Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
Speaker 2: the show, I'm going to be breaking down how I
Speaker 2: just killed my mid October Michigan buck and the tactics
Speaker 2: I use that can help you now and through the
Speaker 2: rest of the season to tag your own deer. All right,
Speaker 2: welcome back to the Wire to Hunt podcast. We are
Speaker 2: here with a special, emergency, impromptu, unexpected just you and
Speaker 2: me show because this isn't something I usually do, but
Speaker 2: when the time is right, when the iron is hot,
Speaker 2: when things are happening, I want to jump in and
Speaker 2: give you the latest information, the most recent updates and
Speaker 2: stories that are fresh off the presses. And this one
Speaker 2: is very hot because I just killed a buck mid October.
Speaker 2: October to lol, as they say, was not so slow
Speaker 2: for me this year. And what I want to do
Speaker 2: for you here today is to walk you through exactly
Speaker 2: how I killed this deer, the things I did in
Speaker 2: the off season, the plan I put together the conditions
Speaker 2: that I waited for to make my strike, and the
Speaker 2: very specific set of circumstances that led to one of
Speaker 2: the most intense deer hunts of my entire life. This was,
Speaker 2: I guess, without giving too much weight right now, this
Speaker 2: was one of those very rare times when you put
Speaker 2: a specific hunting plant together, like a very detailed I'm
Speaker 2: going to do it here, I'm going to do it
Speaker 2: at this point. This is what the deer is gonna do,
Speaker 2: this is where I'm gonna be, this is how it's
Speaker 2: all gonna work out. And then have it actually worked
Speaker 2: that way. I mean, I oftentimes have plans like that,
Speaker 2: but you know, nine point nine times out of ten
Speaker 2: doesn't work out well. This time it worked almost exactly
Speaker 2: to a t. So I want to share with you
Speaker 2: exactly how that happened and then kind of take a
Speaker 2: step back and try to make this relatable and useful
Speaker 2: for all of you and talking through a couple of
Speaker 2: the takeaways, a couple of the things that I did
Speaker 2: here and that I think we're reinforced for me as
Speaker 2: lessons that can help you. In mid October, in late October,
Speaker 2: all the way through November. I want to give you
Speaker 2: some specific ideas that can help you have more success
Speaker 2: this hunting season, no matter when you're listening. So that
Speaker 2: is the game plan. That's what we're doing here. And
Speaker 2: it's just like I said, gonna be pretty casual. I'm
Speaker 2: going to walk you through. This stuff is fresh on
Speaker 2: my mind because this all just happened last night and
Speaker 2: I'm I'm excited. I'm feeling very thankful. Maybe haven't had
Speaker 2: quite enough time to process it, but that's what I'm
Speaker 2: gonna be doing here today. I'm gonna be processing live
Speaker 2: on the air with you guys, and we'll see, we'll
Speaker 2: see what comes out of this. So this story is
Speaker 2: a shorter story in some ways than others you've heard
Speaker 2: because this is not a three or four year hunt.
Speaker 2: This isn't like the Wide nine hunt that was four
Speaker 2: years of history with one specific deer, which, by the way,
Speaker 2: if you haven't watched that film yet, it's on the
Speaker 2: Mediator YouTube channel. Doing a shameless plug here, but check
Speaker 2: out the four year Hunt for the Wide nine at
Speaker 2: the Mediator YouTube channel. I really think you guys will
Speaker 2: enjoy that. It's like a forty minute film dives deep
Speaker 2: into that story, lots ups and downs, This was not
Speaker 2: that kind of hunt, because this is a location that
Speaker 2: I just started hunting this year, and this deer was
Speaker 2: killed on my very first time hunting this spot, so
Speaker 2: very different than the Wide nine story. But I will
Speaker 2: rewind the clock a little bit because this hunt started
Speaker 2: this past summer. Some of this stuff I mentioned earlier
Speaker 2: in the year kind of prepping you guys, and when
Speaker 2: we talked through our goals, hopes and hit lists podcasts
Speaker 2: in the summer, I shared some of this, but I'm
Speaker 2: going to give you the full recap now, just in
Speaker 2: case you didn't hear that. So earlier this year, I
Speaker 2: lost access to a property that I hunted last year.
Speaker 2: That property got sold. It was a nice farm, a
Speaker 2: pretty good size. I you know, had kind of depended
Speaker 2: on that one as a really great kind of plan
Speaker 2: B type spot to spend some time. And so coming
Speaker 2: into this summer, I knew I again had to find
Speaker 2: more access, and so I just kind of came into
Speaker 2: this year going back, I guess to my roots. I
Speaker 2: kind of wanted to get back to what I did
Speaker 2: ten fifteen years ago when I just remember, you know,
Speaker 2: I was I don't know, like twenties, mid twenties, and
Speaker 2: anytime I ran into someone who maybe had some land,
Speaker 2: I would, you know, bring up deer hunting and just
Speaker 2: happen to see if there might be an opportunity there.
Speaker 2: I was knocking on doors, I was asking around, I
Speaker 2: was talking to family and friends, and I just want
Speaker 2: to get a little bit more of that happening. So
Speaker 2: this year, talk to a number of different people, just
Speaker 2: asking around, seeing if there was anyone who maybe I
Speaker 2: hadn't known of in the past that had a little
Speaker 2: bit of land they might be willing to share access to.
Speaker 2: And to make a long story short, I did pick
Speaker 2: up some new spots. I picked up some stuff in
Speaker 2: Illinois as we talked about, and then picked up several
Speaker 2: spots in Michigan as well. And I think the main
Speaker 2: takeaway here with the access thing is to never turn
Speaker 2: your nose up on a spot, to never judge a
Speaker 2: book by its cover. Because one of the parcels that
Speaker 2: I got access to didn't have a whole lot going
Speaker 2: for it. It was mostly just a big farm field.
Speaker 2: And I remember when I got permission on this piece,
Speaker 2: I pulled up the maps and I looked at everything,
Speaker 2: and some of these spots just feels, you know, not
Speaker 2: a great chance to kill a mature buck in that
Speaker 2: kind of spot. So I thought, Okay, you know, I'll
Speaker 2: shoot some dos there, help out this farmer, do you
Speaker 2: know my management duties. But I don't know if this
Speaker 2: will be a spot I'm gonna, you know, get a
Speaker 2: crack at an older deer. But one of these spots,
Speaker 2: when I looked at that aerial, you could see that
Speaker 2: it butted up to a really impressive looking swamp, a
Speaker 2: good swamp system, a place that I'd kind of driven
Speaker 2: around in the past, was aware of, had always wanted
Speaker 2: to get access somewhere around this swamp, and this property
Speaker 2: butted up to it and had a little bit of
Speaker 2: cover on the backside of it. Something like four acres
Speaker 2: is what I kind of was able to measure. The
Speaker 2: area of actual color. This is grass brushy stuff, some
Speaker 2: autumn olive, some scrubby willows that kind of stuff, some buckthorn,
Speaker 2: so good cover, but a very small amount of it,
Speaker 2: and then cornfield for ninety seven percent of the property.
Speaker 2: What it had going for it again was it butts
Speaker 2: up into this great big swamp, which is you know
Speaker 2: in places like Michigan where there's a lot of hunting pressure.
Speaker 2: It's always going to be different depending on where you're at.
Speaker 2: But for me in southern Michigan, the sanctuaries oftentimes are swamps, wet,
Speaker 2: big nasty, thick stuff that other hunters typically don't want
Speaker 2: to go into. That's where deer can get a little
Speaker 2: bit of age on them in my area. You know,
Speaker 2: in Wisconsin it might be big, hilly, nasty topography. In Iowa,
Speaker 2: maybe it's a big open crp field. There's no trees
Speaker 2: around and so hunters can't hunt traditionally there. Whatever it is,
Speaker 2: finding those sanctuaries is huge, and so I knew even
Speaker 2: though this is a very small huntable area, it was
Speaker 2: next to a really good looking sanctuary. So I kind
Speaker 2: of flagged that as hey, this is still worth a
Speaker 2: checkout even though it's pretty small. So late in the
Speaker 2: summer I went out there. I did a speed scout.
Speaker 2: I walked the outside edge of the field. I walked
Speaker 2: that back section to cover. I marked and the scrapes
Speaker 2: that I found or spots looked like they would be
Speaker 2: historically scrapes where you can still kind of see the
Speaker 2: remnant opening underneath these overhanging branches. I marked the major
Speaker 2: trails leaving the swamp heading into my section and heading
Speaker 2: into the cornfield, and I did notice a couple things
Speaker 2: that I really liked. Two spots in particular stood out.
Speaker 2: One of them was this little cluster of oaks on
Speaker 2: this transition between the swamp and the corn and so
Speaker 2: in this cluster of oaks, it's maybe an acre, but big,
Speaker 2: healthy looking white oak trees. And one of these awesome
Speaker 2: scrapes right at the hell convergence of two or three
Speaker 2: different trails. So I marked that. I found a tree
Speaker 2: that would be downwind of the typical winds. I thought
Speaker 2: about how I would access it, and I put a
Speaker 2: camera on this scrape in that spot, set that up,
Speaker 2: moved on, continuing on to a different part of this
Speaker 2: little four acre piece. I found another spot that was
Speaker 2: very interesting, And here was a ditch that came out
Speaker 2: of the swamp and stopped right before it got to
Speaker 2: the cornfield. And I thought to myself, when I looked
Speaker 2: at that, where that ditch and is like a full,
Speaker 2: you know, a water filled ditch. And I saw that,
Speaker 2: and it was pretty wide, and it did not look
Speaker 2: like something that deer would want to jump over if
Speaker 2: they didn't have to. I immediately thought, this is a
Speaker 2: travel pinch. This is a spot where deer going to
Speaker 2: funnel around the ditch and be pressed up alongside this cornfield.
