spot. And so I'm not saying it's
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: easier on one day or the other. But I think
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: it's funny that you know, traill cameras can be picked
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: on a little bit um as it makes it easier.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: When the way a lot of people use them, I
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: think it makes it harder for them. They know the
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: bucks there um and but there's a certain percentage out
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: there or it can really hurt their hunt. Yeah, you
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: make a great point, and I guess that's you're doing
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: a wonderful job of helping me as a host here,
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: because that's a perfect segue to the next thing. I
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: think we had to cover. How do we how do
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: you recommend we use cameras two pattern deer and not
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: do what you just said, which is educate the deer.
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: Mess this up, make it harder than it has to be. UM,
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: I know you've I've watched lots of videos. I've heard
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: you talk about your your thought process behind placing cameras
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: where you hunt, like right at your stand locations, which
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: is another thing most people don't do. UM, could you
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: talk a little about your location choices and then how
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: you're doing that so that you get the data you
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: need to pattern a deer without educating him. Sure, I've
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: you know, and it's I really like, UM, And I
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: do this out on public land where identify a natural
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: scrape and a funnel that I want to hunt or
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: want to know about. You know, it seems like it
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: might be that X of movement between clear cuts away
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: from people, lay the land, uh pinch point of something,
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: and so you're you're putting a camera on a scrape.
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: But I'm I'm using those cameras. I would say, my
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: cameras are are within bow shot of my stand locations,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: and I'm doing that because I want to know effective
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: that stand location is for one. UM, I like getting
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: pictures at my stand locations. We use mock scrapes. But
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: I what I'm doing with those cameras, and I'm making
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: sure that they're not part of the picture, meaning that
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: they're most of the time there are six ft high,
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: or they're hidden back in a v meaning that um,
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: there's covering on both sides, the profiles hidden. UM, it's
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: just kind of like they're shining out in a cove
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: and there's really not much of a reason for you
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: to walk by. M C M. Notice some I'm using
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: blackout cameras so that um or low glow, so you
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: don't have this red glow UM. So that time you
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: play them high, you place them on something typically that's wider,
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: typically their profiles hidden. Then it becomes a non fact
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: to the deer. And then I'm only changing that card
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: when I actually hunt that stand, And it might be
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: that I hunt a stand, and then on the way
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: out in the evening, I know those deer feeding somewhere
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: all night away from where I'm hunting, so I might
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: change to other cards on the way back because it's
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: a similar access route. So I'm not taking this eleven
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: o'clock drive on the a t V to go out
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: and change trail camera cards. I'm keeping the cameras hidden.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: And then what I really like about that is when
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: we use a mox scrape and it's right at that location,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of times you have that buck come in,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: they're focusing on that mock scrape. They're they're literally staring
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: at the scrape. They don't notice the camera, they don't
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: know this us in the stand. And whether that's a
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: natural scrape that you're hunting on public land or a
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: mox scrape on private land, it's a really good tool.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: I mean even for younger hunters or inexperienced hunters where
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: you can actually have take the focus away from them
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: potentially moving in the tree and a deer looking up
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: at them when they're really focusing on We see those
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: and pons focus on those scrapes just as much as
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: those those bucks that come through too. Yeah, kind where
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: uses cameras? You know, I I use him at I
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: like having him at the stand locations. And at the
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: same time, you know, of course cellular cameras um are
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: our big advantage, but it can can aggravate you because
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: you're hunting one spot and last night Dylan and I
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: were at one stand hunting and the buck were afters
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: at another stand, and when he left that camera, I
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: didn't even tell Dylan til later. We're both hoping each
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: show up, obviously, but if he would have come our way,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: we've got another one or two pictures of them, and
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: by him only giving us one picture, that means he
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: turned left and went away from us. So it can
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: be frustrating because you know, unless you make some giant
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: loop or something active, god happens, he's not He's not
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: coming our way, so or he's there and it's close
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: to dark and he's not where you're at. I want
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: to come back to the cell camera thing, but before that,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: I want to touch on the mock scrape thing a bit,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: because you you have a unique approach. You've done some
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: great videos on it. So I definitely recommend folks that
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: if if they hear about this and they're intrigued, they
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: should go to your YouTube channel watch the videos. But
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: could you give us the quick cliff notes on that again,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: just in case someone hasn't heard you talk about this
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: in the past. How do you make these mock scrapes?
