Speaker 1: Welcome to the wire to Hunt podcast, your home for
Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan. In this episode number three sixty
Speaker 1: two and telling the show, I'm joined by the legendary
Speaker 1: d I Y Michigan bow hunter John Eberhart to discuss
Speaker 1: what exactly he would do in some of the deer
Speaker 1: hunting world's toughest scenarios. All right, welcome to the wire
Speaker 1: ton Podcast, brought to you by on X. Today. On
Speaker 1: the show, we've got John Eberhardt back with me. And
Speaker 1: if you're a longtime listener, you're familiar with John. He's
Speaker 1: been on here quite a few times, I think four
Speaker 1: or five, three or four somewhere in that ballpark over
Speaker 1: the years. But if you're not familiar with John, here's
Speaker 1: a really quick intro. He's one of the most successful
Speaker 1: d I Y bow owners that I know of, especially
Speaker 1: in the state of Michigan. He's got dozens of record
Speaker 1: book books. He's written multiple books which I highly recommend,
Speaker 1: such as Precision Bow Hunting and Bow Hunting White Tales
Speaker 1: that Eberhart way. He's done all of this on public
Speaker 1: land or by permission land, and he's doing it in
Speaker 1: tough locations, and he consistently has success, and he's great
Speaker 1: at telling people and teaching people how to do something similar. So,
Speaker 1: like I said, I've had John on the show over
Speaker 1: the years, You've heard kind of the basics of what
Speaker 1: he does. Some of the you know, what do you
Speaker 1: do with rubs? What do you do with traial cameras?
Speaker 1: What are you doing this? Blow blah? But I thought,
Speaker 1: what's a different kind of way that we could approach
Speaker 1: a hunter like John? How might be there some different
Speaker 1: ways we could learn from as m As I'm stewing
Speaker 1: on this, I started thinking through different scenarios and thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, what would John do in that scenario? What
Speaker 1: would John do in this scenario? And let's say you're
Speaker 1: all set up in a tree, another hunter comes waltzing by,
Speaker 1: and you've got an hour and a half left to daylight?
Speaker 1: What would John Eberhart do in that scenario? What would
Speaker 1: John do if he was dropped into a brand new
Speaker 1: property at the end of the summer and he only
Speaker 1: had one day to figure it out and prepare for
Speaker 1: the season, what would he do in that scenario. Those
Speaker 1: kinds of questions started popping in my mind, and they
Speaker 1: were the impetus for this episode. What would John Eberhart do?
Speaker 1: I think that there's something we can learn from a hunter,
Speaker 1: not just by asking him or her what do you
Speaker 1: think about X, but instead put them in a scenario
Speaker 1: and ask them to explain their thought process, what exactly
Speaker 1: they would do, why exactly they would do it, how
Speaker 1: exactly they would do it. I think that we can
Speaker 1: learn something new when you approach a topic in that
Speaker 1: kind of way, and that's that's kind of my hypothesis
Speaker 1: for today's episode. I'm thinking, I'm hoping, I'm pretty damn
Speaker 1: sure that we can get a new level of insight
Speaker 1: from John by picking his brain on a bunch of
Speaker 1: example situations. So that's what we did. I'm grilling John
Speaker 1: on one of our community's very best deer hunters, on
Speaker 1: a bunch of hypothetical situations, very specific, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: hear how he would approach it. And I gotta tell
Speaker 1: you a spoiler alert, They're gonna be a lot of
Speaker 1: cool things that we cover. I'm I'm very much looking
Speaker 1: forward to it. So I think, whether than me rambling
Speaker 1: about it. Rather than me talking about how great this
Speaker 1: episode is gonna be, we should just get into it
Speaker 1: and see if it can actually live up to that billing.
Speaker 1: I think it will. Every time I've ever talked to John,
Speaker 1: I've learned something, and uh, I trust this will be
Speaker 1: the case too, hopefully for you as well. So let's
Speaker 1: get right into it, all right. I am very excited
Speaker 1: to have back on the show with me John Eberhart. John,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for coming back on the show. Oh well,
Speaker 1: thanks for inviting me. It's uh, it's always a treat
Speaker 1: for me because because as you know, as I've told
Speaker 1: you probably every year we talk, you were one of
Speaker 1: the most influential people in the early stages of my
Speaker 1: serious deer hunting journey, and and I've grown a lot
Speaker 1: because of everything I learned from you. So it's just
Speaker 1: great whenever I can get you back on the show,
Speaker 1: because I know other people will benefit from it. To um,
Speaker 1: I've got a cool idea. I think it's a cool idea,
Speaker 1: and maybe you'll think otherwise, but I think I've got
Speaker 1: a cool idea for this chat. Um. But before we
Speaker 1: get into the real meat and potatoes, I just got
Speaker 1: to hear real quick off the bat. It's been a
Speaker 1: weird spring, a weird summer of everything going on with
Speaker 1: with COVID and and everything else. I'm just curious. Regardless
Speaker 1: of that, how do you feel about your deer hunting
Speaker 1: prospects this year? Is everything looking okay to We're able
Speaker 1: to do the scouting you needed? Is everything still on track? Uh?
Speaker 1: Well it's get Uh. My shoulder surgery hampered my season
Speaker 1: last year. Um this year, Yeah, I got out and
Speaker 1: did all my scouting, all my scouting has done. Everything
Speaker 1: looked great. Uh did some additional public land scouting, prepped up,
Speaker 1: reprepped all my old locations. Everything's cool. I'm shooting fifty pounds,
Speaker 1: I'm shooting about six arrows at a time. My shoulders
Speaker 1: I'm still having issue, but I also definitely be able
Speaker 1: to hunt. But as you well know, I don't go
Speaker 1: out and look for deer. So I just I just
Speaker 1: hunt according to the sign that I see during postseason,
Speaker 1: that you know from the previous year's run. Um, So
Speaker 1: I don't go out. I have no idea what's on
Speaker 1: the properties like hunt because I don't own anything, I
Speaker 1: don't leave anything. Everything is pretty far away from where
Speaker 1: I actually live, right now is that something that do
Speaker 1: you ever I can see an inherent benefit to that,
Speaker 1: because there's always a certain sense of surprise when you
Speaker 1: go out there. You don't quite know what's running around,
Speaker 1: and when you see a buck that you want to shoot,
Speaker 1: it's it's a holy smokes, look at this deer. I
Speaker 1: had no idea who was out here. That's that's really cool.
Speaker 1: But do you ever find yourself occasionally hearing about somebody
Speaker 1: else who does get to specifically target one buck over
Speaker 1: course of weeks or months or years. Does that appeal
Speaker 1: to it all? Or is it you know, you're really
Speaker 1: happy that you got uh. I. You know, there are
Speaker 1: times when some buddy that actually hunts the same properties
Speaker 1: as me tells me there's a big buck there, or
Speaker 1: they show me a motion picture. Because I never hunted
Speaker 1: property by myself. It's public or free knock on door
Speaker 1: for permission. So if I have somebody shown me a picture, yeah,
Speaker 1: that definitely raises my level and makes me concentrate more
Speaker 1: on that piece of property. Um, you know, and that's
Speaker 1: what Miles Keller used to do. Miles Keller is an
Speaker 1: old school guy, but you know he always targeted a
Speaker 1: single buck, you know, he'd drive around through the countryside
Speaker 1: with his job and he'd see big bucks and then
Speaker 1: he'd get permission. This is back in the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 1: and he would target those individual bucks. And yeah, that's
Speaker 1: always that always makes it a different type of a challenge. Um.
Speaker 1: But when you're hunting like I do, where you're trying
Speaker 1: to go to a lot of different places, you just
Speaker 1: don't have the time to put out cameras and take inventories.
Speaker 1: It's too far away. Um. I just you know, when
Speaker 1: I like, when I go out of state, I hunt
Speaker 1: cameras exclusively. We put cameras at every single location, and
Speaker 1: we hunt according to what we see on the cameras. Um.
Speaker 1: And but there's always big bucks there. You know, last
Speaker 1: two seasons in Michigan, I haven't even seen a Pope
Speaker 1: and young buck at all. There's time when I go
Speaker 1: to Kansas, I'll see fifteen Pope young bucks in a week.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's definitely different here as you well know.
Speaker 1: And I've had pretty good success on not doing a
Speaker 1: lot of preseason scouting and turning bucks nocturnal before season
Speaker 1: even opens. Um. You know, I've shot a few bucks,
Speaker 1: a few book bucks, early in the season. So, um,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of doing what I do and I like
Speaker 1: doing it. But once in a blue moon, I will
Speaker 1: know there's a big buck on specific property and I
Speaker 1: will actually target that buck and try to kill it.
Speaker 1: So that was what I was. Yeah, so I was curious,
Speaker 1: I was. That's exactly what I was gonna ask next.
Speaker 1: I was trying to rack my brain to think back
Speaker 1: through all the past stories I've heard from you, trying
Speaker 1: to think about if there ever was a year where
Speaker 1: a certain buck got under your skin and just changed
Speaker 1: all your plans and you had to focus on him. Um,
Speaker 1: it sounds like that has happened before. Yeah, it happened
Speaker 1: in There was a big buck on a little two
Speaker 1: acre parcel that I hunt and somebody told me about him.
Speaker 1: I had never seen him, so I went in there,
Speaker 1: you know, during my during September, during a hard rain
Speaker 1: and being two acres, I used to hunt it. I
Speaker 1: used to hunt this property and somebody seeing this buck
Speaker 1: across the road after dark, so I went and got
Speaker 1: permission to hunt it again. And the lady could never
Speaker 1: let anybody else hunter. Nobody else had asked because it's
Speaker 1: such a small parcel. There was a cattail marsh that
Speaker 1: butted up to her property, and right at the back
Speaker 1: of her little two acres there was a little transition
Speaker 1: zone into that cattail marsh. So I went in there
Speaker 1: and I on the edge of the cat tails. There
Speaker 1: was a bunch of red brush, and I went in
Speaker 1: there like on September, and you know, three weeks after
Speaker 1: the bucks are all rubbed out, the bigger bucks, and
Speaker 1: it was all crashed up, you know, that just rubs
Speaker 1: all over the place down that edge. So I prepped
Speaker 1: a tree because it was rainy and I wasn't gonna
Speaker 1: make a lot of noise, and you know, it masked
Speaker 1: my noise, and I prepped a tree and that buck
Speaker 1: was kind of under my skin and I shot him
Speaker 1: opening morning at eight. It was orange ten point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a heck of a buck for two act or
Speaker 1: property especially. Yeah. It just there's very few years, you know,
Speaker 1: and where I hunt in public and stuff that I
Speaker 1: hunt where things work out perfectly, and that was definitely
Speaker 1: one of them. Yeah, So that kind of fits really well.