Speaker 2: I then saw buck, thorn, tree, bush orrub whatever you
Speaker 2: technically want to call it. It was leaning right out
Speaker 2: next to that ditch that had a big old opening
Speaker 2: underneath it where you could just tell for years deer
Speaker 2: had been making scrapes underneath that. And then as I
Speaker 2: had approached that, I had also bumped a buck that
Speaker 2: was bedded out on these little two fingers of timber
Speaker 2: that extended that timber. It's more like brushy shrubs and
Speaker 2: very small scruby trees, but there was two fingers that
Speaker 2: extended alongside either side of the ditch, going in towards
Speaker 2: that swampy section. And as I walked past that, I
Speaker 2: bumped what looked like a decent buck off the end
Speaker 2: of one of those points. So all of that is
Speaker 2: telling me, all right, there's some bedding here, there's this
Speaker 2: pinch here, there's a standing corn behind, there's an obviously
Speaker 2: well used annual scrape right here. All of it made
Speaker 2: my spidery senses tingled big time. So again I thought, okay,
Speaker 2: this is an absolute great hunting location. I like what
Speaker 2: I see here. You could see deer using this in October,
Speaker 2: coming out to feed from that swamp, heading out into
Speaker 2: the corn. I thought, you know, also during the rut,
Speaker 2: there's gonna be does coming out and feeding here. This
Speaker 2: ditch might pinch a little bit of that movement in
Speaker 2: front of me. Problem was, as I searched around, as
Speaker 2: I looked around this whole area, there was no tree
Speaker 2: as you'd get up into. There was no options whatsoever
Speaker 2: within shooting range, even really outside of shooting range unless
Speaker 2: you got like sixty seventy yards away to get a
Speaker 2: saddle or a tree stand somewhere. So I remember standing
Speaker 2: there this summer thinking, what the heck do you do?
Speaker 2: How would I make this work? And maybe in the
Speaker 2: past I would have just moved on. I would have said, Eh,
Speaker 2: can't hunt it, No tree, can't do it. But I
Speaker 2: remember thinking, like, this is a spot you have to
Speaker 2: be and there's got to be a way to make
Speaker 2: it work. So I first thought maybe I could hide
Speaker 2: in the ditch, like maybe I can get down and
Speaker 2: stand in the water, or stand on the bank and
Speaker 2: hide underneath those underneath the weeds and wait for deer
Speaker 2: to come by. Maybe I could shoot from that position.
Speaker 2: But then I got to thinking, the only way to
Speaker 2: hunt this area would be with a wind pushing from
Speaker 2: that ditch out into the field. Otherwise, if you have
Speaker 2: a wind blowing somewhere else, it's blowing into where all
Speaker 2: this deer coming from. Just wouldn't work. So I then
Speaker 2: thought I could probably hide in the corn. And this
Speaker 2: was a really key thing for me, was realizing that
Speaker 2: I can use that standing corn basically as a blind. Right,
Speaker 2: you see a lot of people who own land putting
Speaker 2: pop up blinds or haybal blinds or even tower blinds
Speaker 2: in or right behind standing corn. Like some people will
Speaker 2: even have a cornfield, they'll mow some of it down
Speaker 2: and then they'll have their pop up blind right inside
Speaker 2: the standing corn. Well, I can't do that, but I
Speaker 2: could basically use the standing corn like a blind. I
Speaker 2: could hide in it, just stand in it, or crouch
Speaker 2: down in it. So I walked out there about twenty
Speaker 2: five thirty yards from where I wanted to be able
Speaker 2: to shoot to, and I started looking around and fortunately,
Speaker 2: maybe not for the farmer, but for me as a hunter,
Speaker 2: a lot of that corn had been eaten by deer,
Speaker 2: so there was a lot of it knocked down, so
Speaker 2: there was it almost was like someone came in and
Speaker 2: mowed some of this stuff down, because it was pretty
Speaker 2: good openings. So I found a spot where I was
Speaker 2: back far enough that I was right on the edge
Speaker 2: of the standing corn and then had this kind of
Speaker 2: knockdown corn in front of me, and I just marked
Speaker 2: a waypoint on Onyx and said, all right, this is
Speaker 2: the spot that has the most lanes to different places
Speaker 2: that I think deer might come through. It has me
Speaker 2: within shooting range of that ditch funnel and I can
Speaker 2: see that scrape. So I marked it and said, all right,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna come back at some point, and this is
Speaker 2: gonna be the spot to hunt if I want to
Speaker 2: hunt the ditch. So that's where I left things. I
Speaker 2: had a camera on that scrape. I marked the way point,
Speaker 2: finished my little quick spout scouting, walk through there, and
Speaker 2: pieced out. I was done. That takes me to I
Speaker 2: don't know, sometime in August, late August, and pictures started
Speaker 2: rolling in on those two cameras that I had and
Speaker 2: ended up being pretty promising. There was a handful of
Speaker 2: nice deer, nothing giant but some bucks that or maybe two,
Speaker 2: maybe three, maybe four, and then finally this crazy big
Speaker 2: browtime buck just like crazy big brow times, like eye
Speaker 2: popping ten eleven I don't know at the time, maybe
Speaker 2: twelve inch long brow times is what it looked like
Speaker 2: to me when looking at those first velvet photos. So
Speaker 2: super exciting. I've never had a buck like that anywhere
Speaker 2: I could hunt, and showed my kids the pictures. An Ever,
Speaker 2: my oldest wanted to call them tall brows. So this
Speaker 2: dear right away stood out. And fortunately, over the rest
Speaker 2: of the summer, late August and September, that deer showed
Speaker 2: up somewhat consistently, not over and over and over again,
Speaker 2: but enough to know he was in the area. He
Speaker 2: was using this cornfield, and he called this zone home
Speaker 2: at least. So fast forward, as the season is approaching,
Speaker 2: I'm continuing to monitor these cameras. I'm monitoring different properties
Speaker 2: I have to hunt. I do some drives around these
Speaker 2: various neighborhoods, just trying to see if there's any deer
Speaker 2: in the field, just trying to get a sense of
Speaker 2: what else is out there, and slowly start putting together
Speaker 2: a game plan. The approach that I am taking this
Speaker 2: year is to be a little bit more spread out,
Speaker 2: to try to keep tabs and what deer are around
Speaker 2: to collect collect collect information through cameras, through long distance glassing,
Speaker 2: through the occasional observation stand type hunt, and sometimes doing
Speaker 2: a quick drive through or walk through, and trying to
Speaker 2: scout a little bit on foot and hunt the properties
Speaker 2: that have a potentially active deer. So I'm not going
Speaker 2: to overhunt any one particular property after one particular deer.
Speaker 2: I'm a little bit more open to what I'm targeting
Speaker 2: this year. Last year is very much wide nine. This
Speaker 2: year there's a handful of different deer, some spots here
Speaker 2: in southern Michigan, some spots up in northern Michigan, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to go where the iron seems hot and
Speaker 2: where the conditions seem right. So in this case, there's
Speaker 2: a few things that had to be lined up for
Speaker 2: me to want to hunt this particular small property. I
Speaker 2: knew I would not be ill hunted a lot, because
Speaker 2: again it's small and you could burn it out pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: There's one or two spots. There really was nowhere else
Speaker 2: you could hunt on this piece, and so I was
Speaker 2: looking to make very targeted strikes, so waiting for the
Speaker 2: right moment and then give it a shot and then
Speaker 2: back out for a while and maybe give it one
Speaker 2: more shot. But this wasn't a place that I could
Speaker 2: hunt over and over and over and bump around here
Speaker 2: and try this spot and try this spot and try
Speaker 2: that spot, to wait until I felt pretty darn confident.
Speaker 2: So I was number one infrequent hunting in this particular location.
Speaker 2: That doesn't mean I'm not going to hunt other places,
Speaker 2: but for this spot, it's got to be the right time,
Speaker 2: the right moment for a deer that I actually want
Speaker 2: to take a crack at. The one main deer that
Speaker 2: I want to take a crack aut on this property
Speaker 2: was for sure, that tall browtime buck. There was another
Speaker 2: eight pointer who looked like maybe he was four, with
Speaker 2: short brow times that I thought, if that deer hangs
Speaker 2: out here a lot, I might be interested in that one.
Speaker 2: But the tall browbuck was there the most, probably maybe
Speaker 2: of any of the other deer I was seeing across
Speaker 2: those two different camera locations. He was showing up somewhat frequently. Now,
Speaker 2: in order to hunt him, I mentioned any of those
Speaker 2: right conditions. A couple things. I needed some kind of
Speaker 2: wind that was not blowing into the swamp. I could
Speaker 2: get away with maybe a straight north or a straight south,
Speaker 2: a parallel it, or I could get something that's blowing
Speaker 2: like northwest or southwest coming out of the swamp, but
Speaker 2: I couldn't have anything going into the swamp. So that
Speaker 2: was a key thing. Secondly, as I started seeing pictures
Speaker 2: rolling of this deer, I was getting a basic sense
Speaker 2: of the fact that he spent a decent amount of
Speaker 2: time in this zone, and he was showing up on
Speaker 2: the edges of daylight. In a few times in daylight,
Speaker 2: I had mooring pictures of him coming into bed before
Speaker 2: the sum was up, and then I had a couple
Speaker 2: days where he came out before dark in the evening,
Speaker 2: so he's bedded somewhere on this side of the swamp.
