Speaker 1: As a guide and hunter. I've spent thousands of days
Speaker 1: in the field. This show is about translating my hard
Speaker 1: won experiences into tips and tactics. They'll get you closer
Speaker 1: to your ultimate goal success in the field. I'm Remy Warren.
Speaker 1: This is cutting the distance. Welcome back everyone. We are
Speaker 1: jumping into part two of the Glassing Spectacular. I just
Speaker 1: I dubbed it that, and so that's what it's going
Speaker 1: to be. Probably not on the label, but it will
Speaker 1: be in your minds now. Last week we talked about
Speaker 1: understanding size, reference and shape. This week, as promised, we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about changing those search parameters to color and
Speaker 1: adjusting your varying view looking for movement. By combining that
Speaker 1: in with the other two items we talked about last week,
Speaker 1: you for sure we'll be able to spot more animals
Speaker 1: faster and train yourself to have a sharper eye through
Speaker 1: having a sharper mind. But before we do that, let's
Speaker 1: head way north to the island of Kodiak and search
Speaker 1: for blacktailed deer. Right now, I'm actually sitting in my
Speaker 1: little cabin. It's raining outside. I'm hoping to go out
Speaker 1: and hunt some deer this afternoon. But I would need
Speaker 1: to record a few podcasts, and I'm I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: what we talked about last week, glass NG, and I
Speaker 1: was just trying to, you know, kind of rack my
Speaker 1: brain of some some good hunting stories. And then I
Speaker 1: look over and I see my brothers Sitka blacktail deer
Speaker 1: mounted here on the cabin wall, and I'm like, that
Speaker 1: was an amazing spot. And so this story takes place
Speaker 1: on Kodiak, Alaska, and it was in early October, which
Speaker 1: if you're familiar with blacktailed deer hunting, that's not the
Speaker 1: best time to hunt. It's pre rut, post alpine like
Speaker 1: bucks out in the summer range. It's just kind of
Speaker 1: an interesting time where well, actually, for many dear species,
Speaker 1: that October time frame can be really difficult because the
Speaker 1: bucks break off there by themselves. They're just in these
Speaker 1: thickets kind of preparing for the rut, saving up, conserving energy,
Speaker 1: and they can be very little movement, very hard to find.
Speaker 1: This week was definitely that we had trouble just turning
Speaker 1: up any dear. Not only that, but it was just
Speaker 1: kind of an off year for Kodiak, where experienced a
Speaker 1: little bit of a die off and there wasn't a
Speaker 1: lot of year round, but you know, you you had
Speaker 1: a good opportunity maybe finding a good buck. This was
Speaker 1: Jason's first blacktail hunt, and we're out there and we're
Speaker 1: just like, it's like the last day of our hunt
Speaker 1: and he hasn't got a buck yet. I shot a buck.
Speaker 1: A friend of mine shot a buck that we were
Speaker 1: hunting with, and Jason's just like, he's always that guy
Speaker 1: that's willing to just help everybody and then puts himself
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the list. He's you know, he's
Speaker 1: just one of those guys that is a great guy
Speaker 1: to hunt with. And he's not only really fun to
Speaker 1: hunt with, but he always loves to just help other
Speaker 1: people get their animals and he always ends up doing
Speaker 1: pretty good even though he sends it down to the wire.
Speaker 1: And actually it's a fitting story because he's actually hunting
Speaker 1: blacktails right now with some other friends. So I figure,
Speaker 1: what a great, great story to tell this week. But
Speaker 1: it was just one of those weeks where it was
Speaker 1: very tough, very difficult hunting, and we weren't seeing much.
Speaker 1: It's the last day and so me and Jay are like,
Speaker 1: all right, we're just gonna give it her all. We're
Speaker 1: gonna go on a major mission. We hiked up from
Speaker 1: the beach. We're gonna hike up to the alpine. We're
Speaker 1: gonna work this ridge the entire length of this ridge
Speaker 1: and just glass in all the spots that look good.