Speaker 1: That story fits very well into my idea for our
Speaker 1: chat because I think this is our fourth, our fourth
Speaker 1: or fifth one of these we've done together, and over
Speaker 1: all those years, I've kind of grilled you on a
Speaker 1: bunch of different tactics. I've asked you, you know, what
Speaker 1: do you think about trail cameras, what do you think
Speaker 1: about scrapes? What do you think about this? That, and that?
Speaker 1: So we've got that kind of high level understanding of
Speaker 1: what you do and how you do it pretty well.
Speaker 1: So I started to think, you know, what would be
Speaker 1: a way to get it a new like the next
Speaker 1: level of nuance from you. And my idea is this, John,
Speaker 1: I thought that I could just pitch out a variety
Speaker 1: of different scenarios to you. Outline a scenario, and then
Speaker 1: what I'd like to hear from you is what would
Speaker 1: you do in that situation? I think we could learn
Speaker 1: from all these different examples. So I'll put something out
Speaker 1: there and then I'd be really curious to hear what
Speaker 1: would you do, How would you do it? Why would
Speaker 1: you do it? Maybe there's a story from the past
Speaker 1: where this actually happened to you and you can tell
Speaker 1: us that. Um, but I've got some interesting situations lined
Speaker 1: up that I'm really interested to hear how you would tackle.
Speaker 1: So if your game, I want to start playing. What
Speaker 1: would John neighborheard do. I'm always game. It might take
Speaker 1: me a few seconds to sid and think about something
Speaker 1: to process this tough that's perfect process. I love it.
Speaker 1: I love it. I think that would be great. So
Speaker 1: so let's do that, John, And let's start with something
Speaker 1: that's a little bit like what you just described. It's
Speaker 1: a scenario that some people might find themselves here in
Speaker 1: the coming weeks. Let's say it is late August and
Speaker 1: out of the blue, maybe the mailman stopped by your
Speaker 1: house and you got into a conversation with him, and
Speaker 1: he happens to find out you're a deer hunter, and
Speaker 1: you know he's been your mailman for twenty years, and
Speaker 1: he says, you know what, John, you can hunt my property.
Speaker 1: I've got, you know, forty acres or whatever, just back here,
Speaker 1: go ahead hunt it. But it's the last week August,
Speaker 1: and all you have is one week of available time
Speaker 1: that you could go see it, scout it, prep it.
Speaker 1: You've got like a day and a half, two days max.
Speaker 1: Can you walk me through how would you use that
Speaker 1: day and a half of weekend time to absolutely get
Speaker 1: the most you could out of this brand new property
Speaker 1: you picked up on the last weekend of August. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that's happened to me quite a few times. Actually. Um,
Speaker 1: what I would probably do is, I would grill the guy.
Speaker 1: You know, if he owned forty acres, that's a pretty
Speaker 1: you know, that's a for Michigan, that's that's an average parcel.
Speaker 1: I would ask him if he knows of any decent
Speaker 1: bucks on the property, um, that he has possibly seen,
Speaker 1: because if he was a male man, that means he's
Speaker 1: probably leading his house pretty early and coming in in
Speaker 1: the evening, coming home. Um. And I would ask him.
Speaker 1: I'd obviously look at an aerial and I'd ask him
Speaker 1: what the layout of his property is. Aside from looking
Speaker 1: at an arial, just to see what borders his property,
Speaker 1: I'd ask him, okay, on your bordering properties, you know
Speaker 1: how much hunting pressure is on the bordering properties. Is
Speaker 1: there a swamp on your property? Is there a swamp
Speaker 1: that butts up to your property? You know where your
Speaker 1: mate maybe coming out of a swamp in the evening,
Speaker 1: you know, right at the edge of darkness because it
Speaker 1: butts right up to his fence line. Um, I'd basically grilled,
Speaker 1: not grilled because the guy had given me permission, but
Speaker 1: I'd ask him a lot of questions, and it's very
Speaker 1: possible once I looked at an aerial photo of it,
Speaker 1: you know, if it was just open timber, or twenty
Speaker 1: acres of open timber with no under story and there
Speaker 1: wasn't any betting area on it, if it was you know,
Speaker 1: ten acres of pasture, if there wasn't any oak trees
Speaker 1: on it, because he would know if he owned it,
Speaker 1: if there was olk on it or some apple trees.
Speaker 1: I would ask him what the actual property looked like,
Speaker 1: what it contained. If it did have oaks, would they
Speaker 1: brought up to some semblance of security cover for a
Speaker 1: daytime visits, or if they're just oaks out in open timber,
Speaker 1: where a mature buck in Michigan is not going to
Speaker 1: access that place during daylight hours because it's too vulnerable
Speaker 1: with no understory to for security cover. And then I
Speaker 1: would go from there if if there was something that
Speaker 1: I didn't think was conducive or better than what I
Speaker 1: already have prepped. You know, because I have forty trees
Speaker 1: preps going into the fall. I may only on ten
Speaker 1: of them or twelve, but I've got trees ready. So
Speaker 1: if it's not something that I think is going to
Speaker 1: be overpowering as far as this is something where I
Speaker 1: think I can win here and kill something on a
Speaker 1: pretty short term time frame because it's got a betting area,
Speaker 1: or it's got some apple trees button up the security cover,
Speaker 1: or it's got you know, oaks that butt uped a
Speaker 1: security cover. Um. You know, it would totally depend on
Speaker 1: the layout of the property. I may just put it
Speaker 1: off and totally not even go there, and you know,
Speaker 1: scouted during postseason the next the next spring. But if
Speaker 1: if it had everything I needed, I'd wait for a hard,
Speaker 1: rainy day, or I'd wait for a very windy day
Speaker 1: because the forty acre parcels really really small. As far
Speaker 1: as if they had betting area on it, you know,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a relatively small betting area. So I'd
Speaker 1: wait for a nasty day where it's gonna mask the
Speaker 1: majority of my noise and the majority of my scent,
Speaker 1: even though I would be going in santlock. Um, I'd
Speaker 1: go in on a nasty day, and I would very
Speaker 1: cautiously look the property over. If I thought the property
Speaker 1: was going to be conducive to have a mature book
Speaker 1: on it, that might move on that property during daylight hours,
Speaker 1: and I would also take because it's only forty acres,
Speaker 1: I would take my prep gear and if there was
Speaker 1: something that I saw that looked conducive for daytime movements,
Speaker 1: i'd prep it right there on the spot so I
Speaker 1: didn't have to make a second trip. So when you
Speaker 1: when you say you'd walk it very carefully, can you
Speaker 1: elaborate on exactly what you mean by that? Would you
Speaker 1: just go and check out the few spots on the
Speaker 1: map look the best, or are you going to cover
Speaker 1: the whole thing or just the edges that? How literally
Speaker 1: are you going to check it? I'm going to check
Speaker 1: primarily the ages that there were a betting area on it.
Speaker 1: I would would definitely not intrude into the betting area
Speaker 1: in late August. There's no way I would. I would
Speaker 1: definitely look at the edges of the betting area that
Speaker 1: if there was any mast or fruit trees. And the
Speaker 1: cool thing about going in there in late August, I
Speaker 1: would know not only if their water masts or fruit trees,
Speaker 1: I would also know if they were burying food, you know,
Speaker 1: because I could see the acorns or apples in the
Speaker 1: tree if it had that. So I would just go
Speaker 1: the edges of any you know, projected bedding areas, and
Speaker 1: and I would just walk gingerly and slowly because I
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to spook anything. Because a lot of times,
Speaker 1: you know, when when you go in and you preseason scout,
Speaker 1: which I don't do anymore unless it's in a situation
Speaker 1: like this, which is very rare. But when you go
Speaker 1: in and you pre seasoned scout, a lot of times
Speaker 1: the bucks are not bedded back deep into the bedding
Speaker 1: areas there, They're on the perimeter edges of them. So
Speaker 1: you've gotta be really really cautious, you know, and move slow, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and you just gotta be as quiet as
Speaker 1: you possibly can because you don't want to intrude on anything.
Speaker 1: I did a live webinar the other day and a
Speaker 1: guy had a situation very similar to that. He actually
Speaker 1: pulled in on this piece of property and he saw
Speaker 1: a buck that had been bettered in a fence room
Speaker 1: and it was moving across a little opening in a
Speaker 1: pasture towards September. So he didn't go over there, but
Speaker 1: he asked me how I would go about setting up
Speaker 1: on that, and I said, what I would do is Obviously,
Speaker 1: that buck is probably betted in that fence room because
Speaker 1: the fence rol he said, had a lot of heavy
Speaker 1: security cover. It was probably betted on the edge where
Speaker 1: he could see out into the little open pasture, and
Speaker 1: he probably had the wind coming in from his back
Speaker 1: where he could smell anything coming in from from the
Speaker 1: other side of the open area. So I said, what
Speaker 1: I would do is I would go around through the timber,
Speaker 1: you know, a way outside of the open pasture, and
Speaker 1: I would go back around to where that buck was heading.
Speaker 1: I would do it on a rainy or a windy day,
Speaker 1: come back in the himber from the opposite side, and
Speaker 1: I'd go and try and find out why, you know,
Speaker 1: for buck to get up and move, there's a reason
Speaker 1: he was going in that direction. And you know this
Speaker 1: time of year it was food based. It was probably
Speaker 1: food based, so there was probably something over there, some
Speaker 1: form of a food source, you know, maybe an early
Speaker 1: apple tree. It is way too early for dropping acorns.
Speaker 1: But I'd find out why the deer was going that place,
Speaker 1: and if he could find that location, set up a tree,
Speaker 1: and then go back out the same way, because if
Speaker 1: he if he were to go across that open pasture
Speaker 1: and that buck was still bettered in the same place
Speaker 1: he was when he when he saw him come out
Speaker 1: of there. Probably that buck is going to visually see
Speaker 1: him going across that opening, so he wants to definitely
Speaker 1: go around where there's not going to be a visual
Speaker 1: and it's nasty days not yet, he press the tree
Speaker 1: that buck's not going to hear him, and then he's
Speaker 1: going to go back out the same way he came in.
Speaker 1: And then on opening evening he could go back in
Speaker 1: the same way way around and go to that spot
Speaker 1: and hopefully that buck gets up and keeps that same
Speaker 1: pattern and he might have an opportunity yet. Interesting, So
Speaker 1: here's another scenario. Then it's a little bit related to
Speaker 1: what you just described there. Um as he mentioned that
Speaker 1: that buck was probably heading where he was because of
Speaker 1: a food related attracting of some kind. Um. I want
Speaker 1: to kind of understand better how you choose between potential
Speaker 1: early season spots, you know, opening night set kind of situation.
