Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the white tail Woods, presented by First Light, creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast.
Speaker 2: This week on the show, I'm joined by Bobby Kendall
Speaker 2: to discuss advanced hunting strategies such as the difference between
Speaker 2: hunting offensively versus defensively, and the Djenga approach to killing
Speaker 2: big bucks. All right, folks, welcome back to the Wired
Speaker 2: to Hunt Podcast, brought to you by First Light and
Speaker 2: their Camo for Conservation initiative and their brand new line
Speaker 2: of white tail gear that came out this year. Lots
Speaker 2: of exciting stuff on that front. I will touch on
Speaker 2: it just a little bit, but before that, I want
Speaker 2: to let you know about the show we've got today.
Speaker 2: We've got a hell of a show for you. My
Speaker 2: guest today is mister Bobby Kendall. Now, Bobby is someone
Speaker 2: who's been on the show a couple times in the
Speaker 2: last two ish years. The first time he came on
Speaker 2: to talk habitat the second time he came on to
Speaker 2: talk a little bit about habitat and a little hunting,
Speaker 2: but in the what would you do format that we
Speaker 2: do sometimes, but I wanted to get him on here
Speaker 2: at the beginning of kind of peak hunting season to
Speaker 2: dive really deep into his hunting approach, his tactics, his strategies,
Speaker 2: and what I like about Bobby is his analytical approach,
Speaker 2: the detailed mindset he kind of takes to the with him. Now,
Speaker 2: if you didn't see the past couple episodes that we
Speaker 2: did with Bobby for not familiar, Bobby was a former guide.
Speaker 2: He used to work for some outfitters in Illinois a
Speaker 2: number of years ago, and then, gosh, I'm not exactly
Speaker 2: sure when he started, but he started a company called
Speaker 2: the Whitetail Group, which first started as a company that
Speaker 2: bought and resold farms, and then they started managing farms,
Speaker 2: slipping farms, then doing consultations on farms, then doing all
Speaker 2: sorts of different content around whitetail hunting, whitetail habitat management strategies.
Speaker 2: They make some of their own products now, box blind
Speaker 2: scrape trees, all sorts of stuff. But what grabbed my
Speaker 2: attention with Bobby when I first started seeing his content
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago. Was what I mentioned two
Speaker 2: minutes ago, This analytical approach, the very very thoughtful way
Speaker 2: he thinks about what deer do, why deer do what
Speaker 2: they do, and what all that means for us as
Speaker 2: deer hunt trying to get close enough to them to
Speaker 2: get a shot. And so today's podcast we really go
Speaker 2: into the nuts and bolts of his hunting philosophies. I
Speaker 2: think we do about as good of a job as
Speaker 2: I've heard anywhere of getting into Bobby's mind. That's what
Speaker 2: I wanted to do today. So a couple of the
Speaker 2: particularly interesting things we cover. I kind of tease this
Speaker 2: at the beginning, but Bobby has this approach that he
Speaker 2: refers to as a defensive approach to deer hunting rather
Speaker 2: than an offensive. So think about the two sides of
Speaker 2: the ball in a game of football game right offense
Speaker 2: versus defense. Well, he plays on the defensive side, and
Speaker 2: I think it's it's an interesting way to look at
Speaker 2: things and very different than some folks these days. We
Speaker 2: also talk about the Jenga approach to deer hunting, which
Speaker 2: we'll get into. We talk a lot about how he
Speaker 2: chooses stand sites, and not only builds ambush locations, but
Speaker 2: finds ambush locations. And I want to make a key
Speaker 2: point here. You know, Bobby maybe has become best known
Speaker 2: for the heavily managed properties that he sets up and
Speaker 2: consults on, but he also does a lot of his
Speaker 2: own hunting on permission farms or pieces that he can't
Speaker 2: actually develop. He's had a lot of experience in that too,
Speaker 2: And I really wanted to focus a lot of our
Speaker 2: conversation today on those kinds of setups, because if you're
Speaker 2: listening now in October, when this podcast is coming out,
Speaker 2: you don't have time to develop your farm, You don't
Speaker 2: have time to make habitat manipulations. What I really wanted
Speaker 2: to cover it today was what can we find in
Speaker 2: the woods right now? If I'm heading out in the
Speaker 2: woods scouting a new piece, how do I pick a
Speaker 2: stand with what's there now? What can I do with
Speaker 2: the cards of them and dealt to me now in
Speaker 2: October or November, whatever it is. So that is really
Speaker 2: the key filter to look at this episode through. Everything
Speaker 2: we talk about should be relevant to you right now
Speaker 2: to help you kill a deer in whatever situation it
Speaker 2: is that you find yourself in. So cover All those
Speaker 2: things cover a lot about his approach to patterning, deer analyzing,
Speaker 2: deer timing, deer hunts, a lot of good stuff. I
Speaker 2: enjoyed this one. It should set you up well for
Speaker 2: success in the coming weeks here as we roll through
Speaker 2: October and then enter that sweet sweet month of November.
Speaker 2: So I'm excited for you guys to listen to this.
Speaker 2: I also want to let you know that if you
Speaker 2: are listening to this the day it comes out or
Speaker 2: the first couple days afterwards, which would be oh gosh,
Speaker 2: I should have had this pulled up, this would be
Speaker 2: October third, would be the day this is coming out.
Speaker 2: October third, twenty twenty fourth, if you're listening on that
Speaker 2: date or the fourth, fifth, or sixth. Meat Eater's Whitetail
Speaker 2: Week is still ongoing. So white Tail Week is something
Speaker 2: we kicked off last year. Basically, it's a big old
Speaker 2: celebration of white tails. We've been able to convince everyone
Speaker 2: on the Mediator team to produce white tail focus content
Speaker 2: because you know what, even though Steve and Kale and
Speaker 2: some of these other guys live out West and they
Speaker 2: chase mule deer and elk and moose and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: It's cool, but white tails are America's big game animal,
Speaker 2: right the critter that we all love and know so
Speaker 2: well is the most pursued, most beloved animal across the
Speaker 2: entire country. So I think it's well warranted that we
Speaker 2: spend a little extra time given some love to this creature,
Speaker 2: this incredible critter. So content across the board. New podcasts
Speaker 2: from myself of course, from Tony from Meat Eater, new
Speaker 2: podcasts and films from the Element of course, Rough Fresh
Speaker 2: Radio coming out this week. We have new films from me.
Speaker 2: My twenty twenty three films are starting to come out,
Speaker 2: so we have my return to the Back forty. If
Speaker 2: any of you guys followed the Back forty TV series
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago, you are likely aware of
Speaker 2: the fact that we bought a farm a handful of
Speaker 2: years ago. We worked for two years to try to
Speaker 2: transform this piece into a good hunting property but also
Speaker 2: kind of a biodiversity hotspot. Tried to make this property
Speaker 2: good not just for bucks, but also birds and bunnies
Speaker 2: and butterflies and everything between. Can we take astic approach
Speaker 2: that was the question with this property, and then also
Speaker 2: could we not only make this a wildlife paradise, but
Speaker 2: could we also use it to help other people, especially
Speaker 2: help educate newer hunters. So that's what we try to
Speaker 2: do for the two years that we owned it. But
Speaker 2: then when we got done, we gave the farm to
Speaker 2: the National Deer Association for them to continue using in
Speaker 2: a similar way, for them to continue managing and showcasing
Speaker 2: as an educational spot, specifically for their field to fork
Speaker 2: hunting program. This is their new hunter mentorship program where
Speaker 2: we bring a whole bunch of new hunters out a
Speaker 2: couple different times throughout the year, pair them with mentors,
Speaker 2: and they get to have a great hunting and educational
Speaker 2: experience on the Back forty. So this new film tells
Speaker 2: that story. It catches everybody up on what's happened in
Speaker 2: the last three or four years since we gave the
Speaker 2: farm to the NDA. There's a really cool story that
Speaker 2: I get to share in this about two new hunters
Speaker 2: who have been on the podcast in the last couple
Speaker 2: of years. So maybe you've heard the story, but force An,
Speaker 2: we're two folks that got to help kill their first
Speaker 2: deer on the Back forty and we've continued to kind
Speaker 2: of hunt together. I've continued to try to teach them
Speaker 2: along the way, and they've now become volunteers on the
Speaker 2: back forty giving their time to improve the habitat, and
Speaker 2: now they're even even mentoring new hunters themselves. So I
Speaker 2: got to spend some time with them for this film.
Speaker 2: I think you'll enjoy it. I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 2: So that's film number one. Film number two is the
Speaker 2: story of the Wide nine, so hopefully you guys are
Speaker 2: familiar with that story. It's been several years ongoing, the
Speaker 2: longest experience I've ever had with a single buck. This
Speaker 2: is my fourth season with that deer last year and
Speaker 2: finally was able to wrap my tag on them. So
Speaker 2: that film, it's it's something I'm really excited to see
Speaker 2: come out. It's a heck of a story.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 2: It was a roller coaster ride. So that story is
Speaker 2: finally going to be out on film today if you're
Speaker 2: listening on the day this comes out October third. The
Speaker 2: Wide nine film is over on the mediat YouTube channel,
Speaker 2: so check that out. Lots of other stuff over there, Yeah,
Speaker 2: just more whitetail content than you can shake a stick
Speaker 2: out on the website. Then it crossed First Light and
Speaker 2: our other family of brands. We've got a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of deals going on. The big thing is buy more,
Speaker 2: save more, So something like, if you buy two hundred
Speaker 2: dollars worth of gear, you save fifty bucks. If you
Speaker 2: buy four hundred dollars worth of gear, you save x
Speaker 2: number of dollars. I know it's up to two hundred
Speaker 2: dollars in saving. So if you were thinking of buying
Speaker 2: one of the new white tail kits that I've told
Speaker 2: you guys about earlier this year, now is probably about
Speaker 2: as good of a time to do it as you
Speaker 2: could save two hundred bucks off one of those sets.
Speaker 2: So check it out at themeateater dot com or first
Speaker 2: Light dot com. That's it on that front for me.
Speaker 2: Let's just get to the episode. This is a great
Speaker 2: chat with Bobby. I think we're all gonna learn a
Speaker 2: lot and it should help us on our future hunt.
Speaker 2: So here we go. All right back with me today
Speaker 2: we've got Bobby Kendall. Welcome back to the show, Bobby,
Speaker 2: thanks for having me. So yeah, I'm excited to do
Speaker 2: this one. I have. I found that your approach, your
Speaker 2: kind of analytical style of deer hunting, meshes very well
Speaker 2: with the way I see things and think about things,
Speaker 2: so I've been naturally drawn to hearing your take on
Speaker 2: stuff and very interested in it. So We've done two
Speaker 2: podcasts previous, as you know, but never have we gotten
Speaker 2: deep into your hunting side. We did the Habitat one,
Speaker 2: we did one of our what would You Do episodes
Speaker 2: where we touched on some hunting stuff. But there's a
Speaker 2: lot of ground left uncovered, which is why I wanted
Speaker 2: to get you back on here. And you know, when
Speaker 2: this podcast airs will be early ish October, so a
Speaker 2: lot of hunting season ahead foreverone. But people are definitely
Speaker 2: getting I guess in your words, they're getting Rammy now,
Speaker 2: they're getting excited. M yeah, so so so yeah. I'm
Speaker 2: hoping we can kind of geek out on the nuts
Speaker 2: and bolts of your hunting strategy. And that brings me
Speaker 2: to my first question though, which is are you getting
Speaker 2: Rammy yet? Are you getting excited yet? We're days away
Speaker 2: from opening day in Illinois and Michigan when we're talking.
Speaker 2: Are you feeling it?
Speaker 3: I'm definitely feeling it. That's actually that's actually one of
Speaker 3: the things I was gonna maybe talk about today is
Speaker 3: when I was younger man. I used to get Rammy,
Speaker 3: and I mean Rammy me and my buddy that hunted together.
Speaker 3: It was kind of a running joke. We know he's
Speaker 3: just sit there and kind of be Rammy. But honestly,
Speaker 3: I learned to just trust the process and not get Rammy.
Speaker 3: It feels like, even when I'm having successful seasons, eight
Speaker 3: percent of the season feels like nothing's going on or
Speaker 3: it's not that exciting. And I think it's a good headspace.
Speaker 3: I think people don't really talk about the mental space
Speaker 3: of deer hunting, and it is so important because when
Speaker 3: you start getting Rammy and you start losing faith in
Speaker 3: the system and losing faith in all the strategy and
Speaker 3: the anticipation you've done, I feel like that starts causing problems.
Speaker 3: So I'm not Rammy. I actually, as of right now,
Speaker 3: there's a couple of deer I know about around, but
Speaker 3: I don't have anything any candidates that are wanting to
Speaker 3: play the game right now, which I'm totally fine with.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I think this time of year, we're now, we're
Speaker 3: starting to transition. But sometimes I think if you don't
Speaker 3: have one this last month on camera, it almost means
Speaker 3: you could have higher odds of having one as they
Speaker 3: move around, you know, probability. So I'm not Rammy. I
Speaker 3: was just looking forward to it, looking forward to helping
Speaker 3: some other people and stuff as of right now, and
Speaker 3: so yeah, looking forward to it. Not Rammy.
Speaker 2: So why do you say that you almost think you
Speaker 2: have a better chance of a good one showing up later.