Speaker 2: I knew that my cameras would just telling me a
Speaker 2: slice of the story. So if I got two pictures
Speaker 2: of him around daylight or close to daylight, he was
Speaker 2: probably coming out more often than not, just different spots
Speaker 2: that I can't monitor. So what I knew I wanted
Speaker 2: to do was was wait until I had that right
Speaker 2: set of winds and then a trigger, which for me
Speaker 2: usually is a cold from some kind. I want some
Speaker 2: cooler weather coming in. I want a weather change, ideally,
Speaker 2: you know, ten plus degrees, fifteen plus degrees of a
Speaker 2: temperature drop. That's something I really want to see. If
Speaker 2: I see that in October, I'm I'm interested in taking
Speaker 2: a more aggressive swing on one of my spots. So
Speaker 2: I needed that. Another key thing with this particular spot
Speaker 2: is that I had to walk through a standing cornfield
Speaker 2: all the way to get to this location. And then
Speaker 2: I needed, you know, sneak in standing corn and set
Speaker 2: up close to where these deer or some of these
Speaker 2: deer are probably betted right So I remember thinking to myself, like,
Speaker 2: this is gonna be very hard to pull off if
Speaker 2: it's a very dry and very still. I need some
Speaker 2: wind cover or I need rain cover to be able
Speaker 2: to move through all this standing corn and get set
Speaker 2: up in the corn without alerting deer that maybe are
Speaker 2: better right off those little points that wouldn't be that
Speaker 2: far away. These bucks could have been bedded sixty yards away,
Speaker 2: maybe from where I'd be trying to set up. So
Speaker 2: as I was watching the forecast, I need wind direction.
Speaker 2: I wanted the cold front. I wanted wind or rain,
Speaker 2: so I could stealthily move in there. And then finally,
Speaker 2: like I mentioned, I would love it if I had
Speaker 2: photos that told me again he's you know, give me
Speaker 2: some confidence that he's still in the zone. And so
Speaker 2: that's what I ended up getting. All of these things,
Speaker 2: these stars all aligned here. Just recently, the evening of
Speaker 2: October thirteenth, I had the cold front moved through. Temperatures
Speaker 2: dropped from I think the seventies on Friday all the
Speaker 2: way down to fifties and high forties by Sunday. I
Speaker 2: had a west northwest wind, so this wind was blowing
Speaker 2: away from the cover and down, allowing me to basically
Speaker 2: walk with the wind in my face, just kind of
Speaker 2: quartering across my face and into my face, straight from
Speaker 2: the road all the way through the standing corn. And
Speaker 2: then it had been raining for the last day and half,
Speaker 2: so everything was wet, everything was quiet, and there was
Speaker 2: a little bit of a breeze, so I could sneak
Speaker 2: in there completely silent, nothing would hear me. I could
Speaker 2: head in there with a wind blowing across my face
Speaker 2: and down, so deer might still feel comfortable coming out
Speaker 2: to this field. If a buck wanted some degree of
Speaker 2: wind across his face. He could still smell something as
Speaker 2: he came out to feed, but he certainly wouldn't smell me.
Speaker 2: This cold weather, I thought, would give me a trigger
Speaker 2: to get him moving a little bit earlier than usual.
Speaker 2: And I had two pictures of him moving in daylight
Speaker 2: in the prior ten days, and then I had some
Speaker 2: other shots of him coming into bed in that general
Speaker 2: zone that ten day window two right around daylight. So
Speaker 2: again it's just telling me, I'm I'm probably close to
Speaker 2: his bedroom, and now I have this cold front that
Speaker 2: I think will get him out here to this food source,
Speaker 2: likely a little bit earlier in the day than maybe
Speaker 2: he would on others. I've got one of the best
Speaker 2: food sources on the edge of this big swamp, so
Speaker 2: I believe that there's probably a lot of deer. They're
Speaker 2: in a head towards this standing corner field. There's bean
Speaker 2: fields in the other area, but those are mostly harvested.
Speaker 2: There had not been a freshly cut corn field. That
Speaker 2: sometimes is the kind of thing that gets deer flocking
Speaker 2: to it, So you know there's a good chance these
Speaker 2: deer were feeding the corn. Saw a lot of deer
Speaker 2: on cameras doing that. This would be the trigger I
Speaker 2: thought that could make it all happen. So based on
Speaker 2: all that, the ditch standing corn spot was where it
Speaker 2: was going to be. Those were the conditions I was
Speaker 2: waiting for, and that's why I was so ideal. I
Speaker 2: rushed home from visiting with my family in western Michigan,
Speaker 2: got home Sunday afternoon, grabbed my gear, took a cent
Speaker 2: freeze shower, slipped out there, walked straight down the rows
Speaker 2: of the standing corn right to my pre marked location
Speaker 2: on my map, and tried to just hum grew down
Speaker 2: in the corn, and I remember getting situated in there.
Speaker 2: I brought a little matt to kneel on to keep
Speaker 2: my knees from getting soaking wet. The whole time. I
Speaker 2: remember really trying to be careful about setting up in
Speaker 2: the right position, because when you're hunting on the ground,
Speaker 2: it's harder to move. It's harder to adjust sometimes than
Speaker 2: when you're in a tree right because you just might
Speaker 2: not be able to move as much because you're at
Speaker 2: ground level with deer. You are at the mercy of
Speaker 2: where the deers show up, so you know when you're
Speaker 2: up in a tree, they're usually not going to see
Speaker 2: you hopefully not at first. So you can move around,
Speaker 2: you can readjust you can fix things in the moment,
Speaker 2: but you kind of need to have everything fixed just
Speaker 2: right on the ground, or at least I want to
Speaker 2: try to set it up that way. And I remember
Speaker 2: last year I had to hunt on the ground again
Speaker 2: without a blind, just hiding in grass. Last year in Nebraska,
Speaker 2: it was a similar situation where I knew this is
Speaker 2: the spot I had to be to intercept the deer,
Speaker 2: but there was no trees, and so when I got there,
Speaker 2: just like I did last night, I spent a lot
Speaker 2: of time thinking through, Okay, where exactly do I think
Speaker 2: these deer might come through? How exactly do I need
Speaker 2: to be positioned with my body to be able to
Speaker 2: be abd drawback and shoot. I don't want to have
Speaker 2: to reposition my body if I don't have to. How
Speaker 2: do I best take advantage of cover here on the
Speaker 2: ground so that I can hopefully hide down here but
Speaker 2: still have some shooting lanes. So all that stuff was
Speaker 2: going through my mind last night too. I was using
Speaker 2: standing corn right behind me, but I didn't want to
Speaker 2: be deep into the standing corn because I wanted to
Speaker 2: be able to shoot in front of me and to
Speaker 2: the side of me. So I got to the spot
Speaker 2: as I mentioned, where there was this push down corn
Speaker 2: from the deer feeding already, but there's still some patches
Speaker 2: of standing corn here and there. So I kind of
Speaker 2: adjusted my location just a little bit to where things
Speaker 2: have been changed since the summer. And what I had
Speaker 2: was some open push down corn to my right where
Speaker 2: it was almost like a quarter acre or a half acre,
Speaker 2: almost like food plot looking thing because of the corn
Speaker 2: being pushed down. So I knew if any deer came
Speaker 2: from the north of me, I could turn and make
Speaker 2: an adjustment and take a crack at the deer over there.
Speaker 2: If he came north of me from a spot I
Speaker 2: wasn't expecting, I would have options. If he came right
Speaker 2: out in front of me off one of those two
Speaker 2: little brushy fingers and got pinched by the ditch, I
Speaker 2: would have a perfect twenty five yard shot right in
Speaker 2: front of me, and then I could see the buckthorn
Speaker 2: shrub where that big scrape was. Now, I didn't have
Speaker 2: a perfect shot to it, but I could likely get
Speaker 2: a shot at him as he approached it, or maybe
Speaker 2: if I had to make a slight move I could
Speaker 2: get a shot, but I didn't want to get any
Speaker 2: farther up, any closer to that, which would have given
Speaker 2: me a more clear shot to there, but would have
Speaker 2: exposed me even more. And that was like the challenge
Speaker 2: was trying to get that balance of being able to
Speaker 2: stay hidden while also having shot opportunities. So I spent
Speaker 2: I don't know, ten fifteen minutes thinking this through and
Speaker 2: making tiny adjustments like let's move one yard over here. Okay,
Speaker 2: is this right now? I'm gonna move two yards over here. No,
Speaker 2: I gotta take advantage of these three cornstalks here. So
Speaker 2: really was trying to get that just right, got myself situated,
Speaker 2: tried to map out exactly where the best place to
Speaker 2: put all my different things where it would be. Again,
Speaker 2: it's these little tiny things that many times don't matter,
Speaker 2: but sometimes they make all the difference. So I try
Speaker 2: to be very thoughtful about all the possibilities. This is
Speaker 2: a really key thing that I've talked about a lot.
Speaker 2: So I'm beating the dead horse maybe, But every time
Speaker 2: I get set up in a location, I try to
Speaker 2: walk through every possible scenario and think through can I
Speaker 2: draw if a deer comes here? Can I move in
Speaker 2: a position if a deer is over there? What will
Speaker 2: I do if a deer comes out from behind me? Where?
Speaker 2: You know? What? If I miss and I need to
Speaker 2: grab another arrow, where's my quiver position? Can I reach
Speaker 2: the quiver easily? Can I do it quietly without a
Speaker 2: deer noticing? If I need my grunt to Where's that
Speaker 2: going to be? If I need to reposition and shoot
Speaker 2: up into this open area to the north, what will
Speaker 2: I do? Do I have anything in my way that's
Speaker 2: going to keep me from being able to make that move?