Speaker 1: We get up there, we're glass and we aren't seeing much. Um.
Speaker 1: As we're halfway up the mountain, I look and I
Speaker 1: spot a dough and like a fawn in this little
Speaker 1: there's like this this ridge. As we start to near
Speaker 1: the alpine, these little tiny pine trees and they crossed
Speaker 1: from this like thick stuff like almost like, um, I
Speaker 1: guess it'd be like alders and Devil's Club on this
Speaker 1: on the one face over into these like subalpine little
Speaker 1: furs or a little short, little Christmas tree looking things
Speaker 1: and disappear like, oh, deer up on that ridge, let's go.
Speaker 1: They were does we're hunting bucks, But hey, dear, that's
Speaker 1: maybe a good sign. So we bust through a ton
Speaker 1: of brush to get up there, just like really thick
Speaker 1: alders growing in that. I would say they're like twelve
Speaker 1: foot tall alders and baseball batsize just like we were
Speaker 1: just battling to get up to this spot. We break
Speaker 1: through into the alpine and we just got this really
Speaker 1: great view. We're glass and we don't actually see the
Speaker 1: same deer, but we work around the face. The winds
Speaker 1: blowing up from the bottom, so it's good wind. And
Speaker 1: we're like, okay, you know, it's mid day, is our
Speaker 1: last day. The leaves have started to fall off this
Speaker 1: one like pocket, and we're just looking at this pocket,
Speaker 1: going okay, dear, we're in here. This pocket looks incredible.
Speaker 1: We've got a really goodvantage. We're just gonna sit here
Speaker 1: in glass until we find a book. So we're sitting
Speaker 1: there glass and glass and glassing. I've got the binoculars,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, we cannot turn up a deer. So
Speaker 1: I just started thinking to myself. I'm like just trying
Speaker 1: to picture it. I'm just thinking to myself, Okay, what
Speaker 1: am I going to look for? Everything. I'm kind of
Speaker 1: looking and like the colors, there's all the colors of
Speaker 1: the deer. They don't have a lot. I just started
Speaker 1: to think, okay, just look for something white. Maybe I'll
Speaker 1: get lucky and spot you know, it's tail or whatever.
Speaker 1: So I'm just thinking, find something white, find something white,
Speaker 1: and I'm glassing. I've got my binoculars out on top
Speaker 1: of actually had my spotting scope, and I set my
Speaker 1: binoculars on top of them. So I'm glassing on the
Speaker 1: tripod and just thinking, white, white, white, Let's find something.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, my eye catches something. Okay,
Speaker 1: that looks good. I go down, get the spotting scope
Speaker 1: on it, kind of lose it because it's just so
Speaker 1: much I'm like looking through all this crap. It's just
Speaker 1: so many sticks and twigs and everything, and it's ways
Speaker 1: off on the other side of the canyon. Look back
Speaker 1: through the binocular and spotted again. I'm like, ja, okay,
Speaker 1: I think there's a deer here. Let's and so get
Speaker 1: the spotting scope out and I start focusing and there's
Speaker 1: all this stuff in the way in between me and
Speaker 1: this white spot, and so I'm rolling the focus and
Speaker 1: finally get it focused. I'm like, oh, buck, big buck,
Speaker 1: there's this nice what i'd call three point three by
Speaker 1: three with eye guards like past these years, just a
Speaker 1: solid hundred type black tail on a week that we
Speaker 1: hadn't been seeing very many black tails. So like, this
Speaker 1: is the best buck of the trip, last day of
Speaker 1: the hunt. Heck yeah, And he's just bedded in the
Speaker 1: thicket kind of by himself. So like, dang, Okay, well
Speaker 1: he's too far to shoot from here, and there's just
Speaker 1: like way too much stuff and he's bedded. So we're like, okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna devise a plan because we gotta get this
Speaker 1: buck is a good buck. So we decide if he
Speaker 1: stands up, there's like a log right in front of him.