Speaker 1: So let's assume it's October one, and of all the
Speaker 1: different places you have prepped, of all the different properties
Speaker 1: you have, let's say you're down to two different stand
Speaker 1: sites that seem ideal for early season. We're gonna say that,
Speaker 1: you know, all the conditions seem lined up for these spots,
Speaker 1: but one of them is overlooking. Let's say a couple
Speaker 1: of apple trees, and the other one is set up
Speaker 1: a big it's next to a big, lone white oak tree.
Speaker 1: Both of them are dropping. They're both kind of ideal.
Speaker 1: Can you walk me through how you would try to
Speaker 1: pick between those two. Maybe you've got a clear cut
Speaker 1: favorite between the two food sources, or maybe you could
Speaker 1: describe what other factors you would try to look at
Speaker 1: to determine which is your top option of those two
Speaker 1: good options. That one is really, really, really simple because
Speaker 1: I always do. Let's say, let's say I've got I
Speaker 1: think thisser have act again like trees prepped. Probably twenty
Speaker 1: of those trees are going to be potential first day
Speaker 1: or two or three of season trees. They're gonna be
Speaker 1: early season feeding locations or potentially of a primary scrape
Speaker 1: area on the edge of the standing cornfield. So what
Speaker 1: I always do, and I've done this for years, I
Speaker 1: will put on snuntlock and I'll try and wait for
Speaker 1: a windy day. But it's not that critical, and I
Speaker 1: do what I call a speed tour now. Because Michigan
Speaker 1: season opens on September. On October one, I usually wait
Speaker 1: until at least September before I do a speed tour.
Speaker 1: And what a speed tour consists of. I haven't been
Speaker 1: any of these locations since at least April, so i've
Speaker 1: been there all summer. A speed tour consists of visiting
Speaker 1: all of my existing potential early season locations at mass
Speaker 1: and fruit trees or scrape areas and seeing if they're
Speaker 1: actually bearing food or if the scrapes are active in
Speaker 1: a scrape along age of a crop field, I won't
Speaker 1: hunt it unless it's in standing corn. I don't care
Speaker 1: how active it is. It's got to be standing corn
Speaker 1: with security cover. So once I do that, you know
Speaker 1: if there's multiple Let's say there's ten locations that are
Speaker 1: dropping masked or fruit, and let's say there's one location
Speaker 1: that's that's the scrape areas standing and it's next to
Speaker 1: a standing cornfield. When I do this on the reason
Speaker 1: I do this on September is because the bucks have
Speaker 1: been rubbed out for at least two weeks, if not three.
Speaker 1: Most big bucks up north are drubbed out easily by
Speaker 1: September five, so there will be according to how much
Speaker 1: DOT traffic is visiting these feeding locations. There will be
Speaker 1: buck sign around these locations, so I will hunt them
Speaker 1: according to the amount of rub sign, how high the
Speaker 1: rubs are on the trees. You know, if it's at
Speaker 1: an apple tree, it's not uncommon at all by September
Speaker 1: twenty they have scrapes underneath it. It's even not uncommon
Speaker 1: have scrapes underneath a white oak tree if there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of white oaks in the area, if it's isolated.
Speaker 1: Um and keep in mind, all of my early season
Speaker 1: locations everything is security cover oriented, so I don't ever
Speaker 1: prep any locations unless there's some form of perimeter security
Speaker 1: cover around what I termed the kill zone at a
Speaker 1: destination spot like a master fruit tree or scrape area.
Speaker 1: And I also won't set up if there's not excellent
Speaker 1: transitions security cover to that kill location from a known
Speaker 1: betting area because of mature buck in a pressured state
Speaker 1: like you and I live in, They're not going to
Speaker 1: get out of a betting area and walk through two
Speaker 1: hundred yards of open timber with no understory security cover
Speaker 1: to access a feeding location. Even if the feeding location
Speaker 1: has has a security cover around its perimeter, so it
Speaker 1: has to meet it has to fulfill the security, recover
Speaker 1: or cover requirements for me to even set it up
Speaker 1: in the first place. And then I base which ones
Speaker 1: I'm going to hunt according to the amount of buck
Speaker 1: sign that was at the location and the type of
Speaker 1: buck sign at the location. When I do my speed
Speaker 1: tours and it I'll do about three speed tours to
Speaker 1: hit all the public land and private prices, and I
Speaker 1: only have two private parcels right on. But it will
Speaker 1: usually take three days to do my speed tours, and
Speaker 1: they're all at it. Answer the question, answered it perfectly.
Speaker 1: I've got one additional question, and I feel like I
Speaker 1: might have asked you this question several years ago. I
Speaker 1: can't remember if I asked you this slight version of it.
Speaker 1: And here's what I'm curious about. I know that you
Speaker 1: don't look at wind direction when choosing stand sites because
Speaker 1: of your scent control, you're not worried about dear smelling you.
Speaker 1: But do you ever take into account how dear might
Speaker 1: want to use the wind? I can't remember if I
Speaker 1: asked you that or not. Do you ever think about, well,
Speaker 1: this buck might want to approach an apple tree with
Speaker 1: the wind somewhat in his favor, So this stand would
Speaker 1: give that dear in advantage versus that stand. Does that
Speaker 1: ever enter your mind? Yes, it does, And your dad
Speaker 1: asked me that, But that's okay. I get asked that
Speaker 1: a lot, and it's a it's a very very viable question.
Speaker 1: And yes, the answer is, I do set up specific
Speaker 1: certain locations, especially scrape areas. If I go in and
Speaker 1: I find a scrape area and it's it's in a
Speaker 1: like a terrain feature dump where it might be where
Speaker 1: all gridge drops down into a cat tail mars or
Speaker 1: or there's some cat tails on this side, and there's
Speaker 1: briars over here, and there's a night edge line, and
Speaker 1: there's a river here where general skirt the river. You know,
Speaker 1: basically where several train features dumped together. Um, if I
Speaker 1: if I if there's a scrape area there and there
Speaker 1: is a tree on the south or southeast side of
Speaker 1: the scrape area and it's fifteen to twenty yards from
Speaker 1: the scrapes themselves, that's more than likely the tree I
Speaker 1: will set up because it's extremely common, and I've shot
Speaker 1: two monster Bucks in Michigan this way. And again I'm
Speaker 1: not worried about getting winded. That never ever enters my mind.
Speaker 1: But it's really really common for a mature buck to
Speaker 1: come in, especially in the middle of the day. They
Speaker 1: do this a lot midday during the pre rutting road faces,
Speaker 1: to come in and skirt around the actual scrape area
Speaker 1: or come in from the down wind side, maybe the cards,
Speaker 1: and they will just set check the scrapes without actually
Speaker 1: going into the scrape area because the scrape area is open.
Speaker 1: So scrape areas are always in an open area. It's
Speaker 1: always a small opening someplace. So in two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: for instance, I I shot a hundred or not it
Speaker 1: was a hundred fifty. This is the vact same size
Speaker 1: as the one I shot in fourteen. It was under
Speaker 1: four or under a fifty four inch ten point, and
Speaker 1: he did exactly that. I was hunting between two betting
Speaker 1: areas and there was a there was a pinch point,
Speaker 1: and there was a scrape area right there because it
Speaker 1: can find dough traffic, and when there's confined dough traffic
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of dough traffic, that's where bucks
Speaker 1: makes scrapes. All buck activity during the rough phases revolves
Speaker 1: around dough traffic, so that's where they lay their dominance markers.
Speaker 1: So I'm up in this tree in my saddle, and
Speaker 1: it was like it was election day two thousand four
Speaker 1: and I voted in the morning, and I drove down.
Speaker 1: And this was in southern Michigan, is over by Grand Rapids, actually,
Speaker 1: and I drove down and I got my tree. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think it was around one o'clock, which
Speaker 1: is kind of late, and but to thirty here comes
Speaker 1: this buck out of this bedding area. And he was
Speaker 1: actually coming from he was coming from up the actually
Speaker 1: up wind of the or downwind of the scrapes. No
Speaker 1: upwind of the scripts. He was coming in from the north.
Speaker 1: The wind was out of the north, so he was
Speaker 1: actually going with the wind. But when I seen him
Speaker 1: coming in, the foliages down so I can see a
Speaker 1: little bit of a distance. As he was coming in,
Speaker 1: I thought he was going to come into the scrapes
Speaker 1: because he was making a bee line right at the scrapes.
Speaker 1: When he got about fifty yards from the scrapes, he
Speaker 1: started going east and he went around the scrapes to
Speaker 1: the east, and I had a lane that drugs and
Speaker 1: I had a shooting lane that direction. So I swung
Speaker 1: under n eighty degrees around the tree to the opposite side,
Speaker 1: and by the time got around there, his butt was
Speaker 1: just going through my shooting lane. So I swung back
Speaker 1: around to my original position. And now he's coming in
Speaker 1: and he's making a circle, and he's coming around behind me. Well,
Speaker 1: he got behind me, so now he is directly down
Speaker 1: wind of the scrapes and directly down wind of me.
Speaker 1: And he was at about forty yards and he snopped, stopped,
Speaker 1: and he sniffed, and a smaller bucket came in in
Speaker 1: and urinated in the scrapes about an hour earlier, so
Speaker 1: he smelled that, and he turned and he walked right
Speaker 1: up and he stopped right under my tree. And my
Speaker 1: tree is about it was about fifteen yards from the scrapes.
Speaker 1: But he walked directly to my tree. So I can't
Speaker 1: take that shot. I won't take that direct straight on shot,
Speaker 1: more straight down shot. So I'm sitting there, and I mean,
Speaker 1: if I would have spit, it would have went on.
Speaker 1: He was directly under the tree, and he just raised
Speaker 1: his nose and did a little lift curl and you know,
Speaker 1: did a little like that, and he turned back around.
Speaker 1: You know, they hadn't been a dough there, So he
Speaker 1: turned back around and went in the exact same footsteps
Speaker 1: he came in from. And he started to turn back around,
Speaker 1: and now he's going back north. He's going back around,
Speaker 1: and he's going through that east shooting lane that I had.
Speaker 1: So I swung back around the tree and this time
Speaker 1: I'm ready. And when he got when he got in
Speaker 1: the shooting lane, I just did a vocal doll blat
Speaker 1: and stopped him. And I was a full drawn eye
Speaker 1: shot him. So you know, that was a situation where
Speaker 1: I set that tree up basically because I know big
Speaker 1: Bucks like to scent check certain areas from down wind.