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: It just seemed so they seem particularly effective for getting
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: these deer to stop in front of that camera and
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: give you that information you need, you know, for patterning
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: or a shot. Well there, Yeah, there are a lot
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: of fun and um you know, I kind of stumbled
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: upon it because in the past there's people like Tonio
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: la Pratt in southern Michigan, I would say late nineties,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: early two thousands. Um, there are other other individuals to um.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: I want to say bow hunting told the Wenzel brothers
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: might have used this in the past two maybe that's
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: where Tony got it from. But anyways, they're using a
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: rope um and hanging up for um a branch And
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: so I'd see these ropes in the early two thousands,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: and I'd go to start going to properties and I'd
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: see I went to one property, they literally had five
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: scrapes on two acres and they're all robe and a
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: few of them are getting hit here and there, but
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: nothing really that jumped out of here. And then I
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: start seeing these. Some of my favorite natural scrapes I
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: see on client properties are scouting in general for myself
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: are our vines that are hanging down and it's just crazy.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: And some of the first scrapes I ever saw back
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: in the eighties, back in Clarkston in Michigan, in that area.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: Now it's all deerwoods estates and subdivisions, but you had
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: these noles back in the hardwoods. I didn't even know
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: those scrapes where I had to show a guy out
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: bigger from church, So what are these like these deer
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: around here, like those are scrapes or making them under
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: those vines and so anyways, I got the idea of
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: just hanging those and who broke jackpine branches in the
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: up and Michigan and then hanging those vines. And what
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: I found was is that when you put a camera
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: on them, we'd hang these vines and more of a
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: deer trail area, not off to the side of the
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: traditional scrape at the edge of the like at the
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: edge of the field. We put it where they're coming
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: in and out in the trail or on a funnel.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: And every year that walks by, because it's right in
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: the trail, we hang him at waste time. Instead of
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: a traditional looking branch, it's chest tie where a buck
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: would mostly hit. So then when they come by and
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: it's about waste tie, it's right in the middle of
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: the trail, we have dose fawns and box leaving their
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: scent on it, the preor oble to gland scent every
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: time they come through. And so then to me, the
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: more scent that included on that, the more deer hit it.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: It just becomes a part of their travel pattern. And
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: I really strongly feel that. You know what, when you
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: have a scrape like that and it's a vertical scrape
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: paint over a branch where all deer can participate, then
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: including phones, we have some really cool lots of footage
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: of fawns coming in and dancing around the scrape, playing
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: with it, going back. You can imagine this fall. It's
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: not even two months old. They don't even know what
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: all those smells are. Their tails are flickering, they're curious,
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: they run around, they come back to it. But when
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: every deer's leaving their scent there, you can take four
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: or five trails Nario and narrow it down to one
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: where that's where they're going to go. And so then
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: we put a camera on it. What I find is
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: during the summertime, well I'll have cameras on my cruising
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: scrapes just to know when a buck comes through. They'll
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: always tell you they're alive, you know, meaning that maybe
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: they only come through once in July, a couple of
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: times in August, couple of times in September, but they'll
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: come through that that funnel where you expect to shoot
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: him in the fall. And so all of a sudden
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: he comes through. Anything. Man, that's that buck. I want,
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: that's him, that's that target buck. And he's he's coming,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: he's licking at and then I think he likes all
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: that smell. I' it's you know, we we can't comprehend
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: their noses. You know, we go buy and smell bread.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: They go buy and smell the ingredients and approximately which
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: one stronger than the other. So they're they're they're completely
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, think about a beagle where they hit a
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: track of a rabbit, no snow, no rain, no mud,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: and they know exactly in the moment which way to
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: turn and follow that rabbit based purely on set. So
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: their noses are so unique. So they go by and
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: they small these liking branches and those that peri over
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: the gland scent. To me, it's that accumulation of all
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: those gear together, and so they're about waist high I
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: hang roast those branches like jack pine up north vines
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: down here. Um oak branches work really well. It's anything
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: that traditionally gets rubbed quite a bit or scraped under
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: hemlock in some areas well. Then I'm hanging that. Usually
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: there are five to seven ft long. I'm hanging them
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: from a rope a branch. Typically, if it's really open,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: say you're hanging it like in a two track area
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: where there's a big hardwin on both sides, not a
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: lot of branches. I might make that vine or branch
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: more like eight feet long seven or nine ft, and
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: then I'll put a rope um twelve feet up in
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: the air or thirteen feet up, stand on the back
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: of the tailgate of the truck, or use the steps
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: on a from a ladder to get up a little
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: bit on either side. And uh and so it looks
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: more natural. You don't want to have this one ft
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: piece of vine just there. I think that's unnatural to them.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: So a little bit longer when it's more open like that,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: but we're usually using three quarters of an inch to
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: an inch. It seems like smaller will still attract them,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: but it's not as visible. But it'll break and then larger.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: At some point it's just too big, you know. Uh,
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: it was a baseball bat hanging there. They might rub it,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: they might not, but it seems to be that sweet
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: spot that we found about three quarters of an inch
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: to an inch. We've had those scrapes last for five,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: six seven years before we've had to change them, and
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: so it it's crazy. We have footage of box mature box,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: five six year old box that go up to those
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: and after they leave their scent on it, they literally
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: moved their antlers away from the scrape the licking branch
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: and keep walking as if it's sacred or something. They
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: just left their scent. It's a former communication and so
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: it's really cool to watch the behavior of the box
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: around there. You can you know, they can regressive for
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: about ten days out of the year, maybe another week
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: during the second roun, but other than that and might
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: have some snap but for the most part, um they're
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: leaving them alone, they leave their scent. They might play
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: with them hard here and there during the peak of
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: the rut or right at the pre rod or something,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: but for the most part, it's crazy to see the
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: number of bucks we have that literally move their head
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: away from it to walk around, and they know exactly,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: of course how wide their antlers are, just to not
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: touch it with their antlers after they left their sun so. Um,
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: we usually put them in definitely on a flat surface
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: within shooting distance of the stand location. And I'll start
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: those a lot of times in May, June, July, and
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: cleared out three or four feet, kick it down door.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: I'm kicking out ruts and everything with my feet. Um.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I'll actually pee on the scrape when I leave.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: Sometimes they don't, and and then we put a camera
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: on it and see what happens. Yeah, it's interesting you.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: I think a key thing to point out is that
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: you're saying that not only do these mock scrapes help
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: you get the pictures to confirm you know there's deer here,
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: but it's been at your experience. This is actually tightening
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: the funnel of deer movements. So not only are you
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: identifying when they're coming through more often because this camera
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: location is so great, but it actually is a draw
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: that takes what might have been four trails that buck
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: might have possibly taken in an area, and now instead
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: he's almost always taking this one. So it's it's giving