Speaker 1: Picture it almost like it's on the side of a mountain,
Speaker 1: but it's just it's kind of thick. There's all there's
Speaker 1: there's like this falling log, and he's kind of like
Speaker 1: in this real wet spot kind of hiding out where
Speaker 1: I mean, there's like some dead fault in this little
Speaker 1: open and that's how we spotted him, and there's enough
Speaker 1: clearing above him. We just need him to stand, but
Speaker 1: he's very well hidden and you've got to get into
Speaker 1: the right position. So I think I arranged it. I
Speaker 1: was like seven hundred yards away, so Jason is gonna
Speaker 1: We kind of picked a spot where we thought there's
Speaker 1: this intermediate ridge. Jason could get three hundred yards and
Speaker 1: have a shot. But we're now racing against the clock
Speaker 1: because we're on a time crunch. It's the last day.
Speaker 1: We spotted him in the kind of late afternoon and
Speaker 1: it's gonna get dark. We still have to make our
Speaker 1: way back to camp because we're getting a boat right out,
Speaker 1: so we need to get We're kind of like racing
Speaker 1: against the clock to get to the boat. But also
Speaker 1: we've got this big buck and we're gonna get him.
Speaker 1: But Jason hasked to get a position, so we make
Speaker 1: this plan. Jason is going to sneak in and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna watch him. I'm gonna give him hands signals if
Speaker 1: the buck gets up or does anything crazy, because if
Speaker 1: he moves in that and we're both stalking in, we'll
Speaker 1: never know where he went. So if he moves, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna guide him into where the deer is gone. Now
Speaker 1: we have this contingency plan. I'm gonna stay up on
Speaker 1: point and just watch the deer, and then I'm gonna
Speaker 1: guide Jason in with hand signals. So the way we
Speaker 1: do our hands signals, like I like to take my
Speaker 1: hat off and point in the direction that the deer
Speaker 1: is going. If I'm close enough, I've got like I'll
Speaker 1: turn my hat backwards or like wave my arms if
Speaker 1: the deer's like gone. If it's blown, you know, wave
Speaker 1: my arms, and I was gonna move positions. So we
Speaker 1: have a couple of different positions. So if the deer
Speaker 1: is still where it was, I'm gonna be sitting right
Speaker 1: where I am. If the deer's up, I'll probably stand up.
Speaker 1: And then if it's like still betted, you know, I'll
Speaker 1: be sitting there where I was. And then there was
Speaker 1: this other rock over to our side. So if I
Speaker 1: go to the rock, that means it's blown, it's over,
Speaker 1: and then I'll guide him in if the deer moves,
Speaker 1: so it's close enough where we can kind of see
Speaker 1: each other. So Jason creeps down. He has to lose
Speaker 1: sight of the buck to go around. He drops down,
Speaker 1: he pops up to the right spot. I kind of
Speaker 1: guide him to the spot that I thought he'd probably
Speaker 1: get a view. So, you guys, he's glassing back at me.
Speaker 1: I'm glassing back at him. The bucks betted, So Jason
Speaker 1: set up. He's I can see he's on the gun.
Speaker 1: I'm just watching the buck. Okay, nothing's happening. Nothing's happening.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of in line where I can see both
Speaker 1: of them at the same time. So Jason turns around.
Speaker 1: It's like getting late, and I'm like, man, this deer
Speaker 1: is not going to stand up. So he looks at
Speaker 1: me and he kind of like taps his wrist like
Speaker 1: he's like times running out, and I'm like I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: I know, I know. And then we've got this like
Speaker 1: buddy that has this is kind of a joke but
Speaker 1: kind of serious. He calls it the warning shot. It
Speaker 1: came about on accous deer hunt. We call it the
Speaker 1: Mike Markasy warning shot, where somebody you shoot to get
Speaker 1: the animal to stand up, then you can get a shot.