Speaker 1: Now I have found when I'm hunting at apple trees,
Speaker 1: bucks will typically the wind is irrelevant. They're coming in
Speaker 1: to eat eat apples. They're usually going to come in
Speaker 1: from wherever the thickest cover is. And and I've been
Speaker 1: preaching this for a long time. So if there's excellent
Speaker 1: security cover on the backside of an apple tree from
Speaker 1: the tree I'm hunting from, I'll rape the front of
Speaker 1: that tree so I can shoot to the back side,
Speaker 1: because usually they'll come in and they'll stay in the
Speaker 1: security her, stick their neck out a little bit, eat
Speaker 1: a couple of apples, turn around, go back through the
Speaker 1: security cover. They won't come out into the open underneath
Speaker 1: the tree like the other Dose and Sporting Bucks will.
Speaker 1: They'll stay tight to that security cover. So in that situation,
Speaker 1: it's not so much a win situation as much as
Speaker 1: is a security cover oriented situation where they want to
Speaker 1: be in the security cover where they got to quick exit. Okay,
Speaker 1: that that makes sense. Okay, let's let's throw another scenario
Speaker 1: that's that's similar to this, or it's kind of a
Speaker 1: next step from what we've been describing. Were in this
Speaker 1: early season situation, you picked your top food source and
Speaker 1: based off your speed tour, you're set up. It's a
Speaker 1: great night. Conditions look great, you're excited about it. And
Speaker 1: let's say maybe two hours give or take before dark.
Speaker 1: Another hunter comes in. Right, you've got all properties that
Speaker 1: you share with other people. Another hunter comes walking through.
Speaker 1: He's got his end blowing into really great cover. You know,
Speaker 1: he's not practicing scent control as well as you are,
Speaker 1: so he stinks he's being careless and he kind of
Speaker 1: walks right through your good stuff and he he goes
Speaker 1: out of sight, but you know he made he made
Speaker 1: a serious ruckus and and probably did some damage. In
Speaker 1: that scenario, do you stick it out or do you
Speaker 1: call it and and say, all right, the hunts screwed,
Speaker 1: I'm out of here, and I cut my losses, or
Speaker 1: maybe even try to go to a new location. You know,
Speaker 1: of what would you do in that scenario. If it's
Speaker 1: early enough, It's pretty rare that I hunt any location,
Speaker 1: whether it be public, private, or whatever where I don't
Speaker 1: have multiple trees prepped. So if it's early enough and
Speaker 1: it's an afternoon hunt, yeah I would. I would get
Speaker 1: down and move. If it's if it's late enough where
Speaker 1: there's no way I can move in time, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: sit there and stick it out, even though I know
Speaker 1: my eyes are killing anything or pretty close to zero.
Speaker 1: But I've had that situation happened a lot. I've also
Speaker 1: had it happened a lot where I'm in my tree
Speaker 1: way before daylight on public land. You know, I'm in
Speaker 1: my tree an hour and a half for daylight. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm really excited about the spot. And then you know,
Speaker 1: I see guys pull up on the road because the
Speaker 1: foliage is down and it's a three quarters of a
Speaker 1: mile away. I can see the headlights and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I see these dudes with these bright
Speaker 1: ass head lamps that are six D Loomens. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I have heer run by me, you know, half far
Speaker 1: before daylight as these guys are coming in, and I
Speaker 1: know my hunts screwed for the day. But there was
Speaker 1: one time, and this was in seven UM, and this
Speaker 1: was on an all day sit. I had a guy
Speaker 1: walked right under my tree. I actually said something to
Speaker 1: him because this was on a twenty acre parcel and
Speaker 1: I knew the other there's two other guys that hunted it,
Speaker 1: and I knew this guy wasn't honting them. And I
Speaker 1: actually quietly when he was right underneath me, and he
Speaker 1: just had a red plaid shirt on and a fair
Speaker 1: of blue jeans and a compound bote, I said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, and he looked up and he didn't see
Speaker 1: me at first because I was up, so I and
Speaker 1: finally I got his attention and I said, hey, you're
Speaker 1: not I don't think you're supposed to be here and
Speaker 1: all the guys they have permission, and he said yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, I'm lost. I came in from the other property,
Speaker 1: which was a bullshit use my breads. But anyway, he left,
Speaker 1: he left, and he walked. He walked out on one
Speaker 1: of my shooting lanes, and it was actually the shooting
Speaker 1: lane that I expected if I did get an opportunity
Speaker 1: to get a shot at that's that's the lane I
Speaker 1: thought the deer would cross on. And the guy had
Speaker 1: leather boots, so I looked at I looked. I looked
Speaker 1: at him as he was walking away, and I knew
Speaker 1: if a deer came into that lane, because the wind
Speaker 1: was blowing from the betting area, a wet you know,
Speaker 1: across that lane. So I knew if a deer was
Speaker 1: coming out of that bedding area and he came into
Speaker 1: that lane, I'd have to take the shot before it
Speaker 1: cut those leather boot tracks that that guy had just
Speaker 1: walked out on, because I knew, without a doubt that
Speaker 1: would bust that deer if it was a big, mature deer,
Speaker 1: which was what I was after. And it's straight up
Speaker 1: twelve o'clock, I mean it was to the minute twelve
Speaker 1: o'clock noon, and it's big fourteen point came came down
Speaker 1: through the bedding area sunny day, absolutely gorgeous blue bird day,
Speaker 1: and this guy came. This guy went through it about
Speaker 1: ten thirty and I shot that buck and I drew
Speaker 1: my bow just as his nose was coming into that lane.
Speaker 1: And I make my lanes relatively wide. You know a
Speaker 1: lot of times I see people with shooting lanes and
Speaker 1: I'm like, how in the hell they ever get a
Speaker 1: shot here? How did they stop a deer in that
Speaker 1: narrow of a shooting lane? But anyway, I stopped that
Speaker 1: dear just probably two ft before you know, he would
Speaker 1: have sniffed that guy's leather boot um older and uh,
Speaker 1: and I shot him, and it was that was a
Speaker 1: team point. It was a difficult four team. Would you
Speaker 1: do anything differently if now I don't know what date
Speaker 1: you said that was, but back to the original scenarios,
Speaker 1: that was actually I think November one, Okay, So maybe
Speaker 1: that answers my question for me, because I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: if I changed the date from October one to November,
Speaker 1: would you be more apt to stick it out even
Speaker 1: if you had a bunch of time in the day,
Speaker 1: just because you know it's the rut and you know,
Speaker 1: anything can happened. There could be a buck from three
Speaker 1: miles away that comes through. I did that day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought about moving because I was planning on sitting
Speaker 1: all day, and he went through ten thirty. But it
Speaker 1: was such a good spot, and it was pre rot
Speaker 1: between two betting areas, and I love the hunt betting
Speaker 1: areas or transition zones between two betting areas, and that's
Speaker 1: what this was a transition route between two betting areas
Speaker 1: with lots of security cover. Um. So I thought about
Speaker 1: getting down, but it was such a good location. And
Speaker 1: he went dead center through the middle of that lane.
Speaker 1: In that lane, that shooting lane was probably four yards wide.
Speaker 1: So I figured if a buck came from either direction
Speaker 1: in that shooting lane, I could stop him and take
Speaker 1: a shot before you get that guy's tracks. Ye. Now, okay,
Speaker 1: let's look at another possibility here. Let's look at a
Speaker 1: different kind of uh negative uh. What's the where I'm
Speaker 1: looking for a negative variable? So that scenario is another
Speaker 1: hunter coming through. What if you're in a perfect spot,
Speaker 1: You're in one of your primetime locations, it's late October
Speaker 1: or earlier November, you're in one of your honey holes.
Speaker 1: You've waited all year to go to and a big
Speaker 1: mature buck steps out. He's about to step into a
Speaker 1: shooting lane, and then he spots you, or you make
Speaker 1: a noise and he catches you know, looks up at
Speaker 1: your silhouette, or something happens and he knows that the
Speaker 1: jig is up, there's a person here, and he bolts
Speaker 1: out of there. What do you do in that inn area?
Speaker 1: Do you give up that day? Do you give up
Speaker 1: up in that spot for days? Do you give up
Speaker 1: on it for a week or would you come back
Speaker 1: there at some point because it's so good and other
Speaker 1: deer might be in the area. What's your thought process
Speaker 1: in that scenario? I have to say, Mark, I've never
Speaker 1: had that happen in Michigan. Um, you know, on out
Speaker 1: of the saddle and I behind the tree so I
Speaker 1: don't get picked u which is a major issue I'm
Speaker 1: having with a lot of that's YouTube crap on saddle hunting,
Speaker 1: because these guys are hunting in small trees and sitting
Speaker 1: on spots where they can't move around and maneuver around
Speaker 1: the tree so they don't get picked. So I'm having
Speaker 1: major issues with that and on my YouTube videos that
Speaker 1: I'm gonna come out with you're gonna see why. But
Speaker 1: on that I've never had that happen to me where
Speaker 1: I've gotten picked in and a deer is busted. Now,
Speaker 1: when I was in Iowa, I had a buck come
Speaker 1: through and it was honored forty and shade point and
Speaker 1: he stopped and he picked me. He saw me in
Speaker 1: the tree because I was in a tree, I couldn't
Speaker 1: move around to the back side because they had too
Speaker 1: much balin. And and this was in n no, no,
Speaker 1: this was in two thousand and one, um. But anyway,
Speaker 1: he stopped and he looked at me for about four
Speaker 1: seconds and it was just like on TV where they
Speaker 1: look at you and it's like whatever, and they put
Speaker 1: their head back down and kept going and I shot him.
Speaker 1: So I shot him that time. But I guess if
Speaker 1: we're gonna just you know, say, okay, you're sitting in
Speaker 1: a tree and a buck a big buck bus too
Speaker 1: odd to me. Hunting that location again would be pretty
Speaker 1: close to zero that year, and I think that would
Speaker 1: affect even if that buck did make it through that year.
Speaker 1: I think that buck would remember that location and definitely
Speaker 1: looking and look in that location for a person when
Speaker 1: he came into that spot. I think their memories are
Speaker 1: good enough to do that. I know does do that
Speaker 1: was my next thing. I was gonna say, what about
Speaker 1: with the dough would you how you get busted by
Speaker 1: a doll for one reason or another, same scenario, but
Speaker 1: it's a doll this time. What's the plan? Then stick
Speaker 1: it out? Oh yeah, I'd stick it out with a doll.
