Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the whitetail woods, presented by First Light, creating proven versatile
Speaker 1: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light
Speaker 1: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 2: All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast,
Speaker 2: brought to you by First Light and their Camo for
Speaker 2: Conservation initiative, in which a portion of every sale of
Speaker 2: their whitetail camel gear goes back to the National Deer Association,
Speaker 2: which is doing some really good stuff for deer and
Speaker 2: deer hunters. I'm actually out this week hunting on the
Speaker 2: Back forty, which the National Deer Association now owns and
Speaker 2: uses as a new hunter training ground, helping new hunters
Speaker 2: get into this thing. So they're doing great stuff. I'm
Speaker 2: glad we're supporting them. That said, this week on the show,
Speaker 2: we are chatting with an under the radar big buck machine.
Speaker 2: This is a guy who some of the best deer
Speaker 2: hunters that I know say is one of the best
Speaker 2: deer hunters they know. He's someone who has previously resisted
Speaker 2: the spotlight. He's someone who has not shared his tactics
Speaker 2: or hunting strategies online before or in podcasts before. He's
Speaker 2: a person who has more one hundred and fifty inch
Speaker 2: bucks on the wall than I have years of my life.
Speaker 2: All Right, this is someone you've probably not heard of,
Speaker 2: but someone you're definitely gonna want to learn from today.
Speaker 2: And this guy's name is Brad Davis. Brad's a realtor
Speaker 2: for Macio Properties, and he's a friend of the Lone
Speaker 2: Wolf Custom Gear crew over there, and he came by
Speaker 2: recommendation of a mutual friend of ours, Justin Hollinsworth, who's
Speaker 2: been on the show here today. And what we're going
Speaker 2: to do here shortly is talk to Brad and break
Speaker 2: down his approach to hunting mature whitetails and what makes
Speaker 2: his approach unique, I think, And the main thing we
Speaker 2: focus on here today is how he has simplified deer hunting.
Speaker 2: A lot of us over complicate deer hunting. A lot
Speaker 2: of us go in all these different crazy directions and
Speaker 2: try to pattern this thing and try to think about
Speaker 2: this thing and consider this factor in this factor in
Speaker 2: this factor. And Brad says, no, no, no, no no,
Speaker 2: Let's just look at the terrain of the topography. Think
Speaker 2: about where deer going to eventually move through, and then
Speaker 2: let's wait them out. Let's get there with the right wind.
Speaker 2: Let's be bulletproof with wind. Let's know a couple key places,
Speaker 2: and let's hunt they're smart, over and over, and let's
Speaker 2: hunt the next one over and over. So he's got
Speaker 2: this I don't want to say simple, but a a
Speaker 2: uncomplicated but smart way to kill big old bucks. And
Speaker 2: he does it very well. So that's what we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about here shortly. I think it's a breath
Speaker 2: of fresh air in a certain way. So I'm excited
Speaker 2: about this conversation. I think you guys are all going
Speaker 2: to learn something from Brad. That's that's going to be
Speaker 2: a useful change of pace. But before that, what I
Speaker 2: want to do is take a quick second here to
Speaker 2: catch up with my buddy and right hand man, mister
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson. Thanks for hanging there quietly while I rambled
Speaker 2: on my friend. But what I want to do today
Speaker 2: is something I want to do more often throughout the year,
Speaker 2: which is take a little time here at the beginning,
Speaker 2: just catch up on what's going on in our hunting
Speaker 2: worlds so folks can continue to follow our stories throughout
Speaker 2: the hunting season and what we're doing and learning as
Speaker 2: we go. So before we chat with Brad, I got
Speaker 2: to hear Tony real fast. Is there anything new in
Speaker 2: your white tail world since that Minnesota hunt that you
Speaker 2: filled your tag and we talked about last week?
Speaker 3: Man, you know, other than one of my daughters killed
Speaker 3: a little buck in Wisconsin kind of that same week
Speaker 3: that I was hunting in Minnesota. So that was good.
Speaker 3: And I've been taking my other daughter out and we
Speaker 3: have our eye. You know me, I'm not a not
Speaker 3: a one buck hunter. I'm not a buck namer guy.
Speaker 3: Like we don't we don't hit list of them really
Speaker 3: in the Peterson household. But we have this buck. We
Speaker 3: call it Goofball for obvious reasons.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: He's he's a deer that just I photographed him this
Speaker 3: summer and started getting pictures of him. And he's got
Speaker 3: just a four point side. He's just a big woods
Speaker 3: two year old and the other side has four points
Speaker 3: but it comes back over his head and it's real
Speaker 3: messed up. And my working theory on this is last year,
Speaker 3: this daughter who I'm hunting with, she hit a buck
Speaker 3: and we lost it too far forward. I got a
Speaker 3: picture of him a month later, so I know we
Speaker 3: made it. And now this buck shows up as a
Speaker 3: two year old and he's got a really wonky one side,
Speaker 3: which would kind of correlate with where, you know, the
Speaker 3: opposite side of where she hit this buck last year.
Speaker 3: So I'm thinking this is probably that deer and he
Speaker 3: has been crazy consistent. So we we went last weekend
Speaker 3: and hunted him. And I don't know about what you've
Speaker 3: been getting out there in Michigan, but we've been getting
Speaker 3: a lot of southeast wind. Yeah, and I don't set
Speaker 3: up a lot for southeast wind. So I had a
Speaker 3: backup for this dude. I had a backup blind for
Speaker 3: this deer. And I was like, every other sit after this,
Speaker 3: we can probably make the spot. I want to go
Speaker 3: to work. But that first night I was like, we.
Speaker 4: Can't do it.
Speaker 3: We got to go in and this is kind of
Speaker 3: an experiment. We went in, didn't see anything, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: I feel like I made a big mistake, Like I
Speaker 3: think that that buck was betted too close. I think
Speaker 3: I pushed it and we blanked four sits. I mean
Speaker 3: we were like if we saw a squirrel, we were stoked.
Speaker 3: And so that's kind of been my hunting life other
Speaker 3: than taking this new guy out here close to the cities.
Speaker 3: And so I haven't seen a deer while hunting in
Speaker 3: I guess five or six sits. So I'm kind of
Speaker 3: like it should to make something happen here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that can be the store this time of the
Speaker 2: year can be feast or famine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean, you know me, dude, I'm like,
Speaker 3: the lull isn't real. Hunt in hot weather, do whatever.
Speaker 3: And then now like there was a full moon during
Speaker 3: that weekend when I was out there with my daughter,
Speaker 3: and I was like, gosh, maybe I've been wrong this
Speaker 3: whole time, Like maybe the lull is real. Like you
Speaker 3: know how it is you second guess everything when you
Speaker 3: can't even put a door or a scrapper in front
Speaker 3: of you, but it is what it is.
Speaker 2: So well, I've been seeing the opposite Tony. So I've
Speaker 2: been I've been a person who's always like, ah, you know,
Speaker 2: you want to avoid those warm weather days, or at
Speaker 2: least don't go to your best areas on the warm
Speaker 2: weather days, so on so forth. But I actually, you know,
Speaker 2: have moderated on that a little bit, and I was
Speaker 2: proven and you were proven right kind of on what
Speaker 2: I saw here recently, which has been surprising. So let
Speaker 2: me give you a quick update on my hunting world.
