Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 942: What Would Kip Adams Do?

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Ep. 942: What Would Kip Adams Do? · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
0:04
Speaker 1: the whitetail woods, presented by First Light, creating proven versatile
0:09
Speaker 1: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light
0:13
Speaker 1: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
0:19
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
0:22
Speaker 2: the show, I'm joined by Kip Adams of the National
0:26
Speaker 2: Dear Association for another episode of our what would You
0:29
Speaker 2: Do series, in which we are running him through some
0:32
Speaker 2: of the toughest hunting circumstances and situations I could throw
0:36
Speaker 2: at him. Really all right, welcome back to the Wired
0:42
Speaker 2: to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light and
0:45
Speaker 2: their Camel for Conservation initiative. And today we're wrapping up
0:49
Speaker 2: are what would you Do series. If you've been listening,
0:52
Speaker 2: you know the gist, you know the format, But if
0:55
Speaker 2: you're new, what this entails is a guest comes on
0:59
Speaker 2: the episode and I run them through a series of
1:03
Speaker 2: different specific hypothetical hunting scenarios. I might propose, Hey, it's
1:08
Speaker 2: this date and you're in this place and this happens,
1:11
Speaker 2: what would you do? And then that's what we do,
1:13
Speaker 2: through many different topics, many different regions, different ideas, different challenges,
1:19
Speaker 2: different curve balls, to see how these people process these
1:23
Speaker 2: types of scenarios in the field, how they think them through,
1:26
Speaker 2: how they take action, how they get from point A
1:29
Speaker 2: to point B. And today's guest is Kip Adams from
1:33
Speaker 2: the National Deer Association. And this is a really interesting
1:36
Speaker 2: one to wrap up on because he's got a perspective
1:38
Speaker 2: that is unique compared to everybody else that we've talked
1:41
Speaker 2: to this year in our series, but also compared to
1:44
Speaker 2: almost all of the other what would you do episodes
1:47
Speaker 2: we've done over the course of the last five or
1:49
Speaker 2: six years. He's a Kip is not just a great
1:52
Speaker 2: deer hunter, he is also a incredibly experienced, well read,
1:58
Speaker 2: and diversely experienced wildlife biologist and land manager. He works
2:04
Speaker 2: as the Director of Conservation or geez I think actually
2:06
Speaker 2: chief conservation Officer now for the National Deer Association. He's
2:11
Speaker 2: worked on probably hundreds of different properties across the nation,
2:15
Speaker 2: working with people on their hunting plans, their land management strategies,
2:19
Speaker 2: habitat improvement projects, and much larger deer and conservation related issues.
2:26
Speaker 2: But then he also has been able to take all
2:28
Speaker 2: that insight, all that information and then applied it to
2:31
Speaker 2: his own hunting world and life, where he owns and
2:35
Speaker 2: manages a property in Pennsylvania that he's been hunting and
2:38
Speaker 2: working on for I think decades now and killing mature
2:42
Speaker 2: bucks consistently with a whole bunch of other folks, family
2:46
Speaker 2: and friends the hunter too, and also managing for healthy
2:49
Speaker 2: habitat and a healthy deer herd across the board. So
2:52
Speaker 2: he's able to check a whole lot of boxes with
2:54
Speaker 2: this diverse set of expertise that is really unique that
3:00
Speaker 2: I think gives us in his answers a level of
3:04
Speaker 2: depth that most people don't have. So we're going to
3:07
Speaker 2: run k through a few management related questions, but a
3:10
Speaker 2: lot of hunting questions. But what he brings is this
3:12
Speaker 2: scientific perspective that I think colors things in a unique
3:16
Speaker 2: and really helpful way. So that's the plan for today's episode.
3:19
Speaker 2: It's a great one. I think it's perfect for those
3:21
Speaker 2: of us who are kicking off our hunting seasons soon.
3:24
Speaker 2: Kip's going to give us all something to think about
3:26
Speaker 2: as opening Day and the coming weeks unfold in what
3:31
Speaker 2: should be a very very exciting few months here to come.
3:33
Speaker 2: So that is our game plan. My couple, I guess
3:38
Speaker 2: housekeep items for you today would be number one. The
3:41
Speaker 2: Wired Hunt hats are still available. The brand new Wired
3:43
Speaker 2: Hunt shirts are still available as well over at the
3:45
Speaker 2: med Eater store. Excuse me. We also have a lot
3:50
Speaker 2: going on with podcasts in the met Eater and Wired
3:53
Speaker 2: Hunt world. Of course, there's this show, the flagship Wired
3:56
Speaker 2: Hunt Show. We also have the Foundations episodes the ton
4:00
Speaker 2: Peterson which hopefully you're listening to every Tuesday. Those are
4:03
Speaker 2: Tony's quick kind of monologues on some different deer hunting issue,
4:07
Speaker 2: kind of like a foundational, really important deer hunting issue
4:10
Speaker 2: every week. Great place to learn, great place to up
4:13
Speaker 2: your hunting game. Our Back forty podcast is still ongoing.
4:17
Speaker 2: That comes out every Wednesday with Jake Hoefer talking to
4:20
Speaker 2: a panel of eight different expert guests tackling some tough
4:24
Speaker 2: situations as well some interesting questions. So tune into that
4:28
Speaker 2: one for a diverse set of insights on specific questions.
4:31
Speaker 2: I'm loving what I'm hearing there so far. And then
4:34
Speaker 2: of course across the rest of the media to network,
4:36
Speaker 2: you know, depending on what you're interested, and we've got
4:38
Speaker 2: something for you. Cal in the Field is Cal's we
4:42
Speaker 2: can review podcasts. There's just great conservation and hunting and
4:46
Speaker 2: fishing related news there to stay up to data on
4:49
Speaker 2: what's happening across the world. Of course, the Mediator podcast,
4:52
Speaker 2: the media or trivia podcast, that's all a lot of
4:56
Speaker 2: fun and very interesting. Clay's podcast Bear Grease, the Backwoods
5:01
Speaker 2: University podcast, which is on the Bear Grease feed is
5:04
Speaker 2: brand new and that's really interesting. The American West podcast
5:07
Speaker 2: with Dan Floores was kicked off this summer and that
5:11
Speaker 2: is fascinating learning about the history of the American West
5:15
Speaker 2: and much of what's gone there gone on there with wildlife.
5:18
Speaker 2: So man, there's so much to tune into right now.
5:21
Speaker 2: We're pumping it out at a record pace, and I
5:24
Speaker 2: hope you are checking out all of these different shows
5:27
Speaker 2: we have. Of course on YouTube, we've got just an
5:31
Speaker 2: endless array of new videos too that are going to
5:33
Speaker 2: ramp up as the season progresses, so lots to check out,
5:36
Speaker 2: and of course hopefully there's lots for you to be
5:39
Speaker 2: doing out there in the field too. So if your
5:40
Speaker 2: season is kicking off like mine will be. Let me
5:44
Speaker 2: see here. It's twoth It's August twenty fifth when I'm
5:47
Speaker 2: recording this. By the time you listen to the next podcast,
5:50
Speaker 2: I will be on my first hunt the year, which
5:53
Speaker 2: is very exciting. Maybe you will be too, So if
5:55
Speaker 2: you are best of luck out there, and without any
5:59
Speaker 2: further ado, let's get to my chat with mister Kip
6:01
Speaker 2: Adams of the National Deer Association, which I should have
6:04
Speaker 2: mentioned at the top is truly the premiere conservation organization
6:09
Speaker 2: or whitetail deer across the nation. If you are not
6:12
Speaker 2: aware of what the Deer Association is doing, please go
6:15
Speaker 2: to Deer Association dot com. After you listen to my
6:19
Speaker 2: chat with Kip. Here we go, all right. Joining me
6:28
Speaker 2: back on the show a many time returning guest is
6:31
Speaker 2: Kip Adams. Welcome back, Kip, Hey, thanks Mark, good to
6:34
Speaker 2: be here, Good to see you, and I always appreciate
6:37
Speaker 2: you taking time to chat. It's been a lot of
6:40
Speaker 2: years now. We're on a shared zoom call the other
6:44
Speaker 2: day and it was mentioned that you had been with
6:47
Speaker 2: the National Deer Association or the qtmay or is it
6:50
Speaker 2: twenty three years now? Is that right?
6:51
Speaker 3: Twenty three years last week? Yes, it has gone fast.
6:56
Speaker 3: It's been a great ride, and well you know how
7:00
Speaker 3: quickly time fliers. But I don't feel anywhere near old
7:03
Speaker 3: enough to have been anywhere for that long, let alone
7:06
Speaker 3: one place that long brought up here. Yeah, it's a
7:09
Speaker 3: twenty three year or so. Pretty pretty crazy.
7:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's incredible. You've you've been kind of an icon
7:16
Speaker 2: of our community in that role you've played there. And
7:19
Speaker 2: and so I'll say for everyone, thank you for what
7:21
Speaker 2: you've done there for more than two two decades now.
7:24
Speaker 2: You've certainly helped a lot of folks, taught me a
7:26
Speaker 2: lot along the way. And all that said, though, kid,
7:31
Speaker 2: today I want to unfortunately run you through the ringer.
7:36
Speaker 2: I'm gonna toss you into a but a bunch of
7:39
Speaker 2: challenging situations. We're gonna run you through the gauntlet of
7:43
Speaker 2: sorts to see how you would handle this stuff. And
7:46
Speaker 2: I think you know, we've we've talked to a lot
7:48
Speaker 2: of really good deer hunters, but you are a really
7:51
Speaker 2: good deer hunter. Plus, you are someone who has a
7:54
Speaker 2: tremendous amount of experience from a deer biology perspective, from
7:59
Speaker 2: a land managed perspective, from a you know, a thirty
8:02
Speaker 2: thousand foot overview. You've worked with and learned from managers
8:06
Speaker 2: and state you know, managing agencies and biologists from all
8:09
Speaker 2: over the country, so I'm very curious to see how
8:12
Speaker 2: all of that colors how you hunt and how you
8:15
Speaker 2: make hunting decisions. So that's that's kind of what I'm
8:19
Speaker 2: most interested in as we as we kick this one off, Kip,
8:22
Speaker 2: So you know the basic gist of this format. I've
8:25
Speaker 2: kind of given you the rundown. So are you ready
8:27
Speaker 2: just to just jump into this and see where things go?
8:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm all set. That's gonna be fun. Let's let's go.
8:33
Speaker 2: Okay, So this first question, let's imagine that you just
8:38
Speaker 2: picked up a brand new hunting lease. All right, very exciting.
8:42
Speaker 2: You're gonna be hunting a new spot. You just picked
8:44
Speaker 2: up this lease. It's in Virginia, and you've never hunted
8:47
Speaker 2: here before. The problem is, you just signed the contract
8:52
Speaker 2: right now. It's late August, hunting season opens very soon,
8:56
Speaker 2: and you've it's a long term lease, so you know
8:59
Speaker 2: you're gonna hunting this place for you know, three, four
9:01
Speaker 2: or five years. You have this great runway ahead of you,
9:04
Speaker 2: but you know nothing about the property, you know nothing
9:07
Speaker 2: about the neighborhood, and the hunting season is just weeks away.
9:11
Speaker 2: What do you do in the next few weeks? To
9:15
Speaker 2: start developing a plan because you have no idea what
9:19
Speaker 2: dr are out here. You don't know how many bucks
9:21
Speaker 2: there are, how many dos there are, how many you
9:23
Speaker 2: should shoot, what kind of hunting or management plan you
9:26
Speaker 2: should have, and the deadline is very quickly approaching. What
9:30
Speaker 2: do you do with this short term turnaround that you
9:34
Speaker 2: have before the season momens? To just wrap your head
9:37
Speaker 2: around the plan?