Speaker 3: Well, you just odds, you know, the deer shift or
Speaker 3: like in the summertime, you have all those bucks together,
Speaker 3: so your odds of having one on camera if you're
Speaker 3: not where they're at, are less. And so if your
Speaker 3: farm is this void over here and you don't have
Speaker 3: one as they disperse, you know, you just have a
Speaker 3: good chance of having one fill that void, especially if
Speaker 3: you have multiple maturitier in an area, because I feel
Speaker 3: like when they do disperse within that upper age group,
Speaker 3: they each take their own their own they set up
Speaker 3: shop in their own little space, and then they start
Speaker 3: marking their territory as you know, we get into this
Speaker 3: time of year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, your kind of mindset right now, in which
Speaker 2: you are not Rammy yet, is the perfect setup for
Speaker 2: maybe the biggest overarching set of questions I had for you,
Speaker 2: because I've heard you talk about they're basically being two
Speaker 2: different styles of hunting philosophies. There is like a strategy
Speaker 2: where you are on the offensive or you can be
Speaker 2: on the defensive. And I've heard you say that you
Speaker 2: have a defensive hunting strategy. I'd love to better understand
Speaker 2: what you mean by that and why you take the
Speaker 2: defensive approach, you.
Speaker 3: Know, And another way saying that is risk versus reward.
Speaker 3: I'm always looking at that. It's kind of also like
Speaker 3: saying probability are what are the odds right now? So
Speaker 3: in October, for example, you have the whole month to
Speaker 3: hunt a big deer doing what he's doing. No need
Speaker 3: to get Rammy, for sure. And in the beginning of
Speaker 3: the month, you know, risk reward to do a certain thing,
Speaker 3: push in or whatever it's. It's you can be a
Speaker 3: lot more subtle versus the end of the month when
Speaker 3: you're kind of running out of time to hunt him
Speaker 3: doing what he's doing before he goes to the rut.
Speaker 3: If there's a chance of me getting Rammy during the
Speaker 3: deer seas and it's when the sun goes down on
Speaker 3: Halloween night and I haven't got him killed yet, That's
Speaker 3: when I'm like, here, we go getting ready for the grind.
Speaker 3: But but yeah, so and and that same risk reward
Speaker 3: philosophy for me, you know, goes right into the rut.
Speaker 3: And a lot of times, you know, as I'm hunting November,
Speaker 3: I'm getting I'll get more and more aggressive, and sometimes
Speaker 3: I'll have a deer peg like he's in a bowl.
Speaker 3: It's kind of not bowhuntable. It just it doesn't make
Speaker 3: sense to go in there because the wind swirl or
Speaker 3: whatever and then open a day gun season, which I do.
Speaker 3: I love him opening day risk award goes food and
Speaker 3: I'll just be in there really early in the morning,
Speaker 3: up as high as I can get, you know, and
Speaker 3: looking over ground zero. You know, so that would be
Speaker 3: like the ultimate flip of risk reward. Does that explain
Speaker 3: that kind of and and hunting on the defensive? You know,
Speaker 3: It's it's just we're always like when we do like
Speaker 3: consoles and stuff help people, I always try and get
Speaker 3: them to think of their farm as a nature preserve.
Speaker 3: Everybody wants to hunt that that legendary nature preserved down
Speaker 3: the road. And it's like, well, how do you make
Speaker 3: your farm that that vibe it can be? You know,
Speaker 3: you set it up in a way that you haunt
Speaker 3: as little of it as possible, and you haunt as
Speaker 3: effectively as but still effective, you know, And that's hunting defensively.
Speaker 3: Every time you go in and out, you're not bogering
Speaker 3: things up, You're not you know, hurting things. So I
Speaker 3: guess that's maybe a different spin on on hunting defensively,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've heard you also describe it as you know,
Speaker 2: some people are always trying to find something to do
Speaker 2: to kill a deer, like I'm going to use this
Speaker 2: strategy you've been listening. Yeah, I'm prepared, so you I've
Speaker 2: heard you talk about how some people want to find
Speaker 2: something to do and you're more worried about the things
Speaker 2: not to do. Can you expand on that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, look at the at the foundation of this,
Speaker 3: like all this deer hunting has become, and I'm guilty
Speaker 3: of it, it's become this massive like operation of development
Speaker 3: and strategy and whatever, but at its foundational level, and
Speaker 3: it's most of the dear I've killed has still been
Speaker 3: at this kind of foundational level. You've got to be
Speaker 3: able to like understand big deer and their mindset, and
Speaker 3: you need to be able to hunt them just in
Speaker 3: the wild, you know, and so all this other stuff
Speaker 3: it's built on those foundations and principles of how big
Speaker 3: deer think and act. So what was the question again.
Speaker 2: Well, just just help me understand how you know a
Speaker 2: lot of people are looking for like the stuff they
Speaker 2: want to do, and you're more worried about not doing things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so like at the foundational level, you need to
Speaker 3: be thinking about that and just hunting a deer and
Speaker 3: being out ahead of his mindset and you know, making
Speaker 3: good decisions. And that requires like you know, thinking and
Speaker 3: taking your bow and arrow and your tree stand to
Speaker 3: the woods and hunting. It doesn't require like, for example,
Speaker 3: calling to your rattling. I do not bind rattle, rattle,
Speaker 3: and if and this is like hunting a mature deer, right,
Speaker 3: I think so many people that are just blind rattling.
Speaker 3: If they happen to call in the biggest mature deer
Speaker 3: in the area, they don't know they called him in.
Speaker 3: He is so far down wind and gone it's not
Speaker 3: even funny. So I feel like without really under like
Speaker 3: I'll sit there sometimes with the antlers for half hour
Speaker 3: and I'm like, nope, not feeling it. Like there's so
Speaker 3: small windows where you can just feel the electricity in
Speaker 3: the woods, and you know that they're mind set is
Speaker 3: like they're just gonna run up there and come in
Speaker 3: there because they are not in a good head, you know,
Speaker 3: frame of mind. And so that's the type. And even
Speaker 3: then I don't know that I really ever blind rattle,
Speaker 3: because like quick story, I had. The biggest year I
Speaker 3: ever killed was two eleven, and I saw him coming
Speaker 3: across the field and I called this and that, and
Speaker 3: it had poor rain, and he came down to my
Speaker 3: left and he went to a creek and he stopped
Speaker 3: perpendicular to me, and for like five minutes he stood
Speaker 3: there and he'd looked left at me, and he'd look
Speaker 3: across the creek, and he'd looked left and look across.
Speaker 3: He wanted to cross that creek to get down with
Speaker 3: me so bad. And finally he's like, well, i'll just
Speaker 3: go take a peek, and he turned left and he
Speaker 3: came right down because he couldn't cross the water, and
Speaker 3: he stopped as soon as he could see the plot,
Speaker 3: and he turned around and went the other way, and
Speaker 3: he killed him next morning. But that's just an example
Speaker 3: of how badly they do not want to come in.
Speaker 3: You know that that's just one example, but there's so
Speaker 3: many things, like everything is a tool. We have all
Speaker 3: these strategies and it's all a tool. Well and some
Speaker 3: of it. You know, there's times and places. You know,
Speaker 3: there's times and places for giant food plots because you
Speaker 3: have a situation that makes it really huntable even though
Speaker 3: it's giant. There's other times for little food plots with
Speaker 3: It's just kind of all tools, you know, And you know,
Speaker 3: I just kind of I'm always thinking, like I'm trying
Speaker 3: to visualize what the deer is going to do or
Speaker 3: how he's going to use it, or how he's going
Speaker 3: to act and think like him, you know, and if
Speaker 3: it doesn't make sense, then probably won't do it. But yeah,
Speaker 3: back to the original question, I just think keeping it
Speaker 3: basic hunting like a ghost, not leaving as much scent
Speaker 3: on the farm as you can. Understanding thermals, you know,
Speaker 3: like I generally nowadays, I'm going to the woods in
Speaker 3: my my work clothes that I was like my pants
Speaker 3: I was working in that day, Like because I've tried
Speaker 3: so long all the stuff for scent and it's like
Speaker 3: I stink, I must think, so I'm gonna get smell
Speaker 3: it anyway, And yeah, it can make a difference. And
Speaker 3: I'm not saying not it's all little strategy, but there's
Speaker 3: things that you can focus on, Like I think if
Speaker 3: people focus more on thinking like a deer and learning
Speaker 3: a deer and stuff, they'd be more successful than some
Speaker 3: of the you know, I don't want to use the
Speaker 3: word gimmick, but just some of the stuff that goes on.
Speaker 2: All right, So is it fair to say then rather
Speaker 2: than crazy aggressive moves or gimmicky stuff or products, you
Speaker 2: would take the It's a long game, so I'm going
Speaker 2: to think like a deer, run the marathon and minimize mistakes.
Speaker 2: Is that like a succinct way to summarize.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think of the season as a whole, you know,
Speaker 3: And if I get my few opportunities, I've done well.
Speaker 3: So you just never getting rammy and and always always
Speaker 3: trying to leave that farm undisturbed that that day when
Speaker 3: you come out, I think, is the philosophy trying to
Speaker 3: keep your farm, the nature preserved in the in the neighborhood.
Speaker 2: Okay, So so if I want to be a more
Speaker 2: defensive minded hunter, I should be thinking about two of
Speaker 2: the things you just said. There, which is, you know,
Speaker 2: treating the farm like a glasshouse. Uh, not getting too rammy.
Speaker 2: Are there any other like core fundamentals to being that
Speaker 2: style of hunter that we need to take note of.
Speaker 3: I don't think so. As far as hunting defensively, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, I guess another thing we get into talking
Speaker 3: about is the mindset and kind of being out in
Speaker 3: front of the deer. But that's that's kind of the
Speaker 3: next conversation. Probably, Yeah, I do want to talk about
Speaker 3: that one more foul up than on this.
Speaker 2: Can this ever go too far?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: Can you ever be too defensive? Two passive?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Explain that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I don't want people to get that. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So yeah, this is almost going to contradict a lot
Speaker 3: of this stuff. When you have a big deer on camera,
Speaker 3: like you need to be trying to kill him because
Speaker 3: generally speaking, he's not going to be there the whole season.
Speaker 3: He's not going to be wanting to get shot in
Speaker 3: the whole season. Like you need to capitalize on that.
Speaker 3: Whether it's whether it's October one or ten, or you
Speaker 3: know whatever, you need to be hunting that deer. I've
Speaker 3: had people. I had a guy for a few years
Speaker 3: ago that had a giant and he's I'm like, what
Speaker 3: are you doing? And I mean he told me about
Speaker 3: exactly what the deer is doing. He's like, well you
Speaker 3: know so and so says, wait till November when it's right.
Speaker 3: I'm like, whoa, that deer is gonna be gone, dude.
Speaker 3: So yeah, you need to get in there. Here's another
Speaker 3: thing to keep in mind if you get lucky. So
Speaker 3: there's one thing, the pressure on your farm. You have
Speaker 3: the farm long term. You're trying to grow and hold
Speaker 3: a big deer in a safe space. It is a glasshouse.
Speaker 3: It's a delicate act. You need to let him feel
Speaker 3: like that's that nature preserve, so he's going to live
Speaker 3: in there. On the flip side of that, which I've
Speaker 3: ran into this situation a lot because I bought a
Speaker 3: lot of farms and acquired a big deer, you know,
Speaker 3: not on purpose, but just one that was there. And
Speaker 3: when you get a piece or you get permission on
Speaker 3: a piece, and you put cameras out and you have
Speaker 3: a big mature deer, he is called the older he is,
Speaker 3: the longer he's called that home likely the smaller his
Speaker 3: core has gotten. And it can be extremely difficult to
Speaker 3: run that deer out of there. And I've seen that
Speaker 3: over and over again. I've made some I had to
Speaker 3: go around with a deer a few years ago on
Speaker 3: our YouTube channel. There's a video called face Space with
Speaker 3: a Monster And anyway, I had to go around with
Speaker 3: this deer and it was unbelievable. I couldn't run him
Speaker 3: out of there. So, you know, there's every situation is different.
Speaker 3: You know, if you're hunting your your farm and you're
Speaker 3: managing your farm and it's your farm for bever or whatever, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: need you need to you know, it's a glass house.
Speaker 3: But if you just find a deer, you have got
Speaker 3: to you have got to hunt that thing. You can't
Speaker 3: just sit around. And you know, and that's a loaded
Speaker 3: question too, sit around and wait for the perfect days
Speaker 3: in October. You know, you need to use probability on
Speaker 3: your to your advantage. You may only have four or
Speaker 3: five days that he walks in daylight because of the weather,
Speaker 3: environmental conditions, and you need to up your odds by
Speaker 3: being in the woods each one of those days. So
Speaker 3: so you do you do need to hunt a lot,
Speaker 3: but you need to hopefully have situations that allow you
Speaker 3: to get in and out.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: That's the cool thing about your hunting, Like there is
Speaker 3: no one size fits all. It's really it's almost like
Speaker 3: you just got to sit back and take a lot
Speaker 3: of these philosophies and principles and then make educated guesses
Speaker 3: and decisions and all the little probability and all the
Speaker 3: little strategizing adds up and probability will reward you over
Speaker 3: the years and over the over time, you know, But
Speaker 3: there is no one size fits all, and that's what's interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like you. I've heard you just compare it
Speaker 2: to like a game of Djenga, where you're just slowly
Speaker 2: pulling off pieces here and there when the time is
Speaker 2: right in the right place, piece by piece by piece,
Speaker 2: and finally, you know, eventually the tower comes tumbling down.
Speaker 2: But it wouldn't work if you went in there and
Speaker 2: just try to smash the whole thing down with your
Speaker 2: hand without thinking that through in the first place.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to me, deer hunting is like it's it's a methodical,
Speaker 3: slow paced thing, and you have all this strategy and
Speaker 3: have strategy and physical strategy that you've done on the farm,
Speaker 3: whether it's massive manipulation on your own farm or it's
Speaker 3: just scouting and hanging and having a plan for or
Speaker 3: trees picked out to go up with a climber. It's
Speaker 3: the physical strategizing, and then it's the mental strategizing once
Speaker 3: we get into this time of year and and it's
Speaker 3: the prep you know, the tuning of your bow and
Speaker 3: the all the it's everything. It's it's a lot of
Speaker 3: little things. And that's what he's talking about. The game agenda.