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: me giving you grant great data, and then it's tightening
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: and making the data coming through even more consistent because
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: it's an attractive location. Um, So that's and two two
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: things with that too, markets what's cools. We've had some
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: mature box we've never had on a scrape, a scrape
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: that's only two months old, and they'll literally will see
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: them walking from it away with their head pointed right
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: at their nose pointing at the scrape like they can
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: smell it or see it at night they can smell it.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: They walk right to it and work it like they've
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: been doing it all the time, and it's it's really cool.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: And I was just gonna mention now. The second cool
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: thing is that's free except where we figured out I
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: think it was likety cents for a parachute cord for
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: ope usually on average, so it's next to nothing. We
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: don't use any scent. But it really is cool how
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: they'll see that from a long ways away and just
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: come right into it like they've been, you know, first time.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: It seems like the first time anyway, So here's here's
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: the next question. Then, though, what if someone's listening today
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: on October or November one or something, and he hears
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: this and he's like, oh wow, this sounds like a
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: great way to get better trail cam data or or whatever.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: We've talked about the various benefits. Um, is there any
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: way to use some portion of your mock scrape strategy
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: still at this point or is it too late? I mean,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: what's your what's how would you approach this if you
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: were starting now, like you're on a weeklong rut caastion
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: and you don't have these places all set up, but
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: you've got four cameras in your truck, and you showed
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: up at your lease with a seven day period ahead
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: of you, and you're thinking, man, I gotta get some intel,
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: and maybe for whatever reason you don't have stuff out already.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: Is there some way to put up new mock scrapes
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: right now, put your cameras on and still get some
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: available intel for the next few days or is it
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: too late for all that? Yeah? Definitely, and especially if
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: you're putting cameras out already. To me, the disturbance of
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: putting a camera out, you might as well hang a
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: mox scrape if you can, you know, especially if it's
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: off the branch um. We're cutting a fresh vine or
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: a fresh stick, trying not to put your handprint down there.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: That can stay there for a while, but we've had
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: deer hit it within a day even with doing that.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: And then we're putting it right over a trail fare
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: we expect to shoot a deer hou we're putting it
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: in shooting distance from that stand. So if you're going
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: in to either do a hanging hunt or put a
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: trail camera out, then you might as well throw a
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: mock scrape out there, especially if it's before a lot
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: of rain, you know, true, if it's if it's moist
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: or damp out, then that's I used to warn beetles
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: a lot well that was that was a great scenting
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: condition for the dogs. It was damp, wet, snow wet ground.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: But when it becomes saturated, there's a lot of rain
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: that washes sent away. So there's that tipping point. So
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: if you see that there's really good in coming, what
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: a great time to go out right before that rain
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: and put your mock scrapes out and make them look natural.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: Of course, that's why we're using longer vines, longer branches.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: We always recommend at least five to six feet, but
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: when it's an open you know, seven eight feet and
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: uh about waist high right in the center of the trail.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: Just scratch up a big area. If I scratch up
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: a big area of the stick, I throw the stick
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: in the brusher. I take it out with me. If
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: I clear any branches for that camera, I take those
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: out with me. Try to use the saw grab with
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: one hand, cut with the other. But UM definitely can
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: get those out now. If you're going back into your
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: favorite run stand in the morning and you haven't been
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: there all year, and you have high hopes and you're
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: getting into that stand, I wouldn't take the time to
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: go put a mock scrape in that situation. But there's
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: definitely whether it's on the edge of a food source,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: or you have rain coming, or it's in an area
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: that's well away from betting your feet and you can
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: get into on the side of that movement. Add that
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: make an addition real quick, not leave a lot of
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: scent behind. UM. I would say that in most locations,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: you'd say about those areas you could you could add
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: a mock straight right now and get us out of that.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: If you're careful. That raises another question when you bring
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: up this idea of you know, going into a spot
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: to hang a camera, and in my mind, I'm thinking
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: about the impact you're making to hang that camera. And
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: one of the you know, one of the things you
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: talk a lot about is in a trail camera strategy,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: you know, not letting those cameras hurt you by going
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: in to change batteries or SD cards or whatever too
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: often or at the wrong times. And that's why you
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: put these at your hunt locations and only check them
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: when you're gonna hunt. But you mentioned this earlier. Cell
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: cameras have changed the game. How do you utilize cell
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: cameras two pattern deer differently than with traditional cameras, if
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: at all? Do you play them in different kinds of places?
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: Do you value that data differently? Is there anything different
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: with your cell cam tactics versus traditional Um, I'd say, boy, there,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: I think with the cell cameras the only way it'd
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: be a little bit different as I have a tendency
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: to place still cell cameras in locations where I can't
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: where I'm I'm not going to walk by, I'm only
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: going to go in there and hunt that location. It's
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: a pretty remote. We have one cell camera here in
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: Minnesota that's in a spot where we just can't hunt,
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: and so we pack it with fresh batteries before the
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: season begins and let it ride and it's on a
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: natural vine scrape that's hanging down and uh so I
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: just I have that there just because it's good for inventory.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: It's a cool spot. In fact, Mark you were there
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: because I threw a track on the side by side
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: right down there. It was down there, that exact location.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: I we threw a track. I threw a track, Mark
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: and Dylan just just watched me, uh being idiot. But anyways,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: but it was we had fun. But uh but regardless
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: of it was, Um, that's the one spot down there.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: But for the most part, I'm putting my cell cameras
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: in a little bit more invasive areas where it be
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: harder for me to change batteries and cards. But overall, um,
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: it might be that you know, you have six cameras
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: three or cell camera three or not, you have nine
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: cameras three or cell cameras six or not or four
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: or five, whatever it is, I put every other one then,
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: so I'm using them purely for inventory. I just want
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: to know more immediate. Obviously, you can make hunting decisions
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: more immediately. UM like that, So are a little bit
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: different than a regular cam. UM. But the regular cam
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: two is we get to see that buck behavior. We
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: get to see a little bit clearer picture of exactly
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: where they're coming from and going to. We get to
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: see that behavior around the mock scrape it else if
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: they're being really aggressive or not, I can tell you
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: about the personality of a book a little bit differently. UM.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: You might have one that comes in super aggressive. Can
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: you imagine going out and sitting that evening and using
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: a grun call or something. He might come right into
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: it because he's aggressive. Or you may have one that
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: seems super shy and comes in and just barely touches it,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: kind of as you can tell he's timid. You can
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: see those things with video on our regular trail cameras, UM,
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: where we get a fifteen second, ten second or twenty
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: second clip, or a cell camera, you can't see some
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: of those behaviors. So that's why I still like both. Um.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: They're both both fun, and I think the differences. You know,
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: a cell camera might use it a little bit more
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: of an invasive spot. Yeah, so here's a scenario that