Speaker 2: Is my backpack in the spot that's going to get
Speaker 2: in my way? If I have to move to shoot
Speaker 2: over by the scrape, etc. Etc. All of those scenarios
Speaker 2: went through my mind in that first fifteen minutes as
Speaker 2: I sat through and thought through how I want to
Speaker 2: position myself here. I get all that done. I'm on
Speaker 2: my knees, kind of hunkered down with some scattered standing
Speaker 2: corn and then broken down corn in front of me,
Speaker 2: effectively giving me a natural ground blowe as best as possible.
Speaker 2: And as soon as I get kind of settled, I
Speaker 2: hear a deer sneeze, like that kind of sneeze cough sound,
Speaker 2: that if you've been out there in the woods long enough,
Speaker 2: you've heard that plenty. You can identify it right away.
Speaker 2: That's a deer. And it sounded really close. So I'm
Speaker 2: laying down almost just hunkered down as low as I could,
Speaker 2: because this deer was close. And that was kind of
Speaker 2: the name of the game of this hunt is that
Speaker 2: stuff would just appear very close. You know, there would
Speaker 2: be no deer, and then there would be a deer
Speaker 2: thirty five yards away. There would be nothing, and then
Speaker 2: there'd be a deer twenty five yards away. Again, it's
Speaker 2: it's a breeze and it's rainy, so you can't hear
Speaker 2: almost anything or at least very minimal walking sounds. So
Speaker 2: the hunt begins with a little buck coming out of
Speaker 2: one of these little brushy fingers, walks alongside that dish,
Speaker 2: comes right at me and walks within ten yards seven yards,
Speaker 2: and I remember just trying to melt into the ground
Speaker 2: so he wouldn't see me. And he gets right up
Speaker 2: on top of me and then gets into the row
Speaker 2: of corn that I'm in and looks straight down the
Speaker 2: row and I'm right in the middle of the row,
Speaker 2: and he kind of like jolts notices there's a lump
Speaker 2: on the ground and bounds away. He doesn't blow, but
Speaker 2: he kind of bounds off and then walks away. So
Speaker 2: I consider myself lucky that he didn't totally freak out.
Speaker 2: But I knew that's like a chink in my armor.
Speaker 2: So I then readjusted my location again and again micro adjustment.
Speaker 2: I just realized, I need to set myself up so
Speaker 2: if any deer comes into a row, I'm not right
Speaker 2: in the middle of that row. I need to use
Speaker 2: the row of corn to be to break up my outline.
Speaker 2: So there were some dead corn stocks that were kind
Speaker 2: of pushed in different places, and I just leaned one
Speaker 2: of those in along the side of me, so it
Speaker 2: breaks up my outline a little bit more. And then
Speaker 2: I slid up twelve inches so that the row of
Speaker 2: corn is on either side of me, or at least
Speaker 2: on my right side. So instead of my body being
Speaker 2: right in the middle of a row, I now have
Speaker 2: like half my body in one row half my body
Speaker 2: in the other row. And if a deer were to
Speaker 2: walk through that looking down the rows, now they're just
Speaker 2: seeing a little bit of a clump sticking out from
Speaker 2: one row of corn and a little clump sticking out
Speaker 2: the other but not one big ball that ends up
Speaker 2: hang off when I don't know. Ten minutes later, another
Speaker 2: buck comes out, does the same thing. Another young deer,
Speaker 2: and he comes through right a five yards five to
Speaker 2: ten yards again very close, and this time he kind
Speaker 2: of walks through eyeballs my area, but doesn't freak and
Speaker 2: just walks past into the main standing corn behind me.
Speaker 2: Disappears feeding fast forward another our ish and another deer
Speaker 2: comes out. This one's a doe. She comes out from
Speaker 2: the left side of the ditch and near that scrape.
Speaker 2: She actually was standing in the scrape, and then she
Speaker 2: comes walking right towards me and walks again to five
Speaker 2: yards right into my face, and she's like on top
Speaker 2: of me, notices me at five yards and same deal.
Speaker 2: She kind of like boogers like, sees me, gets a
Speaker 2: little weird, bounds off, stops, turns, stares at me for
Speaker 2: a while, stares at me, stares at me, stares at me,
Speaker 2: and then couldn't figure it out, turns around slowly walks away.
Speaker 2: At this point I thought, hey, you're getting away with it.
Speaker 2: This is good news. You haven't had a deer blow
Speaker 2: the whole thing up. That's the good news. Bad news
Speaker 2: is you're like you're playing with fire, having this many
Speaker 2: deer come this close to you. It's bound to blow
Speaker 2: up in your face, is I remember I was having
Speaker 2: this conversation with myself in my head, like, yikes, this
Speaker 2: might not work out because there's too many deer that
Speaker 2: are coming right to you. It just seemed like it
Speaker 2: was a matter of time until something was gonna just
Speaker 2: start blowing and blowing and blowing. Or if a bunch
Speaker 2: of deer came out and started feeding and then one
Speaker 2: of them gets close. If you know, if you get
Speaker 2: a dozen deer all of a sudden running away, that's
Speaker 2: going to make a commotion. You can only get away
Speaker 2: with so much of that before I'm mature. Buck is
Speaker 2: going to know something's going on. But as I was
Speaker 2: thinking that, and I remember thinking like, gosh, I don't
Speaker 2: know if this is gonna work. I glanced to my
Speaker 2: left and I saw antlers in that scrape, and I
Speaker 2: pull up my binoculars and can get a better look
Speaker 2: through like the brush and the stalks that are there,
Speaker 2: and I realize it's him. Tall Brows is right there,
Speaker 2: twenty five thirty yards in the scrape there in shooting range,
Speaker 2: but behind stuff, I can't get a clear shot. So
Speaker 2: that's a holy crap kind of moment. It's not even
Speaker 2: six o'clock yet and he's already out there. It had
Speaker 2: rained earlier in the day. It actually had been sprinkling
Speaker 2: a little bit while I was out there. Now it'd
Speaker 2: cleared up, barometric pressure is rising, it's twenty degrees cooler
Speaker 2: than it was a day and a half ago. Picture
Speaker 2: perfect conditions as far as I'm concerned, and bam, there
Speaker 2: he is. But I'm on the ground, hiding in half
Speaker 2: stalks of corn, twenty five to thirty yards away from him,
Speaker 2: and he's just right there. I never heard him coming.
Speaker 2: I didn't see him coming. I have no ability to
Speaker 2: move into position to do anything different. He's just there.
Speaker 2: So I just remember at this moment thinking to myself, Okay,
Speaker 2: don't panic, just wait, wait it out. And so as
Speaker 2: soon as he kind of turned his head, I waited
Speaker 2: there for a while. At this point I could see
Speaker 2: his eye like kind of right in my direction, so
Speaker 2: I couldn't move. As soon as he turned his head,
Speaker 2: I slowly reached over and grab my bow, and I fortunately,
Speaker 2: as I described, I had it everything positioned in the
Speaker 2: right kind of spot that I should be able to
Speaker 2: make something happen without a lot of moving. So I'm
Speaker 2: able to reach over the bow, grab the bow, slowly
Speaker 2: pull the bow up. I'm low on my knees because
Speaker 2: I've been hunkered down because that dough had just passed
Speaker 2: through not very long ago. So I was like crouch,
Speaker 2: really low. I wasn't like a pie on my knees.
Speaker 2: I was down low on my knees, and I can't
Speaker 2: shoot from this position like where he is, can't see
Speaker 2: his vitals. All I can see is the top of
Speaker 2: his head. So as soon as he turns around or
Speaker 2: turns away his head a little bit again, I rise
Speaker 2: up higher onto my knees. So I go from like
Speaker 2: down on my knees, like my butt on the back
Speaker 2: of my legs, to now all the way up my knees,
Speaker 2: and I can see him better. But I can now
Speaker 2: see that there's still too much corn and brush in
Speaker 2: front of his vitals. Now I can see like his
Speaker 2: chest up to his head and neck can't move. I'm there,
Speaker 2: I have the bow ready. I'm thinking, Okay, how do
Speaker 2: I maneuver into a shot, And then he spins and
Speaker 2: looks at me, like his head just kind of turns
Speaker 2: and just staring at like right in my general direction.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like, uh oh, I nailed you, but it
Speaker 2: was something got his attention, and in my head, I'm worried,
Speaker 2: did he just nail me? Did he bust me? Now?
Speaker 2: What follows is a collection of different variations of the
Speaker 2: same thing, happening again and again over the course of
Speaker 2: thirty minutes. And it's honestly all of a blur in
Speaker 2: my head. So I can't remember which one of these
Speaker 2: things happen in which order, but I'll give you the
Speaker 2: basic gist of what happens over the next thirty minutes.
Speaker 2: He's twenty five to thirty yards away. He's staring at me.
Speaker 2: I'm holding my bow up, you know, clipped on, but
Speaker 2: not drawn back. I'm thinking he's seeing me. I freeze
Speaker 2: in that position for three to five minutes. He finally relaxes,
Speaker 2: turns back, looks away, begins if I recall right. He
Speaker 2: begins to work the licking branch in the scrape. As
Speaker 2: soon as he does that, and I can see that
Speaker 2: his left eye is not looking at me. I try
Speaker 2: to make a move to get into another lane where
Speaker 2: I might people get a shot, and then I realize
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have to stand to actually pull this off here.
Speaker 2: So as soon as he's up in those branches really
Speaker 2: well distracted, I stand up and start to move into
Speaker 2: a position to get a shot. And then he spins
Speaker 2: head around and looks right at me again, and then
Speaker 2: thinking for sure I'm busted. Game over, and I just
Speaker 2: stand there and I remember thinking like, don't breathe don't
Speaker 2: look him in the eyes, had closed my eyes. I
Speaker 2: just try to do anything to stay calm, cool and collected.
Speaker 2: And that lasted another like three four minutes, just frozen,
Speaker 2: just waiting any second out he's gonna bust. And then
Speaker 2: he puts his head down and I'm just about to
Speaker 2: start moving again, trying to take another half step again.