Speaker 3: Every one of those strategies that's a block and some
Speaker 3: of those things, any one thing is not really going
Speaker 3: to make or break. But when you start adding all
Speaker 3: that up and you're super dialed. You know, a lot
Speaker 3: of the most successful deer hunters I see are just very,
Speaker 3: very over analytical, and they're very you know, they just
Speaker 3: cross every t and dota every eye. How many dear
Speaker 3: have you heard about, like somebody that they didn't end
Speaker 3: up getting job because of something stupid that happened. I mean,
Speaker 3: I've been guilty of it too. So it's just having
Speaker 3: everything dialed. And sure enough, it's that one. It's the
Speaker 3: last limb that you were like trimming lanes and you're
Speaker 3: sitting there and you're like, I'm not getting out of
Speaker 3: tree to go get that stupid thing, and then that's
Speaker 3: the one it costs that deer, you know.
Speaker 2: So, uh so, Okay, what you're what I'm hearing is
Speaker 2: that most of the time we are treating the property
Speaker 2: like a glasshouse. Most of the time we are not
Speaker 2: getting rammy ahead of things. But when the time is right,
Speaker 2: when the moment is right, you have to capitalize on it.
Speaker 2: You said, if you've got a big deer on camera,
Speaker 2: But do you mean do you mean that you're gonna
Speaker 2: be poking in there and hunting a bunch even if
Speaker 2: it's just nighttime pictures or are you waiting for the
Speaker 2: daylight or are you waiting for your magic X days
Speaker 2: and specific conditions. I guess more generally, I'd love to
Speaker 2: hear more about what will make you push in and
Speaker 2: do a hunt on this property that's supposed to be
Speaker 2: a glass house. But but sometimes you've got to do it.
Speaker 2: When do you take your swings?
Speaker 3: Yep, So maybe we could tie this one into a
Speaker 3: current story that's kind of unfolding. So I've got a
Speaker 3: friend of mine. It's a couple from out of town.
Speaker 3: They bought a few farms from me, and they've bought
Speaker 3: some other farms and they have a giant deer on camera,
Speaker 3: I mean right here near my house and I don't.
Speaker 3: So I'm like, I'd like to live vicariously through you.
Speaker 3: Got to help you out. So i mean a giant deer.
Speaker 3: So I was like, I'd love to help you. Guys
Speaker 3: they live out of town and then you know, they
Speaker 3: show up and they just it's hard for them to
Speaker 3: get everything set up and everything. So leading up to
Speaker 3: this point this started unfolding maybe three or four weeks ago,
Speaker 3: I'm trying to anticipate this deer's what he's going to do, right,
Speaker 3: I'm also thinking, Okay, this area has a big picture.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking, Okay, this area has got a lot of
Speaker 3: hunting pressure. This farm that they bought did not, so
Speaker 3: in order for this deer to be this age and
Speaker 3: this big on this several hundred acre farm, he's probably
Speaker 3: this is probably home. He's probably spent a lot of
Speaker 3: time here. So also with all that hunting pressure and stuff,
Speaker 3: I'm like, we need to really try and get this done.
Speaker 3: In October, so they have late planted beans. They've got
Speaker 3: the latest planet beans in the year in the area.
Speaker 3: They also have some corn, so we got on a
Speaker 3: zoom and kind of came up with a plan and basically,
Speaker 3: this deer we have to mitigate like a westerly wind.
Speaker 3: But where my mindset goes to is what's this deer
Speaker 3: going to do? Okay, he's gonna be most likely because
Speaker 3: this is his core and it's the latest beans around.
Speaker 3: The biggest deer generally will hang on to the field
Speaker 3: that's just got looks like some yellow leaves, but there's
Speaker 3: green ones down in. He'll be in that field. That's
Speaker 3: the last place they'll leave usually, so when he transitions
Speaker 3: from that, so they're already lucky because they're going to
Speaker 3: have that green field. I wish it was corn because
Speaker 3: we can mow corn back there. They have like a
Speaker 3: so this field goes back into the east and then
Speaker 3: and then there's like a turkey foot and they had
Speaker 3: planted a little food pot there. But the westerly winds,
Speaker 3: the type of winds that were anticipating having the night
Speaker 3: that he walks in October, are going to have some
Speaker 3: west in it. So we need to mitigate that. So
Speaker 3: we need to use a ditch for thermals. We need
Speaker 3: to use a box line. Where do we want to sit?
Speaker 3: So we have an up ran found that spot. Put
Speaker 3: the box there. The next thing is as these this
Speaker 3: small window where the beans are green, what's he going
Speaker 3: to do? He is going to transition from that green
Speaker 3: to other green slash corn. So I got two spots
Speaker 3: that up to buy that corn ready to mow. Blinds
Speaker 3: put on there if he shifts to the corn. And
Speaker 3: there's kind of like one hundred and twenty yard gap
Speaker 3: that goes from the corn to the beans, And I've
Speaker 3: got brownings along the road lined up so I can
Speaker 3: catch him anytime he transitions.
Speaker 2: And it's the transitions in that moment.
Speaker 3: It's the closest corn round. So the last step was
Speaker 3: the green and of course we haven't had rain, so
Speaker 3: those food plots are kind of at the far end
Speaker 3: of those beans, and we need to drag him to
Speaker 3: the west through a little death trap. These beans were
Speaker 3: very short, they were really late planted, and they're on
Speaker 3: thirty inch rows. So I went over there and I
Speaker 3: drilled wheat, ratuses and turnips for candy, and I actually
Speaker 3: drilled a really heavy dose of winter Piece because winter Piece,
Speaker 3: to me, they generally like will get decimated, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, Like anytime you try and plan them.
Speaker 3: They just wipe them out, but they love them because
Speaker 3: it's so close to a soybean. I almost drilled soybeans
Speaker 3: in the mix too, to get a bunch of baby soybeans.
Speaker 3: And that's kind of putting all my eggs in that.
Speaker 3: Just we're trying to hold him there in extra couple
Speaker 3: of days to catch one front. So I drilled into
Speaker 3: the standing beans, I know, till then we didn't get rained.
Speaker 3: So then I went over there and spent a day
Speaker 3: with a water tank and I put twenty six tank foles,
Speaker 3: which equates a half of an eight inch per acre.
Speaker 3: I watered this entire shield because I'm like, we've got
Speaker 3: desperate times called for desperate measures. We've got to drag
Speaker 3: that in all the while. So that day again back
Speaker 3: to the hole. You can't run a big deer out thing.
Speaker 3: Somebody was like, Oh, you're gonna run that deer out.
Speaker 3: I'm like, that night, after I took twenty six trips
Speaker 3: back and forth in there, he was back there on camera.
Speaker 3: A few days later. I went back to check to
Speaker 3: see if it germinated. I went back in there, and
Speaker 3: he was on camera that night too, Both at night,
Speaker 3: which I'm totally fine with. So all that being said,
Speaker 3: I've anticipated what he's gonna do. He's gonna be on
Speaker 3: the last being field, which we have. We have a
Speaker 3: westerly wind, we've mitigated that, and we're dragging him to
Speaker 3: And this is the final thing I did. There's like
Speaker 3: a fifty yard gap. I took my side by side
Speaker 3: and I grabbed all these tree tops that had blown
Speaker 3: down on the edge of the field, and we do
Speaker 3: all these walls, you know, like from excavation walls to
Speaker 3: wolven wire fences whatever. I used to do this a
Speaker 3: lot when I was young. But I just grabbed all
Speaker 3: these blowdowns and I drug him around the field and
Speaker 3: where that wishbone comes to the beans, I just laid
Speaker 3: them from that corner over there. I actually mowed under
Speaker 3: the tree branches in the corner because that's where the
Speaker 3: natural concentration of the set's going to be. I anticipated
Speaker 3: where's he gonna want to scrape, So I led the
Speaker 3: horse to water and I mowed it to dirt because
Speaker 3: it was really tall brush. Gave him that spot, and
Speaker 3: then from that corner, I laid those tree tops out
Speaker 3: into the beans, so it looks like a tree fell
Speaker 3: out in the field and then I didn't start no
Speaker 3: tilling him until this side of that. So I'm leading
Speaker 3: the horse to water and i'ms and this probably won't
Speaker 3: work out like this, but if I'm that deer and
Speaker 3: what he's doing, I'm gonna come out stage in those
Speaker 3: little food pot that's already there. Which if my peas
Speaker 3: and stuff popped and he transitions, which as of last night.
Speaker 3: I text these guys this morning, I said, did you
Speaker 3: notice how many deer are on the camera now loitering
Speaker 3: right there? It's because that stuff popped. And I said,
Speaker 3: if he starts doing this, which he did at last night,
Speaker 3: I'm going to go in and I'm going to disk
Speaker 3: half of that food plot in it's over there in
Speaker 3: bow range because I don't want him loitering downwind and
Speaker 3: I don't want him hanging up back there. So the
Speaker 3: current situation now we got this pinch because of these blowdowns.
Speaker 3: We basically reverse engineered thinking like a deer for a
Speaker 3: very specific window, which is October. He should do this
Speaker 3: the whole month of October unless he goes that corn.
Speaker 3: But I think he'll be back and forth, So you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know if that kind of ties everything in.
Speaker 3: But currently I was texting them this morning, I said,
Speaker 3: here we are. We got a decent look and opening day.
Speaker 3: There's generally a very small window, like the first few
Speaker 3: days a season where before they start getting to like
Speaker 3: rammy or reclusive. That's a really good date phase or
Speaker 3: mindset to get one killed. We have this weird like
Speaker 3: long It's not like a really powerful magic X. It's
Speaker 3: kind of like a long one. It's subtle. But I said,
Speaker 3: the next few days will tell you know if he
Speaker 3: locks onto this and starts doing this. I don't really
Speaker 3: care if a deer is doing something at night, especially
Speaker 3: this time of year, that's what they do. I mean,
Speaker 3: you just got to pay attention to what they're doing
Speaker 3: at night. So like in this example last night, I
Speaker 3: mean he was he was doing what we want him
Speaker 3: to do. And that's all good and fine, because in
Speaker 3: my opinion, big matured Europe they're not necessarily like geniuses.
Speaker 3: They're not like they can't like reason, or they're not
Speaker 3: smarter than other deer. They just when they get into
Speaker 3: this mindset in the fall and they start getting inclusive
Speaker 3: and stuff, they have a much more specific set of
Speaker 3: triggers that make them walk in daylight, but then when
Speaker 3: you see them, they're just so we're all good with
Speaker 3: him walking at night. It's fine. You just got to
Speaker 3: anticipate the days that you need to be there in daylight,
Speaker 3: which would be opening days looking decent. Because we have
Speaker 3: a north northwest, we have some form of a high
Speaker 3: pressure front. It's a long, kind of slow drawn out one.
Speaker 3: But we also have a magical little date in those
Speaker 3: first couple of days of the season.
Speaker 2: And you're saying that that's magical just because it's the
Speaker 2: first couple of days of the season and they haven't
Speaker 2: been pressured yet. It's it's still relatively natural movement at
Speaker 2: that point, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that gets into my whole date phase, mindset
Speaker 3: philosophy or not philosophy. It's just and again, like I've
Speaker 3: seen people comment sometimes my stuff where they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: it's not this regimented. Well it's not, but it's like
Speaker 3: really good to have a regimented approach because it keeps
Speaker 3: you within the realm of probability. And so, like I
Speaker 3: talk about date phase or mindset, like some people call
Speaker 3: it the phase of the deer season, some call it whatever,
Speaker 3: But those three things mean the same thing. When you
Speaker 3: talk about date, what it really means is what phase
Speaker 3: of the deer season we're in. It also mean ultimately
Speaker 3: means what is the mindset of the dear and that changes.
Speaker 3: October is kind of the same mindset throughout the month.
Speaker 3: It's just that it gets more rammy or more powerful.
Speaker 3: He's in a territory, mark working, grumpy move in October.
Speaker 3: Now there's two little there's a couple of little windows
Speaker 3: or micro phases within that that I think, and that
Speaker 3: is the first couple of days of season. For some reason,
Speaker 3: just seems like you can have less of a powerful
Speaker 3: environmental situation meaning weather, and still have them in daylight.
Speaker 3: It's a small window, and I just subtly feel like
Speaker 3: I've noticed it over the years.
Speaker 2: Like first one days of the season maybe, what's that
Speaker 2: like first three days of the season.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, first three, four or five. You know, it's
Speaker 3: pretty small that I noticed, and it's a subtle thing.
Speaker 3: A lot of this stuff is subtle. And then there's
Speaker 3: another phase I call the boomerang phase, and it's October
Speaker 3: twenty eighth, and that's where, like all these years they
Speaker 3: separate like they're doing now or whatever. And within that
Speaker 3: older age class, they kind of each have their own
Speaker 3: area that they're marking territory. And then, like clockwork, if
Speaker 3: you pay attention on the twenty seventh, twenty eight, they're
Speaker 3: sitting there and they're each doing this, and all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, this dude goes whoom and he hits his
Speaker 3: scrapes and woom and he hits his scrapes and it's
Speaker 3: not that regimented, but it kind of is if you
Speaker 3: start paying attention to that. And so then by using
Speaker 3: that concept, if it's October twenty eight, you might say, well,
Speaker 3: I know this big deer is next door. I know
Speaker 3: he's hit this scrape in the past. I'm probably gonna
Speaker 3: go sit here tonight because there's a chance that he
Speaker 3: boomerangs out of his core and he ends up over here.