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: I think has popped up more often now. Well, absolutely,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: it's popping up more often now that people have cell cameras.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: There's you know, let's say we're in the season and
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: we have this plan. Um, we have a pattern that
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: we've been kind of working on based on all these
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: things that you and I have been talking about. Maybe
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: there's a window when we know he traditionally starts to daylight,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: and we've got some stuff set up to hunt there,
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: and so we're kind of waiting for that window to
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: show up, or or the right conditions to appear, whatever
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: might be. But what happens if he daylights all of
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: a sudden you get a daylight photo of him and
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: you weren't expecting it. Some would you How do you
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: value a single daylight photo? Do you say, oh, he
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: daylight last night, so immediately the next day you gotta
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: go in there and try to hunt him the next morning,
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: the next evening. Or if not that, what how do
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: you use that or what do you need to see
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: an addition to the simple daylight activity to move Yeah.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: I really like that strategy because again it goes back
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: to the y question. Um. For example, sometimes we'll get
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: a daylight picture of a buck and he's hurrying through
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: and it's on Saturday at nine o'clock and we're next
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: to public land or next to our property. There it
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: might be someone honey invasively. And I'm not saying he's
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: not coming back, but why is it they are at
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: that time? Or maybe this is a traditional time. You're
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: waiting every day from the move in, and then when
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: he moves in and you get that daylight picture. Well,
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: if it's daylight, let's say he's going to a spot
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: and it's um six forty in the morning, it gets
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: shooting light at five to seven, so fifteen minutes later
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: may mean he didn't have enough time to cross a
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: big field or open hardwoods to get back home. So
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: then you ask what betting areas in? And isn't it
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: you know I have a stand here, I have stand there.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: It's again, it's kind of like you went into this
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: betting area you're about because you don't think he could
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: go anywhere else in that time frame. He's probably pretty
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: close because he's going to bed soon and uh, and
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: then you're going in and saying, well, I have this
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: camera for the or this stand for this win? Did
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: this stand for this win? You're making that game time
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: decision no different than UM. You know, he comes out
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: of a certain area in the evening, it's daylight, and
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: you think, dang it, that buck was in that betting are.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: He had to be because he and move where where
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: he came out of. There's no way he could have
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: moved that far to get to that location from any
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: other direction. He had to be betting there. Well, then
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: as he dived in bed there the next morning, there's
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: a good chance it's not, but it's you know, maybe
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: chance for twenty it's good chance whatever it is. So
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: then if you have a stand that you can take appropriate,
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: you know. And that goes back to I don't it
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter to me what way the winds blowing, other
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: than I have a stand for this wind. It's on
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: the edge of that betting here, I'm gonna go on it,
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: you know, and make that decision. That and so that's
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: how I use that, UM like a cell camera to
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: that effect. UM that that But you know, I'm trying
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: to think of, trying to think of I've had stands
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: where or sits or locations I've funted specifically for that.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: It always it always seems like when I go in
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: there that time, that I don't shoot him, I end
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: up shooting the next day or the next day on
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: a different stand nearby, a on a funnel, just kind
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: of looking at it like well, I'll hunt here and
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: then i'll hunt over there with the wind, and and
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: then all of a sudden you shoot him. And it
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: was on a on a spot. You didn't even have
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: a picture of him. You just knew he was home,
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: or he knew he's back on your your property. You
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: said kind of along these lines. You said something earlier
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: about how you know when you know a bus in
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: the area, either with the cell camera picture that tells
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: you he's here, or a historical trend that tells you what,
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: I know he's in this zone during a five day
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: window or something. You've you've said this twice, I think
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: where you say you'll take two or three stabs at
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: him and kind of like you know, poke around, take
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: two or three stabbs, poke around. Do you typically do
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: like a cluster of sits like that? Is that a
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: thing like you're doing on purpose and you're not doing
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: an isolated hunt? If you if you think he's in
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: the area right now, you're gonna actually say, well, I'm
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: gonna hunt him three days or two days, so you
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: you you poke around several options so that eventually one
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: of those three times you intercept him. Is that Is that?
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: Am I reading that right? Is that on purpose? Or yes? Yeah,
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: there's not necessarily on purpose, just more opportunity. Where typically
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: I'm clustering stands. So if it's good enough for one stand,
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: it's good enough for two or three in this area
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: this five or ten acres, and so I can come
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: into this stand from this angle, and then I can
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: come into the east two from another angle. Out of
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: those two ones of morning stand, one's an evening stand.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: For these reasons, um or or the winds, for example,
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: especially around here with the thermals, I can use this
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: with a um let's say a south wind, and then
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: because I'm on the side of this ridge, it'll trend
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: downwards at night, so I can use that. But if
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: I use that that stand in the morning with the
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: south wind, it's gonna stay up top on the ridge
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: where the deer are and all. If that makes sense.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: But we'll we'll have stands like that that. Yeah, this
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: one's better towards morning. This one's better than evening towards evening,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: and so I might have two or three stands in
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: that spot. And so then I'll look at Yeah, I'm
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: I'm getting northwest wind, cold front winds. They're turning westerly
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: to southwest, and then it's going back to a stable
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: wind for three days of the south southeast. And so
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: they're right there. I know this bucks in the area,
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: and I can go in and hunt them on northwest
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: wind here in the morning, hunting on a southeast wind here,
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: and I'm gonna southwest morning stand coming in from this one.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: And so you're kind of chipping away at them, and
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: each one to me because you might find the you know,
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: if let's say you have cameras and you pulled cards later,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: he walked by two out of three of those stands.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: Almost every day you're in daylight, it's just a matter off.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: You're making the smart decision of which I wanted to
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: hunt by wind, not wrapping yourself up too much that
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: I gotta hunt this standard that stand, just looking at
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: more methodically that you're you're hunting those clusters stands by opportunity.
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: You can get in and out pretty low impact. You're
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: not putting one stand in the center of that spot
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: and going all in for broke, because then you have
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: a lot of you have more probably more chance you
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: spook them than not. And now you're now you're done
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: for that buck. So I'd rather lightly take a jobs here,
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: take a job there, and uh, overall your your your
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: odds are really good. Um, you know you're taking a
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: job every time job instead of going off for broke
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: at losing them. If if the wind is the same,
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: let's say over a three day period and you've you've
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: determined you want to start taking some shots, you you
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: just describe a situation there where you bounce from this
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: stand to one little over to one that's a little over.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: Is there ever scenario where you'll have that same wind
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: and you've got three days with decent conditions, you know
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: he's in the zone. Where is there a scenario where
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: you say, actually, just staying in the one spot and
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: hunting all three days in that same spot is the
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: right approach because you know that he might not show today,
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: but I know within the next three days he's eventually
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: going to come through here because I have this pattern.
