Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 981: How the Experts Kill Mature Bucks in December and Beyond

Transcript

Ep. 981: How the Experts Kill Mature Bucks in December and Beyond · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the white Tail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week in
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: the show, we are conducting a comprehensive review of the
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: many different approaches to hunting mature bucks during the late season.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: And these are ideas that come from the many different
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: experts that have shared with me their approaches over the
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: course of the seventeen year history of Wired to Hunt.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast,
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: brought to you by First Light and their Camel for
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Conservation initiative.
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: Today we are talking late season.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: We are breaking down the month of December and on
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: an to January, as we enter this final phase of.
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: The white tail year.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: We're doing another one of these deep dive comprehensive reviews.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: We did it for October, we did it for November.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: The idea here is to kind of do you know,
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: what some people would call a literature review, where we
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: basically take a big picture look at the many different
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: perspectives and approaches to a certain topic. In this case,
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: it's hunting the late season for white tails. I'm going
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: to talk you through kind of a high level overview
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: of how many people think about this time of year,
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: the most important things to remember about deer behavior, about
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: how deer use the habitat, about how deer have now
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: you know, reacted to hunting pressure around them, and everything
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: else that kind of trickles down. After that, then we're
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: going to talk through several of the most common approaches
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: to hunting this time of year, and we are going
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: to look at some excerpts from books as well as
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: excerpts from previous podcasts and videos we've filmed from different
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: experts getting their take on these things. So in addition
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: to the summaries that I'm going to provide, we're also
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: going to get some insight in the words of and
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: from the minds of people like Jeff Sturgis, Don Higgins,
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Mark Drury, John Eberhart, Tony Peterson in Hallblood, I believe,
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: are the folks we're going to hear from today. So
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: you're going to get a lot of different ideas here.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: You're going to come away from this conversation with a
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: very clear understanding of what's to come here in December
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: and January, and what you can do as a deer
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: hunter to make sure you have the very best chance
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: possible to bill your tags, to have some success, and
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: to have some fun.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: So that's the plan. Before we get.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Into that very briefly, if you are listening to this
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: in real time when this episode's dropping, which would be
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: you know, Tuesday, November twenty seventh, twenty twenty five, the
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: met Eater and first Light Black Friday sales ongoing. This
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: goes into I think December first, you know, up to
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: forty or fifty percent off all sorts of stuff, you know,
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: the deal tons of huge sales on everything relevant to
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: you as a deer hunter. Three things, where maybe four
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: things worth noting. Number one the major cold weather kits
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: for whitetail hunting from First Light, the Core which is
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: kind of our mid season piece. That the thing I'd
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: recommend to most people for most white tail locations. The
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: Core kit, and then the Therma kit, so again it's
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: a jacket and bib kit. The thermic is for like
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: the total frigid Arctic, you know, far far north, cold, frigid,
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: snowy stuff. Both of those are forty percent off during
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: this sale, so it's a very good deal if you're
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: looking to really upgrade your outerwear. The furnace hoodie, which
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: is what I'm wearing right now, an absolute favorite of
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: mine all year round for just wearing around the house
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: or being outside scouting, shed hunting, or wearing as an
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: insulating mid layer during a cold weather hunt. Very comfortable
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: furnace hoodie. That's twenty percent off. And then the well, actually,
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: I was just going to tell you the Wired Hunt
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: hat is on sale, but it's actually sold out, but
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: the Wired Hunt shirt is still available and that's fifty
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: percent off, I believe.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: So check it all.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Out over at the Mediator store or first Light dot
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: com or wherever it is that you want to take
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: a look at our products. We've got the Phelps Gear,
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: FHF Gear, Dave Smith decoys. They all have their own websites.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: You can check those out as well. So that's it
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: as far as sales and promotions. Onto late season deer hunting.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: Let's first talk through the defining characteristics of the late season,
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: the core things to be thinking about when we reach
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: this point of the year. A number of different things
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: have happened that impact the lives of deer and the
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: lives of hunters. So first, let's talk about kind of
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: the situation that deer are in number one. Once you've
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: made it to the late season, once you've made it
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: to December, there has been a ton of hunting pressure. Right,
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: These deer that we are chasing now have been pursued, bothered,
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: shot at, and harassed by hunters for weeks and weeks
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: and weeks at a minimum, probably two months, if not
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: three months in some cases. That colors everything in a
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: white tails world. You know, the daily movements, the natural tendencies,
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: the patterns, their food.
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: Desires, all of that stuff.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: All of that is kind of surpassed by the simple
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: desire to survive and the simple desire to avoid danger,
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: in our case from humans. So every decision you make
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: as a hunter has to think about that first and foremost.
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: These deer have been pressured. How have they reacted? What
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: are they going to do?
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: Because of the fact they've been hunted for months on end. Now,
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: of course, where you hunt, you know that could relate
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: or could could to lead to different degrees of hunting
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: pressure and different degrees of changes in behavior. Right, So
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: if you have a spot that you're hunting that's public land.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: In a heavily pressured state like Pennsylvania, let's say, or Michigan,
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: you're going to very much. You're going to see a
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: very different level of impact. You're gonna see deer that
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: react to that pressure dramatically, that have maybe relocated in
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: dramatic ways, maybe have changed how much daylight activity have
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: in dramatic ways. This is also especially true if you
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: have a gun season that's already opened up. If your
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: gun season, like in Michigan, opened in mid November, by
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: the time December comes around, things are dramatically different. That said,
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: if you hunt in Iowa or Kansas or some other
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: state that has not had quite as much pressure, maybe
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: your gun seasons have not yet fully opened up. Maybe
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: you hunt in a place that simply just doesn't have
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: as many hunters. Maybe you're on private ground, a large
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: piece of private ground that you control, and you've kept
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: pressure really low. Well, in that case, deer might still
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: be doing the natural things they would normally want to
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: do at this time of year. Maybe the hunting pressure
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: impact will not be as significant. But you need to
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: think about that. You need to consider what's the reality
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: on the ground here for these deer, and is it
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: all hunting pressure impacted or are they in their natural
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: standard behaviors as they would be otherwise. Now, because of
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: the fact that the hunting season has been going on
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: for a very long time, because of the fact that
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: gun seasons maybe have been opened by now, you're also
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: going to have ever reduction in available bucks to hunt.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: You know, you are trying to kill Let's say, for example,
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: a mature buck, and the hunting season started in September
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: or October, and let's say there was ten of them
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: in the couple square miles around where you hunt. You know,
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: by the time December rolls around, there's a good chance
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: that a lot of those deer are just simply not
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: alive anymore.
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: I don't know what that's going to be.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: In Michigan, I would guess that, you know, more than
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: fifty percent of them are probably dead. Maybe more like
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: eighty percent of them are dead. Maybe if you're in
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: Iowa or Kansas or Illinois, maybe it's a lot less
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: than that. But either way, you're simply just by virtue
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: of the fact that there's been a lot of hunting
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: going on in gun pressure, especially in which the majority
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: of deer get killed, You're just going to have fewer targets,
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: and so you have to go into this phase of
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: the season with those expectations understanding that maybe I had
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: ten deer to hunt, or maybe I had two deer
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: to hunt, now it's down to one. Maybe I had ten,
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: now it's down to four. Go into it knowing that's
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: the case, and what that means for you as a
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: hunter means like, not only do your expectations need to
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: be adjusted a little bit, but then also you need
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: to know that everything has to be a little bit sharper.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: Now you could get away with some mistakes where you
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: could get away with just a general idea when there's
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: ten of these deer running around, but when there's only one,
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: or there's only two, or whatever it is, you simply
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: have to be that much more dialed, that much more
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: attuned to what these deer are doing, why they're doing it,
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: and how they're doing it.
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: So attention to detail.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: You know, it always matters, but it really matters in
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: the late season. Now, let's talk a little bit more
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: about how all of this or kind of how some
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: of the weather factors and behavior factors over recent weeks
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: are going to impact deer behavior as well, because not
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: only do you have all of this hunter pressure, not
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: only do you have fewer deer on the landscape, but
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: you also have deer that have been worn down and
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: that are dealing.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: With difficult conditions.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: So, first off, the rut just happened, right, We just
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: had these bucks go through an absolute marathon for weeks
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: and weeks and weeks. The most physical exertion they will
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: have the entire year just happened over the previous month
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: or so. Most bucks will lose a dramatic amount of weight,
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: they will utilize a massive amount of their energy reserves,
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: and they will be struggling now because of that.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: These are war down deer physically.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: I guess I can't speak for them mentally, but in
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: any way possible, these bucks are worn down there, just
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: beat down to a pulp. That's going to impact how
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: they act in the coming weeks. And then finally, layer
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: on top of that, they are also now going to
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: be getting very difficult, increasingly difficult week after week weather conditions. So,
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: of course, as we all know, temperatures are going down,
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: extreme winds and precipitation events like big snowstorms, blizzards, ice storms,
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: all of that stuff's going to start happening more regularly,
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: and so this is going to lead to bucks increasingly
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: focusing on the very first thing I mentioned, which was survival,
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: and that's really the moral of the store here. Survival
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: is number one for these deer at this point. I
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: mentioned earlier how hunting pressure impacts that in a big way.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: Deer is simply trying to find safe places, but then
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: they are also simply trying to survive the difficulties they're enduring.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Having just used up all of their energy, all their
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: extra fat, all of their resources, these deer are trying
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: to get some food back on.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: They're trying to put the feedback on.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: They are trying to recover from this incredible physical exertion
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: they just went through, and then they are also trying
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: to survive the increasingly difficult elements. So because of that,
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: a deer's life, let's talk about a mature bux life.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: A bux life now is going to revolve around a
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: few things. Number one is going to revolve around trying
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: to find the safest place, trying to find that sanctuary,
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: trying to find that pocket of safety where they're not
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: going to be impacted by hunters, all right, So that
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: is a key thing for a buck that will need
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: to be a key thing for you as a hunter,
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: finding these safe spots, finding these core sanctuaries, finding these
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: areas that bucks think they can survive. Secondly, they're going
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: to be looking to survive the elements and survive this
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: food issue that they've just been coming out of energy.
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: I guess what's what I'm looking for here.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Energy deficit, and that means they're going to be gravitating
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: towards high quality winter food and high quality cover. In
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: the case of winter food, that means like high carbohydrates
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: they are packing on energy carbs. That's a big thing
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: for deer right now. Then when it comes to cover,
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: they're looking for high stem count, thickness, stuff that makes
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: them feel safe. And they are also looking for thermal
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: cover stuff that protects them from above, that can shelter
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: them from the wind, shelter them from rain and snow,
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: something that will keep the heat down. That's gonna be
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: something they're gonna like. While also at times when the
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: weather's not as bad, they're gonna be looking for sun
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: so south facing hillsides that kind of thing might also
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: attract deer if you can find the best case where
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: there's like cedars or conifers and stuff scatter the little
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: openings on the south facing hillside and some grass and stuff. Wow,
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: that's a dynamite spot for about to spend some time
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: in the super late season. So think about that. Those
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: are the types of places they are looking for, right,
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: Those are the types of places they are going to
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: gravitate towards. Now, the second or third thing to consider
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: is the fact that once they find these places, they
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: are reducing their movements dramatically. Because of those safety issues
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: and because of those energy issues. Deer have been harassed.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: They want to reduce their exposure to danger as much
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: as possible, which means they are probably going to be
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: moving less than they had earlier in the year.