Speaker 3: And that's just one of those things compounding strategy, one
Speaker 3: of them little layers in the jinga, you know, that
Speaker 3: help you make educated decisions and eventually probability catches up
Speaker 3: with you. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, I know you've talked in the past about wanting
Speaker 2: to be ahead of the deer, like not not be
Speaker 2: behind the deer, and reacting to pictures and stuff like
Speaker 2: that and chasing them around, but rather anticipate the mindset,
Speaker 2: anticipate the trigger with environmental conditions or whatever, and then
Speaker 2: be there ahead of them. Can you expand a little
Speaker 2: on those triggers that you touched a little bit there
Speaker 2: on the mindset thing in October, but can you elaborate
Speaker 2: on the other triggers that will allow you to be
Speaker 2: ahead of the deer. We talked about this last time,
Speaker 2: so we don't need to do it a super long run,
Speaker 2: but I want to make sure if someone's listening and
Speaker 2: they didn't hear that first one, that they get a
Speaker 2: sense of what environmental factors you're looking for. And then also,
Speaker 2: the moon is another thing I know you believe in two.
Speaker 3: So I think of it as and again just simplifying it,
Speaker 3: I think of it as three things that influence a
Speaker 3: big deer to move in daylight. One is date phase
Speaker 3: or mindset. That's a constant you can predict that years out.
Speaker 3: Two is a moon phase. You know. I know there's
Speaker 3: a lot of debate around it, but I just I
Speaker 3: can I've seen it, I can feel it. A bunch
Speaker 3: of guys that are big deer killers, Mark Jury, Lee Lukowsky,
Speaker 3: Ben Rising, they all feel it. That's another thing that's
Speaker 3: a constant, that's something that you can predict and watch.
Speaker 3: And then the third thing is environmental conditions and that's
Speaker 3: the wild card. Those are the fronts. In my opinion,
Speaker 3: it's all about high pressure fronts. I'm less concerned about
Speaker 3: the temperature and it and more concerned about, you know
Speaker 3: that the power of that high pressure front, which we
Speaker 3: have videos on our YouTube called magic x Days or
Speaker 3: something like that, or how to set up your weather
Speaker 3: app or something, and that just kind of breaks down
Speaker 3: how I how I look at that. But you know,
Speaker 3: that's kind of everything else kind of falls in that.
Speaker 3: Like I've seen some comments, well what about like the
Speaker 3: rut like and a girlfriend and that, you know that
Speaker 3: that falls into date phase or mindset, you know. So,
Speaker 3: And as far as the moon, just so I can like,
Speaker 3: I don't know anything. My moon thoughts are so simple.
Speaker 3: It's like I don't know anything about a red moon.
Speaker 3: I don't know anything about all the charts. All I
Speaker 3: know is that the rising moon is powerful and when
Speaker 3: it rises forty five minutes before it, you know, the
Speaker 3: sunsets on the day before the full moon, it's more powerful.
Speaker 3: It's a factor that makes it more powerful to see him,
Speaker 3: and then it flips in the morning, perfect example. And
Speaker 3: again this is kind of subtle, but if you pay attention,
Speaker 3: did you see all the big year that got shot
Speaker 3: in the opening few days of Kentucky and Kansas this
Speaker 3: year and there was not really any good weather and
Speaker 3: then it kind of slowed down perfect moon a couple
Speaker 3: of days leading up to the full moon. So that
Speaker 3: that's the type of subtle things you pay pay attention to,
Speaker 3: you know. So this year we're anticipating that full moon
Speaker 3: around what the fourteenth, thirteenth of October. I've seen so
Speaker 3: many years where everybody's like, oh October wall and the
Speaker 3: moon's in the middle of a month like that, and
Speaker 3: it's fire, you know. And again it's like one of
Speaker 3: them things where you might choose to hunt on a
Speaker 3: subpar environmental night because it's in that powerful three day
Speaker 3: window or four day window leading up to the full
Speaker 3: and you might kill him because of that, you know.
Speaker 3: And the day of the fall, Like I feel like
Speaker 3: over the years, I've I've just noticed that you might
Speaker 3: not see a ton of deer. You won't see a
Speaker 3: ton of deer, but man, you might see the biggest
Speaker 3: one in the woods like last light interesting.
Speaker 2: And so the basically what you're the moon thing that
Speaker 2: you care about is when the moon is rising or
Speaker 2: still up at the edges, right, So when the moon's
Speaker 2: out just before it gets dark, and when it's still
Speaker 2: up in the daylight the next morning, right. And that
Speaker 2: usually is happening in the four or five days before
Speaker 2: the full moon. That's happening in the evening, and then
Speaker 2: the four or five days after the full moon that's
Speaker 2: happening in the morning.
Speaker 3: And if you pay attention to it, I just feel
Speaker 3: like there's always a deer that you're like, there wasn't
Speaker 3: really great weather and he was out in daylight, and
Speaker 3: then you go check it gets if you're watching a
Speaker 3: deer one of those days in the five days leading
Speaker 3: up in the full moon, he'll generally be out there
Speaker 3: in daylight and it's on a explainable you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, we talked about this last year leading into
Speaker 2: the year, and you talked about how you know if
Speaker 2: you've got a target buck that you're on that full
Speaker 2: moon last year is October twenty eighth, and you said,
Speaker 2: you know, be ready either those evenings leading up to
Speaker 2: it or the mornings afterwards. Especially if we get a
Speaker 2: good cold front hitting around that same time, it's going
Speaker 2: to be the best week of the whole year. YadA, YadA, YadA. Well,
Speaker 2: we had a front hit that time, Pier in the Midwest,
Speaker 2: and my target Buck I had my first close encounter
Speaker 2: with him the morning of the the morning of the thirtieth,
Speaker 2: and then got a shot at him the evening of
Speaker 2: the thirtieth. No, I take the back the first encounter
Speaker 2: with in the morning of the twenty ninth, and had
Speaker 2: another encounter with the morning of the thirtieth, got a
Speaker 2: shot him that evening. So I certainly saw the power
Speaker 2: of those conditions all coming together myself last year. See
Speaker 2: what happens this year.
Speaker 3: The real one. So watch for years like this where
Speaker 3: it's kind of in the middle the month, when people
Speaker 3: are kind of like not too excited, you know, and
Speaker 3: it's like, man, these these are these are the knights
Speaker 3: from here.
Speaker 2: So mindset is what they're doing at certain times of
Speaker 2: the year. Moon weather conditions, that being the high pressure
Speaker 2: front and the temperature dropping while cloud covers dropping and
Speaker 2: barre metric pressures rising. That's your magic xt day. I've
Speaker 2: heard you talk about all that a lot, and It
Speaker 2: makes a lot of sense when it comes to predicting
Speaker 2: when a deer is going to move and making sure
Speaker 2: you're ahead of him. Something I haven't heard you talk
Speaker 2: about as much, though, is actual individual deer data or
Speaker 2: information like annual patterns, like if a deer did something
Speaker 2: last year, will he do it again this year? Or
Speaker 2: how much does camera information or observations of deer doing
Speaker 2: you know, a specific deer doing a thing in past
Speaker 2: years or this year, how much does that factor into
Speaker 2: your decision making process when deciding when to strike. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's it is huge. You hear it all over the place.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you can take that to the bank. That's
Speaker 2: some of the best information you can have if you
Speaker 2: know what he did last year.
Speaker 3: I need to get better about categorizing that stuff in
Speaker 3: years past from deer that aren't ready to shoot yet.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it is so powerful, like right to the day,
Speaker 3: it seems.
Speaker 2: You know. So do you have do you have any
Speaker 2: process for analyzing that.
Speaker 3: Form of that that I that I can talk about
Speaker 3: is that I don't see a lot here a lot
Speaker 3: of people talking about is you probably heard me talk
Speaker 3: about this too, like building a straight map if I'm
Speaker 3: on a new property, or I'm scouting in the fall,
Speaker 3: like I'll or even if I get a property late
Speaker 3: in the winter, sometimes I'll put cameras all over that
Speaker 3: farm because those deer will hit scrape super late. I
Speaker 3: don't know if you've ever watched it, but they'll hit
Speaker 3: apes into like February, it's March. I mean, it's crazy,
Speaker 3: and just by learning, Like when I'm on a farm,
Speaker 3: I'll pin on onyx, I'll pin every scrape I find
Speaker 3: in every bed I find so that I can look
Speaker 3: at it and it might not make sense this year,
Speaker 3: but next year, like it'll it'll just sometimes it's like
Speaker 3: a light bulb, like, oh, you already got the map.
Speaker 3: You already got the you know, you got the dots
Speaker 3: of all the bedding areas to where he's going to
Speaker 3: go looking, and you've got all the scrapes, and those
Speaker 3: scrapes are making sense, you know, when he shows up
Speaker 3: the following year. So I guess that'd be one version
Speaker 3: of it. But yeah, I mean, I don't know how
Speaker 3: to deep dive too much in that other than saying
Speaker 3: absolutely they will do the same thing almost to the day.
Speaker 3: It seems like, you know, one quick story hunted this
Speaker 3: place late season saw a big dear got set up,
Speaker 3: dropped Antler's Christmas day bummed. The next year, it was
Speaker 3: all corn. I went up there. It was that face
Speaker 3: face with a monster deer. It was all corn. So
Speaker 3: I waited late until I knew there were scrapes because
Speaker 3: the edges weren't mode and it was going to be
Speaker 3: a nightmare. And that deer was betting like in this
Speaker 3: little area the year before that winter. And I went
Speaker 3: up there and I came around the corner and I'm
Speaker 3: looking for scrapes to put cameras and got a backpack
Speaker 3: and weed whacker and I come around the corner and
Speaker 3: I'm like, man, there's got to be a scrape right here.
Speaker 3: This is kind of where he was coming out, and
Speaker 3: this point it's all kind of beat down. I come
Speaker 3: around the corner. Dude, he stood up out of the
Speaker 3: I mean it was right where I left him the
Speaker 3: year before in the winter. He stood up and took
Speaker 3: off out of there, and it looked like a grocery
Speaker 3: car and on top of his head. I was like,
Speaker 3: oh my god. So yeah, I mean, they'll uh And
Speaker 3: that's not really doing the same thing to the date.
Speaker 3: That's just doing the same thing, But.
Speaker 2: Yes, will you? Will you ever be in a situation
Speaker 2: where you have your mouse trap laid, everything's set, and
Speaker 2: you would go hunt him because of that annual pattern,
Speaker 2: even if those other factors like the moon sucks the
Speaker 2: mindset maybe maybe it's mid October, so you know, mindset
Speaker 2: maybe not be the best it could be, and the
Speaker 2: temperature stuff is not that great. But man, last year
Speaker 2: he did it. Would you hunt in that situation?
Speaker 3: I'll give you a good example of that one too.
Speaker 3: I feel like today, these these real world examples are
Speaker 3: coming out. A couple of years ago, I shot that
Speaker 3: really wide goofy giant there in Illinois, So I literally
Speaker 3: kind of took a bunch of you know, stands down
Speaker 3: stuff and I left one stand in case he showed up.
Speaker 3: And he was a lot bigger because it was like
Speaker 3: definitely like right ground zero for this year in in
Speaker 3: the rout. And anyway, I didn't, I didn't. I had
Speaker 3: one picture of him, it wasn't a great picture, and
Speaker 3: I kind of wasn't even hunting him. It was a
Speaker 3: bad picture. And I had a picture next door on
Speaker 3: the piece that I accessed through these people gave me
Speaker 3: permission to come through there, and they had a produce
Speaker 3: patch back there, and I had a camera on the
Speaker 3: produce patch they let me put out, and I had
Speaker 3: kinda I wasn't even really paying too much attention to it.
Speaker 3: All of a sudden, like November fourth this year, was
Speaker 3: like standing in the camera and I'm like, wow, I
Speaker 3: definitely miss unjudged that thing. So the next day we
Speaker 3: had it was that day we had like fifty mile
Speaker 3: hour winds or whatever, two seasons ago twenty two, like
Speaker 3: the fifth or something like that, and I literally just
Speaker 3: went up there and went right to that stand. I
Speaker 3: left for that deer in horrible conditions. I mean, it
Speaker 3: was probably some type of affront coming through, I would
Speaker 3: assume because of the wind and stuff, but man, it
Speaker 3: was crazy conditions. Fifty The only reason it happened was
Speaker 3: because they were all bedded on the north sides in
Speaker 3: this bedding area of the slope. So I was able
Speaker 3: to get in there, you know, because they weren't betted
Speaker 3: where they normally would have been betted, and they were
Speaker 3: betted right on the backside of a cliff right next
Speaker 3: to me, and they popped up. But so that would
Speaker 3: be an example of just like you know, going to
Speaker 3: where I knew he was the year before, and I
Speaker 3: literally left a stand for that deer. And it wasn't
Speaker 3: the most like I mean, I wasn't even really thinking
Speaker 3: about the deer until the day before when I got
Speaker 3: the picture and I was like, oh my god, misjudged him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you will. You would look at annual data
Speaker 2: as being enough to go in after him, even if
Speaker 2: the conditions aren't aren't perfect.
Speaker 3: Probably probably one of the most powerful things, you know,
Speaker 3: And I think you still need the conditions to really
Speaker 3: make it effective. But if you're ultimately you still got
Speaker 3: a hunt, especially in the rut, like you still got
Speaker 3: hunt because in the rut or you know, saying the
Speaker 3: rut is kind of like a very broad thing because
Speaker 3: of that that means so much. I mean, the whole
Speaker 3: deer season is the ruck. Even right now we're ramping
Speaker 3: where this is a phase of the rock, their mindset
Speaker 3: is they're getting like, the whole thing is the rock.
