Speaker 1: Welcome back to Cutting the Distance. Today's guest is a
Speaker 1: white tail strategy expert. He's published more than six hundred
Speaker 1: deer related articles, thirteen hundred videos, five books, and four
Speaker 1: web classes. But surprisingly, Jeff Sturs just wasn't born into
Speaker 1: a hunting family. He was born into a non hunting family,
Speaker 1: so he had to figure it out all on his own.
Speaker 1: He had learned how to squirrel hunt, rabbit hunt, and
Speaker 1: then eventually deer hunt. He did most of this largely
Speaker 1: on public land. He continues to hunt both public and
Speaker 1: private land in several states each year on DIY hunts,
Speaker 1: and he's used his experience as to design private hunting
Speaker 1: parcels for close to fifteen hundred clients in twenty six
Speaker 1: states since two thousand and five. So he founded white
Speaker 1: Tail Habitat Solutions in two thousand and four after being
Speaker 1: awarded qdma's Deer Manager of the Year, and at the
Speaker 1: present time has a team of experienced habitat professionals that
Speaker 1: combine to work on three hundred clients proper and dozens
Speaker 1: of states each year. He continuously involves his family in
Speaker 1: all of his outdoor endeavors when he's not busy creating
Speaker 1: hundreds of videos each year for his social media platforms.
Speaker 1: He loves to fish, and he's also one of the
Speaker 1: driving forces behind his family run food plot seed company
Speaker 1: Pure Wildlife Blends that they established in twenty twenty two. So,
Speaker 1: as you can see, Jeff has quite the resume when
Speaker 1: it comes to helping whitetail hunters, but he still places
Speaker 1: a priority on spending time with his wife, jen Son
Speaker 1: Jackson and the rest of their families.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show, Jeff, Yeah, thanks, Jason. Great to
Speaker 2: be on with you.
Speaker 1: So how was your season? You mentioned you guys just
Speaker 1: kind of wrapped up your twenty three season or last week,
Speaker 1: I believe, So how did it go for you?
Speaker 2: It was a really good one. It was a nice shot,
Speaker 2: a real nice bock couple targetbox one in Wisconsin, one
Speaker 2: in Minnesota with a bowl, and that's really my priority.
Speaker 2: But we also got to go out and hunt Public
Speaker 2: Land in Pennsylvania. That's a place near and dear to
Speaker 2: my heart. I've been I start hunting there in ninety three.
Speaker 2: This is my twenty first gun season opener and that's
Speaker 2: always a special place. So Jen got to go with
Speaker 2: me Dylan and ended up shooting the buck on the
Speaker 2: second day, got to pack it out and that was
Speaker 2: a lot of fun. And then Jen shot a beautiful
Speaker 2: buck a couple of weeks ago in the blind with Jackson,
Speaker 2: our twenty month old, and that's always that's always a chore.
Speaker 2: We both hunted with him this year, kind of like
Speaker 2: we take turns and she still has bow tags available,
Speaker 2: so she'll be hunting and I'll be on Jackson duty too.
Speaker 2: But it's been a really good season so far, and
Speaker 2: we're not over with Jen hit in the woods too.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's it's almost depressing when it Sunday. I
Speaker 2: counted down the days, the hours, minutes, and Sunday was
Speaker 2: my last set.
Speaker 1: So gotcha. And I'm sure you've created lots of good
Speaker 1: friends through your your consulting work. You stay in touch
Speaker 1: with your clients. How was their season? Was it good
Speaker 1: for them? Was it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I get a lot of updates, and it's crazy
Speaker 2: because we have so many clients or some that I've
Speaker 2: talked to. Some are really close friends, clients that I
Speaker 2: had back in eight nine, twenty ten they keep in
Speaker 2: touch with. So it always seems like there's a handful
Speaker 2: each year out of seventy eighty. Ben does many of
Speaker 2: the one hundred and twenty five in one year that
Speaker 2: you end up keeping in touch with long term, as
Speaker 2: far as more of a friend where you actually see
Speaker 2: them at other clients or I've had a few stop
Speaker 2: up at the house, taking them on tours, and a
Speaker 2: couple of partnership relationships with some of them now. But yeah,
Speaker 2: we get a lot of really good feedback and we
Speaker 2: just actually I used to collect client testimonials, feedback their
Speaker 2: hunting experiences back in the day. This is going back
Speaker 2: fifteen years, but we just started doing that in the
Speaker 2: last year so we could put them on the website.
Speaker 2: And it's been overwhelming as far as you get lots
Speaker 2: of pictures, lots of stories, and that's kind of what
Speaker 2: you feed off keep you keep you fueled up. And
Speaker 2: we get a lot of that on YouTube and our
Speaker 2: social media too, so it's fun really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you mentioned that, that's kind of the feel, you know,
Speaker 1: when we started making calls, you know, it was it
Speaker 1: was cooler to see I didn't I didn't care so
Speaker 1: much about selling the call to somebody. I was more
Speaker 1: interested in what they went and did with that call,
Speaker 1: you know, So when you got the emails or the
Speaker 1: texts or the messages that that was more important than
Speaker 1: I mean, you need the business to to for a livelihood,
Speaker 1: but it's like that was that was what did it
Speaker 1: for me, was that to see the success they had
Speaker 1: with something that we designed and and well, yeah.
Speaker 2: And if you're not it's I talked to We put
Speaker 2: a I put a hunting video out just a couple
Speaker 2: of days ago. So we do that a little bit.
Speaker 2: But it's all about teaching on the YouTube channel social media.
Speaker 2: And so for not teaching somebody something, if it's not
Speaker 2: something someone can learn from, then we'll waste our time
Speaker 2: and it doesn't hit. So other people are more entertaining.
Speaker 2: I'm not an entertaining person. I need to actually offer
Speaker 2: good information or it's going to be a dut And
Speaker 2: so that's a fun process.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm right there with you. When when they asked
Speaker 1: me to take over cutting the distance, I said, as
Speaker 1: long as you guys are in for a very technical
Speaker 1: and tactical podcast, I can do that. But I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna sit and like make everybody light up with jokes
Speaker 1: or be that entertainer. Sorry, I know where you're coming from. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's great. So, like all Cutting the Distance episodes,
Speaker 1: we're gonna jump into some Q and A that we
Speaker 1: either gather from social media, we have people email us.
Speaker 1: If you have questions for me or my guests on
Speaker 1: future episodes, please email us at CTD at Phelps game
Speaker 1: Calls dot com. So the first one was one that's
Speaker 1: just more of a generality I've got. You know, is
Speaker 1: you hear people talk about this or it's just a
Speaker 1: question that goes around out there. So as you're design
Speaker 1: and a property and you can only guarantee one, are
Speaker 1: you taking habitat or genetics to start with?
Speaker 2: That's that's interesting. Genetics you really can't change, especially in
Speaker 2: a free ranging herd, and the habitat is so critical
Speaker 2: and and so we focus really on that. It's kind
Speaker 2: of like I go to clients, said, I have one
Speaker 2: client in southeast Ohio and they and their neighbor have
Speaker 2: seen at least a two hundred inch animal every single
Speaker 2: season for fifteen years. And so there's areas like that,
Speaker 2: and obviously the genetics everything is coming together there. I
Speaker 2: have a lot of other clients, say a northern Michigan
Speaker 2: client or northern Minnesota, maybe poor soils where to them,
Speaker 2: one hundred and forty inch five six year old buck
Speaker 2: would be the king of bucks for decades. And so
Speaker 2: it's you know, that's all a matter of it's all relative,
Speaker 2: but changing the habitat and just they're already locked into
Speaker 2: that site. There's always something that can be done better
Speaker 2: so that they experience a better hurd and hunt.
Speaker 1: Gotcha. And this kind of rolls right into the next
Speaker 1: one when you get consulted, what are the majority of
Speaker 1: people wanting to manage their farm or property for are
Speaker 1: they Are they always wanting top end bucks? Are they
Speaker 1: wanting like a band in the middle, Like is there
Speaker 1: a way to manage for different outcomes or is it
Speaker 1: just manage the best for the deer and then let
Speaker 1: the cards kind of lay where they are.
Speaker 2: And I think that's more we look at is you
Speaker 2: know what's interesting because I work with a lot of
Speaker 2: individuals that are worth you know, you could someone that's
Speaker 2: working at a factory, someone who's a school teacher, and
Speaker 2: then you have the professionals. You have a lot of
Speaker 2: small business owners, people that have four hundred employees or
Speaker 2: five employees, and so there's just all across the board
Speaker 2: of people. I've never had anyone say I just want
Speaker 2: to shoot giant bucks. I don't care about anything else.
Speaker 2: And what's interesting is is that you're really trying to
Speaker 2: do the best with the habitat, the best with the design,
Speaker 2: so that if they want to take it to the
Speaker 2: level where they're only shooting the oldest bucks in the neighborhood.
Speaker 2: And that's all relative too. That might be a two
Speaker 2: or three year old in some areas, in some areas
Speaker 2: it's a five or six year old. They can really
Speaker 2: let them grow and tell that because it's that state
Speaker 2: or that county, that area, or that size of personal
Speaker 2: and you really just want them to do their best.
Speaker 2: So we're looking at One of the things I talk
Speaker 2: about is if you are hitting the property and hitting
Speaker 2: what you need to for white tails, now strategy aside.
Speaker 2: You know, there's so much strategy. How it has to
Speaker 2: be laid out where you're not spooking deer, where you
Speaker 2: have the potential spook deer, how you get out on
Speaker 2: and off the property that I was spooking deer. That's
Speaker 2: so critical. But at the same time, if you're hitting
Speaker 2: the habitat for white tailed, then you're going to encompass
Speaker 2: a lot of indicator species. For example, around here, some
Speaker 2: of the best indicator species we're in mixed ag land
Speaker 2: southeast Minnesota. I hunt in southwest Wisconsin too. If you
Speaker 2: have pheasant, grouse, rabbit, and you have good turkey nesting cover,
Speaker 2: then those are really important indicator species. If you get
Speaker 2: all four going down of property, then not only of
Speaker 2: course we have great wildlife, but then you'll have a
Speaker 2: great white tail person.