Speaker 1: So we're running out of time and I see Jason
Speaker 1: and he's looking at me and he's like giving me
Speaker 1: the like pointing at me and then like aiming and
Speaker 1: like shoot. And I'm thinking we're just we're kind of
Speaker 1: joking because before he went down, I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: if the buck doesn't stand up in time, give him
Speaker 1: the old warning shop. So he's like pointing at me
Speaker 1: and like trigger. Okay. He wants me to try to
Speaker 1: get the buck to stand up, and I'm far enough away.
Speaker 1: I'm like that's not a bad idea. There's a tree
Speaker 1: close by. I've got my rifle, I'm like, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna try this because we're almost we're just cutting
Speaker 1: it close. By the time we butcher it, hike out
Speaker 1: of there, get back. You know, somebody's meeting us with
Speaker 1: a boat that night, like it's their last night. We're
Speaker 1: going out of there after this. We don't have any
Speaker 1: communication devices, so we really need to figure this out,
Speaker 1: get that deer, and hopefully make it back within a
Speaker 1: reasonable hour before you know, boat leaves. So I decided,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm gonna do the warning shot from my
Speaker 1: position and then hopefully that we'll get the deer to
Speaker 1: stand up. So I pick a tree that's near me
Speaker 1: in like a safe direction. I load up around. Boom,
Speaker 1: fire right into the tree. Why am? The sound goes out.
Speaker 1: I look through the scope. I'm like, oh yeah, let's
Speaker 1: get nothing happened, Absolutely nothing happened. All right, let's do
Speaker 1: it again. Boom, who am, hammer that close tree. Look
Speaker 1: back through the scope. Nothing happened. Jason just ready, all right,
Speaker 1: one more boom, wham. I see the buck kind of
Speaker 1: like shake his head, look up, and then just slowly
Speaker 1: stand up. Looking through the scope. Boom, one shot. Jason
Speaker 1: drops the buck. Buck down and the patented warning shot
Speaker 1: in this particular instance paid off. It was a really
Speaker 1: crazy spot like the last day and just a lucky
Speaker 1: I would almost say a lucky spot, but just a
Speaker 1: spot where we were trying to use everything we could.
Speaker 1: Defined one last year and turned out to be a
Speaker 1: great buck and his first black tail deer. Last week
Speaker 1: we started on part one talking about glassing, and my
Speaker 1: four tenants of glassing were size, shape, color, and movement.
Speaker 1: We already covered size and shape, so just as a
Speaker 1: little bit of a recap, we kind of talked about
Speaker 1: understanding what you're looking at the distances and how much
Speaker 1: time you need to spend, but also what's the size
Speaker 1: of the animal you're looking at compared to things that
Speaker 1: are already on that hill. And then shape, not just
Speaker 1: looking for the shape of the animal, but looking for
Speaker 1: certain shapes that identify that there's animals there or things
Speaker 1: that your eye picks up faster unless your brain process.
Speaker 1: What we've been building out is kind of letting your
Speaker 1: brain be the computer of the glassing and letting your
Speaker 1: eyes do the looking. It'll save you time and will
Speaker 1: allow you to pick out things that a lot of
Speaker 1: other people don't pick out. You know, I mentioned last
Speaker 1: week about the gorilla on the stage and people not
Speaker 1: recognizing it. Now, I think color is one of those
Speaker 1: things that it's something that's easy to identify and think about.
Speaker 1: It's something easy to look for, and it is often
Speaker 1: what gets animals spotted. But I think what the trouble
Speaker 1: is is people just have an idea of a color
Speaker 1: and then they end up missing a lot of other things.