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: They know that when they move in daylight over long distances,
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: that exposes them to danger. So in many cases, by
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: the time you get to the late season, that is
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: reduced dramatically. And then I talked about the energy issue.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Deer are trying to survive, They are trying to conserve energy,
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: so they are going to be again moving less because
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: every time they make a large movement. Every time they
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: travel long ways from a betting air to a feeding area,
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: they exerting energy, they are creating a deficit. So what
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: deer would prefer to do is they want to find
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: the best area of safety that has the best available
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: thermal winter cover, that is closest to the best available
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: winter food source where they can add energy.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: Then they're going to.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: Move as little as possible between those two places, both
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: to preserve their safety and to preserve their energy. That,
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: in a nutshell, is what the late season deer activity is.
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: That's what deer want to do.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: That's what deer are deally going to be doing. That's
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: what they're seeking out. They're trying to find a place
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: where that can be their reality. So us as deer hunters,
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: we need to go find those places. If we owned
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: land and we were able to plan for this, we
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: could try to create these scenarios. You can build this
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: type of scenario. You can preserve some type of sanctuary.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: You can create or manage and foster quality late season
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: thermal cover and quality late season food, and you can
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: have these places that you leave alone so that when
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: it gets to this time of the year, these deer
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: can go in there and feel safe and spend their
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: time and start moving in daylight and doing this bed
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: to feed small movement and feel really comfortable and pack
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: on the energy again and then slip there and hunt them.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: If you can build that perfect For many of us,
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: we don't have the ability to build that. We don't
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: have a big property where we can do this, and
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: we simply have to try to find that situation, search
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: it out, whether it be on public land or private
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: land by permission, or at least that we get to
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: hunt whatever it is. You might just need to find
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: the closest thing you can to that and then take
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: advantage of it. But that is a really key thing
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: to be thinking about this time of year, is is
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: what deer are doing, So what are these key circumstances
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: impacting them, and what are deer doing because of it.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: Anytime you find yourself trying to decide where to hunt,
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: or why to hunt a spotter, or how to think
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: through your plan, go back to these core principles of
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: the situation that deer are in right now, and then
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: what they're trying to do to survive. They're trying to
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: survive hunters, They're trying to pack on energy, and they're
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: trying to conserve energy. They're trying to stay warm, they're
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: trying to stay and cover, they're trying to build up
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: those energy reserves. Again, that is a deer's life for
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: the next six seven, eight, several months, you know, six seven,
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: eight weeks, several months from now. This is what is
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: going on on a day to day basis for these deer.
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: Now, don't just take my word for it.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: I want to read to you another person's take describing
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: some of the same things, but with some additional details.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: This is Steve Bartilla, longtime whitetail writer and hunter, sharing
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: here his kind of overview of the late season situation
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: for deer and what that means for them and us.
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: And this is from the book Advanced stand Hunting.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: Strategies, Real World Tactics for Today's Trophy Whitetails. In an
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: effort to minimize the effects of all of these detrimental factors,
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: deer of the upper Midwest Mountains and points farther north
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: employ behavioral and physiological adaptations. To begin with, they significantly
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: reduce their movement. Often they do little more than travel
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: back and forth between bedding and feeding locations. The less
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: they move, the less energy they burn. To take energy
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: conservation a step further. Yet, they even slow their metabolism
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: along with that. When the temperatures really plummet, the deer
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: combat this by shifting their feeding activities more to the
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: warmer late afternoon hours. Since the late night early morning
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: hours are typically the coldest portion of the day, this
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: modification allows them to remain bedded, conserving body heat during
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: these frigid periods. Next, they shift their now greatly reduced
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: home range to locations that best promote their survival in
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: the areas that consistently receive deep snow cover and brutal temperatures.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: The destinations for these winter migrations are traditional yarding areas.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: Most often, a thick stand of mature evergreens such as
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: white cedar or spruce is selected. Here, the dense canopy
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: of branches creates a ceiling effect. Not only does this
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: trap heat to keep the temperature at ground level a
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: degree or two warmer, it also captures some of the snow,
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: making travel easier. Furthermore, with so many deer packing into
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: these areas, the extra hoof traffic also results in more
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: easily traveled deer trails. In addition, to providing more noses,
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: eyes and ears to detect predators. In conjunction with that,
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: this is the period when those otherwise solitary bucks now
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: gladly utilize the same bedding areas, trails, and food sources
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: as the dough family groups. This intermingling allows them to
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: take advantage of the heat retention properties of the yarding
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: area and increase protection from predators as well as the
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: easier travel As mentioned in this setting. The food sources
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: are most often woody brows. White cedar is always preferred
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: when available. It's the only woody browse known to be
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: able to sustain a whitetail's life completely by itself. Areas
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: of recent logging activity are typically the next best alternative.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: If the logging is conducted in early winter, the plethora
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: of tops scattered across the ground provides a bounty of buds.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Older activities can be good choices as well, until the
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: regrowth of saplings extend beyond the deer's reach. They also
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: offer a concentration of tender buds. If none of those
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: is available, it becomes a matter of finding whatever natural
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: browse is available. As we drift into areas that typically
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: provide warmer temperatures and less snow, a less traditional form
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: of yarning occurs. Instead of concentrating on thermal cover, deer
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: in these regions gravitate to the best available food sources
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: when they exist. Standing crops such as corn, soybeans, and
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: sorghum are almost always preferred. In areas where standing crops
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: are in short supply, it's not uncommon for a loan
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: field to draw deer from miles around when snow depths allow.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: Waste left from harvesting crops is also a good option.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: The same can hold true for hayfields that contain round
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: veils of hay. When agricultural options aren't available, the same
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: hierarchy of woody browse species polishes off the list of
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: preferred food sources. Interestingly, in areas where yarding commonly occurs,
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: mild winters often inspired deer to dismiss traditional yarding areas
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: for prime food sources as well. However, regardless of how
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: much better the food may be, they'll almost always choose
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: the thermal protection when snowflakes and temperatures fall. All right, now,
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: for a kind of one more high level take on
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: this late season set of behaviors, I want to share
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: with you a brief excerpt from a podcast that did
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: with Mark Drury, in which he will walk through the
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: way that him and his brother Terry have broken down
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: the phases of a deer's life. They do this on
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: a very granular level. They've got, you know, thirteen different
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: phases they've broken the year into.
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: But I want to.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: Play for you here just a quick minute minute or
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: two of Mark walking through his late November all the
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: way through January phases and what he and Terry have
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: found deer tend to do in their experience.
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: So let's listen that real quick too.
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: I love like one to four o'clock or in that
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: particular phase. Then we get into Green revisited the latter
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: part of November, November twenty sixth through December. The fifth bucks,
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: the really really mature ones are start coming back to
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: the green fields looking for doos because that's where they're going.
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: And a lot of the bucks are stalking back to
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: those green fields because that's the period where you're having
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: saws morning and night and you're starting to break those
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: green fields down. The powell the builder goes through the
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: roofs and there's a lot of deer of editing those
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: green fields, which took a lot of big bucks during
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: that phase December sixth and December the eighth, there's another
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: little bit of a miniature. Well, it's tough during this
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: particular phase. We call it waiting on the front. If
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: you catch it front, it kicks them into their late
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: season seed patterns and we have a really good periment.
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: If you weren't the best overall movement in December December
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: ninth through the twenty first, it's called feedback. Awesome, awesome,
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: good bucks out early, make sure you're understanding the afternoon
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: and make sure you're very early. Then December twenty second
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: for January fifteenth, slowly but surely, the daylight activity starts
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: to slow down and you again need a front. But
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: that's when you get some of the most drastic weather
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: of the winter, and if you get back, you can
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: kill a big buck if you're on. And it's very
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: similar to the first phase because it's all about food,
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: they're not betted very far from it.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: Okay, So there's two different takes on how deer are
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: reacting now to this new world they're living in, this
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: late season world. Hunting pressure impacts, cold weather impacts, habitat changes,
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: food source changes. All of that leads to different behaviors.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: One thing we haven't talked very much yet about, though,
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: is rut activity in December or beyond. There's two different
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: things here that are worth considering. One, if you hunt
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: or live in the South, there could be full blown
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: like the rut, the peak of the rut might be
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: happening for you in December or January.
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: There's some funky things in the South.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: There's been you know, relocations, there's there's many different factors
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: that lead to the timing of the rut being different
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: in different pockets of Southern states. So I'm not going
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: to get into the specifics there, but because I couldn't
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: be like, well, if you live in northern Alabama, it's
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: this thing, and if you're in southwestern Mississippi it's souther thing.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: I would just tell you to make sure if you
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: live in those southern states Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, some of
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: these other regions Texas, you know, make sure you talk
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: to other people in your location. I'm imagine most of
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: you already know this, but just in case you don't,
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: If you don't know when the timing of your rut
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: is in the South, Talk to buddies, talk to any
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: mentors you might have, Call the local dn R officer
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: and ask them, you know, when does this typically happen
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: in my area? Is this happening sometime in December? Is
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: this happening sometime in January? That is the case in
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: some spots down there by you if you fall into
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: this bucket, and if that's the case, what you want
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: to be doing is listening to the episode we did
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: about November hunting, which was our rut episode, and use
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: those tactics.
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: Those are the tactics that will.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: Apply for you in December or January, if that's when
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: your rut is. So all that said, most of us
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: do not fall into that category. Most of us had
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: our majority of our running activity happening in November. But
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: there is this thing that folks sometimes referred to as
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: the second rut or the late rut or something like this.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: And the idea is that if there's somehow a dough
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: that did not get bred the first time around in November,
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: you know, a month later, thirty days later, she could
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: come into heat again, and if that happens, you could
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: have running activity again, maybe in December, or beyond. This
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: is something that's pretty uncommon in many places, especially where
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: there's buck to dough ratios that are very skewed. But
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: what can happen more commonly is a dofont reaching sexual maturity,
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: not in time for that first round in November, but
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: by this early December time period, where you know, many
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: deer are now coming into heat and they are large
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: enough now to be at sexual maturity and so essentially
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: coming into heat for the first time. I have found
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: this to even happen in southern Michigan. I have seen
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: do fonds come into heat and there be a little
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: miniature flurry of running activity on December sixth or ninth,
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: or tenth or first, that's all possible. I've seen this
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: in southern Ohio too. I've heard people see this, you know,
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: just about anywhere in the white tail range. So it's
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: something that I don't plan my hunts around when it
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: comes to December or January. I'm not going into it saying,
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: all right, I'm going to do a second rut hunt.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: That's not typically what's going on, but I'm watching for it.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: So if I see something that looks like November activity,
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: like one dough with five bucks chasinger or two bucks
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: sparring or standing, or a bunch of satellite bucks all
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: standing around one big buck and a dough. If I
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: see that, that's like a light bulb moment that says, Okay,
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: I have a second ruck kind of thing going on here.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: I need to focus on that little zone here right
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: now and maybe apply some of those running tactics again.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: Right If you see this now, the calling techniques that
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: you used in November might very well work again.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: The idea of hunting all day in that dough bedding
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: area like you were doing during the rut, that might
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: be worth doing here for a day or two in
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: that zone. If you see a buck locked on a dough,
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: you know, hunting that buck on the dough just as
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: you would have on November fifteenth. You know, getting tight
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: to where they are, making sure you're as close and
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: in that small area that they're going to focus on
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: for the next forty eight hours. Same thing applies. All
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: that said, I want to share with you one more
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: take on this second rut idea. Tom Inderbau, a renowned
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: hunter and outfitter from Wisconsin, wrote pretty extensively about this
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: in his book Growing and hunting quality books.