Speaker 2: I'm standing up twenty five issu yards twenty five to
Speaker 2: thirty yards away from when I think it's a four
Speaker 2: year old, big old Michigan buck in this scrape. There's
Speaker 2: just like one row of corn that was not knocked
Speaker 2: down on the edge there that's blocking him, and then
Speaker 2: some brush. I just need to kind of move to
Speaker 2: the side a couple steps to get where I thought
Speaker 2: i'd be alc he puts his head down. I start
Speaker 2: to move again, and then I hear clock clock, and
Speaker 2: then I realized what I couldn't see behind that one
Speaker 2: rowf standing corn and brush is that there was a
Speaker 2: second buck there with him. So they start to spar.
Speaker 2: I start to take steps towards him into the side.
Speaker 2: I get to a spot where I think of an opening,
Speaker 2: but now he's spun in that other bucks in front
Speaker 2: of me. I can't shoot. I think I'm gonna have
Speaker 2: an open if he spins around. They release, He looks up,
Speaker 2: looks right at me. I'm frozen again for one, two,
Speaker 2: three minutes. I'm not exactly sure for how long. Frozen
Speaker 2: there for a while, he stands in that position forever.
Speaker 2: I'm just waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting thinkingly. Anytime now he's
Speaker 2: gonna bust, but he doesn't. He turns. The other deer
Speaker 2: kind of turns back, moves off. Then this buck turns
Speaker 2: and starts heading back to the ditch. This is when
Speaker 2: I think, Okay, he's gonna walk towards the ditch. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna have a shot opportunity. He's behind brush. I remember
Speaker 2: two times there was two different times in this encounter
Speaker 2: where I think thought like, you probably could get a shot.
Speaker 2: One of them was when there was that corn in
Speaker 2: the way. There was some like corn leaves that were
Speaker 2: only thing blocking the vitals, and I remember thinking like,
Speaker 2: if you you could get an arrow through there, probably,
Speaker 2: but I didn't want to do it, like I did
Speaker 2: not want to didn't want to push it, didn't want
Speaker 2: to have something go wrong. But I remember having a
Speaker 2: moment where I thought that might be a shot, but no.
Speaker 2: And then the second opportunity was when he starts walking
Speaker 2: away and the brush was just too tall, but it
Speaker 2: was barely too tall. It was like, you know, two
Speaker 2: inches above where I two to three inches two inches
Speaker 2: something like that above where I would have wanted to
Speaker 2: be shooting. So I thought, gosh, if you just aim
Speaker 2: a couple inches beneath that through that grass, you know
Speaker 2: your arrow could punch right through that just fine. Maybe.
Speaker 2: But then I said, no, you're not going to take
Speaker 2: a maybe shot like that. So he keeps he's walking
Speaker 2: now with that, he's about to get to the ditch
Speaker 2: and right there it looks like the brush goes down
Speaker 2: and it looks like I can see like his head.
Speaker 2: Then his neck gets more open. I begin to draw.
Speaker 2: I'm just beginning, and he drops like the ditch. The
Speaker 2: bank of the ditch lowered sooner than I realized, and
Speaker 2: so now he gets down low and I can't see
Speaker 2: the vitals at all now, but he stops and stares
Speaker 2: at me. He's right there, pinned on me, and I
Speaker 2: just remember at this point again, I'm holding the ball,
Speaker 2: I'm clipped on. I had been in the process of
Speaker 2: almost starting to draw, and again frozen looking at me,
Speaker 2: and I remember thinking, and it's such a stupid thing,
Speaker 2: but I was almost like trying to line up the
Speaker 2: riser of my bow in front of my face, thinking
Speaker 2: somehow that the riser the bow in front of my
Speaker 2: face would somehow hide me. And at this point I
Speaker 2: started to kind of shake. You can just tell, like
Speaker 2: the adrenaline the whole thing. I remember seeing my arrow
Speaker 2: shaking on the end and this big silver fixed blade
Speaker 2: broadhead just kind of bouncing, and in my head, I'm like,
Speaker 2: you need to calm down, you need to just get
Speaker 2: control of that thing. You don't want this shaking silver
Speaker 2: thing to be the deal that ends this whole encounter.
Speaker 2: But I also had another thought at this moment. Was
Speaker 2: at this moment or somewhere within this final piece, I
Speaker 2: remember thinking, this is it, Like you're busted. There's no
Speaker 2: way this deer is not going to get out of here.
Speaker 2: Just enjoy it. And that was an interesting thing. I
Speaker 2: don't think I've ever had a moment when I was
Speaker 2: in a moment of truth encounter with a deer where
Speaker 2: I thought to myself, Ah, this isn't gonna happen, But
Speaker 2: just enjoy the fact that you're this close to this deer,
Speaker 2: and I should bring I should, I should take note
Speaker 2: of this because this was a not this is not
Speaker 2: a film hunt. This is the first hunt I've had
Speaker 2: this year that was not filmed for me to or
Speaker 2: this is just a me hunt. This is just for
Speaker 2: fun hunt. And you know, something I tried to think
Speaker 2: about as I drove out there that day and walked
Speaker 2: in that day was to just try to really like
Speaker 2: wallow in the experience, like really soak it in. Don't
Speaker 2: let anything stress you out, don't worry if you know,
Speaker 2: you get buggered, if deer figure you out, if it's
Speaker 2: a if it doesn't work out, that's fine. Just enjoy
Speaker 2: like you're out there. Just soaking in the scenery, enjoying
Speaker 2: watching deer, just have fun. I remember thinking that the
Speaker 2: whole time, and it was happening. It was an intense hunt,
Speaker 2: like even before this buck showed up, all these close
Speaker 2: encounters with deer, it was just there wasn't a whole
Speaker 2: lot of time to sit around and think or to
Speaker 2: sit around and relax. I was kind of in action
Speaker 2: from the beginning, but I did remember thinking several times like, man,
Speaker 2: that's pretty great, Like this is why you do this.
Speaker 2: You're in a beautiful place, You're you're super excited. That's
Speaker 2: another thing that I should point out. This is the
Speaker 2: first hunt of this year where I had like full blown,
Speaker 2: you know, buck killing day vibes. And if you've hunted
Speaker 2: deer long enough, you know what I'm talking about here.
Speaker 2: When you have the conditions, the circumstances, the time of year,
Speaker 2: the intel, the something that makes you think, like when
Speaker 2: you're going into the woods on that day, like it
Speaker 2: should happen. It can absolutely happen. Those are my very
Speaker 2: favorite days to hunt. When it is like a targeted
Speaker 2: hunt where you really have a really strong intuition in
Speaker 2: set of reasons that this should work. That's how I
Speaker 2: felt yesterday, and that just colors everything different, like you've
Speaker 2: got extra nerves. I'm allgittery when I'm getting ready at
Speaker 2: the house, texting my hunting buddies, like, oh man, first
Speaker 2: day where I'm really feeling the vibes. I'm really feeling it,
Speaker 2: and that's just that's a great thing. I love that
Speaker 2: about the fall. You get a handful of days like
Speaker 2: that where you're just amped, and this is one of those.
Speaker 2: So I've got that going on while also trying to
Speaker 2: just enjoy it for what it is. And the hunt
Speaker 2: kind of checked all the boxes because it was in
Speaker 2: the action, and then the buck I'm after shows up.
Speaker 2: I had this crazy encounter and now I've tried multiple
Speaker 2: times to try to get a shot at him. Every
Speaker 2: time I move, he moves. Every time he moves, I
Speaker 2: adjust whenever he's not looking, and I just can't line
Speaker 2: it up quite right. Now. He's staring at me. I'm
Speaker 2: hiding behind my bow riser. My silver broad head is
Speaker 2: shaking in the wind. They're shaking, you know, on the rest,
Speaker 2: and I'm just thinking he's gonna blow out of here.
Speaker 2: There's no way that you're not busted. What a cool encounter,
Speaker 2: and then this stinking buck turns instead of running away,
Speaker 2: walks back to the scrape. He gets back to that scrape,
Speaker 2: and I'm thinking, geez again. As he's doing that, I'm
Speaker 2: having to be frozen because he's in the open and
Speaker 2: his face is like his eye is looking at me.
Speaker 2: And now I'm like exposed. I'm not hiding behind corn anymore.
Speaker 2: I'm standing because I had walked right. I walked on
Speaker 2: the edge of that corn to try to get a
Speaker 2: better shot. But then he'd moved again. So now my
Speaker 2: window of cover or my wall of that I was
Speaker 2: using to get closer to him and try to find
Speaker 2: lane through, now that's gone because he walked to the
Speaker 2: other side, so he's coming across. Now I'm feeling even
Speaker 2: more exposed, so I can't move to get a better shot.
Speaker 2: Goes back to the scrape. I'm blocked from a shot again.
Speaker 2: Now that second buck comes back out, he kind of
Speaker 2: circled behind this tall browtime buck. He's walking towards me
Speaker 2: for the ninth time. I'm thinking this whole thing's not
Speaker 2: going to fall apart, but that buck doesn't see me.
Speaker 2: He moves off to the side. To make a long
Speaker 2: story short. The tall brow buck stands underneath the scrape.
Speaker 2: I make another step to get this last bit of
Speaker 2: brush out of the way, about to draw. He turns
Speaker 2: walks back to the ditch, and this is my window,
Speaker 2: Like I now know, okay, if he crosses here, if
Speaker 2: he gets to the ditch, I have one window, which
Speaker 2: is just before he starts dropping down that bank. There
Speaker 2: was a little bit of an opening right before he dropped.