Speaker 1: When I talk about color, what I do is I
Speaker 1: actually start thinking about what am I hunting, and then
Speaker 1: what are the colors associated with that animal. I know
Speaker 1: when I think thought about times in the past spring
Speaker 1: bear guiding, people that like think about black bears being
Speaker 1: only black tend to spot only black black bears. There's
Speaker 1: been many times where I've been looking at a single hill,
Speaker 1: had someone with me, I spot a bear, you know, whatever,
Speaker 1: Hey there's a bear over there. There's actually a couple
Speaker 1: of bears over there, and they look and they immediately
Speaker 1: see the one that their brain was thinking of, the
Speaker 1: black black bear. And yet you know, there's two brown
Speaker 1: or cinnamon colored bears also on the same hill, and
Speaker 1: those just get glanced over like, oh, I didn't even
Speaker 1: you know, didn't even recognize that because they had in
Speaker 1: their head. I'm looking for something that's black, the same
Speaker 1: ghost filk. You know, people think, oh, I'm looking for
Speaker 1: something brown or mule the or that white butt, and
Speaker 1: he goes looking for that white butt. Well, they miss
Speaker 1: a lot of the deer that are broadside or facing them,
Speaker 1: and they only spot the deer that are facing away.
Speaker 1: What I like to do is I like to think
Speaker 1: of all the colors that are associated with that animal
Speaker 1: I'm hunting, plus one color that kind of is universal
Speaker 1: for all animals. So let's say we we think elk
Speaker 1: a couple of the colors that I like to think about.
Speaker 1: As I'm glassing, I say, okay, look for this color,
Speaker 1: and that color would be that caramel brown, white and
Speaker 1: then black, that black of the bulls, the white of
Speaker 1: their blonde bodies, the kramel color of the cows, and
Speaker 1: then that brown of their neck. So I try to
Speaker 1: break down all those colors that I'm looking for, and
Speaker 1: by doing that, it kind of weeds out many of
Speaker 1: the colors that don't make sense, green, some of the grays,
Speaker 1: some of the other things, and I start focusing on
Speaker 1: colors that makes sense, so I can scan a little
Speaker 1: bit faster. And I've got the search parameter of looking
Speaker 1: for colors that don't make sense in the same way.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the reverse effect of that grill experiment
Speaker 1: where people didn't notice the gorilla, but they're focused on
Speaker 1: one thing. When you're focused on that one thing, you're
Speaker 1: very good at seeing that and thing. So what I
Speaker 1: try to do is I try to pick a few
Speaker 1: things that I know will stand out and focus on
Speaker 1: those and let those pop out at me. So, just
Speaker 1: a couple of days ago, you know, off the distance
Speaker 1: I'm glassing, it's it's fairly kind of like overcast, dark forests,
Speaker 1: um meadows and other things, and I just start scanning.
Speaker 1: I'm looking along ways away, but I've got this mental
Speaker 1: picture of certain colors I'm looking for. Really, I'm looking
Speaker 1: for bull elk and that blonde body is a dead giveaway.
Speaker 1: It's the largest portion of them. Glass and glassing, okay,
Speaker 1: And so my eyes are keying in on those things.
Speaker 1: White rock, get the spotter out. Nope, that's a white rock.
Speaker 1: Keep glassing that same color. Spotter out. Boom, two bowls
Speaker 1: right there, in a matter of minutes, instead of taking
Speaker 1: a lot of time to really analyze every little piece
Speaker 1: going slow, I can throw up my binoculars. I can
Speaker 1: do a quick preview and overview of the area, just
Speaker 1: running those those color scenarios in my head, thinking find
Speaker 1: this color, find this color, find these colors, and then
Speaker 1: I do a quick initial glass on those colors, and
Speaker 1: generally I turn it out. Now let's talk about another animal,
Speaker 1: Say mule deer, what are some of the colors? Gray? White, brown, black?
Speaker 1: The bucks get that black back, they get that black tail,
Speaker 1: they get that white. So I start running those colors
Speaker 1: through and you'll you'll notice you'll start picking out the
Speaker 1: things that are those colors. What I also do is
Speaker 1: I try to weed out certain colors depending on what's
Speaker 1: If there's snow on the ground, I don't want to
Speaker 1: look for the white. I start to think, look for gray,
Speaker 1: look for blacks. As as things get lighter, the color
Speaker 1: of those animals kind of changes based on you've got
Speaker 1: a more monochromatic view. You've got snow and everything looks white,
Speaker 1: but also everything looks dark. So now I'm looking more
Speaker 1: for the grays and the browns, and I also start
Speaker 1: to think think orange. If I'm looking for mule deer
Speaker 1: in the snow, because their antlers look a lot more orange.