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: I'm going to read that for you.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: And there's a little bit here just in general when
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: it comes to his late season approach as well.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: But a big part of this is.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: Discussing his second rut ideas for bow hunting. Late season
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: action starts and stops with food, and in our region,
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: deer find food in nearly every valley that held or
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: holds agricultural crops, whether those fields were harvested earlier in
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: autumn or they still contain uncut standing crops. Deer group
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: up and find ways to scrounge up food. Does and
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: their fawns join others from the doe's bloodline to form
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: loose family groups, and they set up residents where terrain
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: and brush provides shelter and easy access to nearby foods. Invariably,
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: a dough that didn't get pregnant earlier will go into
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: heat once more twenty eight days after she entered Estris
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: in November.
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: Between their need for food and the.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: Allure of these recycled doughs and female fawns entering Estris,
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: bucks emerge from protected sites where they've remained secure since
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: gun season. As these bucks approach early winter fields and
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: study the bunched up dough family groups, they feel some
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: familiar urges and a rekindling of their aggressive tendencies. It's
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: not uncommon for bucks to again spar and joust, but
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: they've lost much of their competitive edge from a month before.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: It's more like paddy cake and shadow boxing as their
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: antlers click and clack at the wood's edge. Their testosterone
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: levels have been dropping for the past few weeks, and
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: although the urges to breed, doze, and intimidate foes remain,
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: the bucks are more mellow. Bowhunters shouldn't expect this so
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: called second rut to bring a repeat performance of November.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: Bucks won't roam the ridges all night or half dropped
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: from field to field each morning in search of love.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: Neither will they storm down a field's edge with fire
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: in their eyes, intent on destroying arrival. But if that
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: field contains corner soybeans and a dozen dos and fawns
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: are feeding there late in the afternoon, and one of
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: them is an estris, there's a good chance that bucks
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: will soon arrive to check her out. Such situations are
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: common in mid December, which is why I think it's
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: one of the best times of all to take a
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: huge buck. In fact, I don't think I'm exaggerating when
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: I say mid December can even be a better time
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: to hunt than November. Why again, it's that perfect storm scenario.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: Deer tend to be more bunched up in December, which
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: makes it easier to predict where you might.
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: Cross paths with a wall hanger.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: If most of the farm's female deer are congregated on
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: the snow dust at alfalfa field, the buck has a
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: target reached environment for locating a dough ready to breed.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: In December, only a small percentage of doughs come into heat,
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: and a buck isn't inclined to trape through the countryside
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: for hours on low Odd's missions. He's hungry and worn down,
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: and testosterone isn't forcing him to ignore those physical discomforts.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: He's looking for a more convenient, efficient way to romance
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: the dough, and a good food source provides those golden opportunities.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: In addition, unlike a mature dough that chases off her
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: fawns when she's going into heat, a dough fun doesn't
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: shun her mother or sibling. She's still hanging out with
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: her maternal group. Following her elders wherever they go. Meanwhile,
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: the buck would like nothing better than to rob that cradle.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: There might be only one dough in heat at any
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: given time, but when deer congregate on a good food source,
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: there's no easier place or time for a buck to
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: find a late season breeder. In my area, this scenario
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: usually unfolds from December ten to fifteen. After that, snow
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: is usually deepened and temperatures drop further, forcing hunters to
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: focus on food sources. Granted, a five day block and
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: a fickle month like December offers only a small window
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: of opportunity. And yes, you might only be dealing with
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: one estra's dough here or there, but almost everything else
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: leans in your favor. Bottom line, you want to be
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: in your tree as much as possible December ten through
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: fifteen if you know where an estra stough will likely
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: be the only question remaining is where to hang your
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: tree stands to ambush the bucks? She beckons, all right,
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: So second rut. In this case, Tom mentioned he really
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: seems to see that in his area of southwest Wisconsin
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: from December tenth through fifteen. I've seen it in southern
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: Michigan and southern Ohio from December one through ten, so
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: it's going to be a localized thing, but anywhere in
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: that first half ish of December, it's something just to
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: keep an eye out. It's something to be aware of.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: It's something to take advantage of if it happens to
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: pop up in your zone. Now, all that kind of
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: in our back pocket. The biggest thing, the most common
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: thing to be thinking about the general approach to hunting
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: in December in January is is it's pretty standard across
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: the board. I've heard about this from Will Brantlee. I've
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: heard about this from Don Higgins, from Jeff Sturgis, from
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: Steve Bartilla, from Bill Wink, from Mark Dury to you know,
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: basically every down every person down the line. It's relatively
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: simple for most people. I'm going to share with you
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: a couple exceptions, but for most folks, the general approach is,
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: you know, understanding what we just talked about, that deer
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: are looking for safety, that deer are looking for late
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: Siason food, and that deer looking for latezias and cover.
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: Understanding those things, you have.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: To find these smaller concentrations of deer, and then you
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: need to very carefully hunt them when the conditions are right.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: Because of the fact that you know, with all of
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: this stuff being true, with all these things being the case,
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: deer are going to be on edge in a way
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: that they were not in the past. Deer are going
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: to be more spooky than they were in the past.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: Deer going to be reacting to hunting pressure more aggressively
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: than they have in the past. Because of all that pressure,
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: they just aren't going to be giving you many second chances.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: So that's why many people take a locate, wait and
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: then strike approach. They're typically not going to be hunting
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: a spot over and over and over, banging into the
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: very best spots and volume hunting it aggressively like maybe
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: they did in November. This is the time for a
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: wait and see approach. Usually, most people would tell you
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: this is a time generally to observe from afar, to
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: scout carefully, and then to strike when the iron is hot,
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: strike when that best moment and the best set of
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: conditions allows, because you're probably in many cases not going
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: to get a whole lot of second chances. Now, of course,
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: you might have an amazing setup where you have tremendous
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: entry and exit and you can get in and out
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: of the spot without deer knowing you, and maybe you
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: have a perfect place to blow your wind. And you know,
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: if all of those things are true, then maybe you
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: can get away with more hunts. Maybe you can do
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: this more frequently without educating deer, and you don't need
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: to take so much of that weight and see approach.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: But for most people it's going to be that kind
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: of thing. So the key things that we need to understand,
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: the key things we need to be looking for, are,
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: you know, given there's this limited area for opportunity concentrated
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: deer areas, and then this limited sets of mistakes that
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: you can make, what are the conditions you're waiting for.
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: I want to talk to you about what are the
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: ideal conditions?
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: And then I want to talk to you about, you know,
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: how do you find where these deer are going to
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: be in a little bit more detail, But first let's
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: talk conditions and why the right set of conditions can
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: make this a really great time to hunt. We alluded
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: to this earlier that things are getting tough for deer,
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: But when things get really tough for deer, it can
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: get them on their feet in a more extreme manner.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: Than maybe at any other time of year other than
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: the rut. I suppose we're talking extreme cold, and we're
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: talking precipitation events or coming off of major precipitation events.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: So of course the colder it gets, the more arctic
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: tundra type situation you can possibly have, the more these
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: deer are going to want to be up on their
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: feet in daylight, as Bartilla mentioned, because it's warmer and
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: more comfortable for them to do so, and then they
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: can bed during those cold as times and just hold
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: it out and just try to conserve energy. So these deer,
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: if it's very cold, they're going to be on their
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: feet earlier and trying to consume as much resources as
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: they possibly can. They got to refuel the tank. They's
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: constantly consuming calories to try to stay alive and stay warm.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: So if you have that big cold front, that mega
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: cold front, you know, the single digit temperatures or something
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: like that, that can be a very very good ten hunt.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: And then also precipitation. If you get a big blizzard
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: moving through, if you have a bunch of snow on
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: the ground that covers up the typically easier to access food, again,
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: you've got something that will probably get deer moving on
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: their feet a little bit more, move a little bit further,
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: stay out there a little bit longer. That big old
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: buck might come out to the field edge sooner. All
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: of that is a good thing for you. So those
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: are two things maybe that will be, you know, particularly
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: helpful for you when you're trying to choose when to
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: make your move, when to go hunt that good spot,
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: when to take your out of state trip.
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: Whatever. It is.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: A big storm passing through and finally calming down on
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: the backside, that's another good Maybe even without you big snow,
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: that's still a pretty great time of year. Let's say
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: you had a warm spell it was in the forties.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: Let's say big cold front moves through with like forty
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: mon in our winds or thirty mile an hour winds
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: and rain and sleet and nasty stuff, and that lasts
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: for several days.
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: If that's the case, that's probably.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: Going to put deer down a little bit. When that
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: passes through and all of a sudden, it's twenty degrees colder,
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: blue skies, hair, high barometric pressure, and winds have died
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: down to eight ten miles an hour. When that nasty
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: thing kind of moves through. All of a sudden, now
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: those deer are gonna.
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: Be all right.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: I gotta get the food back on because I just
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: had to, you know, take a day off or a
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: day and a half of maybe the higher feeding that
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: they wanted to do. They weren't able to do that comfortably.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: So now all of a sudden, you have that increased
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: feeding activity as well. Looking for those things. It's not
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: too terribly different than we talked about in October when
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: we were hoping for these same fronts, but now it
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: can be more extreme. And really the more extreme, the
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: more extreme.
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: Activity you're going to see.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: You know, maybe a cold front in October might have
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: gotten deer moving ten fifteen minutes earlier in the evening.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: Let's say a extreme cold front or twelve inches of
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: snow or something of that in December, that might get
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: a mature buck on his feet two hours before daylight.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: If you're in a place where they feel safe, that's
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: really always the qualifier. Everything we're talking about is typically
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: only true if they feel safe in these places. If
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: they don't feel safe in a zone, they're just not
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: going to be there. And if they kind of feel
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: moderately safe in the place, they're probably not going to
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: move in daylight at all, if they feel relatively safe,
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: if they feel pretty comfortable, if you found that true sanctuary,
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: that true pocket, that's when you can then see these
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: deer moving in daylight when these circumstances, when these cold
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: fronts or snowstorms or whatever pass through.
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: So that's what we're looking for. I want to share
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: with you. Don Higgins take on this.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: He describes why, because of these conditions, because of these
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: things that just described, why this can be such a
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: good time of year to hunt, Why this can be,
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: in his opinion, one of the best possible times to
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: kill a mature buck.
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: So here's what Don has to say.
• 36:58
  Speaker 5: Well, you know, it's ironic. I wrote my first book
• 37:01
  Speaker 5: ten years ago after I had shot that buck, the
• 37:04
  Speaker 5: two hundred and fourteen inch buck we was just talking about.
• 37:07
  Speaker 5: A short time later, I wrote my first book, and
• 37:09
  Speaker 5: when I talk about the late season in that first book,
• 37:12
  Speaker 5: I kind of downplayed it as one of the worst
• 37:15
  Speaker 5: times of the season to shoot a mature buck. But
• 37:19
  Speaker 5: in the years of the past, I've totally changed my
• 37:23
  Speaker 5: mind one hundred and eighty degrees. Now I believe that
• 37:25
  Speaker 5: the late season is the very best time of the
• 37:28
  Speaker 5: year to kill a mature buck on purpose. But the
• 37:32
  Speaker 5: key is you've got to you've got to have a
• 37:35
  Speaker 5: good food source, and you've got to have an undisturbed
• 37:38
  Speaker 5: betting location. If you got those two together, and then
• 37:42
  Speaker 5: you've got made because they're very likely to be a
• 37:45
  Speaker 5: mature buck there. And then you just got to wait
• 37:49
  Speaker 5: for the It's about timing. You need the worst weather possible.