Speaker 1: And it would depend on where I was, if I
Speaker 1: if I were next to a swamp, or if I
Speaker 1: were in a bedding area, you know, during the rud phases,
Speaker 1: And a dope came in and she spooked and she
Speaker 1: did the typical snortnutes yeah, and left her inter digital
Speaker 1: gland order and snorted and makes all kind of noise. Um,
Speaker 1: if I could get down and quietly go someplace outside,
Speaker 1: would definitely do that to give you an example of
Speaker 1: a dope kill. And this happened that she's thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: I had a friend, um, and he was hunting in
Speaker 1: December on public land up by Evert and and if
Speaker 1: he had a decent buck. And when I see a
Speaker 1: decent buck three years ago, it was like a nine
Speaker 1: two and a half year old eight point you know. Um,
Speaker 1: But he was trying to kill it, and it was
Speaker 1: kind of on the edge of the swampy area and
Speaker 1: there was snow on the ground, and he was baiting
Speaker 1: at the time. He had he had a pile of
Speaker 1: beats out and I don't bait. But anyway, I was
Speaker 1: talking to him one day and this was probably around
Speaker 1: mid December, and he said that, man, I've got this
Speaker 1: dough and she comes out, she she has two fonds.
Speaker 1: Whether she'll come out through the swamp and stop on
Speaker 1: the edge of that, right on the edge of the
Speaker 1: security cover, and she'll look at that bait pile and
Speaker 1: she looks up at me. And he's in a big oak.
Speaker 1: He was in this huge white oak tree and he
Speaker 1: was hunting out of a tree stand I on out
Speaker 1: of the saddle. Um. He was in this big white
Speaker 1: oak and his his stand was obviously against the tree
Speaker 1: facing the bait pile, so he had the whole big
Speaker 1: trunk of the tree is his background. But again it's December,
Speaker 1: so all the foliage is down. And he said two
Speaker 1: times in a row that doe came out, stopped on
Speaker 1: that edge, looked in the tree, saw him snorted up,
Speaker 1: and you know, for thirty seconds and then turn around
Speaker 1: ran back in and he never saw another deer both evenings.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, do you want me to kill her?
Speaker 1: And he said he said, yeah, right, how are you
Speaker 1: going to kill her? And this guy was a good hunter.
Speaker 1: I mean he killed a lot of stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of little bucks. And I said, well, I
Speaker 1: didn't add I'm not gonna tell you how. I should
Speaker 1: just ask you if you want her dead. And he
Speaker 1: he was kind of cocky like I was, and he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you think you can kill her, I'll will show
Speaker 1: you where it's as we showed him where it's at.
Speaker 1: And so that evening, Um, I got up in the
Speaker 1: tree and the wind was right because that's before I
Speaker 1: was using sell lock, so the wind was perfect for
Speaker 1: this evening. The one was blown from the swamp across
Speaker 1: the bay to the tree and I got up about
Speaker 1: eight feet above his tree stand and I got on
Speaker 1: the eighty degrees on the back side of the tree.
Speaker 1: And this tree was totally big enough to block my
Speaker 1: silver wet. So just like he said, almost to the minute, said,
Speaker 1: here comes this big dog coming coming through the swamp.
Speaker 1: I could see her. She coming right to that edge
Speaker 1: of two flonds were behind her, and she stopped and
Speaker 1: she looked at that tree up in the tree at
Speaker 1: the stand, and looked back down at the bait. She
Speaker 1: looked at the side, you know, it put it took
Speaker 1: her probably three or four minutes, and then she walked
Speaker 1: out to the bait. And there's probably a this is
Speaker 1: probably a three day gap between the last night he
Speaker 1: haunted it and this this sun walked out to the bait.
Speaker 1: And when she when she was eating the beats, she
Speaker 1: was facing the tree so she could see so she
Speaker 1: could see if somebody was in that stand, you know,
Speaker 1: she could see him out of the peripheral vision, if
Speaker 1: there earth there was any movement in that tree. Well,
Speaker 1: then the fonds came out, and you know how the
Speaker 1: flonds are there turning off different sides. As long as
Speaker 1: moms they're they're fine. So finally, after about ten minutes,
Speaker 1: she slightly turned so she was she got she felt comfortable,
Speaker 1: and she turned where she was quartering about forty five
Speaker 1: degrees towards the tree. And I just slightly leaned out
Speaker 1: to the side and took the shot and shot her.
Speaker 1: And that guy's just freaked out. It's really cool. That's
Speaker 1: pretty nice when you can show your buddy up like that. Right.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Well I wanted to prove it to myself
Speaker 1: because if I couldn't have done it would have been
Speaker 1: kind of Oh man, I uh, I got another one
Speaker 1: for you. We're we're to pivot a little bit. We're
Speaker 1: somewhere mid season and you are heading in to hunt
Speaker 1: some public land you had You've got a pre set
Speaker 1: location that you had prepared at some point. Well, well,
Speaker 1: we'll wait a minute. When you say mid season, what
Speaker 1: do you mean by mid season? Okay, you're right, good,
Speaker 1: thank you for calling me out. I should be more specific.
Speaker 1: I would not go in during mid October to on
Speaker 1: public land in Michigan. It would be a waste of
Speaker 1: my time. Yep. I should say mid season, like late October,
Speaker 1: early November, give or take somewhere in that pre rut
Speaker 1: to rut time frame. Okay, and you've got a spot
Speaker 1: you're going towards that you feel good about. You're heading in,
Speaker 1: sneaking in. You've got a great access route. But along
Speaker 1: the way you come across just some sign that you
Speaker 1: can't ignore. It's just it's rubbed up like crazy. There's
Speaker 1: a bunch of fresh scrapes insecurity cover and there's an
Speaker 1: apple tree maybe that's been pounded by doughs, just like
Speaker 1: all these things are stacking it up and it looks
Speaker 1: unbelievably good. But there's no quality trees in the area
Speaker 1: at all. Even if you happen to have your freelance
Speaker 1: kit with you to hang up in a tree. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's no tree. It's for whatever reason, it's to super
Speaker 1: shrubby stuff. And you're stuck with either going to your
Speaker 1: predetermined location or try to figure some other way to
Speaker 1: hunt this sign. Would you hunt that super fresh sign
Speaker 1: on the ground in some kind of impromptu way, or
Speaker 1: would you say that I gotta stick with my plan,
Speaker 1: I'll come back and set a stand up here tomorrow
Speaker 1: or something. I would stick to my plan. I would
Speaker 1: stick to my plan if it was if it was impromptu,
Speaker 1: because to make to make a sufficient ground blind requires
Speaker 1: some work. And if you have to break weeds or
Speaker 1: cut weeds or do anything cutting, you're leaving in order.
Speaker 1: You know, I may be in sell lock, so I'm
Speaker 1: not leaving any order. But if I'm doing a lot
Speaker 1: of cutting or breaking vegetation to make a makeshift ground blind,
Speaker 1: um leading older there that is not normal for that
Speaker 1: particular location, on that particular you know, at that particular time,
Speaker 1: there's just too much vegetable cleaning out or vegetation order
Speaker 1: that could alter a mature bucks mindset. Is he's coming
Speaker 1: into what at that point would be a destination location
Speaker 1: for him. So I would definitely go on about my plan.
Speaker 1: Now what about Well, I guess I accept that answer,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to move on to this next area,
Speaker 1: in which go ahead. What were you going to say?
Speaker 1: What about? Well? I was curious about if there was
Speaker 1: a tree there, would you absolutely, without a question, there
Speaker 1: was a tree there, I would absolutely if the sign
Speaker 1: warrants it, I definitely set the tree up and hunter
Speaker 1: right then. But here's but wouldn't in that scenario you
Speaker 1: would have been going to a preset location. So are
Speaker 1: you saying you would go back to your truck, get
Speaker 1: some kind of climbing uh ascension tool, and then walk
Speaker 1: back to that location, put in steps or whatever, and
Speaker 1: go up in the tree. Well, typically, when I'm hunting
Speaker 1: public land, I'm not hunting a preset location. It maybe
Speaker 1: a preset location as far as you know, I know
Speaker 1: where I'm going and there's adequate openings for shots. But
Speaker 1: you know, I'm still toting my climbing gear with me,
Speaker 1: so my climbing gear would fit on the tree that
Speaker 1: was accessible at this hot location. I would use my
Speaker 1: climbing gear on that location as long as long as
Speaker 1: there was you know, a lot of times when you're
Speaker 1: on public land, you'll see locations that are hot, but
Speaker 1: there's no trees where you have a shot opportunity because
Speaker 1: you obviously can't cut branches and clear shooting lanes to
Speaker 1: that specific spot. And the tree that you can set
Speaker 1: up does not give you a shot opportunity to that spot.
Speaker 1: So you know, it would totally depends on the situation,
Speaker 1: but I'm I would be carrying my prep fear with
Speaker 1: me anyway. Okay, now you get to your tree, you're
Speaker 1: hunting it, and this is this is a scenari that's
Speaker 1: happened to all of us, I think, and it's happened
Speaker 1: to me plenty over the years, and I've I've debated
Speaker 1: both internally and even externally on this podcast about what
Speaker 1: the right decision is to make in this scenario. And
Speaker 1: this scenarios, you're sitting in a great location, you know
Speaker 1: you're in there for a reason deer should be passing
Speaker 1: through for several reasons that you've predetermined. But the big
Speaker 1: mature buck shows up and he's eight yards you know away,
Speaker 1: he's off in the distance, and you see him move
Speaker 1: somewhere out of sight. You now are stuck sitting and
Speaker 1: thinking should I relocate to that spot for tomorrow? Should
Speaker 1: I stick it out where I'm in now? Because I
Speaker 1: think that it's more likely that another one will come
Speaker 1: through here for some reason, because of all these other
Speaker 1: reasons that you originally set up there. I guess what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to say is how quick are you to
Speaker 1: move based off of a siting, and what factors have
Speaker 1: to do in place for you to say, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: moving right away to that spot. Well as far as moving, obviously,
Speaker 1: if I see a big buck and I'm set in
Speaker 1: a specific location, that buck has already moved through that
Speaker 1: location where I just saw it, So I'm obviously not
Speaker 1: going to get down and move there on during that
Speaker 1: particular hunt. But would I definitely move and go back there.
Speaker 1: I would definitely go back and look and see what
Speaker 1: the reason was that he was there the next day
Speaker 1: possibly um and that situation and has actually happened to
Speaker 1: me before. The biggest I've ever shot in my life
Speaker 1: was a u inter and it was in Iowa, and
Speaker 1: I was actually sitting and I had a decoy out,
Speaker 1: and I was down in a swamp and I was
Speaker 1: gonna be on an all day sat and um I
Speaker 1: saw a bunch of deer activity, but two hundred yards away,
Speaker 1: because again the foliages down. This was in mid November.