9:38
Speaker 3: All right, Well, the first thing I'm going to do is,
9:41
Speaker 3: as I'm a huge fan of on X, I use
9:44
Speaker 3: on X every day, I'm going to go to on
9:46
Speaker 3: X and take a look airily at what's going on there,
9:49
Speaker 3: just to give myself a good feel for what is
9:51
Speaker 3: in the neighborhood. And so many people that we work
9:54
Speaker 3: with look at their property and if I'm visiting a property,
9:57
Speaker 3: you know, they'll ask me like, hey, what should I
9:59
Speaker 3: plant here? Or what would you do there? And the
10:01
Speaker 3: first thing I always do is I want to see
10:04
Speaker 3: what is in your property or on it, but I
10:06
Speaker 3: want to look at the whole neighborhood. That's where it
10:09
Speaker 3: all will start for me. So I want to look
10:10
Speaker 3: at it from the air and just see, all right,
10:12
Speaker 3: not only what is there, but what does it look like?
10:15
Speaker 3: On the neighbors and a couple of properties removed, just
10:17
Speaker 3: to wrap my head around, all, right, what am I
10:19
Speaker 3: getting myself into? Is it mostly forested? Is it all forested?
10:24
Speaker 3: Is there some ag land? Is it a mix of open?
10:28
Speaker 3: What do we have relative to the neighbors? So, for example,
10:30
Speaker 3: I've been on properties that were mostly wooded in a
10:33
Speaker 3: sea of open areas. So I mean that was like
10:36
Speaker 3: all the cover, most of the best cover was there.
10:39
Speaker 3: So that would be my first step, and I would.
10:42
Speaker 3: I'm lucky in that I have worked with a lot
10:46
Speaker 3: of great wildlife biologists and a lot of really good
10:49
Speaker 3: deer and habitat researchers, and so I've tried to learn
10:51
Speaker 3: from all of those because as you mentioned, I've been
10:54
Speaker 3: with QDMA or NDA now for twenty three years. I
10:58
Speaker 3: have been managing or conduct and research on deer for
11:01
Speaker 3: over thirty years. But I am first and foremost of
11:04
Speaker 3: deer hunting. So that's where it all begins and that's
11:07
Speaker 3: what it all ends for me. So with all of
11:09
Speaker 3: the new research that I keep up with, I am
11:12
Speaker 3: always thinking about that from a hunter's perspective, how can
11:16
Speaker 3: I use this to, you know, to get myself closer
11:18
Speaker 3: to deer involved or people that I'm mentoring, how can
11:20
Speaker 3: we get closer? So I would go to Onyx. I
11:24
Speaker 3: would look airily and say, all right, where am I starting,
11:27
Speaker 3: you know, just so that I get to feel for
11:29
Speaker 3: what type of environment am I in. There's parts of
11:32
Speaker 3: Virginia that are solid forests. There's parts of Virginia that
11:35
Speaker 3: are all national forests. I hope this lease is not
11:37
Speaker 3: in the national forest. Nothing against the national forest, but
11:40
Speaker 3: you know so much that is just all over mature
11:42
Speaker 3: hardwoods and it's just a monoculture of that everywhere, you know,
11:46
Speaker 3: very low quality habitat from a deer perspective. So anyway,
11:51
Speaker 3: I want to see what am I starting at, so
11:53
Speaker 3: that I know forested open mix the more importantly, mark
11:57
Speaker 3: what is in that neighborhood, Like am I hunting similar
12:00
Speaker 3: features as what the neighbors are or do I have
12:03
Speaker 3: something very different that I can key in it. So
12:07
Speaker 3: that's my starting point.
12:08
Speaker 2: Okay, So so one follow up, what about One of
12:13
Speaker 2: the things I was thinking about is I was considering
12:15
Speaker 2: this situation would be just determining like what should I
12:19
Speaker 2: even think about shooting, Like not even knowing what's out there,
12:22
Speaker 2: not having started, you know, really developing, whether it be
12:26
Speaker 2: an inventory or lack of a better term inventory, you
12:30
Speaker 2: being someone who's pretty well, very very well informed and
12:34
Speaker 2: making those decisions the right way. I'm wondering, you know,
12:37
Speaker 2: is there anything Is it too late to get a
12:39
Speaker 2: survey of the population. Is it too late to really
12:41
Speaker 2: get get your head wrapped around you know, what's out
12:45
Speaker 2: there so you can make harvest decisions in a better way.
12:48
Speaker 2: Or is that first year at this point you know
12:50
Speaker 2: you're just gonna be learning as you go.
12:52
Speaker 3: I think there's gonna be a lot of well, I
12:54
Speaker 3: think there's always some learning as you go, but there
12:56
Speaker 3: is still time to collect some great data on you
12:59
Speaker 3: know what, dear, I'd be on the property. I've done
13:02
Speaker 3: a summer camera survey on our farm in northern Pennsylvania
13:05
Speaker 3: every year for over twenty years now, and in fact we're
13:08
Speaker 3: in the middle of it right now. That survey always
13:11
Speaker 3: ends Labor Day weekend, so that is a great way
13:14
Speaker 3: to get a good idea of numbers of bucks on
13:17
Speaker 3: the property. Now, granted, some of these deer are going
13:19
Speaker 3: to leave and they're they're ready bound. Now is when
13:21
Speaker 3: they start shifting from that summer to following, but others
13:24
Speaker 3: will come on. So it gives me a snapshot in
13:26
Speaker 3: time of numbers of bucks on the property. From that,
13:29
Speaker 3: then I can get an smate the number of dos,
13:31
Speaker 3: which then helps me calculate the target dough harvest, like
13:34
Speaker 3: do we need to be shooting any dose? And if yes,
13:37
Speaker 3: is it a few or is it a lot? That
13:39
Speaker 3: also gives me a good idea of age structure the
13:42
Speaker 3: bucks that are there, because I want to go into
13:44
Speaker 3: season with realistic expectations, you know, and I would love
13:48
Speaker 3: to kill, you know, one hundred and eighty inch deer,
13:50
Speaker 3: but you know what, I'm my farm in Pennsylvania. That's
13:52
Speaker 3: not going to happen. If I go in every season
13:54
Speaker 3: that is a goal. I Am not going to have
13:56
Speaker 3: any fun and hunting is about having fun. So I
14:00
Speaker 3: think the more local knowledge I have, it allows me
14:04
Speaker 3: to develop more realistic expectations, which then allows me to
14:07
Speaker 3: have more fund So that's very important. So from that perspective,
14:11
Speaker 3: I would look at every year the Deer Association produces
14:14
Speaker 3: an annual Deer report. I would look at that for
14:17
Speaker 3: Virginia and see, hey, what is the annual buck harvest,
14:20
Speaker 3: annual doe harvest, and change structure of the buck harvest
14:23
Speaker 3: to give me a feel er. You know, is this
14:25
Speaker 3: state shooting mostly younger deer or is it most of
14:28
Speaker 3: the older deer? Now this is the state wide look.
14:30
Speaker 3: But then I would go to the Virginia dn RS
14:34
Speaker 3: or what DW are they are now Division of wallaf
14:37
Speaker 3: Resources their website to see what additional information do they
14:41
Speaker 3: have relative to the deer herd in the area where
14:44
Speaker 3: I'm going to be. Some states have awesome data on
14:47
Speaker 3: the website harvest numbers, age structures, et cetera, by county
14:51
Speaker 3: or by township or by DMU. So I would learn
14:55
Speaker 3: what I could from the website with that. It might
14:59
Speaker 3: be the part part of the state that this lease
15:01
Speaker 3: is in, you know, it has a great age structure
15:03
Speaker 3: relative to the rest of the state, or it might
15:06
Speaker 3: be the other end inspective. But I would learn everything
15:09
Speaker 3: I could from that. Then I would make a phone
15:12
Speaker 3: call to the state Wilife Agency, say, but I would
15:15
Speaker 3: make sure I did my homework first. No state, dearbile
15:18
Speaker 3: just wants to receive a call from me, you or
15:20
Speaker 3: anybody else saying hey, where should I go hunting? Or
15:23
Speaker 3: what's it like? However, if he or she gets a
15:26
Speaker 3: call from a hunter saying I'm going to be hunting
15:28
Speaker 3: in your state this year. I have done my homework.
15:31
Speaker 3: I see that on average, you harvest you know, two
15:34
Speaker 3: bucks per square mile. You have pretty good age structure
15:37
Speaker 3: to show the look. I've scoured your website, I've read
15:40
Speaker 3: your resources. Hey, here are some things I can't find.
15:42
Speaker 3: Is there anything in addition you can help me with.
15:45
Speaker 3: They are much more likely than to be good friends
15:48
Speaker 3: and share information to let you know, So that would
15:52
Speaker 3: be a great way to get some local intel or
15:56
Speaker 3: you know, you may be able to work with somebody
15:58
Speaker 3: in that area. Now, one thing that say, I know
16:02
Speaker 3: nobody in the area where we are through well through NDA.
16:08
Speaker 3: We work closely with white Tail Properties. Wait Tail Properties
16:11
Speaker 3: has like four hundred land specialists throughout the US. I
16:15
Speaker 3: promise you I could call or look at the white
16:18
Speaker 3: Tail property's website, find a land specialist in that area,
16:21
Speaker 3: call him or her and get awesome local information on Hey,
16:26
Speaker 3: what's the scoop on the local dere are you know?
16:29
Speaker 3: They you know, will be able to tell hey, people
16:31
Speaker 3: in this area, if it's brown, it's down, they're shooting everything,
16:34
Speaker 3: or ooh, that area you're in. They are far more
16:36
Speaker 3: likely to wait until dear or older. So that would
16:39
Speaker 3: be a great opportunity to meet somebody locally, get the
16:43
Speaker 3: lay of the land, you know, from somebody who knows
16:45
Speaker 3: deer and deer hunting. So those would be my steps.
16:48
Speaker 3: Look at our DAR report, scholar, the state agency website,
16:52
Speaker 3: talk to the state Wileife agency, so I can get
16:54
Speaker 3: a local biologist, and then talk to somebody local.
16:58
Speaker 2: Strong, strong suggestion. Here's another one we're going to put
17:03
Speaker 2: you on. Well, well, let's play it out. Let's play
17:07
Speaker 2: it out this Virginia scenario a little bit further. Let's
17:09
Speaker 2: say you start your process and you have one spot
17:12
Speaker 2: you can plant a food plot. So you plan a
17:14
Speaker 2: food plot in August. At some point, you go back
17:17
Speaker 2: out on September seventh to go see it for the
17:22
Speaker 2: first time since you planted. And let's say you planted
17:25
Speaker 2: a green plot, a diverse blend of various grains and
17:29
Speaker 2: Nebraskas of clover, some stuff like that. You go back
17:34
Speaker 2: September seventh and it is in bad shape. It is dry,
17:39
Speaker 2: it is weedy, there is very little of the kind
17:43
Speaker 2: of growth you were hoping for. What do you do
17:46
Speaker 2: to salvage this situation. It's your only plot, it's your
17:49
Speaker 2: only food. You were hanging a lot of hopes on
17:52
Speaker 2: this thing.
17:53
Speaker 3: What now, Well, one thing that I would definitely take
17:57
Speaker 3: that opportunity to learn a little bit about numbers of
18:00
Speaker 3: deer in the area, because when I planted that, I
18:03
Speaker 3: would have also put an exclusion cage on it, so
18:06
Speaker 3: that when I go back September seventh, say it's been
18:09
Speaker 3: dry or whatever, and boyd there's not much growing, I
18:12
Speaker 3: could at least look at what's growing inside that exclusion case.
18:15
Speaker 3: An exclusion cage, you know, you know, a three to
18:18
Speaker 3: four foot diameter you know, wire structure staked down so
18:22
Speaker 3: that deer candy what's inside? This gives me a great
18:25
Speaker 3: idea on what was the germination of that seed like?
18:28
Speaker 3: And then what is the pressure, you know, grazing pressure
18:32
Speaker 3: from deer, who who's eating it? So I putting exclusion
18:34
Speaker 3: cage on every one of my food plots just for that,
18:37
Speaker 3: just so I know, hey, how hard are they hit us?