• 37:54
  Speaker 5: The worst the weather gets, the better your odds. So
• 37:58
  Speaker 5: you know, I've got a couple of different farms that
• 37:59
  Speaker 5: I manage and where I'm allowed to plant food plots
• 38:03
  Speaker 5: and things like that. And on both those farms, you know,
• 38:07
  Speaker 5: I've got my stands in place, i got the food
• 38:09
  Speaker 5: plots in place. I've stayed out of the betting cover
• 38:12
  Speaker 5: all fall, and I'm just waiting. I'm just biding my time,
• 38:15
  Speaker 5: waiting on the perfect opportunity. And whenever the temperature you know,
• 38:19
  Speaker 5: gets down around zero at night or single digits during
• 38:22
  Speaker 5: the day is a high. When it does that for
• 38:25
  Speaker 5: a few days, you can just you can count on
• 38:27
  Speaker 5: the bucks, on every deer in the woods. Really, it
• 38:30
  Speaker 5: doesn't matter if he's a mature buck or yearling buck
• 38:32
  Speaker 5: or a dough. Under those conditions, they're going to be
• 38:35
  Speaker 5: on their feet in the afternoon headed to that food,
• 38:38
  Speaker 5: and they're more than likely going to get there way
• 38:40
  Speaker 5: before dark. And you know, I kind of set the
• 38:44
  Speaker 5: table throughout the entire year by planting those food plots,
• 38:46
  Speaker 5: by staying out of those betting areas. But then when
• 38:49
  Speaker 5: the time's right, I get into those stands, and you
• 38:52
  Speaker 5: can you can kill, you know, the biggest buck in
• 38:54
  Speaker 5: the woods on purpose, year after year after year.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: That way, all right, And to give you another I'm
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: going to give you a couple different thoughts here. Here's
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: another take from Steve Bartilla, and what he's going to
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: share here is why all of this can lead to
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: good hunting and stuff that you can take advantage of
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: as a deer hunter. So, now that we understand how
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: whitetails cope with winter stress, we can explore how to
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: most efficiently use these traits to our advantage. At first glance,
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: it may appear that drastically reduced movement is a disadvantage. However,
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: finding where a mature buck resides swiftly transforms us into
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: a significant advantage. Investing several late afternoons observing the listed
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: food sources is a good way.
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: To find him.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: Because there's no other time during the season that a
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: mature buck more rigidly clings to a pattern, this is
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: well worth the effort. With that accomplished, the next step
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: is to backtrack his trail just far enough into the
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: woods to allow the hunter a route to and from
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: the stand. On the rare occasion when a safe rout
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: exists to a field edge stand, such as in the
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: Hunt the again this chapter, this is also acceptable, in
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: fact is preferred, owing to the increased odds of catching
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: the minimal second roud activity that might occur. This also
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: provides a firearms hunter with the chance of a longer shot. Moreover,
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: because the concentration effect often means that more than one
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: mature buck is using the same food source, sitting the
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: edge often provides opportunities that inwood's trails don't. Still, without
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: a good route, more harm than good is the most
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: common result. The deer's tendency to shift feeding times up
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: is also an advantage. Frankly, deep snows and cold tempts
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: are the late season hunter's best friends. The worse it gets,
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: the more inspiration the bruiser has to hit the food
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: source before dark. This is so pronounced that these conditions
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: can make an otherwise nearly exclusively nocturnal buck feed during
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: daylight in an open field. Many of my best hunts
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: have occurred on the coldest day of the season. On
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: the flip side, unseasonably mild conditions tend to shut down
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: a mature buck's daylight movement if a high risk stand
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: site is the only option, saving it for an afternoon
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: brutally low temperatures is the best.
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: Option, all right.
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: So to give us one more perspective on this and
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: kind of shifting gears a little bit, I want to
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: talk through this next stage, which is, you know, we've
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: kind of explored why late season hunting can be so
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: good if you're able to find these pockets, if you're
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: able to find where these deer feels safe, if you
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: can find the quality food and the quality thermal cover.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: That is a big set of qualifiers, that last part,
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: especially finding that quality food, finding that quality betting, finding
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: where these deer want to be. And I want to
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: share with you John Eberheart's approach to that, as well
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: as several others, because this is pretty key to the
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: whole topic, right safety first, then food and bedding, and
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: so John Eberhart is somebody who you know different than
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: Don Higgins or Steve Bartila or Tom Injerbau. He's typically
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: not hunting land he owns or manages. He's hunting public
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: land or knock on door permission stuff, and so he
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: has a very different perspective on the late season than
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: these guys, and that you know in some spots like Michigan,
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: he won't hunt the late season there hardly at all,
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: because he simply can't find doesn't have access to these
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: safe places. So what he does instead is he packs
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: up and travels to a lower pressure state where he
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: can find these pockets, and then he takes advantage of
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: some of the same things that Don and Steve mentioned.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: So here's John on his late season approach how he
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: finds deer in these situations. The most consistently productive method
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: of hunting during the late season is to concentrate your
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: efforts on hunting transition corridors between known betting areas and
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: feeding locations such as masts or fruit trees that still
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: have food in the ground, or crop fields if in
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: an agricultural area. These are also the same areas where
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: does will be so they double as searching areas for
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: late estrius does as well. Just as during any other
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: time of the season, the transition corridor between betting and
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: feeding must have adequate security cover for mature buck to
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: feel comfortable transitioning through. During daylight hours when there are
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: several inches or more or snow on the ground, locust
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: trees that dropped bean pods and cedars become major feeding areas,
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: and the deeper the snow, the greater the odds of
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: mature buck encounter in large cedar swamps, Hunting at any
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: time of day can be productive because these swamps become
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: deer bedding areas and winter deer yards prior to snow.
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: There are other more preferred and accessible masts and vegetation
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: than cedar boughs and locust beans, But when there's deep snow,
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: cedar boughs are an easily accessible food source, and one
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: post scrape of the ground under a locust tree will
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: uncover several bean pods. The colder it is, the greater
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: the need is for deer to feed. We have found
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: in pressured areas that to some extent, the more severe
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: the weather conditions, the better mature bucks move during daylight
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: This is likely because while growing up they have had
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: less encounters with hunters during foul weather conditions. General deer
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: activity might be less than normal, but mature buck activity
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: will spike during many inclement weather conditions. All right, let's
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: continue down this line of thinking. How to kind of
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: focus in on the best late season food sources. I
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: want to share with you some of this from Mark
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: and Terry.
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: Drury in their book.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: Giant White Tails A Lifetime of Lessons. This is an
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: old school book, but there's a nice simple excert here
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: in which they explain their take on late season food
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: on finding the spots to focus for deer at this
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: time of year. Our plantings for late season hunting are
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: based around three different food sources. The two most important
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: are corn and soybeans, with beans probably being number one.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: Deer prefer the beans to anything else in December, particularly
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: when it's snowy and seasonably cold. Not every December is
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: created equal from.
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: Region to region and year to year.
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: You don't always have those cold temperatures and heavy snowfalls.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: When that's the case, deer hardly hit the beans at all.
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: That's why we also plant some green food sources like
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: they give you some examples here winter weed, buck foord
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: j o its biologic cover maximum YadA, YadA. When the
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: first ponds, creeks, and puddles freeze over in early December,
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: there's little natural green forage around. Even though there might
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: not be any snowcover, green plants attract deer and provide
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: them with a good source of moisture. Over the past
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: few years, we've discovered the water content of green plants
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: can be a huge drawing cards for white tails in December.
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: In short, we plant beans and corn predominantly, probably eighty
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: percent on the farms we hunt late in the season. However,
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: we don't turn a blind eye towards green food, which
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: comprises about twenty percent of our plantings. A major point
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: I need to make is we see more mature bucks
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: in December and January than we do in October and November.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: During the rut, big deer burn a lot of fuel
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: and eventually run out of gas in December, staring down
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: the barrel of a long tough winter. They go back
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: to filling the station and hammer high energy foods like
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: beans and corn. We take advantage of that weakness. White
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: tails truly are slaves to their stomachs, and it's never
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: more obvious than in December. What's more, if you put
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: out enough seed and planet right, you'll not only see
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: most of the deer that live on your farm, you
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: will also draw bucks from all around. Late in the season,
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: when all the natural forge is gone and gun pressure
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: hits adjoining lands, your land suddenly becomes a safe haven.
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: The big deer come there for one reason food. The
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: colder and snowier it is in December, the more whopper
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: bucks you'll see. Terry and I will take two inches
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: of snow, but we prefer five or six inches, which
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: thoroughly covers all the leftover acorns and other woodland food
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: stuffs that causes deer to pour into our fields. Deer
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: movement is usually magical ahead of, during, and after a
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: fresh snowfall here in the Midwest. Terry I prefer daytime
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: highs not to exceed twenty or twenty five degrees. When
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: you have forty or fifty degree tempts, late season hunting
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: is not nearly as good. The more threatening the conditions
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: with snow and highs and the teens and twenties, the
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: better your chances, because more deer get on their feet
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: and move towards food sources. Finally, I ought to mention
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: that white tails prefer cut fields as opposed to standing crops.
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: When you are a farmer harvested field, all the residue
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: be it beans or corn, sits on the ground, absorbs
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: a little moisture, softens up and often becomes more palatable
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: to deer. Also, it's much easier for dozen bucks to
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: move and feed in a low cut field of.
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: Corn or beans.
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: All Right, there is the dreary take on their key
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: food sources and why that works for them so well.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: Moving on to another set of ideas here, I want
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: to get Jeff Sturgis's thoughts on this as he breaks
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: down some of the key food sources and habitats that
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: he looks for both on public land and on private land.
• 47:48
  Speaker 6: So, like, you know, even going back to Pennsylvania, in
• 47:51
  Speaker 6: that public land, I don't want to be out in
• 47:53
  Speaker 6: the big open hardwoods unless I ask some indication that
• 47:56
  Speaker 6: there's still acorns and that's where they're feeding, you know,
• 47:58
  Speaker 6: tore up ground snow. I really want to be in
• 48:01
  Speaker 6: the high stem count areas where you have lots of regeneration,
• 48:04
  Speaker 6: lots of habitat coming in think upland cover. If you
• 48:07
  Speaker 6: can find it on public land, it's hard. But where
• 48:10
  Speaker 6: you have shrubs, bushes, briars, hardward region, maybe on the
• 48:16
  Speaker 6: edge of a swamp, it's all coming together. Where there's
• 48:18
  Speaker 6: a lot of different habitat groups coming in together. That
• 48:20
  Speaker 6: means there's a lot of brows. And to me, as
• 48:24
  Speaker 6: opposed to a wide open oak flat where deer been pressured,
• 48:29
  Speaker 6: hunters have been out too, they might feed there more
• 48:32
  Speaker 6: at night. It's safe, it's social, they can see predators
• 48:36
  Speaker 6: for a long distance. I'd rather be tucked up against
• 48:38
  Speaker 6: that high high stem count, diversity and brows of public land.