Speaker 1: Their coats starts to look a lot more orange. You
Speaker 1: start to pick those orange colors out a lot faster,
Speaker 1: even over distances. Now, I would say for a lot
Speaker 1: of animals, also understanding that as you get further away
Speaker 1: you know the environment and contrast. But think about light
Speaker 1: and dark contrast. If everything around is dark, I look
Speaker 1: for the things that are light. If everything around is light,
Speaker 1: I look for the things that are dark. If I'm
Speaker 1: glassing a big lots of open, big grassy meadows, maybe
Speaker 1: that gray sage, I'm gonna it's like light background. Now
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start looking for the shadows of the animal,
Speaker 1: or the necessarily shadows of the animal, but the way
Speaker 1: the animal looks shadowed in what it's at. Think about
Speaker 1: seeing a you know, you talk about camouflage, and you've
Speaker 1: got a person up close, the camo blends in, and
Speaker 1: then they go a mile away and they just look
Speaker 1: like this human object that's really dark walking around the
Speaker 1: same goes for animals. Yes, their coats blend in, but
Speaker 1: also you know, getting your mind to picture the differences
Speaker 1: in contrast the lights and the darks. If I'm glass,
Speaker 1: like I said, if I'm glassing big open grassy meadows
Speaker 1: for elk. Everything's light, everything's that kind of elk color.
Speaker 1: So now I just start to think dark, that dark brown,
Speaker 1: that dark, that black. Maybe that's around the back end
Speaker 1: of a bull or that like mane of a bull.
Speaker 1: So a certain thing dark, and you start picking out
Speaker 1: those pieces. If everything around is dark, maybe it's a
Speaker 1: more forced area, maybe more I don't know, like a
Speaker 1: little bit more brush and other things that I start
Speaker 1: to think the light, start to think out, okay, pick
Speaker 1: out the whites of the bodies and and and start
Speaker 1: to kind of narrow in what I'm looking for, or
Speaker 1: the the white off the mule there as opposed to
Speaker 1: the gray in the lot of sage, or maybe some
Speaker 1: more of those brown colors, and combine that with the size,
Speaker 1: the shape, and then as we go into it, movement.
Speaker 1: Movement is the first thing that most people look for,
Speaker 1: but movement is honestly the easiest way to spot animals.
Speaker 1: I would say most animals that get spotted are based
Speaker 1: on movement. Their movement looking at something that everything should
Speaker 1: be still and something moves through it that catches your
Speaker 1: eye allows you to focus in. One thing. I like
Speaker 1: to do whether I'm quick glassing or just previewing an area.
Speaker 1: When I sit down and glass, I like to think
Speaker 1: of looking for that movement. And how I do that
Speaker 1: is I generally want to find a movement based on
Speaker 1: a wide view. That means getting using my binoculars more
Speaker 1: than my spotting scope. It would be looking at the
Speaker 1: mountain or the hill and this really wide view and
Speaker 1: this is kind of more panoramic, and just letting my
Speaker 1: eye stare at the picture and then catch movement in between.
Speaker 1: There's many times where the movement might just be the
Speaker 1: tree swaying back and forth, but you're keen in on
Speaker 1: the movement. When you add movement into your search parameters,
Speaker 1: you start to pick up a lot of other things
Speaker 1: that aren't just what you're looking for. It's crazy because
Speaker 1: you'll be looking out there and you'll be like, huh,
Speaker 1: there's a magpie. I just spotted a magpie from a
Speaker 1: mile two miles, five miles away. You're like, WHOA, Okay,
Speaker 1: because you caught the movement, your eye was drawn to it,
Speaker 1: and now you can also use those other things that
Speaker 1: you see moving to go back to your size, reference
Speaker 1: your shape, and and just test the fact that you're
Speaker 1: actually seeing what you're looking for. Movement is one of
Speaker 1: the best ways to verify that something is what you
Speaker 1: think it is. You know, you you these other search
Speaker 1: parameters go off. You focus in on something that looks
Speaker 1: like it might be a deer, and then you watch it.