Speaker 3: A deer's whole life is the ruck. But you know,
Speaker 3: so so yeah, you still got to have the weather conditions,
Speaker 3: you know, to make a move. But when we get
Speaker 3: into a certain date phase or mindset, you have got
Speaker 3: to be in there with them, you know, kind of
Speaker 3: like two things. Two things I could tell somebody to
Speaker 3: do to up their probability and almost get out of
Speaker 3: their own way is once November first rolls around, get
Speaker 3: out of the boxes, get out of the fields, and
Speaker 3: get in the woods in the cover, because that's where
Speaker 3: they're gonna spend the highest amount of their time. And
Speaker 3: the other tip would be, once November first rolls around,
Speaker 3: stop paying attention to your trail cameras and just hunt
Speaker 3: and think like a deer. And you know, yeah, the
Speaker 3: cameras will basically tell you he's a live or he's dead,
Speaker 3: are he's still around or whatever, But it doesn't even
Speaker 3: matter if he's not around, because you could somebody could
Speaker 3: be like, oh, I got a picture him two miles
Speaker 3: away that evening before, and then you don't go hunt,
Speaker 3: and then he's all over your farm that morning. So
Speaker 3: those cameras will do more harm to your mental status
Speaker 3: when you roll around in November first, and they will
Speaker 3: do good guaranteed.
Speaker 2: And they do it for me to get a dinno
Speaker 2: right here too. So that's perfect though, because the next
Speaker 2: thing I wanted to ask you about was was kind
Speaker 2: of shifting gears to Okay, we've talked a lot about
Speaker 2: when to hunt and when not hunt, or when to
Speaker 2: be conservative versus aggressive. But now let's talk a little
Speaker 2: bit about where you're actually setting up on this deer
Speaker 2: and you know, picking those locations. I've heard you discuss
Speaker 2: this idea of thinking like a deer, always trying to
Speaker 2: think like a deer when picking a tree stand location
Speaker 2: or line location. But let's just let's work with the
Speaker 2: assumption that we're on an undeveloped farm, because anyone listening
Speaker 2: today in October, you know, it's too late for them
Speaker 2: to develop their farm because they're hunting right now, so
Speaker 2: they're stuck with whatever they have. All they can do
Speaker 2: now is find spots that check the boxes and set
Speaker 2: up there possibly. So, can you explain a little bit
Speaker 2: about what you mean when you say thinking like a
Speaker 2: deer and how does that play into your strategy and
Speaker 2: picking spots to hunt?
Speaker 3: Yep, in October, their mindset is to mark territory. They're
Speaker 3: flexing their muscles to the deer population, and they're trying
Speaker 3: to show off as simple as as I can explain it.
Speaker 3: You want to get cameras on all the scrapes on
Speaker 3: your hunting area, especially you know, especially the ones on
Speaker 3: the field edges around the food, and they're going to
Speaker 3: tell you the story of what he's doing where he's
Speaker 3: going to do that. Then you need to find a
Speaker 3: spot to get set up that as good ingress or egress,
Speaker 3: and that's kind of I guess I would take the
Speaker 3: right spot over good Ingress or egress. But the most
Speaker 3: important thing I could say about your setup in October
Speaker 3: is those evenings he's gonna move are most likely gonna
Speaker 3: be westerly, the northwesterly wins, They're gonna be high pressure fronts.
Speaker 3: So you need to have your setups for those evenings
Speaker 3: that he's most likely to move, and you need to
Speaker 3: really pay attention to finding a setup where you're northwest
Speaker 3: also aligns with a big deep ditch behind you or
Speaker 3: a hillside or something to pull your air down. I
Speaker 3: feel like more big deer have escaped death because of
Speaker 3: the air currents in October than any one thing, because
Speaker 3: we've all been screwed by him. Just when the sun
Speaker 3: goes down in October and your highest odds of him
Speaker 3: coming out the air or just starts doing whatever it
Speaker 3: wants to do, and you need a big ditch or
Speaker 3: hole for the thermals to suck down that hole. So
Speaker 3: so that that'd be my process. Cameras on the scrapes,
Speaker 3: figure out which one he's hitting, hunt that scrape, but
Speaker 3: do it in a way that you're hunting with a
Speaker 3: wester really to the northwest, really, and you have something
Speaker 3: to pull your thermals down. I did a little real
Speaker 3: couple of days ago showing the type of spot that
Speaker 3: I would choose. I would rather be in a stand
Speaker 3: than a line, and we manufactured blinds itself, and they're
Speaker 3: sent free for that reason. It's a tool, a deadly tool.
Speaker 3: I'd rather be in the tree A lot of times.
Speaker 3: I'll have a tree over the line. I'll have a
Speaker 3: stand one. I'll be in the stand during the November
Speaker 3: and the blind during October. But you know, thinking about
Speaker 3: those air currents and the egress part, like, honestly, in October,
Speaker 3: you know that you know the days that he's likely
Speaker 3: to walk, Like there are certain days in October and
Speaker 3: everything's lined up where I go into the woods and
Speaker 3: I'm like this because I just I just know that
Speaker 3: the odds are so high. So that being said, you
Speaker 3: could have a spot that's bad egress because your risk
Speaker 3: reward is so high, that the reward is so high
Speaker 3: on those certain nights in October that it's not like
Speaker 3: you got to come out of there every day. Now,
Speaker 3: if you do have the fortune to develop a farm
Speaker 3: and create perfect egress, it just helps your probability because
Speaker 3: you're able to haunt every night and not screw things up.
Speaker 2: So in that October timeframe, when you're thinking like a deer,
Speaker 2: I know one thing a lot of people talk about
Speaker 2: is is thinking about how a deer wants to use
Speaker 2: their wind. So you mentioned like, hey, on those really
Speaker 2: good days for conditions, we're probably going to have the
Speaker 2: west or northwest wind because that's pushing a front through.
Speaker 2: That's good for us. It's probably gonna get them on
Speaker 2: their feet. But with that wind, how do we How
Speaker 2: does that factor into how you predict what they're gonna do?
Speaker 2: Do you? Are you one of the guys that things
Speaker 2: that these deer are almost always going to use the
Speaker 2: wind or what? No?
Speaker 3: Personally, I have tried. I have tried to make myself
Speaker 3: believe it for a long time. I've watched it, and
Speaker 3: I've watched these big deer walk with the wind that
Speaker 3: they're back in October. It is long now. I don't
Speaker 3: I don't hunt a lot of like crazy pressure, dear,
Speaker 3: I don't hunt. I don't hunt a lot of public ground.
Speaker 3: I don't. That might be a thing. I could see
Speaker 3: them adapting to that. But the farms that I hunt,
Speaker 3: where I purposely am trying to keep the pressure off.
Speaker 3: I don't buy it. Like they're just the deer. They're
Speaker 3: not gonna do. You know how hard it would be
Speaker 3: to live your life walking like they'd be. They look
Speaker 3: like they look like, you know what, like they're out
Speaker 3: there like you know, a shrimp boat or something. You know.
Speaker 3: I just don't buy it. I haven't seen it. They
Speaker 3: don't need to do that. But when November rolls around,
Speaker 3: it's a whole different story. Now they're hunting, you're hunting them.
Speaker 3: They're hunting. Does does live in cover? You can't see
Speaker 3: into cover a lot of the times, depending on the farm.
Speaker 3: They're using their nose to find a doe. And that's
Speaker 3: when it becomes really important. So as far as the
Speaker 3: winds in October, I'm not really concerned with making him
Speaker 3: walk into the wind or this or that. November completely
Speaker 3: different story, and you know, and another thing about that
Speaker 3: in October, I think I hear every year I start
Speaker 3: getting texts all they're pushing them already, they're bumping, or
Speaker 3: they're they're chasing already, and it's like they'll send a
Speaker 3: video and Buck comes out there's a couple of dose
Speaker 3: over here, and he goes over to him and he
Speaker 3: lip curls, he rushes them and they go straight to
Speaker 3: the closest scrape and they leave the field. I think there,
Speaker 3: you've got to get your head wrapped around the fact that, yeah,
Speaker 3: there's some does that come in early. I get that,
Speaker 3: but you're you're hunting probability, you're hunting the mass numbers
Speaker 3: of what's going on. You know, he's flexing his muscles,
Speaker 3: he's he's marking his territory. He's grumpy, you know, he's
Speaker 3: when he stretches his legs on. I mean, I've seen
Speaker 3: some nights in the end of October where they just
Speaker 3: put the miles on straight plot through the woods, next
Speaker 3: straight plot boom. You know. So that's the mindset they're
Speaker 3: in in October, is their marking territory. They don't need
Speaker 3: their nose to do that.
Speaker 2: November, they're hunting. Does now walk me through how you're
Speaker 2: thinking like a deer and using that fact to your
Speaker 2: advantage when choosing word hunt.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So uh, it's almost start looking at those betting areas,
Speaker 3: those spots you know, does bed within his core area
Speaker 3: as food box or kill plots, they're destinations. The difference
Speaker 3: is instead of likely he's only going to show up
Speaker 3: there at last later or the first thing in the morning,
Speaker 3: he could show up there at any time of day.
Speaker 3: So you know, think of those betting areas is connect
Speaker 3: the dots. I've also seen them go on a jaunt
Speaker 3: on the right day with the right conditions in November
Speaker 3: where they'll hit every single I mean they're on every camera,
Speaker 3: it seems like on the whole farm in a matter
Speaker 3: of ten minutes. I mean it's just crazy. We've all
Speaker 3: seen that too. So yeah, you just got to think,
Speaker 3: like a deer, he's going to be checked. Those are
Speaker 3: the places like you can kill him on food source
Speaker 3: in October or November. I've done it late in the
Speaker 3: day and stuff like that, and a lot of times
Speaker 3: my strategy because to get into some of these places
Speaker 3: in November it's more invasive. But the way you make
Speaker 3: it uninvasive and hunt the best time of day to
Speaker 3: kill the most matured deer in the woods is you
Speaker 3: wait until the field clears, the field's clear gray daylight
Speaker 3: eight thirty, You shoot across the field on the bike
Speaker 3: and you get into a sweet inside corner funnel on
Speaker 3: the down inside of the cover, and you sit there
Speaker 3: till two thirty, and then you get back onto your
Speaker 3: bike and you go shoot over and maybe you do
Speaker 3: hunt a food plot in the afternoon or whatever. And
Speaker 3: that's that is like, in my opinion, most matured here
Speaker 3: in the woods. You are definitely more likely to kill
Speaker 3: him in the middle of the day between the fifth
Speaker 3: and the thirteenth than you are in primetime in the
Speaker 3: morning in the evening. We used to see that back
Speaker 3: in the day, like when I was just guiding for outfitters,
Speaker 3: like years and years ago. It was just crazy to
Speaker 3: me that like the few amount of people like if
Speaker 3: we had like, you know, one hundred people or whatever
Speaker 3: in the in the season, the few amount of people
Speaker 3: that actually hunted all day to the number of deer
Speaker 3: that were big deer that were killed in the middle,
Speaker 3: it's crazy, you know. And that's when you're watching odds
Speaker 3: and probability at work, because you've got so many people
Speaker 3: out there. Again, you're not gonna see a ton of deer.
Speaker 3: But man, it's just it's kind of like turkey hunting
Speaker 3: when when they lose their hens or whatever and they
Speaker 3: just are so vulnerable in the middle of the day.
Speaker 3: It's the same deal, man. They just they'll get out
Speaker 3: and stretch your legs and it's hard to tell. You
Speaker 3: just got to be there. You got to grind her out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it seems like the core principle there during
Speaker 2: the rut for you is rather than pinch points and funnels,
Speaker 2: it's really more downwind of the cover, downwind of those
Speaker 2: betting plots as you describe them, and that's that's where
Speaker 2: the buck's going to because lots of times people will
Speaker 2: set up in the spot where the wind's good for
Speaker 2: them in the rut, but the deer would never be
Speaker 2: there because they can't use the wind to send check
Speaker 2: for dose. You want to be where they're going to be,
Speaker 2: which is what you just describe, correct.
Speaker 3: I mean, so I prefer to be in a funnel
Speaker 3: that also is on the down wind side of the cover,
Speaker 3: and it doesn't necessarily just need to be like a
Speaker 3: betting area. The whole wood lot is cover, so like,
Speaker 3: you know, I like to be in a funnel that
Speaker 3: is also relative to the downwind of cover, or a
Speaker 3: funnel on that side of the wood lot, because he's
Speaker 3: most likely not going to be you know, again, he
Speaker 3: could be anywhere, but probability, you're just stacking odds by
Speaker 3: by thinking like a deer, you know. And then date
Speaker 3: phase mindset. When you get into November, there's like so
Speaker 3: many like like little phases I feel like to happen
Speaker 3: and it happened to the day, and I kind of
Speaker 3: try and be out ahead of them. So like I
Speaker 3: personally think like the biggest, most mature deer in woods
Speaker 3: can be hardest to kill in the early part of
Speaker 3: November because they get the as that bell curve a
Speaker 3: doze comes in, they get the first one and they
Speaker 3: lock down, and when that she comes out, he goes
Speaker 3: looking and there's more options. He gets another one and
Speaker 3: locks down, and a lot of times they become kind
Speaker 3: of non existent. And I think that's why the mid
Speaker 3: day is so powerful, because you know, when they lose them,
Speaker 3: they just you know, they gotta go searching.
Speaker 2: And then.
Speaker 3: I love that time of year because it's like this wild,
Speaker 3: you know, the tenth and eleventh or some of the
Speaker 3: most exciting days. And then you get into like I
Speaker 3: always look at the fourteenth and fifteenth as lockdown. I
Speaker 3: kind of generally take that as a couple of days
Speaker 3: to regain you know, energy and whatever. I'm not rammy,
Speaker 3: I'm just tired, and so you know, I'll chill out
Speaker 3: for a couple of days on purpose. Usually not to
Speaker 3: say that they're not good days, because they can be,
Speaker 3: but that's my rule. And then from like the sixteenth
Speaker 3: or seventeenth to the twentieth, I think is the most
Speaker 3: powerful time of the rut to kill the biggest year
Speaker 3: in the woods. I call it. So that first phase
Speaker 3: I call pre lockdown cruise phase, and then lockdown. And
Speaker 3: then this is why in my own mind called post
Speaker 3: lockdown cruise fase. That's when I feel like I see
Speaker 3: the just mega giants. It's when I not that I
Speaker 3: see him all the time, but the ones I've seen,
Speaker 3: the ones I see on cameras, the random like giant
Speaker 3: that you're like, what where did that come from? It's like,
Speaker 3: you know, that's when that all goes on, because now
Speaker 3: the belf gurves come off. He's lost of dough and
Speaker 3: now he has to work for it, and he's had
Speaker 3: to taste the lion, and lion tastes good, so he's like,
Speaker 3: you know, fiending, and so that's a very vulnerable stage.