Speaker 2: As he starts approaching that he is angle just enough
Speaker 2: that I don't think he can see me draw. I
Speaker 2: draw back. He gets right there, I stop him. Shoot.
Speaker 2: He's perfectly broadside. I am standing on the edge of
Speaker 2: the cornfield twenty five yards away from him. Ish something
Speaker 2: like that, and I hit him back. In my mind's
Speaker 2: I it looked like I hit him back of the ribs,
Speaker 2: mid body ish perfect up and down, but back and
Speaker 2: on the shot. I remember two things. I remember, you know,
Speaker 2: it was a situation where he walked right to the
Speaker 2: edge of where I bill shoot him. If he took
Speaker 2: another step, he dropped down the ditch. And then it's
Speaker 2: just thick brush. I'd never get another shot. So the
Speaker 2: whole thing was crazy and fast paced at that point,
Speaker 2: and I just remember two things. I remember avoiding the shoulder,
Speaker 2: and I had this situation last year where I hit
Speaker 2: the wide nine and the shoulder, And I've been thinking
Speaker 2: to myself about trying to get back off the shoulder
Speaker 2: more than I used to. And it's funny, you know,
Speaker 2: I am constantly trying to get better at this. I'm
Speaker 2: constantly working to find ways to improve my shooting, to
Speaker 2: improve my shot opportunities, to remove error. And you think
Speaker 2: you've got to figure it out, and then something happens,
Speaker 2: and the next year you're thinking, well, how do I
Speaker 2: count for that error? And then you go out there
Speaker 2: the next year and then you have some other thing
Speaker 2: go wrong or something go right, and're like, Okay, I've
Speaker 2: got it. And then the next year something goes wrong.
Speaker 2: Oh well, how do I do with that challenge or
Speaker 2: how do I fix that thing? And so as many
Speaker 2: of you know, if you've been listening for a while,
Speaker 2: you know that after last year, I wanted to switch
Speaker 2: stuff up again, went to acquire the bow. I've reduced
Speaker 2: my max range from forty yards to thirty yards because
Speaker 2: I don't want to have bad shots happen. I don't
Speaker 2: want to wound deer I don't want to miss deer.
Speaker 2: I'd rather have fewer opportunities, but fewer shots go bad.
Speaker 2: Switch to a single pin sight to reduce any possible
Speaker 2: site picture issues. Switched to a fixed play broadhead so
Speaker 2: that if I do click the shoulder again, I've got
Speaker 2: a better chance of punching through. So I made all
Speaker 2: these adjustments in part because of this bad shoulder situation
Speaker 2: I had last year, which really hit me hard. And
Speaker 2: then of course I overcompensate. I am paranoid about the shoulder.
Speaker 2: I remember thinking off the shoulder, and I think what
Speaker 2: I did is I went off the shoulder, and I
Speaker 2: think I just pulled when I was moving back off
Speaker 2: that shoulder, or I rushed it, or just made a
Speaker 2: human error, and that happens, and maybe he took a
Speaker 2: step forward. I'm not sure. I don't have film of it.
Speaker 2: I can't look to see exactly what the deer did.
Speaker 2: But no excuses. It was not a perfect shot. The
Speaker 2: shot was back and he bounded off, ran maybe fifty yards,
Speaker 2: stopped behind some bushes. I pulled up my bi nose
Speaker 2: found him there, and then he took a handful of steps,
Speaker 2: disappeared in a brush just before he got into the brush.
Speaker 2: I remember thinking kind of a wildly walk, but it
Speaker 2: was a walk, you know. And when you hit a
Speaker 2: deer and you think the shot was back and then
Speaker 2: you see him bound off stop and then walk away,
Speaker 2: you know that is a telltale sign that you hit
Speaker 2: that deer further back than you wanted, you know, liver
Speaker 2: or stomach or intestines or something like that. So I
Speaker 2: went from this thirty minute incredibly intense, like one of
Speaker 2: the most intense face offs I've ever had with a deer,
Speaker 2: very exciting situation. I get the one deer I'm in
Speaker 2: there after like I had the targeted strike go exactly
Speaker 2: the way I wanted it to, and then you know,
Speaker 2: you have that super super high and then you see
Speaker 2: that arrow hit and you know it's not quite right,
Speaker 2: and then immediately you come back down to earth and
Speaker 2: kind of crash down beneath earth, and you know, we've
Speaker 2: all been there. I've been there my share times over
Speaker 2: the years. I've had lots of great ones, I've had
Speaker 2: lots of less than great ones, and this was one
Speaker 2: of those where I thought, well, that's going to be
Speaker 2: a dead deer, but it's not necessarily going to happen
Speaker 2: right away. And so the smart thing to do, the
Speaker 2: thing you know you have to do but it's not
Speaker 2: fun to do, is you got to give that deer time.
Speaker 2: So I waited there for a while and just watched
Speaker 2: this little pocket to cover with my by notes for
Speaker 2: a while, just in case, just in case, he walked
Speaker 2: out of there, and I could see where it went,
Speaker 2: but he didn't. And then I had one more dough
Speaker 2: come out, and she saw me because I was still
Speaker 2: just standing out there in the open now watching, and
Speaker 2: she saw me, and she did start to blow, and
Speaker 2: I remember thinking, all right, I probably just need to
Speaker 2: get out of here before a lot of deer come out,
Speaker 2: because one deer blowing is a thing, But if I
Speaker 2: have a dozen deer that eventually come out here at
Speaker 2: some point, and all these deer are alarming, and I
Speaker 2: just didn't want to spook that buck any more than necessary,
Speaker 2: So grab my stuff, slips straight out the cornfield. I
Speaker 2: don't go to look for my arrow, I don't check
Speaker 2: out the shot site, none of that stuff, because I
Speaker 2: just knew the hit was back of where I wanted
Speaker 2: to be. This deer needs to go overnight. The calculus
Speaker 2: here is that a deer that has hit somewhere back there,
Speaker 2: whether it's liver or stomach or intestine, whatever it is,
Speaker 2: that deer usually needs eight to twelve hours to be safe.
Speaker 2: And the problem is that if you let that deer,
Speaker 2: if you leave that deer a long, what they're probably
Speaker 2: gonna do is get to the first good cover, lay down.
Speaker 2: They don't feel well, they lay down. If they're not pushed,
Speaker 2: they'll stay there and they will die in their bed,
Speaker 2: and you'll find them relatively close. If you push in
Speaker 2: there too soon, what typically happens is that deer still
Speaker 2: has enough energy to get out of their first bed
Speaker 2: and then run off and they might cover a lot
Speaker 2: of distance. And oftentimes a deer that's hit back a
Speaker 2: little bit will not bleed very well, so you're not
Speaker 2: gonna have much of a blood trail. YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 2: Long story short, I'm going to make sure that I
Speaker 2: have a chance of finding that deer and not put
Speaker 2: and let them go overnight, even though that's super stressful.
Speaker 2: And to make a very long story short, you know, overnight,
Speaker 2: stress about it, worry about it, think through all the scenarios,
Speaker 2: think through everything as you do. And I'm very fortunate
Speaker 2: that the next morning a friend and I were able
Speaker 2: to go out there and maybe I don't know, between
Speaker 2: seventy one hundred yards away found that buck and the
Speaker 2: tall brow buck story is concluded. I scouted this property
Speaker 2: one day, and I hunted it one day, and I
Speaker 2: was able to kill the deer. It doesn't go that
Speaker 2: way very often. It was like a very targeted strike
Speaker 2: plan and it actually panned out that way. So I
Speaker 2: count myself very fortunate that this time, the careful plan
Speaker 2: actually the deer actually word or you know, follow the
Speaker 2: script this time, So that doesn't happen all that often.
Speaker 2: So I've wanted to try to think through, Okay, what
Speaker 2: worked right here? What did I do right? And anytime
Speaker 2: you kill a deer there's a certain element of luck,
Speaker 2: so that's got to be admitted, Like anytime the deer
Speaker 2: do the thing you need them to do, count yourself
Speaker 2: lucky and just appreciate that. So that's number one. But
Speaker 2: number two, let's talk through like the key things that
Speaker 2: led to this actually panning out. A big thing was access.
Speaker 2: A big thing was that I constantly am trying to
Speaker 2: find new spots to hunt, and this year, after losing
Speaker 2: a good spot. Try to make an extra effort to
Speaker 2: do so, and picked up two three new spots in
Speaker 2: southern Michigan, and that ended up leading to a great
Speaker 2: deer down here. That wouldn't have happened if I had
Speaker 2: not made the extra effort to just ask around, talk
Speaker 2: to more people about this stuff. And I think an
Speaker 2: important thing with this particular property is to remember that
Speaker 2: you can't judge a book by its cover. Like we
Speaker 2: all want the two hundred acre farm with mixed egg
Speaker 2: and timber and swamps and topography and the whole nine yards.
Speaker 2: That'd be great, but for most of us, that's just
Speaker 2: not gonna happen. I mean, almost all the stuff I
Speaker 2: hunt in Michigan is less than one hundred acres and
Speaker 2: mostly fields, and none of it is ideal. Like almost
Speaker 2: none of the properties that I have permission to hunt
Speaker 2: would be spots i'd pick as like, oh that's a
Speaker 2: slam dunk spot. It's usually well, this little zone looks
Speaker 2: like it's Scott Promise, and this property maybe butts up
Speaker 2: into something good. And this spot doesn't have a lot
Speaker 2: going for but maybe it will slide under the radar.