Speaker 1: The foliage was down. I saw a deer activity, not
Speaker 1: necessarily buck activity, big bucket activity, just dear activity couple
Speaker 1: hundred yards away. So I got down at about ten o'clock,
Speaker 1: packed up the decoy, put him in my military double bag,
Speaker 1: and stored him where, you know, so I could get
Speaker 1: him on my exit after dark. And I just you know,
Speaker 1: I'm in stuntlock again. And I took all my climbing
Speaker 1: gear out when I descended the tree, just slowly walked
Speaker 1: back through there found but back where I got to
Speaker 1: the area where I had seen that deer traffic earlier
Speaker 1: in the morning. Um Man, I just saw a scrape
Speaker 1: area from home. I mean there was for monster scrapes here.
Speaker 1: One of the men had two huge clumps of deer
Speaker 1: droppings all clumped together and they were big dropping, so
Speaker 1: I knew it was a big buck. And there was
Speaker 1: still urine in that particular scrape that I could see
Speaker 1: a spot of urine in it, which out and off
Speaker 1: the urine was is the droppings were old that the
Speaker 1: urine could have been something else. So I prepped a
Speaker 1: tree and I shot that that hunter eight inter that afternoon.
Speaker 1: It was a twelve point um. In another time, and
Speaker 1: this one was in Michigan, Um, I was sitting in
Speaker 1: a tree and I about eighty yards away two evenings
Speaker 1: in a row. I actually hunted a tree two times
Speaker 1: in a row, and both both times there was a
Speaker 1: decent buck. He wasn't a monster, but I saw a
Speaker 1: decent buck about seventy eight yards away going down the saint.
Speaker 1: He went the same route both evenings in a row.
Speaker 1: So the next evening I went back in there and freelanced,
Speaker 1: and I prepped a tree, and I actually put out
Speaker 1: a dope decoy and that evening net. But because there
Speaker 1: wasn't any trees right where he was going through, so
Speaker 1: I had to I took a decoy and I was
Speaker 1: set up about forty yards from where he was going
Speaker 1: through on top of this little bridge kind of like
Speaker 1: and um, and he saw the decoy. He came right
Speaker 1: over and I shot him in fifteen yards and it
Speaker 1: wasn't a monster, but it was a good buck for
Speaker 1: the time. That was thirty years ago too. Speaking of decoys,
Speaker 1: I know that historically you've been, you know, willing to
Speaker 1: do something like that or use calls or rattle when
Speaker 1: you're out of state, like Iowa or Ohio or Kansas
Speaker 1: or something. But in Michigan, from from everything I can
Speaker 1: remember ever reading from you and hearing from you, you're
Speaker 1: usually very very conservative of that stuff. Um. It's a
Speaker 1: two part question. Number one, has that changed at all?
Speaker 1: And number two, I want to paint one specific scenario
Speaker 1: to consider of that with Let's say you're hunting in
Speaker 1: a location in this big mature buck steps out in
Speaker 1: Michigan just out of range, Let's say, I don't know,
Speaker 1: thirty yards whatever, let's say five or ten yards outside
Speaker 1: of whatever you're comfortable shooting ranges. Would you called him
Speaker 1: in that scenario or is it still like, where's that
Speaker 1: line for you in Michigan? If he was if he
Speaker 1: was that far away thirty forty yards, it would depend
Speaker 1: on what was between him and me. Um, that's pretty close. Um,
Speaker 1: since thirty forty yards and there was really heavy security
Speaker 1: cover between him and me. I might possibly do a
Speaker 1: really quick soft inhale runt because I carry an inhale
Speaker 1: and an exhale rount call with me. Or I might
Speaker 1: possibly do just a little light vocal you know, a
Speaker 1: dobl at domat um. But if there were no you know,
Speaker 1: if he's forty yards away and there was nothing, but
Speaker 1: you know a little bit of brush between me and him,
Speaker 1: and I do some sort of a vocal thing to
Speaker 1: try and move him closer. You know, if he's a
Speaker 1: big enough buck, he's going to take a look in
Speaker 1: that direction. And if there's nothing there, visual, he's not
Speaker 1: gonna he's not stupid, he ain't gonna come into it.
Speaker 1: It might happen out west, but not here. UM. So
Speaker 1: you know, in that scenario, I don't know if I
Speaker 1: would do anything or not. But there has been several
Speaker 1: times in Michigan during the first few days of season.
Speaker 1: And I'll give you one really good scenario. Um. This
Speaker 1: was in nine UM, and this was on October two,
Speaker 1: and this was a morning hunt, and I was up
Speaker 1: in a tree. UM, and these deer were transitioning through
Speaker 1: some timber with some form. There was a little bit
Speaker 1: of understory in this timber, and they were they were
Speaker 1: probably two hundred yards away, and all I could see
Speaker 1: was their legs below the canopy. I did they I
Speaker 1: had no clue they were heading into a betting area.
Speaker 1: It was probably on our yards in front of them.
Speaker 1: I had no idea if there was a dozor bucks um,
Speaker 1: so I took out I took out my rattle bag,
Speaker 1: and I made a light sparring sequence about ten seconds,
Speaker 1: you know, with a little gap in between, and they
Speaker 1: both turned and they started coming my direction. Well, when
Speaker 1: they got about forty yards from me, they were facing
Speaker 1: my tree, and I could tell they were both bucks.
Speaker 1: It was an eight and a ten point, and they
Speaker 1: actually totally lost interest. It took them took them a
Speaker 1: couple of minutes to get that far, and they had
Speaker 1: lost interest, and they started actually eating acorns under an
Speaker 1: oak tree, and and I'm like, well, maybe they'll keep coming.
Speaker 1: And then they got lost interests and eating acorns and
Speaker 1: they turned and started heading back towards that betting area again.
Speaker 1: So now they're about fifty yards away. They're moving away
Speaker 1: from me again. So they're too close for me to
Speaker 1: do a sparring sequence again because the sparring sequence takes time,
Speaker 1: and it's easier if they stopped. You know, they were
Speaker 1: within visual sight of me now because I can see
Speaker 1: them at first. They couldn't see me when I rattled
Speaker 1: the first time, but they could visually see me in
Speaker 1: the tree. And obviously, if I'm gonna do a sparring
Speaker 1: sequence that takes five seconds, you know they're gonna turn
Speaker 1: their head immediately and they're gonna see it's coming from
Speaker 1: up in a tree, and they're obviously not going to
Speaker 1: come in. So I took out my again. I took
Speaker 1: out my soft inhale grunt call and turned around the
Speaker 1: opposite side. You know, I was in my saddle and
Speaker 1: just made it really soft like grunt, and they both
Speaker 1: turned and came right to the tree and I shot
Speaker 1: the gun point at twelve yards. So so yeah, I
Speaker 1: rattled in Michigan. I've I've shot several bucks that make
Speaker 1: book in of the thirty one, I've shot several of
Speaker 1: that make book in Michigan by rattling them in or
Speaker 1: or grunting them in. That's not the norm, though I'd say,
Speaker 1: maybe I don't know, maybe six or seven of them
Speaker 1: I've actually used calls, but most of them are you know,
Speaker 1: I am hunting spots on the merits of the location,
Speaker 1: you know, their destination locations, of their interiors of betting areas,
Speaker 1: and I hunt them according to the merits that I
Speaker 1: chose them for, and I don't like to make any alterations.
Speaker 1: I want the deer to come in naturally. That's why
Speaker 1: I picked that location. So I will never do any
Speaker 1: type of a tactic on the first hunt at a
Speaker 1: location for that year I want. I want the location
Speaker 1: to work on the merits I chose it for. I
Speaker 1: don't want to boog it up by maybe you know,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe when I decide to do a rattle sequence
Speaker 1: because I'm gonna do it like a half hour or
Speaker 1: four dark, maybe that buck is transitioning to the spot
Speaker 1: and he doesn't like the way I did it, you know,
Speaker 1: and they got to be in the right frame of
Speaker 1: mind through fond of that stuff. In Michigan, it's not
Speaker 1: like out West. So you know, I'm not gonna booger
Speaker 1: a destination location. I'm not going to booger it up
Speaker 1: with doing tactics on my first hunt, But if I
Speaker 1: hunt there maybe a couple of times, let's say during
Speaker 1: Let's say it's during the rut phases, and I hunt
Speaker 1: a really hot location and it's a primary scrape area
Speaker 1: or it's a feeding location where there's a lot of
Speaker 1: dough activity, and I hunt it and I don't see
Speaker 1: anything other than maybe a spike corner or four pointer
Speaker 1: and two dolls. You know, if the sign is that hot,
Speaker 1: there's an excellent chance that the buck that I'm after.
Speaker 1: If I know there's some mature buck sign there because
Speaker 1: the rubs are tall, but the buck I'm after is
Speaker 1: with a hot dog, you know, he's he could be
Speaker 1: doped up. So I'm gonna hunt that maybe two or
Speaker 1: three hunts in a row, and maybe on the second evening.
Speaker 1: If I own it the next morning, then I on
Speaker 1: it to the next evening. If I don't see anything
Speaker 1: half hour or four dark, I may do a rattle sequence,
Speaker 1: you know, a sparring sequence, or you know, adults and
Speaker 1: dough beliefs or something to try and bring something in.
