Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the white Tail Woods. Present it by First Light, creating
Speaker 1: proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
Speaker 1: First Light, Go farther, stay longer, and now your host
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wire to Hunt Podcast. I'm your guest host,
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today I'm speaking to Clint Campbell about
Speaker 2: scouting white tails at home and on the road. Welcome
Speaker 2: to the Wire to Hunt podcast, which is brought to
Speaker 2: you by a First Light. You've heard me say this before,
Speaker 2: and I'll say it again. If you don't have some
Speaker 2: of the Trace clothing, the Trace pants, or maybe the
Speaker 2: quarter zip, and you want to go get some work
Speaker 2: done in the white Tail woods, you might want to
Speaker 2: check it out. Super breathable, super durable. It is just
Speaker 2: the right stuff for early seas and hunting and for
Speaker 2: summer scouting and getting your work done. So check it out.
Speaker 2: You've got it, You've guessed it. Mark's still off, but
Speaker 2: he's not really doing anything cool this time. He just
Speaker 2: sent me a text and he said, listen, Tony, I
Speaker 2: have to level with you. I just need to go
Speaker 2: fly fishing. I've only been on the water ninety seven
Speaker 2: days this summer, and I'm just itching to get out
Speaker 2: and catch a few fish. Man, you kind of gotta
Speaker 2: feel sorry for the guy, don't you. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: barely any playtime. So I hope he catches some fish
Speaker 2: and he finds a good place to show off his
Speaker 2: catch on social media if he's so inclined. And so,
Speaker 2: while he's off tossing dryflies to brownies and cuts, I'm
Speaker 2: back here keeping the lights on. But it's not all
Speaker 2: bad because I get to talk to killer whitetail hunters
Speaker 2: like Clint Campbell, who happens to be my guest today.
Speaker 2: Clint hosts The Truth from the Stand podcast. He plays
Speaker 2: a mean guitar, he's an expert at wrapping people into
Speaker 2: tiny little bows through his jiu jitsu skills, and he
Speaker 2: scouts deer harder than almost anyone you've ever met. That's
Speaker 2: what we get into today, and he breaks down his
Speaker 2: strategy for mastering public land white tails out east and
Speaker 2: how he approaches traveling hunts when he draws a tag
Speaker 2: somewhere far from his native Pennsylvania. Clint is honestly a
Speaker 2: wealth of whitetail knowledge, and I think you're gonna love
Speaker 2: hearing what he has to say. So Clint, as usual,
Speaker 2: we started talking as soon as we saw each other here,
Speaker 2: and we've gone through We solved most of the world's
Speaker 2: problems before we even started this podcast. But we should
Speaker 2: probably get into this and talk a little bit about scouting.
Speaker 3: Huh yeah, talk a little scouting, man. I mean, we've
Speaker 3: already gone to Mars, we went to Saturn, we won
Speaker 3: a UFC belt, a title, you know, Like, I mean,
Speaker 3: why not solve deer hunting problems at the same time.
Speaker 2: We definitely should, And you know, I want to have
Speaker 2: you on for a lot of reasons. I always love
Speaker 2: talking to you. You've got the truth from the stand podcast.
Speaker 2: You're one of those people who's out there. You're living
Speaker 2: it like you're always you know, you're always sending me
Speaker 2: pictures and we're always going back and forth. And we
Speaker 2: just started talking a little bit off here that you
Speaker 2: brought up something I want to get into. You know,
Speaker 2: you mentioned how important winter scouting is to you, and
Speaker 2: I'm the same way. You know, like, I feel real
Speaker 2: cheated this year because we had a nasty winner and
Speaker 2: you guys had a pretty bad winter, and you had
Speaker 2: some other stuff going on, So you didn't get to
Speaker 2: take advantage of that window the way that you you
Speaker 2: usually do to feel good about your season. And so
Speaker 2: you're kind of scrambling now and you have to summer scout,
Speaker 2: you know at home there in Pennsylvania, like you usually
Speaker 2: don't have to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I I'll be honest and I'll be one hundred
Speaker 3: percent transparent. It's the summer is my least favorite time
Speaker 3: to spend time in the woods. You know, it's hot,
Speaker 3: it's buggy, I'm getting cobwebs all over my face. I
Speaker 3: can't see the ground the way I want to see
Speaker 3: the ground. The rubs now have kind of faded to
Speaker 3: where it's a lot harder to tell was that last
Speaker 3: year's rub? Was that two years ago? So the sign
Speaker 3: obviously just isn't there. And the nice thing about winter
Speaker 3: scouting is when you have all the foliage off the trees,
Speaker 3: it's like I don't have to walk that extra seventy
Speaker 3: five yards or whatever the case is to go check
Speaker 3: out this thing over here. If something catches my eye,
Speaker 3: like a rub on a tree, it's like I can
Speaker 3: see the discoloration through the open timber at that point right.
Speaker 3: A lot of times I can throw some glass on
Speaker 3: it and I can tell, okay, is that something I'm
Speaker 3: walking over there for or my head to you know,
Speaker 3: continue in the direction that I was I was going
Speaker 3: anyway right now, it's a little different where it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's a lot of map reading and kind of finding
Speaker 3: those spots and then getting to them, and like you know,
Speaker 3: if it's thick covered, you maybe only see ten, fifteen,
Speaker 3: twenty yards and so now you're really having to dissect things.
Speaker 3: It slows it down. You don't cover nearly as much ground.
Speaker 3: But you know, with that, you know, you just kind
Speaker 3: of deal with the cards, the cards that you have.
Speaker 3: And we were talking a little bit yesterday. We were
Speaker 3: texting a little bit before we uh, you know, we
Speaker 3: knew we were going to be chatting today, and I
Speaker 3: think I mentioned to you adaptability is sometimes our best ability,
Speaker 3: right with your honey, And I kind of feel like
Speaker 3: that's where I'm at now, you know, I talked to
Speaker 3: I did a who did I do that podcast with?
Speaker 3: It might have been it's actually been a couple of
Speaker 3: different guys like hes Cisco is one guy, and a
Speaker 3: Mike Perry from Pennsylvania was another guy. And we talked
Speaker 3: a little bit about the reliance on winters scouting and
Speaker 3: like we might rely on it a little bit too much, right,
Speaker 3: because it tells you the story of last year, and
Speaker 3: without being there whenever whatever sign was laid down, you
Speaker 3: don't really know particularly what week that happened. Right. It's
Speaker 3: like you might be able to tell just based on
Speaker 3: how close it is to like a food source or
Speaker 3: like a betting area, or like a specific terrain feature
Speaker 3: or something like that, that that might be like rut signed,
Speaker 3: or that might be like early season sign or whatever
Speaker 3: the case is. But you really don't one hundred percent know.
Speaker 3: And so this year it might be a blessing in
Speaker 3: disguise where it's like I'm going to get out hanging
Speaker 3: my cameras here in the next couple of weeks, kind
Speaker 3: of finish hanging those and doing a little bit of scouting,
Speaker 3: a little bit more exploring on the new piece I've
Speaker 3: been I've been looking at the buy and large this
Speaker 3: year is probably going to be a lot of you know,
Speaker 3: boots on the ground come September October and starting to
Speaker 3: figure things out. And so you know, I'll start to
Speaker 3: lay the groundwork for that here during the summer, but
Speaker 3: it will be a lot of doubling back in the
Speaker 3: uh in the fall to kind of check my premonitions
Speaker 3: from the from the summer, if you will.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you or your situation, do you do you
Speaker 2: hunt any private land?
Speaker 3: I do not. Well, I shouldn't say I don't on
Speaker 3: an occasion. I mean, my family does own in like
Speaker 3: Centralish western side of PA roughly, you know, we have
Speaker 3: a couple of hundred acres between a couple of different parcels.
Speaker 3: But I haven't been back there in probably four or
Speaker 3: five years, probably other than like a wayward turkey hunt
Speaker 3: one day with my dad like three years ago. That was.
Speaker 3: That was about it. But yeah, for you know, buy
Speaker 3: and large, it's all all the public either that's around me,
Speaker 3: a couple hours north of me or out of state.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So you're where I want to go with this
Speaker 2: is your style is tied so closely to the kind
Speaker 2: of terrain you're hunting. Yeah, so you you know, you're
Speaker 2: hunting the mountains of Pennsylvania. You don't have a situation
Speaker 2: where you're gonna grab the spotter and go sit on
Speaker 2: the edge of a beanfield in you know, late July,
Speaker 2: early August, whatever, so like the importance for you of
Speaker 2: getting out there winter scouting would be different from some
Speaker 2: dudes saying like maybe Ohio or somewhere like that. And
Speaker 2: I think that there's an important lesson there because it's
Speaker 2: so easy for us to hear like, oh well, I
Speaker 2: just run trail cameras a scout, or I just do this,
Speaker 2: or Zach Fharrenbau does this, or whoever does this, But
Speaker 2: it's so tied to your personal situation. Yeah, And so
Speaker 2: for for you, you know, that winter scouting in that
Speaker 2: big Wood scenario, it's like such an advantage. And then
Speaker 2: if you lose that, you're like, Okay, now I'm scrambling
Speaker 2: and I got to get a ton of cameras out
Speaker 2: and you and you run a ton of cameras.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I mean I'll have out you know, I
Speaker 3: probably own I want to say, maybe thirty roughly is
Speaker 3: probably what I have in my arsenal, you know, probably
Speaker 3: like nine ish cell cameras and then the rest of
Speaker 3: all regular SD card cameras put on that North people
Speaker 3: on the Big Woods piece. It's like I'll pull you know,
Speaker 3: cameras with my buddy Aaron Heppler and my other buddy Tom,
Speaker 3: you know, we'll all kind of pull our cameras together
Speaker 3: and like commit exit number of cameras to like that spot.
Speaker 3: And so in that piece alone, we'll probably have between
Speaker 3: the three of us like thirty plus cameras on there.
Speaker 3: And we've met some other friends. We get some other
Speaker 3: friends up there, and we all share intel. I mean,
Speaker 3: the place is so big. That's the one thing you
Speaker 3: know when you're hunting smaller pieces. So like for me
Speaker 3: locally in PA, I don't share really intel with anybody
Speaker 3: locally because it's just like there's not a lot like
Speaker 3: the public pieces just aren't real big, and there's a
Speaker 3: lot of pressure. And I certainly don't put any pictures
Speaker 3: online of deer that I'm getting on camera or anything
Speaker 3: like that. If anyone ever sees me share a picture,
Speaker 3: you can almost guarantee it wasn't from PA, and certainly
Speaker 3: wasn't from you know, my local area. You know, me
Speaker 3: and a couple different guys, like we'll all share intel
Speaker 3: with each other because the place is so big, we're
Speaker 3: not going to step on each other, you know. And
Speaker 3: so I have pictures of deer, and you know Tom
Speaker 3: has pictures of deer. I'll send them my pictures and
Speaker 3: be like, hey, I saw this deer. He was on
Speaker 3: camera over here, and then we can start to get
Speaker 3: an idea of like how they're moving, because otherwise it
Speaker 3: just takes I say, it always takes about three years
Speaker 3: to figure a spot out roughly, and then you can
Speaker 3: start to reasonably consider that you should start to have
Speaker 3: the type of encounters that you want to have. May
Speaker 3: not kill that third year, but you should at least
Speaker 3: be in the game before that. Though. If you don't
Speaker 3: have any help, you're you're really throwing a dart at
Speaker 3: a dartboard, you know, in a lot of ways. And
Speaker 3: so we try to do the best we can just
Speaker 3: kind of help help each other out and allows us
Speaker 3: kind of like lay a game plan. You start to
Speaker 3: understand how deer is starting to use that terrain. You know,
Speaker 3: this place has just wildly open timber, and then all
Speaker 3: of a sudden you get like really kind of almost
Speaker 3: like microhabitats where all the sign kind of explodes, where
Speaker 3: where it gets really thick and they've got some food
Speaker 3: and they've got some cover, but there might be two
Speaker 3: miles between that and the last place you saw signed
Speaker 3: And so to figure all that out on your own,
Speaker 3: you know, is a task.
Speaker 2: So run me through a scenario here, because when when
Speaker 2: I think of like big woods Tapa hunting, I mean,
Speaker 2: my big wood sap of hunting is a little bit
Speaker 2: different because I can't run cameras on a lot of
Speaker 2: the places that I hunt, like in northern Wisconsin, some
Speaker 2: of the rules and stuff, and so for me, it's
Speaker 2: so tied to winter scouting looking for the sign, and
Speaker 2: then summer scouting just looking for the sign because there's
Speaker 2: not you know, I don't have the glassing situation, but
Speaker 2: you rely so heavily on those trail cameras to do
Speaker 2: some heavy lifting for you in the summer. So let's
Speaker 2: say you go out and you're like, you don't you
Speaker 2: don't have this current winter scouting situation where you're like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I know I'm going to go drop a camera here, here,
Speaker 2: and here because of what I saw you're going in. Now,
Speaker 2: let's say you're bringing in a half a dozen cameras
Speaker 2: or whatever. What are you hanging them on? Are you
Speaker 2: looking at like train traps? What are you doing here?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that's that's a very good question because that's
Speaker 3: exactly where I'm at, Like, because where I had run
Speaker 3: cameras in the past. So one thing I will do
Speaker 3: is I'll roll on like historical data, all the cameras
Speaker 3: I typically run and leave out for a year, and
Speaker 3: then I go back and I gather them, you know,
Speaker 3: and I might check them in the fall, but buying
Speaker 3: largely stay out for the year, and I start to
Speaker 3: just get a sense of, like, one, how often am
Speaker 3: I seeing new deer in the fall? And how often
Speaker 3: am I finding homebodies? And what I've kind of found,
Speaker 3: at least on this big piece, is that I get
Speaker 3: a lot more homebodies than I do on smaller parcels
Speaker 3: for whatever, for whatever reason. And so if I have
Speaker 3: five good bucks, you know, on a camera, say in
Speaker 3: this big woods piece, chances are three of them will
Speaker 3: probably be around it in the general area whenever fall
Speaker 3: rolls around where for locally, for me, if I have
Speaker 3: five good bucks on camera in the summer in an area,
Speaker 3: I'll be lucky if one sticks around, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, For whatever reason. It's just something that I've noticed.
Speaker 3: So most of the place that I've kind of focused
Speaker 3: on the past two years is really challenging spot to hunt.
Speaker 3: There's another area that I kind of I hung a
Speaker 3: couple of cameras let them run for like the past
Speaker 3: two years, hadn't hunted at once because it seemed like
Speaker 3: it was the easiest access. I always had great deer
Speaker 3: on camera, but in the back of my mind is
Speaker 3: always like, man, this place is gonna getound because it's
Speaker 3: the easiest access, seems like the most logical place for
Speaker 3: someone to jump in if they wanted to do a
Speaker 3: quick hunt. But in the course of two years, I
Speaker 3: think I might have had three people on camera, and
Speaker 3: all of them were during gun season, and so I'm like,
Speaker 3: all right, so archery season, we're kind of in place,
Speaker 3: so I need to kind of expand on that piece.