18:40
Speaker 3: So when I went back and looked at that, even
18:43
Speaker 3: if outside maybe it's been really dry, kind of like
18:45
Speaker 3: it's been here in northern Pennsylvania this summer, it is
18:48
Speaker 3: super dry. Many of my food plots, you know, would
18:50
Speaker 3: look horrible just no rain. But every one of those
18:54
Speaker 3: has an exclusion cage on it, and even in the
18:56
Speaker 3: ones that are really tiny er, I'm doing good. I
19:00
Speaker 3: can still measure the difference inside and exclusion cage as
19:03
Speaker 3: out because there's no pressure at all inside, So that
19:07
Speaker 3: mark would let me know, Okay, one, yeah, we need
19:10
Speaker 3: some rain. I don't have much food here. But is
19:14
Speaker 3: the food any taller inside that cage or not? If
19:16
Speaker 3: it's not, that's a good sign that deer aren't, you know,
19:19
Speaker 3: just eating everything right to the ground. If it is
19:22
Speaker 3: considerably taller inside, that lets me know. One, there is
19:26
Speaker 3: not enough food in this neighborhood for the numbers of
19:29
Speaker 3: deer that are here. That will let me know, Okay,
19:31
Speaker 3: you know what, I am absolutely going to take at
19:34
Speaker 3: least one dough this year. That'll be my first step
19:37
Speaker 3: in trying to figure out how many I should take,
19:39
Speaker 3: because there should be enough food in that area for deer,
19:44
Speaker 3: regardless of food plots. Food pots should be there like
19:47
Speaker 3: as a supplement, so you know, if I'm looking in
19:50
Speaker 3: that food inside that exclusion cage is a lot taller,
19:53
Speaker 3: you know, Regardless of how many deer are there. There
19:56
Speaker 3: are more deer than there is food avail, so that
19:59
Speaker 3: that's good information for me to know. And I'm used
20:01
Speaker 3: that to either you know, as I'm figuring out how
20:03
Speaker 3: many dos I will shoot, but also probably what I
20:06
Speaker 3: can expect from a buck standpoint, you know, a buck
20:10
Speaker 3: quality standpoint, like nutritional standpoint, So that would be good
20:13
Speaker 3: to know. Say, I get there, man, it's really dry. Okay,
20:18
Speaker 3: I'm still happy that I have something that's in open
20:21
Speaker 3: area because even if there's not a lot of food
20:23
Speaker 3: in it, just the fact that it's open and different
20:26
Speaker 3: from wooded areas, that's still an attraction point for deer.
20:29
Speaker 3: So that's helpful to me. I also probably would be
20:34
Speaker 3: doing a little drive through the neighborhood that day and
20:36
Speaker 3: just looking at other either ag fields and or food
20:39
Speaker 3: plots that I could see from the road to see like, okay,
20:43
Speaker 3: how does my stuff compare to the neighbors? So to
20:45
Speaker 3: the neighbors, is that stuff growing really good? You know?
20:48
Speaker 3: Or yeah they're in tough shape as well, Because that
20:51
Speaker 3: kind of you know, lets me know the playing field
20:53
Speaker 3: when it comes time from an attraction end. Now, I
20:56
Speaker 3: would have also looked at on X flipped on the
20:59
Speaker 3: soil quality layer to know where that food plot is.
21:03
Speaker 3: Am I giving myself the best chance to grow good
21:05
Speaker 3: food there?
21:06
Speaker 1: Or not?
21:07
Speaker 3: Very simple to look and see, like, hey, ooh, the
21:09
Speaker 3: quality of soil here is you know, much higher than
21:12
Speaker 3: surrounding areas or you know, some properties. I have been
21:15
Speaker 3: on people at food plots because that's the only open area.
21:18
Speaker 3: But if you look at the soil profiles, you realize
21:20
Speaker 3: it's some of the worst soil on the whole property,
21:23
Speaker 3: Like that would be the last place to pick for them,
21:26
Speaker 3: So that I would understand. Am I giving myself a
21:30
Speaker 3: good chance to grow something good here if conditions are
21:33
Speaker 3: right or not? So that will go in to let
21:35
Speaker 3: me know how either Okay, I'm kind of in an
21:39
Speaker 3: average situation if this isn't growing good, or now I'm
21:42
Speaker 3: in a bad situation. Man, everybody else seems the neighbors
21:45
Speaker 3: have way better food. Plus that will change my perspective
21:48
Speaker 3: hunting wise, and where I'm picking, you know, two hangstands
21:52
Speaker 3: that first year or or what I expect from the
21:54
Speaker 3: first year on the lease.
21:57
Speaker 2: Is there any scenario in which you would try to
22:02
Speaker 2: make a last minute hail mary attempt to resurrect that
22:06
Speaker 2: food plot to either replant it or supplement it or
22:09
Speaker 2: do anything else.
22:11
Speaker 3: Yep. If it is say you say that the green plot,
22:14
Speaker 3: say you know that I whatever I plant, it doesn't matter.
22:17
Speaker 3: Say I get there and it's and is just not
22:20
Speaker 3: at all what I was hoping. It's full of all
22:23
Speaker 3: kinds of other weeds that aren't nutritious to deer that
22:25
Speaker 3: I know will that time of the year, September seventh,
22:29
Speaker 3: around Labor day, if Virginia is far enough south, I
22:35
Speaker 3: still would have time to either spray that plot and
22:39
Speaker 3: then broadcast winter wheat or winter rye or or brask
22:43
Speaker 3: or something else that I could still get decent growth
22:47
Speaker 3: out of that. Would you know, I could hunt through
22:49
Speaker 3: the fallen into the winter. I would pick something that
22:52
Speaker 3: is an annual plant, something that is going to grow
22:55
Speaker 3: very very fast, put on as much tonnage as possible.
22:59
Speaker 3: I'd have planted as late as Labor day in northern
23:02
Speaker 3: Pennsylvania before you know, you don't get a lot of
23:06
Speaker 3: growth out, but you get some. Virginia would be a
23:08
Speaker 3: place that early September. If this thing is really really bad, yes,
23:13
Speaker 3: you still have time for you know, one more planning
23:17
Speaker 3: fingers crossed. You know, rain is coming, or maybe rain
23:20
Speaker 3: is about right there, so you get farther north than that,
23:23
Speaker 3: you still you still could do it. You could throw it,
23:26
Speaker 3: you know, as you said, a hail Mary, even in
23:28
Speaker 3: Pennsylvania around September seventh, just recognizing you're not going to
23:32
Speaker 3: get a lot.
23:33
Speaker 2: Now.
23:33
Speaker 3: If I'm looking at that plot and what I had
23:35
Speaker 3: planned has germinated, it's just competing with some weeds and
23:39
Speaker 3: you know needs rain, then I'm not going to replant it.
23:43
Speaker 3: I may spread that to remove that competition from the weeds,
23:47
Speaker 3: to give the things I have there every chance, you know,
23:50
Speaker 3: to out compete it. You know, as soon as we
23:52
Speaker 3: get some good rain. But all is not lost early
23:55
Speaker 3: September at that latitude, there's still a chance to end
23:58
Speaker 3: up with something decent.
23:59
Speaker 2: To Okay, that's good news, good news. Here's another hypothetical.
24:16
Speaker 2: Let's say you own a one hundred acre farm and
24:21
Speaker 2: you have been hunting this farm for a number of years,
24:24
Speaker 2: but you've done it kind of by feel. I guess
24:26
Speaker 2: you've been that person who's always been targeting a buck.
24:30
Speaker 2: You should a doe here and there, but maybe you've
24:32
Speaker 2: not been serious about it. That said You've been listening
24:35
Speaker 2: to this podcast for years now, and you heard mister
24:39
Speaker 2: Kip Adams come on the show last winter and say, hey,
24:42
Speaker 2: you really got to take the dough harvest thing more seriously.
24:44
Speaker 2: You heard it a year before when Nick Pinzoto came
24:47
Speaker 2: on and said the same thing. You've heard it from
24:49
Speaker 2: your state DNR. You've read about it in the magazine articles.
24:53
Speaker 2: You're realizing, Oh, wow, maybe I need to take this
24:56
Speaker 2: whole ant lilas harvest thing a little bit more seriously.
24:59
Speaker 2: You've noticed there's tons of deer on my farm, you know,
25:02
Speaker 2: every year, especially in the late season. I'm just seeing
25:05
Speaker 2: a pile of deer out there, more and more deer
25:07
Speaker 2: every year. I probably do need to do something about it.
25:10
Speaker 2: So this year you've made it a goal that you
25:12
Speaker 2: are going to take more does. You're going to kill
25:15
Speaker 2: more does this year. But you also have two really
25:19
Speaker 2: great target bucks on your farm this year that you're
25:21
Speaker 2: very excited about that they've just reached that let's say
25:26
Speaker 2: five year old mark that you've been hoping they would
25:28
Speaker 2: get to, and you're just thrilled about that. You're sitting
25:32
Speaker 2: here the night before opening day thinking to yourself, well,
25:35
Speaker 2: I really want to kill does this year. I really
25:38
Speaker 2: want to kill these bucks and I don't want to
25:40
Speaker 2: spook these bucks while doing that. What do you do
25:44
Speaker 2: to be able to achieve both of those goals somehow?
25:48
Speaker 2: Moving to this season?
25:50
Speaker 3: Would I would shoot I would shoot Dose as early
25:53
Speaker 3: as possible if given the chance. I'm not going to
25:57
Speaker 3: pass a chance on one of those bucks to do that,
25:59
Speaker 3: but I would shoot Dose early in the season, and
26:03
Speaker 3: I would try to If I'm going to shoot multiple doughs,
26:06
Speaker 3: I would try to do that from different stands, so
26:10
Speaker 3: I'm not shooting them all from the same spot, and
26:12
Speaker 3: I wouldn't necessarily shoot them from my best stand that
26:15
Speaker 3: I thought I had chances to kill that bucket. And
26:18
Speaker 3: the reason I say those is oftentimes, with the exception
26:23
Speaker 3: of early early season like first or second day, which
26:27
Speaker 3: can be very good times to kill mature bucks, you know,
26:30
Speaker 3: they're still pretty particular. If you can hunt in September Pennsylvania,
26:34
Speaker 3: we are essentially the beginning of October. We've kind of
26:37
Speaker 3: missed that nice window in that September window to kill
26:41
Speaker 3: those mature bucks. So often the best time to kill
26:45
Speaker 3: him is once we get into late October or early November.
26:49
Speaker 3: I love it. Our Pennsylvania farm, if we have most
26:51
Speaker 3: of our dough harvest done in early to mid October,
26:55
Speaker 3: we never get there, but we try because what that
26:58
Speaker 3: allows us to do is spread doors harvest around throughout property.
27:01
Speaker 3: Have it early such that when our rut comes, you know,
27:05
Speaker 3: I tell you guys, like, have your dough harvest done
27:07
Speaker 3: so all you have to do is focus on bucks
27:10
Speaker 3: for the rest of the year. It's such a good
27:12
Speaker 3: feeling to know, like I am solely focused here. I
27:14
Speaker 3: don't have to worry about, you know, trying to be
27:17
Speaker 3: a good steward and shoot my does later. I've already got,
27:20
Speaker 3: you know, those doughs in the freezer, which that means
27:22
Speaker 3: now I don't need well, Pennsylvania is at one buck state.
27:25
Speaker 3: But some hunters get so nervous, like oh I just
27:27
Speaker 3: got to get a dear in the freezer, so they
27:29
Speaker 3: shoot a younger buck. Don't do that, shoot a dough sorry. Anyway,
27:33
Speaker 3: I would shoot was early, I wouldn't necessarily kill it.
27:37
Speaker 3: From my stand to, I think I have the best
27:40
Speaker 3: chance at killing a mature bucket, and I would try
27:43
Speaker 3: to spread the dough harvest out, you know, across the
27:45
Speaker 3: property a little bit. If you have one hundred acres,
27:48
Speaker 3: you definitely have an opportunity to be able to do that.
27:51
Speaker 2: Yep, Okay, that makes sense to me. That's uh, it's
27:56
Speaker 2: it's something that I personally have have struggled with myself
28:00
Speaker 2: doing the early doll harvest. But I know I need to.