• 48:43
  Speaker 6: And then when you go on to private if you're
• 48:46
  Speaker 6: managing your own property, you want to definitely have a
• 48:49
  Speaker 6: lot of younger timber coming in and diversity of habitat.
• 48:53
  Speaker 6: But then you're looking at either high volume greens like
• 48:55
  Speaker 6: braska if it's towards the north, or corn beans that
• 48:59
  Speaker 6: are standing late if you can get that. But and
• 49:04
  Speaker 6: then adjacent to that same type of cover where you
• 49:06
  Speaker 6: have really thick cover. So if I'm hunting in the morning,
• 49:08
  Speaker 6: i want to be by that thick cover, high stem count,
• 49:11
  Speaker 6: and then I might flip stands and go hunt a
• 49:13
  Speaker 6: more food source stand related for the afternoon on private land,
• 49:18
  Speaker 6: but on public land that might be all in the same.
• 49:20
  Speaker 6: It might be your hunting on the edge of a
• 49:22
  Speaker 6: very thick area that deer might transfer out of to
• 49:25
  Speaker 6: go to an open food source like a big oak
• 49:27
  Speaker 6: flat during the afternoon.
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: If you had to rank order late season food sources from,
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: like what your very best would be down the list,
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: how would you do that? Because I'm imagining, like I've
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: been in this situation where I've hunted ad country and
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: I've got some grain food plots, and then there's a
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: neighboring cornfield, and then there's another field next to this beans,
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: and then there's you know, some cuttings on the neighbors
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: and I know there's like some thick natural brows in there,
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: and I'm trying to think where should I hunt tonight?
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: And I've got all these different food sources to choose from,
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: and I'm trying to think, Okay, what's going to be
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: the absolute most attractive for this time of the year.
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: If you're in if you have the luxury of that situation,
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: how would you rank order what would potentially be most attractive?
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: And then as a follow up, and I'm giving you
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: making this even more tricky.
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: But as a follow up.
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: Would conditions change that order? So if I told you
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: it was a forty degree December day versus a ten
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: degree December day, how would you reorder things as well?
• 50:31
  Speaker 6: You know, kind of it to back up just a
• 50:34
  Speaker 6: little bit, you know, like you mentioned, it's you have
• 50:37
  Speaker 6: all these available, what choice would you make? But a
• 50:39
  Speaker 6: lot of times, especially if people are building it or planting,
• 50:42
  Speaker 6: and on private land, you're not looking at what's the
• 50:45
  Speaker 6: beast You're looking at what's the best that would be available.
• 50:49
  Speaker 6: And so a lot of times someone could say ten
• 50:52
  Speaker 6: degrees late December standing beans, pretty hard to be forty
• 50:59
  Speaker 6: degree late December standing beans. I'd rather shift to corner
• 51:06
  Speaker 6: or greens. But then at the same time, even beans
• 51:12
  Speaker 6: that ten degrees late December, someone has to have either
• 51:15
  Speaker 6: fences or a large amount of acreage of beans to
• 51:19
  Speaker 6: make them last all that time. So I see people
• 51:21
  Speaker 6: beat themselves like I love beans late like that, But
• 51:25
  Speaker 6: if they're not there, then it doesn't really matter what
• 51:29
  Speaker 6: your scale one to ten would be. And then also
• 51:33
  Speaker 6: you have to look at what's the most unpressured. So
• 51:35
  Speaker 6: let's say just someone could say, okay, mid December hunt
• 51:40
  Speaker 6: let's just say December twelfth. There's a little bit of
• 51:42
  Speaker 6: the rot left last, you know, upper midwest, upper third
• 51:45
  Speaker 6: of the country. And you have a choice of a
• 51:49
  Speaker 6: bean field in a cornfield, but the beanfield's been pressured
• 51:52
  Speaker 6: and hunted heavily, then I'm gonna go pick the corn
• 51:56
  Speaker 6: and you might even find there's a lot of dozen
• 51:57
  Speaker 6: falls in the bean field because they can take a
• 51:59
  Speaker 6: lot more hunting pressure, human pressure. I'd rather cheat over
• 52:03
  Speaker 6: towards that corner the Braska that deer are still coming
• 52:06
  Speaker 6: to and there's still does come into it, obviously, if
• 52:09
  Speaker 6: dose aren't going to it, I would a buck. I mean,
• 52:11
  Speaker 6: he wants some good food too, but unpressured should be
• 52:15
  Speaker 6: the first, uh, you know, the first requirement of a
• 52:19
  Speaker 6: late season food source. And then you start looking at
• 52:22
  Speaker 6: what's best, and you know, if it's forty degrees, it
• 52:25
  Speaker 6: seems like they really like greens if it's warmer, so
• 52:28
  Speaker 6: if they have high volume greens, even if they have
• 52:30
  Speaker 6: stainy wheed to rye mixed with various greens clover down
• 52:35
  Speaker 6: in Kentucky, West Virginia, southern Illinois, southern Indiana, where you
• 52:39
  Speaker 6: might even get a little growth of clover in November
• 52:41
  Speaker 6: because it hit sixty seven degrees a few days. So
• 52:44
  Speaker 6: that's a little bit different too, versus something you might
• 52:47
  Speaker 6: want to do in central Michigan or focus on so
• 52:50
  Speaker 6: heavy greens of some kind when it's a little warmer
• 52:52
  Speaker 6: later and then certainly those grains. But again it has
• 52:55
  Speaker 6: to be unpressured.
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: All right. So I think you know something worth mentioning here.
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: Something that's very important is in identifying these places, right,
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: identifying you know, I guess everything, trying to find where
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: these safe places are for deer, trying to find where
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: these best late season food sources are, trying to find
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: these pockets of bedding cover that's still available. You have
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: to do some scouting to figure that out.
• 53:21
  Speaker 5: Now.
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: Hopefully, in a best case scenario, you have been, you know,
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: doing this for years in a particular area and you
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: know from history where these key late season hangouts are.
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: But if you're not, or if you are still trying
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: to figure it out as you go, you are going
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: to have to do some scouting.
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: There's you know, the same forms of scouting as we
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: talked about in October, they applied now in December.
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: You simply have.
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: To do it with an even greater degree of concern
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: and care because, as mentioned, these deer are very touchy.
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: These deer have been pressured, they have been hunted, they
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: have been harassed. They're not going to tell erate much.
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: So on the ground scouting, if you have to do it,
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: you've got to be very tactical about when you do
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: it and how you do it because these deer, you know,
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: they could blow out from a long ways away. I
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: think a very important thing to be thinking about, A
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: special consideration this time of year is how open the
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: habitat is right where maybe you could have walked through
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: a forest and nothing could see you unless they were
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: within thirty yards of you.
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: Now it might be.
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: Two hundred yards away they can see you. So when
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: you're scouting, be aware of that. And I would suggest,
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: i think many other people would suggest taking a much
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: lighter touch when it comes to on the ground scouting.
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: This is when long distance observation is huge. Driving back
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: roads and looking at these fields, getting up on a
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: hill and watching from afar in a place that you're
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: not going to spook a bunch of deer, but you
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: can see into an important area. Of course, trail cameras
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: play a part in this as well, you know, going
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: out there midday once on your bike or your truck
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: or your UTV, and moving cameras to late season food
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: sources in places that you think they might be using,
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: using those trail cameras to confirm for you which is
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: the hot food source.
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: At the moment.
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: All of that can be really helpful. But using a
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: light touch, I can't emphasize that enough. I can't tell
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: you how many different people have kind of mentioned this
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: over and over and over again. In the late season,
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: you have to wear white satin gloves. You have to
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: be so careful. This is like a very fragile situation
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: you're dealing with. If you happen to be so lucky
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: to have that sanctuary where deer have felt safe, and
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: if you are so lucky to have quality late season
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: food and to have that quality late season betting cover,
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: if you have this special thing that many people don't have.
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: You have a gift.
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: You have a fragile, fragile gift, and you do not
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: want to waste that and throw it away because you're
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: not being careful. So that all said, sometimes you do
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: still need to get on the ground and scout things
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: out in person. John Eberhart advocates for that sometimes I
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: want to read for you. Another excerpt from his book
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: The Ultimate Guide to DIY Books, as he discusses a
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: couple quick things when it comes to scouting in the
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: late season. He says, if you need to scout if
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: there's snow in the forecast, we recommend waiting until it
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: falls and then scout twenty four hours after it has
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: quit snowing. By late season, routines are somewhat consistent from
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: betting to preferred feeding areas, and if you scout an
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: area twenty four hours after a fresh snow, you will
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: be able to identify exactly where the deer betting by
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: the freshly used runways leading to them, and where they
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: are feeding by the kicked up snow to access the
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: food on the ground.
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: The point is that a day or so after a fresh.
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: Snow, you know exactly where the deer feeding, and while
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: it's not advised to intrude into their betting areas during
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: late season, you can backtrack to see the area they're
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: betting in. You'll also be able to decipher if the
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: transition corridor has adequate security cover for mature buck movements
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: during daylight. In short, if you wait for this fresh snow,
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: you can take one big swing with your scouting, which
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: will make an impact. But if you do it just once,
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: with this specific set of circumstances, you can learn a
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: ton in one trip and then use that hopefully for
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: the next week or two or three or whatever it
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: is you need. So something to keep in mind there now,
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: something we've alluded to which I haven't given you a
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: whole lot of detail, is what makes for late season
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: betting cover, What makes for that security cover, thermal cover
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: the deer. Like I share a little bit, I want
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: Don Higgins to give you just a little.
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: Bit more insight.
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: So here's an excerpt from a previous podcast I did
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: with Don as he discusses late season cover.
• 57:35
  Speaker 5: Well, it's extremely thick. It's also got some thermal cover.
• 57:39
  Speaker 5: Seeds fines a lot of the oak species and not
• 57:43
  Speaker 5: a lot of them. But some oaks species will hold
• 57:45
  Speaker 5: their leaves in the winner pano oaks, saltyeth oaks, shingle oaks,
• 57:49
  Speaker 5: those species will hold their leaves all winter along and
• 57:51
  Speaker 5: provide you know, some wind and thermal cover for the deer.
• 57:55
  Speaker 5: But the main thing is you want it thick, but
• 57:57
  Speaker 5: you know you want it free of human intrusion, and
• 58:00
  Speaker 5: that goes for the entire year. You don't want to
• 58:02
  Speaker 5: be stomping in your late season bedding area in October
• 58:07
  Speaker 5: and ruin it months before you're planning to hunt it.
• 58:11
  Speaker 5: That freedom of human intrusion is probably the most important thing,
• 58:14
  Speaker 5: even more so than the type of plants and the
• 58:18
  Speaker 5: little way of the terrain and everything. I like to
• 58:21
  Speaker 5: say that every mature buck has a sanctuary, and if
• 58:24
  Speaker 5: he didn't need to never make it to mature status,
• 58:26
  Speaker 5: he'd been killed before that. The thing about sanctuaries is
• 58:31
  Speaker 5: you can create them or you can find them on
• 58:34
  Speaker 5: the properties that we have control over. The best thing
• 58:37
  Speaker 5: to do is go out and create them because you
• 58:39
  Speaker 5: can make the best cover possible, you can control the
• 58:42
  Speaker 5: human intrusion within that area and everything else, and you
• 58:46
  Speaker 5: can make an excellent sanctuary. But sometimes that's not possible,
• 58:50
  Speaker 5: like you mentioned, other hunters have access to the property
• 58:53
  Speaker 5: or whatever. Well, then you let the deer find the
• 58:56
  Speaker 5: sanctuary and created it, really create it. But he just
• 59:01
  Speaker 5: finds those pockets, you know, where the human intrusion is
• 59:05
  Speaker 5: not there, where he feels safe, and you can either
• 59:09
  Speaker 5: create it or you can find it, and the bus's
• 59:11
  Speaker 5: gonna be there either way.