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: Is that ever I think it depends on the stand location.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: So some stands are more invasive than others. Um where
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: you know, getting down here, it's a little risky getting
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: in or out, and so in that case you might
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: you might take a different approach where, yeah, you have
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: this cluster stands here, you go in there and hunt it.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: But it was pretty invasive. Maybe even spooked the dough
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: or fallen or something else. You know something that ran
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: um a couple of dolls that come in a young buck.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: Do you think, man, I might have buggered this area up.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: So instead of just going back and sitting in there,
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: I'd rather go on a an adjacent stand that might
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: be two hundred yards away. Three hundred yards. Well, if
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: I spooked him here maybe and it was light, meaning
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: like I didn't spook camp, I spooked another deer, kind
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: of buggered up that area, Maybe I'll go two hundred
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: yards over there to that betting area, the back side
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: of that betting area, because I can hunt with that
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: same wind, different approach, and he'll be none the wiser.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: So if I spooked him in this location, he'll probably
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: be over there. I had a spot I went in
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: this year, and I've hunted to stand five times. It's
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: actually a blind down the bottom where we get away
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: with Once we're there, we get away of northerly winds.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: It's pretty cool spot. Usually go down there and I
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: haven't spooked any deer, and so I went down there
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: this time, and sure enough there's a doop high spooked him.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: There was um, a really nice the tur buck down
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: in the draw to my right, about sixty yards away.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: I spooked to me, went right up the other side,
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: watched them. I think I know what buck it was.
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: And then I got down to the blind and there's
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: a deer blowing at me on the other side. Well,
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: the very next night, that main buck I was after,
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: and this is that was a bad one. That was
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: really bad for for six for me. I don't normally
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: spook a lot like that, so it was really bothered me.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: I just looked at like, I'm just gonna relax here
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: in the blind and have a nice night. And I
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: didn't see any deer and um, but the very next night,
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: UM on a spot about two hundred fifty yards away,
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: on a water hole that box names bowl. He showed
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: up on that water hole, which happened to be I
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: think the fifteenth of her sixteenth of October, So it
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: wasn't that long ago sixteenth. He was on the sixteenth
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: there where I buggered him up on the fifteen and
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: so baby buggered him up, but it kind of and
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: then that was the last time we saw him there, Dylan,
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: I said, there last night, we didn't see him. We
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: haven't had any other trill Camp pictures of him there.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: We haven't seen him around any any other location. So
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: it makes you wonder that bump him there. And and
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: then I've had opportunities like that where you know, if
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: I would have been thinking and it was the right wind,
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: maybe I could have gone over and hunted that adjacent standing.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: That would have been a good play. So you're not
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: forcing it in the same spot, especially being spook, But
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: then you have those other stands red going, you know,
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: spook anything you feel really good about your act, and
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: that's what he kind of goes back. You get back.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: If you're hunting with some somebody's you get back, and
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: you know, it's cool to talk about what you saw,
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: But what did you spook? You know, that's a really
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: good question, is what did you spook? Where did they go?
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: Where'd they run? And Uh, And that's often it is
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: just as important as as what what you saw in
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: an area. But if you get in and out really
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: clean and you feel good about it, I definitely humped
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: that stand three days in a row if it's the
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: same wind. So it really really depends on the stand,
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: location of sets, what happened on the set. Uh. This
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: whole idea of what did you spook? Brings to mind
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: another kind of situation I'm often and where I'm thinking about,
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: you know, usually not always, but usually you have to
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: give up something, you have to sacrifice something like every
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: time you take a hunt, you're always there's always the
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: risk of educating deer. There's always the risk of your win,
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: your winds gonna blow somewhere, right, there's always something. Um,
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: what is the scenario when you are building out a
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: pattern and figuring out where you want to take a
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: stab at and when you want to take it a
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: stab at a deer? What's the scenario the data point
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: or set of data points that you would be willing
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: to like swing for the fences knowing that you're going
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: to have a high impact, Like it's a spot that
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: it's gonna some deer will know you're there. You have
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: to push into the interior. You have to go into
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: a spot that's tough and in some reason or way,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: what do you need to see to make you confident
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: in that. What are the pieces of data or circumstances
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: where you're willing to do that. It's more timing, So
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't do that, UM for a general set or strategy,
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: meaning that I think a box in there, summon to go.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: Do you know I'm gonna go sit in a standard
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: I know that's there or whatever and take a chance. Um.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: I would look at like, um, it's I have nine
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: days of rutcation since the last two or three days. Um,
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: I know the spot is in this betting room in
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: our bedroom. I can go do a hanging hunt. It's
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: going to be a little bit invasive or risky, um,
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: and I'll go kind of off for broken go in.
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: So it'd be more of a timing where, um, I'm
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: there for it's October and I'm not coming back until
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: the sixth of November. I can afford to be a
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: little risky because I have three weeks of forgiveness for
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: the local deer heard. Um, So I'm looking at it
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: more like that, not that this is an actual option
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: on the table. For me, it's I don't want to
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: be risky like that. I want to live to hunt
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: another day. Kind of going back to the private land thing,
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: where on private land it doesn't matter if you have
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: five hundred acres two acres a D forty five. If
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: you make mistakes, you can really mess up that property.
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: Where public land I can just go somewhere else. So
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: public lands a different story. There were I'm gonna I'm
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: gonna be more invasive when I know my time is
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: limited and running out um on a on a private land.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: Personal public land, on the other hand, that's a little
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: bit different because if you're scouting public land a lot
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: and you know you know several good spots, and you
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: know you might have several good bucks that you're familiar with,
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: or or maybe good spots that have a good box.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: Maybe you don't even know what bucks are in there.