28:02
Speaker 2: I need to get get working sooner because the late,
28:05
Speaker 2: the late stress trying to kill a dough or kill
28:08
Speaker 2: a bunch of doughs late is always trying in December
28:11
Speaker 2: when somehow you can see doughs all the time and
28:13
Speaker 2: have a thousand shot opportunities when you're trying to kill
28:15
Speaker 2: a buck, But then as soon as you're trying to
28:17
Speaker 2: kill a dough, they somehow become incredibly elusive.
28:21
Speaker 3: So I agree, And you know what I want to
28:23
Speaker 3: tell hunters is to make themselves feel feel good about it,
28:27
Speaker 3: or to know because some people just aren't entirely sure. Yes,
28:30
Speaker 3: Mark said, I should kill a dough or camp or
28:32
Speaker 3: who everybody? You know what, there's a very simple way,
28:35
Speaker 3: actually two simple ways of one. We talked about the
28:37
Speaker 3: exclusion cages. Look look at that. You can tell that
28:41
Speaker 3: food outside of those should absolutely be as high as
28:44
Speaker 3: it is inside. If it's not you need to shoot
28:47
Speaker 3: more does. That's very simple. Everybody can look at that. Also,
28:51
Speaker 3: if when you shoot a dough because deer lay fat
28:53
Speaker 3: on external to meat, when you skin that deer, there
28:57
Speaker 3: are to be a big thick layer of fat own
29:00
Speaker 3: the animal's body that you see. If that thick layer
29:03
Speaker 3: of fat is not there, there's not enough food for
29:06
Speaker 3: the deer neighborhood. You need to shoot more does or
29:08
Speaker 3: even if you feel dressing that the kidneys should be
29:10
Speaker 3: totally encased in fat. If you have a hard time
29:13
Speaker 3: finding the kidneys because it just looks like fat lobs,
29:15
Speaker 3: that is awesome. If you can see the kidneys, you
29:18
Speaker 3: know very easily there's not enough food for the deer
29:21
Speaker 3: in a neighborhood. So those are really simple ways to
29:24
Speaker 3: let yourself feel good about. Okay, you know those deer,
29:27
Speaker 3: they will make use of that. Oh, you know that
29:30
Speaker 3: food if it's available, which makes their heavier, which is great,
29:33
Speaker 3: which means bucks have bigger antlers, which is great. All
29:36
Speaker 3: the things we want. So you don't have to be
29:38
Speaker 3: a you know, a scientist or certainly not a rocket
29:41
Speaker 3: scientist to determine is there enough food here or not?
29:44
Speaker 3: So you know, look at the exclusion cage, look at
29:46
Speaker 3: the fat on deer. It's very simple. Anybody can determine that.
29:50
Speaker 3: And if you're not seeing that, shoot another dough.
29:54
Speaker 2: Get to work. Okay, it's the night before opening day.
29:57
Speaker 2: We'll say you're you're at home in Pennsylvania. H right,
30:01
Speaker 2: opening day coming up, and you've got a big old
30:06
Speaker 2: buck that you are there's one day you're very, very
30:08
Speaker 2: excited to hunt this year, and as you mentioned that
30:11
Speaker 2: first day or two. Okay, let me change this a
30:14
Speaker 2: little bit. I'm going to take you to a stay
30:15
Speaker 2: with a September opener. Okay, so so hit pause here.
30:20
Speaker 2: We're going to Maryland, Maryland. All right, We're going to
30:26
Speaker 2: Maryland with a September opener, and there's a big old
30:29
Speaker 2: buck that you would like to hunt on this particular
30:31
Speaker 2: property that you can have access to. Leading up to
30:36
Speaker 2: opening day, you have had daylight photos of this buck.
30:40
Speaker 2: This buck's been out and about. You know what it's
30:42
Speaker 2: bead to feed pattern is. You've got it pretty dial.
30:45
Speaker 2: You think like, all right, opening day should be great.
30:48
Speaker 2: But the day arrives and you have two very warm
30:53
Speaker 2: days to open the season, so above average temperatures for
30:58
Speaker 2: the first two days of the season. Does that impact
31:01
Speaker 2: how you approach those first two days of the first
31:04
Speaker 2: handful of days, and if so, how it does it?
31:10
Speaker 3: It does not affect it very much. It does a
31:12
Speaker 3: little bit mentally for me because I grew up in
31:15
Speaker 3: northern Pennsylvania, deer season is supposed to be cold, So
31:18
Speaker 3: when it's hot, we just feel like, yeah, it's you know,
31:22
Speaker 3: it's hot for us. You know, deer aren't moving either.
31:25
Speaker 3: There are literally millions of data points with radio color
31:29
Speaker 3: deer that show that temperature a little bit above average
31:33
Speaker 3: is not impacting them at all. They are still moving
31:36
Speaker 3: just like they would if it was colder. The biggest
31:38
Speaker 3: difference in the temperature stuff is what we feel, you know,
31:42
Speaker 3: as as hunters. Perfect example, when I was in graduate
31:45
Speaker 3: school at the University of New Hampshire, their bot season
31:48
Speaker 3: always started September fifteenth. I vividly remember September fifteenth, sitting
31:53
Speaker 3: in a tree stand in central New Hampshire ninety some degrees,
31:59
Speaker 3: sweating profusely and you know, bugs all over me, not
32:03
Speaker 3: having any fun at all, to thinking it's opening day
32:06
Speaker 3: like I am going, and then they're thinking there's no
32:09
Speaker 3: way deer moving. So I wasn't as intent on the
32:14
Speaker 3: stand as I should have been. My mind wasn't in
32:16
Speaker 3: it the way it should have been because it didn't
32:18
Speaker 3: feel cold to me. I don't kill a deer, you know,
32:22
Speaker 3: I blame it on the heat. Well, you know, then
32:24
Speaker 3: you fast forward even look like those deer were moving.
32:27
Speaker 3: They might have moved slightly later in the day, but
32:30
Speaker 3: they are still They're not waiting until after dark. You know,
32:33
Speaker 3: they are getting up all day long, you know, multiple
32:36
Speaker 3: times a day, to urinate, to defecate, to get a snacked.
32:39
Speaker 3: They're up and move it. So the warm part of
32:42
Speaker 3: that market will play on my psyche because I like
32:44
Speaker 3: it to the hot when it's colder, but it's not
32:47
Speaker 3: impacting deer. And this actually I've learned this when I
32:50
Speaker 3: worked for the State of Florida. You know, it never
32:52
Speaker 3: got cold there, Like the whole deer season was warm.
32:55
Speaker 3: So you know, deer are still moving. They have to
32:57
Speaker 3: get up and move. So I do believe that there
33:02
Speaker 3: are there are there are certain days, and you know
33:04
Speaker 3: this and serious hunters us, there are certain days. It
33:08
Speaker 3: just feels different in the woods. It's electricity in the air,
33:12
Speaker 3: whether in the GPS. Studies suggest that it's not just temperature,
33:17
Speaker 3: it's not just barometric pressure. But I think there's some
33:21
Speaker 3: combination of things that we just haven't been able to
33:24
Speaker 3: adequately measure yet, because there are certain days that just
33:26
Speaker 3: feel different, but overall they do will show man. Even
33:30
Speaker 3: when it's warmer, deer are still move. So I tell people, like,
33:34
Speaker 3: don't stay home just because it's warm. I you know,
33:36
Speaker 3: I have to sometimes remind myself of that. I personally
33:39
Speaker 3: don't enjoy it as much because I grew up hunting
33:42
Speaker 3: when it was cold. But I at least now I
33:45
Speaker 3: will not stay home because it's warm, because I know
33:48
Speaker 3: those deer are going to move. I just have to
33:50
Speaker 3: make sure that I am mentally strong enough to keep
33:52
Speaker 3: myself focused even though there's not a little chill in there.
33:56
Speaker 2: So let me let me let me add a little
33:58
Speaker 2: bit more detail here, because your perspective on this is
34:01
Speaker 2: really interesting to me, because, as you know, everybody has
34:05
Speaker 2: very strong feelings about temperature impacts on deer, but the
34:09
Speaker 2: science continues to come back showing negligible correlation. But I
34:15
Speaker 2: know you as a hunter, as you just alluded to, like,
34:17
Speaker 2: there is something that you and I know and Matt
34:20
Speaker 2: and other people who are very dialed on the science
34:22
Speaker 2: still are like, well, there are certain days, so so
34:25
Speaker 2: imagine this. Imagine you have three days to hunt. You
34:29
Speaker 2: have the first three days of the season to hunt there, right,
34:31
Speaker 2: and as I just described, your first two days are hot.
34:36
Speaker 2: Third day temperatures drop twenty degrees Okay, and you have
34:43
Speaker 2: You've got two places you could hunt. One of them
34:47
Speaker 2: is like the absolute best place to kill this deer.
34:50
Speaker 2: You think it's like close to it's right in between
34:52
Speaker 2: his bedding and feeding areas, and there's a super hot
34:55
Speaker 2: food source. It's like that quintessential early season it's spot
34:59
Speaker 2: to kill a boobut, but it's high impact, so you know,
35:02
Speaker 2: like if you go in there and hunt it and
35:04
Speaker 2: it doesn't work out, it's gonna be really hard to
35:07
Speaker 2: get out of there without him knowing it. The second
35:10
Speaker 2: place you could hunt is like maybe it could work,
35:13
Speaker 2: Like there's a chance maybe he happens to come out
35:15
Speaker 2: this way. But it's like a very safe place to hunt.
35:18
Speaker 2: So you could hunt this and it's very easy to
35:21
Speaker 2: get out after the evening hunt. He's not gonna smell you,
35:23
Speaker 2: he's not gonna see or hear you. It's safe, but
35:26
Speaker 2: just lower odds of reward. So those are your two
35:29
Speaker 2: possible locations you could hunt. You have three days to
35:32
Speaker 2: do it. Two days are hot, one day is much colder.
35:36
Speaker 2: How do you split your decision? How do you split
35:39
Speaker 2: your pressure? Given that I am going to I am
35:44
Speaker 2: going to hot, Well, let me let me storry. Let
35:48
Speaker 2: me throw on one more thing just for the audience.
35:51
Speaker 2: I want you to or I want the audience to
35:55
Speaker 2: remember something you mentioned a few minutes ago, which is
35:58
Speaker 2: that that first day or that first two two days
36:00
Speaker 2: can oftentimes be your very best chance to kill a
36:03
Speaker 2: deer before they change their behavior. So that mine sorry,
36:07
Speaker 2: go ahead, kid, So.
36:08
Speaker 3: With that, I am going regardless of the temperature. So
36:12
Speaker 3: the temperature is not going to be a factor here.
36:15
Speaker 3: If the wind is right, I say, it's the same
36:18
Speaker 3: road I am hunting, the stand that is safer to
36:21
Speaker 3: get in and out. And the reason that I say
36:23
Speaker 3: that is the worst thing that we can do as
36:28
Speaker 3: hunters is spook deer from where we're trying to hunt them.
36:31
Speaker 3: And as soon as we spook them from there, they
36:35
Speaker 3: remember that other deer, you know, they share information that
36:38
Speaker 3: stand is never as good again. And I have we
36:42
Speaker 3: have seen this on our Pennsylvania farm. We have stands
36:46
Speaker 3: here that are put in very good places, partly because
36:52
Speaker 3: we have awesome entry and exit routes where we don't
36:56
Speaker 3: spook deer going there or coming from there. So what
36:59
Speaker 3: that means is I will pick that spot to say
37:03
Speaker 3: spout to get in and out because deer travel so much,
37:07
Speaker 3: and deer select many different areas to bed and so
37:11
Speaker 3: you can do everything right. The wind is perfect, I'm
37:14
Speaker 3: in my stand. You can do everything right. But if
37:17
Speaker 3: that deer doesn't happen to be in that area, you
37:20
Speaker 3: don't have a chance to see it. However, if you're
37:24
Speaker 3: at that high risk spot, there might be a dough
37:28
Speaker 3: to five or other small box or whatever that are,
37:31
Speaker 3: and if you spook them from that stand, you really
37:35
Speaker 3: reduced your chances to kill that buck you're trying to
37:38
Speaker 3: from that. What we have done in our place over
37:41
Speaker 3: the last several years, and it has really worked out well,
37:43
Speaker 3: is pick stands that are in good spots that we
37:47
Speaker 3: aren't spooking dear from, or at least spooking very very
37:49
Speaker 3: few dear from. Because that way mark rather than making
37:52
Speaker 3: those stands good once or twice a year, we can
37:56
Speaker 3: go back to them literally five to ten times a year.