Speaker 1: You stare at it, and you see if it moves.
Speaker 1: That's like the tried and true test of is that
Speaker 1: what I'm looking for? How does it move? Is it moving?
Speaker 1: Many times, what I'll do is I'll go between not
Speaker 1: only glassing but also using when I talk about movement,
Speaker 1: using my naked eye or without glass, I'll do a
Speaker 1: lot of glassing through the binoculars, through the optics, and
Speaker 1: that wide you have been zooming it out, sitting there
Speaker 1: and just staring at the hill and just looking for
Speaker 1: things that move, things that look different, things that change,
Speaker 1: not necessarily trying to look for the animal, but just
Speaker 1: looking for things that are moving. In that really wide view.
Speaker 1: You'll be surprised that you start to catch movements of
Speaker 1: different things, and you start to notice a lot more
Speaker 1: so things that you might not notice ahead of time.
Speaker 1: When you're looking for an animal. You go to this
Speaker 1: really wide view and you just stare and you go, oh,
Speaker 1: there's movement. Then you throw your binoculars up. It turns
Speaker 1: out to be a deer. It turns out to be this,
Speaker 1: It turns out to be that. If you've got decent vision,
Speaker 1: it's a really good way to kind of back that view.
Speaker 1: Like I like to back the view in and out,
Speaker 1: So I'll go from really wide eyes, two binoculars back
Speaker 1: to eyes too, maybe spotting scope at a distance to
Speaker 1: binoculars at a distance. And what I'm doing is I'm
Speaker 1: just looking and observing and waiting for that movement because
Speaker 1: there might be especially in the times of morning and
Speaker 1: evening when you're expecting movement, but even in the middle
Speaker 1: of the day when you aren't expecting movement, could be
Speaker 1: the best time to really hone in. One caveat to
Speaker 1: movement is what about those times a day when there
Speaker 1: isn't any movement, like the middle of the day, heat
Speaker 1: of the day. How do you find animals when it's
Speaker 1: a really good area, You know there should be something here,
Speaker 1: but they're probably bedded up. What I do in that
Speaker 1: scenario is I more zoomed in and try to catch
Speaker 1: little movements. There's so many times that the deer that
Speaker 1: I've spotted were bedded deer in the shade, and I
Speaker 1: caught the flick of an ear. There's always something moving,
Speaker 1: the flick of a tail, the step of a leg.
Speaker 1: Zoomed in on those bedding areas, trying to look for
Speaker 1: small movements, not necessarily large movements, and you might get
Speaker 1: a little wind and branches are moving, but at least
Speaker 1: you know you're you're keying in on things that are moving,
Speaker 1: so you're you're using your brain to kind of go
Speaker 1: from this just looking for the animal to looking for
Speaker 1: pieces of the animal, shapes of the animal, colors of
Speaker 1: the animal, and then certain movements that will trigger you
Speaker 1: into spotting more animals. If you think of it broken
Speaker 1: down into those pieces and then start giving your brain
Speaker 1: queues to look for all these things at once, I
Speaker 1: guarantee you you're gonna start spotting a lot more animals,
Speaker 1: a lot faster, with a lot less effort than most
Speaker 1: of the other people looking. You're gonna find things that
Speaker 1: other people don't notice, and it's just gonna come natural.