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: Then I can go in the morning and you're looking
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: at like man in those public land hunts, you might
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: have be able to afford to let a spot just
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: mature all season, and you go in there at the
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: perfect time in early November. You might want to hit
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: that hard in early October, you might want to hit
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: it again. You might have more pressure, so do are
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: being moved around a little bit more, and so public
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: plan is different. I would be a little bit more aggressive.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: And then and then you know, of course you have
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: some of the areas where you might have a small
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: parcels surrounded by agg and some of the big buck
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: rich areas Kansas, Kentucky, I will western Illinois and you
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: look at like, I know this area always holds mature box.
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: You go in there and you spoke a buck out, Well,
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: another one just takes this place in the next two
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: or four days. I don't have those areas to hunt,
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: but there are areas like that. Then you can be
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: aggressive too. You can go in there and so so
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: again kind of back to the y when. Um, there's
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: a lot of different conditions. But and for me personally
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: my general hunting, I don't push I don't push it
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: or take chances, because, um, they'll have a devastating effect
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: on the property so much so that even when we
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: go get deer, we go get them after dark, if
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: if it's cold enough, and I shoot a buck and
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: I had them on the ground during gun season, Um,
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: even both season and you went into a certain betting area. Um,
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: and it's nine o'clock in the morning. If I can
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: sneak out, I will, If not, I'll stay there until dark.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: We'll go in there with leave the machine running voices low.
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: You're just trying to do anything you can on that
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: privately and not to spook here and and so lope,
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: that makes sense, you know. I think there's a case
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: to be aggressive, but not as a general strategy unless
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: you're on public land. But it's completely different. But then
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: you might ask some of those areas that you know
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: it's your back back to our public land or this
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: is where you go hunt public land in Michigan, Well
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: you might want to look at it like, you know,
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: you're going in a wage you're not seeing a lot
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: of other hunters that you can almost look at it
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: like you're managing that area as if it was a
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: big private land chunk. Yeah, yeah, that that does make
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: sense for sure. I want to I want to start
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: tying the ball in this and wrapping it up so
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: you can get out and get your packing ready for
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: your big trip. Um. So just a couple of quick
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: last questions. One thing that's that's more of a general
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: question but I have forgotten to ask you about it.
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: You know, we've talked through the sign that you're seeing.
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: We've talked through the historical trends that you're observing and
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: keeping tabs of. We've talked through how you're getting pictures
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: of these deer and how that helps you pattern them.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: But what we haven't touched on is is how do
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: you actually actually keep track of all this data and
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: organize it? Do you do you write any of this
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: stuff down in the journal? Do you have a spreadsheet
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: or anything where you track deer sightings and observations or
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: daylight photos or anything. Do you have a way you
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: organize your photos on your computer? Is there anything like
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: that that helps you keep track and analyze all this stuff?
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: Mark this is gonna be, um, not helpful to your listeners.
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: And I'll and I'll say this, um uh, my memory
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: is really good. Um where I remember certain box, certain
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: times of the year, leaves or no leaves, early season,
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: late season, morning evening there in the day. Those those
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: things really stick out, stick out the sign that goes
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: with it. I see it like a big puzzle in
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: my head. And it's kind of like when I go
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: to a client property there's client party. I could just
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: about redraw my first property. I went to drew it
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: on graph paper with a pencil and ruler back at
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: oh five in the eastern side of the up. And
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: there's things like that that stick in my head. I
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: would read a history book in high school and get
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: to the end of the page and after re read it,
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: I don't even know what I just read. And Hunting
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: magazine I can tell you, and I bet you this
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: same way. I can tell you just about to the
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: page number where a certain ad was on a Field
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: and Stream magazine when I was ten, and so like
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: it doesn't help because I don't keep journals. I don't um,
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: you know, use any fancy software. We had some software
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: back in the day for keeping track of boxing where
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: they were and it wasn't that it was a bad software.
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: Is this that for me? Well, you know me, with
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: like sponsors, partners, products, I don't use them unless I
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: don't I don't partner with somebody unless I'm gonna use
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: the product. And and we don't have like product days
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: where we just go out and take videos of a
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: bunch of sponsored stuff. We we actually use it. And
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: so if I'm not going to use it like that
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: data collection for Carol Camera. Then it wasn't a good
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: partner to have. And so it doesn't matter how much
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: money they give me, I'm not gonna do it. Um.
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: So that was kind of it's it is bad for me. Um.
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: If I had to organize it in my head, it
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: would be certain colors or letters for certain bocks, and
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: where I've had pictures of them in the past, I'd
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: probably change the color is something I thought about in
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: the past to be cool to do. But I'd probably
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: changed the color to the frequency. So it was red,
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: he's there all the time. If it's yellow, he's not
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: there that much. If it's green. You know, I'd have
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: different colors so that I could look at a map
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: and see those hot spots of where that buck would
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: be the most. But it's kind of like I already
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: had those in my head where he's at. And then
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: it comes back down to that cluster stands in this
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: thirty acres or this edge, And if I know he's
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: in that thirty acres, I'm gonna chip away at him
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: on the outside with the right wind, and they'll stands.
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: And it's it's amazing how if you it's the little things.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: If you're if you're being smart how you hunt, you're
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: not making a lot of noise, you're blending into the woods. Um,
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: you can even get away with a little bit less
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: strategy and still be very consistent on shooting those target
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: box just because you're not buggering them out and you're
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: hunting safe and you're making smart decisions on when to
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: go in. Yeah. Yeah, well so yeah, Like I said,
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: it's kind of gonna help your listeners. So, but it's
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: just it's kind of um. I think we can get
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: so bogged down in those details. It's information overload. I'm
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: the type of personality that I keep those in my head.
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: If I wrote them down and made charts or graphs,
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: to me, it would almost take the fun out of it.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: But that's me. That's just my personality. I'd rather spend
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: more time scouting or having friends is over setting around
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: the fire. I don't know, you know, it's more um.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: To some people, that's really cool, you know, like they
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: love doing that. I don't blame I have a friend Tim.