38:00
Speaker 3: And what that does is we only hunt when the
38:02
Speaker 3: conditions are right. But if I can hunt a stand,
38:05
Speaker 3: say eight times, the odds are much greater in my favor.
38:09
Speaker 3: With that buck that I'm trying to kill is in
38:11
Speaker 3: that area that night, not two hundred yards away on
38:14
Speaker 3: the neighbors or a quarter mile away here. So part
38:17
Speaker 3: of it is the odds. You know, you can have
38:19
Speaker 3: the best stand in the world, but you're not guaranteed
38:22
Speaker 3: that that deer is going to be right there. But
38:24
Speaker 3: if you can go back to that again and again
38:27
Speaker 3: and again every time you can, you have increased the
38:30
Speaker 3: odds that now through his travel, he is not only
38:34
Speaker 3: on the property of access to hunt, but on that
38:36
Speaker 3: portion of the property. We have permanent stands on our
38:40
Speaker 3: farm that we have killed multi that have been there
38:44
Speaker 3: literally a decade, and we have killed multiple four plus
38:49
Speaker 3: year old bucks out of four to eight year old bucks.
38:52
Speaker 3: Same stand not moved all tower blind there that we
38:57
Speaker 3: can get in year after year after year because we
39:01
Speaker 3: spook so few deer get it in or out. We
39:04
Speaker 3: also have stands used to have stands like the first
39:06
Speaker 3: place at the high risk in the past. That man
39:09
Speaker 3: it is literally in the best spot, and we have
39:12
Speaker 3: killed some deer out of them, but we have spooked
39:16
Speaker 3: way more deer, not the ones who are trying to kill,
39:20
Speaker 3: then the ones that we have killed out. And as
39:21
Speaker 3: soon as you do that, then quality of that stand
39:24
Speaker 3: really drops. So back to your question, I will pick
39:26
Speaker 3: the spot. I don't care about the temperature. I'm going
39:29
Speaker 3: to prefer it to be colder. But I am going
39:31
Speaker 3: to take the stand that I can get in and
39:33
Speaker 3: out without spooking things, because on a three day hunt,
39:36
Speaker 3: I might be able to hunt that three times, you know,
39:39
Speaker 3: in just up my odds each time of being able
39:43
Speaker 3: to have the deer that I'm looking for not only
39:46
Speaker 3: in the neighborhood, but right there where I have a
39:49
Speaker 3: chance to be able to shoot him from that stand.
39:51
Speaker 3: So I'm a huge fan mark of the entry in
39:55
Speaker 3: the exit, and I will even give up views of
39:58
Speaker 3: food plots or oak plots or whatever. I used to
40:00
Speaker 3: like to be right on the edge where I could
40:02
Speaker 3: see it all and be able to shoot. I have
40:04
Speaker 3: changed my mindset tremendous event I am back off those now,
40:08
Speaker 3: even though I do the majority of bow hunting, I
40:10
Speaker 3: am back off those will give up shots in certain
40:13
Speaker 3: places of views to be able to get there and
40:16
Speaker 3: out without being without spooking deer without seeing them. So anyway,
40:21
Speaker 3: that has worked out so much better for us over
40:24
Speaker 3: the past five to ten years that I would never
40:28
Speaker 3: go back to the other one with the exception of
40:30
Speaker 3: it's the last day of season and I know I
40:33
Speaker 3: won't be back in the higher risk stand. It's just
40:36
Speaker 3: way better in a much better spot. If I know
40:39
Speaker 3: that I will not be able to hunt this deer
40:41
Speaker 3: again for a long time, that is the only time
40:44
Speaker 3: I would do that. And on our farm, that is
40:46
Speaker 3: the only time that I will sit a stand if
40:48
Speaker 3: the wind is questionable at all all year, we are disciplined.
40:53
Speaker 3: We won't do it last night a season is the
40:55
Speaker 3: only time I would sit if I think the chances
40:59
Speaker 3: are in my favor that a certain years comment if
41:01
Speaker 3: the wind isn't exactly right, Okay, I should say, if
41:05
Speaker 3: the wind isn't acceptable to.
41:06
Speaker 2: Be there, Yeah, all right. I've got one more scenario
41:10
Speaker 2: that's that's kind of related to this, this this earlier
41:14
Speaker 2: discussion around whether or you know movement related factors. Maybe
41:19
Speaker 2: not my last question, but my last for this moment.
41:24
Speaker 2: Another one of these hunter isms that everyone likes to
41:29
Speaker 2: point to would be the October lull, right everybody, Not everybody,
41:34
Speaker 2: but many folks have talked about the impact of mid October.
41:38
Speaker 2: So let's say it's October sixteenth, and you're hunting your
41:43
Speaker 2: home farm in Pennsylvania and you have a target buck
41:47
Speaker 2: that you've been following around. There's there's the one big
41:50
Speaker 2: seven year old on your guys's place that you've been
41:53
Speaker 2: watching for years, and this is the year you think
41:55
Speaker 2: you can take them. And mid October major coal and
42:00
Speaker 2: pushing through. Your buck is still that large. He has
42:04
Speaker 2: been showing up on camera after dark the entire season.
42:08
Speaker 2: You've had no daylight settings while hunting, yet you've had
42:11
Speaker 2: no daylight photos of him yet during the season. There
42:14
Speaker 2: is a thirty degree temperature drop coming up on October sixteenth.
42:20
Speaker 2: What does this do if in any way change your
42:23
Speaker 2: hunting strategy for him? If on October sixteenth, big cold
42:26
Speaker 2: front pushes through, but he's been dark to this point, I.
42:31
Speaker 3: Was seeing the cold front is going to make me
42:33
Speaker 3: very happy because, as I said, I like it to
42:35
Speaker 3: be cold to hunt. The data with regard to do
42:41
Speaker 3: your move into cold fronts, as we said, doesn't hold up.
42:45
Speaker 3: I mean, the GPS data will show when that cold
42:49
Speaker 3: front comes through that had no impact on his movements
42:52
Speaker 3: leading up to it or his movements after. However, when
42:56
Speaker 3: you get that big of a change, I personally feel
42:59
Speaker 3: there is some in there. Whether it's thirty degrees colder
43:01
Speaker 3: or thirty degrees warmer, big wide swings tend to for
43:05
Speaker 3: whatever reason, uh, you know, get deer moving a little bit.
43:09
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna love the cold front because mentally I
43:12
Speaker 3: like to hunt cold. If it's not getting cold, I'm
43:15
Speaker 3: still going to be there. And I will say this,
43:18
Speaker 3: there's so much data now with that October lull all
43:21
Speaker 3: over the White Tails range north, south, east, and west
43:24
Speaker 3: that show across October or if you're in the southeast,
43:28
Speaker 3: you know, we think of October to north as you know,
43:30
Speaker 3: it's that pre rut leading up to the rough that
43:32
Speaker 3: same time period like in Louisiana, which tends to be
43:36
Speaker 3: December or January or other say, every single GPS cost
43:40
Speaker 3: star shows deer move more all the way through that
43:44
Speaker 3: October supposed you know lull thing, but you know what March,
43:49
Speaker 3: so I know they are moving more every single day
43:52
Speaker 3: through there. I also know as a hunter there are
43:56
Speaker 3: times I really struggle to find there in October, and
43:59
Speaker 3: I all so would swear they can't be moving, you know,
44:02
Speaker 3: like I just can't. So I know what the data
44:05
Speaker 3: says that keeps me going as a hunter to know that, hey,
44:08
Speaker 3: I know they're moving, I just have to do a
44:10
Speaker 3: better job figuring out here. And even on our home farm, man,
44:13
Speaker 3: there's times in October that we struggle to find deer.
44:16
Speaker 3: You know, our cameras show us now they're still moving
44:19
Speaker 3: in that so I know that they are. But I
44:21
Speaker 3: hear like I sympathize with hunters who can struggle, particularly
44:26
Speaker 3: in mid October when deer are hard to find. My
44:30
Speaker 3: professional opinion is what's happened is you know by now
44:35
Speaker 3: do you know they're being hunted? And they do such
44:37
Speaker 3: a good job reacting to human presence, whether you see
44:41
Speaker 3: them or not, just knowing that you were there. But that,
44:43
Speaker 3: more than anything else, is what's going on. They're just
44:45
Speaker 3: reacting to now more there are more hunters in the woods,
44:48
Speaker 3: there's more ATVs in the woods, there's people around, so
44:51
Speaker 3: you know they're just on high alert. So my part
44:54
Speaker 3: of that is, Man, that buck I've seen that lets
44:58
Speaker 3: me know it Okay, you're like, I'm still in the game.
45:00
Speaker 3: This is good. I'm still going to try. He's got
45:03
Speaker 3: I know that we're not to the rut yet, so
45:06
Speaker 3: you know, he still is going to want to be
45:08
Speaker 3: eating as much as possible. I would still think my
45:11
Speaker 3: best chance to kill him is as he is headed
45:14
Speaker 3: to a food source. I used to hunt food sources
45:18
Speaker 3: a lot more than I do today, and the reason
45:21
Speaker 3: for that is I used to set up almost exclusively
45:23
Speaker 3: on food, whether that be a food plot or in
45:25
Speaker 3: an oak flat where there's a bunch of acorns or
45:28
Speaker 3: near an apple orchs or whatever it was. And I
45:31
Speaker 3: still do that occasionally today, but I am much more
45:35
Speaker 3: so likely to be positioned between where I think or
45:40
Speaker 3: know they're bedding and where they're going and get them
45:43
Speaker 3: in between the two. And I'm not being cliche with us.
45:45
Speaker 3: The reason I say this is one there I am
45:49
Speaker 3: more likely to see them during shooting hours. You know,
45:52
Speaker 3: they often are going to be at that food plot,
45:54
Speaker 3: but oftentimes it's not till after dark. That's a big thing.
45:58
Speaker 3: But what I found marked to be even more sucessful
46:00
Speaker 3: for me is as they as I try to intercept
46:04
Speaker 3: them on the way wherever I am in between those
46:07
Speaker 3: two areas, there's almost never a deer near me at dark.
46:11
Speaker 3: You know they are over at the food plot or
46:13
Speaker 3: they are over else. So what that allows me to
46:15
Speaker 3: do is get out of my stand without spooking anybody
46:19
Speaker 3: and get out of the woods, which means then I
46:22
Speaker 3: can come back and be able to hunt that spot.
46:23
Speaker 3: And I'm convinced this is why we are able to
46:26
Speaker 3: hunt those stands that I mentioned effectively year after year,
46:30
Speaker 3: because there are areas where, in many cases you know
46:33
Speaker 3: deer move through, you know, lots of shooting light, which
46:36
Speaker 3: is great. They give you a good look and they're gone,
46:39
Speaker 3: so you can get out of a stand at night
46:40
Speaker 3: and never spook anything. I think that, more than anything else,
46:43
Speaker 3: is what has really changed the game for us, particularly
46:46
Speaker 3: with regard to to killing mature bucks. And we've been
46:50
Speaker 3: very lucky and shot a bunch of them on our
46:53
Speaker 3: farm over the last decade, and that, as much as anything,
46:56
Speaker 3: is what has made that happen. We often don't see
47:00
Speaker 3: as many deer because we don't see that huge group
47:02
Speaker 3: flood the field or whatever at dark, but we are
47:05
Speaker 3: more effective at killing the ones are trying to kill
47:08
Speaker 3: because we are better at I guess being a little
47:12
Speaker 3: stealthy in and out.
47:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like you said earlier, there's a lot a
47:17
Speaker 2: lot in regards to discipline here with some of these decisions.
47:32
Speaker 2: So here's here's one that I'm curious on your take on.
