Speaker 1: Welcome to Wired to Hunt's rut Fresh Radio, bringing you
Speaker 1: the latest reports from the whitetail Woods, presented by First Light,
Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
Speaker 1: First Light Go farther, stay longer, and now your hosts
Speaker 1: Case Smith and Tyler Jones.
Speaker 2: This is rutfresh, brought to you by First Light Gear.
Speaker 2: A cold front has blitzed through most of the country.
Speaker 2: Lots of bucks are going down. But is it just
Speaker 2: because of the increase in hunters in the field. Is
Speaker 2: the rut actually happening? Our guests give you their thoughts today.
Speaker 2: This is rutfresh. Let's go Welcome to rutfresh Radio. This
Speaker 2: is Tyler Jones, your host, and on the line. I've
Speaker 2: got ca C Smith the other host, the dude that
Speaker 2: is like a long ways from me right now. Case
Speaker 2: you're up in South Coda. It's been a crazy cold
Speaker 2: front across the country. What are the temperatures like up there?
Speaker 3: It is as cold as I have ever hunted, if
Speaker 3: you consider like Winchy on stuff. We're going straight Alex
Speaker 3: Comstock on this thing. You know, I don't know what
Speaker 3: they are, but it's like in the mornings now We've
Speaker 3: had one warmer day, but for the most part in
Speaker 3: the mornings it's seventeen and the wind is blowing fourteen
Speaker 3: to nineteen something like that.
Speaker 4: It's very cold, very cold.
Speaker 3: And then somewhere yeah, like it's it's bad, but I
Speaker 3: considered it pure joy, man, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: It's just it's just a good thing. It's it's makes
Speaker 3: you tough. Michael says, it makes your testosterone higher.
Speaker 2: You know, really, is that a real thing or is
Speaker 2: that just what people from Ohio like to say about themselves.
Speaker 2: I don't know that.
Speaker 3: Well. I think it's just more like doing hard things,
Speaker 3: which probably does help. Well, speaking of hard things, man,
Speaker 3: I want to I want to say something right quick.
Speaker 5: You called me a host logo, but this week I
Speaker 5: am not.
Speaker 3: You are doing all this stuff yourself, and I just
Speaker 3: want people to know I'm thankful appreciate the help with
Speaker 3: this because I'm I'm doing some hunting and I'm getting
Speaker 3: to concentrate on that and it's a huge help for me.
Speaker 4: And the element just wouldn't go if you weren't around.
Speaker 4: So we're all thankful for you.
Speaker 2: Well, I appreciate it, man, but yeah, it takes all
Speaker 2: of us man. I mean it takes you know, there
Speaker 2: there's like five of us and and that that runs
Speaker 2: the Element and Wired to Hunt and part of Meat
Speaker 2: Eater and everything. You wouldn't know it, but it is,
Speaker 2: you know. So it's a lot of work and I'm
Speaker 2: I'm glad to be able to do it, but you know,
Speaker 2: I really am starting to get the FOMO real bad
Speaker 2: right now, because.
Speaker 3: I bet the cold front's been kind of just pushing
Speaker 3: through the country and giants are dropping.
Speaker 2: Well, and just so you know, the retfresh guests were
Speaker 2: actually pretty hard to get this week because everybody and
Speaker 2: their mom is in Iowa this week. It's I don't
Speaker 2: know if I've seen anybody that wasn't in Iowa this
Speaker 2: week here hardly. I mean, it's just ridiculous. Like I'm
Speaker 2: sitting there going through stories on Instagram, like, man, here's
Speaker 2: my friends. Now this guy he's from like Illinois, He's going, Nope,
Speaker 2: he's in Iowa this week. Okay, Well this guy's from Michigan. Well, no,
Speaker 2: he's in Iowa this week. Well It's just like, dude,
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's it is. I mean, there's got
Speaker 2: to be some sort of convention going on there. Or something.
Speaker 4: Imagine it's the Convention, for sure.
Speaker 6: It is.
Speaker 2: You know. In fact, I've got a buddy that's on
Speaker 2: this this ret fresh episode, Anthony Warren, to kill the
Speaker 2: giant there, and you know he would attribute a lot
Speaker 2: of this daylight movement and that daylight movement in particular too.
Speaker 2: This cold front that's pretty well timed, but as you
Speaker 2: and I discussed today, probably not the perfect cold front,
Speaker 2: not not the best timed, right, you know, maybe November
Speaker 2: seventh would be a better time for this cold front,
Speaker 2: you know, but yeah, yeah, weird, we can get right.
Speaker 3: It makes the last week October a lot better compared
Speaker 3: to like, you know, seventies in the afternoon for last
Speaker 3: week October.
Speaker 4: That'd be real tough.
Speaker 5: And as much as we want to.
Speaker 3: Be the rut, the twenty eighth of October is a
Speaker 3: lot different than the second of November. As weird as
Speaker 3: it is, those are so close. But I've been seeing
Speaker 3: it on the ground here and I know you're gonna
Speaker 3: have the steady and true Michael Stole on here to
Speaker 3: talk about South Dakota in a bit, so I won't
Speaker 3: I won't ruin too much of what we have seen
Speaker 3: from that, but I do want to just kind of
Speaker 3: address something, and I know you'll have thoughts on this too.