Speaker 1: At some point. It's going to be something where you
Speaker 1: just throw up the binocular and oh, there's this, there's that,
Speaker 1: and it might just be a piece of it you saw,
Speaker 1: but something in your brain triggered the effect that Okay,
Speaker 1: now I gotta look a little closer there, focus in,
Speaker 1: focus in Yes, that's what I'm looking for. And that
Speaker 1: really is the essence of you know where to look,
Speaker 1: you found the good spot. How do you find what
Speaker 1: you're looking for fairly quickly, fairly easily, or knowing that
Speaker 1: you didn't miss anything. And honestly, I think that's the
Speaker 1: best way to do it is having those kind of
Speaker 1: search parameters, by using by utilizing and understanding the size
Speaker 1: reference of how things are looking for different shapes, understanding
Speaker 1: that you can turn on and off this thought of
Speaker 1: color to help you eliminate a lot of the things
Speaker 1: that don't matter and bring in some of the things
Speaker 1: that do. And then using this difference in zoom where
Speaker 1: you're looking wide and then moving wider checking for movement.
Speaker 1: By combining all those things, you will be way, way,
Speaker 1: way more proficient. Well that concludes our glass NG strategy
Speaker 1: are two part glassing what to look for. I think
Speaker 1: if you can put all those things into practice, as
Speaker 1: I said last week, you know, understanding all those things
Speaker 1: in the way that they work together, what you're doing
Speaker 1: is you're you're letting your eyes do the looking, in
Speaker 1: your mind doing the sorting, and you can turn those
Speaker 1: filters and those layers on and off. If you think
Speaker 1: about your eyes are just the window to your brain
Speaker 1: processing everything, and you say, Okay, now I'm gonna pick
Speaker 1: those colors. I'm gonna boom, throw those search parameters out
Speaker 1: there and do that fast, and then you're you're also
Speaker 1: constantly looking for that shape and that size and understanding
Speaker 1: and trying to catch that movement. By doing all that
Speaker 1: all the time, there's gonna be very little that you
Speaker 1: don't catch. You can be the guy. There. There people
Speaker 1: that are really good at it, and hopefully I know
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people that listen to this podcast
Speaker 1: that are these people that not very much gets by you,
Speaker 1: not much gets spotted before you, and they probably, if
Speaker 1: they really thought about it, have this similar process going.
Speaker 1: When I talk to other people that I know that,
Speaker 1: I say, these guys are good at picking out animals,
Speaker 1: these guys are good glasses, they're good at spotting game.
Speaker 1: These are some of the things that it's hard to verbalize,
Speaker 1: but it's actions that happen that we might not even realize.
Speaker 1: So I think it's something that when you go out
Speaker 1: there and you you put um a label on it
Speaker 1: and say this is how you do it, and you
Speaker 1: start to pay attention to it, and you start to
Speaker 1: home that skill and you start to get better. I
Speaker 1: think it's just something fun because when you've you've got
Speaker 1: limited maybe've got limited time, You're you're gonna go out
Speaker 1: on the weekend and hunt, and you've got a good spot,
Speaker 1: you're looking at the right times in the right areas.
Speaker 1: You want to be able to find what you're looking for.
Speaker 1: One of the main complaints or like I think struggles
Speaker 1: I get from people is them saying, how do I
Speaker 1: know that I've seen everything? I don't know if I'm
Speaker 1: looking in the right areas? Did I what did I miss?
Speaker 1: And you know, building this out being better at picking
Speaker 1: out the things that are there. Yes, you will probably
Speaker 1: still miss stuff, but you can train your brain to
Speaker 1: help you find what you're looking for by understanding you know,
Speaker 1: those four basic things, the size, reference, the shape, choosing
Speaker 1: the colors, and then looking for movement, and you're going
Speaker 1: to be a lot more successful in the field. So
Speaker 1: as always, thank you guys for listening. I think you
Speaker 1: appreciate the support and all the great messages of success
Speaker 1: that have come in. If you get a chance you
Speaker 1: like the podcast, feel free to just share it with
Speaker 1: your friends, family, co workers, hunting buddies. Make them as
Speaker 1: good outdoors as you are, and then you would just
Speaker 1: have be unstoppable. It would just be meet filled freezers
Speaker 1: for life. And that's the whole goal here, right, So
Speaker 1: keep filling those freezers. I will catch you all next week.