Speaker 1: Nice, nice, I like that. And then the last question
Speaker 1: I've got for you, you know, us coming from out west,
Speaker 1: say we don't get the luxury like you said picking
Speaker 1: I think we were talking before the podcast, like picking
Speaker 1: the days. You know, it's you're not always hunting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we come from out west. We've got basically we got
Speaker 1: to pick a ten day or a seven day or
Speaker 1: a fourteenthil what would be that like ten day period
Speaker 1: of time when you'd recommend somebody, you know, come out
Speaker 1: on a white tail hunt, and.
Speaker 2: That's a tough one in our area, it'd be can
Speaker 2: we ask what kind of buck they're hunting for? What
Speaker 2: I mean by that, is it one that they feel
Speaker 2: is in and around their property in October? And if
Speaker 2: that's the case, I'd really like to hunt on the
Speaker 2: last several days of October, first several days of November.
Speaker 2: If it's one that they see years prior, that they
Speaker 2: typically see in the middle of the night in October,
Speaker 2: but they get daylight sometime in early November during the
Speaker 2: rut November tenth, November fifth, whatever that might be. Then
Speaker 2: I'd have them pick more of the first ten days
Speaker 2: of November. They want to see those bucks that are
Speaker 2: actually cruising and coming a long distance where you're not
Speaker 2: going to see that necessarily in the pre rott last
Speaker 2: ten days of October, so those are more of the
Speaker 2: local box, call them core box, and then the non cores.
Speaker 2: So it depends on the property. But sometime around there,
Speaker 2: I always like, I shot my bucks October twenty seventh
Speaker 2: October thirtieth, so that's my favorite time to get in
Speaker 2: before they start leaving and you know, might get shot
Speaker 2: on someone else's property on the seventh of November.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm a very inexperienced white til hunter, but
Speaker 1: have absolutely fallen in love with it. But my first
Speaker 1: year out to Kansas, we hunted November first to the tenth,
Speaker 1: and then this year we went out because it didn't
Speaker 1: jive with a meal deer hunt. So I came out
Speaker 1: November fifteenth to the twenty second, and at least where
Speaker 1: we were at, we got an unseasonably warm patch in
Speaker 1: the middle of November. This year anyways, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but we hit like lockdown, we hit warm. And this
Speaker 1: year I would have told you that there wasn't a
Speaker 1: deer at times in our entire county, you know, in
Speaker 1: some of the best places in Kansas. Yet last year
Speaker 1: I was like at the edge of my seat the
Speaker 1: whole time because we had deer coming around or moving.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, it was like you said, that the
Speaker 1: guy's property, I get to hunting Kansas Randy, Who's awesome.
Speaker 1: He agrees like either that late October kind of that
Speaker 1: pre rut staging yacher's still kind of covering their ground
Speaker 1: versus you getting that mid rud It might be tough,
Speaker 1: but like you said, if those deer may come from
Speaker 1: the neighbor's property or might be cruising, then you may
Speaker 1: get a chance at those. He may want to push
Speaker 1: that into November a little bit.
Speaker 2: Right, right, Yeah, And that's it in Kansas. Like down there,
Speaker 2: I would say they're ten weeks to two days behind us.
Speaker 2: Are ten days of two weeks behind us. Suck kind
Speaker 2: of like I used to hunt Southeast Ohio a lot
Speaker 2: on public land and they would be about a week
Speaker 2: to ten days behind the stuff. You kind of look
Speaker 2: at that, gotcha? Is it moved south country? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well thank you, yeah, thanks for grabbing those few
Speaker 1: Q and a's once again. You got questions for us
Speaker 1: or my you know, myself or my guests here at
Speaker 1: Cutting the Distance, Phil free Meal free to email them
Speaker 1: to us at seat he d at Phelps Game Calls
Speaker 1: dot Com, or send us a social media message and
Speaker 1: we'll do our best to get them on here. So
Speaker 1: now to really get into what I wanted to hear
Speaker 1: come some of my personal questions. Yeah, and really what
Speaker 1: I want to so, I want to dive into hunting
Speaker 1: whitetail bucks. I'm still learning. Uh you know, it's not
Speaker 1: that I know everything about meal deer, elk, but I've
Speaker 1: I've been able to cut my teeth and then got
Speaker 1: to test my ideas and theories and and everything. But
Speaker 1: you know, white tails, they're new to me. So I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm still learning. There's a lot that I
Speaker 1: can apply from from some of my Western hunting. You know,
Speaker 1: you you're you're trying to do. You're trying to manage
Speaker 1: what's within your control, and then there's some things out
Speaker 1: of your control. And so I try to look at
Speaker 1: it like that, what what can I take care of?
Speaker 1: What can I do to get myself kind of in
Speaker 1: the in the best position, And that's kind of you know,
Speaker 1: it all boils down to hunting. But there are some
Speaker 1: things that that you know, just in my conversations with
Speaker 1: the guys out out in the Midwest, you know, Chris Parrish,
Speaker 1: Randy Milligan, Brock Shelton, these guys that they get to
Speaker 1: hunt with that have did it for a long time,
Speaker 1: know their stuff. I'm like, what I I didn't think
Speaker 1: of it that way, you know? Or they certain things, so, uh,
Speaker 1: what is the best management? So one thing like for
Speaker 1: me out west, I'm able to use optics my eyes right,
Speaker 1: and so right off the bat, I go into the
Speaker 1: white tail wood and sometimes I'm like, well, this is
Speaker 1: this is unfortunate. I can only see fifty yards, so
Speaker 1: it kind of takes that ability, do you ever, like
Speaker 1: you know, and seeing them in the daylight, that's a
Speaker 1: whole nother thing. Like I live in blacktail Country, which
Speaker 1: is which is maybe even a more nocturnal than white tail.
Speaker 1: I won't go on record saying that, but I feel
Speaker 1: that they're may be just as nocturnal as so seeing
Speaker 1: these things in the daylight and giving yourself a chance,
Speaker 1: which a lot of times means maybe moving closer to bedding,
Speaker 1: which then some people are like, it's it's not worth
Speaker 1: the risk. So what's your what's your approach, what's your
Speaker 1: opinion on being able to see deer target deer in
Speaker 1: the daylight? Like, what's your strategy for that? And I've
Speaker 1: got some all up questions, but I'm going to hear
Speaker 1: your answer and then kind of kind of run into
Speaker 1: these other, I guess, additional questions.
Speaker 2: You know what's interesting, it's there's a lot of properties
Speaker 2: where you can go out and see dose fawns, young
Speaker 2: bucks during the daylight on every set. There's other properties
Speaker 2: you have trouble seeing the deer. What comes to older bucks.
Speaker 2: I always look at them as independent thinkers. They're not.
Speaker 2: They don't have a herd around them. In fact, their
Speaker 2: buddies keep getting picked off as they grow older, so
Speaker 2: it's a little bit different. They do an act on
Speaker 2: their own. To me, when we're looking at private parcels,
Speaker 2: and you can even extend this to public land. There's
Speaker 2: three percent to five percent of all public or all
Speaker 2: private parcels that actually hold daylight bucks. There's not a
Speaker 2: lot and so a lot of people are looking at well,
Speaker 2: we're getting pictures of that buck at two am and
Speaker 2: consistently middle of the night, you know, three times a week.
Speaker 2: He must be just over in this corner on this
Speaker 2: eighty acre wood lot, and he's just not coming out
Speaker 2: till light. And I look at it like if you're
Speaker 2: in a normal white tail property and they're not coming
Speaker 2: in till middle of the night, it's because they came
Speaker 2: a mile and a half two miles a mile from
Speaker 2: a direction. So that's part of it. So why why
Speaker 2: are they around during the daylight in some areas? And
Speaker 2: mature bucks, to me have the knack for finding the
Speaker 2: best food in the area. Their home range is several
Speaker 2: times greater than a dough family group. So they're going
Speaker 2: to travel three square miles instead of a half square
Speaker 2: mile or three quarters of square mile, and they're going
Speaker 2: to find that best food if that best food is unpressured,
Speaker 2: and they can go back and forth to betting, and
Speaker 2: it's unpressured. There's not too many doughs. You want to
Speaker 2: have a certain number of dough If there's no dose there,
Speaker 2: they're not attracted, then why would an older buck be attracted.
Speaker 2: But that's where it starts getting a little bit difficult
Speaker 2: between public or private land. Is let's look at areas
Speaker 2: that for one, have good food, two have good cover,
Speaker 2: three have good movement between, and four aren't pressured at
Speaker 2: all by hunter, or at least have that illusion that
Speaker 2: they're not pressured. And when you look at those factors,
Speaker 2: it narrows it down to very very few areas that
Speaker 2: actually hold mature box. And so that's part of it is,
Speaker 2: you know, hunting those on a private land, it's so
Speaker 2: critical that, yeah, you have to have great habitat, you
Speaker 2: have to plant probably food plots have you know, if
Speaker 2: you just work on the habitat but you don't have
Speaker 2: food plots, someone else a mile away, if they have
Speaker 2: a good food plot program, those deer are gone. You're
Speaker 2: not going to see, especially as mature box. But it
Speaker 2: has to be set up and you have to hunt
Speaker 2: that private land very very strategically, so you cannot push
Speaker 2: deer off your property. And I just give an example,
Speaker 2: a long, narrow food plot that's starting the center of
Speaker 2: your land and goes to the outside edge. It's very lengthy.
Speaker 2: Let's say it's two hundred yards long by forty feet wide.
Speaker 2: That's just going to push and pull deer off your border.
Speaker 2: If you create that habitat provement parallel your borders, then
Speaker 2: you'll keep them on your border and running parallel. That's
Speaker 2: just one example. But everything has to be a line
Speaker 2: so that you're controlling that three hundred yards and mature
Speaker 2: buck might move here in the daylight within your borders
Speaker 2: or around your borders, even taken into account your neighbors,
Speaker 2: what it's a safe neighbor and what's a high pressure
Speaker 2: neighbor as far as where you might pull dear from.
Speaker 2: And then you look at public land, you're just instead
Speaker 2: of trying to do that on one hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: acres and create it and apply a lot of strategy
Speaker 2: and work really hard, you're trying to put a lot
Speaker 2: of boot time in on public land and find that
Speaker 2: over ten thousand acres or five thousand acres.