Speaker 3: And so what I'm really kind of looking for, especially
Speaker 3: in this in this particular area, is there's not a
Speaker 3: lot of undulation and terrain in this particular area because
Speaker 3: you're already kind of on top of of on top
Speaker 3: of the mountain, so to speak. And so really what
Speaker 3: I'm looking for is just very slight variations and change
Speaker 3: in elevations. So it might only be like a ten
Speaker 3: foot rise or something like that that's just gonna kind
Speaker 3: of funnel deer around an area. Because I found one
Speaker 3: spot like that, and that's where I found a lot
Speaker 3: of deer traffic. The other part is is find you know,
Speaker 3: this is again using a little bit of intel from
Speaker 3: the one or two cameras I did have in that
Speaker 3: area the past two years, is that most of the
Speaker 3: bucks that I was seeing they actually had like black
Speaker 3: up to like mid shin, if you will. And there's
Speaker 3: a handful of like swamp areas that are around there.
Speaker 3: And so whenever I was watching these pictures of these
Speaker 3: bucks come through, you know, last fall, it's funny because
Speaker 3: I was I wasn't even looking at their head at first.
Speaker 3: I was looking at their feet to see if they
Speaker 3: had mud on their feet, you know. And so one
Speaker 3: I started seeing like the younger deer that would come through,
Speaker 3: I didn't see that as consistently. All the bigger deer
Speaker 3: that I had come through, almost all of them had
Speaker 3: dirty legs. And so it's like I started then looking around, going, Okay,
Speaker 3: where like the swampy kind of areas and not it's
Speaker 3: so thick that you can't get through, but like, where
Speaker 3: are the spots where I look kind of open just
Speaker 3: from you know, looking looking on a map, you know, ea, scouting,
Speaker 3: And then from there. What I started looking for were
Speaker 3: just kind of like little land bridges between swampy areas
Speaker 3: to kind of go investigate, you know. And then I
Speaker 3: started thinking, you know, so that was the first thing.
Speaker 3: What are the land bridges, and so I'll investigate those.
Speaker 3: And then the other part was was just looking at
Speaker 3: my prevailing wind and knowing that I get a south
Speaker 3: you know, south southwest west kind of predominant prevailing wind
Speaker 3: during that time of year, then looking at the opposite
Speaker 3: side of those swamps and those areas, going like, all right,
Speaker 3: are there any terrain features there are going to kind
Speaker 3: of funnel them down toward the edge of that swamp
Speaker 3: or is it flat? They can kind of meander out
Speaker 3: and I just need to kind of go investigate that stuff.
Speaker 3: But I'll start on that side of the swamp knowing
Speaker 3: that that's going to be my predominant wind, and I'll
Speaker 3: be my most likely tree locations that I would want
Speaker 3: to find to play to be able to play the wind.
Speaker 2: When you're running cameras, can you see those bucks have
Speaker 2: muddy muddy feed on there too or not?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's how that's how I pull That's.
Speaker 2: How you see it's not in Yeah, interesting I think
Speaker 2: it was. I think it was Steve Bartello that wrote
Speaker 2: an article one time years ago, I might even edit
Speaker 2: it when I was at Peterson's bow hunting, But he
Speaker 2: said big bucks have wet feet, and I've thought about
Speaker 2: that because it's so freaking true. I want to back
Speaker 2: up a second, because you said something about, you know,
Speaker 2: running cameras on bigger properties and homebodies versus running cameras
Speaker 2: on smaller properties and not necessarily any is easy to
Speaker 2: find a homebody there. Don't you think that's just tied
Speaker 2: to the amount of a deer's like home range that
Speaker 2: you have to work with.
Speaker 3: I think it's that, And I think and this is
Speaker 3: just look, I don't claim to be smart enough to
Speaker 3: know this for a fact. It's just these are just
Speaker 3: kind of my hypothesis or my hypotheses. But if I
Speaker 3: were to venture a guest, I think it's one, Yes,
Speaker 3: they have so much more room and they have so
Speaker 3: much more kind of like available to them that why
Speaker 3: would you completely change home ranges. There's likely multiple dough
Speaker 3: families within that area already that they are that they're
Speaker 3: using for food and cover, just kind of in general, right,
Speaker 3: And then I think the the second part of it
Speaker 3: is is that food is so sparse there that I
Speaker 3: think that they just kind of move around like with
Speaker 3: as the food changes and as opposed to like going
Speaker 3: like three properties over or whatever, they're just staying in
Speaker 3: that general area because there's a patch of oaks here
Speaker 3: and then in the summer there's a bunch of wild
Speaker 3: blueberries and raspberries, because I see that a lot, especially
Speaker 3: in around those swampy areas where it's like those beds,
Speaker 3: just like there're those deer just bed in there and
Speaker 3: live in that area until the bears run through, run
Speaker 3: them mouth and then they'll come back essentially, and then
Speaker 3: I think the other part is too, is that they
Speaker 3: make such even when they are doing a little bit
Speaker 3: of traveling, they make such long cycles that if you're
Speaker 3: if you're impatient, you'll think they have left. But if
Speaker 3: you really think about it and you see them kind
Speaker 3: of come back, it's like instead of it being like
Speaker 3: a three day window where you catch them, it might
Speaker 3: be a five, seven eight day window, you know. And
Speaker 3: so that's the other thing, like when you're on big pieces,
Speaker 3: I just had to kind of learn painfully over time,
Speaker 3: is that just because they had n't been around for
Speaker 3: eight days, maybe even ten days, depending, you know, I
Speaker 3: just might be in the wrong little you know, five
Speaker 3: hundred acre chunk. They might be playing this one hundred
Speaker 3: acre piece over here just to my east or whatever.
Speaker 3: They've not left the area, They're just not in this
Speaker 3: little not in this particular chunk, yep, you know. And
Speaker 3: so and that's what I've seen. And when I say homebody,
Speaker 3: it's not that I've caught that deer on camera the
Speaker 3: same camera consistently. I might have during the summer and
Speaker 3: then maybe a couple times during the fall, but I
Speaker 3: had a camera that was a quarter of a mile away,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of like a cast the net. And
Speaker 3: it's like I caught him on two other ones over here,
Speaker 3: all fall along, plus the one I had him on
Speaker 3: originally in the summer, like three times. Right, So I'm
Speaker 3: going he's maybe not bedded in the same exact spot
Speaker 3: because you know, foliage has come down, betting situations change,
Speaker 3: but he's still in, he's still at home. He hasn't
Speaker 3: completely left, you know. And so that's kind of what
Speaker 3: I've seen, at least on that on that big woods piece.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a I think there's a really valuable lesson
Speaker 2: in that where when you talk about using tra cameras
Speaker 2: to scout and I had to figure this out the
Speaker 2: hard way when I started hunting a lot of small properties,
Speaker 2: like twenty to forty acre type of chunks. The randomness
Speaker 2: to deer movement feels so real, especially when you're trying
Speaker 2: to find a decent buck. You're like, man, he was
Speaker 2: here September twenty seventh, and he wasn't back until October sixteenth.
Speaker 2: And one time he was here in the day, one
Speaker 2: time he was here at night. It's like, yeah, because
Speaker 2: you might be hunting five percent of his home range
Speaker 2: or three You know, if you get into a big
Speaker 2: wood scenario where you talk about with limited food and
Speaker 2: lots of cover, you might have a home range it's
Speaker 2: nine hundred acres and now you're hunting twenty acres of
Speaker 2: it or forty acres of it. And I think it's
Speaker 2: hard for us to wrap our heads around that. Sometimes
Speaker 2: you go, well, he's just totally nocturnal or he's not moving.
Speaker 2: It's like, man, you're just playing with a little tiny piece.
Speaker 2: They'd be like if you were looking for somebody in
Speaker 2: the house and you could only stay in like one
Speaker 2: closet and you're like they're not home, and you're like
Speaker 2: spin around in the closet and you're like, well, you
Speaker 2: can't look in the living room, you can't go downstairs.
Speaker 2: And I think the big lesson there is to be
Speaker 2: really careful about trail camera usage as far as like
Speaker 2: what you deduce out of that. You know, like you said,
Speaker 2: if you're working some big cover, you know, you've got
Speaker 2: a thousand acres or five thousand acres of big woods
Speaker 2: to work and you get a picture of him here,
Speaker 2: and then a month later a picture of him here,
Speaker 2: and you can draw a line between him and you go, okay,
Speaker 2: we're within a third of a mile, quarter of a
Speaker 2: mile whatever, Like now you're starting to pin down what
Speaker 2: could be considered like some level of core area. Like
Speaker 2: now you have something to work with. It's vastly different
Speaker 2: than being on thirty acres and going I got two
Speaker 2: pictures of him, I guess I'm going to sit here,
Speaker 2: like you got to, like you said, you got to
Speaker 2: work with what you're like the hand you're dealt, And
Speaker 2: it's different.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that and that two pictures on a piece
Speaker 3: the size of this big woods piece, Like that's like
Speaker 3: for me, that's money in the bank, especially if I
Speaker 3: get them at two different times of the year. You know,
Speaker 3: that's all I really need at that point. It's like
Speaker 3: if I get him in the summer and know he's around, right,
Speaker 3: and then I get him again October fifteenth, that's all
Speaker 3: I need. I don't need any more pictures of him.
Speaker 3: I know he's gonna be here at the at you know,
Speaker 3: all fall. He might transition, you know, around winter, take
Speaker 3: an excursion during rutt. Even though it's just interesting because
Speaker 3: I was re listening back to like some stuff I
Speaker 3: did with doctor Bronson Strickland from a MSU Dear lab
Speaker 3: and the idea, and this changed, This kind of changed
Speaker 3: how I looked at my trail camera data too, and
Speaker 3: just knowing that, you know, we think that the deer
Speaker 3: more predictable and patternable, you know, in October early earlier
Speaker 3: in the year, for example, right like they're still on
Speaker 3: like maybe a pseudo bed to food ish pattern. They've
Speaker 3: not completely got all ramped up and started thinking about chasing,
Speaker 3: chasing does and stuff like that. And then we think
Speaker 3: when RUTT happens that all of a sudden, like they
Speaker 3: go berserk and they like they're running all over the place,
Speaker 3: and they're betting in like various places, you know, every
Speaker 3: different day, every day there's a different bed, right, But
Speaker 3: the data actually suggests the opposite. They're way more sporadic
Speaker 3: and unpredictable in October in their betting patterns, and they're
Speaker 3: way more predictable when the rut happens. Right. Well, he doesn't.
Speaker 3: They don't have data on this, but we actually he
Speaker 3: and I talked about it, and I was like, Doe families, right,
Speaker 3: He's like, don't have data, but I would put any
Speaker 3: amount of money that mattered to me that, Yeah, they're consistent.
Speaker 3: Betting is tied to like dough families that they're hanging around, right,
Speaker 3: And I would go and I would say, maybe that
Speaker 3: doesn't go for younger bucks, but I think older bucks,
Speaker 3: you know, get smart and get hip to the game. Right.
Speaker 3: And So because I've talked to G's this is something
Speaker 3: like I saw this play out this year too, and
Speaker 3: this this thing, this taught me two different lessons that
Speaker 3: I kind of knew academically but really kind of you know,
Speaker 3: made them concrete for me. You know, Johnny Eberheart a
Speaker 3: lot would talk about hunting over scrapes, you know, and
Speaker 3: especially when you're scouting trying to find a script. It's
Speaker 3: hard to during the summer sometimes, but if you can
Speaker 3: find a good community scrape, you know, a dominant deer
Speaker 3: in the area, buck in the area will likely at
Speaker 3: some point probably come bed not far from that scrap
Speaker 3: and wait for doze to come through and hit that scrape,
Speaker 3: and he's gonna scent check them as they're coming through,
Speaker 3: as opposed to chasing them. Right. So it's the old
Speaker 3: adage of like, you know, in my twenties or thirties,
Speaker 3: we were out running like crazy men, right, crazy people.
Speaker 3: And now I'm forty five and I'm like, nah, man,
Speaker 3: I said, I'm just happy to sit home and hang out,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. It's a similar type of thing.
Speaker 3: It's like why work harder when you can work work smarter?
Speaker 3: And so last year I was hunting one of my
Speaker 3: favorite kind of community scrape areas and the target deer
Speaker 3: I wanted to kill locally walks in beds down about
Speaker 3: forty yards from the scrape, about thirty five is yards
Speaker 3: from me, and was down windo that scrape and just
Speaker 3: was sitting there sent checking that scrape for two hours
Speaker 3: bed and sleeping, nodding off, waking up, readjusting, et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera. So that was the one kind of lesson
Speaker 3: academic lesson I learned in real time was that one, yes,
Speaker 3: those older deer will kind of bed down wind to that,
Speaker 3: and they won't even come to the scrape, right, which
Speaker 3: gives credence to hunting the places in between those kind
Speaker 3: of destination spots.
Speaker 2: And then the.
Speaker 3: Second one was I got him on camera, says, ties
Speaker 3: back to our summer thing. I got him on camera
Speaker 3: the last time was like September fifteenth, Right, Never again
Speaker 3: did I get that deer on camera the rest of
Speaker 3: the season. But he was comfortable enough to bed forty
Speaker 3: yards from that scrape and walked in and knew what
Speaker 3: he was doing.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: So that time I got him on camera was that
Speaker 3: the only time he was ever there until the time
Speaker 3: that he showed up that bed. If I were a
Speaker 3: betting man, I would say not yeah, right, no way,
Speaker 3: He's just he's consistently going to be in that general
Speaker 3: area until the dough that needs to get bread in
Speaker 3: that area is bred, right, And so that deer's consistently there.
Speaker 3: So it just kind of goes back to what I
Speaker 3: was saying, where it's like, I don't need more than
Speaker 3: two pictures. I just need the two pictures to be
Speaker 3: at the right time to know that that deer's home
Speaker 3: range is in that area, and that may not be
Speaker 3: true for everybody. That's just kind of how I look
Speaker 3: at it, And it's not the gospel, but it's how
Speaker 3: I kind of approach it.
Speaker 2: Well. That lesson there is one probably for a different podcast.
Speaker 2: We could do an entire thing on it, but I
Speaker 2: think that we look at the rut so wrong most
Speaker 2: of the time. Like you said, you know, Eberhart's talking
Speaker 2: about how they look a look at the strategy there.
Speaker 2: If you know that there's do is going to come
Speaker 2: through there, there's no reason to go wear yourself out
Speaker 2: looking for them when they'll come to you. You know.
Speaker 2: It's like I've written about this a whole bunch, but
Speaker 2: I see bass like I bass fish a lot, and
Speaker 2: I see them adopt two strategies to hunt. One of
Speaker 2: them is they ambush and they sit in a stump
Speaker 2: like next to a stomp or a you know, a dock,
Speaker 2: and they use the shadows to their advantage and they
Speaker 2: wait for something to crawl into their world and they
Speaker 2: eat it or you know, you see this with a
Speaker 2: lot of younger ones that form a little wolf pack
Speaker 2: and they go looking and they go find that school
Speaker 2: of minnos to chase or find a place where the
Speaker 2: crayfish are. And it's like two different strategies. But the
Speaker 2: old ones, like the big ones, you don't see them
Speaker 2: out like schooling up burning a bunch of energy to
Speaker 2: do what they could do without burning a bunch of energy.
Speaker 2: And I mean, I I I'm dumb. I'm a slow learner.
Speaker 2: So every year I got and I hunt the rut
Speaker 2: and five thousand times in the in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: During the run, I'm like, why aren't there deer running
Speaker 2: all over the place? And you know, this happened to
Speaker 2: me last year when I was hunting southwestern Wisconsin where
Speaker 2: I'm like, I know, I'm around a ton of deer.