Speaker 3: The timing of the rut really does matter because things
Speaker 3: change quite a bit from October twenty fifth until November fifth,
Speaker 3: Like these deer go through crazy changes, you know, in
Speaker 3: the way they're acting and all kinds of stuff. And
Speaker 3: I think we noticed last year, and I believe we
Speaker 3: might be in store for the same thing this year
Speaker 3: that across the country, it's potentially going to be a
Speaker 3: little later than what most people would anticipate being the rut,
Speaker 3: you know, like as far as like the perceived movement
Speaker 3: of bucks chasing does and and all that. You know,
Speaker 3: I know that you and I in particular last year
Speaker 3: noticed like November first through fifth of it was just
Speaker 3: not a lot going on.
Speaker 2: You know, why is that? Man? Why why is it?
Speaker 2: Why does it seem like? I mean, last year there
Speaker 2: was a lot of warm weather, and I think the
Speaker 2: perceived rut was definitely later in that mid November cold
Speaker 2: front that we had. But is there something changing?
Speaker 3: I don't know, you know, it's it's interesting you bring
Speaker 3: that up because the Julian calendar is isn't perfect, which
Speaker 3: is what we operate on that age with actually probably
Speaker 3: a manipulated Julian calendar. But either way, we don't have
Speaker 3: a perfect three hundred and sixty five days every three
Speaker 3: years and then a three hundred and sixty six day
Speaker 3: year and the fourth you.
Speaker 2: Know, King Julian that made that one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, mo Movid, I like the move moved.
Speaker 3: He's like, by the way, one of the greatest cartoon
Speaker 3: characters ever created.
Speaker 4: Uh so.
Speaker 5: The uh I don't.
Speaker 3: Know, this is complete hypothesis, you know, but like what
Speaker 3: we know of and we know this to be the
Speaker 3: case anyways, because you know.
Speaker 4: From year to year, specific dates change a little bit.
Speaker 2: You know, like.
Speaker 3: My birthday won't be on a Friday every year, right,
Speaker 3: So that tells you that actually, you know, whatever that
Speaker 3: date is isn't the same day every year. So November
Speaker 3: first isn't the same day every year, right, So like
Speaker 3: it can fluctuate. November first this year might actually be
Speaker 3: the same day of the year, you know, if you
Speaker 3: want to talk about photo period, right, which is what
Speaker 3: determines the extracycle of those that might be that first
Speaker 3: could be on the fifth on a different year. Now,
Speaker 3: I don't think you can I don't think like the
Speaker 3: next year it will change that much. But I'd have
Speaker 3: to do some math and look at some stuff. But
Speaker 3: that's just kind of my hypothesis a little bit. And
Speaker 3: then I think, too just things are shifting. I'm not
Speaker 3: a climate denier. I'm not a climate change believer either,
Speaker 3: but I think that things are different in time periods.
Speaker 3: You know, my granddad talks about a time whenever he
Speaker 3: was a kid when he'd have to go bust ice
Speaker 3: every morning for like sixty days during the winter for
Speaker 3: the cows to drink.
Speaker 2: Yeah know, and dude, I don't have that. I'll tell
Speaker 2: you what. I went to Alaska this summer, if you know.
Speaker 2: For those who might listen to the Element podcast, they
Speaker 2: might know. But it made me think about some stuff
Speaker 2: for sure, seeing those icebergs, and like you just it's
Speaker 2: hard to deny, like the pictures from a certain spot
Speaker 2: that like here's a picture from nineteen ninety, here's a
Speaker 2: picture from two thousand, here's a picture from twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: and here's a picture. Here's what it looks like today,
Speaker 2: you know, or whatever, and it's like, WHOA, I mean,
Speaker 2: for sure, for sure, some different we're going through some
Speaker 2: sort of a different weather pattern, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: So yeah, crazy, but yeah, I'm just kind of wondering if, like,
Speaker 2: you know what all I guess that has to do
Speaker 2: or I guess, let's say Iceberg. I probably should have
Speaker 2: said glacier, but yeah, that's what I meant, was glacier. Well,
Speaker 2: and so with my wife. But yeah, so anyway, that's
Speaker 2: just something I noticed and I was like, man, that
Speaker 2: there's you know, something going on. So I wonder how
Speaker 2: that all plays into the rut. And it's definitely something interesting.
Speaker 2: And this is why, you know, there's so many variables
Speaker 2: just if you look at nature, right and you you know,
Speaker 2: it's you can't just look at studies and have those
Speaker 2: can't even to most of the time be just a
Speaker 2: complete one hundred percent determinator, you know, like it's it's
Speaker 2: going to be there's going to be some variable that
Speaker 2: they didn't consider or some something that could have affected it,
Speaker 2: or you know whatever.
Speaker 4: So uh, it's like polling data and stuff like that too.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like, okay, well if you pull inner
Speaker 3: city of Chicago and then you pull uh, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know, sometown, West Virginia, you'll probably have different results.