47:36
Speaker 2: Let's imagine you're out hunting on October twenty fourth, and
47:41
Speaker 2: let's say you're still at least you can tell me
47:45
Speaker 2: if this is wrong. But on October twenty fourth, I'm
47:47
Speaker 2: still considering food sources and bedding and how they're moving
47:51
Speaker 2: back and forth between the two. But when you're on
47:53
Speaker 2: stand that evening, you see a dough getting chased by
47:57
Speaker 2: a group of bucks, like four different come piling through,
48:01
Speaker 2: just like chasing, like hardcore chasing. There's you know, a
48:05
Speaker 2: year and a half old, a year and a half old,
48:07
Speaker 2: a three year old, and then a mature buck is
48:10
Speaker 2: in the tail. There's four different bucks, all hot on
48:13
Speaker 2: the still they go just busting past you. It's October
48:16
Speaker 2: twenty fourth. You had been planning to continue to hunt
48:20
Speaker 2: kind of a bed to food type pattern for the
48:22
Speaker 2: rest of your weekend hunt. Now you see that. Does
48:25
Speaker 2: that change anything for your next couple hunts?
48:28
Speaker 3: But it probably not. And the reason I say that
48:32
Speaker 3: is if we're in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, or somewhere in
48:34
Speaker 3: the north where you know the rut is gonna peak
48:38
Speaker 3: in early to mid November, I often think of Halloween
48:41
Speaker 3: is flipping the switch from you know, the rut standpoint,
48:44
Speaker 3: so still late October like that, Probably what has happened
48:48
Speaker 3: is that dough is in heat. And if you look
48:51
Speaker 3: at the rut maps, you know it's a very steep
48:53
Speaker 3: bell curve where most deer are bred of a short time.
48:56
Speaker 3: But there's still a lot of deer. You know, they
48:59
Speaker 3: get bread in October, even some back into September. So
49:02
Speaker 3: it's probably a dough that just came in heat early
49:06
Speaker 3: obviously has attracted the attention of those bucks. And as
49:09
Speaker 3: you're starting that, in my mind, I'm thinking, okay, late
49:12
Speaker 3: on Earth October twenty fourth, I see this. I'm thinking
49:16
Speaker 3: some young bucks are just chasing her around, you know,
49:18
Speaker 3: this kind of bird dogging her and harrassing her. So
49:21
Speaker 3: you said, oh no, no, there's actually a three year
49:23
Speaker 3: old and if I okay, they're not messing with her
49:25
Speaker 3: because she's not in heat or almost in here. So
49:28
Speaker 3: what I would do in that situation is I would
49:30
Speaker 3: look at that as kind of an outlier, and I
49:33
Speaker 3: absolutely would be calling to those bucks. I like to
49:36
Speaker 3: call a bunch anyway. I'm very, very active in that.
49:40
Speaker 3: I think it's a lot of fun. I grew up
49:42
Speaker 3: with a turkey call in my mouth, so I love
49:44
Speaker 3: the calling anyway, and I call way more today while
49:48
Speaker 3: I'm deer hunting than I have in the past. You know,
49:51
Speaker 3: I'm not nearly as nervous about spooking deer. Deer are
49:54
Speaker 3: communicating all the time, you know, verbally, so I am
49:57
Speaker 3: absolutely trying to call all that deer into me to
50:02
Speaker 3: you know, to make something hap her, put myself in play.
50:05
Speaker 3: I'm not entirely changing my my strategy yet because it's
50:09
Speaker 3: still about a week early for when most of that
50:11
Speaker 3: is coming. But I would take advantage of that as
50:14
Speaker 3: an outlier of hey, this is my good fortune. I
50:17
Speaker 3: see this. And actually an example was last fall my
50:20
Speaker 3: daughter and I were in North Dakota. She had a
50:23
Speaker 3: deer tag. I did not, but we saw a buck
50:26
Speaker 3: in there. We could see it long ways away. We
50:29
Speaker 3: watched the buck chasing does five hundred plus yards away
50:34
Speaker 3: in and out of this brush, and uh so I
50:37
Speaker 3: started calling to him, and my daughter looked at me, like,
50:40
Speaker 3: come on, dad. I tought her it was eighteen at
50:43
Speaker 3: the time. She's hunting a lot like she She's like,
50:46
Speaker 3: do you really think, I said, do you want to
50:48
Speaker 3: just sit here and do nothing? Like the chances that
50:51
Speaker 3: we're gonna call him to us? Yeah, he's got four
50:53
Speaker 3: or five dos there, but look, we're gonna I'm we're
50:56
Speaker 3: gonna play the game. So we call he mess with them,
50:59
Speaker 3: and they weren't and he they were probably close, but
51:02
Speaker 3: mess a little bit, and all of a sudden, he's
51:05
Speaker 3: four hundred yards away, still kind of there. I continued
51:08
Speaker 3: to call, and I was calling in such that you know,
51:11
Speaker 3: I actually was challenging him a little bit, just letting
51:13
Speaker 3: him know, like a girl with a very sharp end
51:15
Speaker 3: on it, like man, just let him know, Hey, I
51:18
Speaker 3: see you, and uh. He would look at us and
51:21
Speaker 3: kind of be through bush. About an hour later, he's
51:24
Speaker 3: three hundred yards away, and h make a long story short,
51:28
Speaker 3: another hour later, he's one hundred and twenty yards standing
51:32
Speaker 3: in front of us, ticked off at whereas and my
51:34
Speaker 3: daughter killed him right four year old buck.
51:37
Speaker 2: Wow.
51:37
Speaker 3: And so as we leave, she says, so like like Dad,
51:40
Speaker 3: she said, like, I am super happy. That was awesome,
51:45
Speaker 3: And I know that deer wasn't here by chance, like
51:48
Speaker 3: I know it was because we and she was using
51:51
Speaker 3: we I know it's because we called him in and
51:53
Speaker 3: then she smiled. I know, but I said, you know,
51:55
Speaker 3: you're absolutely right, you know, like if we if we
51:59
Speaker 3: are timid and nothing, I mean, I guess it's possible
52:03
Speaker 3: mark that deer comes with. But I'm gonna say from
52:05
Speaker 3: a Honting end in your union experience, there is maybe
52:07
Speaker 3: a one percent chance that deer ends up where he did.
52:10
Speaker 3: He came a long way, and he came there because
52:14
Speaker 3: of you know, the calling that we did, so example
52:17
Speaker 3: you gave. I absolutely am calling to those deer, you know,
52:21
Speaker 3: to try to put myself in a position. How are
52:24
Speaker 3: they gonna come? You know, like who knows, maybe maybe not,
52:27
Speaker 3: but you know, in the process of all that may lee.
52:30
Speaker 3: You know that dough may end up coming back by
52:32
Speaker 3: or whatever. So I'm gonna try anyway, But I am
52:35
Speaker 3: not shifting my strategy based on you know, one outlier,
52:38
Speaker 3: you know, a little bit early before the run.
52:42
Speaker 2: In that scenario October twenty fourth, Buck's chasing a doll
52:46
Speaker 2: what's the call that you would try to employ.
52:49
Speaker 3: I would be grunting at that bucket, particularly lead buck.
52:52
Speaker 3: So if I thought I would be doing anywhere from
52:57
Speaker 3: a challenge grunt at him to let him know all
53:00
Speaker 3: the way up to a snort wize and so you know,
53:03
Speaker 3: I'm not being real timid with just little tending grunts,
53:06
Speaker 3: you know, or just social grunts or whatever. So I
53:08
Speaker 3: would have grown. And so often when I'm hunting now
53:10
Speaker 3: I'm I've grunt. Some people won't grunt when they're not
53:13
Speaker 3: seeing deer. I am grinning all the time. In the fall,
53:16
Speaker 3: I have called a lot of deer and I did
53:18
Speaker 3: not know here there you know that came out to
53:20
Speaker 3: check what was going on. So in those cases, you know,
53:22
Speaker 3: I'm often just going like, ah, well, if I see
53:26
Speaker 3: a buck that I want to call to, I will
53:29
Speaker 3: do that, but at the end, make it very sharp.
53:31
Speaker 3: That's more of the challenging like a man to let
53:35
Speaker 3: him know I'm talking to you. I'm not just genuinely
53:39
Speaker 3: communicating like I am talking to you, and I've done that.
53:43
Speaker 3: Whether I see a buck or no, I absolutely will
53:46
Speaker 3: do it. You know, if it's a buck that I
53:47
Speaker 3: want to get closer to me, so that and up
53:51
Speaker 3: to a snort wheeze. It's a bit early for a
53:54
Speaker 3: snort weeze, I went, and I love the snort wheeze.
53:56
Speaker 3: As we get into November, probably I'm not snoring weason,
54:00
Speaker 3: you know, the twenty fourth of October. But I definitely
54:03
Speaker 3: would be challenged running to that deer. But if it,
54:07
Speaker 3: you know, I wouldn't be opposed. I guess to storm
54:09
Speaker 3: reason as well. You know you're not going to scare
54:11
Speaker 3: it away, so I mean you're not. It's not like
54:13
Speaker 3: I do that. It's like, oh, everything's ruined. So anyway,
54:17
Speaker 3: I think more people should be more aggressive from the calling.
54:19
Speaker 2: That does your calling your comfort with aggressive calling? Does
54:23
Speaker 2: that extend to rattling as well? Or do you have
54:25
Speaker 2: a different take on that now?
54:26
Speaker 3: You know I'd love to rattle, and I rattle very
54:29
Speaker 3: little anymore. I used to rattle a lot more than
54:32
Speaker 3: I do now. And I've called some really nice bucks
54:35
Speaker 3: in and had fun with that, I found though at
54:38
Speaker 3: least I do most of my honting in Pennsylvania, but
54:42
Speaker 3: I've rattled in North Dakota, Kentucky, Illinois, all over the place.
54:48
Speaker 3: I don't call as many deer in that way, and
54:52
Speaker 3: I end up sometimes I think, making more noise on
54:55
Speaker 3: my darn rattling antlers when I'm putting them down on
54:57
Speaker 3: a stand or carrying or carrying out or whatever. So
55:00
Speaker 3: you know, I used to carry a lot more stuff
55:02
Speaker 3: to the stand than I do now. I try to
55:04
Speaker 3: go minimal just to not have all of that, and
55:08
Speaker 3: rattling antlers are one of the things that I've kind
55:10
Speaker 3: of to let go of.
55:13
Speaker 2: Now.
55:13
Speaker 3: If I'm going to South Texas, I'm I'm taking rattling
55:17
Speaker 3: And absolutely I never go deer hunting without a grunt tube.
55:21
Speaker 3: I often grunt with my mouth any but I always
55:23
Speaker 3: have a grunt tube. There was a long time and
55:26
Speaker 3: I carried you know, antler's off fall. I don't do
55:28
Speaker 3: that anymore, but more so just from because I don't
55:31
Speaker 3: want to carry them, so I don't. I have friends
55:33
Speaker 3: that had that rattle in a lot of deer over
55:35
Speaker 3: here and have fun with it. I think it's a
55:36
Speaker 3: lot of fun, but it's also a lot of movement,
55:39
Speaker 3: you know, all of this, and so I probably well,
55:42
Speaker 3: I shouldn't say I know that I have spooked, and
55:44
Speaker 3: I've seen deer that I have spooked, either in the
55:46
Speaker 3: course of the rattling or done is setting the antlers
55:50
Speaker 3: down on a tree stand or whatever. So I'm so
55:52
Speaker 3: careful about movement, and there's very little movement associated with grunting,
55:56
Speaker 3: a lot more so with rattling, So I'm not nearly
55:59
Speaker 3: as much rattler as I used to be.
56:01
Speaker 2: Okay, we're head and south. Let's say you are gonna
56:06
Speaker 2: go hunt in Georgia with your buddy Lindsay Thomas Jr.
56:10
Speaker 2: And I don't know what his family property looks like there,
56:14
Speaker 2: So let's just say that you guys are on a
56:16
Speaker 2: property that has a big central core of cover and
56:22
Speaker 2: that is like all of the cover. There's a big
56:24
Speaker 2: chunk of this bedding in the middle, and then it's
56:26
Speaker 2: surrounded on all Let's say it's a square, and on
56:28
Speaker 2: all four sides there's a different food source. Okay, to
56:33
Speaker 2: your north is a chunk of hardwoods with some oaks
56:37
Speaker 2: in there. To your south are some green fields, like
56:42
Speaker 2: some food plots. They plant some clover or maybe some
56:45
Speaker 2: cereal grains. It's like a mixture of that kind of stuff.