Speaker 3: Hold On, hold on, did you just say that it
Speaker 3: was surprising that I was right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I said.
Speaker 3: Well, hold on, didn't you just kill a big buck
Speaker 3: in a morning in the early season.
Speaker 2: Like I said, Uh No, I just kidding.
Speaker 3: I uh And and now you're seeing big bucks in
Speaker 3: conditions that you just didn't think we're gonna happened, but
Speaker 3: I said, would happen.
Speaker 2: You know what, Tony, we all have grown over the
Speaker 2: years and we're slowly becoming more wise, and experience is
Speaker 2: the best teacher, right, it sure is.
Speaker 4: So what do you see it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so's here's what's happening. So as we talked about
Speaker 2: I don't think we talked about last week, but a
Speaker 2: few weeks ago we were talking about kind of our
Speaker 2: upcoming hunts and stuff. And I told you the story
Speaker 2: of the main buck I'm after in Michigan. And I
Speaker 2: am a one buck kind of dude, and I do
Speaker 2: the name the buck I'm after usually. So I've got
Speaker 2: this deer I call the Wide nine, and he is
Speaker 2: a buck that I have had four years of history
Speaker 2: now with which is the longest I've ever been able
Speaker 2: to keep tabs on a buck in Michigan with before.
Speaker 2: And so you know, I started getting pictures of him
Speaker 2: again this year. He survived, He showed up in the summer,
Speaker 2: cool deer, a lot of encounters. I know a lot
Speaker 2: about what he does usually. I had a pretty solid
Speaker 2: idea of like where he beds on these properties I
Speaker 2: have permission on, so I thought I had him pretty
Speaker 2: well dialed. The night before opening day, though, I wanted
Speaker 2: to see if I could get some better like just
Speaker 2: some really recent intelly. Let's see if he's doing what
Speaker 2: I think he might do it, or if he's if
Speaker 2: he's moving in daylight somewhere yet, as you mentioned, like
Speaker 2: it's hot. It's been it was very hot spell there
Speaker 2: at the beginning of October and just preceding that, so
Speaker 2: conditions weren't great, but I still, you know, anything's possible, right,
Speaker 2: So I thought, maybe I can learn something the night
Speaker 2: before the season that will give me either the confidence
Speaker 2: to move back into something that maybe I wouldn't usually
Speaker 2: with this weather, or I'll confirm like, okay, play it safe,
Speaker 2: do some more observation. So there's a hill that I
Speaker 2: can access from the road that usually if I get
Speaker 2: up on this hill, I can glass down into one
Speaker 2: of these properties, and there's a power line that stretches
Speaker 2: off kind of heading southeast, and I can basically that
Speaker 2: power line runs along the southern border of one of
Speaker 2: the mains zones at this buckbeds, and then there's a
Speaker 2: that runs to the northeast that kind of forms the
Speaker 2: border of the north border of one of these betting zones.
Speaker 2: So from a specific location on this hill, if I
Speaker 2: get there, I can see down that creek a little
Speaker 2: bit to the north side, and I can see down
Speaker 2: that power line to the south side. I can kind
Speaker 2: of bracket either side of this betting zone. So it's
Speaker 2: been a place historically like if I can get in
Speaker 2: there and glass from this zone, you can learn some
Speaker 2: good stuff. Well, the problem this year is that a
Speaker 2: standing corn and you can't see anything from the hill
Speaker 2: because of standing corn. So I got to think, a man,
Speaker 2: I really want to see what's happening. How can I
Speaker 2: figure this out? And what I decided to do is
Speaker 2: I actually brought a ladder out to this place. Walk
Speaker 2: the ladder along the road and then walked into the
Speaker 2: standing corn from the road. So people were driving by
Speaker 2: me on this road. There's like a dude and camo
Speaker 2: carrying a huge silver ladder. And I got into this spot,
Speaker 2: put the ladder up in the standing cornfield and stood
Speaker 2: up on top of the ladder. And from that vantage
Speaker 2: point it was perfect and it actually worked like I
Speaker 2: could see down the power line. I could see not
Speaker 2: as far down the creek as I was hoping. There's
Speaker 2: still a lot of leaves on, but I could see
Speaker 2: a little ways. So I'm down there, I'm watching deer.
Speaker 2: I'm seeing deer move. I actually saw the number two
Speaker 2: buck in this area on his feet in daylight the
Speaker 2: night prior opening day, on like a seventy eight degree day.
Speaker 2: Something in geez. I can't believe it, but there he is.
Speaker 2: He's on his feet way way back in this property,
Speaker 2: hitting a little green field. And as I'm watching him,
Speaker 2: I noticed something white like down beneath me, like close,
Speaker 2: And I pulled my bottles down and I look down
Speaker 2: at the bottom of the hill, and at the bottom
Speaker 2: of the hill it's just this thick, tall, grassy stuff.
Speaker 2: There's historically, maybe like some does, there'll be like a
Speaker 2: dough family group maybe that hangs out down there and
Speaker 2: then heads up to this little food plot. I've got
Speaker 2: up there further down, but it's not a spot that
Speaker 2: I've ever you know, paid much attention to other than
Speaker 2: you know, and there's probably a doe or two in there. Well,
Speaker 2: I look down there, and here's the wide nine like
Speaker 2: at the base of the hill right beneath me, standing
Speaker 2: up out of that tall grass. So they're standing corn
Speaker 2: all around him, and then this tall grass. But then
Speaker 2: there's also like you know, houses in the road up
Speaker 2: there too. He was bedded right up close to the
Speaker 2: road in the house house kind of area is there.
Speaker 2: And he stands up and I watch him, you know,
Speaker 2: walk through this tall grass heading towards that food plot.
Speaker 2: And then a truck pulls across the road, a big
Speaker 2: semi and starts backing into one of the houses across
Speaker 2: the road, making tons of racket and ends up spooking
Speaker 2: every deer around. All the deer go running away. But
Speaker 2: I saw him in this place. It was like a
Speaker 2: wild place to see him hanging out. I've never seen
Speaker 2: him in there before, so that was a very interesting
Speaker 2: aha moment. And I'm wondering to myself, was that a
Speaker 2: fluke or is this something he's doing more often now
Speaker 2: Like in the past he's always betted. You know this
Speaker 2: zone I was telling you about that's probably four hundred
Speaker 2: yards to the east of this, back in the core
Speaker 2: of these properties, like the core of the square mile,
Speaker 2: he's usually where he beds. So it's an interesting aha.
Speaker 2: I hunted that following night, opening night in a spot
Speaker 2: that's kind of right in between where I saw him
Speaker 2: and where he usually beds. There's an oak tree dropping
Speaker 2: a bunch of oaks, and there's a little food plot
Speaker 2: tucked in some grass there, and it's this great transition
Speaker 2: that's usually tight to where he's bedded.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: I didn't see him that night. The next night, I
Speaker 2: hunted a different spot that's kind of farther north of there,
Speaker 2: and this was this is one of my AHA moments.
Speaker 2: I did not see him, but I did see a
Speaker 2: three year old and a buck that's three or four
Speaker 2: on their feet half an hour before dark. And it
Speaker 2: was eighty three degrees that night, and I saw these
Speaker 2: two like mature. You know, anything over three in Michigan
Speaker 2: is a pretty rare deer. So here's a three year
Speaker 2: old and a three maybe four year old buck on
Speaker 2: their feet on an eighty three degree night meal movin
Speaker 2: So great to see that, and I would I did
Speaker 2: for both of those hunts with that hot weather as
Speaker 2: I set up in a place, you know, this low impact.