Speaker 1: Gotcha, you brought up a point there. I'm going I've
Speaker 1: already kind of shot my, my, my, itinerary in the
Speaker 1: foot here. But now you spark about that. You no, no,
Speaker 1: you made a point that can you design when you
Speaker 1: go in and look at a property, or if an
Speaker 1: owner is looking at their own property, do you design
Speaker 1: that based on what your neighbors like? If your neighbors
Speaker 1: already have all the act, would you maybe just is
Speaker 1: there ever a time where you'd leave it like this
Speaker 1: is good betting, like well, well you'll try to kill
Speaker 1: them on this wind when they come back to bed,
Speaker 1: or will you still want to have food in their form?
Speaker 1: Or how much do you take into account everything around
Speaker 1: your piece and the ultimate scheme of what they need
Speaker 1: or what your piece provides.
Speaker 2: So when we when I sit down with a client,
Speaker 2: the first hour to two hours usually have coffee, breakfast, whatever,
Speaker 2: we sit and we talk about a lot about food,
Speaker 2: what's going on on their land, what they planted, what's
Speaker 2: worked in the past, what's going on in their neighbors
Speaker 2: lands to the best of their knowledge, or even pull
Speaker 2: up aerial photos see if they have food plots. Just
Speaker 2: see what's going on. And the cool thing is, if
Speaker 2: your neighbors have food plots, ninety percent of the time
Speaker 2: they're probably over pressuring and spooking the deer off those plots,
Speaker 2: so then you can become the daylight parcel. It's the
Speaker 2: same with public land. If you're no a little secret.
Speaker 2: If you hunt public land, look for large tracks of
Speaker 2: land with lots of food plots. Go about a half
Speaker 2: mile mile off their borders. Get in, even if it
Speaker 2: takes an hour and a half to walk in, and
Speaker 2: you'll probably have those deer come into your lap in
Speaker 2: the morning because most people or pushing them off your property.
Speaker 2: So the food around you is critical, but you never
Speaker 2: want to let someone else's food dictate your hunt. And
Speaker 2: what I mean by that is, let's say I have
Speaker 2: ag land around you. Ag Land is always rotating. For example,
Speaker 2: here we could have standing corn one year and then
Speaker 2: another year, which is half the years. Around here, it's
Speaker 2: plowed down in early November, manued and chisel plowed down,
Speaker 2: so there's zero food. The elf alpha frost's out turned yellow, stormy,
Speaker 2: dormant or stemy and dormant. So you can really shoot
Speaker 2: yourself in the foot counting on ag land because it's
Speaker 2: always changing. Now on the flip side, if you're counting
Speaker 2: on someone else's food plots, then if they're doing a
Speaker 2: good job. All those deer are going to stay within
Speaker 2: two three four hundred yards of that food plot, which
Speaker 2: might not even place any deer on your property. So
Speaker 2: to me, it's critical you have that food. And great
Speaker 2: habitat is critical too. You have to have daytime browse
Speaker 2: form and then you have to have that afternoon food
Speaker 2: source in a food plot. If you don't have both,
Speaker 2: they're not going to stand in your land just because
Speaker 2: you have great brows and great habitat consistently, It's gonna
Speaker 2: be very random. You can't define or build a deer herd.
Speaker 2: And then if you have food and you don't have
Speaker 2: great cover, then why are they going to bet on
Speaker 2: your land? Even if you have great food, it turns
Speaker 2: into a nighttime parsal. So you always consider what's going
Speaker 2: on around you, your neighbor's access, what kind of food
Speaker 2: that they're planting, and where water sources that they might have.
Speaker 2: But in the end, as far as the food control,
Speaker 2: that sets the structure for the movement on your parcel
Speaker 2: every single day, and ideally you'd have enough food, which
Speaker 2: doesn't take a huge amount, but you'd have enough food
Speaker 2: that would start really hitting in August peak in November
Speaker 2: as far as attractiveness, and if it runs out the
Speaker 2: end of the deer season, that's okay. But that gets
Speaker 2: you in through all the way into December January most areas,
Speaker 2: and that'll give you an ability to actually not only
Speaker 2: have a great hunt, but to build a great herd.
Speaker 1: Too, gotcha. And then so with that, if it's small
Speaker 1: pieces of property or the train lays out so that
Speaker 1: you can't put big like are you a big fan
Speaker 1: of like the Heidi Hoole food plots, like something that's
Speaker 1: back away from the bigger ag to get them through
Speaker 1: there like in the daylight, or like what's your opinion
Speaker 1: on that? Because not everybody's got you know, five hundred
Speaker 1: or four hundred acres, some people are dealing with these
Speaker 1: smaller ones. Like what would be a recommendation like on
Speaker 1: these small food plots to get them to hit it
Speaker 1: prior to AG or what's your opinion on that?
Speaker 2: Well, you got to look at it too. If if
Speaker 2: the AG is no good, then you could have a
Speaker 2: nice eighth of an acre quarter acre food plot. And
Speaker 2: if the AG's no good, then there's not gonna be
Speaker 2: any deer to go through that hunting plot. Anyways, so
Speaker 2: that in itself, a small food plot isn't going to
Speaker 2: put deer on your land or through that movement. So like,
Speaker 2: for example, one of the property a hunt in Wisconsin,
Speaker 2: I've hunted that since twenty fourteen. Then I hunted the
Speaker 2: neighbors since two thousand and two. Some real familiar with
Speaker 2: that area. But we have about thirty acres of woods
Speaker 2: and we have about eight acres fields that we can
Speaker 2: work with, and out of those eight acres, only about
Speaker 2: three acres is flat enough to plant food plot, and
Speaker 2: we do. And that three acres sets the tone and
Speaker 2: structure for the movement on that parcel for the entire
Speaker 2: hunting season. And so we have yet to hunt those
Speaker 2: food plots with a bow since twenty fourteen because we
Speaker 2: can't get into them without spooking deer. They're in a
Speaker 2: big valley and that's like an arena of hillside all
Speaker 2: around them. But what we do travel to is we
Speaker 2: get around those points and we hunt deer on the
Speaker 2: way to those food plots, or we hunt deer up
Speaker 2: in the betting areas. So a lot of times we're
Speaker 2: killing deer up in the bedding areas in mornings afternoons
Speaker 2: when they're exiting a bedding area or on the way
Speaker 2: to food, down close to the food, but not so
Speaker 2: close that we spook the deer. So even on a
Speaker 2: small parcel like that, the only exceptions are I've worked
Speaker 2: on five eight acre parcels where they just they're not
Speaker 2: going to have the room for food, and it has
Speaker 2: to be more like a pass. And obviously if they're
Speaker 2: personal is that small. Typically there's neighborhoods involved, subdivisions. It's
Speaker 2: less rural, it's not out now. If you had ten
Speaker 2: acres and it was surrounded by national force or a
Speaker 2: remote area, you'd want to plant five or six acres
Speaker 2: and food plots if you could. And then you'd draw
Speaker 2: a deer from a mile and a half two miles
Speaker 2: in any direction, and I'd probably go try to kill
Speaker 2: them out on the public land and maybe sit on
Speaker 2: that food in the afternoon evening during certain times. But
Speaker 2: so those little heidi hole plots, we love them, but
Speaker 2: they have to be supported by consistent food. And so
Speaker 2: we'll have a three quarter acre plot here and then
Speaker 2: a tenth of an acre food plot off to the
Speaker 2: side fifty eighty yards away. Will hunt those gears. They're
Speaker 2: coming back and forth. So it really depends you have
Speaker 2: to have those anchoring food plots to anchor that movement.
Speaker 1: Yet, if you mentioned, you know, in certain situations having
Speaker 1: to you know, kill them in their betting, how how
Speaker 1: close are you willing to get now when you say
Speaker 1: killing them like they're the X where they want to
Speaker 1: bed or are you how close are you willing to
Speaker 1: get to that point.
Speaker 2: Just on the outside edge where I feel him safe
Speaker 2: and so safe place to blow my scent, safe way
Speaker 2: to get in and out without spooking him in that
Speaker 2: betting area. And then what that allows you to do.
Speaker 2: I'll give you an example. We have a ridge system
Speaker 2: on the property Wisconsin on the one side, and you
Speaker 2: can count on deer betting on that backside of the
Speaker 2: ridge system in the hollow and valley between there and
Speaker 2: the neighbors. And so we'll get up to the top
Speaker 2: of that ridge system towards the crest. But you never
Speaker 2: want to break that crest and go down on the
Speaker 2: backside because you can spook out the whole hollow. So
Speaker 2: the buck I can think of some of the buck
Speaker 2: betting areas in that valley in there one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty two hundred yards fromhere, we're sitting one hundred yards
Speaker 2: fromhere we're sitting, and as long as those bucks are
Speaker 2: there every day, then we have a chance to shoot
Speaker 2: them because they'll come up to our ridge system on
Speaker 2: the funnels, we're hunting, on a water hole, we're hunting,
Speaker 2: while they're cruising for doughs on the way down to
Speaker 2: our food. There's a lot of different reasons they could
Speaker 2: go through there. And so what I find is you
Speaker 2: just chip away at the outside of that betting area safely,
Speaker 2: and as long as you maintain them in that location,
Speaker 2: then you'll you'll kill them eventually. You know, eighty percent
Speaker 2: of the time, over a long period of time, you'll
Speaker 2: you'll shoot eighty percent of those target bucks by just
Speaker 2: chipping away at that move and play a safe.
Speaker 1: And one of the things where we're talking about betting
Speaker 1: getting close to it. So I'm going to continue down that.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things for me is like
Speaker 1: how do you know that's a betting area? And this
Speaker 1: might be a dumb question for you white tail experts
Speaker 1: for people that have been there, like how do you
Speaker 1: how are you for sure? Or do you do like
Speaker 1: your best guess or you know, let's say you see
Speaker 1: a buck on one of your food plots and you
Speaker 1: come from this direction to that direction, Like, how are
Speaker 1: you placing the X on the ground without maybe knowing
Speaker 1: exactly where he's getting into or where he's actually betting?
Speaker 1: Are you giving it?
Speaker 2: Like they's just like that's a great question. You know. Obviously,
Speaker 2: if they're coming in right around dark from a certain direction,
Speaker 2: you can pinpoint where they're betting is because the majority
Speaker 2: of the season on an average whitetail property, and when
Speaker 2: we get into big wilderness parcels, they might travel three
Speaker 2: quarters a mile during daylight to go from betting in
Speaker 2: a swamp area to a food source, especially if it's
Speaker 2: the bait pile or something I think at Upa, Michigan.