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: So we have discussed the importance of security. We've discussed
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: how do identify quality late season food sources and what
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: some of those are. We have now discussed the betting
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: and cover needs that deer have during the late season.
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: I want to tie a bow a little bit on
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: this general approach to hunting white tails in the late season,
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: which is the find them, learn them, wait until the
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: right conditions, and then strike kind of approach. I want
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: to talk through just a couple special considerations when trying
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: to execute those hunts, or when you know anytime you're
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: in the woods. I allude to this first one a
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: second ago when I talked about how the cover has changed,
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: the habitat has changed in the woods. What used to
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: be a spot where maybe you would only be seen
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: from thirty yards away, maybe now you're seeing from two
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: hundred yards away. This also applies not just to scouting,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: but to hunting. The woods are open, the grassy fields
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: are knocked down by snow or cold weather.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: Everything is more open.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: So when you go into hunt, maybe an afternoon hunt
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: or whatever it is, you can be seen from much
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: further away. This is even more so if there's snow
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: in the ground and you just kind of stand out
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: as this big, dark silhouette against a perfectly white background.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: So access an entry or being up in the tree,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: all of that is so much more difficult. You really
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: need to think about cover. Visual cover is very very
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: important for late season hunts, So walking in, really be
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: aware of what kind of cover you can take advantage
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: of to sneak in without dear seeing you. When you
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: choose a tree to hunt from, really be thinking about
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: what's the cover up in the tree without leaves up there,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: are you still hidden or do you stand out as
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: this huge object in a little tiny bean poul tree.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: That can really impact the success of your hunt. Another
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: thing to think about here is sound. Sound travel so
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: much further in the late season. You know, for one thing,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: all of the leaves are down, the grass is down,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: as we just mentioned, that just allows for sound to
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: travel further. I feel like, for whatever reason, everything just
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: seems like echo more. I can't say this with one
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: hundred percent certainty, but it just seems like in the
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: late season. I've had many more hunts where the wind
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: is kind of down, and it just seems like any
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: little thing will just be heard from a mile away.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: Every piece of metal seems to make more noise, like
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: your your ladder steps, your trees stand. It just seems
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: like things want to creak and pop and it just
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: cause trouble.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: So you need to be aware of that. You need
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: to be extra careful to stay quiet.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: If there's anything you can do ahead of a hunt
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: to dampen sound, to tape things up a little bit,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: better do that because sound can really get you in
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: trouble at this time of year.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: Again, deer are very.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: Averse two hunters right now, So any little extra sound,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: any little extra sout, you know, sight of movement, those
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: things can really be big problem. All of that brings
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: us to making decisions about when to hunt. We've talked
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: earlier about you know, waiting for the right conditions, right
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: waiting for that cold front, waiting for that precipitation, waiting
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: for that you know, dire arctic tundra event. And that's
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: what a lot of these people do, right because they
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: find where this little special pocket of deer is and
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: they don't want to go and hunt it over and
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: over and over again and educate these deer right, So
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: instead they wait for the right conditions, They wait for
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: that cold front or for that you know, snowstorm, and
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: then they go take their big strike and they do
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: it very very carefully. For many deer hunters, this also
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: means evening hunts. Morning hunts are more difficult to pull
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: off at this time of year for all the reasons
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: we just discussed. Right, deer are traveling back to their
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: bedrooms in the morning, they might already be back there early.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: If you are trudging through the woods when it's very
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: loud out and it's wide open out and maybe you're
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: crunching through ice or snow, it's just very risky to
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: get there without educating deer. And you simply can't get
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: away with educating deer now as much as you maybe
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: could have in October or definitely in November. So because
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: of that, a lot of folks prefer just to hunt
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: the evenings. They have to be smart about how they
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: get out after the hunt. But getting in, you know
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: where deer are right there in their bedroom, so you
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: can walk in being confident that as long as you
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: avoid wherever that core betting area is, and as long
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: as you're smart about where your wind's blowing, you should
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: be able to get in there safely and then have
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: a good hunt. All that said, morning hunts, of course,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: there's never you know, never say never. Things are never
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: black and white. There are certainly people who hunt mornings
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: in the late season. I know Jeff Sturgis is one.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: I know my buddy Tony Peterson is one. I know
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: there's plenty of others. You just have to be very
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: careful about how you do this. So I want to
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: play for you an excerpt from a video that we
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: produce for Wired to Hunt, Tony talking through his take
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: on hunting late season mornings.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 7: When you're talking about late season bowing, we kind of
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 7: default back to a mindset that we have during September
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 7: and early October, where they say, don't hunt the mornings.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 7: There's no way to get in. All you do is
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 7: damage your spots. Anyone who knows me knows that. I
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 7: think that's total bunk. I look at it almost exactly
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 7: the same way I look at it early season. There's
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 7: probably a way to figure out a spot to have
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 7: really good morning hunts, But you got to think about
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 7: a couple different things. Where do I go to catch
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 7: them staging, or how do I get close to their bedding.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 7: You're probably not going to get in on a food
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 7: source in the morning and be able to hunt it
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 7: very well. You're going to blow everything out of there.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 7: You don't want to do that. So you want to think, Okay, well,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 7: I know they feed in this field, where do they
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 7: go back to bed? How do they travel? How do
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 7: they get there? The main part of finding a spot
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 7: to bowhunt a late season deer in the morning is
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 7: all about your access. You got to figure out a
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 7: way to drop in there. You got to figure out
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 7: a way to use a creek, you got to figure
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 7: out some way to come in from a direction where
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 7: you're not going to alert the deer. And then you're
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 7: talking more open woods than you've had all season. You're
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 7: talking deer that are cagey after the gun season, after
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 7: a bunch of weeks of bow hunting. You're talking about
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 7: deer that are not gonna put up with a bunch
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 7: of mistakes. So your access is really important. With any access,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 7: you're thinking about the wind, of course, but late season
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 7: you're also really thinking about the sounds you make. It
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 7: might be dead calm, you might have a little frost
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 7: you might have a little snow, little ice, you might
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 7: have just frozen leaves. You know, how far away can
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 7: you park so they don't go, Oh, there's a truck
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 7: park right up here. Now I heard him get out.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 7: Now I hear him walking through the woods. You got
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 7: to think about how good their hearing is and how
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 7: calm the conditions are. Really, pay attention to the forecast.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 7: If it's gonna be dead calm, I'm probably not gonna hunt.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 7: Even if I just summon my inner ninja and I'm
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 7: sneaking through there, really well, I'm gonna make more noise
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 7: than I want. Am I gonna get a little bit
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 7: of rain? Am I gonna get a little bit of
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 7: wind like I have here right now? Am I gonna
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 7: get something to help me out to utilize that spot?
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 7: Don't give up on mornings in the late season. If
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 7: you have a chance to hunt, it just takes a
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 7: little detective work to make sure you have that situation
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 7: and you know how to hunt it.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: There's Tony's take on the morning hunts in the late season.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: I want to circle back to this kind of wait
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: and see approach one last time and explore what to
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: do if you don't get that weather, because for many
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: people the late season is find them wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: strike when it's right. But what happens if you wait, wait, wait,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: wait and you never get the right moment. What if
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: you never get that big call from What if you
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: never get that big snowstorm.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: Here's what Don Higgins does. Here's his thoughts on what
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: to do when you don't get the cold weather that
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: you want during the late season.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 5: Well, I don't hunt very often, that's for sure, because
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 5: I'm hunting the biggest bucks I can find, and a
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 5: lot of times that means that I'm not looking at
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 5: things from just a one season perspective. I'm looking to
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 5: kill that beer and if it happens this season, great,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 5: But I don't want to go in and tip him
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 5: off when the conditions aren't right. Next year, he could
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 5: be twenty inches bigger, and if you've educated him, you've
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 5: just made him. You know, three times it's hard to kill.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 5: So a lot of times, you know, if the weather
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 5: isn't perfect, I'll hunt secondary locations. I will stay out
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 5: of my prime locations, and you know, I might watch
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 5: a feeding area from a distance just to see if
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 5: there happens to be a buck coming out before dark
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 5: and one that i'd want to target, which is very
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 5: very rare for that to happen. But I'm not one
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 5: just to sit home either. I've got to be out
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 5: there to them something. So I just as soon sit
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 5: back and watch from a distance and see if maybe
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 5: there's a buck coming out that I wouldn't expect, you know,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 5: under those conditions. But you know much your bucks are unpredictable.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: All right, And I would just add to that that
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: you know, you always have to think about timing available
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: right in the implications of you know, how you might
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: educate deer. So if you are waiting and waiting for
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: the right moment but you never get it and then
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: you just don't hunt that deer at all, well then
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: you had zero percent chance to kill it. Here anyways,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: the whole idea here is that you're trying to not
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: hunt so much on days when your odds were low
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: that it impacts your chances some day later when the
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: odds are high. But if you never get that some
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: day later, what was the point of avoiding all of
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: those lesser hunts. In the end, you have to eventually hunt.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: You have to get out there and try. So it's
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: just a matter of finding that the best available.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: So maybe the best available is not the mega cold front.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: Maybe the best available is like, hey, you know, all
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: I have left is this week or these next two weeks,
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: and I'm not.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 3: Going to get that front.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: But I do have four or five days here this
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: coming weekend when it's like Okay, it's not great, but
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: it's not horribly warm.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: That's when you go.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: Then you just look for what's your best chance, what
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: are your lowest odds for this being a swing and
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: a miss, and then go take your chances. And I
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: think maybe Jeff alluded to this or someone did earlier.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: But you know, if you can set yourself up in
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: such a place that the odds of educating deer are
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: really low, you know, if you have that amazing access,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: if you have that smart exit plan, if you can
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: sit in a place that you've got a very safe
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: place for your wind to blow. If you can do that,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: then you might have a situation where you could hunt
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: over and over and over again. I know that Jeff
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: Sturgis has talked about doing this in gun season. He
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: sets up in late season locations for gun hunts quite
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: a bit away from where the deer is gonna come
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: out quite a bit away from that best stuff, just
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: within gun range, so that he can actually hunt a
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: larger number of days in the late season and give
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: kind of the roll of the dice, enough rolls for
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: that big buck to finally show up. So not just
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: hunting the single best weather day, but instead maybe hunting
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: seven of those days when some of them those days
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: are great, some those days are okay, but you're giving
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: yourself a chance to be there when the magic finally happens.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: But that only can work if you.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: Have that really really safe, bulletproof location that's well prepared,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: that's well planned out, that's not going to get you
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: burned over and over and over again, because if you
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: get burned several times, these deer are going to catch