Speaker 2: I went to very low impact locations, like I'm not
Speaker 2: going to be risky and push into my best stuff,
Speaker 2: but I set up in places where it could happen
Speaker 2: and I could see a long ways like I wanted
Speaker 2: to learn. So those are kind of like observation sets
Speaker 2: with the possibility of something coming together, but mostly you know,
Speaker 2: being in the game, but really learning something is how
Speaker 2: I approach those first two hunts and interesting stuff. So
Speaker 2: those are the first two nights. Now after that I
Speaker 2: was going for. What I'm doing now is I'm hunting
Speaker 2: on the back forty, not myself hunting. I'm mentoring two
Speaker 2: new hunters on the back forty property. Again. We're doing
Speaker 2: a project kind of recapping folks on what's going on
Speaker 2: there on the back forty since we gave it to
Speaker 2: the National Deer Association, and the story of these new
Speaker 2: hunters that have been using it. So I'm out there
Speaker 2: helping two guys having a good time. So far, not
Speaker 2: a lot deer activity out there yet, but I'm hopeful
Speaker 2: it's going to get better here soon. But last night
Speaker 2: I hear from a friend who is able to be
Speaker 2: in the area and can see this grassy area as
Speaker 2: you drive by. The wine nine was back in that
Speaker 2: grassy pocket again last night. So he was spotted down
Speaker 2: at the bottomless hill in that tall grass, the same
Speaker 2: place I spotted him the night before the opener. So
Speaker 2: now two nights of the last five he was spotted
Speaker 2: bedded in this tall grass right up by the road.
Speaker 2: So it's very interesting. And he was moving in daylight,
Speaker 2: so twice now in the first five days of October.
Speaker 2: Well one was the day before October daylight up by
Speaker 2: the road in this tall grass. And now we have
Speaker 2: this big coal front that hit. And now I'm thinking, okay,
Speaker 2: i can start hunting him again once I'm done in
Speaker 2: the back forty, so I can hunt on October eighth
Speaker 2: as the first day I'll be to hunt myself again.
Speaker 2: And so now I'm thinking, do I hunt him the
Speaker 2: way I thought I was gonna hunt him, back in
Speaker 2: the core where he usually beds, or do I think
Speaker 2: this is not a fluke, and he's now a five
Speaker 2: year old buck. Doesn't like to be around other deer,
Speaker 2: wants to He's got this little pocket that there's never
Speaker 2: I never go in there, there's never people in there.
Speaker 2: Is that a new thing I need to start thinking about?
Speaker 2: So that's where I'm right now. It's like thinking this
Speaker 2: whole thing through and like, is there a way to
Speaker 2: hunt this deer coming out of this grassy pocket?
Speaker 3: When So when you say that, like, historically that grassy
Speaker 3: pocket has only you know, maybe a dull family, not
Speaker 3: you know, not been a real big buck betting spot.
Speaker 3: Has that been consistent with whatever crops were planted there?
Speaker 3: Has it been consistent with beans and corn or whatever's
Speaker 3: been in there?
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean, you know, it rotates corn beans
Speaker 2: every other year. And I'm able to watch this grassy
Speaker 2: area quite a lot because it's it's you know, it's
Speaker 2: right along that hill where I always go glass from.
Speaker 2: And I've you know, for years, talked about trying to
Speaker 2: glass in here when I'm after different bucks and stuff.
Speaker 2: And so it's not like I haven't been able to
Speaker 2: watch this grassy pocket in the past. There was one
Speaker 2: other deer. There's one other buck that used it, and
Speaker 2: it was that really really big deer. I killed Frank
Speaker 2: like five years ago, but that was just during the rut.
Speaker 2: What he would do is he would he would lock
Speaker 2: down with a dough and then like rodeo her into
Speaker 2: this pocket and then stay with her like all night,
Speaker 2: and then every morning I would see him coming out
Speaker 2: of there with that dough. That's the only time I've
Speaker 2: seen a buck really use that area in the past.
Speaker 2: Not to say it hasn't happened, and I certainly could
Speaker 2: have missed it. I'm just what are you curious about that?
Speaker 3: Well, when you say you know you've got this kind
Speaker 3: of grassy swale, grassy pocket in standing corner around it,
Speaker 3: I mean, that's like such a recipe for big buck betting.
Speaker 3: It gets especially early season stuff. When that's you know
Speaker 3: that corn gets picked. That's a different deal. But I've
Speaker 3: seen that. I was chasing a buck in southern Minnesota
Speaker 3: a while back that was betting in a situation like
Speaker 3: that some and he was a giant, and it happened
Speaker 3: in the summer, it happened in the early season, and
Speaker 3: then it was done. And I just think it was
Speaker 3: like one of those situations where he was catching the
Speaker 3: wind and avoiding the bugs. And you know when they're
Speaker 3: kind of walled in with corn like that, they love
Speaker 3: those spots. But you know, if you've observed it a
Speaker 3: lot and they just don't historically use it, I just
Speaker 3: it just I wonder why.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know the answer to that. And I
Speaker 2: mean when you look at it with fresh eyes, and
Speaker 2: if I were to look at it, you know, brand new,
Speaker 2: I'd be like, well, yeah, this doesn't seem like a
Speaker 2: bad deal at all for him. He's got us. You know,
Speaker 2: it's it's probably maybe three acres maybe something like that,
Speaker 2: maybe three acres of this like tall, you know, it's
Speaker 2: probably over my shoulder height of just grass and brush
Speaker 2: and crap, and then it's surrounded by a standing corn
Speaker 2: and then there's houses along the road. But the thing
Speaker 2: is like, you know, it's you know where he stood
Speaker 2: up when I saw him, he was probably one hundred
Speaker 2: yards from the road, one hundred yards from like houses.
Speaker 2: So he's right there, you know, close to people. But
Speaker 2: for me to get back to hunt him, you know,
Speaker 2: the way I have to access his property, he's not
Speaker 2: gonna see me because he's down in that grass, bedded
Speaker 2: down but if I were to go through with any
Speaker 2: kind of southerly wind, he would certainly win me. With
Speaker 2: any kind of southerly wind coming the way I would
Speaker 2: usually go into this property. So it's interesting. It changes
Speaker 2: things up a little bit.
Speaker 3: Haven't you been having a bunch of southern southernly win Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 3: so that is that why he's there?
Speaker 2: Certainly could be huh. I mean I wonder though, like,
Speaker 2: do you think bucks are that smart? Like do they
Speaker 2: think like, well, I know this dude hunts me and
Speaker 2: I know this dude, uh, you know comes in this
Speaker 2: zone a lot of ways, and I'd be smelling with
Speaker 2: a southerly wind, Like are we giving them too much credit?
Speaker 5: Is he?
Speaker 2: Or maybe maybe not? I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Man, if you're if you know ninety
Speaker 3: five percent of you year was spent just avoiding predators
Speaker 3: and one of your worst predators comes in that way
Speaker 3: a lot and the wind would tip you off, you'd
Speaker 3: probably be clued into that.