Speaker 2: They get pushed off a long ways, but then they'll
Speaker 2: hit that bait pile an hour after dark and they
Speaker 2: probably came from three quarters a mile away at least
Speaker 2: to get there. On a normal whitetail parcel, though, those
Speaker 2: bucks are not going to move more than three hundred
Speaker 2: yards during the daylight, especially the older they get, or
Speaker 2: they'd be dead. And so it's pretty easy to say, Okay,
Speaker 2: this buck is shown up right around dark hour, a
Speaker 2: half hour after, you just go the direction he's coming from,
Speaker 2: and you probably know the thick cover that he's at,
Speaker 2: and then you back up a little bit. Dozen fawns
Speaker 2: will typically bed right next to that major food source.
Speaker 2: That buck's not going to bed there, and then you
Speaker 2: might have younger bucks, and then you have that older buck.
Speaker 2: And I call that depth of cover. If I've gone
Speaker 2: to a property southern Michigan, I can think of as
Speaker 2: four hundred acres near Jackson County, beautiful buck area. In
Speaker 2: every hundred yards one hundred and twenty five yards, they
Speaker 2: had another food plot twenty eight over twenty acres food plots.
Speaker 2: In that case, that buck never had that depth of cover.
Speaker 2: So they grow up and they year and a half,
Speaker 2: two and a half, all of a sudden they're gone
Speaker 2: at three and a half four and a half. Neighbor
Speaker 2: shoots them two miles away as one hundred and eighty
Speaker 2: inch five year old. And the point was that grew
Speaker 2: out of its level of reclusiveness needs. It grew out
Speaker 2: of the depth of cover requirement that it needs. It
Speaker 2: didn't have a space where it could go back and
Speaker 2: call its own, and so a lot of times you're
Speaker 2: looking at a private parcel if there's major food here
Speaker 2: and you have decent cover extending to the west, and
Speaker 2: then you have some knowles or little swamp edge, some diversity,
Speaker 2: like two hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: yards back. I can look at a client parcel and say, well,
Speaker 2: there's the food. There's an unpressured neighbor. You have about
Speaker 2: three hundred yards back. You can say, is that where
Speaker 2: the buck's been? You know, is that where you're finding
Speaker 2: all the sign Could you just look at it? Food,
Speaker 2: layers of dough, betting young bucks, and then you have
Speaker 2: those old bucks. And it's no different on public land.
Speaker 2: You know, if you have major apple trees, white oaks
Speaker 2: near the road, and then you can look at that
Speaker 2: and say, well that's going to hold a lot of
Speaker 2: dose fawns, young deer, and then you're going back a
Speaker 2: mile and finding now where those mature bucks. Are no
Speaker 2: different than I love hunting public land that's near privately
Speaker 2: and big public land chunks where you can come in
Speaker 2: from an opposite direction, walk back an hour and a half,
Speaker 2: get about half mile three cores a mile from neighboring
Speaker 2: golf courses, subdivisions, ag fields, food plots house and house
Speaker 2: and house, because then you know those bucks are going
Speaker 2: to be in that wheelhouse, those dozen funds will be
Speaker 2: a lot closer. So I hope that makes sense. It's kind
Speaker 2: of part of its distance, but you have to have
Speaker 2: that depth form and then part of its timing. If
Speaker 2: they're not getting to your food plots still two am,
Speaker 2: they're literally a mile and a half away, probably two
Speaker 2: miles away.
Speaker 1: Yeah, before I ask, but when one thing that I've
Speaker 1: struggled with as a Western hunter, we're just always keeping
Speaker 1: the wind in our face, right, and we're either keeping track,
Speaker 1: we can see the animal we're hunting, we're white till
Speaker 1: you don't get to see it. And so you know
Speaker 1: you've mentioned a couple of times, like your example of
Speaker 1: coming in you know, an hour, hour and a half behind.
Speaker 1: How do you decide because you're playing the wind maybe
Speaker 1: ninety to one hundred and twenty degrees right, you're not
Speaker 1: playing it perfect because you can't. But how do you
Speaker 1: make sure when that deer passes your location he doesn't
Speaker 1: get your wind or you know what I mean? Like
Speaker 1: are you just hoping? Are you knowing what trail that
Speaker 1: he's on, or you're guessing what trail because if he
Speaker 1: if you don't do it right, like he can win
Speaker 1: you on the backside or if you're just off the
Speaker 1: trail by forty yards, Like there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a you know, stand placement. There's a science to all
Speaker 1: of that, or or an art to it, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: more so, like that's always been my thing. You know,
Speaker 1: the property I hunt, the stands are somewhat established, right
Speaker 1: they know the travel corridors. But say on a piece
Speaker 1: of public, how would you go in and are you
Speaker 1: going to use pinch points? Are you gonna use ri lines?
Speaker 1: Like what's your what's your strategy on going in there
Speaker 1: and hanging a stand on on a piece of public
Speaker 1: like that?
Speaker 2: With the first off for for scent control, the number
Speaker 2: one form of scent control is stand location. So you
Speaker 2: you have to have a good stand location, meaning you
Speaker 2: don't expect deer to be downwind of you. And so
Speaker 2: in that case, like I love ridge systems because in
Speaker 2: the hill country, that'll dictate or deer are not going
Speaker 2: to be for example, on a really steep face, they
Speaker 2: might not be there. But then at the same time
Speaker 2: you can use that elevation change in the thermals, so
Speaker 2: morning hunting up high, we can blow our scent right
Speaker 2: over a deer trail down below us and know that
Speaker 2: they're not going to get our wind. You know that
Speaker 2: if you blow it down in this steep face for
Speaker 2: the deer or not, they're not going to get your wind.
Speaker 2: A lot of times when we're working with small properties
Speaker 2: forty to eighty to one hundred acres, lakes, ponds, open,
Speaker 2: mature woods, horse pasture, land, in a neighboring house, neighboring school, factory,
Speaker 2: whatever it might be. Road, then you're backing up to
Speaker 2: that area where you can blow your sent into and
Speaker 2: I call them scent blockers, where you know that you're
Speaker 2: not going to spook a deer, but you're getting in
Speaker 2: close to the movement where you it's set balance where
Speaker 2: you're moving as close as you can to the movement
Speaker 2: without getting so far that you get deer back behind you.
Speaker 2: And then that's the way you have to hunt. And
Speaker 2: so every time, that's what a lot of times we're
Speaker 2: working with clients is assessing that balance. So if we
Speaker 2: put a stand here, is that too close to your access?
Speaker 2: Is it too close to the movement, is it far
Speaker 2: enough way to not spook deer off the food plot
Speaker 2: every time you get in and out of the stand.
Speaker 2: And so it's all about if there's a question of
Speaker 2: if I move in on the stand and deer might
Speaker 2: get down wind to me behind me, then we just
Speaker 2: to me it's black and white. You just don't hunt it.
Speaker 2: You can't. You always have to have, always have to.
Speaker 2: I had a big buck I was after it was
Speaker 2: four seasons. We had videos of them, pictures, been hunting
Speaker 2: in the last two years. He was a legitimate six
Speaker 2: year old, beautiful buck, and that was my number one
Speaker 2: target bock here in Minnesota. I went into an area
Speaker 2: where we had actually had a picture of him in
Speaker 2: the morning, going into a betting area, we had a
Speaker 2: stand back there. Went into that stand, sat there for
Speaker 2: ten minutes, couldn't wait to go sit in there. Gave
Speaker 2: myself about a four and a half five hour set.
Speaker 2: Get in there in fifteen minutes later the wind was
Speaker 2: just iffy, and it was good two thirds three quarters
Speaker 2: of the time, and then it wasn't and then I'd
Speaker 2: do it again. So I gave myself fifteen twenty minutes
Speaker 2: and I got out and moved to a stand about
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty yards away and ended up shooting
Speaker 2: that buck, probably as he was coming from that betting area.
Speaker 2: And you have to have that discipline to you can
Speaker 2: never look at it like I sprayed this. I use
Speaker 2: this machine and it's going to block your scent if
Speaker 2: you do that. Then, for example, on that night, if
Speaker 2: it was bad, and I've done that before where I've
Speaker 2: gone out to sit and the winds just didn't feel
Speaker 2: right from what I thought, maybe a calmer wind than
Speaker 2: I thought, so the thermals were going down too soon
Speaker 2: and being pulled down right. I wanted that steady wind,
Speaker 2: So I get moved somewhere else, and then all of
Speaker 2: a sudden check the trail cameras later and realized that
Speaker 2: he came in that night, and if you were there,
Speaker 2: you would have spooked him, and then you shoot him
Speaker 2: four days later in that same spot, kind of like
Speaker 2: I've had many opportunities like that. If you didn't, if
Speaker 2: you weren't disciplined, you wouldn't. And once you spook them,
Speaker 2: you're not getting them there two or three weeks from now.
Speaker 2: It's maybe you had five six weeks from now if
Speaker 2: he's still around, but you're in big trouble if you
Speaker 2: spook them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's where sometimes I think, you know that
Speaker 1: place we hunt in Kansas, the perimeter s downs. I love,
Speaker 1: like it all makes sense to me. Like we come in,
Speaker 1: we've got a very clear direction, and you know a
Speaker 1: lot of times those bigger bucks will run like the
Speaker 1: edge of that property, which the wind's perfect in our face,
Speaker 1: Our approach was perfect. That buck's going to come by
Speaker 1: because he's trying to win check that entire patch of
Speaker 1: timber or food plot or whatever it may be. So
Speaker 1: I love that. I've always just struggled when we go
Speaker 1: to the interior, right, we don't get a great win.
Speaker 1: We can't hunt the right perimeter stand. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: well unless I either shoot this deer before he gets
Speaker 1: behind me, like, and that means he's gotten within eighty
Speaker 1: yards of this tree that we're in, and we I
Speaker 1: just noted. Thankfully they weren't target deer. But even these
Speaker 1: younger deer, they're fifty or sixty yards off, they get
Speaker 1: past you, and they they wind you, and and I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's where we don't have that freedom of being local
Speaker 1: or close where we just wouldn't hunt that day. Right,
Speaker 1: We're like, well we're there we got to try to
Speaker 1: hunt a stand that gives us a fifty percent chance.