Speaker 4: So yeah, you can make data seem any which way
Speaker 4: you want.
Speaker 6: Sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's hard. It's hard to look at the
Speaker 2: studies and know for certain. Still it's it's good to
Speaker 2: look at. I think it's good to do. But anyway,
Speaker 2: I'm definitely pretty interested in it because currently I'm sitting
Speaker 2: here looking at the multimobile app and just refreshing it
Speaker 2: about every you know, thirty minutes and trying to see
Speaker 2: if the rut has hit anywhere across the country yet,
Speaker 2: because I'm, like I said, I got fomo bad and
Speaker 2: I just need to need to go hunting. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm glad to be here because I'm able to do
Speaker 2: stuff like this for refresh and to do some of
Speaker 2: the work that they need to do and get like
Speaker 2: all my stuff in order. But everybody in Iowa having
Speaker 2: a party and you know, multiple people shooting deer that
Speaker 2: I know and including maybe you know, somebody very close
Speaker 2: to me, that that is making me feel like I
Speaker 2: need to be out in the woods right now.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, you got a couple up on most folks right
Speaker 3: now for the year already, so it'd be all right.
Speaker 3: But you know, if you're if you got the fomo
Speaker 3: Tyler and you're you're concerned about what's going on around
Speaker 3: the country. I hear that there's a new ret Fresh
Speaker 3: episode coming out on Wednesday, that'd be today probably, and uh.
Speaker 4: Who's gonna be on that episode?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, as you referred to earlier, old Michael Stole
Speaker 2: known as Jim Michael. Sometimes depending on if Tony Peterson's
Speaker 2: talking to him or not, we have he be in
Speaker 2: South Dakota. And Anthony Warren, who's a good buddy of mine.
Speaker 2: It goes way back. He's in Iowa. I referred to
Speaker 2: him earlier. We're gonna have Gordon Dalton. He's out in
Speaker 2: Virginia doing some cool stuff out there. It's kind of
Speaker 2: flies under the radar a little bit as far as
Speaker 2: that state goes, but he's I mean, he always has
Speaker 2: good pictures of nice bucks and he says that things
Speaker 2: are going on right now. And then our good buddy
Speaker 2: Christopher Webb from Texas. He's been doing some public land
Speaker 2: hunting and had a really close encounter recently that on
Speaker 2: a man, dude, And those are hard to come by
Speaker 2: Texas public land bucks that are over thirteen inches wide,
Speaker 2: which is what it has to be to be legal
Speaker 2: in most most of the areas. Man' that's a tough
Speaker 2: buck to come by, so I feel sorry for him
Speaker 2: that he didn't get that quite done. But anyway, that's
Speaker 2: all coming up here in just a second. The man
Speaker 2: goes by many names, but Michael would probably be the
Speaker 2: one he prefers. This is Michael Stole. He's been up
Speaker 2: in South Dakota hunting here.
Speaker 6: What's up, dude, Oh, nothing much, just trying to stay
Speaker 6: warm and watch the Rangers win a world series.
Speaker 2: Let's go, dude. I love how you start off with
Speaker 2: the letter, oh when you just address me.
Speaker 6: I'm I'm amongst my people currently. I hear it all
Speaker 6: over except for when I'm with your psychopathic compadre.
Speaker 2: So you're you're up there with old Caleb and he's, uh,
Speaker 2: he might have there might have been a buck that
Speaker 2: got an arrow sometime soon. We won't say much more
Speaker 2: about it, though, But you guys have seen I don't know,
Speaker 2: at least talking to your compadre there, it seems like
Speaker 2: you've seen kind of the gamut of I guess rut behavior.
Speaker 2: Would you say that you've been back and forth on
Speaker 2: what stage they're in and what they're actually one.
Speaker 6: Dude, Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. We don't really know
Speaker 6: what's going on. All we know is that.
Speaker 4: We thought it was going to be a lot more
Speaker 4: ruddy than it actually is.
Speaker 6: So we kind of started out like hunting pinch points
Speaker 6: and doing the rough thing and kind of realized it
Speaker 6: it doesn't seem like they're really doing it. A lot
Speaker 6: of the bucks are still bashed it up and it
Speaker 6: doesn't seem like they're chasing a whole lot, so we
Speaker 6: started just going back to bed to feet.
Speaker 4: It helped that we had that big cold front that
Speaker 4: came through, so deer at least.
Speaker 6: On their feet and moving, But as far as rud activity,
Speaker 6: it's kind kind of grim really.
Speaker 2: So have you seen deer nosing dose around?
Speaker 4: We saw that tonight.
Speaker 2: Do you think changing or do you think that that
Speaker 2: just happens to be a certain buck that you had
Speaker 2: an encounter with that's different than other bucks.
Speaker 6: I think it has less to do with the buck
Speaker 6: and more to do with the dough that he was
Speaker 6: nosing around, because he was very keyed in on like
Speaker 6: one or two dos.
Speaker 4: He was just following them around all evening.
Speaker 2: Gotcha so and he he just stayed with him and
Speaker 2: follow him around. But there was no like active breeding
Speaker 2: or anything going on.