Speaker 3: That's when you get those deer. They're kind of like
Speaker 3: almost like zombies, like like you're like, really, he's not
Speaker 3: acting like a big dear. And I think I think
Speaker 3: that phase kind of continues on for a long time.
Speaker 3: I've seen some of them zombie walkers up until December.
Speaker 3: I just think that you know, here in Illinois, like
Speaker 3: where I hunt a lot, I think the gun pressure
Speaker 3: and stuff kind of puts a big squash on some
Speaker 3: of the natural movement of that.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I've seen a number of your videos where
Speaker 2: you have talked about or shown spots like this where
Speaker 2: you're hunting a situation like some of the stuff you've described.
Speaker 2: And something I've noticed is that very rarely are any
Speaker 2: of your stands set up for one reason, Like there's
Speaker 2: never just one feature, like as we just talked about,
Speaker 2: like you don't want to be just downwind to the
Speaker 2: betting or just downwind to the cover. You want the
Speaker 2: pinch point that also is downwind to the cover. It
Speaker 2: seems like you've said this, you're always looking for spots
Speaker 2: where features compound, they like build off of each other.
Speaker 2: Can you can you just expand on that a little
Speaker 2: bit when you're choosing spots to hunt. What kinds of
Speaker 2: spots give you those multiple reasons or those compounding factors
Speaker 2: that make it a really powerful location? Because I think
Speaker 2: over the next month, month and a half, there's gonna
Speaker 2: be a lot of guys and girls walking through the
Speaker 2: woods trying to say, should I hunt here? Hunt here?
Speaker 2: And I want to lay out some clear guidelines for
Speaker 2: what makes a spot like the spot within the spot
Speaker 2: the best of the best.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, pay attention to the deer and
Speaker 3: the cameras, even if they're night because I always say
Speaker 3: the best way to learn a farm is to learn
Speaker 3: it through a deer. You know, he'll teach at the
Speaker 3: farm in October. Compounding would be, like I said, you
Speaker 3: really want to pay attention to those thermals because it
Speaker 3: doesn't matter how good the spot is, you're gonna get
Speaker 3: blown up. And if there's downhill going towards where he's
Speaker 3: coming from and the winds in your face, you are screwed.
Speaker 3: Before you start it, and you better hope it comes
Speaker 3: out early in November. You know, Like we just talked
Speaker 3: about funnels on the down wind side, you know, thinking
Speaker 3: like a deer one thing to get more granule on.
Speaker 3: This is like, I have this thing it says I
Speaker 3: would rather be in the wrong tree in the right
Speaker 3: spot then the right tree in the wrong spot. I
Speaker 3: see so many people and I'll you know, we'll get
Speaker 3: you know, me and my buddies getting like arguments about
Speaker 3: the tree stand location. But I just feel like sometimes
Speaker 3: it is a matter of yards between it being where
Speaker 3: it needs to be and not. When I'm assessing a
Speaker 3: spot that I'm going to put a stand, I'm looking
Speaker 3: around at blowdowns and depressions and all this stuff and
Speaker 3: sticks that are falling bushes, and I'm like, when he
Speaker 3: moves through here, how is he going to navigate this stuff?
Speaker 3: Because it's usually like all these micro funnels within a
Speaker 3: fifty yard area, that's what they are. And so I'll
Speaker 3: kind of read the area and then i'll go based
Speaker 3: on the wind I want to hunt here, and I'll
Speaker 3: look there and I'll be like, where's the closest tree.
Speaker 3: A lot of times it'll be I mean, my friends
Speaker 3: make fun of me because I get some jacked up
Speaker 3: little stuff and I won't sacrifice being in the wrong
Speaker 3: tree if it means I got to build a nest
Speaker 3: uff there or be two feet off whatever, I got
Speaker 3: to do. So, and then once I picked the tree
Speaker 3: that I'm going to be in. This is kind of
Speaker 3: something I think might be unique to my approach. A
Speaker 3: lot of people are always like, well, I'm hunting this,
Speaker 3: so I'm going to hang a stand like this. Because
Speaker 3: I'm right handed, I will always put my back to
Speaker 3: the least likely spot or the spot, and that's impossible
Speaker 3: for a deer to be. So sometimes it might be
Speaker 3: a ditch. Sometimes it might be a big huge blowdown.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it might be a pond or whatever. I'll always
Speaker 3: put my back to that, even if I've got to
Speaker 3: stand up to shoot that way, because it ups my
Speaker 3: odds because one hundred percent chance I can't shoot that
Speaker 3: way and I can only shoot from here to here,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. So I don't know if
Speaker 3: that if all that plays into that question?
Speaker 2: Yeah, what about what about what about finding spots where
Speaker 2: you have you know, you build these situations a lot
Speaker 2: where I see you build a you know you'll you'll
Speaker 2: put blowdowns down or wolven wire or something to to
Speaker 2: funnel deer past a certain thing, and then you'll also
Speaker 2: have a natural ditch crossing, and then there will also
Speaker 2: be an inside corner, and then there will also be
Speaker 2: a scrape tree or something like that. Like, I see
Speaker 2: you build those things, but I've also seen you find
Speaker 2: spots like that, And I guess I'm just looking for
Speaker 2: more ideas for how to find those spots when we
Speaker 2: can't build them, or do you have any other examples
Speaker 2: you can share of a found spot like that that'd
Speaker 2: be worth keying in on or looking for.
Speaker 3: I guess, you know, when I see them, I just
Speaker 3: it just kind of makes sense. You know, you'll have
Speaker 3: old fences in the woods with a hole in the
Speaker 3: fence that's also on an inside corner, there's a ditch.
Speaker 3: I don't know how you find them, because how to
Speaker 3: tell you to find them because it you know, every
Speaker 3: farm is different, but you can see when there's layers
Speaker 3: of something going on. Like you know, sometimes if you
Speaker 3: find an old tens in the woods, you just need
Speaker 3: to walk it until you find the spot that they're crossing.
Speaker 3: Those are some of the best spots in the world.
Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, and then as far as manipulating, like
Speaker 3: you know, you can manipulate like crazy, like you know,
Speaker 3: probably that video you're talking about on or YouTube recently
Speaker 3: where you're looking at the farm and the natural pinches
Speaker 3: and ditches and this and that, and then you're building
Speaker 3: this other stuff off of that, you know. So it's
Speaker 3: like it's where the deer already want to be, and
Speaker 3: you're just squeezing them even more. And then like an
Speaker 3: example of this deer I'm helping my friends kill, like
Speaker 3: I was out there toting deadfalls around to pinch it off,
Speaker 3: but I was anticipating like that outside corner concentration ascent
Speaker 3: where he's probably gonna naturally want to come anyway, and
Speaker 3: I'm just trying to cope them a little bit closer
Speaker 3: to my setup, which happens to be at the head
Speaker 3: of the ditch for the So it's almost like sometimes
Speaker 3: this is another way of saying it, but you're trying
Speaker 3: to make him come to you, like you're trying to
Speaker 3: make him do what you want on your terms because
Speaker 3: it ups your odds so much. But your original question
Speaker 3: asking how to find those spots.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and I think I think we've covered it
Speaker 2: in that. You know, I think I said this a
Speaker 2: second goal I used to even be guilty of when
Speaker 2: I was first starting this. You know, going down this path,
Speaker 2: I would find one reason to hunt a spot, and
Speaker 2: that's set up camp there. It'd be like, hey, this
Speaker 2: this seems like a betting era. I'm gonna hunt the
Speaker 2: betting air. And that was enough. And now I'm at
Speaker 2: a point and it seems like this is something you
Speaker 2: really prioritize, which is well, I don't want to be
Speaker 2: just down one of the betting air. I want to
Speaker 2: be down one of the betting aar at the place
Speaker 2: where the natural pin pinch is also at the place
Speaker 2: where I'm within shooting range of this big hubscrape inside
Speaker 2: the cover, and I've also taken a look in. I've
Speaker 2: noticed there also happens to be a little dish crossing
Speaker 2: here that might funnel movement even a little bit better.
Speaker 2: So it's like the spot within the spot within the spot.
Speaker 3: And you know, when you get into November, sometimes I
Speaker 3: think reading terrain is more powerful than reading sign, Like,
Speaker 3: for example, the deer trails might be doing this on
Speaker 3: the inside corner because all year long the deer are
Speaker 3: coming to and from the food. So they're making that
Speaker 3: sign thinking like a deer being out in front that
Speaker 3: stand you hung on an inside corner. That's for a
Speaker 3: specific deer or a buck, using it in a completely
Speaker 3: different way than they use it the entire rest of
Speaker 3: the year. So sometimes you don't need to pay attention
Speaker 3: so much to the sign or the trails. You need
Speaker 3: to anticipate what he's going to walk in that very
Speaker 3: short window of the deer season, and there's not going
Speaker 3: to be really enough traffic to ever make a giant
Speaker 3: deer trail there, you know, so none might have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Another thing that I've heard you bramp a lot is
Speaker 2: focusing on areas where there's a concentration of scent. Yes,
Speaker 2: I've heard you talk about that for hunting locations, for
Speaker 2: camera locations, for a lot of stuff. Can you talk
Speaker 2: about that a little bit first off, like what kinds
Speaker 2: of spots would qualify as being concentrators of scent? And
Speaker 2: then how does that factor into the things that you do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's another thing that's not really been talked about
Speaker 3: for years within the you know, all the hunting industry
Speaker 3: and stuff. But we say it all the time. When
Speaker 3: we're on farms, we say concentration of scent. If you
Speaker 3: pay attention to sign buck sign, you know, you find
Speaker 3: a cluster of old big rubs from years past, or
Speaker 3: you find a random straight down in the woods or
Speaker 3: giant rubs somewhere. If you look around real quick, it's
Speaker 3: almost always in some type of a concentration of scent,
Speaker 3: whether it be you know, I mean the reason happens
Speaker 3: on food plots and food edges is because there's a
Speaker 3: concentration of scent there, you know. And all that being said,
Speaker 3: Like the biggest when we talk about it, the most
Speaker 3: and the biggest you know thing I keen in on
Speaker 3: it is tree coy locations slash. You know, when you're
Speaker 3: trying to make a scrape or a deer go to
Speaker 3: a certain spot, or you've got a green grain in
Speaker 3: a little section events or something to pinch them, you're
Speaker 3: creating concentration of scent and you're you're you're you have
Speaker 3: the green to grain or green to grain or whatever
Speaker 3: it is. You have the pinch. Then you put a
Speaker 3: tree coy there. You eliminate scrape branches, natural ones on
Speaker 3: the edges and all that stuff just starts just pushing
Speaker 3: the scent more and more and more to that spot,
Speaker 3: which makes it more and more powerful. You want to
Speaker 3: see the ultimate example of concentration ofcents, put up a
Speaker 3: tree coy in the middle of a pasture in Kansas
Speaker 3: or grass fields out in western Kansas. I mean we
Speaker 3: put out, you know, tree coys and stuff out there,
Speaker 3: and then you put a feeder near it and getting
Speaker 3: more scent. The first year, I thought there was some
Speaker 3: of our tree coys that weren't gonna survive. I mean
Speaker 3: they were down to like a one inch it was crazy.
Speaker 3: And these deer would come from I mean like I
Speaker 3: had pictures, you know, I'd have like a water tank
Speaker 3: and a feeder and a tree coin in the rut.
Speaker 3: These deer would come out there in the middle of
Speaker 3: the all times a day in the rut. They wouldn't
Speaker 3: touch the feeder or the water tank. They'd come straight
Speaker 3: to that, straight, hit it, and begone. So I truly
Speaker 3: feel like you could just stick poles in the ground
Speaker 3: out in some of this big open stuff in Kansas
Speaker 3: and smoke giants out there. It's hilarious. But you know,
Speaker 3: they're just communicating. And if you think like a deer
Speaker 3: spends a lot of his time walking around at night
Speaker 3: and he's walking. He lives with his nose and he's
Speaker 3: walking around the woods. And October is generally when they're
Speaker 3: doing the most scraping, because you're thinking, like a deer
Speaker 3: in their territorial and whatever. They're trying to flex and
Speaker 3: you're you walk through a pinch at night and you
Speaker 3: get hit in face with all this scent. You know
Speaker 3: you're gonna get ramming and you're gonna want to say,
Speaker 3: this is my this is my house. And so that's
Speaker 3: why that sign blows up. So we're all the time,
Speaker 3: me and told Me and stuff walking around the woods,
Speaker 3: and we're like concentration ascent. It's always, you know, I
Speaker 3: had a classic example of concentration ascent a few weeks ago.
Speaker 3: I was up in Wisconsin walking around a farm. Maybe
Speaker 3: we'll post a little real on that, but it was
Speaker 3: like a pinch between an inside corner of a field
Speaker 3: and a neighborhood and there was just all these giant
Speaker 3: old drugs from the past. It's pretty funny.
Speaker 2: So those are the kinds of places that you would
Speaker 2: prioritize for cameras, probably too.