Speaker 1: And I've always just like, yeah, if you know out west,
Speaker 1: we would just you know, or our thought process like
Speaker 1: this isn't gonna work enough, or it's almost got to
Speaker 1: be perfect, like we got to know that deer is
Speaker 1: going to travel on this road and our tree is
Speaker 1: set up for that travel path.
Speaker 2: It's like, you just we have no interior stands. If
Speaker 2: I'm going to spook young deer there, then it it's
Speaker 2: almost like if you're not spooking the red carpets rolled
Speaker 2: out for deer activity for mature box, if you're spooking deer,
Speaker 2: then they're not going to be there either. And so
Speaker 2: we can't afford to have And you go to clients.
Speaker 2: It's hard because and I'm pretty black and white with
Speaker 2: that. I've been doing it enough where you go to a
Speaker 2: client and they say, hey, what about this stand, And
Speaker 2: I'll just say, you can never hunt it? Why even
Speaker 2: have me here? Why have me designed the property? You
Speaker 2: can't destroy your property. How long do you want to
Speaker 2: destroy your property for? Do you want to destroy it
Speaker 2: for two weeks, three weeks? You just can't do it.
Speaker 2: And I'll say, you know, if you're going to do it,
Speaker 2: at least wait till middle of November. Going there really early,
Speaker 2: sit all day. But if you spook deer, and if
Speaker 2: you can imagine, even on two hundred acres, a deer run,
Speaker 2: these white tails run a half mile when they're spooked,
Speaker 2: and so you can be in the middle of one
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty acres, spook them and they're gone. And
Speaker 2: so our average clients about a hundred acres and you
Speaker 2: just can't hear on our property here it's two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty five acres, So a big difference from Wisconsin.
Speaker 2: But what area do I want to destroy in the property?
Speaker 2: So we have seventy seven acres over here, thirty eight
Speaker 2: over here, one hundred and ten over here, So which
Speaker 2: area each one of those? If I it's all connected,
Speaker 2: but it's weird shape, But which area do I want
Speaker 2: to destroy? And which area that we worked on for
Speaker 2: the entire year. And so that's kind of how you
Speaker 2: have to look at it, like you just can't do it.
Speaker 2: And that's where like I'll tell you we went Dylan
Speaker 2: and I it was back in I think twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: we went on a guided hunt, and I've only been
Speaker 2: on like three in my lifetime. And we went into
Speaker 2: the stand and from where they said the deer were
Speaker 2: coming from, and where you know, we thought they would
Speaker 2: go where they said the deer would come from. It's
Speaker 2: like these winds are horrible, and we just went to breakfast.
Speaker 2: We never even told the guide. We just got out,
Speaker 2: went to breakfast and came back. And it was like,
Speaker 2: I just don't I don't want to, we answered. I
Speaker 2: probably put out some Instagram reels or something that was
Speaker 2: more like we we got stuff to do, you know,
Speaker 2: like and that's what around here. I just it's different
Speaker 2: when you live here and when you have the choice
Speaker 2: of when you hunt, because I got other things to do,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't hunt. I might set twenty five
Speaker 2: thirty times for an entire season forty times at the most,
Speaker 2: but that's over three and a half months.
Speaker 1: Yep, yeap, no it. And most of the property like it's,
Speaker 1: you know, a four hundred. I get to hunt a
Speaker 1: south four hundred that he owns a lot, and almost
Speaker 1: all the all the stands are perimeter, but the one,
Speaker 1: I guess there's two ones on like a very steep bluff.
Speaker 1: So we can get away with the wind going up
Speaker 1: and over and we don't get wind checked. But the
Speaker 1: one in the bottom that I actually killed my deer
Speaker 1: out of last year's always just made me nervous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can hunt on this wind hoping that they're coming back.
Speaker 1: This year was beans, you know, last year it was
Speaker 1: I don't remember what it was, but there's a lot
Speaker 1: of feed out there, and they kind of come back
Speaker 1: up that valley. But I'm like, dang, if I don't
Speaker 1: kill them right here, I'm gonna get winded.
Speaker 2: And it's just it's like the last day, last day hunt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it works. It's just one of those things
Speaker 1: I think about, like all the perimeter stands are awesome,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just that one, like it's there and
Speaker 1: it works. But it's like, yeah, even if even if
Speaker 1: the wind's perfect for where you think the deer are
Speaker 1: coming from, it's not perfect for you know, ninety degrees
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty degrees behind that and deer could
Speaker 1: be in there, and.
Speaker 2: It's never perfect. So you can only plan for it,
Speaker 2: you know, but it yeah, the deer or anything, but
Speaker 2: you predictable.
Speaker 1: So I've got to imagine, just like you know, elk
Speaker 1: around here, they usually walk into the wind right and
Speaker 1: these more mature animals they understand wind. Do you feel
Speaker 1: your chance of killing a big buck on an absolute
Speaker 1: perfect wind where that deer is walking with that wind
Speaker 1: directly up as you know, at his tail? Or do
Speaker 1: you got to give them a little bit of wind?
Speaker 1: Do you have to get them to make a mistake?
Speaker 1: Like what's your opinion on the wind hitting your right
Speaker 1: cheek versus the wind hitting in the nose? Like do
Speaker 1: you need to give them a little advantage? Or have
Speaker 1: you found that that the bigger bucks, they'll slip up
Speaker 1: either way, you know what I mean? Like are they
Speaker 1: more comfortable moving when they think they got a little
Speaker 1: bit of wind in a direction? Or will they move
Speaker 1: in a direction with the wind that they're back?
Speaker 2: So I find they, especially in smaller persons, when you're
Speaker 2: talking a few hundred acres or less, they choose their
Speaker 2: betting area, and they might have a few betting areas,
Speaker 2: but they're not choosing. They're not moving typically four hundred
Speaker 2: yards a day from this side to this side based
Speaker 2: on the wind. They're choosing a betting area, and that's
Speaker 2: very sacred to them. The older they get and then
Speaker 2: their food sources stay very consistent, a lot more consistent.
Speaker 2: Now there might be a football movement where they start
Speaker 2: in one spot they more cheat to the north and
Speaker 2: then come into that food plot or another wind they
Speaker 2: might cheat to the south, but they're starting and ending
Speaker 2: in the same spots either way. And where dose are
Speaker 2: more straight line movers, they just go from their betting
Speaker 2: area to food betting area to food in that afternoon
Speaker 2: without any care to the wind. When I see bucks
Speaker 2: using the wind the most, or when they're sent checking
Speaker 2: for dough. And so we're sitting on the outside of
Speaker 2: a betting area, winds in my face or somewhat where
Speaker 2: the betting area, winds are blowing towards us, and he's
Speaker 2: on the outside of that betting area checking that dough
Speaker 2: betting area, just looking for dose because he can check
Speaker 2: in one hundred and fifty yards. So I always base
Speaker 2: the hunts not on what I think the buck will
Speaker 2: be using the wind by checking where he's coming, where
Speaker 2: he's movie he's going to use this trail with this wind.
Speaker 2: I'm purely hunting because the wind is in my favor
Speaker 2: in this stand, I expect this buck to be betted
Speaker 2: in this location and going to this area, or he's
Speaker 2: feeding here in the morning, I expect him to be
Speaker 2: coming back to that betting area. And now I've seen
Speaker 2: him circle the betting area to get into that betting area,
Speaker 2: use the wind to get into the betting area. I've
Speaker 2: seen him coming on the downwind sign of a food
Speaker 2: source a lot of times when they're cruising and when
Speaker 2: they're moving in between. I just choose to stand look
Speaker 2: based on where I think I can kill him and
Speaker 2: and have that wind advantage, and I find they move
Speaker 2: and they'll move with the wind. The Bucky shot in
Speaker 2: Wisconsin was moving with the wind because he comes from
Speaker 2: the betting area to the right. He was going to
Speaker 2: the water hole to the left, and he just came
Speaker 2: with the wind right in My wind was blowing to
Speaker 2: my left side and off the steep face, and so
Speaker 2: he came win with the wind. I shot him at
Speaker 2: like fifteen yards, and so you know that that kind
Speaker 2: of thing happens all the time. I'm trying to think
Speaker 2: of the buck Eye shot in Minnesota. The wind was
Speaker 2: blown straight in my face, a little bit to my right,
Speaker 2: and then he was coming in directly from my last left,
Speaker 2: so he didn't have a wind advantage coming in either,
Speaker 2: and he was a six year old. The other one
Speaker 2: was a five year old. Yeah, so I don't really
Speaker 2: go by that too much. Or how can I hunt safely?
Speaker 2: Is it a good weather day? You know it's not
Speaker 2: terribly hot or windy?
Speaker 1: And then last question, well maybe last question for a
Speaker 1: second on betting areas. Do you believe in like letting
Speaker 1: them be natural or early on on like a habitat
Speaker 1: project or early on in a property when you're wanting
Speaker 1: to manage it, do you believe to go in there
Speaker 1: and create them, like you know, hinge cutting, you know,
Speaker 1: burning like how or not burning the betting area making
Speaker 1: sure it doesn't get burnt? Like, do you believe you
Speaker 1: can create the betting area or does it need to
Speaker 1: be somewhat in the right spot, the same location or
Speaker 1: the right location, right terrain, right tree species, whatever it
Speaker 1: may be. What's your opinion on creating that versus does
Speaker 1: it need to be somewhat natural?
Speaker 2: That's good. I really like it to be somewhat natural possible.
Speaker 2: But when you go to a client property, they'll have
Speaker 2: traditional movement that's on and off the property, and those
Speaker 2: are always going to be based on major funnels, major
Speaker 2: movement areas, and so those are something you can't change.
Speaker 2: But you can imagine if we put a food plot
Speaker 2: in an area where they might have a quarter acre
Speaker 2: food plot before, now we're carving that out to be
Speaker 2: a two acre food plot. There's going to be cattle
Speaker 2: paths coming from area that weren't The locations weren't there before.
Speaker 2: If you put that food plot in there, that locates
Speaker 2: doze next to it, and then you'll have that buck betting.