Speaker 6: No, he was just nosing them around, and like, like
Speaker 6: I said, there was I mean it was a group
Speaker 6: of probably like six dos and there were just two
Speaker 6: that he was just doing circles around, just pushing them.
Speaker 2: So are you guys hunting dough betting or are you
Speaker 2: hunting pinch points and funnels or what strategy you're using
Speaker 2: up there?
Speaker 6: Mostly we hunted a lot or we've been hunting a
Speaker 6: lot of pinch points, but our best success was kind
Speaker 6: of just glassing them up and then getting in.
Speaker 4: Front of them, I mean the old fashioned element way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, where are they headed?
Speaker 6: They were headed to a I believe it's a hayfield
Speaker 6: up on top, and we kind of ran into him
Speaker 6: just in like a little staging area in between that
Speaker 6: and some timber.
Speaker 2: Gotcha, So staging being like brush that what scrapes and
Speaker 2: rubs are around or something?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 6: Yeah, yep, So just I mean on it's pretty much
Speaker 6: a big valley and on either side there's just a
Speaker 6: rub line and scrapes all up and down it, and
Speaker 6: he was pretty much just going scrape to scrape.
Speaker 2: Is there any correlation between the movement and those scrapes
Speaker 2: or is it just like anywhere is it there's a tree,
Speaker 2: there's you know, there's a rub and a scrape and
Speaker 2: I can't really tell where they're gonna be.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's the scrape line runs right along a
Speaker 6: big like it's a big creek system that runs through
Speaker 6: the property we've been hunting.
Speaker 4: So it I mean, if.
Speaker 6: You look at the pins that we've been placing on bucks,
Speaker 6: it draws a perfect line right down that that uh,
Speaker 6: that creek that goes right up to some more ag
Speaker 6: so just traveling creek systems basically, yep, pretty much.
Speaker 2: Man, it seems like we talk about that quite a
Speaker 2: bit on our podcast.
Speaker 4: It sure does.
Speaker 2: They like those things a lot. So with that in
Speaker 2: mind and all the things that you've seen, and with
Speaker 2: it being you know, not quite as just ramped up
Speaker 2: to you know what a lot of people think the
Speaker 2: rut is. Do you expect them the next week for
Speaker 2: anything to change? Do you expect them to to actually
Speaker 2: get to the rut where you're seeing actual chasing and stuff.
Speaker 6: I think within the next week things are for sure
Speaker 6: going to be ramping up.
Speaker 4: I mean we.
Speaker 6: Started to see it today, but I think it's more
Speaker 6: of these does come in.
Speaker 4: To e they are going to be going absolutely crazy.
Speaker 2: Hmmm. So would you stay with the same strategies hunting
Speaker 2: pinch points or would you spend time around those scrapes
Speaker 2: or dough betting or what do you whre would you
Speaker 2: spend your time in the next week?
Speaker 6: I think the the main focus should be a pinch point.
Speaker 4: But we have found that there are you know, like.
Speaker 6: There's scrapes all over the place, but there are like
Speaker 6: a specific couple scrapes that are just they're lighting up.
Speaker 6: We've seen bucks go to like the same scrape we
Speaker 6: saw where you know, the buck we were on tonight.
Speaker 6: We also had an encounter with him a different night
Speaker 6: going to check the same scrape, and it seems to
Speaker 6: be that that scrape is like the hot scrape. So
Speaker 6: it's it's it sounds real easy just find the hot scrape.
Speaker 6: If you find a scrape that a buck's going to,
Speaker 6: that might just be the one.
Speaker 2: So is there a delineator that shows you why that
Speaker 2: is the scrape or is it just a matter of
Speaker 2: seeing a buck there, or you know, is there some
Speaker 2: sort of you know, characteristic that that scrape holds that
Speaker 2: you could just walk through their woods and see a
Speaker 2: scrape and be like, oh, that's the one that's hot.
Speaker 6: I'm I mean, I think especially when it's you know,
Speaker 6: below freezing like we're dealing with, if you see like
Speaker 6: like that a deer has been peeing in it recently,
Speaker 6: that I think that could be a good way to tell.
Speaker 6: I also think, like, I mean, there's some scrapes that
Speaker 6: are just like dug And I saw this. I know
Speaker 6: we're talking about South Dakota, but I saw this in
Speaker 6: Texas the other day and a scrape was like dug,
Speaker 6: like a good four inches into the ground and it
Speaker 6: was the size.
Speaker 4: Like if I laid down on the ground.
Speaker 6: It was the size of me pretty much. And we
Speaker 6: saw multiple bucks go use that scrape too. So I mean,
Speaker 6: there's a couple different ways to tell, but the best
Speaker 6: way I feel like to tell is.
Speaker 4: Just see a big mature butck go go scraping.
Speaker 2: So in the next week, with all those things considered
Speaker 2: scale of one to ten, what's the buck movement going
Speaker 2: to be?
Speaker 6: Like, Oh, I feel like it's about to be like
Speaker 6: a I'm gonna say a seven.
Speaker 2: I think it's gonna be.
Speaker 6: I think it's gonna be getting pretty good.