Speaker 2: I mean, And I got to say, if I was
Speaker 2: if I was an old man, and if the last
Speaker 2: three of my best friends were all killed by one person,
Speaker 2: I would probably get really good at avoiding that one person.
Speaker 2: That's been his life, his last four buddies, so he's, uh,
Speaker 2: he's had some bad stuff happen to his life.
Speaker 3: Do you do you have a way to watch that
Speaker 3: buck in the morning to see if you could catch
Speaker 3: him coming back so you'd know he was in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's what I'm actually gonna plan on doing,
Speaker 2: is I'm going to get up super early and try
Speaker 2: to get out to this spot where I can get
Speaker 2: on this hill. I think I can do it without
Speaker 2: We'll have to see what the wind's doing. But if
Speaker 2: I can get to this pocket up on this hill
Speaker 2: and not have my wind blowing down into it, I
Speaker 2: think I could watch it. So I'm gonna try to
Speaker 2: do that the morning of the eighth, which is the
Speaker 2: day the next day I can personally hunt and try
Speaker 2: to get out there and watch it and tell for sure,
Speaker 2: because that's my big question, is like we have this
Speaker 2: big coal front that came through, so we're gonna have like,
Speaker 2: these are the best conditions I've had yet this year.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be like thirty five degrees cooler than it was,
Speaker 2: and so I think it's worth taking a good hunt
Speaker 2: at him. You know, if I had not seen him
Speaker 2: twice up in this grassy pocket. My good hunt would
Speaker 2: have been, you know, way back where he usually beds
Speaker 2: tied to that stuff. Like I've thought about there's some
Speaker 2: oaks dropping in this little woody pocket next to his
Speaker 2: usual betting area. I thought about diving into that. Or
Speaker 2: I've got this little green field way back there that
Speaker 2: he off also frequents this on the other side of
Speaker 2: his betting area. I thought about going in there, but
Speaker 2: now I'm wondering, like, geez, do I hunt up front?
Speaker 2: But the problem is, like if I hunt up front,
Speaker 2: it's like a it's either gonna be great because he's there,
Speaker 2: or it's gonna be like a completely lousy hunt because
Speaker 2: if he's not there, there's nothing else there and it's
Speaker 2: just gonna be sitting there watching people play with their
Speaker 2: dog or walking the kids. That kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Man, when you get a buck like that in early
Speaker 3: like this and you see him in a spot, my
Speaker 3: personal opinion is get after him right now because that
Speaker 3: pattern's probably going to die. And I wouldn't overthink it.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've I've killed a few bucks in the
Speaker 3: beginning of October, first two weeks of October like that
Speaker 3: where you just pick them up, and you're like, I
Speaker 3: saw him here, what's going on? And then you go
Speaker 3: in and kill him the next chance you have, and
Speaker 3: ye would I wouldn't do the Kenyan overthinking thing here.
Speaker 3: I just Bond's eye in there and kill that bastard.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't appreciate that you're labeling this as the
Speaker 2: Kenyon overthinking thing, but I'll gloss past that and just
Speaker 2: say I like the idea of killing.
Speaker 3: Him, so yeah, go kill him. I got I got
Speaker 3: a question for you when you walk out on the
Speaker 3: back forty now after not being there, you know, I mean,
Speaker 3: you spent a crazy amount of time there for a
Speaker 3: couple of years, and then now you go back do
Speaker 3: this mentor thing like, do you feel a sense of
Speaker 3: like nostalgia when you walk in there?
Speaker 2: Man, really big, big time nostalgia and like a proud
Speaker 2: daddy kind of thing, like a proud dad Like you
Speaker 2: go out there and you should see you should see
Speaker 2: what it looks like now, Tony, it's so much better
Speaker 2: than when you and I were hunting there, Like the
Speaker 2: fields you remember, I mean, in the year you came
Speaker 2: in a hunted they were dramatically better than the first year.
Speaker 2: But now there is switchgrass like up to my face
Speaker 2: all over the place. There's all sorts of native vegetation.
Speaker 2: I mean it's there could be deer bedded on every
Speaker 2: square inch of that place. It looks it looks like
Speaker 2: a dreary outdoors Iowa property. Now, Wow, it's pretty impressive. Now,
Speaker 2: we hunted the last two nights and I saw just fawns,
Speaker 2: So it was weird. I'm surprised by that, So I do.
Speaker 2: I have got questions about what's going on. There's tons
Speaker 2: of acorns everywhere out here right now, Like the white
Speaker 2: oaks are raining acorns, and we don't have white oaks
Speaker 2: on this property really anywhere that I know of, So
Speaker 2: I'm a little worried that they might be like sitting
Speaker 2: in the timber somewhere eating acorns, and that could be
Speaker 2: what's happening. But the first two days we probably had
Speaker 2: lousy weather. Yeah, the first day was like eighty five.
Speaker 2: The second day was like torrential downpour. So because of that,
Speaker 2: we stayed on the front half of the farm, like
Speaker 2: the safer part of the farm, and we've saved the
Speaker 2: back half of the best stuff for the second part.
Speaker 2: When this cold front hits, it's now going to be
Speaker 2: like twenty some degrees cooler and great. So we've got
Speaker 2: this back half of the trip with great conditions, and
Speaker 2: now the back half of the farm is you know, untouched.
Speaker 2: So tonight we're gonna go into a kill spot and
Speaker 2: hopefully one of them will get a shot.
Speaker 4: Nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, this has been an I don't know, this
Speaker 3: has been a weird year. I was telling my wife
Speaker 3: the other day, I'm like, I feel like I'm either
Speaker 3: hunting in beach weather or a downpour and there's nothing
Speaker 3: else every day, and it's this bad win and the
Speaker 3: acorn thing. I mean, it's I've heard from people all
Speaker 3: across the country and I've definitely dealt with it myself
Speaker 3: in Minnesota, Wisconsin. The acorn situation this year is wild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of mass and like you said, it's
Speaker 2: not a one off thing, like everyone seems to be
Speaker 2: seeing it. Everyone I've talked to at least has been
Speaker 2: seeing it. So yeah, that changes things up. It makes
Speaker 2: your typical you know, crop fields or little food plots
Speaker 2: and stuff just not dead but not quite what they
Speaker 2: usually are when they can be back in the timber
Speaker 2: and the cover eating candy.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Yep, So we'll see. I'll hopefully have an update for
Speaker 2: you next week or the week after on this whole
Speaker 2: wide nine thing in the back forty thing. These two
Speaker 2: guys are trying to kill their first year with a
Speaker 2: bow and I've been I've hunted with them the last
Speaker 2: two years in a row, kind of helping them on
Speaker 2: their journey. So this is hopefully going to be that
Speaker 2: final step. It'd be pretty cool if that came together.
Speaker 3: What are they open to? What's where? Where's the bar
Speaker 3: set for those.
Speaker 2: Guys for any Yeah, any adult deer that gives them
Speaker 2: a really good safe shot with the bow, So that
Speaker 2: could be a dough, that could be a four key,
Speaker 2: anything like that, they would be thrilled with.
Speaker 3: Nice. So that's that's like a fun way to hunt. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna be doing that next week down in Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: That's a fun way to hunt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So give us the thirty second rundown of what
Speaker 2: hunt you've got coming up? Thirty seconds because we got
Speaker 2: to shut this thing down right on.