Speaker 2: So let's say, okay, we're going to count on this
Speaker 2: little knoll back two hundred and fifty yards at all
Speaker 2: private buck betting. If it's wide open hardwoods, that's probably
Speaker 2: going to be part of a timber harvest. That's the easiest.
Speaker 2: And then to get into the backside of that betting area,
Speaker 2: we might might want to leave the timber alone so
Speaker 2: that we can actually walk through open timber and blow
Speaker 2: our sent into it while we're waiting for that buck
Speaker 2: to come back. Let's say that's a solid seedar pocket area,
Speaker 2: then we'll probably remove fifty percent of those seeds in pockets.
Speaker 2: Let's say it's a fifteen acre area, so we might
Speaker 2: move remove six seven eight acres of ceedar and pockets
Speaker 2: quarter acre acre and then try to get some herbaceous
Speaker 2: growth in there, some hardred regions, some shrubs which will
Speaker 2: help wildlife too. But now they have that daytime browse
Speaker 2: and then they have the cover of this ceater switchgrass.
Speaker 2: We do the same looking for diversity. Pockets pollinator blends
Speaker 2: will put in the switchgrass so that critters have food
Speaker 2: and soda deer, but then they have that solid structure
Speaker 2: of the switchgrass to hold them in. So it really
Speaker 2: depends on the property. We'll try to enhance it if needed.
Speaker 2: But then I was, I remember those five properties. Last week,
Speaker 2: we go into an area and it's where a lot
Speaker 2: of bucks come from and go into a major food plot,
Speaker 2: and he sees them coming in from this area. We
Speaker 2: walk in there and he's it was beautiful. I had
Speaker 2: vines hanging down. It had a lot of junk timber,
Speaker 2: some box celled or some crappy cherry trees, occasional oak.
Speaker 2: It had some shrubs in there, some little knolls and flats.
Speaker 2: And he said, what would you do with this area?
Speaker 2: And I said, absolutely nothing. This is a really low
Speaker 2: priority on your property. They're already using it. But then
Speaker 2: that out of his one hundred and twenty acres, he
Speaker 2: had about forty eight as over to the east side
Speaker 2: that was just all open timber, and that was a
Speaker 2: big giant hole in his property where we need to
Speaker 2: work on that area and remove timber, leave the edges alone.
Speaker 2: And then on the other portion of his property, about
Speaker 2: half of the forty on the west side he had it.
Speaker 2: It was just nasty brier feel filled thicket, gray dog
Speaker 2: wood mixed with white pine and it was hard to
Speaker 2: imagine a big buck walking through there it was so thick.
Speaker 2: So what they did is they went in with a
Speaker 2: rotary cutter and they made an amazing pocket effect all throughout there,
Speaker 2: so deer could actually use it. And then I was
Speaker 2: back now about a year and a half later after
Speaker 2: they did a lot of this, and it was amazing
Speaker 2: how the deer take to those areas. So it's kind
Speaker 2: of you know, some areas you're leaving alone. Some areas
Speaker 2: you need to do something to fill holes, and then
Speaker 2: you need to do it different ways.
Speaker 1: That makes sense, Yeah, yeah, no.
Speaker 2: Hinge cutting is. Hinge cutting is a tool, but we
Speaker 2: recommend hinge cutting on maybe you know, not more than
Speaker 2: twenty percent of all properties more like fifteen. But the
Speaker 2: habitat determines that maybe someone's not skilled with a saw,
Speaker 2: then I don't want them cutting hingecuts, so we'll recommend
Speaker 2: they don't cut. And then if you can have a
Speaker 2: logger create your betting areas and stem count for you,
Speaker 2: what an excellent time and a lot less risk to
Speaker 2: do so. And then that's a time for diversification too.
Speaker 2: We could add some conference to those hardwoods, especially in pockets,
Speaker 2: start to diversify the landscape a little bit too. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of different ways to look at that, and
Speaker 2: it might be we've had clients where the big bucks
Speaker 2: are coming from the public land to the north, for example,
Speaker 2: and so you don't want to try to reinvent it
Speaker 2: and say, well, we're going to try to stick them
Speaker 2: one hundred yards from a food plot. It's okay. If
Speaker 2: they're four hundred yards back on that public land, no
Speaker 2: one hunts it. It's really hard to access. And so
Speaker 2: you're considering that within the management plan too.
Speaker 1: Gotcha, that makes a lot of sense. And I'm always amazed,
Speaker 1: at least when we're driving around in Kansas, it seems
Speaker 1: like you drive by somebody's unmaintained like eighty or they're
Speaker 1: unmaintained one sixty or three twenty, and it's it is
Speaker 1: like you said, just gray gray hardwood trees that are,
Speaker 1: you know, and then they got some cedars mixing. It's
Speaker 1: a brushy mess never maintained. And it's like, wow that
Speaker 1: unless you had the piece next to it, you couldn't
Speaker 1: necessarily hunt in that. But that thing will be loaded up.
Speaker 1: That thing will just be loaded up with deer right there,
Speaker 1: right and and and my buddy Randy's property has a
Speaker 1: piece like that and some corners, and it's like you
Speaker 1: sit in your stand and you're like all the deer
Speaker 1: coming out of that junk.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: So it's like it's weird. You know, he's got these
Speaker 1: beautiful oak hardwoods. You know, he's one of those guys
Speaker 1: if it can't produce an acorn or you know, if
Speaker 1: it doesn't produce something for the deer, like let's get
Speaker 1: it out of there, let's cut it or get it out.
Speaker 1: And so he's got these beautiful hardwoods, but yet hey,
Speaker 1: all these deer are picking this just brushy, messy ceedar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so it's like that's important, you know. Or the
Speaker 1: CRP is important.
Speaker 2: What you have to always remember looking at deer property
Speaker 2: is and we talk about like land buying tips. Land
Speaker 2: buying fails to avoid the lower the timber value unless
Speaker 2: it's underwater giant rocks or something. But the lower the
Speaker 2: timber value, the higher the wildlife value. So if you
Speaker 2: have big oaks, maple cherry, worst kind of woods for deer,
Speaker 2: A huge oak woods worst kind of woods for deer.
Speaker 2: Acorns are not acorns are more like brows. They're hard
Speaker 2: to digest, and yeah we have acorns out here, but
Speaker 2: they're a part of the brows. The acorns alone are
Speaker 2: not going to hold deer on the property. So always
Speaker 2: remember that the lower the quality of the timber, the
Speaker 2: better the value for wildlife. That makes sense, and that's
Speaker 2: a really hard concept for you know, for people buying
Speaker 2: because they want to have these big, beautiful woods. But
Speaker 2: then and then the worst thing is, let's see at
Speaker 2: one hundred acres of hard woods, do you know much
Speaker 2: work and doze or time and land manipulation and diversification
Speaker 2: need to make that actually a good wildlife person a
Speaker 2: lot of.
Speaker 1: Money versus just sending a brusher through or multip you
Speaker 1: know something that just mulches it up. You got to
Speaker 1: get out there the equipment and.
Speaker 2: Or buying, yeah, buying a property that and so that's
Speaker 2: where you try to keep people. Make sure it's got
Speaker 2: a lot of diversification. You want to look at it
Speaker 2: from an aerial photo, and this is even on public land.
Speaker 2: You look at an aerial photo, there's lots of different
Speaker 2: shapes and colors. Probably a good place to hunt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, gotcha. So now we're going to jump into weather.
Speaker 1: It kind of ties back in to what we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier. And you guys, you guys that live there,
Speaker 1: just like us out here. If we're hunting out west
Speaker 1: and the day doesn't present itself right, the wind's wrong,
Speaker 1: or we can sit it out. So whether introduces all
Speaker 1: of these variables into it. You know, you've got different
Speaker 1: temperature ranges, you've got different pre sip whether it's rain
Speaker 1: or snow. You've got different pressures highs or lows moving in.
Speaker 1: You've got you know, wind, which we've already covered on.
Speaker 1: But you know, it is such a huge thing. But
Speaker 1: then to complicated even more, you get all these things
Speaker 1: that work in unit. You know, they got all these
Speaker 1: variables that change with each other. They change against each other,
Speaker 1: and then one thing, like my buddy Chris Parrish has said,
Speaker 1: like he's always a big fan of like he wants
Speaker 1: it to change, but then sit there for two or
Speaker 1: three days, like he doesn't want to be it's not
Speaker 1: as good like during the change sometimes right, he wants
Speaker 1: to be like on the backside of that cold front
Speaker 1: a little bit. So how do you look at all
Speaker 1: these things? Like I guess maybe a better way to
Speaker 1: pose the questions, like what's your perfect weather day? Like
Speaker 1: what are you looking for? Temperature wise, precip wise, you know,
Speaker 1: higher low pressure. You know obviously we want the wind, right,
Speaker 1: but but like what's a good day versus like what's
Speaker 1: a marginal day? Or does it come down the wind?
Speaker 1: And if you got the wind, are you gonna hunt
Speaker 1: regardless of those other factors of the weather.
Speaker 2: Explain a little bit. There's U and this is something
Speaker 2: that's near and near to my heart. My last book
Speaker 2: kind of ties in with that. But it's all weather,
Speaker 2: white tails and so. And then I worked I work
Speaker 2: with hunt Wise, and I helped to develop their algorithm.
Speaker 2: I developed an algorithm for outdoor Life back in twenty
Speaker 2: fifteen on how I hunt the weather, and so it's
Speaker 2: near and dear to my heart. And what I'm looking
Speaker 2: for is not a certain temperature for example, I'm looking
Speaker 2: for temperature change. And so temperature change to me is
Speaker 2: number one. And so let's say you have a time
Speaker 2: period where it's and it could be late October where
Speaker 2: it's unseasonably warm. It's seventy one, sixty nine, sixty eight,
Speaker 2: seventy seventy for several days in a row, and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, there's a major cold front that goes
Speaker 2: through and it drops the temperatures down to fifty So
Speaker 2: even then it might be traditionally a little bit warm,
Speaker 2: but it just dropped twenty degrees. Well, there's if it
Speaker 2: dropped twenty degrees, there's major weather that took place to
Speaker 2: get it to drop, meaning you probably had extreme winds,
Speaker 2: probably some extreme moisture of some kind, and it was
Speaker 2: volatile for a longer period of time that the longer
Speaker 2: it's dropping. And so deer feed five times in a
Speaker 2: twenty four hour period. If they misfeedings, they're really hungry
Speaker 2: on the backside. So if they're not going out into
Speaker 2: the open agfield, it's because it's blizzard. Because it's windy
Speaker 2: because it's raining, thunder lightning storms, it's stressful to them.