56:48
Speaker 2: To your east is a neighboring property owner with corn planted.
56:55
Speaker 2: And to your west you have some kind of native
56:59
Speaker 2: region generation old field kind of stuff going on. Okay,
57:04
Speaker 2: those are the four different food sources surrounding your square
57:07
Speaker 2: of cover. And I can repeat that for you if
57:09
Speaker 2: you want at some point. But on this particular evening
57:12
Speaker 2: hunt you're going on, Lindsey tells you, Hey, this place
57:16
Speaker 2: is great. There's a lot of great deer. The challenge
57:19
Speaker 2: is you just never know what they're going to come
57:21
Speaker 2: out to feed on. They've got these four options, four
57:23
Speaker 2: different directions. It's very tricky to pick where to hunt
57:26
Speaker 2: on any given night. There seems to be no rhyme
57:28
Speaker 2: or reason, he says. And on this particular night, you
57:31
Speaker 2: have a light and variable wind, so there's not going
57:36
Speaker 2: to be a really strong stiff breeze to be considering.
57:39
Speaker 2: So it's late October, you're hunting this place in Georgia
57:43
Speaker 2: with a light and variable wind. You're trying to choose
57:46
Speaker 2: where to sit for your evening hunt. And I'll repeat
57:49
Speaker 2: your food sources. To your north, you have your hardwoods
57:53
Speaker 2: with oaks. To your south, you have your green food plots.
57:59
Speaker 2: To your east, you have the cornfield. Into your west,
58:05
Speaker 2: you have the old field region kind of thing going on.
58:10
Speaker 2: Where would you hunt why how would you come to
58:12
Speaker 2: that decision?
58:13
Speaker 3: Okay? And in what month is it?
58:15
Speaker 2: This is the end of October.
58:17
Speaker 3: End of October, okay. The first thing I would do
58:21
Speaker 3: is I would be assessing wind. Can do like I
58:24
Speaker 3: would pick based on where the wind is. You've already
58:26
Speaker 3: said wind is not a factor. Can have any of those,
58:29
Speaker 3: so you know that I can pick one spot or
58:32
Speaker 3: I have a stamp for every wind with those the
58:35
Speaker 3: next thing I would do, And first of all, I
58:37
Speaker 3: like the idea of the cover being central hunting from
58:41
Speaker 3: the outside, like hunting deer coming out of that into food.
58:44
Speaker 3: That is a really, really good setup. I like that
58:47
Speaker 3: a lot. What I would do I think that there
58:50
Speaker 3: are if oaks are falling with acorns hitting the ground,
58:55
Speaker 3: there are very few things that attract dear more than acorns,
58:58
Speaker 3: particularly white oak acorns. If I can hunt white oak acorns,
59:03
Speaker 3: corn green, whatever it is, or really successful vegetation, odds
59:08
Speaker 3: are and there's lots of deer food studies to show this.
59:13
Speaker 3: Acorns are likely your best bet. You know they are
59:16
Speaker 3: going to be just super attractive. Deer love them, and
59:19
Speaker 3: that time of the year you are at the end
59:22
Speaker 3: of when they can really put on much fat to
59:24
Speaker 3: get ready for winter, so they are going to be
59:27
Speaker 3: doing everything possible to add as much fat as they
59:30
Speaker 3: possibly can, So acorns will be an awesome, awesome selection. However,
59:36
Speaker 3: I would pick where I'm going to be as much
59:38
Speaker 3: as anything based on what does the cover around that
59:43
Speaker 3: food source look like. And by that what I mean
59:46
Speaker 3: is for a long time we had food plots, or
59:49
Speaker 3: we had open oak stands where you know, we're hunting
59:52
Speaker 3: with a corns or whatever, where you had that and
59:56
Speaker 3: then you had woods. Today, every single food plot I
1:00:02
Speaker 3: have and almost every single stand I have in the woods,
1:00:07
Speaker 3: those food sources have some type of cover immediately adjacent
1:00:12
Speaker 3: to them. So for example, the food plot it was
1:00:15
Speaker 3: a square. Rather than plant that whole thing, I plant
1:00:18
Speaker 3: a smaller portion of it and have early successional vegetation
1:00:22
Speaker 3: all the way around where awesome oak stands. Rather than
1:00:27
Speaker 3: being all open through the woods. We have done work
1:00:29
Speaker 3: in the woods so that we have young forests so
1:00:32
Speaker 3: that it's thick cover right adjacent to where there. And
1:00:36
Speaker 3: the reason for this mark is as you're where deer
1:00:38
Speaker 3: are going to go find the food, you know, but
1:00:41
Speaker 3: they might eat after dark. So if I can only
1:00:44
Speaker 3: have one food or cover. I'm taking cover every single
1:00:47
Speaker 3: time because that still keeps me in the ball game.
1:00:50
Speaker 3: And when I mentioned this, about every single one of
1:00:53
Speaker 3: our stands has early successional vegetation around it because that
1:00:57
Speaker 3: facilitates daytime movement of deer into that food source. You know,
1:01:01
Speaker 3: they might be in the food plot after dark, but
1:01:03
Speaker 3: they're going to be you know, in the area right
1:01:06
Speaker 3: near it before dark. If they feel secure in three
1:01:10
Speaker 3: to five feet of early successful vegetation makes them feel
1:01:13
Speaker 3: very secure. We are hunting from an elevated position, we
1:01:17
Speaker 3: can see the deer very clearly, so it puts us
1:01:20
Speaker 3: at a tremendous advantage. Having that cover right around food
1:01:25
Speaker 3: is an absolute game changer, absolutely, and we have shot
1:01:29
Speaker 3: some of the best bumps on us over the last
1:01:31
Speaker 3: few years with that exact scenario. Case in point, my son,
1:01:35
Speaker 3: this is three hunting seasons ago, now overlooking a food
1:01:38
Speaker 3: plot that had been there for a long time. That
1:01:41
Speaker 3: year I had taken the outside acre of it and
1:01:45
Speaker 3: made it into early successful vegetation. Pennsylvania has more dinners
1:01:49
Speaker 3: per square mile in every other state fourteen and a
1:01:51
Speaker 3: half deer, so there are people everywhere we are into
1:01:55
Speaker 3: It's the end of November. We've hunted deer for six
1:01:57
Speaker 3: or seven weeks with the bow, now a week with
1:01:59
Speaker 3: a rifle. Deer know they're being hunted. I'm in the
1:02:03
Speaker 3: stand when my young son we watch a buck walk
1:02:05
Speaker 3: into this food plot. What he's done is he's walking
1:02:08
Speaker 3: by the early successful vegetation because he knows one step.
1:02:12
Speaker 3: I'm completely hit. It's a winter ride plot. He walks
1:02:16
Speaker 3: down an hour before dark. You know mature bucks aren't
1:02:20
Speaker 3: walking around an hour before dark in Pennsylvania. He walks
1:02:23
Speaker 3: down this row of early successional vegetation, stops at one
1:02:27
Speaker 3: hundred and thirty yards away. My son pulls a trigger,
1:02:30
Speaker 3: drops him in his tracks. We are going crazy celebrating
1:02:34
Speaker 3: because we've had our camp since nineteen seventy seven. This
1:02:38
Speaker 3: was the biggest buck we'd ever killed. This was a
1:02:40
Speaker 3: six and a half year old, one hundred and fifty
1:02:42
Speaker 3: inch dear that is standing at the edge of a
1:02:46
Speaker 3: food plot an hour before dark. He's not standing there
1:02:49
Speaker 3: if that early successional vegetation isn't there. That is the
1:02:53
Speaker 3: game jigger. That is why every food plot we have
1:02:57
Speaker 3: now has that around it. And then when we are
1:02:59
Speaker 3: standing in the woods, we work in the woods to
1:03:02
Speaker 3: have thicket. They don't have to be huge areas, but
1:03:04
Speaker 3: it just has to be enough cover that deer feels
1:03:06
Speaker 3: secure that one step and I'm hitting. So I say
1:03:09
Speaker 3: that to say, everything else being equal, I'm going to
1:03:12
Speaker 3: hunt at oat flat. I want to be with the
1:03:14
Speaker 3: eight corns. But if it's all wide open and the
1:03:18
Speaker 3: corn and or the green patch has early successful vegetation
1:03:22
Speaker 3: aren't cover around it, I likely I'm picking one of
1:03:25
Speaker 3: those because deer are more likely to show themselves during shooting. Ours.
1:03:30
Speaker 2: All right, I love this topic that you brought up
1:03:32
Speaker 2: about the hunting pressure impacts there and how you've dealt
1:03:36
Speaker 2: with that. From like a habitat management perspective, I've got
1:03:39
Speaker 2: to question a scenario for you that is related. Let's
1:03:44
Speaker 2: say you're on your home farm or yeah, let's say
1:03:47
Speaker 2: it's your home farm and you get new neighbors this year.
1:03:50
Speaker 2: And I don't know what your neighboring landowners situation is,
1:03:53
Speaker 2: but let's say that this new neighbor owns property on
1:03:56
Speaker 2: two sides of your farm and they come in the
1:03:59
Speaker 2: season open, and all of a sudden, you see, like WHOA,
1:04:02
Speaker 2: these guys are guns blazing. There's people there every weekend,
1:04:06
Speaker 2: sometimes weekdays, there's a whole pile of people. Like a
1:04:10
Speaker 2: lot of hunters, you frequently see them. You hear them
1:04:13
Speaker 2: buzzing around on their ATVs all the time. They're setting
1:04:16
Speaker 2: up on your property lines. You're seeing them often right
1:04:18
Speaker 2: there on the edge of your property. As the season advances.
1:04:22
Speaker 2: This continues from a hunting perspective of what you can
1:04:26
Speaker 2: do and impact right now during this season while this
1:04:29
Speaker 2: is happening. How does that change things, if at all,
1:04:32
Speaker 2: for you.
1:04:34
Speaker 3: The first thing I'm going to do is if somebody
1:04:36
Speaker 3: buys land near me, I'm going to go meet them
1:04:38
Speaker 3: and introduce myself and just let them know what we do.
1:04:42
Speaker 3: And actually, this is a very real serio for us
1:04:44
Speaker 3: because where I am in northern Pennsylvania, it's an economically
1:04:48
Speaker 3: depressed area. It's an awesome place to raise kids and hunt.
1:04:54
Speaker 3: Money wise, you know, there's not so every landowner except
1:04:58
Speaker 3: for one who borders our farm, lives at least three
1:05:01
Speaker 3: hours away. They live in southern pa or Maryland or
1:05:04
Speaker 3: New Jersey and then drive up here monetarily. You know,
1:05:08
Speaker 3: they can afford to land here more than the locals can.
1:05:11
Speaker 3: It's a great place to be. So having said that
1:05:13
Speaker 3: you know, it's not like I grew up with it.
1:05:15
Speaker 3: Because I now live where I grew up, It's not
1:05:17
Speaker 3: like I grew up with our neighbors. So what I
1:05:20
Speaker 3: do is is I share information with all of our neighbors.
1:05:23
Speaker 3: Every year, I share trail camber pictures, I share an
1:05:25
Speaker 3: annual camp report to let them know what we're doing.
1:05:28
Speaker 3: And I remember in the early years when I started this,
1:05:30
Speaker 3: the guys that are camp said, I can't believe you're
1:05:33
Speaker 3: sharing dear camp, And I said, look, I want them
1:05:36
Speaker 3: to know. This is what we're doing. We're gonna be
1:05:39
Speaker 3: we want to be good neighbors. I'm not asking you
1:05:41
Speaker 3: to do what we do. If you don't want to
1:05:43
Speaker 3: ever pass the buck, that's totally fine. But I want
1:05:45
Speaker 3: you to know where going to so that if you
1:05:47
Speaker 3: choose to, then you can feel secure that we're going
1:05:50
Speaker 3: to as well. And that has worked out very well
1:05:53
Speaker 3: for us. So first thing, I'm gonna let them know, Hey,
1:05:55
Speaker 3: I'm Kip Adams. You know awesome hunting in the area. Congratulations,
1:05:59
Speaker 3: And by this, you know we work with a lot
1:06:02
Speaker 3: of the neighbors here. Share information. You know you have
1:06:05
Speaker 3: bought into a good place to deer on. This is
1:06:08
Speaker 3: kind of what the neighborhood does. This is what we do.