Speaker 4: I don't think it's gonna be quite a ten, but
Speaker 4: in the next week it's definitely gonna be ramping up.
Speaker 2: Yeah cool man, Well, thanks for the report. I hope
Speaker 2: you get to shoot one while you're up there, and
Speaker 2: I hope that your your friend there in the room
Speaker 2: with you gets plenty of those hungry man's that he's
Speaker 2: warming up in the background.
Speaker 4: Now, all right, man, I'll tek you later.
Speaker 2: Okay, I've got Anthony Warren here. He's a good buddy
Speaker 2: of mine. I know for a long time. He's been
Speaker 2: out in Iowa hunting big monster bucks and it looks
Speaker 2: like you might have seen one.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, hey, thanks for having me on, Tyler.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Man made up there and it was pretty short lived,
Speaker 7: but ended up having some success on the first evening.
Speaker 7: So yeah, it was a good time.
Speaker 2: Man. So this was a This was a big eight
Speaker 2: point that you'd had on camera some right, had he
Speaker 2: been daylight on any of your cameras.
Speaker 7: He hadn't been full daylight. He had been on the
Speaker 7: edge of dusk or dawn, you know. The week or
Speaker 7: so leading up to me getting up there, you could
Speaker 7: tell he was starting to hit scrapes and he had
Speaker 7: a lot of night time activity. But was just starting
Speaker 7: to hit the fringe of dusk and dawn about the
Speaker 7: week before I got there.
Speaker 2: Okay, so there's been a big cold front that's pretty
Speaker 2: much gone across much of the US. This week was
Speaker 2: the night that you had to encounter with this buck.
Speaker 2: Was that a part of this cold front or was
Speaker 2: it separate of it?
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was, it was separate of it.
Speaker 4: It was actually the day before the front hit.
Speaker 1: The tenth was.
Speaker 7: Slightly down I want to say, two or three degrees
Speaker 7: from the day before, and it was a little misty
Speaker 7: on and off, but I actually caught it right before
Speaker 7: the front actually came in.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this year came in earlier than you had
Speaker 2: seen him on trail cameras or about the same time.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he was probably about ten to fifteen minutes early
Speaker 7: from his earliest that he had been previously. And you know,
Speaker 7: he was actually.
Speaker 4: With another buck that was a younger year.
Speaker 7: Not really sure where they had betted at, but I
Speaker 7: had a bunch of dose around me, and I was
Speaker 7: on the edge of a cornfield that had yet to
Speaker 7: be cut, and so I think a lot of the
Speaker 7: deer were still feeding, and you know, I saw the
Speaker 7: dose well before I saw any bucks that day?
Speaker 2: How I interested? Was he in those dos? Yeah?
Speaker 7: So he was. He was semi interested to the point
Speaker 7: that he wasn't chasing, but he was definitely in the
Speaker 7: sneak position, you know, trying to nose a dough that
Speaker 7: that ended up running away from him. You could tell,
Speaker 7: like he starts and have some acres, but she just
Speaker 7: had nothing to.
Speaker 2: Do with him. Was he eating it all around that cornfield?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 7: Not that I could tell. Man, The dose were coming
Speaker 7: in and out of the corn and just happened to
Speaker 7: congregate in that corner.
Speaker 2: Where I was at.
Speaker 7: And I think he probably would have if he would have,
Speaker 7: you know, just messed with the does long enough. But yeah,
Speaker 7: he did. Fortunately for me, he didn't make it to
Speaker 7: start eating any of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Is that what you think he was doing in there?
Speaker 2: Was was going to eat corn? Or was he doing
Speaker 2: something different? You think?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think he was in there eating corn. He
Speaker 7: also had a couple of scrapes right there in that
Speaker 7: corner of the field, and so you know, my my
Speaker 7: feeling is he was getting up out of bed gonna
Speaker 7: go eat and you know, check those scrapes on the
Speaker 7: way to eat, and you know that's how I ended
Speaker 7: up intercepting him.
Speaker 2: Basically, Yeah, So in the next week or so, do
Speaker 2: you foresee much changing? Are they going to still are
Speaker 2: you still going to be looking at if you were,
Speaker 2: if you still had a tag there, then you were
Speaker 2: gonna be hunting. Would you still be hunting edge of
Speaker 2: you know, standing corn or near scrapes or would you
Speaker 2: would you change to funnels and pinch points or what
Speaker 2: would you do?
Speaker 7: Yeah? I would probably I would probably look for pinch
Speaker 7: points and funnels probably between uh, you know food, which
Speaker 7: was was that corn that's standing and maybe some some
Speaker 7: real thick spots on the property, because I think Dose
Speaker 7: are still in that that point of the year where
Speaker 7: they're still wanting to go feed. And so I think
Speaker 7: as we get into the next you know, a few
Speaker 7: days next week, we're going to start seeing things kind
Speaker 7: of shift. You'll start seeing a lot of these bucks
Speaker 7: start cruising a little bit more frequently, going back and forth,
Speaker 7: checking scrapes, trying to go and find these Dose and
Speaker 7: the dough betting areas that that are starting to get
Speaker 7: the first dough in estras. So I think it's I
Speaker 7: think it's going to only pick up.