Speaker 2: This area has a ton of deer, and I'm like
Speaker 2: blanking or you know, seeing very little. And it's like,
Speaker 2: you know, if you if you look at this on paper,
Speaker 2: there's no reason for a buck to have to work
Speaker 2: that hard there, So you'd think, like, you know, some
Speaker 2: kind of chase is going to end up in your
Speaker 2: lap or some kind of cruiser. But it's just not
Speaker 2: necessarily the case, especially if they're not ways spread out
Speaker 2: and there's not a lot of competition. Why why would
Speaker 2: they And you know, and then you say, like, well,
Speaker 2: some of the scrappers are going to come through, and
Speaker 2: like that's what happens. Like you sit all day and
Speaker 2: you see like a four ky or you know, like
Speaker 2: you're in like a primo spot and that little basket
Speaker 2: rack six comes through. But it's not the chase best
Speaker 2: that we always assume it's going to be, because that's
Speaker 2: just not how nature works most of the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was a couple of things, like speaking going
Speaker 3: back to like summer scouts, Like the one thing that
Speaker 3: I started doing regardless of whether it's winter or summer,
Speaker 3: is if if I find a really really good kind
Speaker 3: of community scrape area, it always gets a camera. Even
Speaker 3: if I see like something in the summer that looks
Speaker 3: to me like okay, I can still see that there's
Speaker 3: some liking branches broken, you know that this is obviously
Speaker 3: something that they're using it as a scrape. They're hitting
Speaker 3: a licking branch, and especially if there's a couple of
Speaker 3: rubs that are around that that to me kind of
Speaker 3: like okay, this is worth a camera, and I'll just
Speaker 3: see what happens, you know, and I'll qualify scrapes that
Speaker 3: way where I'm just gonna hang it. I'm gonna let
Speaker 3: it run for the whole year, and then if I
Speaker 3: see deer hitting it during the summer, then I know,
Speaker 3: like okay, yatzie, this is like a communication hub and
Speaker 3: then we just have to figure out how good it
Speaker 3: is or if it turns on at a certain time.
Speaker 3: The other thing I started doing, and I learned this
Speaker 3: from actually hunting with my buddy Chad in this big
Speaker 3: woods piece in Ohio because there was this area that
Speaker 3: he got this one deer I think it was this
Speaker 3: deer he called we called Chriser because there was a
Speaker 3: guy used to hunt there. His name, last name was Chrysler,
Speaker 3: I believe, And and it was just like this really
Speaker 3: small spine back and like so the dose would always
Speaker 3: run like this spine back right, and like you would
Speaker 3: never see deer during daylight in there really ever, right,
Speaker 3: it was always kind of like night nighttime. But there
Speaker 3: was this giant bed that was just like off that
Speaker 3: spine back maybe four or five foot in the brush
Speaker 3: that was just huge and like warmed to the dirt.
Speaker 3: But we would never get a picture of a buck
Speaker 3: in there like any other time of year other than
Speaker 3: like the rut right, and so it was kind of
Speaker 3: a rutbed er. It was like, so, huh, interesting, rutbed
Speaker 3: does traveling us a lot? Makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3: He can sit here and just pick does off? Okay? Cool.
Speaker 3: Another area there was this big primary scrape that we
Speaker 3: would just get like these hammer bucks on, like one
Speaker 3: of them was like a world class animal. And two
Speaker 3: years we've watched this scrape and like hunting in and
Speaker 3: around it and stuff like that, and nothing ever really happened.
Speaker 3: And we were scouting the following year and I just
Speaker 3: happened to be on the I guess the leeward side
Speaker 3: of that ridge behind that scrape, about sixty yards down
Speaker 3: the side of the ridge as we were coming up,
Speaker 3: because we went all the way around the ridge and
Speaker 3: then we were coming back up and our rendezvous point
Speaker 3: was kind of like to come up and meet right
Speaker 3: around that scrape because it was in this old ballyard
Speaker 3: And as we're coming up, there's like a giant bed
Speaker 3: that's perfectly downwind of where that scrape was at about
Speaker 3: sixty yards from it, like on this little bench. So
Speaker 3: I pull up my map real quick and I'm looking.
Speaker 3: I'm like, you gotta be kidneing, man. I'm like, this
Speaker 3: thing is like literally rate below that scrape, and so
Speaker 3: not a big surprise all of a sudden, you know,
Speaker 3: that rut rolls around or pre rud or whatever timeframe,
Speaker 3: and a buck starts bedding there waiting to catch doze
Speaker 3: and just scent checking. It never has to move right.
Speaker 3: So now what I started doing is when I find
Speaker 3: these community scrapes, I don't take a ton of time,
Speaker 3: but I take like a quick like thirty minutes and
Speaker 3: just kind of like do like a pinwheel out from
Speaker 3: that from that community scrape and just start pinning me
Speaker 3: whee on my way out to where I get maybe
Speaker 3: thirty forty fifty yards in all directions out from it,
Speaker 3: to see if there's a bed that's around there somewhere
Speaker 3: that a deer might use during the rut right to
Speaker 3: see like, because I don't think I don't think every
Speaker 3: scrape is every scrape is not created equal, but certain
Speaker 3: ones when you get spidy sense if you pin wheel out,
Speaker 3: all of a sudden you'll find that bed that they'll
Speaker 3: use as like that rutbed. And so that's what I
Speaker 3: found last year. I could have never found it because
Speaker 3: it's so thick and swampy in this area. But whenever
Speaker 3: I walked in there to hang a camera two three
Speaker 3: weeks or to check the camera that had in there
Speaker 3: two or three weeks ago, I went back to see
Speaker 3: where that deer was at, and sure enough, there's a
Speaker 3: bed there, and there's a down log. There's an easy
Speaker 3: way for him to get in, an easy way for
Speaker 3: him to get out. It's like a perfect setup, right.
Speaker 3: And so that's the other thing I started doing, Like
Speaker 3: even in the summer, when I find those areas, I
Speaker 3: just kind of pin wheel out and see if I
Speaker 3: can't locate a bed that's somewhere close by.
Speaker 2: You bring up an interesting point there, and I'm I
Speaker 2: look at like probably ninety five percent of scrapes like
Speaker 2: they do mean no good, yeah, but the want five
Speaker 2: percent that do I really like, and they're always tied.
Speaker 2: Like what you're talking about. You treat them a little
Speaker 2: bit differently than I do. But what you're saying is
Speaker 2: you have this community scrape. It's at it. It's in
Speaker 2: a spot where a buck can bed down when he
Speaker 2: can wait for the action to come to him. He
Speaker 2: doesn't have to go to it. He could probably wait
Speaker 2: for the little scrappers to chase by and gauge that
Speaker 2: situation or whatever. But all of that is tied to
Speaker 2: some kind of travel hub, Like, all of it is
Speaker 2: tied to a place where the deer just like to
Speaker 2: go and be. So what you're saying is like that
Speaker 2: scrape is like it tips you off, Like it's like
Speaker 2: that's the one thing where you're like, Okay, now I
Speaker 2: need to investigate this spot. But most people think, well,
Speaker 2: there's a big community scrape here with a good looking branch,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna hunt this. But what does that scrape like signify,
Speaker 2: Like what's going on in that area that matters more?
Speaker 2: And what it is is it's a hub. It's those
Speaker 2: are going to be located in a place where deer
Speaker 2: move morning and eve and for multiple reasons, they come
Speaker 2: through there, usually from different directions, and there's just like
Speaker 2: a high odds chance of being around traveling deer where
Speaker 2: those show up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean to me, it's it's it's like the
Speaker 3: you know, when I was a kid, you'd hang out
Speaker 3: in the parking lot of like the burger king or whatever.
Speaker 3: It's the burger king hang out for deer, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. Like they're just you know, it's like
Speaker 3: there's so many things that kind of connect in those spots.
Speaker 3: It's like if you're in hill country, it's oftentimes it's
Speaker 3: some type of thermal hub.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of times where multiple ridges are kind
Speaker 3: of coming together and they're all kind of dumping down
Speaker 3: into this bottom at the same spot, right, and it's
Speaker 3: really easy for the deer to be able to smell
Speaker 3: everything that's happening on every ridge, and so all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, a lot of deer congregate congregate there, and
Speaker 3: then they start leaving sign there their sin is there,
Speaker 3: they lay down a scrape, and that becomes like a
Speaker 3: central central hub. One hundred percent agree with you, Like
Speaker 3: they're not all huntable. What I do, going back to
Speaker 3: what we were talking about with summer, what I'll use
Speaker 3: You know, if you're like me and you're a working guy,
Speaker 3: I have to time my hunts and be very strategic
Speaker 3: about the days I'm going to get out, right, And
Speaker 3: so that's why I focus a lot on scrapes because
Speaker 3: I can usually predict not what's going to happen directly
Speaker 3: at that location, although sometimes I can, but I can
Speaker 3: predict what's going to happen in the general area much
Speaker 3: better if I have a really good scrape in that
Speaker 3: spot to kind of start to be my barometer for
Speaker 3: the area, if you will, right. And so, what I'll
Speaker 3: do during the summer, and what I'll use summer for
Speaker 3: is I hang my cameras on those scrapes, you know,
Speaker 3: And people are like, when you're hanging cameras on scrapes
Speaker 3: in the summer, it's like, well, yeah, but what I
Speaker 3: want to see is that if there aren't any deer
Speaker 3: hitting it during the summer, then I'm like, Okay, that's
Speaker 3: just like a rut pre rut scrape. It might be decent,
Speaker 3: it might not be. If it's not connected to something
Speaker 3: else that's nearby that really kind of trips my trigger,
Speaker 3: then it's probably not worth a hunt unless there's like
Speaker 3: a terrain feature that's close by that like is really
Speaker 3: good that I want that I want to hunt. But
Speaker 3: if I get deer hitting that thing almost daily during
Speaker 3: the summer, I'm like this is like a main kind
Speaker 3: of artery for deer activity, regardless of whether it's that scrape,
Speaker 3: the things in this area this is a play or
Speaker 3: is are things that are drawing deer to it on
Speaker 3: a daily basis, regardless if it's does you know, bucks
Speaker 3: and velvet, whatever the case is. Deer just want to
Speaker 3: be here. So whenever I see that, that's whenever I
Speaker 3: start to pay a lot of attention to it. And
Speaker 3: it's not like they hit it once or twice. It's
Speaker 3: like I'm looking for multiple days a week during out
Speaker 3: of season, right that they're hitting these scrapes, and those
Speaker 3: are the ones I'll prioritize and I try to find
Speaker 3: those on every piece I have. And then what I
Speaker 3: do is I use that summer intel. I watch the
Speaker 3: fawn drops. I try to find if there's an early
Speaker 3: fawn drop, which the one I do know that I
Speaker 3: have as an early fonnd drop. So that's why the
Speaker 3: eighteenth of every October I'm in that spot because the
Speaker 3: past two years I've had an encounter with my shoot
Speaker 3: with my target deer on the eighteenth in that spot right,
Speaker 3: because that does is getting ready to come in and
Speaker 3: she's bread somewhere between the fifteenth and the twentieth, and
Speaker 3: so I use the fawn drop data during the summer
Speaker 3: for the upcoming hunting season to kind of know when
Speaker 3: these spots are going to come in. And then I
Speaker 3: watch them during the rut as well to understand, you know,
Speaker 3: when are these dough groups actually cycling in, you know,
Speaker 3: because they'll cycle in the same every year. And so
Speaker 3: I just watch these scrapes and I start dating these
Speaker 3: scrapes going right this week for this scrape, this week,
Speaker 3: for this scrape, this week, for this scrape, And then
Speaker 3: I don't waste my time hunting in an area where
Speaker 3: I don't have those that are warming up that are
Speaker 3: going to attract deer for me. You can't bait in PA.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't anyway. But that's the closest thing you can
Speaker 3: get to get in an attractant to bring a buck
Speaker 3: in is to know when those dose extra states are.
Speaker 3: And I do that by kind of, you know, just
Speaker 3: dating the scrapes.
Speaker 2: Man. That's that's high level. I want to take a
Speaker 2: step back here a second. Yeah, And because you brought
Speaker 2: up something a while ago that I made a note
Speaker 2: on that I want to talk about because I've been
Speaker 2: thinking about it a lot, and you were talking about elevation,
Speaker 2: and you were talking about like the subtlety to terrain
Speaker 2: and like finding the difference of you know, ten feet
Speaker 2: in elevation or twenty feet or thirty feet, how important
Speaker 2: that is. And I'm starting to get to the point
Speaker 2: this is something. You know, I grew up hunting the
Speaker 2: bluffs in southeastern Minnesota, and I'm I'm I love bluff
Speaker 2: country stuff, Like, I like the terrain traps, and I
Speaker 2: like I like that style. But where I live, and
Speaker 2: I've lived the last seventeen years, it's pretty freaking flat,
Speaker 2: but not like pool table flat. And I started to
Speaker 2: just appreciate, you know, if there's a little bit of
Speaker 2: a rise in the woods or there's like I'll give
Speaker 2: you an example. This. This kind of hit me right
Speaker 2: over the head this turkey season. So this farm that
Speaker 2: I've been turkey hunt in the last few years pretty flat, right,
Speaker 2: There's there's not much to it, but there's one field
Speaker 2: on there. There's one field left that we can hunt
Speaker 2: because it's being developed, and it's got this little rise
Speaker 2: in it that comes out of the woods. You know,
Speaker 2: there's a it's kind of on the edge of a
Speaker 2: cattail swamp. It's actually kind of between two cattail swamps,
Speaker 2: and it's maybe an elevation change of like six feet.
Speaker 2: But if you walk out on it, you can see
Speaker 2: everything on that side of the field. You can look
Speaker 2: from one end to the other. And so scouting turkeys,
Speaker 2: I would see turkeys strut on there all the time.
Speaker 2: And so this, you know, I put a blind on
Speaker 2: there for the kids. Took my daughter in there. She
Speaker 2: killed the bird in there. Took my nephew in there.
Speaker 2: He killed a bird in there, took his dad in there.
Speaker 2: He killed a bird in there. And it's it's just
Speaker 2: a spot where they expect to see turkeys and they're
Speaker 2: just so visible. So it's like it's got that going
Speaker 2: for it. And then I was thinking, you know, I'm like, man,
Speaker 2: the buck I shot last year with my muzzleoder was
Speaker 2: standing right here. Out of all the places he could
Speaker 2: have come out of the woods, he picked that and
Speaker 2: he was a little scrapper. But he's like, there's that
Speaker 2: just difference because he knows if he walks out there,
Speaker 2: he can look down there all the way to the
Speaker 2: end of the field, and he can look the other
Speaker 2: way to the end of the field, and I think
Speaker 2: we don't appreciate how like tuned into those tiny little
Speaker 2: elevation differences. All those deer are out there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's hunting. The flat kind of terrain is is
Speaker 3: something that it drives me crazy, to be honest with you.