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: He records and he's a really close friend of mine
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: up in the up and Michigan, up in Market Michigan.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: But Tim keeps a journal and he records literally the weather,
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: the movement, how many hunters around the land, what deer
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: he saw, where they came from, and and imagine the
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: history that he could look back on twenty years from now,
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: thirty years his grandkids. So you know, I'm missing out
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: on some of that stuff. I know, well, I can
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: tell you as one of those people, as one of
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: those crazy people, sometimes it ken lead to some stress
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: and over analysis. So there's pros and towns. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: and that's where yeah, there's already. I mean, you know,
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: it's we're both really busy with what we do. It's
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: kind of like you gotta you getta balance what uh
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: you make a priority and what you don't. It's not
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: that you don't have time, it's as you spend your
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: time on almost a list of priorities, which you podcast.
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: You know, like you said, we're getting ready to going.
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: But I always, I always love talking to you. So
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: it's kind of like when Mark Kenyon calls, I'm gonna
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna do a podcast today. You know, we get
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: request for podcasts all the time, but I've always enjoyed
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: the history with you and and talking about this stuff,
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: because um, it always leads this down a rabbit hole
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: of good rabbit hole of um a lot of detail
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: and strategy that some people either gloss over or they
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: just don't care to talk about or really relate to. Yeah, yeah, well,
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: I I really really really appreciate you taking the time
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: to do this, and uh and I too really enjoy
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: how we can geek out and get into this level stuff.
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: So let's just do one last question and then get
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: you out the door. If if you had to right down,
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: like if I had a stone tablet in front of you,
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: like a big chunk of granite, and I gave you
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: big old piece of metal you could scrape, you could
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: engrave some words into this stone tablet, and I was
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: gonna say, Jeff, right for me, your top three rules
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: for patterning Bucks. You can write these things in stone
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: and everyone will see for the rest of time. Jeff
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: sturgises Keys to patterning Bucks. You've got three things you're
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: gonna write on this stone tablet. We're gonna stick it
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: on top of a mountain, and every deer hunter in
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin and Minnesota has got to make a pilgrimage to
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: it and see this to help them kill deer in
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: the future and many other states as well. What would
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: you engrave on that stone tablet Jeff Three? Three main rules.
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: I put an asterisk down the bottom. Mark Kennion only
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: allowed me three. But anyways, I'll think of things tomorrow
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: when I'm driving to where we're on. It's gonna be
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: But um, I know the one of the first things
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: is look in the past almost more than you look
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: in the future. What I mean by that is look
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: for historical sign look for historical presence. Um you're looking
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: for this historical patterns. Those historical patterns might be a
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: Bux you knew, or it might be in a new area,
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: and you're finding different ages of robs and the presence
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: of scrapes, and knowing that multiple bucks have used this
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: over a number of years. And so I think sometimes
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: we look forward so much and we think we're planning
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: all these great making these great strategies, and we forget
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: about all this stuff that's been there for two or
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: three years behind us. The second one of the things,
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: just these are three things that popped into my head
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: is the second thing is really, um, learn to hunt
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: like a predator. And one of the ways to do that,
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: And I know this sounds corny, is to really imagine
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: the deer head guns? You know, would you would you
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: use that stand whether its noise or or stick out?
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: Would you use that stand if the deer had a
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: gun and doesn't allow you to hide? Are you really hiding? Um?
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: Would you sit in that area and take that chance
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: around that deer? If that deer could shoot you if
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: a knew you were there? Um? Your approach in and out?
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: How how would you hunt? Different? If you had to
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: be more like a sniper on a hill? How would
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: you how would you ambush? I think about a mountline
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: or a cat sitting on a ledge and the unsuspecting
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: prey that goes by. I think that's kind of cool.
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: That's the way I like to hunt. The other guys
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania they made fun of us from Michigan for
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: coming out and sitting they call the sitters and where
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: they like to walk and still hunt and and they
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: shot bucks too. So it was just that's how I like.
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: I like to be blend into the woods, be a
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: part of the woods, and then you get to kind
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: of soak in everything to you're not an obtrusive, unwanted guest.
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: You're you're part of the woods, and then you can
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: to me, you can enjoy it more. So you know,
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: first of all, look look in the past. Second, really blend,
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: and then third when you do choose to hunt, really
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: choose to hunt by um picking the conditions. There's something
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: that I had to do in the early nineties because
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: I had two weeks vacation, I could take a half
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: day off of the time, and and I didn't have
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: And then when it got a two kids in the
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: early two thousand's, I had to hunt for two or
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: three days at a time, So I had to pick
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: my days. I was. I was lucky as it got later,
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: I was a real estate appraiser for eleven years on
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: my own business. So I kind of slant my hunts
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: towards the good weather and the good days where I
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: thought dear would move. And so that's been a gift
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: to me to be able to do that, because it
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter like it's a weekend, you have wh I
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: could take a Friday or a Monday. We'll just slant
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: it towards the best weather days. At the best weather
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: day is Monday. Kind of look at it black and white.
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm gonna go and maybe Saturday stinks for
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: the weather, so spend some time with the family. Yeah,
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: you get less hunting time, but you're able to spend
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: time with your family and friends a little bit more too.
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: Maybe at work, maybe you're able to impress your boss
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: a little bit more because you said, you know what,
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: I'll come in on Saturday, and do you mind if
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: I take Monday off instead of Friday or so whatever,
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: But you can slant it a little bit and so
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: not you know, not holding. I talked about this all
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: the time that it. You know, people say you can't
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: kill him from the couch. I think that saved more
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: dear more bucks than any other phrase and in the
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: history of hunting, because people look at it like, well,
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go sitting that stand ten days in
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: a row. And what you find is there's a diminishing
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: return every time you sit there. And uh. And so
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: if you if you really look at the past, if
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: you learn to blend, and then you learned to really
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: pick your approach on those high percentage days, then to me,
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: you combine those right there. And even if you're hunting
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: out a poor property or habitat property, smaller property a
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: little bit more pressured land, and you're gonna be successful
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: a lot more than than you're not. I love it.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: Those three things. Those are good. Those are good things.