Speaker 2: They're burning energy through stress because it's loud and it
Speaker 2: makes them nervous. They're creatures of stress. They're burning energy
Speaker 2: because they miss feedings, and they're burning energy because of
Speaker 2: the temperature drop. They're trying to stay warm. So you
Speaker 2: have three things that work for them. And then on
Speaker 2: the backside of that, what we see when that temperture
Speaker 2: drops when the wind modifies. No, it could have been
Speaker 2: forty miles an hours dropped into twenty, could have been
Speaker 2: thirty miles an hours dropped into ten. The bottom line,
Speaker 2: that's the modification of the wind then and it still
Speaker 2: could be really windy. Let's say it was fifty miles
Speaker 2: an hours drop into twenty five. They'll notice that change.
Speaker 2: So once that change takes place and it modifies, then
Speaker 2: that's when I want to be on the stand. They'll
Speaker 2: look at pressure. Let's say that that there's you know,
Speaker 2: five or six days of consistency, you have this big
Speaker 2: whammy of a cold front come through, and then all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, on the backside, it drops twenty degrees, winds,
Speaker 2: moderate weather, but the pressure is still low because there's
Speaker 2: another front coming, doesn't matter what the pressure is, you're
Speaker 2: going to move. They just missfeedings. The weather dropped, the
Speaker 2: temperature dropped, it's it's moderating right now. They're going to
Speaker 2: put the feedback on and they're going to move. So
Speaker 2: that's a great time to hunt. If it's higher pressure.
Speaker 2: Let's say that it comes true and there's a high pressure,
Speaker 2: great time to hunt. If the moon's bad or good,
Speaker 2: it's still a great time to hunt. So I look
Speaker 2: at it like they don't have a pressure meter in
Speaker 2: the heady. Everything that they do is tangible, and so
Speaker 2: you can even look at So you'll have a pre
Speaker 2: front coming through a big blizzard, and you'll probably see
Speaker 2: this in Elk too, where they know not to be
Speaker 2: caught out in the open. And I think they know
Speaker 2: that by wind speed, temperature, moisture, wind direction. They live
Speaker 2: out there at three sixty five, obviously they know not
Speaker 2: to get caught out there. But then you have a
Speaker 2: snow that's coming in. It's going to be three inches,
Speaker 2: it's wet snow, the winds are going to be moderate. Well,
Speaker 2: then you see them feeding like crazy out there in
Speaker 2: the fields. They know and I don't think it's and
Speaker 2: it could be the exact same pressure. They just know
Speaker 2: by tangibles. So there's times where like you'll have it
Speaker 2: come through, there's a high pressure right at the backside.
Speaker 2: Awesome day to hunt. Low pressure doesn't matter. All those
Speaker 2: changes is took place. There's times where the second or
Speaker 2: third day show a higher pressure day because it's slowly
Speaker 2: rising after that front take place. Took place. To me,
Speaker 2: that first day, after the front, part of that second
Speaker 2: day is when you need to be hunting. By the
Speaker 2: third day, it's just more of the same. So even
Speaker 2: if the pressure is higher, and I'll see some of
Speaker 2: the some of the formulas for looking at weather change
Speaker 2: and predicting deer movement, if you'll have those models showing
Speaker 2: that that second and third day is higher than that
Speaker 2: first day, and you just miss one of the best
Speaker 2: days of the year, just because the pressure is hired
Speaker 2: doesn't mean a thing you know on that second, third day.
Speaker 2: So look at in a deer's world, they just it's
Speaker 2: kind of like us being lost out in the wilderness.
Speaker 2: We get rescued, We're probably going to gorge ourselves on food,
Speaker 2: but do we do it the second day, the third day?
Speaker 2: And that's what I look with deer, when that change
Speaker 2: goes through, they're ready to replenish that energy. But two
Speaker 2: days after that they're not doing the same, and that's
Speaker 2: when you want to be there, right there, So I
Speaker 2: hope that makes sense. It's kind of based on feeding,
Speaker 2: based on temperature. Obviously we have right now just on
Speaker 2: those two properties. I'm talking about a total of three
Speaker 2: hundred acres. We have almost sixty cell cameras out in
Speaker 2: two states, and so we can see when the weather's windy,
Speaker 2: when it's super hot, when there's blizzard conditions. Deer don't move.
Speaker 2: It's pretty easy. It's pretty obviously they don't move. So
Speaker 2: weather does influence obviously, but it's fun to watch them
Speaker 2: and be able to predict it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we watched them in Kansas is sut. We went
Speaker 1: from mid seventies when we first got there, in the
Speaker 1: middle of the day where it's like you couldn't stand
Speaker 1: to get in the Redneck in the afternoon without like
Speaker 1: just being insulate, you know, just being in an oven.
Speaker 1: And then and then we had this weird low pressure
Speaker 1: moving that brought a bunch of rain, which they needed.
Speaker 1: So I wasn't gonna complain cause everybody needed the rain
Speaker 1: there in Kansas. Yeah, but then it was like the heat,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of stifling their movement a little bit.
Speaker 1: And then you throw this this rain and wind on
Speaker 1: which you know, we're like, well, they maybe it'll change
Speaker 1: it didn't they still, And then we got a high
Speaker 1: pressure the last day we were there, high pressure, and
Speaker 1: the weather dropped from that mid forties with the rain
Speaker 1: down into the high twenties at night. And you know,
Speaker 1: my buddy Randy that owns it, he's like, get on
Speaker 1: the food. And sure enough, like that night was like
Speaker 1: somebody flipped the light switch on. It's like, oh, where
Speaker 1: have these deer been the entire hunt? You know, they
Speaker 1: all came out of the woodworks, and so we just
Speaker 1: needed that change. And it wasn't the change from hot
Speaker 1: to rain, which we thought may spark it. It was
Speaker 1: a change from hot to rain and then all that
Speaker 1: stress built up, like you were saying, and then the
Speaker 1: cold and the clear came and they were everywhere that night.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you gotta look at some of the white research
Speaker 2: that's out there shows them not really moving that much
Speaker 2: different during better weather, but they're not looking at it.
Speaker 2: That deer can move the exact same, but he's doing
Speaker 2: it during daylight. They're sitting in their beds all day.
Speaker 2: They're ready to eat, and they want to go to
Speaker 2: their best food source afternoon food source, which sets up
Speaker 2: the reason for those food pots on private land because
Speaker 2: you want to have that great food source on there
Speaker 2: to anchor that movement. So it's really important to understand
Speaker 2: the weather and how it plays, and it's no surprise
Speaker 2: like in that situation where you see those deer move
Speaker 2: and if you look at it, you can see those
Speaker 2: major fronts usually ten days out, seven days out. You
Speaker 2: might not know if it's going to drop seventeen degrees
Speaker 2: or if it's going to drop seven, but you know
Speaker 2: there's going to be a change, and it's important to
Speaker 2: get out in the woods. And even during the front
Speaker 2: some of those fronts. We had one just a little
Speaker 2: bit ago, we had over forty mile an hour wind,
Speaker 2: We got a little precipitation with snow during that. You
Speaker 2: can find those days where there's super wind and the
Speaker 2: temperatures dropped already a lot. And when you have ridge systems,
Speaker 2: or you have them the backside of a big seedar,
Speaker 2: swamp or conifers, you get on the lease side of
Speaker 2: the cover or the lease side of the ridge, and
Speaker 2: you can take a disproportionate number of deer that are
Speaker 2: up on those ridges. They don't want to be in
Speaker 2: those forty mile hour winds, so they get down on
Speaker 2: the lease side. And you do that during the rut
Speaker 2: or something, and it's like throwing gasoline on the rock
Speaker 2: because you take a high percentage of deer, you put
Speaker 2: them all down on the lease side, and then you
Speaker 2: learn how to hunt those areas, and uh, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: So even in the wind, you can have some huge
Speaker 2: advantages by finding the column side of the cover and
Speaker 2: habit deep.
Speaker 1: And I want to make a correction there. I think
Speaker 1: I misquoted my buddy Chris. I think he won't. He
Speaker 1: actually wants to hunt during that change and then once
Speaker 1: things stabilize, it's not as it's not as good. So
Speaker 1: I know Chris knows what he's doing. You know, killed
Speaker 1: some great public lamb bucks And I think I actually
Speaker 1: quoted him there as we talked through that. I think
Speaker 1: he wants to hunt during those two or three changes
Speaker 1: or those big drastic temperature drops or big you know,
Speaker 1: pressure drops tonight and I.
Speaker 2: And I want to be on the I want to
Speaker 2: be on the back side because those winds will stifle
Speaker 2: movement even if the temperature is changing. So unless you
Speaker 2: get on the lee side, you get in the quiet.
Speaker 2: And and so wind is a huge thing even you know,
Speaker 2: and not saying that they won't move. It's not a
Speaker 2: certain mile per hour to change. So if it moves
Speaker 2: from fifty mile an hour down to twenty five, they're
Speaker 2: going to move.
Speaker 1: In Kansas, it's weird. You know, it always blows there.
Speaker 1: And these these guys that are hunting Kansas for a
Speaker 1: long time, and you know, it's just from a lot
Speaker 1: of time to sitting in the stands. Those deer seem
Speaker 1: to like a north wind better because that means that
Speaker 1: they're getting that cold wind, you know. And and they'll
Speaker 1: still move on the south. But they said they get
Speaker 1: better move on the north. And those deer they're like
Speaker 1: some wind. They don't want it to be two to three,
Speaker 1: they want it to be ten to fifteen.
Speaker 2: It's tough to around these hills. It's tough too because
Speaker 2: the thermals get thrown out of whack. You know, I'm
Speaker 2: you're counting down winds coming up from the hollow. But
Speaker 2: if it's nice time and it drops down to zero,
Speaker 2: and so you always have to look and see what
Speaker 2: the wind's gonna do two to three hours after dark
Speaker 2: because it's calming two to three hours. That means an
Speaker 2: hour before dark you're gonna get some calm wins in there,
Speaker 2: and the wind just goes right back downhill, even if it's.