Speaker 3: I am heading down to Oklahoma to hunt public land
Speaker 3: with Steve Ranella and we are bow hunting deer and
Speaker 3: it is gonna probably be a disaster where I'll be
Speaker 3: back out on my own by the.
Speaker 2: End of October, but maybe not.
Speaker 4: We'll see.
Speaker 2: It was a good run, Tony. I'm glad you were
Speaker 2: able to work here for a little bit. We're gonna
Speaker 2: miss you. But uh now, you guys will have a blast.
Speaker 2: I'm excited to hear about how it goes. I'm sure
Speaker 2: you guys will have fun.
Speaker 3: I hope so, buddy.
Speaker 2: Okay, So with all that said, Tony, thank you for
Speaker 2: giving me the rundown. Thanks for giving me some thoughts
Speaker 2: and feedback on my hunting stuff going on here. Let's
Speaker 2: do this again soon so we can kind of keep
Speaker 2: tabs on what's happening. And now we got to talk
Speaker 2: to mister Brad Davis, who's got some good thoughts, some
Speaker 2: kind of grounding advice. He takes someone like me who's
Speaker 2: like all over the place, and I think he kind
Speaker 2: of brings us back to earth and says, hey, just
Speaker 2: focus on a couple core things and do them. Well,
Speaker 2: that's what we're going to focus on here today. So
Speaker 2: let's get to mister Brad Davis. All right here with
Speaker 2: me now on the line. I've got Brad Davis. Brad,
Speaker 2: thanks for taking time to do this.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 2: So I understand this is your first podcast you've done,
Speaker 2: so thank you first off for being willing to step
Speaker 2: on a limb here and talk about this stuff. But
Speaker 2: I got to tell you the story of how I
Speaker 2: heard about you and why i'm you know, why I
Speaker 2: want to reach out. I was listening to a conversation
Speaker 2: that your buddy, Justin Hollinsworth was having, and Justin's made
Speaker 2: the podcast Rounds. He's been out there talking to a
Speaker 2: bunch of people recently, so so Justin was on my mind,
Speaker 2: and he was talking about some of his different you know,
Speaker 2: hunting styles and influences, and he brought up the fact
Speaker 2: that he has this buddy, and he's got a buddy
Speaker 2: who has this goal of killing fifty one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty inch bucks before it's all said and done. And
Speaker 2: I heard that I was like, jeez, that is an
Speaker 2: ambitious guy. And then he said that this friend of
Speaker 2: his has already killed thirty eight of them, and I thought, Okay,
Speaker 2: this guy's not only ambitious, but he's really getting it done.
Speaker 2: So I reached out to Justin after I listened podcast,
Speaker 2: and I said, who is this friend of yours? And
Speaker 2: he said, well, Mark that's Brad Davis, and you should
Speaker 2: talk to him. So so here we are, Brad, we
Speaker 2: are talking, and I got to ask you about that goal.
Speaker 2: Is that Is that a goal you are still actively chasing?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I think when you're younger, you make goals
Speaker 4: or you kill a few big deer, and you think, boy,
Speaker 4: I'm pretty young. You know, you think I could probably
Speaker 4: get this done. But as the years go by, you
Speaker 4: start you probably up the up the annie a little
Speaker 4: bit and you start letting stuff walk that normally you
Speaker 4: would shoot. I would have shot younger years. But no,
Speaker 4: I'm still I'm still thinking it's a it's attainable. There
Speaker 4: was several years I was able to kill two a year,
Speaker 4: you know, here in Illinois, and that that really flattens
Speaker 4: the curve. But he was wrong, I think I'm and
Speaker 4: I might have told him wrong. But I've only killed
Speaker 4: thirty seven, so he was He's one off.
Speaker 2: Okay, not too many.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's still a goal. Yeah, I'd like to kill
Speaker 4: I'd like to kill fifty over one fifty.
Speaker 2: What's the tell me about your goal process? Like, how
Speaker 2: why have goals like that? How does that keep you focused?
Speaker 2: What does that kind of how does that fit into
Speaker 2: the way you approach your hunts.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, first of all, I want to I
Speaker 4: want to let everybody know I'm probably luckier than a
Speaker 4: lot of people on where I get to hunt. You know,
Speaker 4: where I'm in Central Illinois, there's big deer. You know.
Speaker 4: You just you get into these guys hunting the Southern
Speaker 4: States or the Eastern States, and they they think you're nuts.
Speaker 4: But you know, you let two or three one fifties
Speaker 4: walk in a year, and then you know you're trying
Speaker 4: to kill a one sixty so or a one seven deer,
Speaker 4: you know, or whatever whatever you've got, But you can
Speaker 4: only kill what's on the property. And growing up here
Speaker 4: in Central Illinois, I've been pretty fortunate to be able
Speaker 4: to be around big deer, you know, and you kind
Speaker 4: of lose sight of that when you're when you live
Speaker 4: here and you're in the middle of it, you lose
Speaker 4: sight of that. For the guys that are on the
Speaker 4: out e east or out in the South, you just think, well,
Speaker 4: this is how do they not killing one fifties? Well,
Speaker 4: they don't kill them because they're not there. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's you just got to remember where you live.
Speaker 5: Yeah, was there any kind of major like threshold for
Speaker 5: you when you as you've been going up over the years,
Speaker 5: as you've been targeting.
Speaker 2: Older deer or bigger deer, was there any kind of
Speaker 2: moment where all of a sudden you realize, Oh, if
Speaker 2: I want to kill that next tier deer, that's a
Speaker 2: whole new ballgame, Like this is a whole new thing.
Speaker 2: I need to figure out. Where was that shift for you?
Speaker 2: Is it like when you went from shooting those first
Speaker 2: few young bucks all of a sudden trying to shoot
Speaker 2: three year older bucks, Or was it when you you know,
Speaker 2: is it a certain size deer, when was that big
Speaker 2: jump in your experience?
Speaker 4: Well, I just think it's a progression for a lot
Speaker 4: of guys. When you're around when you've got to quo
Speaker 4: deer and you're a round, good deer, the more you're
Speaker 4: around them, the more you settle down, you don't get
Speaker 4: you know, you don't get so wound up every time
Speaker 4: you see a one fifty or bigger. And there's probably
Speaker 4: times that you let deer walk that you at the
Speaker 4: end of this season you think I probably should have
Speaker 4: shot him. But that's just part of it. And I've
Speaker 4: never been too caught up and eating tags. It's kind
Speaker 4: of been more about if I don't want to put
Speaker 4: a deer on a wall or something, I'm I'm happy
Speaker 4: with just let it go. And yeah, it's there's years
Speaker 4: that pays off, and there's years that somebody else kills
Speaker 4: the deer the next year. You know, you just it's
Speaker 4: just a crapshoot. You just can't. You can't. You can't
Speaker 4: make sure that every deer survives every year. And there's
Speaker 4: been deer let pass one year, thinking boy, he'll be
Speaker 4: a dandy next year, and two weeks later you get
Speaker 4: a picture from a neighbor somebody's killed him. So but
Speaker 4: as far as I don't know, I think after everybody
Speaker 4: probably gets into the same When you kill a half
Speaker 4: a dozen one forties, then you you know, you just
Speaker 4: keep moving up the ladder. You think, well, I want
Speaker 4: to kill a one fifty, Then I want to kill
Speaker 4: a one sixty. Then you want to kill a you know,
Speaker 4: and everybody wants to kill a two hundred. But it's
Speaker 4: it's just a needle in a haystack to find a
Speaker 4: two hundred. So I don't know, I just I just
Speaker 4: think a guy's got you got to have. You've got
Speaker 4: to have some patience and not get too caught up
Speaker 4: in this. I don't know. Social media, to me, has
Speaker 4: has changed the way a lot of guys they want
Speaker 4: to promote themselves, and that's that's not me, but guys
Speaker 4: that want to promote themselves, they want to kill big
Speaker 4: deer every year, and whatever it takes is what they do.