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: And uh and I know that if if folks visit
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: those granite tablets and read through your top three rules,
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: they're gonna say to themselves, Man, I want more from this, Jeff, guy, Jeff,
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: where can folks go to get more from me? Because, um,
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: well your stuff is great. That's really some of the
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: best out there. Well, I appreciate that, market really do.
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: And you can tell. I mean, I lived this stuff.
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: So this is what I do. You know, whether it's
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: with clients, um around a hundred a year being in
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: the woods hunting, and I like to do a lot.
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: I think we're going as a family down to hunt
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: Public Land in Ohio this year for their gun season.
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: Opener Um. I like to do a lot of do
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: it yourself and so that comes through. And for that,
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: I feel like even on client properties, we get to
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: learn every time we go on another client and so
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: then when I think I learned something, I love to
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: teach that. So the YouTube channel white till abitat Solutions
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: dot com. Um we have over a thousand videos now
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: on there for people to cruise to. I try to
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: categorize them so like you mentioned mock scrapes, I think
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: we have almost sixty mock scrape videos in that playlist.
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: I try to put them in playlists. Advanced hunting strategy
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: is probably the largest and right and be a couple
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: of hundred, and there of course food plots, habitat provement.
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: I also try to spend quite a bit of time
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: and I go through streaks on this depending on how
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: much time I have. But Instagram, White Till, Habitat solutions
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: there too. And then Dylan and I who Dylan he's
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: goes to clients to who he's worked with me since
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen Independent works for a A is a
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: great dude. And you you know Dylan Dylan has worked
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: with U Meat Eater. Um, you know, he's worked with
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: a lot of different hunting industry personalities and people and
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: entities and companies and so. But um, Dylan and I
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: I worked with them about once a week shooting videos
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: and he sits in a tree with me too. We
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: playing a strategize a lot together and we started a
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: podcast and um, you know we've talked to you about
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: being our first guest. We're hoping that will work out
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: here in the next couple of weeks. Um, but yeah,
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: we're we're looking forward that we've already talked about the
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: topic with you to talk about so but kind of
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: a blend of Western do it yourself whitetail hunting and
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: hunting industry questions and stuff. So, um, you know, get
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: into a talk about that. But bottom line is, um,
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: we've shot three uh not shot, we actually have recorded them,
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: but we've filmed them and recorded them and those those
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: should be on my website. We have white tab tat
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: solutions dot Com. There I have over six d white
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: Till articles. I've written strategy articles and we'll be hosting
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: the podcasts supposed to be done by about October thirty one,
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: the first of November, and we'll try to consistently put
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: out about one a week on those. So that's that's
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: another way. You know. Of course you have books, web classes,
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: we go visit people site, visit we even sell seed now,
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: whs wildlife flens. But again, you know, I have over
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: a thousand videos on YouTube, bring out the podcast, over
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: six articles and um that's all for free and so
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: I don't hold anything back. Um, it's you. You try to.
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: When I've learned something, I keep a running tab of
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: notes I might have shown you, Mark, but it's a
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: couple of thousand long in my in my phone, and
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: it's um. You know, when I think of something i'm
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: on a client property, I get excited and geeked out
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: about it. I can't wait to tell people, and so
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: I do that through Instagram, YouTube, now, the podcast, books, writings, whatever. Man,
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: it's awesome. We've all we've all benefited from it. So
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: uh on the on behalf of everybody listening here, and
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: all the folks have watched your videos, read your books,
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: read your articles. Let me just for I'm sure you've
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: heard a million of these, but let me just do
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: it all more time. Thank you well, Mark, thank you.
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: You know, I really appreciate it. It's uh, it's been uh,
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: it's been fun rewarding, you know, this entire process. But
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: most of all, I hope you know. I always say,
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: if the information is not helping anybody, then it's why
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: I put it out until UM. I love hearing that feedback.
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it. I love hearing the feedback and the
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: comments on YouTube, and uh in Instagram to um YouTube
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: tells me I answer about ten tho comments a year
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: on YouTube, So I try, I try. I try to
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: answer as many as possible. Um. But you know, the
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: whole the whole mission is to try to help. So
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: I hope it comes true. And I really appreciate that feedback.
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Mark. Yeah, well, hey, you're you're doing an
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: awesome job. But now I've got one last thing for it, Jeff,
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: you need to hang up this phone, finished packing and
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: go kill a buck in Saskatchewan. All right, my friend,
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: that's that sounds really good. Mark, We're that's Uh. I
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: thought that was a dream hunt. I'd go on and
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: when I'm in you know, ten years now or something,
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: but um hunt wise made it happen this year. It
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: was a random call in January. They let me know
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: Jen's going to and um Dante's actually coming to film.
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: We found out that in the last couple of days
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: he worked at Matthews, my stepson, and he uh, they
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: gave him time off unpaid. So we're helping him out
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: with that and getting him he's gonna film us, and
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: so we're even at six am. It's kind of a
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: dream hunt I've always wanted to hunt those chocolate horn
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: monsters up north. Yeah, and we're gonna be able to
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: do so here pretty soon. So very very fortunate. Alright, Well,
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna be crossing every one of my fingers and
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: toes for you. Thank you, Mark. I'm open to just
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: see a giant that'll be. That'll be nice, it'd be,
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: it'd be awesome. So just to be up there, that
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: sounds awesome. All right. That's it, my friends. I hope
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: you enjoyed it. Thanks for joining me. Follow along my
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: story over at wired to Hunt on Instagram. Be sure
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: to check out the Wired to Hunt page over on
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: the mediator website. That's the meat eater dot com slash wired.
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: You can follow along on Facebook our YouTube channel. We've
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: got the Dear Country Show over on the meat Eater
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: YouTube channel. Be sure you're subsided or subscribed to the
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: Meat Eater newsletter, which you can do over on that
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: meet of your website. You'll get a weekly email with
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: an update on all the content we've got. What I'm
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: trying to say is we're putting out a lot of
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: deer hunting stuff for you folks who love deer hunting,
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: just like me. But it's time to hunt, so let's
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: stop talking, let's get in the woods. Best of luck,
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: have fun, and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.