Speaker 3: You know, it was something I had to get used
Speaker 3: to locally because locally where I live in eastern Pa
Speaker 3: is flat. Where I hunt in the north, you know,
Speaker 3: there's there's mountains, and so it's it's very like there's
Speaker 3: extremes right here. It's like, you know, you don't even
Speaker 3: rarely get that little five five foot ten foot elevation
Speaker 3: change here. It's like, you know, you're dealing with primarily
Speaker 3: you know, using transition lines and you know, in hard
Speaker 3: edges that are set by swamps or whatever whatever the
Speaker 3: case is. But I think sometimes, you know, I was
Speaker 3: talking to there was a fella I talked to from
Speaker 3: Virginia and he hunts a very similar kind of terrain
Speaker 3: where it's a lot of flat. It's just like with
Speaker 3: the little knobs and knolls, and he was like, anything
Speaker 3: that had like five to ten foot elevation, man, He's like,
Speaker 3: you could almost they might not be bedded there, but
Speaker 3: they're going to spend time there, and something kind of
Speaker 3: I don't remember if he's the one who said it
Speaker 3: or if someone else mentioned it to me. It's like
Speaker 3: we often forget that deer a lot of times want
Speaker 3: want the same things we want, you know. It's like
Speaker 3: we want to be fed, we want to be safe,
Speaker 3: we want cover a house or you know, a shelter
Speaker 3: of some sort. Right, they're looking for the same things.
Speaker 3: They just go about getting it a little bit differently.
Speaker 3: We want to be able to see, right, we want
Speaker 3: to be able to observe. Well, they want the same
Speaker 3: They want the same thing, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: And so they'll go to the place where they can.
Speaker 3: It's not it's not a when you think about it
Speaker 3: that way, it's not a surprise if you're thinking about,
Speaker 3: you know, the the hunting beast style of things, right,
Speaker 3: the dan enfold approach of like you know, uh, setting
Speaker 3: up on like the leeward edge of a of a ridge,
Speaker 3: knowing that deer want to spend time there. It's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: they're going to bed with the wind that's coming over
Speaker 3: their back and they're going to look down directly where
Speaker 3: they came from. Because now they're covered in all directions, right.
Speaker 3: It's like the one reason is because they got the
Speaker 3: visual right. It's like, I think we oftentimes discount the
Speaker 3: visual element of their protection because we focus so much
Speaker 3: on their smell, the smell aspect. We spend so much
Speaker 3: time trying to beat their nose. I think we oftentimes
Speaker 3: get beat by their eyes, you know. And that's been
Speaker 3: true for me, you know, in in Kansas for sure,
Speaker 3: you know, because I you know, I've been to Kansas
Speaker 3: the past two years. I drew the tag again this
Speaker 3: year to go back. And that's the hardest part for
Speaker 3: me out there. It's like I I've been within bow
Speaker 3: range and we'll say fifteen feet a sorry, fifteen yards
Speaker 3: in under all three years. But I've gotten beat by
Speaker 3: their eyes and never once have I've been beaten by
Speaker 3: their nose yet, you know what I mean. And so
Speaker 3: that to me was a thing that kind of just
Speaker 3: pointed out to me, like there's little rises, there's little
Speaker 3: changes in elevation, especially when you're out there, make all
Speaker 3: the difference, you know, between you being skylight or them
Speaker 3: skylighting themselves, or them getting into like a little you know,
Speaker 3: a little ditch and they're two hundred yards away in
Speaker 3: your glass them and then they seemingly disappear and something
Speaker 3: that looks flat, you know what I mean. It's like
Speaker 3: it's just those little undulations and we overlook them. But
Speaker 3: you know, we'd be fools to think that the deer
Speaker 3: don't know exactly where those things are at and know
Speaker 3: exactly when and how to use those Oh Man, when.
Speaker 2: You when you talk about that souf, I think about
Speaker 2: so many situations in my life, and I think one
Speaker 2: of the easiest ways to understand this is if you
Speaker 2: have the opportunity to glass in the summer, so you know,
Speaker 2: sit that alf aalpha field, sit that being filled whatever,
Speaker 2: and watch what you see. And so pay attention because
Speaker 2: we go out and go I want to find that
Speaker 2: bachelor group and I want to watch them. But the
Speaker 2: real benefit besides finding them, of course, is how do
Speaker 2: they use the land? Like are are they tucked into
Speaker 2: a little drainage to feed so you can't see them?
Speaker 2: Or like how did they come out of the woods,
Speaker 2: or how do they travel from one point of the
Speaker 2: woods to the other. And you start watching deer actually
Speaker 2: move through the landscape. It's not just a betting thing. Man,
Speaker 2: like they're using little, tiny, almost insignificant folds in the
Speaker 2: train to their advantage. And they they probably don't even
Speaker 2: think about it. It's probably just like a gene deep thing.
Speaker 2: But when you watch them do that stuff, it's the
Speaker 2: same thing like I talked about the turkeys, like, oh,
Speaker 2: they strut in a field, No, they strut right.
Speaker 3: There, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, you can see them anywhere at any given point. Maybe,
Speaker 2: But if you want consistency, which is what we're all
Speaker 2: looking for when we're scouting, we're not looking for a
Speaker 2: one off encounter. We're looking for high odds places. That
Speaker 2: stuff matters so much. And so yeah, like you said earlier,
Speaker 2: the advantage of bedding, you know, I mean, if there's
Speaker 2: a six foot rise and it's otherwise flat, that's a
Speaker 2: better spot for them to bed than almost anywhere else,
Speaker 2: just for that because if they can use the prevailing
Speaker 2: wind and they can use their eyes and they're just
Speaker 2: a little bit above everything else, that's a win. Like,
Speaker 2: and if they can travel in certain ways and use
Speaker 2: that stuff. The more that you figure that kind of
Speaker 2: stuff out, like, the more you figure out how they
Speaker 2: use the terrain that way, like, it just opens up
Speaker 2: a different world to you and you can take that.
Speaker 2: Like you said, you know, you go from Pennsylvania to Kansas,
Speaker 2: your scouting opportunities are so vastly different. But those little
Speaker 2: usages of the terrain, and you know, those deer that
Speaker 2: live in open country will teach you a lesson about
Speaker 2: how they use like a little fold in the terrain.
Speaker 2: I mean it. It is mind blowing when you hunt
Speaker 2: them in that open terrain, how easily they can dis
Speaker 2: or how many deer can hide from you where you're like,
Speaker 2: there's no way, like I would see every coyote out there,
Speaker 2: and then you figure it out and you go, man,
Speaker 2: there was there was a whole little herd of them
Speaker 2: in the same section as me that I had no
Speaker 2: idea to I walked over this little lip of a ridge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I want to You're hund percent right, man.
Speaker 3: And there's there's like an approach that I have like
Speaker 3: whenever i'm you know e scouting for Kansas that I
Speaker 3: kind of like, I don't want to say I developed it,
Speaker 3: actually I kind of I want to say I learned it,
Speaker 3: But I kind of was tipped off by just through
Speaker 3: a conversation with Eddie Claypoole. I know, you're good buddies
Speaker 3: with with Eddie. And but to go back to before
Speaker 3: I get to that, the one thing about terrain, Like,
Speaker 3: so when I'm talking thinking about that north piece, those
Speaker 3: small little kind of undulations or high spots, they become
Speaker 3: really really important, especially the spot that I'm gonna be
Speaker 3: spending a lot of time in this summer and then
Speaker 3: hunting this fall in and around those swamp ears, because
Speaker 3: that little three foot five foot rise that is the
Speaker 3: primo betting opportunity in those wet in those wet areas.
Speaker 3: And that's also in those areas where I'll find those
Speaker 3: land bridges that are kind of connecting two swamps sort
Speaker 3: of like the passageway between two swamps and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: and that's really the only high ground until you get
Speaker 3: out of the swamp, right, And so it's those things
Speaker 3: that kind of dictate the movement of the deer, dictate
Speaker 3: the betting opportunities and stuff like that. And so it's
Speaker 3: I start to try to focus on those things. The
Speaker 3: second part in that big woods piece that I started
Speaker 3: kind of focusing in on are almost like these big
Speaker 3: like what I'll call like just big drainages or big
Speaker 3: draws that are kind of cut into the side of
Speaker 3: the mountain where it probably has a stream runoff in
Speaker 3: it whenever there's a bunch of melt in the in
Speaker 3: the winter or whatever. What I've found is that I
Speaker 3: found a lot of trails and sign that are following
Speaker 3: following those drainages, almost up to the top of those drainages,
Speaker 3: and so I started kind of focusing in on those,
Speaker 3: and lo and behold, found a hammer scrape. Whenever I
Speaker 3: was there, like the Midish May hung a cell camera
Speaker 3: on it, and sure enough, a deer that had like
Speaker 3: popcan sized bases already and it was already split in
Speaker 3: a brow on like May eleventh, showed up on that scrape.
Speaker 3: So there were two things there. It was like that
Speaker 3: draw is kind of dictating the movement, right, and also
Speaker 3: a scrape there. Knowing that, okay, there's a there's a
Speaker 3: terrain feature there. It's also near a logging road like
Speaker 3: a bench that they're using, so there's two you know,
Speaker 3: avenues of travel and then deer using it during the
Speaker 3: summer consistently, and so I'm like, yachtzi, I'm like, that
Speaker 3: is a spot that I'll be spending time and it's
Speaker 3: a bitch to get into because you have to climb
Speaker 3: the side of a mountain, so the thermals are really
Speaker 3: kind of odd where you can really only get in
Speaker 3: the morning when your thermals are falling, and it's an
Speaker 3: all day hunt, Like, you can't really get into the
Speaker 3: afternoon to hunt it. It's got to be a morning
Speaker 3: sit in, an all day or a morning hunting you're
Speaker 3: out type of thing. But pivoting to the Kansas thing.
Speaker 3: The thing I started like, so I lived too far
Speaker 3: away from Kansas to drive there to scout during the summer.
Speaker 3: The first year we were fortunate my buddy Chat went
Speaker 3: out and actually turkey hunted the first year before we
Speaker 3: went there, and so we got a little bit of
Speaker 3: the lay of the land a little bit. But you know,
Speaker 3: what I really kind of have to rely on is
Speaker 3: just looking at maps over the course of the summer,
Speaker 3: and it's all walk in access. So it's not like,
Speaker 3: you know, I have like a big piece of private
Speaker 3: or a big chunk of public that I'm going to
Speaker 3: have fifty thousand acres to hunt. I'm going to be
Speaker 3: hopping pieces. So it's a lot of like looking at
Speaker 3: small parcels and stuff like that, and what I started
Speaker 3: doing was really kind of focusing on areas that have
Speaker 3: a drainage system that kind of runs through it. And
Speaker 3: what I kind of figured out was talking with Eddie
Speaker 3: the one time is we were kind of talking about it,
Speaker 3: and you know, Eddie's a little bit of a different
Speaker 3: animal where he goes out in like the middle of
Speaker 3: like a blue stem patch like field and it will
Speaker 3: sit up and like the only tree that's out there,
Speaker 3: and the deer wall just magnetically walk toward that tree, right.
Speaker 3: But I was asking him about Betted Bucks and he
Speaker 3: was like, well, he's like Betted Bucks, you know, you know,
Speaker 3: oftentimes during the rut, because he knew I was going
Speaker 3: out during the rut. He's like, you know, they'll cut
Speaker 3: these dose out and they'll take him to the heads
Speaker 3: of these drainages, you know what I mean. I was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: He's like, but it's not the main drainage. He's like,
Speaker 3: when you look at you get in there and you
Speaker 3: look at a drainage, He's like, there's drainages just have
Speaker 3: like these little offshoots like tributaries that are running off
Speaker 3: of them and stuff like that. He's like, it's you
Speaker 3: usually in one of those like secondary offshoots off the
Speaker 3: main drainage because they're usually the most brushy. He's like,
Speaker 3: and that's usually where they want to cut deer out too.
Speaker 3: I just kind of paused for a second, and I
Speaker 3: was like, shoot, I was like, that drainage is just
Speaker 3: an inverted ridge. I was like, and so those offshoots
Speaker 3: of those secondary kind of tributaries of that drainage is
Speaker 3: like our secondary ridges. He's like, well, by god, you're right,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like one of those things. I never
Speaker 3: thought of it that way, And so then all of
Speaker 3: a sudden it made sense to me on how to
Speaker 3: scout it and how to look at it, because it
Speaker 3: was just an upside down ridge and those you know,
Speaker 3: if you have a west wind that east side, you know,
Speaker 3: tributary off of that main drainage, that's your spot, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, Because that's the that's the place
Speaker 3: where they're going to have everything under under control. They're
Speaker 3: going to smell everything and able to see what they
Speaker 3: need to see. You got to backdoor it, but that's
Speaker 3: the area they're going to want to play. And so
Speaker 3: I've seen that kind of play out the path last
Speaker 3: year because I relied on that approach was just like scouting,
Speaker 3: you know, uh east scouting and kind of finding these
Speaker 3: drains and then heading to those drainages to the heads
Speaker 3: of those and kind of looking for those kind of
Speaker 3: like offshoots and then kind of setting up in those areas.
Speaker 3: And that's where I was having my encounters and where
Speaker 3: I was seeing, you know, and if I wasn't having
Speaker 3: the encounter, I was glassing the deer in those areas
Speaker 3: before I went in to actually make a move.
Speaker 2: When you when you're hunting them, are you sitting on the.
Speaker 3: Ground, Yeah, hundred percent on the ground for those no
Speaker 3: trees to get into. No, no, I mean there was
Speaker 3: one tree in this crick bottom. I was able to
Speaker 3: get into a thorny ass locust tree, and you know,
Speaker 3: I did that like one day, and I was like, yep,
Speaker 3: not doing that again. And but all my encounters have
Speaker 3: been on the ground. You know. It's like I've not
Speaker 3: had any good encounters with quality, you know, with good age,
Speaker 3: structured deer. I've had like the one day I was
Speaker 3: in a tree the first year I was there, and
Speaker 3: I had like a decent buck kind of like walk
Speaker 3: right underneath me. But like anything that I was willing
Speaker 3: to draw my bow back on have all been on
Speaker 3: the ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's an obvious reason for that, right.
Speaker 3: Like I was in spots. I was in spots. They're
Speaker 3: just hard to wiggle your way into, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. It was like, you know, and that's the
Speaker 3: name of the game out there, is like you try
Speaker 3: to find because you think it's all flat. But there's
Speaker 3: a lot more role to it than you think, you know,
Speaker 3: and so you really kind of have to examine, especially
Speaker 3: when you're doing all your es scouting, and kind of like
Speaker 3: be very mindful of like that little rise, that little
Speaker 3: role is a big deal when you get out there,
Speaker 3: Like I look at it, and if I have my
Speaker 3: pennsylvani your brain on, I overlook it.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: But I got to kind of shift my mindset when
Speaker 3: I start looking at that stuff. Over the summers, I'm
Speaker 3: getting ready to go out there, because there's like a
Speaker 3: lot of times I'll be like, I'm not dropping a
Speaker 3: pin there. Then I have to go, Hey, put your
Speaker 3: Kansas brain on. You need to drop a pin there.
Speaker 3: You need to probably walk that because that's probably a
Speaker 3: little bit more significant than you think it is, you know.
Speaker 3: And so that's really my approach for out.
Speaker 2: There, dude.
Speaker 3: That is a.