Speaker 4: But I just I just enjoyed. I actually enjoy hunting
Speaker 4: more than the killing, I mean, And that's probably part
Speaker 4: of the reason I don't mind letting one fifties or
Speaker 4: a one sixty walk is because as soon as you
Speaker 4: kill that deer, then you're on to the next one,
Speaker 4: and that deer has gone from the herd. You know,
Speaker 4: he can't grow, he can't get bigger for the next year.
Speaker 4: So I think patience and the fact that after you
Speaker 4: kill a certain number, you just kind of can get
Speaker 4: to the that you can let him go. But there's
Speaker 4: really was nothing that I can say, hey, you know,
Speaker 4: this is really what triggered did I. I've just always
Speaker 4: loved chasing the you know, the bigger, mature bucks.
Speaker 2: So so what's the goal for this year?
Speaker 4: Do you have? Are you? Are you? Well? I've got
Speaker 4: two bucks A steer or yeah. I've got two bucks
Speaker 4: that both made it last season. One of them's on
Speaker 4: a personal a piece of ground that's a personal property
Speaker 4: that mown farm. And I let him go last year.
Speaker 4: We thought he was probably he's a clean ten, thought
Speaker 4: he was No. One sixties last year, let him go twice,
Speaker 4: videoed him and and he is. He did survive. He
Speaker 4: made it. I did not find his sheds. He I
Speaker 4: don't know where he went for the winner, but I
Speaker 4: never found a shed. But he put on a couple
Speaker 4: of stickers and an eleventh point this year, so he's
Speaker 4: a little bigger, not not huge. I mean he's he
Speaker 4: might he might be one seventy. But I got another
Speaker 4: buck that's I think he's a young buck. But man,
Speaker 4: is he got. He's got about everything you'd want. He's
Speaker 4: got junk, and he's got tall times. And I don't
Speaker 4: know if he's survived or not. I had pictures of
Speaker 4: him in late January before he shed, so I know
Speaker 4: he made it that that long, that that far, but
Speaker 4: I don't know since I've not got any pictures of him.
Speaker 4: But it's a small plot, like a four acre piece,
Speaker 4: and it's maybe he'll show up again this year. Late
Speaker 4: season because he didn't show up there until late last
Speaker 4: year till December. And I'm pretty okay, I've seen that
Speaker 4: happen a lot of times. You know, dear will show
Speaker 4: up late season, and the next year the same thing,
Speaker 4: they won't show up till late season again. So that's
Speaker 4: my two that's the two target bucks I've got, and
Speaker 4: we'll see what happens. The game begins at the end
Speaker 4: of one season, the next season starts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So with that that home buck, the bucks, the
Speaker 2: buck that's on your personal farm. What does that game
Speaker 2: look like at this point? So I guess that's two
Speaker 2: parts of this the question one, what did you do
Speaker 2: from the end of last season until now to prepare
Speaker 2: yourself for this? And then I'm curious, where's your heat at?
Speaker 2: Like right now? The Illinois season just kicked off a
Speaker 2: handful of days ago. Where do things stand now in that?
Speaker 2: That would be my two part question.
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, I've got my farm this year
Speaker 4: is all standing corn and I've only gotten pictures of
Speaker 4: him on two different cameras one time each last year.
Speaker 4: And I always tell guys to pay attention if you
Speaker 4: see him mature buck moving through the woods or you
Speaker 4: see in bed pay attention to the wind, the conditions,
Speaker 4: pay attention to why he's where he's at that day.
Speaker 4: And he was bedding up next to another fence. He
Speaker 4: was right up against my back, was laying against the
Speaker 4: fence last year, and he's still and that's where he's
Speaker 4: bedding this year. He's back there now. But it's an
Speaker 4: old pasture that I would have to cross, an old pasture,
Speaker 4: and i'd have to have an east wind. Well, we
Speaker 4: don't get hardly any east winds here, so I'll let
Speaker 4: it go. I'll just let it ride a little bit here.
Speaker 4: I'm not I know some guys can, some guys don't care,
Speaker 4: and I and I'm I mean, I'm friends with Andre
Speaker 4: Toquisto and Cody. Those guys are aggressive. I am not aggressive.
Speaker 4: I'll be the first to tell you. I'm I'm more
Speaker 4: sit back, let it play out type type hunter. And
Speaker 4: I don't use sins. I don't use grunt to, I
Speaker 4: don't use anything, no rattling antlers. I mean, I just don't.
Speaker 4: And I've seen pluses and minuses of all that stuff,
Speaker 4: but I just don't. I don't I play the wind.
Speaker 4: And I just think that buck has been there that long. Well,
Speaker 4: he's grown up there, and does he leave, Yeah, he
Speaker 4: probably does. He probably gets to the neighbors. But he's
Speaker 4: made it this long and I feel confident of where
Speaker 4: he's staying and where he's staying and is what I
Speaker 4: consider my sanctuary. So I'll let it play out until
Speaker 4: my conditions get better, as far as I got to
Speaker 4: get the corn out, and they're they're picking corn here now,
Speaker 4: but it's got to come out for me to be
Speaker 4: able to access my farm very well at all. So
Speaker 4: it's just patience, and I know some guys really struggle
Speaker 4: with that.
Speaker 2: You know where he's at, that sanctuary area, and so
Speaker 2: I'm assuming you knew that based on what it did
Speaker 2: last year. So do you go in the off season?
Speaker 2: Did you pre hang anything, do you have anything set
Speaker 2: up already or are you going to be going actually
Speaker 2: in season hanging hunt?
Speaker 4: No, I pretty well am owned property. I pre hang presets.
Speaker 4: It's so much easier, especially when you're going in the
Speaker 4: camera equipment and video and stuff. But most all my
Speaker 4: ninety percent of the time of my own property, it's
Speaker 4: all pre set and I do all my I do
Speaker 4: most of my prune and scouting and stuff. In in
Speaker 4: March and February March, and it's and I hunt. That's
Speaker 4: when I hung a stand for him for for this year.
Speaker 4: So I shouldn't say I don't even have a stand home.
Speaker 4: I've got steps, I've got it pruned, everything's ready to go.
Speaker 4: But and I'll slip in. I normally go in there
Speaker 4: with a mow or a boush hog, and I haven't
Speaker 4: done that. In fact, I was going to do it today.