Speaker 1: In your face, regardless of the prevailing Yep, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: I can't. I can't let you go here without talking
Speaker 1: about calling deer a little bit, you know, running running calls.
Speaker 1: I love to be able to call them, but I
Speaker 1: also understand their situations or times when, if your stand
Speaker 1: placement is correct, you may not want them to even
Speaker 1: know you're on the on the landscape. What's your opinion
Speaker 1: and strategy for making any noise in the stand? You know, calls, grunts, bleets,
Speaker 1: weez you know, snort, wheezes, any of that. Like, are
Speaker 1: you a quiet hunter? Are there times when it works?
Speaker 1: What's your opinion on that?
Speaker 2: And they're I'm a I'm a pretty quiet hunter, only
Speaker 2: because I'll explain that that we're in a higher pressure area.
Speaker 2: So you look at Wisconsin had three hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: thousand bowl hunters at one time eight hundred thousand gun
Speaker 2: hunters going in the woods. Michigan, my home state, had
Speaker 2: over four hundred thousand bowl hunters. Minnesota is in that
Speaker 2: two seventy five at one time where you talk about
Speaker 2: Kansas the twenty five thousand, Iowa sixty five thousand bowl hunters.
Speaker 2: So when you have high pressure areas, people are calling
Speaker 2: all the time, and that's a really bad thing. And
Speaker 2: so we've even had a neighbor he was rattling, snort,
Speaker 2: weazing and grunting and bleeding and we had all the
Speaker 2: deer run from their property. He was probably four hundred
Speaker 2: yards away. And at first I got excited, I'm like,
Speaker 2: what's going on over there? And then all of a
Speaker 2: sudden the year run from that area. You realize it's
Speaker 2: a neighbor and they were actually guiding on that property.
Speaker 2: And this is down in southwest Wisconsin, and that's what
Speaker 2: the guy was doing. Someone probably paid to hunt there
Speaker 2: and he's just throwing all the stops. Now that being said,
Speaker 2: I always have a grunt call in my handwarm or two.
Speaker 2: That's something my carrying the woods all the time. I
Speaker 2: like using a bleaqe can and those you can imagine
Speaker 2: in my area, those are pretty low impact. You know,
Speaker 2: if I have a mature buck that's going by and
Speaker 2: I can't get a shot with a bow, I'm going
Speaker 2: to try to grun them back or bleed them back.
Speaker 2: And then also I'll use rattling antlers. There's some on
Speaker 2: the wall right behind me right here, but I use
Speaker 2: those rattling antlers more on public land, like for example,
Speaker 2: where we went in Pennsylvania, we didn't see another hunter
Speaker 2: for two days. So you can be in a really
Speaker 2: remote area calling works awesome. Then, so I'll use combination
Speaker 2: of rattling antlers and grunt calls, but more I'd be
Speaker 2: more aggressive there even though it's public land, but it's
Speaker 2: big and open, not a lot of hunters. And then
Speaker 2: same with the southeast Southeast Ohio. I bring my rattling
Speaker 2: antlers out there because we didn't see a lot of
Speaker 2: hunters an hour and a half in and we're around here.
Speaker 2: I'm using them to try to get them to come
Speaker 2: back when I can't get a shot. And we rarely
Speaker 2: blind call around here unless our downwind is completely secure,
Speaker 2: because a lot of times they'll go right downwind of
Speaker 2: you on circle around. So yeah, get especially the older bucks.
Speaker 2: Yeah that makes sense, but no, no, make kind of
Speaker 2: all over the chart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that makes a ton of sense. You let
Speaker 1: the situation dictate whether you're gonna make noise out of
Speaker 1: the standard, whether you're going to be quiet. And I
Speaker 1: was gonna give a little example last time we used
Speaker 1: a rattling bag on on the Kansas hunt last year
Speaker 1: and the deer didn't know exactly where it came from.
Speaker 1: And we had three bucks and it was my very
Speaker 1: first morning ever like run past our blind and all
Speaker 1: ended up winding us because they didn't know exactly where
Speaker 1: it was they had ran past. And well that that
Speaker 1: didn't work, Like you didn't get it to stop in
Speaker 1: the right spo. It got him real close, real fast.
Speaker 1: But I'm like, well this this works, and yeah, I
Speaker 1: last year we hit the timing right where I'm like, dang,
Speaker 1: calling these deer in is maybe easier than calling Elkin
Speaker 1: out west. And then this year, like very very I mean,
Speaker 1: we grunted a couple in that weren't quite shooters, but
Speaker 1: the big bucks that were were interested in dose there was.
Speaker 1: It didn't didn't really work.
Speaker 2: Like you said in the lockdown, that's a tough one.
Speaker 2: But they we As a side note, have you ever
Speaker 2: I like, like with these rattling antlers, is a pretty
Speaker 2: long rope on them, and have you ever done it
Speaker 2: where you've dropped it, dropped them down out of your
Speaker 2: stand with the rope and then it's on the ground
Speaker 2: down there, and then all you have to do is
Speaker 2: reach over and like hit it like this and around
Speaker 2: the ground, hitting each other right against the tree, like
Speaker 2: I was just thinking. Made me think of that when
Speaker 2: a rattle bag that works with a rattle bag too.
Speaker 1: Yeah it does. Yeah, and like just kind of tickling
Speaker 1: them down there and maybe giving a little bit better location.
Speaker 1: We tried to put a longer lanyard on ours and
Speaker 1: do it, and I'm just like I didn't And this
Speaker 1: is where maybe my my not having enough time in
Speaker 1: the stand and just need to spend more. I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: it's real quiet down there, like if something was close,
Speaker 1: they might hear it. But real horns, I think make
Speaker 1: a little bit better of a clash when you're dropping
Speaker 1: them together. But the rattling bags really need to be hammered. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they need to be hammered and rolled around. But no,
Speaker 1: a great idea, like all this stuff is going through
Speaker 1: my head as I'm in the stand, like I'd like
Speaker 1: to be able to do it down at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the tree or you know, out in my hands.
Speaker 2: But that's where like these you get a nice set
Speaker 2: of sheds or something. They they really bounce off each other,
Speaker 2: are down there, and then that way if they come
Speaker 2: in and you know a lot of times they're back
Speaker 2: there at seventy yards making a rub, they're being aggressive
Speaker 2: before they come in, posturing a little bit. And in
Speaker 2: that case, to me, like you grunt, they are so
Speaker 2: good at pinpointing exactly where that came. I'm not meaning
Speaker 2: like that came from twenty two feet up in that
Speaker 2: tree over there, if they know whereas if you can
Speaker 2: tickle those antlers down there and there's some brush between
Speaker 2: you and them, they that's that ground level. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's I think that's a great tactic that I didn't
Speaker 2: come up with that, but that's something I heard long
Speaker 2: time ago, and that's I really like that that tactic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's a great idea. We'll have to we'll
Speaker 1: have to play with that more so if we can
Speaker 1: get some volume out of like a rattle, would yep, yeap, yeap,
Speaker 1: figure that out, So no, I really appreciate having you
Speaker 1: on Jeff and your busy schedule. I know you're a
Speaker 1: busy guy, but how can our listeners find out a
Speaker 1: little bit more about you, what you got going on
Speaker 1: any of the other tips. I know this is just
Speaker 1: scratching the surface on all the videos and info you
Speaker 1: put out there, but how can people find more more
Speaker 1: about you and what you got going on?
Speaker 2: Well, we you know, mostly on YouTube. I try to
Speaker 2: put out two hundred and eight videos a year. Last
Speaker 2: when he missed was summer of twenty nineteen, so that's
Speaker 2: four week. It's all white tail strategy. Depending on what's
Speaker 2: going on that week, everything is different. We're not talking
Speaker 2: about building betting areas in August, for example, we're talking
Speaker 2: about that in December, January, February. No different than the rut.
Speaker 2: We're talking about that in early October, you know, because
Speaker 2: that's coming up two weeks, so we're not talking about
Speaker 2: that in July. But it's white tail habitat solutions dot com.
Speaker 2: We're very active on Instagram too and putting out reels
Speaker 2: and pictures that's a little bit more personal side. And
Speaker 2: then also the books, the web classes. White tail habitats
Speaker 2: Solutions dot Com. The website, there's over six hundred white
Speaker 2: tail articles on there. We have our food plot company,
Speaker 2: which you can find on the website. Also Pure Wildlife
Speaker 2: Plans WHS Wildlife Planging find that too. And most of all,
Speaker 2: if you don't want to buy anything, and we go
Speaker 2: to client properties, we booked those. Like my client schedule
Speaker 2: right now is book probably ninety five percent out through August,
Speaker 2: and I might go to seventy clients this year. But
Speaker 2: if you don't want to spend a dime with us,
Speaker 2: to me, the whole business and what's been very rewarding
Speaker 2: is giving as much information as I know out as
Speaker 2: much as possible, so whatever fits for the for that
Speaker 2: time of the week or month. We try to help
Speaker 2: people out whether they ever spend a dime with us.
Speaker 2: And that's the most rewarding because we'll have people say
Speaker 2: I bought some of your seed. I don't even really
Speaker 2: know if I'm going to plan a food plot, but
Speaker 2: I did it just as a way to say thanks
Speaker 2: for all the videos and stuff like that. We bought
Speaker 2: a book, you know that kind of thing, thank you,
Speaker 2: And we sell hats and stuff in the books and
Speaker 2: web classes but like I said, if you ever, it's
Speaker 2: not not trying to push you to buy something, it's
Speaker 2: we'll try to keep putting us out as much as
Speaker 2: we can as much free content. So it's always to
Speaker 2: have attached lollutions.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, well thanks, thanks for jumping on, have a
Speaker 1: have a good winner, you know what you saying, get
Speaker 1: and getting property set up and uh this one will launch.
Speaker 1: Uh I think it'll be, but if not, it might
Speaker 1: be after a Christmas. But Merry Christmas do you and
Speaker 1: your family, and thanks for thanks for being on here,
Speaker 1: and we'll catch up the creator and Jeff.
Speaker 2: That's a great chat, which Jason, that was great. H
Speaker 2: m h
Speaker 1: M hmmmmmmmmmm