Speaker 3: Definitely the types of places that you try and build
Speaker 3: mock scrape setups. But yes, cameras because they are generally
Speaker 3: gonna be a ton of sign there, you know. So
Speaker 3: as far as hunting strategy, I'd say, it's not like
Speaker 3: I just hang stand over it because it's a concentration
Speaker 3: of scent. It's just it's a really good It's a
Speaker 3: philosophy that teaches you how to build a spot when
Speaker 3: you're manipulating. Really so, if it's a food plot, you're
Speaker 3: eliminating great branches, you're having two food sources, you might
Speaker 3: pinch them with a bunch of blowdowns. You skid in
Speaker 3: your golf cart like I did the other day, or
Speaker 3: a woven layor fence, or one strand of our lawyer
Speaker 3: or whatever. And it's that philosophy that you're concentrating scent
Speaker 3: and it's becoming more powerful because of it. The other
Speaker 3: way to manipulate, or think of it is if you
Speaker 3: are doing some TSI on a south facing little point,
Speaker 3: you stand there, you let all the light in, You
Speaker 3: blow this little point up, so it's becomes a betting point,
Speaker 3: a betting knob that a deer has to use. As No,
Speaker 3: because maybe it's the thickest chunk patch of the woods,
Speaker 3: and you have a tree stand that's already pre planned
Speaker 3: on the down side of it, and then you put
Speaker 3: a water hole. I love this tactic. It's just a
Speaker 3: little water hole. He's a pond liner, just a little
Speaker 3: eight foot hole that that is not trying to make
Speaker 3: a primary water source, that is literally trying to concentrate
Speaker 3: scent when he is looking in the rut for a dough. Now,
Speaker 3: not only do you have the downwind of a betting area,
Speaker 3: you also have a little water hole that concentrates scent.
Speaker 3: And then maybe you hang a hamp rope or whatever,
Speaker 3: because there's going to be a concentration of scent there
Speaker 3: because of the water. So it's going to be a
Speaker 3: spot that they want to naturally communicate and scrape. So
Speaker 3: now all of a sudden, you've taken a terrain feature
Speaker 3: that they are naturally betting on, and you've compounded it
Speaker 3: by you thinking like a deer and saying, you know,
Speaker 3: now we've got a concentration of a major concentration ascent
Speaker 3: right here, and they're going to go to that to
Speaker 3: try and find Mahada in the rut. So all last
Speaker 3: year Bundy killed at one to eighty on it on
Speaker 3: exact set up down wind, south facing slope, saddle up
Speaker 3: and over funnel, a natural deer trail. After we logged that,
Speaker 3: I opened back up to make sure it was still
Speaker 3: path of least resistance water hole, and that deer was
Speaker 3: there a few times in the summer, never there up
Speaker 3: until that point, and just trusted the process. It's within
Speaker 3: his home range, and when he stretches his legs, he's
Speaker 3: going to know there's a concentration ascent here. It's downwind
Speaker 3: of a south facing slope, it's a funnel. He's going
Speaker 3: to be here. My cousin came out and sat on
Speaker 3: the sidelines for the first two days because it was warm,
Speaker 3: and went in there the third day. Hardly saw anything
Speaker 3: at two thirty in afternoon, first time in daylight the
Speaker 3: whole year, the whole twenty twenty three walk right down
Speaker 3: the trail smoked him. So we've got to kind of
Speaker 3: trust the process and think like a deer. And he
Speaker 3: knows that area, he's shown that he knows it, he'll
Speaker 3: be there.
Speaker 2: And I guess it's not too different than when we
Speaker 2: just talked about a second ago, where you're trying to
Speaker 2: layer like feature upon feature upon feature. It's the same
Speaker 2: thing because where there's concentrations of scent, either you create
Speaker 2: them like you just describe, or in the natural world,
Speaker 2: the place where the concentration of scent typically exists is
Speaker 2: where multiple natural features come together, which is what pinches
Speaker 2: or funnels deer into a concentrated area, which leads to
Speaker 2: the concentration of sense. I suppose we're almost talking about
Speaker 2: the same thing here, Yeah, deer.
Speaker 3: It's just kind of an interesting thing to follow from
Speaker 3: now on. When you're out in the woods and you
Speaker 3: see clusters of sign just kind of take a look
Speaker 3: and be like, why is that sign here? Is there
Speaker 3: something that's congregating deer traffic making a concentration ascent and
Speaker 3: you'll see it's You'll be like, light bulb. I mean,
Speaker 3: how it helps you? I guess you know, there's different ways,
Speaker 3: but like I said, it just it kind of helps
Speaker 3: you create spots.
Speaker 2: And you mentioned the hemp scrapes, mock scrapes in general.
Speaker 2: I know, you know in places that you're able to
Speaker 2: set up You've got a really cool treecoise set up
Speaker 2: you guys put out there. But do you have any
Speaker 2: advice for people that are trying to create mock scrapes
Speaker 2: in season with natural you know, trees. You know, in
Speaker 2: what situation, which should someone do that, and and how
Speaker 2: would you best recommend they do that?
Speaker 3: So, uh, I got that kind of series. I got
Speaker 3: to get back on going with the developed versus undeveloped farm,
Speaker 3: my undeveloped one. Like I there's a cove that I'm
Speaker 3: anticipating if this deer shows up, he's probably gonna be using.
Speaker 3: It's a good setup of the thermals and this and that.
Speaker 3: I just I clipped all the branches down that had
Speaker 3: scrapes in the past, and I hung a hemp rope
Speaker 3: on one that's within bow range. So and I did
Speaker 3: that to this other big deer of trying to help
Speaker 3: my buddy skill over here. When I was back there,
Speaker 3: I went around the edge and I took them all
Speaker 3: I had. I had a whole ranger full of scrape
Speaker 3: branches or potential scrape. And some people go going, my god,
Speaker 3: you're doing that. There's a two hundred steer in there.
Speaker 3: Well pieces the deer and by taking those other branches
Speaker 3: when he comes out, you know, he might come out
Speaker 3: nibble bum Russia dough go to the closest scrape and
Speaker 3: leave the field. Well, now there's only one scrape that
Speaker 3: he can do that too, So you know, I'd say
Speaker 3: mock scrapes are good. They're most powerful when they're in
Speaker 3: the area they want to scrape, which is a concentration scent.
Speaker 3: Usually when somebody's like, I put out a mock scrape
Speaker 3: but they haven't hit it, it's because it's in a
Speaker 3: spot it's not really like a concentration scent. And sometimes
Speaker 3: that concentration ascent is because they have no other options,
Speaker 3: so they're going to go to it and then it's
Speaker 3: going to start fueling itself. So so yeah, they're powerful.
Speaker 3: I like the tactic of taking some of their natural
Speaker 3: ones away.
Speaker 2: So I think this is a good place to kind
Speaker 2: of tie a bow on things because we've I feel
Speaker 2: like we've got a pretty good idea of how you're
Speaker 2: looking at choosing these locations that are the best of
Speaker 2: the best places. We're looking for those concentrations of sign
Speaker 2: we're looking for multiple features converging to give a deer
Speaker 2: multiple reasons to be there on the right days and times,
Speaker 2: And you have a whole philosophy and how to predict
Speaker 2: when those right days and times are one final question.
Speaker 2: I guess two final questions. Here we have the right
Speaker 2: spot spots. I'm sure we have an idea when the
Speaker 2: right times are. But I am curious about your approach
Speaker 2: to like volume of how often you would hunt a
Speaker 2: spot like this, because let's say, like everything's lined up
Speaker 2: magic X, past history, mindset, everything's green light, and you
Speaker 2: have this spot. Let's let's take let's take the example
Speaker 2: you subscribed this undeveloped lease. You've got. There's a cove
Speaker 2: in the back where you've got these really cool different
Speaker 2: features all coming together, kind of a inside corner, dropping off,
Speaker 2: betting off this point. You've got kind of pins, You've
Speaker 2: got a logging road the deer should use. There's all
Speaker 2: these reasons for a deer. Hell yeah, I might sneak
Speaker 2: over there and sit it myself. Bobby watched out. It's
Speaker 2: a good looking spot. So everything lines up and you
Speaker 2: hunt it day one. Let's say he doesn't show. So
Speaker 2: then my question is do you hunt a day two?
Speaker 2: Do you hunt a day three? Do you what kind
Speaker 2: of volume will you apply to these kinds of locations
Speaker 2: where you really believe in the spot, and you really
Speaker 2: believe in the conditions, but he just hasn't shown how
Speaker 2: much is too much? How do you know?
Speaker 3: I think that's somewhat situational. Obviously depends on your egress
Speaker 3: most importantly, man, If you and again those gifted knights
Speaker 3: are kind of far and few in between, Like within
Speaker 3: a front, you're gonna have the best night, the best
Speaker 3: sit So if it's a very unsafe place to go
Speaker 3: into and you're busting deer, like you're gonna know when
Speaker 3: you leave there, like you're gonna have the gut feeling like,
Speaker 3: oh God, the whole place is blown up when you
Speaker 3: leave or you get slipped out of there, and you
Speaker 3: can kind of feel if the type of pressure or
Speaker 3: damage is he continuing to hit the scrapes at night,
Speaker 3: like I think you can kind of get The only
Speaker 3: way to answer that is you've got to kind of
Speaker 3: be self aware of if you think you're impacting the farm,
Speaker 3: if he's like all of a sudden not doing the
Speaker 3: same stuff on on camera, you know, and take it
Speaker 3: by case for a case. But in October, those good nights,
Speaker 3: it's not you have to also be self aware enough
Speaker 3: to be like, it's not worth going back there tonight,
Speaker 3: Like those high pressure fronts are such high odd sets
Speaker 3: that if it's a risky business area to go back into,
Speaker 3: like you don't need to be going back there, you know,
Speaker 3: like that little spot I was talking about the other day,
Speaker 3: and the real the type of spot I'd hunt in
Speaker 3: October in a stand, Like that type of spot. You
Speaker 3: could hunt that like every night. I mean, that's what
Speaker 3: makes that spot so magical because you can get out
Speaker 3: of there. The crazy thing is last year I actually
Speaker 3: shot the deer a shot last year in that spot,
Speaker 3: but I was in a box and I had hung
Speaker 3: this I had blocked the deer off. I hoped I
Speaker 3: got them not doing a certain thing, int starting to
Speaker 3: do a certain thing, and I hung a stand and
Speaker 3: I got feeling was that that stand was going to
Speaker 3: be wonky because of the winds, and it was so
Speaker 3: then I brought a box in there to help mitigate that,
Speaker 3: and I ended up killing that deer. But then this
Speaker 3: year we got permission to hunt on the neighbors like
Speaker 3: tree line, and then once I could move the stand
Speaker 3: a matter of thirty yards, it totally changed my egress,
Speaker 3: my ingress. I wasn't leaving scent anywhere. Now all of
Speaker 3: a sudden instead of being thirty yards there and the
Speaker 3: air slowly finding its way into the little green plot
Speaker 3: and then there's a fence and then a beanfield into
Speaker 3: the corner of a beanfield. Now instead of that air
Speaker 3: falling towards this big sexy bedding area that we created,
Speaker 3: now I'm thirty yards this way and that air. You know,
Speaker 3: picture somebody pouring a thing of water onto the topo
Speaker 3: or the earth, and where that water is going to
Speaker 3: go and slow mow, and that's where the air is
Speaker 3: probably going to go. And just by moving thirty yards,
Speaker 3: I feel like that air now is going to just
Speaker 3: settle behind and then go around the corner to meet
Speaker 3: up with the other air. So it went from a
Speaker 3: situation where you know, probably need to be hunting the
Speaker 3: right nights, definitely need to be using a sent free blind,
Speaker 3: to all of a sudden, get hunt pretty much every
Speaker 3: night that there's a good chance of seeing him. So
Speaker 3: it's situational. I wish I had all the answers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do we all, But that's there are.
Speaker 3: No right and wrong answers. It's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 3: we got all these strategies and they all work, just
Speaker 3: not all the time. It's pretty funny. So this is
Speaker 3: a crazy concept. I have a friend named Jeremy Newsom.
Speaker 3: He's like, he's one of the best stock traders in
Speaker 3: the world. He has a company called Real Life Trading
Speaker 3: and it's an education stock company. And he always says,
Speaker 3: you know, there's all all these strategies. I truly feel
Speaker 3: like there's no activity closer to the mental game of
Speaker 3: deer hunting than stock trading and the like. There's all
Speaker 3: these strategies. They all work, just not all the time.
Speaker 3: And you know, the market rewards the specialists and the
Speaker 3: people that are attentive to detail and the people who
Speaker 3: are patient and wait on the trade to come to
Speaker 3: them and not get rammy and not. It's the same
Speaker 3: thing in deer hunting, the people who wait and are
Speaker 3: patient and are analytical. You can backtrade the stock market
Speaker 3: to learn charts, just like you can backtrade the deer
Speaker 3: hunting history. You know, it's it's a wild thing. And
Speaker 3: if you really want to have your mind blown, maybe
Speaker 3: I'll grab a chart and I'll send it to you. You
Speaker 3: can post overlaying moon phase with the stock market. That
Speaker 3: will blow your mind.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So anyway, it's just kind of an analogy, you know,
Speaker 3: to it's so the whole thing is so mental, you know,
Speaker 3: and it's so strategic, and everything works just not all
Speaker 3: the time, and it's just being aware and situational different
Speaker 3: situations and making very good educated guesses and not doing
Speaker 3: crazy things that are not within the plan, you know,
Speaker 3: Like him with the sock market, he teaches people to
Speaker 3: have a plan, like a literally a written plan, And
Speaker 3: I kind of with my deer hunting, I kind of
Speaker 3: have a regimented thing that I follow, not that it's
Speaker 3: that tight. It just helps you to stay organized and
Speaker 3: focused and have a plan so you don't get too
Speaker 3: in the moment and you know, you continue to think
Speaker 3: like a deer.
Speaker 2: So so you have a plan, it's it's a starting point,
Speaker 2: it's a foundation, and then you'll be flexible the season
Speaker 2: goes on. But if I forced you to call your
Speaker 2: shot based on your plan and what you anticipate and
Speaker 2: what you know, will you have set up this year?