Speaker 2: From here, gotcha. So in the next you know, seven
Speaker 2: days or so, what do you predict the buck movement
Speaker 2: will be like on a scale of one to ten,
Speaker 2: Thinking maybe ten is like the best day of the rut.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I would probably be somewhere around a seven to eight.
Speaker 4: I think it's going to get better.
Speaker 7: We've got some good weather for it, which is nice
Speaker 7: to see. I just typically don't start seeing that level
Speaker 7: ten until you get about seven, eight, nine, ten days
Speaker 7: into November. That's just personally my experience. But I think
Speaker 7: it's going to improve drastically. I think with this cold
Speaker 7: weather a lot of deer are going to hit the
Speaker 7: ground this upcoming week.
Speaker 2: Sweet man, Well that's exciting. Thanks for the report, man,
Speaker 2: and congrats on that big stud of a deer. Man.
Speaker 2: If you're interested and you're listening out there, you can,
Speaker 2: I'm sure find Anthony Anthony Warren on Instagram and go
Speaker 2: check out that big eight point he shot.
Speaker 7: Yeah, thank Tyler, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2: Right now. I've got Gordon Dalton on the phone. He's
Speaker 2: out in Virginia. Now. You're in Virginia right now. But
Speaker 2: when I met you several years ago we were in Colorado.
Speaker 2: It was just the weirdest chance thing. We were fishing
Speaker 2: out in Colorado in the Black Canyon and you came
Speaker 2: just coming down the chute right there. Man, what's going on,
Speaker 2: Gordon oh Man?
Speaker 5: Not a whole lot at work right now, but hoping
Speaker 5: to get in the woods later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny that you're you know, to me at least,
Speaker 2: it's interesting that you're such a hardcore deer hunter because
Speaker 2: you know, when I met you, you were kayaking down
Speaker 2: just whitewater rapids, which is something you do often, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I have a lot of irons in the fire,
Speaker 5: really hardcore into whitewater kayaking, have been a long time.
Speaker 5: But I mean I've been hunting all my life and
Speaker 5: it's just part of life for me.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So ever, yeah, yeah, so you know you've been hunting
Speaker 2: quite a bit. In fact, I tried to get the
Speaker 2: interview with you last night and you went straight from
Speaker 2: work to the stand. Uh what did you see last night?
Speaker 5: Not a thing. I think I busted them all up
Speaker 5: on the way in, busted a bunch of you know,
Speaker 5: but I took the wrong approach.
Speaker 2: But yeah, talking about the terrain you're hunting.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I'm hunting in the mountains like Blue Ridge,
Speaker 5: but the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, Central Virginia, Western Virginia.
Speaker 5: And uh so I was walking through some pretty steep terrain,
Speaker 5: a lot of Mountain Laurel, a lot of oaks, stuff
Speaker 5: like that, real steep, real rugged.
Speaker 2: So are the oaks dropping right now out there?
Speaker 5: So this year the red oaks are doing pretty good.
Speaker 5: Last year, I think in most of Virginia was a
Speaker 5: huge white oak year, white oak a corns which are preferred.
Speaker 5: It was probably the best white oak year we've had
Speaker 5: in eight ten years. It was a big deal. This year,
Speaker 5: no white oaks, not many. But the red oaks, of course,
Speaker 5: are are doing pretty well. And the deer really do
Speaker 5: seem to be in the red oaks right now. They're
Speaker 5: they're in those pretty hard. And so that's kind of
Speaker 5: where I was yesterday, was near a good scrape among
Speaker 5: a bunch of red oaks near some Mountain Laurel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so does this scrape sit you say it's steep country?
Speaker 2: Is this is this like on a ridge or a
Speaker 2: bench or a saddle or what is it?
Speaker 5: Yep, this particular scrape is kind of on a on
Speaker 5: a little bench of a ridge where the ridge kind
Speaker 5: of you know, flattens out just briefly. I think they're
Speaker 5: crossing from two different directions. I missed a really good
Speaker 5: buck on this past weekend right there. My my arrow
Speaker 5: hit hit a limb. I had to shoot through sapling
Speaker 5: and didn't work out. So I was hoping I didn't
Speaker 5: scare them too bad.
Speaker 2: You come back, Yeah, it hurts.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 2: You sent me pictures of that deer and he is
Speaker 2: a mondo.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yep, well he is. He's he's living a good life.
Speaker 5: I didn't. I didn't, you know, thankfully it was a
Speaker 5: clean miss.
Speaker 2: Yeah is he? So did he check the scrape right there?
Speaker 5: He'd been coming to that scrape mostly at night, but
Speaker 5: I went ahead and pushed on it this weekend, even
Speaker 5: though it was sixty degrees. It's just that magical time
Speaker 5: of year, you know, when the bucks are running around,
Speaker 5: they're feeling randy, but the does aren't ready, and so
Speaker 5: you get a lot of movement, and that seems to
Speaker 5: be what's happening. And I kind of surprised me. He
Speaker 5: showed up at eight thirty in the morning. It was
Speaker 5: probably sixty something degrees. Yeah, so not so.