Speaker 2: Real common problem if you if you head to a
Speaker 2: state like Kansas and you haven't hunted that kind of
Speaker 2: terrain you know, I mean obviously not the whole states
Speaker 2: like that, but you look at it like eat scouting
Speaker 2: and you go, Okay, you know there's a drainage here
Speaker 2: or whatever, like I'll go glass that quick, and I'll
Speaker 2: check this spot out, and there's a few trees in
Speaker 2: the creek bottom here. And then you get out there
Speaker 2: and you see the scope of that terrain and it's
Speaker 2: it's big country where you know, those drainages are way
Speaker 2: bigger than you think, and yet you still have the
Speaker 2: opportunity to blow everything out so fast. So it's like
Speaker 2: a weird like you're right, you have to kind of
Speaker 2: reconfigure how you look at this stuff. It's not like
Speaker 2: you're walking into a section of timber and you're like,
Speaker 2: I'm going to find a concentration to sign and start hunting.
Speaker 2: It's a totally different animal. And I think it's so
Speaker 2: important to try to hunt different styles like that or
Speaker 2: different different terrain because it just teaches you, like what
Speaker 2: you think you know, you know, like you said when
Speaker 2: you when you look at that stuff on your EA scouting,
Speaker 2: you're like, ah, maybe maybe not. And then you go
Speaker 2: look at it in real life and you're like, man,
Speaker 2: I just dismissed the better part of half a section
Speaker 2: cause est scouting, it doesn't look like this stuff I
Speaker 2: typically eat scout. Then you get out there in the
Speaker 2: real world and you're like, you could tuck five thousand
Speaker 2: booners in there and not be able to see them
Speaker 2: from the road. You know, like it's a different thing.
Speaker 2: I love that kind of stuff because it just challenges
Speaker 2: you to, like your worldview changes a lot when you
Speaker 2: start getting into that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so whenever I'm in Kansas, you know, or a
Speaker 3: place that has that, you know, just flat terrain, you know,
Speaker 3: my focus really in E scouting and stuff is really
Speaker 3: primarily on figuring out how to try to find a
Speaker 3: spot to get into an area that I want to hunt,
Speaker 3: so I can actually glass and get a visual before
Speaker 3: I kind of trump into a place, you know, just
Speaker 3: because you don't know what's kind of you know, laying
Speaker 3: in the head of that draw or what's out in
Speaker 3: the CRPI field that you kind of need to make
Speaker 3: your way through whatever the case. Keeping the wind in
Speaker 3: your face is the easy part out there. The hard
Speaker 3: part is trying to get to a visual vantage point
Speaker 3: because everyone thinks it's flat, but it's not, you know.
Speaker 3: So it's trying to figure out how I'll get into
Speaker 3: a spot without blowing everything out so I can actually
Speaker 3: glass and get a visual on where I want to
Speaker 3: get to without alerting the deer that I'm trying to kill,
Speaker 3: that I'm that I'm there, you know. And so that
Speaker 3: to me is kind of the game within the game
Speaker 3: out there, so to speak, and really where a lot
Speaker 3: of my time is spent, you know, scouting well, and what.
Speaker 2: That makes me think of and a lot of the
Speaker 2: stuff you've said is we look at deer. Scouting is
Speaker 2: like I gotta find the deer. I gotta find my
Speaker 2: target buck, or I got to find a bachelor group,
Speaker 2: or I got to find a concentration of deer. But
Speaker 2: that's like foundational, Like that's like basics, Like sure, you
Speaker 2: want to know he lives there, he walked through there
Speaker 2: one time or whatever. But like figuring out how to
Speaker 2: hunt those spots is what scouting does for you. It's
Speaker 2: not just like, oh, I'm going to identify a target
Speaker 2: buck and give him a name good enough, Like no,
Speaker 2: And when you talk about this Kansas thing, finding where
Speaker 2: the deer should be is pretty easy, like you can
Speaker 2: you can e scout and look at it and go,
Speaker 2: you know, like there probably should be a concentration in
Speaker 2: this drainage and a concentration in that one. But figuring
Speaker 2: out out how to work against that disadvantage of you
Speaker 2: being so much more visible than they are, even though
Speaker 2: it's open country and theoretically you kind of should be
Speaker 2: on the same level, you're not, Like that's what the
Speaker 2: scouting like, that's what that's what you need to figure out,
Speaker 2: Like you need to figure out how to how to
Speaker 2: get in there without them seeing you, because their advantage
Speaker 2: there is so much greater. You know, it's different than
Speaker 2: when you're home at Pennsylvania and you're like I can
Speaker 2: walk through the woods and a lot of stuff's not
Speaker 2: going to be able to see me because I'm in
Speaker 2: the woods. Now, I got to figure out where are
Speaker 2: they going to go to find those or where are
Speaker 2: they going to go to get away from the rest
Speaker 2: of the pressure. Like that's a different game than scouting
Speaker 2: that Kansas ground, you know, like finding a buck there,
Speaker 2: and I think I think we've kind of done a
Speaker 2: disservice to the like hunting community by there's been a
Speaker 2: lot of hunting content that comes out of like spot
Speaker 2: in Stock Kansas Bucks and you're looking at guys finding
Speaker 2: a buck, getting in there and shooting in it's action
Speaker 2: packed and it looks amazing, but you're not looking at
Speaker 2: the days and days of glassing where they're just not
Speaker 2: on them, or they're seeing deer where they're like, there's
Speaker 2: a great buck, I have no chance of getting anywhere
Speaker 2: near him, and I got to go find something else.
Speaker 2: It is not It looks easy when it's distilled down
Speaker 2: to a YouTube video and that shit is tough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it was. It was eye opening for me, man,
Speaker 3: and it's maybe a better hunter, you know, because your
Speaker 3: earlier point. You know, we focus so much of the
Speaker 3: scouting on finding the deer where that's actually the easiest part.
Speaker 3: Like if you think about it, because they're laying down
Speaker 3: sign and they're telling you where they're at, they're telling
Speaker 3: you where they're spending time. They may not tell you
Speaker 3: exactly what time of year. That's like you have to
Speaker 3: do your due diligence. Maybe sit, hang some cameras, do
Speaker 3: some observation sits, you know, scout during the season, whatever
Speaker 3: the case is. But definding the deer part is the
Speaker 3: easy part. Figuring out how to like get in there
Speaker 3: with close enough to get them killed without them knowing
Speaker 3: that you're there, That's where the scouting actually takes place, right,
Speaker 3: because then it becomes that's really when you're battling your
Speaker 3: wits against the deer's wits. You know what I mean,
Speaker 3: Because I'm I think I know how you're using this area.
Speaker 3: I need to I need to kind of pull a
Speaker 3: fast one on you, make you think I'm not there
Speaker 3: while I'm there, you know, and try to use your
Speaker 3: senses against you to a degree, is what you're kind
Speaker 3: of doing. Right, and then so that's very much like
Speaker 3: a Pennsylvania or just like a timbered kind of approach. Right,
Speaker 3: you see the sign, do you know the deer's in
Speaker 3: the area. You figure out how you get your you
Speaker 3: know your access, et cetera, et cetera. When you're in Kansas,
Speaker 3: you know those flat areas, finding the deer's really easy.
Speaker 3: It might take some driving around, right, but you're just glassing,
Speaker 3: sitting behind your Bino's watching and you're finding where they're at,
Speaker 3: and then then becomes the chess match, right, especially if
Speaker 3: you're out there during the rut, might be a little bit.
Speaker 3: I might take your advice this year, I might go
Speaker 3: out in October. So we'll see, because you know, during
Speaker 3: the rut, it's like, so I found you didn't just
Speaker 3: find a buck. Most likely you likely found a buck
Speaker 3: in two or three dos that he's pushing around. If
Speaker 3: it's you know, a dominant buck, you'll might find some
Speaker 3: pecker heads running around by themselves or nudging a do around,
Speaker 3: you know, or run around like they're lost. But if
Speaker 3: it's a mature deer, at least what I've seen out there,
Speaker 3: they usually they're pushing two or three around because there's
Speaker 3: a small dog group that has a hot dough in
Speaker 3: and he's pushing them around, and eventually he's going to
Speaker 3: cut around, but he's just pushing the whole group around
Speaker 3: until it comes time. And now you're trying to beat him,
Speaker 3: which he's not as hard to beat because he's kind
Speaker 3: of an idiot. At that point, you know, it's still
Speaker 3: not easy. But then you've got his lady friend and
Speaker 3: whatever other lady friends that she might be hanging out
Speaker 3: with that you're having to beat at the same time,
Speaker 3: And that's where the game really kind of gets interesting.
Speaker 3: That's where you start to kind of how far can
Speaker 3: I push the envelope. You know, is rattling going to
Speaker 3: work to try to entice him, is decoy going to
Speaker 3: tick him off to get him to come in. That's
Speaker 3: when you have to start kind of reading the deer.
Speaker 3: So this is like the next level of scouting. It's
Speaker 3: not just find the deer. Okay, now I got in.
Speaker 3: The next step is I can't close the distance. How
Speaker 3: do how do I get him in range? Right? And
Speaker 3: so it's just I've fallen in love with it because
Speaker 3: there's so many layers to that game that you don't
Speaker 3: sometimes get to play in timbered areas.
Speaker 2: Man, you're you're so right on all this stuff. I
Speaker 2: want to back up a second and talk about the
Speaker 2: finding the deer thing that you went through just a
Speaker 2: little bit ago, because I think this is maybe the
Speaker 2: biggest disservice that widespread trail camera usage has given us,
Speaker 2: Like it is not that hard to get a picture
Speaker 2: of a good buck, Like I don't care where you live,
Speaker 2: where you hunt. If you got a little bit of
Speaker 2: you know, a little bit of horsepower between your ears.
Speaker 2: At some point in the summer or at some point
Speaker 2: in the fall, you can probably get a picture of
Speaker 2: a buck. Goot to make you real happy. You know.
Speaker 2: That might be a one to ten somewhere and it
Speaker 2: might be a one to seventy somewhere else, but you
Speaker 2: can do it. And we've kind of convinced ourselves that
Speaker 2: that's good enough, Like that's you know, we've got it
Speaker 2: figured out then, And it doesn't mean anything until you
Speaker 2: scout enough to figure out how to hunt them. Like
Speaker 2: it doesn't you know, it's the same thing like you
Speaker 2: said about you know, if you're out in Kansas and
Speaker 2: you glass up one hundred and sixty incher out there
Speaker 2: in the pasture, great, like what's next? Like that's awesome,
Speaker 2: it's fun, But what's next? I mean what it reminds
Speaker 2: me of God? You know, like for a long time
Speaker 2: in the in the Turkey hunting world, you'd hear people
Speaker 2: say like, oh, roosted, like roosted is roasted, and then
Speaker 2: it kind of changes like roosted isn't necessarily roasted anymore.
Speaker 2: It's like because it doesn't take that long for you
Speaker 2: go out there and you have that bird gobbling his
Speaker 2: ass off one hundred yards away and you don't kill him,
Speaker 2: and then it happens again and he doesn't fly down
Speaker 2: on your decoach, and you go, okay, this is this
Speaker 2: is not enough, Like there wasn't enough to my setup,
Speaker 2: or you know, like your your example with a buck
Speaker 2: with a couple of dos, like you're competing with a
Speaker 2: bird that has a couple of hens with him. Now
Speaker 2: it's a different story. Like so much of this stuff,
Speaker 2: we go good enough. I figured I found the scrape,
Speaker 2: I found fence crossing. They like I got a picture
Speaker 2: of three big ones on this trail in August. It's over.
Speaker 2: It's like no, like that's the start. And I'm continually
Speaker 2: reminded of that when I talk to guys like you
Speaker 2: and Andy May and some of these people who are
Speaker 2: real obsessed with scouting, because it's not you know, like
Speaker 2: it's it's always starts with I found this then, like
Speaker 2: I found him then, or I found this spot then,
Speaker 2: and then it goes into this long process, like maybe
Speaker 2: a multi year process of like now I gotta figure
Speaker 2: out how to hunt it, or somebody will be like,
Speaker 2: you know, you drew your Kansas tag and you're like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, this world of hunting, these planes, you're
Speaker 2: so vastly different, Like it started there, like now all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, this journey to scout started with just
Speaker 2: getting that tag or like walking into the big woods
Speaker 2: when you're used to hunting you know, egg country and
Speaker 2: going holy shit, like I have a new world. But
Speaker 2: it's not, it's not. It doesn't hinge on just finding
Speaker 2: the deer and done. Like there's that. That's just like
Speaker 2: the you're opening the door, like you were standing on
Speaker 2: the porch, you knock, they let you in, and now
Speaker 2: you got to go like it's totally different.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's interesting because I've kind of
Speaker 3: done myself a disservice. Well, first I want to say,
Speaker 3: you know, for people listening, like, I'm not one of
Speaker 3: these guys who's it's like not one hundred and seventy
Speaker 3: inch deer or a bus, right, it's whatever's going to get
Speaker 3: me excited. You know, I'm not I'm not necessarily I
Speaker 3: like big deer, don't get me wrong, but I'm not
Speaker 3: into the you know the quote unquote horn porn. You
Speaker 3: know that's not my that's not my game. You know,
Speaker 3: if a good one hundred and thirty plus inch deer
Speaker 3: walks by me, you know out in Kansas, you know,
Speaker 3: I get a crack at him. You know, awesome, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna you know, I'm going to take a shot. But
Speaker 3: you know what you were kind of saying around the
Speaker 3: game just kind of beginning, like I've kind of started
Speaker 3: my game almost completely over whe where I kind of
Speaker 3: tacked a big woods piece and I started going to
Speaker 3: Kansas at the same time. So it was two brand
Speaker 3: new kind of areas, you know, where I was like,
Speaker 3: I went into those seasons knowing that like it's going
Speaker 3: to be a while, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 3: if I really want to consistently be able to hunt
Speaker 3: this big woods piece, I I got to be committed
Speaker 3: to it, and I just got to spend my time
Speaker 3: here and know that it's probably going to be a
Speaker 3: couple of season endeavor before it happens. And then the
Speaker 3: Kansas piece was a big slice of humble pie because
Speaker 3: you know, I'd been to the Iowa and Ohio and
Speaker 3: I've killed deer in those areas. I have, you know,
Speaker 3: more target rich environment more so than PA and stuff
Speaker 3: like that, and so I was like, Kansas, you know,
Speaker 3: we should get it, should get it done. And this
Speaker 3: would be my third year back and I've had three
Speaker 3: deer that I've been either at full draw on or
Speaker 3: within you know, fifteen yards under that the smallest one
Speaker 3: was like mid one forties. And being fifteen yards or
Speaker 3: closer to a caliber or that deer on the ground
Speaker 3: and just not being able to get an arrow in
Speaker 3: him has just been extremely humbling, you know, because it's
Speaker 3: just it's one of those things where, you know, the
Speaker 3: first year out there, like I was playing it all wrong,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, Like I was just I
Speaker 3: was just like one of those It was like I
Speaker 3: turned twenty one and someone took me the Strip club
Speaker 3: for the first time, got a water ones and I'm like,
Speaker 3: what's up? You know, that was how I was doing it,
Speaker 3: you know, And I blew a bunch of hunts, and
Speaker 3: you know, the last day of that hunt, actually had
Speaker 3: a really good deer, you know, probably borderline hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty inch deer, and he got within fifteen yards and
Speaker 3: he caught my thermal, you know, and I was hung
Speaker 3: out the dry in the middle of nothing. And then
Speaker 3: last year, you know, I had one it was you
Speaker 3: know one forties, you know, clean eight awesome deer. It
Speaker 3: was a hunt on a whim at the head of
Speaker 3: a draw, like right, working the wind correctly, and I
Speaker 3: clipped a small branch. When I went to draw back,
Speaker 3: my arrow hit a small twig and that was in
Speaker 3: front of me, and it bounced. The arrow bounced off
Speaker 3: off my off my rest, and he heard it and
Speaker 3: snapped his head around and he was gone. You know,
Speaker 3: I was at full drawing that deer. I've never wanted
Speaker 3: to throw a bow so bad in my life like
Speaker 3: that one almost went for a ride, like I was
Speaker 3: so mad. And then so this is where like the
Speaker 3: game comes in. So so I started learning. I started
Speaker 3: being more patient. That's why I had that really good
Speaker 3: encounter there. And then the first day that was there,
Speaker 3: I just glassed the whole first day I was there,
Speaker 3: and I kind of started figuring out how they were
Speaker 3: using the head of this one draw. And I saw
Speaker 3: the second day when I was taught. You know, I
Speaker 3: walked in during a little bit of daylight and I
Speaker 3: ended up glassing from about two hundred yards away from
Speaker 3: me up the CRP toward the head of that draw.