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: on very quick, quicker than any other time of the year,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: and you're simply not going to get any more chances.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: So that's kind of the key thing to be thinking
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: about this time of year.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: Not everybody has this situation. Not everybody is going to
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: have some private land where they could build a sanctuary
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: or plant food plots and have crops up for deer.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: Not everyone is going to have a lease where there's
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: limited pressure, there's going.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: To be some folks out there. I've been in this boat.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: My buddy Tony's been in this boat. I know many
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: of you have been in this boat where you just
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: don't add that and then you're just searching and searching
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: and hoping to find a gem out there. And that
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: doesn't mean it's gonna, you know, be impossible. That doesn't
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: mean that you can't have late season success during you know,
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: or on public land or on by permission stuff.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: You definitely can.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: It just requires a little bit more work and trying
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: to find these things out in the real world. So
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: I want to play for you a couple more quick
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: takes from Tony as he breaks down number one, why
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: hunting public land in the late season isn't as bad
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: always as some people think. And then finally, what to
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: do when you don't have one of these dynamite built
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: in food sources that we've been talking about so much.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: So two quick takes here from Tony on public land
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: and hunting in the areas that aren't you know, carefully
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: managed and manicured for late season.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 7: Probably ninety nine point seven percent of the late season
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 7: bull hunting advice has come from people who have awesome
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 7: properties to hunt. If you're a public land hunt or
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 7: it might make you feel like you don't really have
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 7: a chance in a late season, a lot of people
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 7: just won't do it. But I'm here to tell you
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 7: some of the best late season hunting I've found in
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 7: my life has been on public land.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: I usually do.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 7: Sort of a quick turn and burn scouting trip. I
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 7: just want to find fresh tracks. I want to find
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 7: those trails that are pounded. I'm not looking for a
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 7: big buck sign right now. I just want to see
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 7: evidence that deer living there. The second thing you got
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 7: to think about with this is what's going on out
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 7: there right now. We always kind of think that public
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 7: land is worse than private land, But there are a
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 7: lot of areas where some of the best wintering cover
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 7: is on public land because it can't be farmed. Even
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 7: though those properties might be okay for most of the season,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 7: they really become something special when the deer opportunities are
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 7: so limited to get into good cover to survive in,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 7: and so in some ways public land can be even
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 7: better than you would expect in a late season. One
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 7: thing that I know about public land in a late
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 7: season is everybody's thinking the same thing. This is gonna suck,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 7: This is not going to be fun to hunt. I
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 7: don't want to go do it when I know all
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 7: the deer been blown out of there or shot out
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 7: of there. I've found that I can have so many
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 7: of these places almost to myself. It's almost like having
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 7: your own private spot to hunt. At least ninety five
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 7: percent of the hunters have given up. That's a big advantage.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 7: If you're sitting there and you're looking at the clock,
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 7: kind of wine down on your hunting season and you
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 7: only have public land, or you might want to go
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 7: check out some public land do it like.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: You can have.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 7: Amazing late season bow hunts if you go in with
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 7: the right mindset and you spend a little time trying
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 7: to find those deer concentrations. The traditional late season hunting
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 7: advice is to find that food source, sit on it,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 7: and wait for the deer to come out. Most people
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 7: don't have that, and not every food source is created equal.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 7: When you're thinking about a late season bow hunt and
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 7: you don't have that perfect food source, it doesn't mean
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 7: you're out of the game. Deers still have to walk
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 7: from the food to their betting areas. They're still going
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 7: to mill around, they still might browse. There's still a
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 7: lot of opportunities. You might be hunting thousands of acres
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 7: of timber and not have a destination food source within
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 7: three miles of you. Does that mean you're out of
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 7: the game. Absolutely not. The first thing you gotta do
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 7: is you've got to analyze your situation.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 3: What do you have to work with. Do you have.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 7: Access to a property that they might be betting in.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 7: Do you have access to a transitional property if you're
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 7: in that big wood situation. Do you have some mast
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 7: they might be on. Do you have some brows they
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 7: might be on. A lot of times with hunting, we
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 7: kind of focus on the negatives. What are the positives, like,
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 7: what are you working with? The second thing you got
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 7: to do is figure out where deer like to walk.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 7: When I'm sitting there and I don't have that destination
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 7: food source for whatever reason, I kind of go back
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 7: to this mobile strategy.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: Of observe, move, observe move.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 7: Those deer in the late season, even if they've been
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 7: really pressured, they'll start to mill around, they'll browse, they'll stage,
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 7: they'll stay in the cover, But if you've got good
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 7: buy ando and you've got a good vantage point, you'll
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 7: probably pick them up. I know these deer have to
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 7: walk to get to food. I know they have to
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 7: walk to get to where they're going to bed. Maybe
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 7: in the right situation, they're gonna have to walk somewhere
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 7: to get water. Depending on where you hunt. If you're
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 7: down south, they're going to give you something to work with.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 7: You got to go in with the idea that the
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 7: food source stuff that's for the people who have a
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 7: thousand acres in southern I would to manage. You don't
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 7: have that, And so you can get into the woods
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 7: start watching them. They'll give you something to work with.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 7: Then the next step is to figure out how to
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 7: get in on them a little bit closer. The other
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 7: thing that you can do here, and I do this
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 7: a lot in the late season, is I start running
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 7: cameras a lot more. I'll mount them high up in
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 7: a tree with a camera, mount angle them down on trails,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 7: and I can couple that with what I actually observe
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 7: when I'm in there, and I play it safe, and
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 7: you can start to pin down where those deer are
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 7: killable when they're not on that food source that you
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 7: can't hunt or that you don't have, So don't give
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 7: up on your late season hunts. If you don't have
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 7: that food source, figure out a way to get dialed
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 7: into the current deer move then work your way in
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 7: for the right setup. This can totally be accomplished if
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 7: you're really careful about it. You will get on those
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 7: deer and you will be successful just by figuring out
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 7: where they like to walk.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: All right, now, I want to share one final alternative
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: set of ideas for the late season, because I think
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: much of what we talked here is kind of your
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: standard late season December January hunting style.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: Right. You don't have to do it this way.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: There is another way that I have dabbled in, I
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: have tried, I've learned from some folks on and is
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: very fun, very interesting, and very compelling if you have
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: the right set of circumstances, and that is tracking deer
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: in the snow. Tracking deer in the snow. Typically this
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: is something done in the big woods. This is you know,
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: Maine is famous for this. I know people do this
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: in northern Minnesota, northern Wisconsin, northern Michigan. I know people
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: can do this in Pennsylvania, but really anywhere you have
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: snow in some space to roam, some space to follow deer.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: So if you have some either big parcels of land
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: you own or public land that stretches a decent bit,
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: if you have snow, you can follow deer tracks in
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: the snow during gun season, if you have that late
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: firearm season, or maybe your gun season doesn't open untill December,
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: and you can actually follow deer right to where they
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: are and get a shot them, or you know, some
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: of the things from hell I'm going to share with
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: these excerpts from hell Blood, who's kind of the modern
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: day og when it comes to tracking deer in the snow.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: There are things you can learn from tracking deer in
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: the snow that even if you are bow hunting, you
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: can use that to your advantage to set up in
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: some of the ways we talked about. So you can
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: go in and let's say you just don't know where
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 2: these deer are right now, you have not found a pocket,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: you don't have that amazing.
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 3: Spot like we've talked about.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: But maybe you can backtrack a deer in the snow
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: and find where they're moving, find where they're betting, find
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: where they're heading to feed, and yeah, you just made
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 2: this aggressive scouting move today, probably going to blow things up.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: But again back to John Eberheart's take a couple of
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: minutes ago, maybe doing that just once you can learn
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: enough to then make some smart hunts later in the
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: late season. All that said, I mentioned hell Blood. Hell
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: Blood is the author of a number of books. He's
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: done a lot of films. He's an outfitter up in Maine,
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 2: tremendous deer hunter and deer tracker.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 3: I had the great privilege.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: Of getting to spend some time with him a few
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: years ago and actually get to go to his camp
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: and go out in the woods with him and have
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: him teach me how he did this. And I got
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: to watch him for a full twenty four hours, not
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: full twenty four but a full day of hunting to
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: see exactly how he tracks deer and kind of learn
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: his style and approach to that. So what I want
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: to do here is play for you a quick kind
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: of overview of some of Hal's high level thoughts on
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: tracking deer in the snow. This is a short video
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: that we produced when I was there.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 3: Visiting with him.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: And then I'm going to kind of give you a
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: very short rundown of some of the key lessons I
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: learned from him, and then I would suggest if any
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: of this is interesting to you, to go and listen
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: to the two full podcasts that I did with this
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: or did with him on this topic, or check out
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 2: the episode that I filmed with him of our show
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: called Deer Country. So just in advance, I'll tell you
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: podcast episode two oh three and episode four ninety seven
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: are the ones that you want to listen to if
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: the idea of tracking deer in the snow is something
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: you want to learn more about. But first, a really
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: quick rundown of hell of three of his best pieces
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: of advice for people trying to learn to track deer
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: in the snow.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 8: I'm how Blood, and these are the three things that
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 8: I think are the most important tips. The track in
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 8: white tailed bucks. The first thing is is you got
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 8: to keep moving. I've had days I've gone all day
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 8: and not even pick up the big track.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: I want got to be.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 8: Willing to walk, maybe it's ten miles a day, whatever
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 8: it is. You're not willing to do that, you're probably
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 8: not going to be a tracker. You got to pick
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 8: up that track. The goal is to catch up to
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 8: the buck. Get where you can jump them, see him,
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 8: shoot them, whatever it is. The quicker you can do that,
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 8: the more time you have in the day to hunt
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 8: for that buck. Second tip, if you jump the buck
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 8: way to half an hour, sit down and have a sandwich,
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 8: do whatever you want, but way to half an hour,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 8: let him settle down. If you go right after him,
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 8: he's thinks something's chasing him, and you're gonna run after
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 8: him all day. If you wait a half an hour,
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 8: he might lay down again. He might keep on his circuit,
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 8: go check, goes, do whatever he's doing in life. That's
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 8: the best time to kill a buck. The third tip
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 8: would be get in the mindset of the buck right
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 8: from the beginning. When I first get on the buck,
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 8: I'm trying to figure out what he's up to, what
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 8: he's doing, what's going on is life. It's written in
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 8: the snow for me. I gotta interpret it and react
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 8: to it. He might have some little quirk idiosyncrasy that
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 8: tells you he's going to do a certain thing before
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 8: he lays down. A lot of times it's feeding, but
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 8: sometimes it's other things. Try to learn that buck, and
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 8: as you're learning the buck get that track, you imprint
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 8: the track size and shape, and his feet made drag
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 8: in the snow. You internalize that in your memory, and
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 8: then when you get into all the tracks, you should
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 8: always remember which one is your buck that you're on.