Speaker 2: The most of the country's kind of seen a cold front.
Speaker 2: Have you guys had that at all.
Speaker 5: Yes, the cold front hit yesterday, but it's been it's
Speaker 5: been a rollicking ride here in Virginia. You know, October
Speaker 5: is basically bo season the whole month. This is the
Speaker 5: last few days of it, and it's been. Our opening
Speaker 5: day was windy and rainy, and you know since then,
Speaker 5: the weather has just really not cooperated up until now,
Speaker 5: but it's been. It was eighty degrees last weekend, which
Speaker 5: is crazy for this time of year. Yeah, the rainy, hot,
Speaker 5: and now finally cooling down. So hopefully things are about
Speaker 5: to get really good.
Speaker 2: So you know, things were getting good. Apparently you saw
Speaker 2: daylight movement off of this buck that hasn't been daylight
Speaker 2: much even before the cold front. So now at the
Speaker 2: cold fronts here, you expect things to be you expect
Speaker 2: to be more of the same or is there you
Speaker 2: know your patterns are tactic going to change it all?
Speaker 2: Or what do you think in the next week or so?
Speaker 5: I think for the next few days you can I'm
Speaker 5: still going to be banking on the bucks moving pretty good,
Speaker 5: you know, just based on that that need to find
Speaker 5: a dough and that's what I was banking on last
Speaker 5: weekend was it even though it was warm, you know
Speaker 5: that he would still be moving at least in the morning.
Speaker 5: And I mean, it worked out. Sometimes it amazes me
Speaker 5: when the plan actually works out.
Speaker 2: Does me too, Man, it's such a it's such a
Speaker 2: cool thing. It doesn't happen often, you know.
Speaker 5: And I think that's gonna that kind of thing will
Speaker 5: keep up for the next few days, you know, into
Speaker 5: the you know, it's November when we're talking here, and
Speaker 5: I think that'll keep up. And then as we go
Speaker 5: into the next week, you might, you know, maybe they'll
Speaker 5: they'll be a little more of what you know, lockdown,
Speaker 5: I guess in theory. But but November ninth is always
Speaker 5: a great day here in Virginia.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So you're still using terrain, you know, like benches or
Speaker 2: saddles or stuff to get in the way of these
Speaker 2: cruising bucks. Are you using scrapes or combination or different
Speaker 2: things or what.
Speaker 5: I'd go for that combination just like you said there,
Speaker 5: you know, I'm hunting big woods, not a lot of
Speaker 5: edge except you know, vegetation edges, So I'm trying to
Speaker 5: use the terrain. I use a lot of little gullies.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of steep gullies. The bucks don't want
Speaker 5: to go up and down through those little gullies. They
Speaker 5: don't show up on a map, and so you've got
Speaker 5: to find them boots on the ground, as they would say.
Speaker 5: The bucks like the cruise along the top of those
Speaker 5: little gullies rather than waste energy going up and down
Speaker 5: these little six foot six foot gullies. So I try
Speaker 5: to look for that, you know, that east facing rig.
Speaker 5: We don't have a lot of east west running ridges.
Speaker 5: If you can find one, it's usually money. So I'll
Speaker 5: keep keep focusing on some scrapes at least for the
Speaker 5: next few days. But I'm always trying to use terrain
Speaker 5: and the edge of Mountain Laurel and things like that.
Speaker 2: Gotcha. So, in the next week in Virginia, with the
Speaker 2: weather coming in, do you expect the buck movement to
Speaker 2: be better? And what would you rate it? On a
Speaker 2: scale of one to ten.
Speaker 5: I would think it would still be pretty good at
Speaker 5: least for the next you know, a few days into
Speaker 5: the next week. I would rate it maybe an eight
Speaker 5: eight plus hopefully m hm, seven to eight plus.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm hoping for, all right, man, Well, that's good,
Speaker 2: that's positive news. Man. I think everybody right now is
Speaker 2: getting a little bit itchy. That colfront that came in
Speaker 2: right Halloween, in the end of the end of October,
Speaker 2: there got a lot of people in the woods and
Speaker 2: there were some bucks that went down. But I still
Speaker 2: think there's there's more to come, man, So I'm excited
Speaker 2: about it, and I appreciate the report from Virginia. Yes, sir,
Speaker 2: I got my good friend Chris Webb. He is one
Speaker 2: of probably you know, the audience's favorite Element characters on
Speaker 2: our YouTube channel. Recently, Chris actually killed his first public
Speaker 2: land buck in a video of ours on our YouTube channel. Chris,
Speaker 2: what's been going on, man?
Speaker 8: Just trying to be in the woods as much as
Speaker 8: I can this time of year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a pretty good time of year to do that.
Speaker 2: You spent some time in Texas now recently, and it
Speaker 2: seemed like you had a pretty good hunt the other day.
Speaker 2: You saw some bucks, right, I did.
Speaker 8: We had that big cold front blow through Sunday into Monday,
Speaker 8: and so I got out Monday morning and the storm
Speaker 8: the weather broke, you know, probably around six am. So
Speaker 8: about nine am I had a buck chasing. Some does
Speaker 8: come running through and came in for a second and
Speaker 8: looked right at me and ran away.