Speaker 3: Like the reason why you go to Kansas, like I
Speaker 3: ended up seeing him, you know, I ended up being
Speaker 3: close enough to him. He was one hundred and sixty
Speaker 3: plus audiench like mainframe ten, you know, junk Oliver's bases
Speaker 3: like awesome deer. And so I saw him, and from
Speaker 3: the previous year and watching him with those doughs, I
Speaker 3: knew that he was going to cut that dough out
Speaker 3: and he was going to go a breeder and I
Speaker 3: probably wasn't going to see him for like three to
Speaker 3: five days roughly, right, depending on like how close she
Speaker 3: was to being bred. He was gonna lock down with
Speaker 3: her for three and that was you know, and then
Speaker 3: he'll be back. And so I ended up hunting a
Speaker 3: bunch of other areas because I didn't get a shot
Speaker 3: at him. I got about as close as seventy five
Speaker 3: yards and couldn't rattle him in and he walked off
Speaker 3: with her and I didn't see him again. I kept
Speaker 3: an eye on that draw every day. I would kind
Speaker 3: of check it. We didn't see him, and I was
Speaker 3: like the last day of the hunt, I was like,
Speaker 3: this will be the day he should come off that
Speaker 3: dough and so I just played it patient. I didn't
Speaker 3: bust up that draw. I didn't mess with it. I
Speaker 3: glassed it, just kept tabs on those deer hunted some
Speaker 3: other spots. The last day, I went up to the
Speaker 3: head of that draw. Stayed inside the draw because it
Speaker 3: was the last day I was going to be there,
Speaker 3: so I didn't care if my scent was on that
Speaker 3: draw anymore. Walked up the head of that draw, went
Speaker 3: to a tree that I'd picked out, this locust tree
Speaker 3: that he was kind of when I'd seen him previously.
Speaker 3: He walked in from it. When I glassed other deer,
Speaker 3: they were always walking in front of this one tree.
Speaker 3: So I'm using other deer to tell me what deer
Speaker 3: want to do in that spot, not necessarily just him.
Speaker 3: This is again where the scouting part comes in, right.
Speaker 3: It's like you're just trying to take the pieces that
Speaker 3: you can find. And I walked to that tree, walked
Speaker 3: up out of the draw, and there was a deer
Speaker 3: grunting to my right, and there was deer grunt on
Speaker 3: my left, and there was enough like moonlight just starting
Speaker 3: to get a little bit daylight where I could start
Speaker 3: to see a little bit, and I saw deer out
Speaker 3: in front of me, and net net was. There was
Speaker 3: a buck to my right that was grunting. There was
Speaker 3: a dough in front of me, and then there was
Speaker 3: the deer that I was after that was with her,
Speaker 3: and he was standing right behind the tree I was
Speaker 3: trying to get to. He's at thirty yards and I
Speaker 3: can see his frame, and I'm just like, you gotta
Speaker 3: be kidding me. What are the chances we both show
Speaker 3: up the same spot at the same time, right, I
Speaker 3: don't have enough shooting light. I tried to wait him out.
Speaker 3: He was kind of prancing around, getting nervous because that
Speaker 3: other buck was grunting, and I have no I never
Speaker 3: saw that buck. I just heard him grunting. And so
Speaker 3: I think he thought I was a deer cause I
Speaker 3: had the back. I had the back like the darkness
Speaker 3: of the draw behind me, and he had like the
Speaker 3: skylight behind him, so I could see him. He couldn't
Speaker 3: see me, and my wind was in my favorite So
Speaker 3: I think he thought I was a deer. So I
Speaker 3: started grunting, grabbed my grunt call and shuffle on my
Speaker 3: feet and got behind a tree, Harlily brown Christmas tree,
Speaker 3: and I made it to the hat and I got
Speaker 3: k nelt down and got an arrow knocked, and I
Speaker 3: was like, if I can just get like another five
Speaker 3: minutes a day light, and if I can get him
Speaker 3: to step in front of where I knew these saplings were,
Speaker 3: I was like, then I have a shot, and so
Speaker 3: I got the five minutes that I needed. He snort,
Speaker 3: We used at me. He still thought I was a buck.
Speaker 3: I snort, We used back at him. He postured up,
Speaker 3: started walking toward me, and he walked right to the
Speaker 3: edge of where those sappings where I just stood. There
Speaker 3: he was at like twenty yards and I just I
Speaker 3: just did not have enough light to get a clear pin,
Speaker 3: to be able to to one have a clear pin,
Speaker 3: and two be able to see exactly where those sapplings
Speaker 3: were at. So I didn't like clip one and have
Speaker 3: a deflected arrow hit him and have a bad situation.
Speaker 3: So I ended up just watching him walk out of
Speaker 3: my life. But that's you know, that's you know, that's
Speaker 3: the humbling kind of nature of hunting somewhere like that
Speaker 3: and talking about like the game just starts when you
Speaker 3: find them, it's the scouting you have to do in
Speaker 3: between to figure out how you're going to put yourself
Speaker 3: with like in their world, right, it's not just being
Speaker 3: it's not like it's not being in there on their planet,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, Like I want to be
Speaker 3: in his house, you know. And so that's that's where
Speaker 3: the game really kind of comes into play. And then
Speaker 3: when I left that night, was the last night in
Speaker 3: Kansas and driving out, and I saw him in my
Speaker 3: headlights and he's running beside my truck full Kansas gallop
Speaker 3: through a cut corn field, chasing a dough right beside me.
Speaker 3: I just see like all these antlers. And that was
Speaker 3: when I got the best look at him, because I
Speaker 3: was like right on top of him. I was like,
Speaker 3: you kind of freaking kidding me.
Speaker 2: You bring up a point we don't we don't talk
Speaker 2: about very often. Like I wrote an article last month
Speaker 2: and for Meat Eater, and I've been I've been pounding
Speaker 2: this drum pretty hard about finding another place to hunt.
Speaker 2: And so you know, what you're talking about is something
Speaker 2: not everybody can do, right, Like, not everybody's gonna leave
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania and go hunt Kansas. Like a lot of people
Speaker 2: are staying home, right, And the goal that we've been
Speaker 2: shown in white tail hunting for so long is get
Speaker 2: a spot you can manage and make it so you
Speaker 2: don't have to scout anymore. They're gonna come to the
Speaker 2: food plot, they're gonna go through certain you know, terrain
Speaker 2: traps or whatever. Run some cameras keep tabs on them.
Speaker 2: But you don't have to scout anymore. But you don't
Speaker 2: necessarily get a lot better without getting your ass kick.
Speaker 2: Like when you're talking about your first time in Kansas
Speaker 2: and you're doing everything wrong. That's like a powerful motivator
Speaker 2: to figure new stuff out that you can bring home
Speaker 2: with you and you don't need to travel seventeen states
Speaker 2: away to do it. Like I I think one of
Speaker 2: the biggest problems people have with white tails is we
Speaker 2: limit ourselves to our spot. Like I hunt this place,
Speaker 2: this farm or whatever, and it's like great, you know,
Speaker 2: like that's that's great.
Speaker 3: But.
Speaker 2: Like how are you limiting yourself? Like are you limiting
Speaker 2: yourself on opportunities? If you have like the forty acres
Speaker 2: you hunt and there's ten thousand acres of public land
Speaker 2: down the road, like you could probably level up your
Speaker 2: game a lot, scouting wise and hunting wise by by
Speaker 2: putting yourself in that position where you're like, I don't
Speaker 2: know what's going on here and I have to figure
Speaker 2: it out. I think that's like the one of the things.
Speaker 2: You know, you hear a lot of like negativity out
Speaker 2: there on people in the hunting industry and being like, oh,
Speaker 2: they're ruining everything, and I'm like, what you know, that's
Speaker 2: a different topic. But I also look at it and
Speaker 2: I go, these are some of the best hunters you're
Speaker 2: ever gonna meet in your life because they're going to
Speaker 2: places all the time where they have no history, where
Speaker 2: they have to scout on the fly, or they have
Speaker 2: to really bring up their scouting game and figure it out.
Speaker 2: And we can all do that on some level. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you might not be able to go hunt seven states
Speaker 2: a year like most people can't, but you might be
Speaker 2: able to find a place an hour down the road.
Speaker 2: Or maybe you live in you know, southern Michigan and
Speaker 2: you could hunt northern Michigan. You know, like maybe you
Speaker 2: could do something that's still on your resident tag but
Speaker 2: forces you to go I'm not just gonna go sit
Speaker 2: on the same cornfields. I'm not gonna go sit on
Speaker 2: the same ponds, Like I'm gonna go scout and figure
Speaker 2: this stuff out. Because when you start challenging yourself that way. Man,
Speaker 2: things change, and like you get your ass kicked a lot,
Speaker 2: but you're getting better while you're doing it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to me, as odd as it might sound, getting
Speaker 3: my own handed to me is part of what I
Speaker 3: like about some of these trips and hunting in these
Speaker 3: different different areas. You know, to your point, man, like
Speaker 3: you don't need to travel three six five however many
Speaker 3: states states away, you know, just finding a pocket of
Speaker 3: your your home state that just offers a different a
Speaker 3: different scenario you know, is often enough, you know, Like
Speaker 3: for me, I look forward, like even like locally, I
Speaker 3: don't hunt the same spots over and over again. Like
Speaker 3: I can only think of one two spots all of
Speaker 3: last season locally that I've hunted in the past, Like
Speaker 3: every other spot that I hunted last year was was
Speaker 3: was a fresh sit, was new, like I'd never I'd
Speaker 3: scouted it, I'd hung a camera, check cameras in the summer,
Speaker 3: scouted in the summer a little bit, and then just
Speaker 3: went in and hunted, right. And that's just kind of
Speaker 3: what I like to do. I want to fill this
Speaker 3: freaking Kansas tag this year because I want to go
Speaker 3: to a different state and I'm determined to fill the
Speaker 3: tag before I there, fill a Kansas tag before I
Speaker 3: venture off to another state because I've never been to Nebraska.
Speaker 3: I wanted to go to I want to go to Nebraska.
Speaker 3: I've never been to Oklahoma. I want to go to Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: I've never been to Minnesota. I want to go to Minnesota.
Speaker 3: I've never been to Wisconsin. Want to go there, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. So it's I just like to
Speaker 3: I just like to experience brand new stuff. And for me,
Speaker 3: you know, going back to what we said earlier, you know,
Speaker 3: adaptability being your best ability. I just always want to
Speaker 3: kind of keep that at the forefront and force myself
Speaker 3: to continue to adapt because whenever I'm incomfortable is it
Speaker 3: makes that willingness to be uncomfortable and have to adapt
Speaker 3: makes the game a little easier in some of those
Speaker 3: spots that I have familiarity with, you know. And that's
Speaker 3: why I think, you know, there's a time and place
Speaker 3: for everything, you know, whether it's food, plot building, you know,
Speaker 3: smarter mouse trap, and I think that for people who
Speaker 3: have access to that, I think that's great. I think
Speaker 3: that's a great way to kind of start to understand
Speaker 3: what deer like to do because you maybe see deer
Speaker 3: more often, right, because I know you and I've talked
Speaker 3: about like you've got to be around deer to learn deer. Right,
Speaker 3: So if you have a hard time finding deer and
Speaker 3: you have a situation like that where you can just
Speaker 3: be around deer and observe and walk, like that's a
Speaker 3: great way to kind of cut your teeth and then
Speaker 3: take it into like you know, a piece of big
Speaker 3: woods or like the piece of public land it's close
Speaker 3: to your home or whatever, and then start to see
Speaker 3: how some of what you knew starts to fall apart,
Speaker 3: maybe just a little bit, and then what parts you
Speaker 3: have to kind of like sharpen because there were skills
Speaker 3: that you had, but they weren't quite where they needed
Speaker 3: to be, honestly, to kill a deer that everyone else
Speaker 3: has access to or that's not set up for you
Speaker 3: to to put them in a certain spot where they're
Speaker 3: doing exactly what they want to do and you're on
Speaker 3: their terms, you know. And so I think there's a
Speaker 3: time and place for stuff, But I one hundred percent
Speaker 3: agree with you. Man. It's like when you force yourself
Speaker 3: to go do unfamiliar stuff, you have no choice, but
Speaker 3: to get better. Like that's when you're uncomfortable, you're growing.
Speaker 3: If you're not, if you're if you're not, if you're comfortable,
Speaker 3: then you're then you're then you're not progressing. It's kind
Speaker 3: of like the old saying.
Speaker 2: Oh man, and what you find out when you do that.
Speaker 2: And I don't care if you are traveling seven states
Speaker 2: away or you're hunting something you know, a farmed on
Speaker 2: the road you've never hunted before. You start to, like
Speaker 2: you said, you start to realize the things that you
Speaker 2: believed are bullshit, And man, I you know your your
Speaker 2: obsession is getting that Kansas tag out of the way
Speaker 2: and moving on to another state. I'm I really got
Speaker 2: sucked into this this western Minnesota thing. So I hunted
Speaker 2: there last year for a few days during the rut,
Speaker 2: got my ass handed to me, saw a few doughs,
Speaker 2: couldn't even get a four ky near me, Like really
Speaker 2: really got rouffed up by it. But I'm like I'm
Speaker 2: around them. And then I went back and pheasant hunted
Speaker 2: a whole bunch again, which is the reason I wanted
Speaker 2: to hunt there. And I'm pheasant hunting properties that I
Speaker 2: deer hunted, and I'm jumping bucks, and it's pissing me
Speaker 2: off because I'm seeing good deer right where I was hunting,
Speaker 2: and I go, people have told me my whole life
Speaker 2: it's not worth deer hunting here, And then I go
Speaker 2: pheasant hunt there, and I'm seeing good deer consistently. Then
Speaker 2: I go deer hunt there, and I get my ass kicked,
Speaker 2: and so I go. The disconnect here is not that
Speaker 2: there aren't good deer to hunt, or enough deer to hunt,
Speaker 2: or whatever, enough public land to hunt. It's it's all there.
Speaker 2: All of that is available. The disconnect was it's just
Speaker 2: really hard, and so it's easier to say it's not
Speaker 2: worth it than to actually go try to figure it out.