Speaker 2: You got to take what you can get, and you know,
Speaker 2: don't judge it before you go out there and see
Speaker 2: what's going on. And in this case, mostly just a
Speaker 2: huge field, just a little area in the back where
Speaker 2: there was grass brush, some scrubby trees. But it made
Speaker 2: this really great little transition zone along the edge of
Speaker 2: that swamp. And I'm just very glad that, you know too,
Speaker 2: things happened. Number One, I looked at the aerial of
Speaker 2: this property, I thought, that's not a lot to hunt,
Speaker 2: but it butts up into a great piece. And then
Speaker 2: number two, when I went out there, just saw what
Speaker 2: a tremendous transition that this was. So that was Number one,
Speaker 2: taking advantage of a small property, or at least a
Speaker 2: small part of a property that some people maybe would say,
Speaker 2: I'm not worth hunting, there's like one good tree to hunt,
Speaker 2: But I recognized an opportunity there. Number two being creative
Speaker 2: with setups. As I mentioned earlier, you know, fifteen years ago,
Speaker 2: I think I would have walked past this spot, and
Speaker 2: maybe if I identified it as a good area, as
Speaker 2: a good ambush location, with this ditch coming out and
Speaker 2: the two fingers of brush going into the swamp, maybe
Speaker 2: I would have seen, oh hey, this looks like a
Speaker 2: great transition. Oh hey, this looks like there might be
Speaker 2: bucks bedded off of those points, maybe in the swamp.
Speaker 2: And oh hey, this ditch. I wonder maybe that ditch
Speaker 2: would funnel deer moving up through along the edge of
Speaker 2: the field. Maybe I would have picked out all of
Speaker 2: those things that made this look good. I hopefully would
Speaker 2: have identified that scrape, that overhanging branch where there'd be
Speaker 2: a scrape in the fall. But I think fifteen or
Speaker 2: twenty years ago, I might have looked at this and
Speaker 2: then looked for trees and not found a good tree
Speaker 2: for a tree stand, or not found a tree for
Speaker 2: a saddle and then said, well, can't do it. Or
Speaker 2: I would have looked for the next closest tree, and
Speaker 2: I would have ended up seventy or eighty yards away
Speaker 2: in a good tree, but not in the spot. But
Speaker 2: what I've learned is that you don't need to have
Speaker 2: the perfect tree. You don't need to have a tree
Speaker 2: at all. You don't need a perfect blind, you don't
Speaker 2: need to have some big, fancy, elaborate spot. If this
Speaker 2: is the spot where you have the X, like the
Speaker 2: X the spot in the spot, you gotta do whatever
Speaker 2: it takes to be there because with a bow we're talking.
Speaker 2: Two feet can be the difference, five yards can be
Speaker 2: the difference. One little gap in the brush can be
Speaker 2: all the difference you need. In so so, just having
Speaker 2: the confidence to get creative with where you hunt and
Speaker 2: be willing to hunt on the ground, or be willing
Speaker 2: to hunt low in a scrubby tree, or be willing
Speaker 2: to hunt really high in a bean pole tree, or
Speaker 2: be just don't get hung up on the ideal. You know,
Speaker 2: you hear all these different people on these podcasts. My
Speaker 2: podcasts included who say, well, you want to have a
Speaker 2: great you know, a great tree with cover all over,
Speaker 2: and you want to be twenty feet up and lots
Speaker 2: of branches around you, et cetera. And sure that'd be great,
Speaker 2: but sometimes that's not going to be in the right spot.
Speaker 2: And I've just seen now time and time again so
Speaker 2: many times in the last decade or so, where if
Speaker 2: I hadn't gotten creative and been willing to just risk it,
Speaker 2: willing to be on the ground and hid in grass
Speaker 2: or hide in brush or belly crawl across the field,
Speaker 2: I would have never killed deer. I killed the deer
Speaker 2: on the ground without a blind in Nebraska a few
Speaker 2: years ago, like ten years ago. I did it again
Speaker 2: last year in the grass, snuck into a spot where
Speaker 2: there's no trees, ambushed them as if I was hunting
Speaker 2: from a tree, but instead in a patch of grass,
Speaker 2: had a belly crawl on the wide nine last year,
Speaker 2: had a belly crawl across the field and sneak up
Speaker 2: to a bucket called Junior a few years before that.
Speaker 2: It just keeps on reinforcing the notion to me that
Speaker 2: you have to learn when to go for it and
Speaker 2: when you know. Sometimes it's when you see a buck
Speaker 2: do something and you see it with your own eyes
Speaker 2: and you think to yourself, well, there's a reason he
Speaker 2: did that. That's the spot I needed to be. Well,
Speaker 2: you need to do whatever it's going to take to
Speaker 2: be able to hide your tail there and hunt that spot.
Speaker 2: If it means laying on your belly, if it means
Speaker 2: hiding in a ditch, if it means hiding in a
Speaker 2: bush or being three feet up in a tree, whatever
Speaker 2: you got to do, you got to be there. So
Speaker 2: sometimes it's when you see a deer do a thing.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you just know based on sign that's the spot.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you actually see a deer bedded, and you gotta
Speaker 2: go for when you have an opportunity lined up like this.
Speaker 2: Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Right,
Speaker 2: we only have so many chances, we only get so
Speaker 2: many hunts, and for too many years, fifteen twenty years ago,
Speaker 2: I was so conservative. I was so worried about scaring deer.
Speaker 2: I thought, man, if I screw up once, that mature
Speaker 2: buck's gonna catch on to me and I'll never never
Speaker 2: have another chance. But it's just not true most of
Speaker 2: the time, even in heavily pressured areas. You know, I
Speaker 2: talked about this a week or two ago with with
Speaker 2: Jacob at Exodus. You know, these bucks that get to
Speaker 2: four or five years old, they are in an area
Speaker 2: for a reason. They made it to that age because
Speaker 2: they believe this spot that they live is safe. So
Speaker 2: if you take a swing and do one of these
Speaker 2: aggressive things to be in the right spot at the
Speaker 2: right moment, because everything's telling you to do that. Even
Speaker 2: if you mess it up, you're probably gonna have another
Speaker 2: chance somewhere maybe, but you would never have had that
Speaker 2: chance if you didn't go for it. So there's a
Speaker 2: big difference between being a deer watcher and a deer killer,
Speaker 2: and if you want to get to the point where
Speaker 2: you were actually closing the deal on some of these deer,
Speaker 2: you just have to take the big swing. You have
Speaker 2: to do the creative sit You have to take the
Speaker 2: belly crawl or the hide in the corn or the
Speaker 2: hide in the grass, or sneak up on the deer
Speaker 2: that you saw betted, even though it's high risk, even
Speaker 2: though probably seven times out of ten it's not going
Speaker 2: to go well, three times out of ten, maybe it does,
Speaker 2: and it's worth it. So many of the deer that
Speaker 2: I've killed in recent years have been because I was
Speaker 2: willing to say, damn it, I'm going to give it
Speaker 2: a try. Probably not going to go well, but it might.
Speaker 2: It's definitely not going to go well. If I sit
Speaker 2: back here seventy yards away and just watch the whole time.
Speaker 2: If you go for it, yeah, maybe you screwed up.
Speaker 2: But if you do screw it up, you learn something
Speaker 2: because you were actively trying to change the situation. You
Speaker 2: were actively trying something new, and then maybe not, maybe
Speaker 2: you do actually pull it off and you get to
Speaker 2: enjoy that situation. So that's that was a huge takeaway
Speaker 2: from this hunt for me being creative with my setup,
Speaker 2: being willing to plan ahead and say, hey, there's not
Speaker 2: a tree here, how can I make up for that?
Speaker 2: How can I make this work? Still thinking about the
Speaker 2: standing corn, finding a place I can hide in the corn.
Speaker 2: That gave me some excuse me, gave me some lanes.
Speaker 2: And then finally when I got in there and the
Speaker 2: buck shows up, well, I don't have a shot. And
Speaker 2: looking back at old mark, I think I would have
Speaker 2: been afraid to move. At one point as a hunter,
Speaker 2: I would have thought, Okay, I'm hidden here in the corn.
Speaker 2: I need to just wait until he walks my way, hopefully,
Speaker 2: and then I'll get a shot. And instead I knew, Hey,
Speaker 2: you can get away with movement, even when you're close
Speaker 2: to deer if you time it at the right moments.
Speaker 2: And so I waited till he was looking the other way,
Speaker 2: or he put his head down, or he put his
Speaker 2: head up in the scrape, or he sparred with that deer,
Speaker 2: or he moved and walked behind bushes. But every time
Speaker 2: he gave me a one second window, I was standing up.
Speaker 2: I was taking a step to the left. At one
Speaker 2: point took like three or four steps with my bull
Speaker 2: about to be drawn, like, you know, very aggressive right
Speaker 2: in his wheelhouse movements. And yes, I was lucky that
Speaker 2: there was some wind and that had been rained earlier
Speaker 2: in the day so I could do that without him
Speaker 2: hearing me. But if I hadn't done that, I don't
Speaker 2: think I ever would have been able to get the
Speaker 2: shot that I did. So I think that goes back
Speaker 2: to knowing that, you know, when you have these windows,
Speaker 2: when things are lined up, you do have to get aggressive,
Speaker 2: be creative, you know, make your own stars. Like, don't
Speaker 2: just wait for the stars to align. Make them align.
Speaker 2: That's a big thing. That's a really key thing. Make
Speaker 2: the stars align for you. Don't wait for some happenstance,
Speaker 2: make it happen. Finally, I think an important thing here
Speaker 2: on this front was that it's October thirteenth. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of people say you shouldn't be kill deer for
Speaker 2: mature deer in mid October. It's the October lull. A
Speaker 2: lot of folks that say, don't go out there and
Speaker 2: mess spots up when there's no chance of good things happening.