Speaker 4: It's raining here today. Now. My goal is to get
Speaker 4: it done here before the weekend. And I'm going to
Speaker 4: get the stand home. I'll go in there with the
Speaker 4: bush hog and make all the rack and the noise
Speaker 4: with the tractor and the buuschhog mowing, and I'll just
Speaker 4: I'll put the stand on the tractor and then I
Speaker 4: just I'll just get off, hang the stand and make
Speaker 4: sure everything's okay, and then I'll just get out of there.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I'm pretty patient on that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: I don't get I don't get too rambunctious. As far
Speaker 4: as running deer around, I never have. But there's there's
Speaker 4: so many different ways guys can kill big deer. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's not it's not I've said forever. It's not magic.
Speaker 4: I mean you just you just think about a buck
Speaker 4: that's walking through the woods during the rut. How many
Speaker 4: trees in a day could a hunter be sitting in,
Speaker 4: have the right wind and kill that buck. There's thousands
Speaker 4: of trees, you know, and it's I'm not trying to
Speaker 4: dumb it down, but there is literally in a twenty
Speaker 4: four hour span or a say, a twelve hour day
Speaker 4: daylight hours, there's probably a thousand trees that a guy
Speaker 4: could be in that a buck walks by and you
Speaker 4: could kill him. I I don't get too caught up
Speaker 4: and trying to make anybals believe I'm doing anything magical.
Speaker 4: It's a lot of us persistence and patience.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So this setup you've got that you're going to
Speaker 2: go mow the trail to and throw the stand up there?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 2: Can you break down that spot? Why is that the
Speaker 2: spot you think you can get them killed? How's that
Speaker 2: going to work?
Speaker 4: This is a pretty this piece of wood, it's a
Speaker 4: pretty square woods. It's got a creek that runs through it.
Speaker 4: And what he does is he stays on the north
Speaker 4: side of the creek. Almost well, every time I've seen
Speaker 4: him do what he does to go to his bed.
Speaker 4: He's on the north side of the creek. It's a
Speaker 4: jungled mess. There was a tornado went through this woods
Speaker 4: years ago and there was a bunch of heade trees
Speaker 4: on that side of the creek, and they are a
Speaker 4: jungled mess. You can't and there's no really no good
Speaker 4: place to even hang a stand in there. It's such
Speaker 4: a mess. But he gets in there and he's bedding
Speaker 4: along the he's got an old pasture. Well there's cattle
Speaker 4: in the pasture, but he puts his back to that
Speaker 4: pasture and he's laying was basically his back on the fence.
Speaker 4: And you can't you can't really access it except across
Speaker 4: the pastures. There's no way to get through the woods
Speaker 4: to it. You got to come across the pasture. And
Speaker 4: I'll just I'll have to wait till there's an east wind,
Speaker 4: or I'll probably I'll probably try to cheat it a
Speaker 4: little with the southeast, because I saw what he did
Speaker 4: both times last year when he worried betted he in
Speaker 4: there with the southeast wind, So that's probably what I'll
Speaker 4: wait on. And when I get the right conditions, I'd
Speaker 4: like to try to get in there before you know,
Speaker 4: the first part of November, before they really started rolle
Speaker 4: running around a lot. I try to like to try
Speaker 4: to get in everybody. He's pretty consistent staying there. But
Speaker 4: this this farm actually waned before I bought it. There
Speaker 4: was an older fellow that owned it, and he actually
Speaker 4: mowed a trail around the inside rim of that woods
Speaker 4: and it was because he cut firewood, so it gave
Speaker 4: him access. It's just like a it looks like a
Speaker 4: just a mode trail around this inside perimeter. And he
Speaker 4: did it so he could access for firewood. Well he had.
Speaker 4: He started letting me hunt years ago, and I noticed
Speaker 4: the deer paid no attention to him. I could be
Speaker 4: in there in a tree stand and deer paid no
Speaker 4: attention to him when he'd come around there on his
Speaker 4: John dear side beside. So I bought the farm I
Speaker 4: think I was seventeen years ago, and I've continued to
Speaker 4: mow that trail for a couple of reasons. I think
Speaker 4: it gives deer, especially bucks, they get that they know
Speaker 4: where the danger zone is and they know where they're safe,
Speaker 4: and they can use that little buffer area that I mow.
Speaker 4: They use it as well. I would just it's just
Speaker 4: a spot that they know, Hey, this is I can
Speaker 4: get from here to here. I feel safe once I
Speaker 4: cross this line. I know I may be in danger.
Speaker 4: But it also gives me access. That's the big thing.
Speaker 4: I've got access in and out of there. I use
Speaker 4: an electric bike and it gives me access. I'll go
Speaker 4: in and mow it short. I'll pick up all the sticks,
Speaker 4: you know, get all the brush out of the way.
Speaker 4: But then I can access it myself. But for this
Speaker 4: particular deer, it's probably going to be coming across the pasture.
Speaker 4: I'm probably not gonna be using this mode trail. But
Speaker 4: I've kept the mode trail up, kept it mode just
Speaker 4: because of it had been done for years. And I
Speaker 4: noticed the deer they'll walk the trail, but the bucks
Speaker 4: normally stay inside it doze. And fawns seem like they'll
Speaker 4: walk the they'll walk that trail, but bucks seem to
Speaker 4: want to stay on the inside of it. They don't
Speaker 4: want to see all the younger ones. You know, they'll
Speaker 4: get to it but walk it. But for the most part,
Speaker 4: the mature bucks want to stay on the inside of
Speaker 4: that trail. And it's kind of something I'd noticed years ago,
Speaker 4: and it's just it's the only farm I've got that's
Speaker 4: got that mode trail on it. It's not something I
Speaker 4: typically do, but it was just there, and I noticed
Speaker 4: that they like to mature bucks like to stay inside,
Speaker 4: so it does kind of shorten the woods down for
Speaker 4: me as far as hunting. But no, I this buck's
Speaker 4: just going to I'm gonna have to wait till the
Speaker 4: corns out. It's where I can access it good. And
Speaker 4: he's he's got a couple of other bucks staying with him.
Speaker 4: You know, they'll they'll come in their bed right next
Speaker 4: to him. And it's kind of odd that I say,
Speaker 4: next to him ten fifteen yards, but they're staying right
Speaker 4: in the same spot.
Speaker 2: If it weren't for the standing corn, would you have
Speaker 2: tried to get in there after him earlier in the season,
Speaker 2: or would you wait till that late October time period?
Speaker 4: Either way, yeah, I'm probably waiting till late October regardless.
Speaker 4: I've tipped well. Of all the bucks I've killed, i've
Speaker 4: killed two three. I've killed three in October out of
Speaker 4: that whole group. So that tells you I don't live
Speaker 4: close to where I hunt. I'm an hour away, so
Speaker 4: I don't get that accet. I don't get the evenings
Speaker 4: to run out check out the beanfields, you know, an
Speaker 4: hour or so at night. I don't have that availability
Speaker 4: to me that you know guys that live close to
Speaker 4: where they hunt. It's it is handy, it's a lot handier.
Speaker 4: But I'm fifty fifty to fifty minutes to an hour
Speaker 4: from where I hunt, so I have to I have
Speaker 4: to spend some time on the road, so I don't
Speaker 4: get that. The early season thing for me is it's
Speaker 4: a it's really rolling the dice. I mean, I think
Speaker 4: you can run some deer out, you can run some
Speaker 4: deer off your property, because it's hard to beat a
Speaker 4: deer back to his bed this time of year. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's you've got to be in there way early if
Speaker 4: you think you're going to beat him to his bed,
Speaker 4: and in this heat. I'm just I guess I'm I've
Speaker 4: got the time off in November. I've always taken my
Speaker 4: time off in November, so obviously that's that's part of
Speaker 4: it too. You can only hunt when you can hunt,
Speaker 4: but I don't. I don't typically have a buck this one.