Speaker 2: But once you kind of get your like your claws
Speaker 2: stuck into something like that, it's hard to not want
Speaker 2: to get better. And you know, because I think, and
Speaker 2: this is not everybody, Like I have buddies who they're
Speaker 2: like wired so vastly different from me. For deer, like,
Speaker 2: they want a very consistent, pretty easy place to hunt,
Speaker 2: and that's like good for them. It's like they're working
Speaker 2: hard in their life and they want to go sit
Speaker 2: in a tree stand where they know if they put
Speaker 2: in their time, he's coming by. But for a lot
Speaker 2: of people, I think, you know, especially if you know,
Speaker 2: if you're listening to this podcast or reading our articles
Speaker 2: or whatever, you're you're looking to level up, like you're
Speaker 2: looking to get this stuff figured out, and man, hunting
Speaker 2: a new place is one way to get you to
Speaker 2: re frame your entire thought process on white tails and
Speaker 2: kind of kind of get rid of that stuff that
Speaker 2: you believe that just isn't true and start figuring out
Speaker 2: what is true. And like that process doesn't end, like
Speaker 2: you start getting hooked on it and you're like, I
Speaker 2: want this more, and it just not only does it
Speaker 2: help you become a better dear killer, it just makes
Speaker 2: deer hunting more enjoyable, like you're just problem solving.
Speaker 3: It's and for me too, in like a weird way,
Speaker 3: it like whenever that when I have that type of experience,
Speaker 3: I just feel way more connected to the to the moment.
Speaker 3: I'm able to stay present more, if that makes sense,
Speaker 3: And like that's been like kind of a mantra for
Speaker 3: me this year is like you know, trying to be
Speaker 3: you know, more more present just in just in general,
Speaker 3: like in my day to day life and hunting being aware,
Speaker 3: you know, of my body's capabilities, you know my capabilities
Speaker 3: you know, as a as a human, as a hunter.
Speaker 3: And I was just I kind of kind of I
Speaker 3: don't want to say long. It seems like a weird
Speaker 3: dramatic word, but like I do long for that like
Speaker 3: like primal connection. And to me, like whenever I go
Speaker 3: out and I get lost in these places and I
Speaker 3: have to kind of figure it out, like that's when
Speaker 3: I feel connected, as weird as that might sound, like
Speaker 3: knowing jack shit, is when I feel most connected, you know,
Speaker 3: and so much so that like I've toyed around with
Speaker 3: the idea of like switching to a trad bow just
Speaker 3: for the sole purpose of it being more primitive and
Speaker 3: being more connected, and it becomes part of me and
Speaker 3: it's not there's not really anything mechanical, and there's nothing
Speaker 3: wrong with I shoot a normal, you know, vertical bow.
Speaker 3: You know it's and I'm not poo pooing that because
Speaker 3: you know, it's hard enough to try to do it
Speaker 3: with that. But like I'm yearning this, like this like
Speaker 3: primal connectivity that I seem to get whenever I'm in
Speaker 3: places like Kansas and I feel like I'm out of
Speaker 3: my element a little bit and I'm on the ground,
Speaker 3: you know. And that's the other part that I love
Speaker 3: about when you go to these different places, they call
Speaker 3: for different tactics. You know. Kansas was a big switch
Speaker 3: me because like I really never hunted off on the
Speaker 3: ground much at all, you know, except whenever i'd hunt
Speaker 3: like elk or mule deer or whatever. And so it
Speaker 3: made me get proficient at being able to be on
Speaker 3: the ground and hunt, you know. And so now it's
Speaker 3: like I don't shy away from those ground setups when
Speaker 3: I'm in Pennsylvania. You know. It's like if there's a
Speaker 3: good spot and nobody can get to it and there's
Speaker 3: no trees, I'm like, hmm, this seems like a pretty
Speaker 3: good spot, right, Like, shouldn't be a lot of pressure
Speaker 3: in here. And so it makes you kind of you know,
Speaker 3: basketball players would say, like, you know, makes you, you know,
Speaker 3: get a bigger bag. You know. It's like you got
Speaker 3: a lot more handle, you know what I mean, so
Speaker 3: to speak right, you know. And so that's the other
Speaker 3: thing that I think it does not just from like
Speaker 3: an academic kind of like mental how you process this stuff,
Speaker 3: because it's new standpoint, but you start adding things to
Speaker 3: your arsenal because if not, that hunt is going to
Speaker 3: be really long and hard, you know, until you start
Speaker 3: to try some of that stuff, and then you know
Speaker 3: the other part for me is just it is just
Speaker 3: the connection to the to the challenge, you know, and
Speaker 3: the personal connection to it. And it seems like the
Speaker 3: longer I go, the harder I want to make it,
Speaker 3: because that's whenever I feel most connected and I feel
Speaker 3: most present. Is whatever. Do you ever notice how when
Speaker 3: you're doing something really hard, like you become a laser
Speaker 3: focused like where you almost don't hear other stuff outside
Speaker 3: of you, you know what I mean. And when something's
Speaker 3: really easy or comes naturally right, you start to get
Speaker 3: distracted by by things right. And I think that's the
Speaker 3: one thing that I've really kind of come to understand
Speaker 3: and try to implement through like you knowing jiu jitsu,
Speaker 3: is that idea of like, when something is really really
Speaker 3: tough and I have to really try, man, my focus
Speaker 3: is laser sharp, and whenever it's not and something's easy,
Speaker 3: I don't perform as well, you know. So I meet
Speaker 3: the challenge and then I will perform down to my
Speaker 3: to my opponent. If you will right. My best roles
Speaker 3: in the gym are always against guys who are way
Speaker 3: better than me. Not a surprise because I'm trying to
Speaker 3: keep up right. Same thing with deer hunting. It's like
Speaker 3: if I'm at some place it's lazy, you know, just
Speaker 3: say at home, I'm a worse deer hunter at home
Speaker 3: than I am on the road. One hundred oh, man,
Speaker 3: that is.
Speaker 2: That is something you learn so fast when you travel
Speaker 2: to hunt, is how much you phone it in when
Speaker 2: you're at a place you you think, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's it's crazy and you like you mentioned, you know,
Speaker 2: kicking around the idea hunting with a trad bow and
Speaker 2: you know hunting, you know, going to Kansas and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, I got to sit on the ground.
Speaker 2: All of a sudden, I'm gonna I'm gonna decoy when
Speaker 2: you you might never pick up a decoy in the
Speaker 2: big woods of Pennsylvania right like it. Also, you're out
Speaker 2: of your comfort zone. You're doing things different. I I
Speaker 2: hunted for a few years with a trad bow back
Speaker 2: when I was in my twenties. And I'll tell you what, man,
Speaker 2: when you hear people talk about it and they go, well,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not shooting a bowl with training wheels
Speaker 2: on it, like you always think. It's just tied to
Speaker 2: like the distance that you can be accurate, right, That's
Speaker 2: part of it, you know, Like when you when you've
Speaker 2: got to recurver a long bow up there, You're like,
Speaker 2: I want him at fifteen yards quartered away, and I
Speaker 2: want I want that dream me shot, you know, like
Speaker 2: you're not sitting on the edge of a bean field,
Speaker 2: range in it and go, Well, if he comes through
Speaker 2: that row, he's thirty five yards, I'll dial into that
Speaker 2: and shoot him. It's a different thing that way. But
Speaker 2: what really messed me up, or at least forced me
Speaker 2: to rethink my setups was if you've got a re
Speaker 2: curve and it's you know, fifty five inches tip to
Speaker 2: tip or sixty inches whatever it is, that shot that
Speaker 2: you would take behind the tree with a compound, you
Speaker 2: don't have it. You can't get around there, or you know,
Speaker 2: it depends how you hold. I can't. I can't my bow,
Speaker 2: so I take up a lot of space. I'm not
Speaker 2: shooting straight up and down or just like when you're
Speaker 2: on the ground, like oh, you're gonna go get in
Speaker 2: a ground blind and do this now? Good luck? Right,
Speaker 2: can't do it? You just have to think, like, now,
Speaker 2: how do I structure my setup so not only is
Speaker 2: he going to be there at that range, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: actually be able to draw on him and shoot him.
Speaker 2: It's a different thing, and it I mean, I still
Speaker 2: I haven't done it in a long time. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: go back eventually, probably when my job isn't tied to
Speaker 2: killing stuff. But it forced me to look at everything differently,
Speaker 2: and I didn't think it would. I've kind of seen
Speaker 2: the same thing taking my daughters when they cross bow hunt.
Speaker 2: I'm like, it's such an advantage that now it sort
Speaker 2: of takes away like three layers of difficulty. Would you
Speaker 2: don't have to worry about drawing? Okay, Like you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. So that goes a different way, but
Speaker 2: all of it forces you to think, like, man, you
Speaker 2: know what, I was comfortable with one little variation and
Speaker 2: weapon or one little variation in like hunting styles. Now
Speaker 2: you've got a problem. You've got a problem solve in
Speaker 2: a totally different way, and it, like you said, it
Speaker 2: brings you into the moment. And I man, I think
Speaker 2: that stuff's important.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent is man, and it's like, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's you know, getting older or
Speaker 3: whatever it is, but you know, the longer I do this,
Speaker 3: and and maybe for me too, like this year, you know,
Speaker 3: I kind of had a focus of some other stuff
Speaker 3: that I was, you know, focusing on trying to trying
Speaker 3: to get better at, and I think it allowed me
Speaker 3: to kind of look at hunting a little bit differently.
Speaker 3: I think for a while I was getting wrapped up.
Speaker 3: You know, it was all consuming. And I'm not saying
Speaker 3: it like that. You know, you shouldn't be dedicated and
Speaker 3: passionate about it because I love I love bow hunting, right,
Speaker 3: but there's also a part of like you sometimes need
Speaker 3: things that pull you away slightly that way whenever you
Speaker 3: get in it, that the passion and everything is there,
Speaker 3: right because you and I've talked about this, like there's
Speaker 3: parts of this that suck, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: there's parts of this that are a grind, right, And
Speaker 3: to pretend that it's all rainbows and unicorns and stuff
Speaker 3: like that, it just is a is a false narrative.
Speaker 3: And I was finding myself there where I was like,
Speaker 3: I love this stuff, but like it's starting to wear
Speaker 3: on me a little bit because I do like hard hunts,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. I do like the challenging stuff,
Speaker 3: and that's the part that I love. But you know,
Speaker 3: there's a part of me that's like I'm like, okay,
Speaker 3: this is this is getting brutal, you know what I mean. Like,
Speaker 3: and so I had to kind of you know, you know,
Speaker 3: I've talked like I started training a lot of jiu
Speaker 3: jitsu and that's the thing that kind of took me
Speaker 3: away from it, not away from it, but allowed me
Speaker 3: to kind of divert my attention to where it's like
Speaker 3: I wasn't so obsessed, and that distance actually gave me
Speaker 3: more clarity, you know. And like you'll hear a lot
Speaker 3: about this type of stuff and like leadership stuff, and
Speaker 3: it applies whenever you're talking about deer hunting. It's like
Speaker 3: whenever things are kind of getting rough or whatever, it's
Speaker 3: like you need to detach and assess, right, you need
Speaker 3: to be able to step back from yourself and almost
Speaker 3: look at yourself as though you're like a ghost, you know,
Speaker 3: and go like what's going on here? Like what part
Speaker 3: of this is the part that you don't get joy
Speaker 3: out of any longer right, and then define what that is.
Speaker 3: Not saying that there was loss of joy in in
Speaker 3: deer hunting or whatever, but like what aspects were starting
Speaker 3: to grind on me, you know what I mean to
Speaker 3: make me, you know, not love it as much as
Speaker 3: I maybe did three years ago. And it was that
Speaker 3: assessment where I was like, Okay, cool, let's just cut
Speaker 3: that shit out and awesome, and now it's gone, you know.
Speaker 3: And the part that I cut out was it was
Speaker 3: actually a personal thing where I felt compelled that I
Speaker 3: needed to be always doing something for it, otherwise I
Speaker 3: was slacking, right, And it was that idea that and
Speaker 3: then I what I realized was was that I was
Speaker 3: doing that because I felt like these external pressures of like,
Speaker 3: you know, whether it was because I have a hunting
Speaker 3: podcast or whatever the case, I don't know exactly where
Speaker 3: they came from. But I was like, that's just no
Speaker 3: one's expecting me to do that. I'm doing that to myself.
Speaker 3: And so once I removed that, you know, and was like,
Speaker 3: I'll do this whenever I on my time, when I
Speaker 3: feel like it, and whenever I want to do it,
Speaker 3: as opposed to whenever I feel obligated to do it,
Speaker 3: you know, And that was really what And so it
Speaker 3: wasn't like I spent any less time doing it or
Speaker 3: thinking about it. It's just like I allowed myself to
Speaker 3: be free to do it whenever the mood struck, and
Speaker 3: it brought the joy back to it again, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean. And so for me, that was like the
Speaker 3: idea of like the trad bow and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: because I was like, you know, I don't care if
Speaker 3: someone thinks that, you know, I'm killing something smaller than
Speaker 3: I should because I'm using a trad bow, or I
Speaker 3: blew an opportunity because I'm using a trad bow. It's
Speaker 3: like I want the experience, don't care what the other
Speaker 3: person thinks, you know what I mean. It's like and
Speaker 3: and so and that was kind of like, you know,
Speaker 3: it was good for me, like to kind of detach
Speaker 3: train jiu jitsu. That's also mental shift too, that really helps.
Speaker 3: And now it's like I'm like I was sending you
Speaker 3: dear pictures man, It's like I'm geeked.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: It's like like this season I'm like super pumped for.
Speaker 3: Like I'm just like probably more excited for this upcoming
Speaker 3: season than I've been probably in the past two.
Speaker 2: Dude, I love that. And I think you know when
Speaker 2: you talk about you when you start to feel that
Speaker 2: this stuff sucks and it starts to be not fun.
Speaker 2: I mean, And if you're listening to this and you
Speaker 2: haven't hit that stage yet, just wait, it's coming. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just sitting right up over the hill waiting for
Speaker 2: you to walk over. Man, it's coming. And for me,
Speaker 2: you know, a change of scenery does me really well,
Speaker 2: like a new kind of challenge, but also just just
Speaker 2: learning to trust the process because we always think like
Speaker 2: if only I do this, or if only I do that,
Speaker 2: or if like it's going to happen, and the truth
Speaker 2: is it's probably not. Like you're probably going to keep
Speaker 2: failing no matter what. But if you learn, just like
Speaker 2: anything like working out or anything like, if you learn
Speaker 2: the long game process and you go there's a lot
Speaker 2: of suck built into this, but the reward is coming,
Speaker 2: then it's like it's easier to just go, Okay, I know,
Speaker 2: I gotta do this. I gotta run these cameras, or
Speaker 2: I gotta go look at this, or I got a
Speaker 2: glass for the night, or I like, I gotta do
Speaker 2: the process. I gotta give myself that shot because if
Speaker 2: I do that, like, eventually, the reward's gonna come, and
Speaker 2: it might not be seven bucks this year, it might
Speaker 2: be one or two good encounters or whatever. It might
Speaker 2: lead you two seasons down the road where you kill
Speaker 2: three of them in three states and you have an
Speaker 2: amazing season and then you start over like but but
Speaker 2: you learn that it's like this is what it takes.