Speaker 2: But the truth of the matter is, and we've talked
Speaker 2: about this a lot too but truth of the matter
Speaker 2: is that buck activity, deer activity ramps up throughout the
Speaker 2: month of October towards the rut. They just shift right,
Speaker 2: So what they're doing in September and early October changes
Speaker 2: as hunting pressure ramps up. Deer just to hunting pressure,
Speaker 2: Deer just to changing food sources, right, You've got crops
Speaker 2: coming out, they just to cover changing, you've got leaves
Speaker 2: falling down. They are making all these changes. There's changes
Speaker 2: in their habitat, there's changes to pressure, there's changes in
Speaker 2: their physiology as they're getting ready to rut. So all
Speaker 2: of that just means that deer are changing, So hunters
Speaker 2: need to change with them. And if you can do that,
Speaker 2: you can get on deer. I think if you plan
Speaker 2: your hunts to account for that, or if you've got
Speaker 2: a deer dialed in, or if you have an unpressured spot,
Speaker 2: you can absolutely till still have success, especially when you
Speaker 2: have these right conditions lined up. And so a big
Speaker 2: thing for me over recent years has been if I
Speaker 2: see that front come through, that gives a deer a
Speaker 2: little bit extra incentive to get on his feet earlier,
Speaker 2: I'm going to take a swing. Whether it's October eighth
Speaker 2: or October thirteenth, or October nineteenth or twenty second, that
Speaker 2: window can still be really good. So in this case,
Speaker 2: our front came through like the thirteenth through the fifteenth,
Speaker 2: and I when I saw the forecast, I said, all right,
Speaker 2: that's going to be one of these swings. Now. I'll
Speaker 2: also say that it's great to have a lot of
Speaker 2: different options so that you don't only have one farm
Speaker 2: or one spot you're hunting over and over. Right, So I,
Speaker 2: because I had picked up new access, because I had
Speaker 2: additional properties that I've slowly accumulated over the years, I
Speaker 2: could hunt early October and then wait and hunt a
Speaker 2: different spot mid October, and then I can come back
Speaker 2: and hunt a different spot a little bit later October.
Speaker 2: And I'm not burning out any one of those spots.
Speaker 2: So it's not like the October law is going to
Speaker 2: screw things up for me come the rut, because i
Speaker 2: haven't been hammering one spot the whole month of October.
Speaker 2: I've been spreading it out. Take a strike there, take
Speaker 2: a strike there, Take a strike there. When the rut arrives,
Speaker 2: no one of them is over pressured, no one of
Speaker 2: them is ruined. But I've still been able to hunt,
Speaker 2: and I've still been able to have opportunities all throughout
Speaker 2: the month. So that's an important thing to remember if
Speaker 2: you're listening to this on October seventeenth, you know, don't
Speaker 2: be afraid to get after it. Take advantage if you
Speaker 2: have a chance. But then also don't blindly hunt over
Speaker 2: and over and over. If you have just one spot
Speaker 2: to do it, Go hunt some public land, Go hunt
Speaker 2: that new permission that you got that maybe doesn't look
Speaker 2: that good, but who knows. And I think if you
Speaker 2: can do those things, you've got a better chance of
Speaker 2: just enjoying your hunting season, because that's so important to
Speaker 2: be careful to avoid. We talk a lot, you listen
Speaker 2: to a lot of really good hunters who oftentimes talk
Speaker 2: about needing to time your hunts, wait for the right
Speaker 2: moment to strike, don't overhunt, don't hammer these spots too much.
Speaker 2: You know you can kill them from the couch. Some
Speaker 2: people say, right, because if you're educating deer, you're not
Speaker 2: gonna be able to kill them. And all of this
Speaker 2: is true to a degree, and a lot of what
Speaker 2: I've talked about with this deer, this particular hunt, would
Speaker 2: you know point to me waiting and waiting and waiting.
Speaker 2: This is the first time out hunted this property. But
Speaker 2: make sure you still enjoy your season, have other places,
Speaker 2: get out there, enjoy yourself. So if you have a
Speaker 2: weekend in October, get out there. If you've got your
Speaker 2: vacation in November, but then a warm front rolls through
Speaker 2: and the conditions don't look good, don't worry about it.
Speaker 2: Hunt have fun. Maybe it's not perfect, but you never know.
Speaker 2: These are wild animals, these are wild places. The whole
Speaker 2: reason this is so exciting is that it's unsure. We
Speaker 2: do not know what's going to hap happen. There are
Speaker 2: no guarantees, and that uncertainty and the mystery that comes
Speaker 2: along with every single time we head into the woods.
Speaker 2: That is a beautiful thing. That's what keeps me coming
Speaker 2: back time and time again. And I'm betting that's the
Speaker 2: case with you too. So that is my hunt. That's
Speaker 2: how I killed this buck here in mid October in
Speaker 2: southern Michigan. I'm very thankful for it. It was a
Speaker 2: lot of fun. It was a very intense hunt. It
Speaker 2: was a crazy thirty minutes. I actually had that camera
Speaker 2: send pictures today all almost that entire encounter. So that
Speaker 2: buck showed up, the time between when he first showed
Speaker 2: up and when I got a shot at him was
Speaker 2: about thirty minutes. And I can tell you that not
Speaker 2: because I remember it happening in real time, but because
Speaker 2: the pictures. I've got the first picture there, and I've
Speaker 2: got pictures of him fighting with this other buck, and
Speaker 2: then I have pictures of him running away, which is
Speaker 2: pretty cool to see. So so yeah, just a really
Speaker 2: special one that is different but incredibly memorable all the same.
Speaker 2: And once again learning new lessons, having something's hammered home again,
Speaker 2: and just thankful worked out. So that is it for
Speaker 2: me here today. I'm hoping that you will take this
Speaker 2: and maybe this will inspire you a little bit. Maybe
Speaker 2: this will give you some new ideas. Maybe this will
Speaker 2: give you that extra kicking the butt to get out
Speaker 2: in the woods even if conditions aren't quite right or
Speaker 2: whatever it might be. If you're listening in mid October
Speaker 2: or late October, there are really good things available to
Speaker 2: you right now. I should point out scrapes are going
Speaker 2: to be ramping up over the coming week to ten days,
Speaker 2: So if you are listening October seventeenth through like the
Speaker 2: thirty first, and if you've got scrapes back in cover
Speaker 2: that you know deer have historically hit, that is absolutely
Speaker 2: a place where there will be bucks in the coming days.
Speaker 2: This buck came to a scrape, and that was one
Speaker 2: of the not the only reason I typically don't hunt
Speaker 2: spots just because of a scrape. But if you can
Speaker 2: have a scrape with a terrain or cover feature, with
Speaker 2: the food source to bed type pattern or whatever it is,
Speaker 2: you know, having that extra sweetener can be a key thing,
Speaker 2: especially this time of year, almost well not almost more
Speaker 2: than any other time of the year. This next seven
Speaker 2: to ten days is your best time for deer to
Speaker 2: be on those scrapes, so watch out for that. You know. Again,
Speaker 2: as we get into the last week of October, this
Speaker 2: is a great window because you have bucks that they're
Speaker 2: testosterone is just about maxed out, but most dos aren't
Speaker 2: in heat yet, So you've got bucks that are ready
Speaker 2: to go, but can't find any ladies that are. So
Speaker 2: they're amped up, they're frustrated. They're moving more in daylight
Speaker 2: right now, but they're still sticking to their home range.
Speaker 2: So if you have been studying a specific deer, if
Speaker 2: you've got a pattern on a couple deer, this might
Speaker 2: be your best window coming up because they'll still be
Speaker 2: in your area, not running crazy yet, they're not randomly
Speaker 2: cruising the landscape or chasing does across the landscape. They're
Speaker 2: still going to be to a degree following those patterns
Speaker 2: you've been learning about this past month or six weeks,
Speaker 2: but you've got a good chance of it happening in daylight.
Speaker 2: So I put a high priority on that last week
Speaker 2: of October, and then once November hits, then we're rolling
Speaker 2: into the rut. Assuming you don't live in the South
Speaker 2: where there's some of these different rut windows, but if
Speaker 2: you're in the northern half of the country, once November
Speaker 2: first hits, for me at least, I'm thinking betting areas
Speaker 2: and funnels and pinch points, anything that concentrates deer travel.
Speaker 2: There's gonna be a lot of bucks moving on their
Speaker 2: feet going from dough era dough betting ereic to dough
Speaker 2: betting era, to dove food source to dough food source,
Speaker 2: trying to find a dough ready to breed. You want
Speaker 2: to be anywhere that's downwind of one of those dough
Speaker 2: hot spots where movements funneled where movement is pinched down
Speaker 2: to locations. Find those kinds of spots. Put in the time,
Speaker 2: rind it out, yes, but also enjoy yourself. Do what
Speaker 2: you need to do to make sure this is fun.
Speaker 2: This should not feel like a grind, a job, misery entirely.
Speaker 2: Like you know, some of this stuff, it takes hard work,
Speaker 2: no doubt about it. But if you are not enjoying
Speaker 2: yourself along the way, you're getting it wrong. You're missing out.
Speaker 2: There's got to be a balance, There's got to be
Speaker 2: a sweet spot there between really giving it you're all,
Speaker 2: but then also making sure that you know you're enjoying
Speaker 2: this incredible experience for one's worth. So you probably heard
Speaker 2: me talk all about this. I won't belabor it anymore.
Speaker 2: I'll leave you with that. I'm wishing you guys all
Speaker 2: the absolute best from here on out. We're going to
Speaker 2: have some really great interviews coming up giving you some
Speaker 2: very you know, clear and actionable tips and tactics to
Speaker 2: make sure that the next four weeks of your hunting
Speaker 2: season are as jam packed and successful as they possibly can.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this
Speaker 2: story and until next time, good luck out there, and
Speaker 2: stay wired to hunt h m m m