Speaker 1: But you know, because a lot of times during the
Speaker 1: rock phases, a location will warrant you to hunt it
Speaker 1: several times in a row, because the buck that actually
Speaker 1: left that fine maybe with hot dough during the time
Speaker 1: you're in that tree, but you know, once her twenty
Speaker 1: eight hour thirty two hour cycles overready's gonna start looking
Speaker 1: for the next doe, and then that that time he
Speaker 1: may come to that spot, you know, in search of
Speaker 1: the next est stuff. A lot of the stuff you
Speaker 1: just talked about is kind of all influenced by hunting pressure, right,
Speaker 1: Like whether or not you're in a call and spil
Speaker 1: like Michigan or rattle and spolic Michigan's, it's because of
Speaker 1: hunting pressure impacts. Yeah. So so here's something that I've
Speaker 1: wondered about. I you tell me if you think differently
Speaker 1: in this, but I think that today there are more
Speaker 1: very well educated bow hunters in the woods than ever before. Right,
Speaker 1: You've you've got all your great books out there, there's podcasts,
Speaker 1: there's websites, there's magazines. There's a lot of people that
Speaker 1: not even just the V stuff, right, there's TV stuff
Speaker 1: for a long time, but now there's a lot of
Speaker 1: information out there about how to kill bucks in real
Speaker 1: world scenarios, not like TV. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: guys that understand hunting pressure there's a lot of people
Speaker 1: that know how to get into places where bucks will
Speaker 1: move in daylight, even in heavily pressured states. So, given
Speaker 1: the fact that there's more hunters hunting this kind of
Speaker 1: way that are relatively savvy, is there anything you're doing
Speaker 1: differently now than you did ten years ago, Let's say,
Speaker 1: given the fact that there's more guys and girls out
Speaker 1: there hunting the eber Heart way. Uh No, I'm still
Speaker 1: kind of hunting the same way. But the last two
Speaker 1: years I haven't killed anything in Michigan. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: them bucket Michigan. So but you know, a lot, even
Speaker 1: back in the two thousand's and the ninth and then
Speaker 1: in the nineties, you know, there were there was always
Speaker 1: a year or two here and there that I didn't
Speaker 1: kill something. So but I'm still hunting in the exact
Speaker 1: same way. There's there are certain things I don't do
Speaker 1: now that I used to do. And first book, I
Speaker 1: had a whole chapter on staging areas and I've kind
Speaker 1: of totally given that up. You know, staging areas worked
Speaker 1: great if you're hunting. Staging areas out west where a
Speaker 1: big buck will actually get up during daylight hours and
Speaker 1: move out to some peripheral area where you know that
Speaker 1: he could potentially intercept those going out into a feeding location.
Speaker 1: But I've just found in Michigan that mature bucks not
Speaker 1: going to get up and make that daytime movement because
Speaker 1: it's just too vulnerable to go on stage where those
Speaker 1: may go by in the in the evening, or stage
Speaker 1: in the morning where those may come by after daylight,
Speaker 1: and then if nothing came by of interest, he has
Speaker 1: to physically get up and move to a betting area
Speaker 1: and be vulnerable making that movement. So I don't I
Speaker 1: don't hunt staging areas in Michigan anymore. They just haven't
Speaker 1: worked out for me on mature bucks. Interesting, you just
Speaker 1: mentioned that the last two years you haven't seen a
Speaker 1: single pope and young buck, and I know that you're
Speaker 1: after or that kind of caliber buck, and that I'm
Speaker 1: very interested to hear how you handle that scenario itself,
Speaker 1: Like what happens when hunt after hunt after hunt across
Speaker 1: all these different places you're going to you're not seeing
Speaker 1: a single target buck. What what did you do in
Speaker 1: that scenario? Do you end up going to new property
Speaker 1: after new property after new property just trying to figure
Speaker 1: something out or do you hunker down in your best
Speaker 1: spot during the rut because you know eventually one has
Speaker 1: to come through? Do you not sleep for two weeks
Speaker 1: at a time because you're so stressed about it. I'm
Speaker 1: just wondering, how do how do you tactically and mentally
Speaker 1: handle that? That's funny, That's so funny. No, I don't
Speaker 1: get I don't get stressed about it anymore. I'm too
Speaker 1: old for that. I I used to. I mean I
Speaker 1: used to as like, God, I'm not killing anything. I
Speaker 1: gotta get out there more more frequently. And I used to.
Speaker 1: I used to actually start arguments with my wife to
Speaker 1: give me a reason to go out hunting. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go out hunting. I'm serious, I did, I do. I
Speaker 1: don't stress about that anymore. Um, if things don't work out,
Speaker 1: they don't work out. And yeah, you know, I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm a figure in the hunting industry and and
Speaker 1: it's kind of embarrassing not to kill something. But I'm
Speaker 1: also a realist and most people know I won't hunt leases,
Speaker 1: I won't hunt manage properties. I just will not do
Speaker 1: that because I preach about hunting pre permission properties and
Speaker 1: public lands. So there's gonna be seasons when you shouldn't
Speaker 1: be successful. You can't if you're not in that type
Speaker 1: of property, you can't be successful every year. You just
Speaker 1: can't do it. It's impossible if you're in a pressured
Speaker 1: state like we are. Speaking of public. Then let's let's
Speaker 1: let's run one more public scenario by you. And this
Speaker 1: is one that I know you've talked a little bit
Speaker 1: about the past, and some of the things you mentioned
Speaker 1: already are probably applicable, but I just want to hear
Speaker 1: exactly what you do. Let's say, for whatever reason you
Speaker 1: have to go to piece of public land for your
Speaker 1: runt hunt's let's say it's out of state run hunt
Speaker 1: and you haven't been able to ever be on this
Speaker 1: property before. You've got five days? What do you do
Speaker 1: in that first day? Is that a full day scout?
Speaker 1: Is that a little bit scout during midday instead of
Speaker 1: stand hunt that night? What's what's day one of your
Speaker 1: five days? Brand new public peace during the rent scouting
Speaker 1: handed down? To blow off? First day to scout. I
Speaker 1: want to have at least at least two, three or
Speaker 1: four locations ready and then um, then I don't feel
Speaker 1: like I'm hunting backwards even if it's a five day hunt,
Speaker 1: I got four days day. Actually do hunting where I've
Speaker 1: got preset locations, you know, locations that are ready to go.
Speaker 1: I should say, they may not only have the stuff
Speaker 1: in them, but but I know where they are and
Speaker 1: I can go to them. Um. And I never, I
Speaker 1: have never, ever in my life when I go out
Speaker 1: of state, I've never went and pre scout of them. Ever.
Speaker 1: They are all locations where i'd go and I scout
Speaker 1: them and then I hunt. So, UM, I don't go.
Speaker 1: I don't go pre scout anything. Now obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: when I'm going to Kansas, I got drawn for Kansas
Speaker 1: this year, I'm hunting places that I've hunted before, so
Speaker 1: I don't really have to scout them. I just have
Speaker 1: to go, you know, prep prep those locations again. But
Speaker 1: if I'm going to a brand new piece of property
Speaker 1: public or whatever, um, out of state, Yeah, I do
Speaker 1: not do any pre scouting on a pre on a
Speaker 1: trip prior to when I'm going hunting. And and it's
Speaker 1: been kind of interesting because it's it's worked well for me. Um,
Speaker 1: you know. And I went to Ohio one time and
Speaker 1: shot up about a hundred ten point and It was
Speaker 1: kind of interesting because I was gonna be a five
Speaker 1: day hunt, and when I scouted it the first day,
Speaker 1: the property was just laid out where there was no
Speaker 1: way I could hunt this property in the morning without
Speaker 1: spooking deer because to go on the property I had
Speaker 1: to go through areas where deer would potentially defeating. So
Speaker 1: I only had five days to hunt. I blew off
Speaker 1: the first day, prepped two locations, and now I got
Speaker 1: four days left, and I'm blowing off morning. So I
Speaker 1: got four sis and they're all evening and thank god,
Speaker 1: I shot this under fifty inch gen point on the
Speaker 1: second evening of those four days I had left to hunt.
Speaker 1: So I grew up mornings. All I would do on
Speaker 1: morning entries would be spooking deer. Was there any way
Speaker 1: to use those mornings in a in a positive way,
Speaker 1: Like did you glass or anything? Were able to get
Speaker 1: anything out of your mornings? Or is it literally because
Speaker 1: of the setup, you just got to stay out and
Speaker 1: and put all your cards into the evening um Because
Speaker 1: of what you described, I felt very good when I
Speaker 1: scouted that. I when I scouted I I spooked deer.
Speaker 1: You know, I spoked that a deer that day, but
Speaker 1: I felt really really good about the two locations that
Speaker 1: I prepped that No, I didn't go out and glass
Speaker 1: the next morning or anything, because I'm not gonna hunt morning,
Speaker 1: so that morning movement wouldn't really mean anything to me anyway.
Speaker 1: And then there was another time in Ohio which I
Speaker 1: didn't kill anything. UM. And this was on a parcel
Speaker 1: and I went down there in mid December. The other
Speaker 1: one was in December. Never snow on the ground when
Speaker 1: I shot that hundred fifty or that was after their
Speaker 1: gun season ended. Um. The other one was also after
Speaker 1: gun season, and I went in and I I made
Speaker 1: a big mistake because I usually look at the weather
Speaker 1: when I go out of state, especially if I'm going
Speaker 1: in December, and I usually try to go in there
Speaker 1: snow on the ground, fresh snow, so I'm looking at
Speaker 1: sign made within the last twenty four hours. UM, And
Speaker 1: this time I didn't. I went and there was no
Speaker 1: snow on the ground, but it was getting down into
Speaker 1: the low twenties at night, and the leaves were just
Speaker 1: super super crispy. And I prepped a couple of locations
Speaker 1: in the first morning I went in. I mean, I
Speaker 1: just I spooked deer quarter mile away get running through
Speaker 1: the wood, and so again I totally blew off the mornings.
Speaker 1: But I did something really unique on this hunt. Even
Speaker 1: though I didn't kill anything, I learned something. And this
Speaker 1: was just a few years ago. Um after I blew
Speaker 1: all those deer out of there. Every morning after that
Speaker 1: I went, I slept in and I got up about
Speaker 1: eight o'clock and I went to my two locations and
Speaker 1: I actually walked into the tree that I was gonna
Speaker 1: hunt in the evening. And I did this early in
Speaker 1: the morning because the deer even on my evening entry.
Speaker 1: The first evening I I spooked year betted within like
Speaker 1: two hundred yards of the tree I was gonna hunt
Speaker 1: because the leaves were so noisy. So I went into
Speaker 1: both of my locations from then on about eight o'clock
Speaker 1: between eight and nine in the morning, and I spooked
Speaker 1: gear each time, and I could hear them, you know,
Speaker 1: I could see the flags and they ran like three
Speaker 1: eighths of a mile away before they went into the
Speaker 1: betting area. But then when I actually hunted in the evenings,
Speaker 1: I didn't have to worry about my entry because I
Speaker 1: wasn't spooking deer with my evening entry because I had
Speaker 1: already spooked him out early in the morning. Yet the deer,
Speaker 1: it was such a long gap between when I spooked
Speaker 1: him and the evening hunt that they were filtering back
Speaker 1: out from that distant betting area and they were actually
Speaker 1: going by me, you know, in the evening before dark.
Speaker 1: And the biggest buck I saw was a hundred ten
Speaker 1: injury and I didn't shoot it, so I didn't kill anything.
Speaker 1: But I learned something about, you know, spooking deer with
Speaker 1: the morning entry really early, so that they would still
Speaker 1: filter back out in the evening, but they were far
Speaker 1: enough where my evening entry to that location and didn't spook. Dear,
Speaker 1: do you kind of understand what I'm saying? I do
Speaker 1: I follow you exactly? Have you ever would is it?