Speaker 2: It's the same thing like if you if you struggle
Speaker 2: with like depression and you're like, I gotta figure out
Speaker 2: a way to manage this better. One of the things
Speaker 2: a lot of people learn is I need to move
Speaker 2: my body and wear myself out. Like it's not the
Speaker 2: only answer a lot of times. But it's like I
Speaker 2: don't want to run. I don't want to run five
Speaker 2: days a week, but I know that sucky part is
Speaker 2: going to make me feel better overall and be a
Speaker 2: better person, Like I don't have a choice, Like I
Speaker 2: gotta trust that process to get myself into a better place.
Speaker 2: Deer hunting is exactly the same. Like if you're not
Speaker 2: hunting a banging property where you can just count on
Speaker 2: them showing up, you got to figure out that process
Speaker 2: of scouting and you know, scout to learn how to
Speaker 2: hunt specific spots, not just find the deer. The process
Speaker 2: will deliver for you eventually, and once it starts to
Speaker 2: it's like, okay, at least I have a template. When
Speaker 2: I start veering off and I start feeling really shitty
Speaker 2: or like I need that break or whatever, that's fine,
Speaker 2: you can return to the process.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, there's no shortcuts, right, this is It's
Speaker 3: one of those things that's very akin to like working out,
Speaker 3: running jiu jitsu or whatever it is, where there's not
Speaker 3: like a you know, pass, go collect two hundred dollars
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden, like everything's good to go.
Speaker 3: You know, it's it just doesn't happen that way. It'd
Speaker 3: be nice if it did, you know, But it's just
Speaker 3: not the it's just not the truth of the truth
Speaker 3: of the matter. And there's a lot of suck that's
Speaker 3: built into it. And sometimes you said, you know, you
Speaker 3: mentioned something there about scouting, and I was just thinking.
Speaker 3: I was like, sometimes you have to scout to learn
Speaker 3: how to scout to where you're not going to do
Speaker 3: it right the first time, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: or the second time or the third time. You know,
Speaker 3: it's going to take doing it over and over again
Speaker 3: to where you start to see like where the shortcomings
Speaker 3: are right. And sometimes you're fortunate you have someone who's
Speaker 3: close to you or that you know who can point
Speaker 3: your shortcomings out to kind of help you expedite that
Speaker 3: part of it. If not, you'll still get there. It
Speaker 3: might just take you a little longer, and that doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: I think people get you know, hung up also like
Speaker 3: in the idea that like it has to happen within
Speaker 3: a certain amount of time, you know, And that was
Speaker 3: probably like the biggest learning lesson with the training stuff
Speaker 3: that I've been doing is that people don't advance the
Speaker 3: same rate. There's a lot of reasons why people even
Speaker 3: if you commit two people commit, you know, jiu jitsu
Speaker 3: at the same time, same body size, same strength, same everything,
Speaker 3: and they train the same amount of days, doesn't mean
Speaker 3: they're going to advance the same rate. And so you
Speaker 3: can't get hung up on like this person that you
Speaker 3: started with or that's around your skill level or whatever
Speaker 3: is advancing more quickly than you. Right, It's all about
Speaker 3: your your personal journey, and it's interesting once you start
Speaker 3: focusing on that journey, all of a sudden the advancing
Speaker 3: happens like I won't say overnight, but all of a
Speaker 3: sudden you start to see it like it comes in spades.
Speaker 3: And I feel like hunting's kind of the same way.
Speaker 3: Whereas when you start, if you're comparing your journey to
Speaker 3: somebody else, you're always going to lose because you don't
Speaker 3: have the same Even if everything you think, everything you
Speaker 3: can kind of put your finger on, is the same,
Speaker 3: it's not the same. You know your your inputs if
Speaker 3: you will right, and so you're always going to feel
Speaker 3: like you're not enough when you're measuring yourself against someone
Speaker 3: else because they're advancing more quickly than you, or they're
Speaker 3: achieving more than you are. But if you frame it
Speaker 3: in am I atter deer hunter this year than I
Speaker 3: was last year? Then you're moving in the right direction.
Speaker 3: And then that's all you need to be worried about
Speaker 3: is just what is your journey? How are you being fulfilled?
Speaker 3: How are you enjoying the process. What parts of the
Speaker 3: process don't you like? Then don't do them? You know
Speaker 3: what I mean. You don't have to do you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. It's just you find what works for
Speaker 3: you and you focus on the path that you're kind
Speaker 3: of creating and not the other paths people are, you know,
Speaker 3: creating for themselves. That's a losing battle, you know. And
Speaker 3: once you start doing that, you know, it's all of
Speaker 3: a sudden the amount of joy you would expect is there.
Speaker 3: And then something funny happens as that all of a
Speaker 3: sudden the results show up too.
Speaker 2: Yep, dude, you start not taking it so seriously and
Speaker 2: you start having fun. The big bucks are dying and
Speaker 2: it's a hard place to get to. Man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's and it's not a it's not a not caring,
Speaker 3: you know, because I think that sometimes people get it
Speaker 3: misinterpreted with like having fun and not caring. It's like, no,
Speaker 3: you care, but it's like you don't live and die
Speaker 3: with the results the end result, you know, you you
Speaker 3: appreciate the journey. Yep, you know. And that's you know,
Speaker 3: like you could equate like big bucks to like a
Speaker 3: black belt. Right. It's like there's a saying, you know
Speaker 3: in jiu jitsu that anyone whoever wanted to become a
Speaker 3: black belt did because all itever is is takes his
Speaker 3: time and commitment, right, Anyone who ever wanted to kill
Speaker 3: a booner really everyone to kill a booner did right,
Speaker 3: because it just took time and and focus on that thing,
Speaker 3: and eventually it'll happen, you know, And so I so
Speaker 3: that's kind of like what my new approach has been
Speaker 3: has been.
Speaker 2: That My my new approach is mostly just take my
Speaker 2: kids and then hunt when I can and shoot whatever
Speaker 2: watch by and I freaking love it. Although I'll tell
Speaker 2: you what, man, You know, like we talked about like
Speaker 2: traveling in new places and scouting new stuff when and
Speaker 2: then you know, you were just talking about like finding
Speaker 2: the things you enjoy there. It's it's not like you're
Speaker 2: going to find styles of scouting or find some kind
Speaker 2: of terrain that you just love to hunt and that's
Speaker 2: the end, because they'll drift away or over time something
Speaker 2: will be like I'm not that into this anymore. I
Speaker 2: need something else. So like you have to understand that
Speaker 2: this is it's like all happiness, right. It's a moving target, man,
Speaker 2: Like you hit it today and you won't hit it tomorrow.
Speaker 2: But you got to keep looking. And I found that,
Speaker 2: you know. For I hunted a lot of public land
Speaker 2: for like a decade, like a bunch of states had
Speaker 2: a good run. But I was burned Man. Like I
Speaker 2: was like, I'm I'm sick of drive, and I'm sick
Speaker 2: of camping. I'm sick of like the pressure. And you know,
Speaker 2: for the last couple of years with Meat Eater, I've
Speaker 2: had to save tags and it's been different seasons than
Speaker 2: I'm used to, and so I was like, this is
Speaker 2: kind of a relief. I don't feel the pressure to
Speaker 2: go kill a bunch of stuff on public land. And
Speaker 2: what I found was that's actually kind of what I
Speaker 2: need to be happy. Like I went to South Dakota
Speaker 2: and we filmed a hunt with the Element Boys the
Speaker 2: buck Truck deal and didn't go that well. I had
Speaker 2: a pretty decent hunt, you know, I had one really
Speaker 2: good encounter at the end, but I told my wife
Speaker 2: when I got home, I'm like, I'm going back without
Speaker 2: a camera guy, and I'm going to go figure this
Speaker 2: out because I just needed it. And I went back
Speaker 2: and I had another you know, one hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: eenter come in super close. Screwed that up, but I
Speaker 2: left it going. Even though I didn't film my tag,
Speaker 2: I left it going like that was what I needed,
Speaker 2: Like it just it made me feel good, like I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I got to have that kind of thing mixed in there,
Speaker 2: other wise the whole thing doesn't work for me, right,
Speaker 2: figuring the more the more of that stuff you figure out,
Speaker 2: the better it is to just go okay, Like, man,
Speaker 2: I'm veering off a little bit. I'm in the ditch,
Speaker 2: like I'm in the room bar, but like I need
Speaker 2: to correct here and get back up onto the road.
Speaker 2: And if you know where that is, it's awesome to
Speaker 2: like try that stuff and figure out new things because
Speaker 2: you always kind of go okay, like I know where
Speaker 2: my true north is, Like I know what baseline. I
Speaker 2: need to just enjoy this and always find what I'm
Speaker 2: looking for out there. I think that's so like that matters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's funny that you know, people will
Speaker 3: you know, kind of jump around or experience different things,
Speaker 3: Like they would never want to eat the same food
Speaker 3: every day. We'll use that as an example, right, And
Speaker 3: so when you think about like how you kind of
Speaker 3: find like happiness or joy and something like that, to
Speaker 3: expect to find it consistently in the same spot and
Speaker 3: deer hunting, you know, seems crazy if you think about it, right,
Speaker 3: you didn't you don't find that if someone said, like
Speaker 3: even like even when I was a musician, was doing
Speaker 3: that right, and that was kind of like my gig
Speaker 3: there got and that was all I ever wanted to
Speaker 3: do when I was a kid growing up, Like that
Speaker 3: was it, like that was my passion and I finally
Speaker 3: got to do it, you know, eight nine, ten years
Speaker 3: of doing it, you know, all of a sudden it
Speaker 3: became a job, you know, and yeah, I still enjoyed
Speaker 3: it. It was about as lacks of daisical you know, loose
Speaker 3: call loose job as you could possibly have, you know,
Speaker 3: being a delinquent, but there was an element of work
Speaker 3: to it that started sucking the joy out of it,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, because it became the thing
Speaker 3: that you had to do, and it was a certain
Speaker 3: type of music and I was expected to write a
Speaker 3: certain way because that was what we were, you know,
Speaker 3: had a record deal for or whatever. That was what
Speaker 3: you know, the producer was expecting or the management was expecting,
Speaker 3: or whatever the case was. And so it's crazy to
Speaker 3: think that hunting is not the same. And that's something
Speaker 3: that I've kind of you know realized and kind of
Speaker 3: been spending more time paying attention to because you know,
Speaker 3: you asked me when we first started, like you know
Speaker 3: about private land or any private land or whatever any
Speaker 3: family owns some back back home. And I've been thinking
Speaker 3: a lot recently, like why am I not going back
Speaker 3: and spending time with my dad, like hunting his property
Speaker 3: with him, you know what I mean? Like is it
Speaker 3: because I feel so compelled that I've got to do
Speaker 3: this public land thing because that's what I really like
Speaker 3: to do, Or should I be hunting with the old
Speaker 3: man because that will actually that will bring me a
Speaker 3: different type of joy that I probably haven't had since
Speaker 3: I was a kid, you know. And he wants to
Speaker 3: go do an elk hunt, and I don't like using outfitters,
Speaker 3: and he only wants to go use an outfitter because
Speaker 3: he's an older fellow. He wants the comforts, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. And we've kind of put it off
Speaker 3: because I'm like, ah, Dad, it's just it's to a
Speaker 3: public land piece. I got a buddy who's got like
Speaker 3: a cab and we can stay at you know. And
Speaker 3: then I'm thinking, like, dude, you're an asshole, Like your
Speaker 3: dad wants to go do an elk hunt with you
Speaker 3: at some like you know, outfitter like get off your
Speaker 3: wallet and spend a couple of bucks to go make
Speaker 3: a memory, you know what I mean, And don't be
Speaker 3: a douche, you know what I mean. And so it's like,
Speaker 3: and you know, I'm being honest with people that are
Speaker 3: listening here, It's like I've been very selfish in that regard,
Speaker 3: you know. And to me, I think when I think
Speaker 3: about things, part of what was driving me a little
Speaker 3: crazy whenever I did that step back and kind of
Speaker 3: reevaluate was like, I recognize the selfishness that I had
Speaker 3: in this and that was the other part that was
Speaker 3: starting to suck the joy out of it for me.
Speaker 3: And so it was that commitment to like, man, spend
Speaker 3: time with the buddies, you know, go hunt with your dad,
Speaker 3: even if it's a good weather day and you know
Speaker 3: there's a deer somewhere that you could try to go kill.
Speaker 3: Like still go hunt with the old mand even though
Speaker 3: you're probably not gonna see jack shit, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. Like, So it's just stuff like that, you know.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if it's like being an adult,
Speaker 3: you know, or you know, being a parent with a
Speaker 3: teenage daughter or or what you know, because I'm thinking
Speaker 3: in the back of my mind, you know, even if
Speaker 3: it's not hunting related, like when she's my age, and
Speaker 3: I hope she would make the choice to spend time
Speaker 3: with me, you know, and and so I need to
Speaker 3: kind of I need to give her the roadmap for that.
Speaker 3: She needs to see me do it. She needs to
Speaker 3: see me be committed to spending time with my dad,
Speaker 3: you know, as we're both getting older and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: And I know that Mark's been doing like this series
Speaker 3: on parenting and stuff like that, so I don't feel
Speaker 3: completely out of place mentioning that.
Speaker 2: Well. I mean, it just changes you man, you know,
Speaker 2: taking your kids hunting or you know, you get to
Speaker 2: a certain age and you realize, like the big buck
Speaker 2: things kind of dumb. It's way overrated, It's not that important.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, I mean there's just more to the
Speaker 2: experience in that, and you kind of realize how much
Speaker 2: of a gift this white tail hunting thing really is.
Speaker 2: I think that's a great way to end this. Man,
Speaker 2: Where can everybody find your podcast, the website, all that
Speaker 2: good stuff.
Speaker 3: Social Yeah, it's a truth from the stand on all
Speaker 3: the different social platforms and wherever you like to waste
Speaker 3: your time running down the rabbit Hole on YouTube. It's
Speaker 3: a truth from the stand your hunting podcast. All the
Speaker 3: places that you find, all the places you'll find podcasts awesome.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it, buddy. That's it for this week, folks.
Speaker 2: Be sure to tune in next week for more white
Speaker 2: tail goodness. This has been Wired to Hunt and I'm
Speaker 2: your guest host, Tony Peterson. As always, I just want
Speaker 2: to thank you so much for your support and for
Speaker 2: sticking with us through I don't know how many hundreds
Speaker 2: episodes now it's bananas, but we really do appreciate that
Speaker 2: you guys show up every week and you give us
Speaker 2: the support, so thank you for that. If you want
Speaker 2: more whitetail content, head on over to the mediat dot com.
Speaker 2: You can see articles that I've written. You can see
Speaker 2: articles by Mark, Alex Gilstrom, Dylan trmp, Bomartonic, whole bunch
Speaker 2: of white tail Killers. Tony Hansen's in there in the
Speaker 2: mix too, or you can you know, if you have
Speaker 2: a short attention span or you're just like watching stuff,
Speaker 2: you can check out The Buck Truck, a new series
Speaker 2: that we dropped pretty recently that was produced by the
Speaker 2: Element Boys who are absolute public land whitetail killers as well.
Speaker 2: If you like hunting, if you like phishing, there's some
Speaker 2: content there for you that you're gonna love somehow somewhere.
Speaker 2: Go find it at the mediater dot com