1:06:11
Speaker 3: Love to hear what you want to do, you know,
1:06:13
Speaker 3: love to have you be a good, productive part of us.
1:06:16
Speaker 3: And if they say they choose they don't want to
1:06:19
Speaker 3: be at all, or they just are. And there are
1:06:22
Speaker 3: certainly something like that, and I work with people who
1:06:24
Speaker 3: have neighbors like that. I work really hard to make
1:06:27
Speaker 3: sure we have good cover on us so that deer
1:06:30
Speaker 3: have places to feel secure. I would absolutely make sure
1:06:33
Speaker 3: that in these areas that deer you know, between us
1:06:36
Speaker 3: and them, had really good cover that they could get into,
1:06:40
Speaker 3: whether they're on you know, our farm and moving into that,
1:06:43
Speaker 3: you know, because they're not our deer. It's the neighborhoods dereal.
1:06:45
Speaker 3: They belong to everybody. But you know, if these people
1:06:48
Speaker 3: are and the neighbors are shooting everything or run over,
1:06:51
Speaker 3: I want to provide a place for deer that are,
1:06:53
Speaker 3: you know, near us to be able to feel safe
1:06:56
Speaker 3: and secure as well. So I'm going to make sure
1:06:57
Speaker 3: there's really good cover that they can get in, and
1:07:00
Speaker 3: then I'm gonna be uber careful to not apply pressure
1:07:04
Speaker 3: to those sides of the property that you know, to
1:07:07
Speaker 3: make dear want to leave and go the other way,
1:07:09
Speaker 3: and you know how dear are, though, they will react
1:07:12
Speaker 3: very quickly realize if there's less pressure over here, I'm
1:07:15
Speaker 3: going to spend more time this way. So we'll just
1:07:19
Speaker 3: we'll just be super careful about that. But I absolutely
1:07:21
Speaker 3: I am going to reach out and try to meet the
1:07:24
Speaker 3: neighbors and you know, be a be a good good
1:07:26
Speaker 3: friend to them, so at least give them the opportunity
1:07:29
Speaker 3: to to be good friends with us too.
1:07:31
Speaker 2: Yep, that makes a lot of sense, all right, Kip.
1:07:34
Speaker 2: In the interesting time, I want to move us to
1:07:37
Speaker 2: the final section of this gauntlet, which is like a
1:07:40
Speaker 2: rapid fire section. I've got several just very quick questions
1:07:43
Speaker 2: that I ask everybody and ask for them to just
1:07:46
Speaker 2: respond with like a yes or no or like the
1:07:48
Speaker 2: one word answer. I'll give you your options. I know what
1:07:51
Speaker 2: you're gonna answer for a couple of these, but I
1:07:53
Speaker 2: gotta ask you anyway, and then we'll we'll wrap up
1:07:56
Speaker 2: with the one real doozy for you, Okay.
1:07:58
Speaker 3: Right, all right?
1:07:59
Speaker 2: So does the moon matter to deer movement in any
1:08:03
Speaker 2: way at all? That is worthwhile for hunters to pay
1:08:06
Speaker 2: attention to yes or.
1:08:07
Speaker 3: No no, not that it's been in there. Again, there
1:08:12
Speaker 3: are millions of data points to show this, and that
1:08:15
Speaker 3: goes for both moon phase and moon direction, whether it's
1:08:19
Speaker 3: overhead or underfoot. We literally are talking to maybe a
1:08:23
Speaker 3: minute or two minutes different, So no appreciable difference with
1:08:27
Speaker 3: regard to to when deer moment.
1:08:30
Speaker 2: Would you take a fifty yard shot at a white
1:08:32
Speaker 2: tail with your bow? Yes? Or no?
1:08:35
Speaker 3: I would not. I practice that far. I practice farther
1:08:39
Speaker 3: than that. Most of the hunting that I do involves
1:08:43
Speaker 3: being near or in woods, so total wide open area.
1:08:49
Speaker 3: If I was hunting most of that, like maybe mostly
1:08:51
Speaker 3: out west, that might be different. For the vast majority
1:08:54
Speaker 3: of the deer hunt that I do, I personally am
1:08:55
Speaker 3: not shooting fifty yards.
1:08:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you only have one of these for the
1:09:01
Speaker 2: rest of your deer hunting days, which would it be
1:09:04
Speaker 2: grunt tube or rattling antlers, grunt tube expandable or fixed
1:09:09
Speaker 2: blade broadheads.
1:09:11
Speaker 3: I'm an expandable guy. And then the data shows that
1:09:14
Speaker 3: that that's a little better. And this comes from a
1:09:16
Speaker 3: hardcore fixed blade guy for a long long time, But
1:09:19
Speaker 3: for white tails, I'm an expandable guy.
1:09:22
Speaker 2: Okay, should you stop a moving buck with some kind
1:09:27
Speaker 2: of sound before shooting with your bow. Yes or no?
1:09:30
Speaker 3: Yes, and that that is a gay difference for me.
1:09:32
Speaker 3: I did not used to be that I am with
1:09:36
Speaker 3: a rifle, no, with a bow. Absolutely.
1:09:39
Speaker 2: Okay. Let's imagine that I ascend to a place of
1:09:44
Speaker 2: power in which I have control over your hunting privileges
1:09:48
Speaker 2: and I am going to take away your hunting license
1:09:52
Speaker 2: across all fifty states unless you can kill a mature
1:09:56
Speaker 2: buck this year. You have to kill a mature buck
1:09:59
Speaker 2: that if you don't, no more hunt in the rest
1:10:02
Speaker 2: of your days. Here's the real kicker, though. You only
1:10:05
Speaker 2: get one day to hunt this season, and you have
1:10:09
Speaker 2: one location to do it from, like one specific stand site,
1:10:12
Speaker 2: one ambush location. I would like you to pick the
1:10:15
Speaker 2: date on the calendar that you would like to choose
1:10:18
Speaker 2: for this very important hunt, and then describe for me
1:10:21
Speaker 2: the exact spot. This can be an actual spot that
1:10:24
Speaker 2: you know of, or this can you can paint a hypothetical.
1:10:27
Speaker 2: You can dream up your perfect situation if you'd like.
1:10:30
Speaker 2: But what's the best possible date for you to kill
1:10:33
Speaker 2: this mature buck and the best possible place to do
1:10:35
Speaker 2: it on that day?
1:10:37
Speaker 3: My favorite day to hunt therey of the year is
1:10:39
Speaker 3: November sixth, and so it's that early November time. Personally,
1:10:43
Speaker 3: the sixth that's just been very good to me. So
1:10:45
Speaker 3: it's going to be November sixth if I'm in Pensilvan,
1:10:48
Speaker 3: say I'm near home, it's where we have, you know,
1:10:51
Speaker 3: a mix of woods and ag land. I am going
1:10:54
Speaker 3: to be in the woods, preferably on a saddle with
1:10:57
Speaker 3: good cover nearby, just a route that really is conducive
1:11:03
Speaker 3: to deer move and you'll covering a lot of the ground.
1:11:06
Speaker 3: You'll be able to navigate between ridges. So I'm a
1:11:10
Speaker 3: huge fan of saddles, but I absolutely want some some
1:11:13
Speaker 3: cover and then often is in the case of young forest,
1:11:16
Speaker 3: you know, even those environments nearby. But November sixth, without
1:11:19
Speaker 3: a doubt, one day of the year, that's the day
1:11:21
Speaker 3: I'm hunting.
1:11:22
Speaker 2: All right, Well, I have a strong sense of confidence
1:11:26
Speaker 2: that you would get the job done, Kip. I believe
1:11:29
Speaker 2: I think you'll be able to keep on hunting, Kip.
1:11:32
Speaker 2: Before I let you go, what should folks know if
1:11:35
Speaker 2: there's is there anything new with the with the Deer
1:11:37
Speaker 2: Social Association these days, anything that should be checking out,
1:11:41
Speaker 2: anything you want to make sure we're aware before you
1:11:44
Speaker 2: hit the road.
1:11:45
Speaker 3: I think one thing that's cool that we have now
1:11:47
Speaker 3: that it's going to be brand new is, you know,
1:11:50
Speaker 3: we talk to people about the need to shoot additional
1:11:52
Speaker 3: analysts deer. Part of the reason they don't, it's not
1:11:54
Speaker 3: because they're not a tag or they don't see it,
1:11:56
Speaker 3: it's because they don't even outlet far. So we have
1:11:59
Speaker 3: spent a ton of time this past year H one
1:12:03
Speaker 3: working with Venison Processors to develop a national Venison donation
1:12:07
Speaker 3: processor map. You can go to Deer Association dot com
1:12:10
Speaker 3: and see that, and we continue to add Venison processors
1:12:13
Speaker 3: all the time, so it's a place that you can
1:12:15
Speaker 3: have an L two take a deer to be donated,
1:12:18
Speaker 3: and we're working with statewide donations to increase the amount
1:12:23
Speaker 3: of revenue to them so that it doesn't cost you
1:12:26
Speaker 3: or me or any un or anything. You can literally
1:12:29
Speaker 3: take the deer, not pay a penny. You've done your
1:12:31
Speaker 3: service as a deer steward. You know, you're you're helping
1:12:34
Speaker 3: balance deer nerves and then that food ends up in
1:12:37
Speaker 3: needy family's hands. So I am super excited about that. So, yeah,
1:12:41
Speaker 3: they can go check out that Venison processor map. Has
1:12:44
Speaker 3: all the information you know on state donation programs, et cetera.
1:12:47
Speaker 3: I think it's a great resource for hunters and it's
1:12:50
Speaker 3: helping get food into needy family's hands and allowing hunters
1:12:54
Speaker 3: to be the champions of society. So that's a pretty
1:12:57
Speaker 3: good image for hunters to be. I like that a lot.
1:12:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's a huge win across the board. Well, Kip,
1:13:03
Speaker 2: thank you as always thoroughly enjoyed our chat. I always
1:13:08
Speaker 2: learned something. I always come away with these with new
1:13:11
Speaker 2: ideas and stuff to take to the woods with me,
1:13:13
Speaker 2: so I appreciate that, Kip, And best luck this season.
1:13:16
Speaker 3: All right. Thank you always good to talk with you,
1:13:18
Speaker 3: and thanks for what you do, and absolutely good luck
1:13:21
Speaker 3: to you as well. And I'll be following you and
1:13:24
Speaker 3: I'll be sending you a congrats when I see some hero.
1:13:27
Speaker 2: Pics, so bitter back at you. Thanks geting right, We'll
1:13:30
Speaker 2: see you all right, And that's a wrap. Thank you
1:13:34
Speaker 2: for tuning in. As I reminded you guys at the
1:13:38
Speaker 2: end of the introduction, please go to dear Association dot
1:13:41
Speaker 2: com to learn more about what the National Deer Association
1:13:45
Speaker 2: is doing. Kip is leading the charge on a lot
1:13:47
Speaker 2: of really great and important conservation work for white tail deer,
1:13:52
Speaker 2: white tail deer habitat, and the issues and causes that
1:13:55
Speaker 2: matter to folks like you and me deer hunters. So
1:13:58
Speaker 2: become a member. Support dear association. Keep on saying the
1:14:01
Speaker 2: Deer Association. It's the National Deer Association, but their website
1:14:05
Speaker 2: is Deer Association dot com. So, without all said, and
1:14:09
Speaker 2: without any further ado, thanks for being here. I appreciate
1:14:12
Speaker 2: you being a part of this community. I appreciate you
1:14:14
Speaker 2: tuning in every single week, and until next time, best
1:14:17
Speaker 2: of luck in the woods and stay wired to hunt.