Speaker 1: Is that something you would do again in a future
Speaker 1: scenario then if you had that type of deal, even
Speaker 1: if it's a place you know, well yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: But to go on and out of state hunt again,
Speaker 1: I would never ever go out of state again without
Speaker 1: looking at the weather and making sure there was snow
Speaker 1: on the ground or else it was going to be
Speaker 1: above thirty five degrees. Speaking of your out of state stuff,
Speaker 1: you mentioned how a lot of your out of state
Speaker 1: scouting as trail camera focused. Now, Um, yeah, can you
Speaker 1: has there been an evolution of your trail camera strategy
Speaker 1: at all over the last five six years, because I
Speaker 1: know early on, you know, some of the things you
Speaker 1: were you were, you weren't as into them. Now it
Speaker 1: seems like, are you maybe a little bit more and
Speaker 1: have you changed what you do or how you do
Speaker 1: it so that it works better for you in that
Speaker 1: scenario where or is it about the same. I still
Speaker 1: don't use motion cameras in Michigan, you know, I may
Speaker 1: put one out, you know, one or aout one year.
Speaker 1: The last two years, I haven't had any trail cameras.
Speaker 1: But when I'm out of state, I have found that
Speaker 1: I can actually put trail cameras out on all the
Speaker 1: locations and they're all in pinch points or whether it's
Speaker 1: scrape areas and where I'm when I'm going to Kansas
Speaker 1: o Iowa, and I have found I can actually visit
Speaker 1: the cameras and it doesn't affect gear movements. Um, it
Speaker 1: just doesn't bother those gear out there. You know, I
Speaker 1: can check the cameras and if if I'm taking my
Speaker 1: two boys now, John and Joe. And you know, we'll
Speaker 1: usually have a dozen locations prepped and they all have cameras.
Speaker 1: Will check every damn camera during the during the middle
Speaker 1: of the day out there. You don't have to hunt
Speaker 1: all day because it's not necessary. The dear the big
Speaker 1: bucks moving the mornings and the evenings, just like all
Speaker 1: the other deer. So it's just it's just a lot easier.
Speaker 1: So we check the cameras and we hunt according to
Speaker 1: what's on the cameras. And it seems like checking the
Speaker 1: cameras doesn't affect the deer traffic at the location in Michigan.
Speaker 1: You know, I it. I could see putting out cameras
Speaker 1: where they that internet wise back to your phones or
Speaker 1: your computer, um, where you don't have to make a
Speaker 1: physical visit an intrusion. Um. But because my properties are
Speaker 1: so far away from where I live, and there's you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different public lands, I can't afford
Speaker 1: to put those out. They'll just get stolen, and those
Speaker 1: stuckers are expensive, so I don't do that. But out
Speaker 1: of state, yeah, I use cameras of the time. Interesting,
Speaker 1: all right, John, I know you've got to run here soon. UM,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna give this one last question and then
Speaker 1: I'll let you get out of here. Here's the scenario.
Speaker 1: Let's say I rule the world. I'm in control of
Speaker 1: the world, I'm in control of your life, and I'm
Speaker 1: a real jerk, and I'm gonna put you in a
Speaker 1: tough position here. I'm going to tell you that I'm
Speaker 1: going to take away your ability to deer hunt for
Speaker 1: the next ten years. You lose your hunting rights, you
Speaker 1: lose your bow, You your shoulder can't pull back a bow,
Speaker 1: and there's no other options. I'm taking it away. You
Speaker 1: can't deer hunt for the next ten years unless unless
Speaker 1: you kill a three and a half year old buck
Speaker 1: or older this year in a heavily pressure state like Michigan.
Speaker 1: But I'm only gonna give you one day to do it.
Speaker 1: You get one day this year to kill that three
Speaker 1: and a half year old or older. What I want
Speaker 1: to know is what day of the year are you're
Speaker 1: gonna pick for your one hunt this year. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of high stakes on this hunt. What's the day
Speaker 1: and what is the tree stand? You pick? Described the spot,
Speaker 1: what's your you know, everything matters for this hunt? Described
Speaker 1: the spot? In the day you're gonna choose to put
Speaker 1: it all out there. It's gonna be November one, and
Speaker 1: it's probably gonna be in the interior of a five
Speaker 1: acre betting area or possibly in all days fit in
Speaker 1: a good location with heavy security transition cover between two
Speaker 1: betting areas on November one, where a buck's gonna sund
Speaker 1: check you know, betting area to betting areas as long
Speaker 1: as they've got security covered for you know, early ester STOs.
Speaker 1: November one is pre rock um. You know death in Michigan,
Speaker 1: pre ruts definitely the best time to hunt, you know,
Speaker 1: October through let's say November five, because the mature bucks
Speaker 1: are still typically on some form of a routine. You know,
Speaker 1: they're checking their primary scrape areas, are looking for those
Speaker 1: early ester STOs. But in Michigan there's so few mature
Speaker 1: dominant bucks um that during the peak run they're typically
Speaker 1: dot up, so you know, you just don't get as
Speaker 1: many opportunities during peak run. But that November first time frame,
Speaker 1: if I were in a relatively small betting area, UM,
Speaker 1: and I was in a decent tree and I had
Speaker 1: you know, shooting lanes and five directions like you know,
Speaker 1: spokes down a wheel. That's probably where i'd be because
Speaker 1: they're gonna be in there surgeon for those early esterus
Speaker 1: those and if there's if there with a possible early
Speaker 1: esterus though, they're gonna push him down into the betting
Speaker 1: areas to do their breeding. And as you well know,
Speaker 1: during those breeding cycles, they'll move around within the betting area.
Speaker 1: You know, he'll breed her and they'll she'll bed down.
Speaker 1: He may stand up next to her for twenty minutes
Speaker 1: or the half hour, and then you know he'll go
Speaker 1: nudge her and she she may get up and run
Speaker 1: thirty forty yards and then he'll breed her again. Um,
Speaker 1: So they move around in the betting areas and it's
Speaker 1: during the daylight hours, so that I feel like that
Speaker 1: would be probably my best opportunity. And what what does
Speaker 1: that ideal betting area look like? Because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of different scenarios. It could be a cattail marsh, It
Speaker 1: could be like a red oz or dogwood thicket. It
Speaker 1: could be you know, young cedars. Like if you had
Speaker 1: to paint that perfect betting area for this scenario, what
Speaker 1: would that look like? My perfect bet are betting area
Speaker 1: would be a grove of spruce trees with some scattered
Speaker 1: mature timber in it. Um. Spruce trees are awesome for
Speaker 1: betting because spruce trees grow to the ground. They always
Speaker 1: stayed tight to the ground. Yet white pines, red pines, uh,
Speaker 1: cedar trees, you know, they have openings underneath them. They
Speaker 1: where as they mature, the branches below them die. So
Speaker 1: spruce trees with scattered timber in it. Because spruce trees,
Speaker 1: because you know, they have a form at the bottom. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's always gonna be gaps between the trees. So if
Speaker 1: you find an area you know, a little opening and
Speaker 1: and grow up with spruce with some open timber or
Speaker 1: something like that, uh, typically there's gonna be converging runways
Speaker 1: in some form of an opening because it's path the
Speaker 1: least resistance, and that would be that would be my
Speaker 1: perfect scenario. And also in an area like that where
Speaker 1: I know deer betting in it, and would also be
Speaker 1: a great place to do a little sparring sequence. Here
Speaker 1: in their couple of couple they've been all days sit
Speaker 1: and the you know, a couple of two or three
Speaker 1: times during the day I do a sparring sequence or
Speaker 1: possibly even some uh cold, Doug Leaf calls m Well,
Speaker 1: I like the sound of it. John. I I'm betting
Speaker 1: that you'll get your hunting rights the next ten years
Speaker 1: because that sounds like a good scenario. So I think
Speaker 1: you'll be with your skill set and experience in that
Speaker 1: location on November one. I believe in you. I've stop
Speaker 1: the last two years. This this will be your year, John,
Speaker 1: I really, I really appreciate taking the time to do this. Um.
Speaker 1: I know you've got some cool stuff coming out on YouTube.
Speaker 1: You're doing a whole bunch of neat things. Where can
Speaker 1: people go these days to find your latest work? Well,
Speaker 1: we just started a YouTube channel. It's called eber Heart's Outdoors.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of what I'm most excited about. And
Speaker 1: other than that, my website is uh www dot dear
Speaker 1: dash John dot com. Um, but the YouTube thing is
Speaker 1: what I'm probably most excited about right now. Eber Heart's
Speaker 1: out Doors gonna be a lot of good information coming
Speaker 1: out on that in the next few months. I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to. The videos I've seen so far have been great,
Speaker 1: so I'll definitely be keeping tabs on it. And uh, John,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. I hope I can convince you
Speaker 1: to keep on doing these at least yearly like we've
Speaker 1: been doing because I always learned something. I love it.
Speaker 1: Thanks Marks for the opportunity. I really appreciate them. Good
Speaker 1: luck everybody out there. Yes, thank you, John eight. One
Speaker 1: more thing that John forgot to mention but later did
Speaker 1: tell me that he said I could share with you
Speaker 1: is that there is an eber Heart's signature saddle coming
Speaker 1: out in August, sold through Tethered Tethered Saddles or what
Speaker 1: I run. I love them. They've got a special design
Speaker 1: now specifically with eber Hearts input. It's a two panel
Speaker 1: seat system. You're gonna have to stay tuned to hear
Speaker 1: more soon. Definitely be checking out what Tether's got coming out.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they will give some announcements soon, but it
Speaker 1: looks pretty awesome. Check out eber Heart's signature saddle. And
Speaker 1: with that said, hopefully you feel the same way as
Speaker 1: I do, which is that that was a pretty fun
Speaker 1: way to talk to a great deer hunter. I think
Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep doing this. I think we're gonna bring
Speaker 1: on some other guys that we've talked to in the
Speaker 1: past that we thought we know well. But I'm gonna
Speaker 1: put them in some tough situations. I'll put maybe some
Speaker 1: of the same questions, maybe a bunch of new questions
Speaker 1: like this, and see what they would do. What would
Speaker 1: I don't know, what would Dan Infalt do, What would
Speaker 1: Mark Drury do? What would what would Dan Johnson do?
Speaker 1: Now there's a question, So stay tuned for those episodes
Speaker 1: in the future. Hopefully, I hope, I hope You're hunting
Speaker 1: season preparations would come along well, and I think we
Speaker 1: should shut it down now. So thank you so much
Speaker 1: for listening, thanks for being a part of this community,
Speaker 1: and until next time, stay wired to hun