Speaker 2: Man gotta hate it. The uh so he was like
Speaker 2: running dose or just like pushing them around with like
Speaker 2: in like a sneak position. He was just pushing them around.
Speaker 2: I heard him.
Speaker 8: I heard some blowing going on in a creek behind me,
Speaker 8: and so I kind of thought they had just got
Speaker 8: my wind. And then they started running closer to me,
Speaker 8: and I thought that that's odd. And then after they
Speaker 8: ran through, you know, ten seconds later he came running in.
Speaker 2: So well, so in that spot, are you hunting like
Speaker 2: a rut pinch or are you hunting something different there?
Speaker 8: So that's a community scrape and also white oaks Okay,
Speaker 8: so the doze will feet in there and then a
Speaker 8: pretty good scrape opens up there about this time of year.
Speaker 2: How about how big is that scrape?
Speaker 8: About the size of a dinner plate?
Speaker 2: Okay? And you do you have a camera on it?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And you've seen dearly using it in daylight at all
Speaker 2: this year?
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, we're seeing been seeing a lot more of
Speaker 8: that after this cold front will come through on a
Speaker 8: mid morning cruising and checking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got youa So, so the cold weather or
Speaker 2: do you think that that it's more the time of
Speaker 2: year that's increased the daylight movement there.
Speaker 8: I think it's the time of year, but the cold
Speaker 8: front definitely, you know, adds a little bit to it,
Speaker 8: gets a movement a little bit more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how's the achorn crop there?
Speaker 4: It was really good. It looks like a lot of
Speaker 4: it's kind of.
Speaker 2: Gone, so they've already eaten a lot of it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, but that scrape stays open and there's some dough
Speaker 8: betting pretty close by, so it's a pretty frequented.
Speaker 2: Area, gotcha. So you know, looking forward into the next
Speaker 2: week or so, is anything going to change as far
Speaker 2: as what the deer are doing, what the bucks in
Speaker 2: particular are doing, or what the does are doing that
Speaker 2: would affect buck movement? The buck movement, I don't think so.
Speaker 4: I think it's going to continue to be just more
Speaker 4: of the same.
Speaker 8: I think you're going to see more bucks cruising, unlike
Speaker 8: the private I hunt. You're gonna see just new bucks
Speaker 8: showing up to your corn, and then I think you're
Speaker 8: going to see them moving, you know, all throughout the
Speaker 8: morning and then potentially earlier in the afternoon.
Speaker 2: Do you expect to scrape movement to increase or decrease
Speaker 2: as the cruising movement picks up.
Speaker 8: I expect the scrape movement to increase probably over the
Speaker 8: next two to three weeks.
Speaker 2: Okay, And do you think that I guess would you
Speaker 2: assume that most of those acrons on the at least
Speaker 2: on the white oat crop are pretty much gone, and
Speaker 2: and you're looking for reds or what kind of food
Speaker 2: source do you think you'll be keen in on for
Speaker 2: those does?
Speaker 8: For those does? Yeah, I think the white oak's gone,
Speaker 8: so keenan on red oaks or being the deer around
Speaker 8: here kind of eat just about anything.
Speaker 4: So just figuring out what they're eating.
Speaker 8: If you're on private, that's corn, so sure.
Speaker 2: Well even if you're on public sometimes too because they're
Speaker 2: going off on the private.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So on a scale of one to ten, what
Speaker 2: would you assume or predict buck movement will be like
Speaker 2: in the next week or so.
Speaker 8: I'm thinking it's going to be probably seven seven and
Speaker 8: a half.
Speaker 2: All right, seven and a half. I like it, man,
Speaker 2: That's like, that's pretty pretty good. Man. I feel like
Speaker 2: I'm right there with you. If I've seen our trail
Speaker 2: cameras in Texas, you know, in the last couple of days.
Speaker 2: I mean it's going to start getting pretty good. I
Speaker 2: think I.
Speaker 8: Think so too. It's going to just kind of each day.
Speaker 4: I think it will just get a little bit better.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Well, thanks for doing this, Chris, and I'm hoping
Speaker 2: that next time a buck crashes in on you get
Speaker 2: a good shot on him. Hi.
Speaker 4: Thanks man, I do be too.
Speaker 2: Some really great thoughts about the rut, the pre rut
Speaker 2: which is happening right now in that podcast. We appreciate
Speaker 2: all the guests. Also, Adam Moore has written an article
Speaker 2: on the Wired to Hunt website called why you should
Speaker 2: Catch a white Tail rut down South. So if you're
Speaker 2: interested in more rutting action, more running information, there's something
Speaker 2: there for you at Wired to Hunt. Also, you can
Speaker 2: go to the Element YouTube channel and check out our
Speaker 2: latest video where we get in on the first pre
Speaker 2: rut action in Texas on a public land hunt where
Speaker 2: I actually shoot a really nice bug. This happened just
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks ago. It's already out on YouTube,
Speaker 2: so go check it out. This has been rut fresh,
Speaker 2: Keep it fresh.