Speaker 2: If I forced you to call your shot and to
Speaker 2: predict and describe how, when and where you're going to
Speaker 2: kill a target buck this year in Illinois, tell me that,
Speaker 2: tell me how you think it's going to play out.
Speaker 2: If you had to predict how it might happen and
Speaker 2: where what do you think is your best chance?
Speaker 3: So on that developed farm in that series, I'd say
Speaker 3: maybe this afternoon I might go mow corn, and I
Speaker 3: think that at a certain point a certain deer might
Speaker 3: lock on to that corn, and then within the first
Speaker 3: couple high pressure fronts, probably make a mistake. If it
Speaker 3: happens on my lease in that video, that deer that
Speaker 3: I'm kind of waiting on up there has not showed
Speaker 3: up yet. Talking about history, I don't even remember that
Speaker 3: I had cameras out early enough last year for some
Speaker 3: reason to know like where he was this year. But
Speaker 3: if he's shows up, I think he's going to be
Speaker 3: a giant, And I personally think it's gonna happen in
Speaker 3: one of the first several one of the first several
Speaker 3: high pressure fronts that he shows up. It's gonna happen
Speaker 3: in that code where I eliminated the branches and put
Speaker 3: that straight branch, I overseated the beanfield, so I have
Speaker 3: all these little food plots that are just hand broadcasted
Speaker 3: within the beans because that's all I can do. So
Speaker 3: that deer would probably show up and be hitting that
Speaker 3: scrape in that corner. And if he shows up later,
Speaker 3: because I don't know when he would show up. If
Speaker 3: he shows up, it's probably going to be right across
Speaker 3: from that cove in that in that great big tree,
Speaker 3: on that sweet little inside corner. If he shows up
Speaker 3: a little later and I got to get into hunt
Speaker 3: in November, I will hunt that spot over and over
Speaker 3: and over again, every single sit. I won't move as
Speaker 3: long as the wind is good, and he will come
Speaker 3: through there eventually, and it's probably one of the deals
Speaker 3: because it's two hours from my house. I'll drive up
Speaker 3: there eight thirty, I'll eat bike, drop my bike twenty
Speaker 3: yards in the tree, I'll get in and I'll sit
Speaker 3: there all day and then i'll get out.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 3: So I wish I had a deer like just you know,
Speaker 3: pegged right now, and then I could I could call
Speaker 3: the shot because I'd be a lot easier. But I'm
Speaker 3: kind of still in the waiting phase here here. How
Speaker 3: about this is you are your friends gonna kill that
Speaker 3: two hundred boy? I wish we were like, Oh, I
Speaker 3: wish we were like a couple of days further along here,
Speaker 3: because I feel like I feel like i'd like to
Speaker 3: think that the watering day was not all for nothing.
Speaker 3: I think I got it to germinate a week sooner
Speaker 3: than it would have, which puts the growth a week ahead,
Speaker 3: which could make the difference in that small phase in
Speaker 3: the beginning of the year with the green beans and
Speaker 3: this and that. I think that I can't see him
Speaker 3: not I mean, he's large.
Speaker 2: Well I can't wait to see I'm sure. Well, maybe
Speaker 2: maybe you'll be sharing with folks the story if it happens,
Speaker 2: so hopefully, hopefully we'll get to find out ourselves too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've done documenting it so sweet.
Speaker 2: So that's a perfect way to end this though, for
Speaker 2: people that want to see that story whenever it comes out,
Speaker 2: For people that want to see some of these farms
Speaker 2: you've been talking about, You've got great videos about it.
Speaker 2: Can you fill folks in on where they can connect
Speaker 2: with you guys where the videos are. You've got a
Speaker 2: new project launching soon. Maybe tell people about that too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we have a YouTube channel. We're trying to
Speaker 3: keep it very organically educational. I mean you just go
Speaker 3: in there and watch stuff and take bits and pieces.
Speaker 3: We buy and develop a lot of farms and we
Speaker 3: offer them for sale. We have a pre market list
Speaker 3: where people can get on there and see these farms.
Speaker 3: They don't generally hit the market, but they can see them.
Speaker 3: On the front end. We can design with people to
Speaker 3: tailor their you know, hunting style and stuff. That's our mainstay.
Speaker 3: We have a logging division where we log for people
Speaker 3: heavily weighted on deer strategy and stuff. We have a
Speaker 3: consulting division where we help people set their farms up.
Speaker 3: We have Facebook and Instagram. It's kind of funny, like
Speaker 3: a lot of people build these YouTube channels and stuff.
Speaker 3: They build them, you know, and and and then they
Speaker 3: try and figure out what they're going to do with it.
Speaker 3: Whereas like me and Toby had our heads so focused
Speaker 3: on buying and developing property for so long, and we
Speaker 3: kind of stepped away from the hunting industry, like back
Speaker 3: when the outfitting days and stuff, and then all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, we're like, oh wow, people like watch our
Speaker 3: stuff on YouTube. It's kind of weird. So now we're
Speaker 3: kind of doing it in the reverse order. Now we're
Speaker 3: trying to start working on the social media, and we
Speaker 3: kind of accidentally got where we were now, so now
Speaker 3: we're starting to work on that So the project he's
Speaker 3: talking about that I'm excited about launching is we are
Speaker 3: starting a Discord server. So Discord is an app. It
Speaker 3: was actually originally made for the gaming community, and it's
Speaker 3: like the most genius thing ever. So my vision of
Speaker 3: the Whitetail group was always like, it's a group of
Speaker 3: all of you guys and us helping each other and
Speaker 3: working together, and that's why I named it the group.
Speaker 3: But it's also the group of people, like professionals on
Speaker 3: the back end that provide value and in our situation,
Speaker 3: it's not just like your hunting strategy because we're so
Speaker 3: heavily involved in real estate. It's it's you know, in
Speaker 3: markets and stuff, so it's it's there's there's professionals on
Speaker 3: the back end. So that's also like a play on
Speaker 3: the world word of group. So the Discord app, I
Speaker 3: don't know if you can see this, but it's literally
Speaker 3: an app you download and it's kind of like a
Speaker 3: private forum, you know, and there's general conversations. There's an
Speaker 3: archery there's an archery chat channel where people can help
Speaker 3: each other with all things archery. There's a there's two
Speaker 3: video conference rooms in the general area. One is an
Speaker 3: archery shop where you can literally somebody can go in
Speaker 3: there and get on a video conference instantly and help
Speaker 3: each other set your bows up or you know, work
Speaker 3: on your shooting form. There's a follow my Blood Trail,
Speaker 3: like somebody might be on a blood trail and they
Speaker 3: aren't super experienced and they watch some guys that are
Speaker 3: more experienced, and fifteen people instantly can be in there
Speaker 3: like helping you look at the blood and figure out
Speaker 3: its instant video conference and helping you make decisions. Or
Speaker 3: you can just take people on your blood trail virtually live.
Speaker 3: And then you know, there's all kinds of stuff in here.
Speaker 3: There's there's our farms pre market, you know, and fully developed.
Speaker 3: There's a whole section of how to videos like planting Braskas,
Speaker 3: planning that you know this and that, and each one
Speaker 3: is like a quick start guide, uh, just organized in
Speaker 3: one place. How to process dear, how to set up
Speaker 3: a weather apple hanging in a tree stand. Then there's
Speaker 3: a section called market analysis, which is really cool, like
Speaker 3: for example, like commodities. So I have a friend who's
Speaker 3: a twenty year corn and bean trader, and he's going
Speaker 3: to be in here giving real time updates and analysis
Speaker 3: on the corn and bean markets and teaching people about
Speaker 3: basis and futures and contracts and how all that works.
Speaker 3: And there's professional contacts for banking and real estate attorneys,
Speaker 3: insurance surveying, land management services, title companies, farmers by county
Speaker 3: in different states. There's farms off market, Like I know
Speaker 3: of farm sometimes that are off market. I don't buy,
Speaker 3: but it's a really good farm, but it's it doesn't
Speaker 3: fit what I buy. Or there's a listed farm on
Speaker 3: the market that's been sitting there and I'm like, why
Speaker 3: is the way buying this? Like this is I know
Speaker 3: the neighborhood. I know, Like I knew of a farm
Speaker 3: a few weeks ago they had a two hundred on
Speaker 3: it that was for sale. Like so there's special farms
Speaker 3: that we might throw in there. And then there's going
Speaker 3: to be like there's downloadable farming leases and hunting leases
Speaker 3: that are blank, Like we've tailored our farming leases over
Speaker 3: the years, you know, to be hunting friendly and buy
Speaker 3: your crops back the right way so it's most affordable.
Speaker 3: There's going to be courses in there eventually, like rec
Speaker 3: ground bookkeeping, like how to set my CFO is going
Speaker 3: to do a course on bookkeeping for ret ground and
Speaker 3: how to set up quick books and categorize everything correctly,
Speaker 3: how to buy your first farm. And this is so
Speaker 3: easy to like, if somebody is like, you need a
Speaker 3: channel for this boom, we'll have it. If somebody wants
Speaker 3: a course for this boom, will have it. Some of that,
Speaker 3: like very little bit of it, but like those courses
Speaker 3: might be monetized because I got these people's time to
Speaker 3: build the courses and it's just a one time download
Speaker 3: to download it. And then the last part like I
Speaker 3: have this and you know, it's kind of weird to
Speaker 3: try and promote myself, But there's a Bobby Kendle Deer
Speaker 3: Season subscription and in the categories of that are and
Speaker 3: this might be backwards, I don't know how you can
Speaker 3: see it, but the categories are date based, mindset, moon phase,
Speaker 3: whether plan your time off by predicting the season. And
Speaker 3: this is kind kind of like a real time section
Speaker 3: that somebody can subscribe to and then we can just
Speaker 3: chat throughout the whole deer season, all this stuff we
Speaker 3: talked about today about you know, thinking and making changes,
Speaker 3: Like I feel like if I can take somebody along
Speaker 3: in real time through the deer season and they can
Speaker 3: ride the deer season together. I think it will help
Speaker 3: like solidify and it's so it is a community that
Speaker 3: is moderated. I've got lots of people in there that
Speaker 3: are you know, I feel like our professionals and stuff
Speaker 3: that I've met over the years to help with different things.
Speaker 3: And there's gonna be no drama. There's gonna be no
Speaker 3: or you're out of there. So it's just gonna be
Speaker 3: a nice friendly like deer hunting for fraternity, for us
Speaker 3: to all hang out and help on another and grow
Speaker 3: as hunters and land managers.
Speaker 2: So how do people get that? Get in that? For
Speaker 2: the folks who aren't Discord savvy already, can you give
Speaker 2: us like the how they find that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so easy. So basically, you'll just go to
Speaker 3: our website in the whitetail group dot com and right
Speaker 3: on the homepage, you'll see a Discord icon and you
Speaker 3: can click that and it'll bring up a link and
Speaker 3: that link will basically take you right to the app.
Speaker 3: You'll download the app and it'll ask you to set
Speaker 3: up a user name, and then as soon as you
Speaker 3: do that, the bot will welcome you into the whitetail
Speaker 3: group and then you're in there.
Speaker 2: It's pretty wild, nice and easy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's super easy. And if anybody like some of
Speaker 3: the stuff isn't populated yet, but I got to get
Speaker 3: going at some point at deer season. If anybody has
Speaker 3: any thoughts or or things they want to add or whatever,
Speaker 3: I mean, we can add things eventually. Like I want
Speaker 3: to have a whole section of conversation by region, So
Speaker 3: like the Adirondacks of New York where I'm from, those
Speaker 3: guys can't relate to a lot of stuff we do,
Speaker 3: but they can relate to each other. And it's all
Speaker 3: the white tailed group, Like you know, the guys in
Speaker 3: in Alabama who's rout is lee, I want them to
Speaker 3: have a place to discuss, and the guys in in
Speaker 3: you know, northern Michigan, like everybody should have a place
Speaker 3: in there, and we should have all the common threads.
Speaker 3: But then we should have areas to help each other
Speaker 3: and everything. So I think it's gonna be really cool.
Speaker 2: I love it. Well, I'm I'm signed up. I'm on there.
Speaker 2: I'll be following along and and and shiming in when
Speaker 2: I can, So I'm looking forward to it as well.
Speaker 2: And you know, this has been great. I knew it
Speaker 2: would be. I appreciate you sharing all this, Bobby. As
Speaker 2: I mentioned on the top, I've I uh, your approach
Speaker 2: resonates with me. I appreciate your analytical take on this
Speaker 2: stuff and looking forward to putting in an action here
Speaker 2: pretty soon. Awesome, good luck, Thanks Bobby, you too, and
Speaker 2: I look forward to hearing about this two hundred that
Speaker 2: you're living vicariously through and uh and hopefully you're shot
Speaker 2: coming together on that giant on the undeveloped lease or
Speaker 2: or somewhere else soon.
Speaker 3: So that's the thing about it, you know again, And
Speaker 3: I don't I don't get too. I mean, even if
Speaker 3: the one doesn't show up this season, Hunt, he'll show
Speaker 3: up next year. It's all probability he'll be there.
Speaker 2: All right. Well we'll talk about next time.
Speaker 3: Thanks man.
Speaker 2: All right, and that's it for me today, folks. Appreciate
Speaker 2: you all joining. Hope you enjoyed this one. Like I
Speaker 2: mentioned at the top, make sure you heading over to
Speaker 2: themeateater dot com or first let dot com to check
Speaker 2: out all of our Whitetailweek content and the savings. Definitely
Speaker 2: please go watch those new films on the media or
Speaker 2: YouTube channel. I'm proud of my return to the back
Speaker 2: forty and the hunt for the Wide nine. I hope
Speaker 2: you guys enjoyed this list too, so until next time,
Speaker 2: appreciate you being here, and stay wired to hunt.