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 8: It'll make it easier for you.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: Okay, so good stuff there from Hale. I'm gonna walk
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: you through at a very high level. The key things
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: that I learned when I walked out there with Hale,
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: walked in his footsteps and tried to learn how to
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: track deer. Number one was this idea of speed and
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: needing to cover a lot of ground because you simply
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: have to find a buck track, and once you find
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: a buck track, then you're in the hunt. Then you're
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: actually doing the thing. But because of that, there's two
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: things that he does. A ton of drives, a lot
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: of roads, drives a lot of backcountry forest roads, dirt roads.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 3: Two tracks.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: Anywhere he might be able to cut a track and
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: find a relatively fresh track in the snow, he's doing that,
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: or and I think he prefers this actually goes off
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: in the woods and walks, loops, walks areas that he
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: knows historically have been good for deer movement and kind
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: of walks through funnels or deer concentrating topography where there's
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: a good chance that a buck might have cruised through
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: covers lots and lots of ground until he finds that
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: track he is looking for. And I'm going to read
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: you an excerpt of how he thinks about tracks. But
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: he's looking for a big track that indicates to him
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: it's a mature buck. And then he's looking for a
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: relatively fresh track. Best case is that he wants to
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: find a track from the night before. So he's out
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: there looking for a track that happened in the dark
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: the previous evening or early that morning. What that looks
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: like for him. The thing that's stuck with me is
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: that he's looking for a crispy track. So he's looking
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: for the edges of this track still having crisp, sharp
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: lines and edges to them. If you touch it with
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: your fingers, some of the snow might actually still just
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: like kind of fall down. You can just see like
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: a fresh track in the snow. It's it's really hard
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: to describe with words, but if you were standing out
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: there in the snow, and if you took your hand
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: just like flick some snow. You would see crisp lines
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: where your fingers went into the snow. But then you
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: would actually see crisp little snowflakes, some bunches of snow
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: and stuff scattered on top of the snow. And it's
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: very clearly defined. Versus an old track where you're gonna
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: see very rounded edges, things just start to deteriorate, they
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: start to round out, they start I mean, it's kind
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: of like they're melting, right, melting or freezing, but everything
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: gets rounded more so it's not as crisp. So if
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: you find that very crisp track, that's going to tell
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: you this probably happened the night before, This probably happened
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: sometime relatively recently, and Hal's mind, that was enough to
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: get after now here. Again, it's fast moving once you
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: get on that track. He recommended covering ground fast. You
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: don't need to be too careful. If that deer is
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: on the move in a relatively straight line, you should
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 2: be in a move fast covering ground because he might be,
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: you know, hours and hours and hours ahead of you
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: or miles ahead of you. You've got to catch up.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: You're looking at two things to slow you down, one
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 2: if you see in his movements that he is circling,
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: that he is feeding, that he is zigzagging, that he's
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: heading up into an area of really thick cover, and
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden his straight line turned into this zigzag, slow,
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: circle around, stand around kind of thing that would be
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: indicative of this deer as getting ready to bed, then
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: you should slow down. Or if you have a situation
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: where you see that you bump to the deer, then
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: you should slow down. Two different forms of slowing down
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: Hell talked about to me. One would be if you
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: get in there and you see this sign of slowing
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: down and getting ready to bed, but you haven't yet
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: spooked him. This is when he recommends going into what
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: I think he called like the death creep. This is
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: when you really slow down. This is when you are
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: very careful not to make noise, not to make big movements.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: This is when you're scanning ahead of you and trying
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: to pick apart the terrain and trying to see that
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: little flicker of a tail or that gleam of an antler.
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: You do the death creep to hopefully not spook that
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 2: deer and hopefully lucky enough that you happen to see
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: it before it sees you, then you can pull up
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: and get a shot. In many cases that doesn't happen,
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: though you do spook the deer, and you're gonna come
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: up and you're gonna find a bed, or you're gonna
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: find where the deer kicked up and ran off, and
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: you're gonna see mud and dirt and snow kicked out
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: behind and then tracks changing from walking tracks to now
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: bounding tracks when you see that. Another key thing, and
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: Hall mentioned this in that YouTube clip, this is when
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: you take the sandwich break, his kind of famous sandwich break.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 3: Take thirty minutes, sit.
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: Down, relax, give that deer time to run off and
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: slow down and look behind him and not see something
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 2: coming after him, and then feel safe again and resume
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: what he was gonna do. As Hell discussed, if you
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 2: don't give it that thirty minute break, you're probably just
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: gonna push that deer further and further, and he's gonna
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: bound and.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 3: Just kind of leave your life. But if you give.
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: Him that time, he'll slow back down and you can
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: hopefully catch back up and get that second chance. So
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: those were the key things that I took away from
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: Hell's approach to tracking deer in the snow. Again, this
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 2: is obviously not comprehensive. Go and listen to episodes two
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: oh three and episodes four ninety seven of the Wired
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 2: Hunt podcast. Look up My Dear Country episode in Maine
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 2: with Hal. There's so much to learn from him and
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 2: others like him.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 3: They've got a.
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: Podcast, they've got all sorts of great resources. So if
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 2: you want to learn about tracking deer in the snow,
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 2: which is a really fun thing to consider in the
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: late season, go and check those out.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 3: I've gotten a kick out of it.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: I want to do more of it in the future,
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 2: and I think there's something that all of us can
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: learn from when it comes to studying tracks, learning about
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: deer tracks and really getting to not only following their
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: footsteps and try to shoot a deer like that, but
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: also just like learning how to interpret tracks in general.
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: So that mind, I do want to read you a
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: little excert here from Hale's book Hunting Big Woods Bucks.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: He's got a lot here about tracking deer in the snow.
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to pick out a couple little bits
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: here about what he looks for in to help them
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: determine if it's one worth following. So he says, when
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: I look at a deer track, there's three things. I
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: want to determine the size of the deer, if it's
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: a buck or dough, and when the track was made.
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 2: The first thing I look at is the size and
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: shape of the track itself. Keep in mind that when
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: a deer is walking, the rear foot is placed directly
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 2: into the front footprint, so the track you see is
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: the rear foot. Keep in mind also that the rear
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: foot is smaller than the front. If the track is
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: two and a half inches wide and three inches long,
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: and the dew claws are half inch outside of the
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 2: hoofs is most likely a mature buck. I personally like
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: tracks that are three inches wide, as they are usually
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 2: made by the old monster bucks. I don't recommend that
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: all hunters hold out for what I call a three
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: by three track, as in most places these tracks are
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 2: few and far between. As I noted earlier, bucks from
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: different areas have different size feet. The sizes that I'm
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: referring to are the northern boreal forest bucks of northern Maine.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: Make sure you know what's realistic for the size of
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: foot on the bucks in the area you're hunting. The
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: shape of a track can also help you determine whether
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: or not it was made by a mature deer. As
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: a buck gets older, his feet will tend to flatten out.
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 2: This will cause the dew claws to show more. Even
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: in a minimal amount of snow. A mature buck will
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: have dew claws that show one to two inches behind
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: his hoofs, and they'll be noticeably.
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 3: Wider than them.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 2: A mature buck's toes will often be rounded or blunt
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 2: in the front from where of the years. The print
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 2: of an older buck will appear to be square. This
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: is because they get older their feet splay, causing the
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: toes to be spread. This square shape will be apparent
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: no matter how deep the snow may be. The next
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 2: thing I look at is the length of the stride.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: I like to see the distance between prints to be
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: twenty four to thirty six inches. This measurement can vary, though,
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: depending on how fast the buck is walking. Generally speaking,
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 2: the longer buck stride is the longer his body is,
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: which is a good indication of how much the buck
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 2: might weigh. Long bodied bucks will typically weigh much more
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 2: than a short bodied buck. The other thing I look
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: for is the stagger. This is the distance side to
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 2: side between the tracks on a mature buck body. Excuse me,
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: on a mature buck, this distance will be eight inches.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 2: This measurement is an indication of how wide a buck's
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: body is and another indication of how much he might weigh.
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 2: As a buck mature is, his body and chest get wider.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 2: If you find a truck a track with a twelve
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: inch stagger, you are looking at an old mossy horned
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 2: bucks track. The last thing I look for is that
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: the buck is dragging his feet in the snow. Mature
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: bucks have a tendency to drag their feet, and the
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: older they get, the more they drag them. I call
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 2: these old bucks cross country skiers. These bucks drag their
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: feet so much, even in an inch of snow. That
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: is when you see the tracks, it looks like someone
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 2: was skiing through the woods. I can assure you I'll
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 2: never walk past one of those tracks.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 3: All right. So much more you can take from Hale.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 2: On these books or the other resources I meant I mentioned,
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: but hopefully there's something to get you started and intrigued
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: in what you can take from studying the snow.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 3: So there is what.
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 2: Is hopefully a helpful high level overview of the late
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 2: season conditions to expect how all these things impact deer,
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: the general approach to the learn, wait and then strike
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 2: approach to late season hunting, and then a couple alternative
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 2: ideas to consider as these weeks go on. And I
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: guess I'll leave you just one final thing, and this
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 2: is similar to what I mentioned in November, and I
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: think it is especially important here at the end of
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 2: the year, which is remembering what makes this whole thing fun.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: And the late season is a perfect time to lean
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: into that, because if you're like me, once you get
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: to December or January, you have been grinding at this
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: thing for many, many weeks and months. You're probably exhausted.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 2: You've probably been beaten down. You've probably been on the
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 2: wrong side of the equation many many more times than none. Right,
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 2: even the very best hunters in the world still, you know,
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: they come out on the losing end nine percent of
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: the time. So when it comes to this part of
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: the season, it's very easy to be disheartened.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 3: It's very easy to want to give up. It's very
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 3: easy to not enjoy.
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 2: Those cold, nasty days out there in the tree. So
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: because of that, my suggestion to you is double down
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: on the things that do bring you joy as a
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: deer hunter. For me, that means taking my kids out more.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: The late season is when I get my kids, my
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 2: two sons out and hunt a lot. This is when
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: I really focus on dough hunts. It's a great time
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 2: to kill those before the season ends. We got to
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: do We've got to do our part as managers. But
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 2: it's also you know, when the mature bucks have been
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: seriously you know, limited, and how many are left, all
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 2: of a sudden, you can create a target rich environment
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 2: that you wouldn't have had otherwise by setting your sights
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: on dos. So it just makes every hunt more exciting
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 2: and more you know, raises your expectations for every hunt.
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: It's easier to deal with meat and processing and all
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: that because you've got the colder whether you need, you
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: can hang a deer up and leave it for a
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 2: while where you can wait until you get several deer
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 2: and then process them all at one time. So from
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: that perspective, it's a great time to shoot does. I
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 2: also highly recommend doing whatever you can to include your
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 2: family and friends during your late season hunts. This is
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: a great time to not only bring your kids out,
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: but plan to hunt with your dad or your grandpa,
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 2: or go to the family deer camper, invite your buddies
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: to your hunting property. That usually you just focus on
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 2: trying to kill a big deer, but maybe now is
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: the time to have everybody over for a big group
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 2: dough hunt. That's the thing I do every year in
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 2: the late season, kind of around Christmas or New Year's.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 2: It's become a very fun tradition. It's a great way
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: again to be a good manager, but also to you know,
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 2: just enjoy the camaraderie and the community that hunting builds
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 2: for us. That sometimes we get a little bit too
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 2: focused on the deer to take advantage of so don't
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 2: do that. Make sure to enjoy these special days here
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: as deer season wraps up, with your friends, with your family,
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 2: with your kids, get out there, enjoy the heck out
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: of it. We have planned for, dreamed about, obsessed over
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 2: hunting season for all of these months, and then all
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 2: of a sudden it came, and then just like that,
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: it's almost done. So soak it up, really, really squeeze
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 2: the marrow out of the bone that is these last
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 2: few weeks of the year.
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 3: I'm wishing you well. I hope this sets you.
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 2: Up for a great last act or a great final
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: part of the year. Hopeing there's something here that's given
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: you a new idea or inspired you to get out
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 2: there and tried just a little bit more, to bring
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 2: some friends or bring your family out, because the late
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 2: season can be great, and I'm hoping it is for you.
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 2: So thank you for tuning in, and until next time,
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 2: stay wired to Hunt.