Speaker 4: This year's kind of a fluke for me because I
Speaker 4: don't typically have a buck. I can tell you right
Speaker 4: where he's bedding, I can tell you a vicinity, or
Speaker 4: I can tell you where he's coming and going from.
Speaker 4: But I'm not I'm not close enough there to actually
Speaker 4: stay on top of what he's deer always where they're
Speaker 4: staying all the time. But and it changes. You know,
Speaker 4: you get a buck that you're chasing, he gets killed, Well,
Speaker 4: you then you're starting over square one.
Speaker 2: So I heard your buddy Andrea once tell me that
Speaker 2: he hates the rut because it's so hard to get
Speaker 2: after a specific buck because they start doing crazy things.
Speaker 2: Have you had that same frustration even though that's your
Speaker 2: main hunt, or have you found it you're able to
Speaker 2: still get after a specific deer that time.
Speaker 4: Andre and I we've talked about this a lot. I've
Speaker 4: been friends with Andre since I don't even know, early nineties,
Speaker 4: and we talked yesterday.
Speaker 3: We talk a lot.
Speaker 4: I mean, I talk with him all the time. But
Speaker 4: his his method of hunting, his style is not is
Speaker 4: not my style. It just never has been. And that's
Speaker 4: why I said, there's a lot of ways to skin
Speaker 4: a cat. But I'm pretty much a terrain hunter. I mean,
Speaker 4: I so the ruts A. I mean, that's what I
Speaker 4: can't wait for when these bucks get to move in
Speaker 4: and I'm hunting train. I'll be the first to admit
Speaker 4: I don't hunt trails. I don't hunt sign Now, well,
Speaker 4: there'll be a lot of times I'll hang a stand
Speaker 4: and train won't go back to it for two or
Speaker 4: three weeks, and you go back and there's rubs and
Speaker 4: there's all kinds of signs around you. But I'm pretty
Speaker 4: well a travel corridor type hunter. I mean, it's just
Speaker 4: basically the whole way I hunt. It's all based on
Speaker 4: how the ground lays and pinch points, fingers, draws. I
Speaker 4: just that's how I hunt. And I know it's not
Speaker 4: the same for everybody obviously, But you know Andre's gotten
Speaker 4: he's gotten that perfected on that bumping dump stuff. He's
Speaker 4: got that perfected now. He and well Cody does it too.
Speaker 4: Those guys can bump stuff, get in, hang stuff, and
Speaker 4: get right back on him and kill them. And first
Speaker 4: of all, I'm not that aggressive. That's why I mentioned
Speaker 4: early on, I'm not an aggressive hunter. And you got
Speaker 4: to have some aggression to do that, that style of hunting,
Speaker 4: you just got to. And but I also had a
Speaker 4: guy tell me one time, what would it take to
Speaker 4: run you out of your bedroom? And when you think
Speaker 4: of it from my perspective, how many times would you
Speaker 4: have to have somebody run you out of your bedroom
Speaker 4: before you to actually leave? Yeah, And you know, when
Speaker 4: you think of from that perspective, I'm not sure you
Speaker 4: can run the mature buck out of his bed. But
Speaker 4: I just that's not the way I have. Not my
Speaker 4: style of hunting. I just never have been that way.
Speaker 4: I'm I'm really a lot more cautious hunter conservative. I
Speaker 4: should say, maybe not cautious, but I'm a lot more conservative.
Speaker 4: I just I just kind of let things play out.
Speaker 4: I always figure that in the end, if I know
Speaker 4: where that buck's home poor area is, I'll get him
Speaker 4: killed during the rut.
Speaker 2: So, in that kind of situation where you're after one
Speaker 2: deer and you're hunting mostly terrain and travel corridors, you
Speaker 2: know a lot of guys when they're after one specific deer,
Speaker 2: they're going to be analyzing camera photos and sign and
Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff. But in your case, where
Speaker 2: it sounds like it's more you know, travel and terrain specific,
Speaker 2: is it mostly just identifying? Okay, Well, here's the two
Speaker 2: pinch points coming in and out of his main core area,
Speaker 2: and I'm just going to volume hunt those based on
Speaker 2: wind until he eventually does come through. Or how do
Speaker 2: you do that when you're after a deer. It's not
Speaker 2: just like you're gonna shoot ten different bucks. You're after
Speaker 2: like one buck in the rut.
Speaker 4: Right, And I hang way more stands in a year
Speaker 4: than most people could imagine. That's one thing. I don't
Speaker 4: hunt a stand. I don't go to a stand over
Speaker 4: and over and over. I mean I'll hunt a stand three,
Speaker 4: four or five times in a season, and that'll be it.
Speaker 4: I do a lot of all day sits, a lot
Speaker 4: of all day sits, especially during the rut. And for me,
Speaker 4: I probably put in a lot more work or time
Speaker 4: in a tree to get a deer killed. And what
Speaker 4: some guys do because of what they're they're more aggressive,
Speaker 4: and I have to play. I just I'm playing the
Speaker 4: game of sit back and wait. You know part of
Speaker 4: that is because I like being out there part of us.
Speaker 4: In this part of Illinois, you never know what the
Speaker 4: neighbor's gonna A deer you don't even know is around
Speaker 4: may show up. So yes, I'm after I know, like
Speaker 4: I said this year, at two deer, but I'm two
Speaker 4: bucks that I know I'm after. Does that mean I
Speaker 4: may not shoot something I've never seen before. I've done
Speaker 4: it several times. Several times Buck shows up with the
Speaker 4: dough during the rut. You think where did he come from?
Speaker 4: And you can get him killed. But part of that
Speaker 4: too is the fact that he's deer that move. You know,
Speaker 4: they come from a mile away, two miles away. They
Speaker 4: aren't familiar with the dangers in that specific timber. You
Speaker 4: know they're they're coming in there and they're following the
Speaker 4: dough and what she does is what they do. So
Speaker 4: when you're in a travel corridor, you can get them
Speaker 4: killed that way. And I've killed a lot of them,
Speaker 4: I mean a lot. There's not many deer I've killed
Speaker 4: that I don't have any pictures or have never seen before.
Speaker 4: But I've got a handful that you look up here
Speaker 4: they come they where'd that deer come from? But typically
Speaker 4: I know what I'm after, and typically it's a waiting
Speaker 4: game and you're just playing cat and mouse. I'm not
Speaker 4: bumping them, I'm not hanging sets on top of their beds,
Speaker 4: but I typically try to find. Okay, I know this
Speaker 4: buck's going in this vicinity of this woods or this
Speaker 4: this this draw, how's he getting there with certain winds?
Speaker 4: And why is he traveling at the way he does
Speaker 4: with certain winds? And then I try to set up
Speaker 4: accordingly and it's I don't know, it's paid off for
Speaker 4: me through the years. And there's like I said, there's
Speaker 4: just there's several different ways to kill big deer. I mean,
Speaker 4: guys that think it's got to be done a certain way.
Speaker 4: I just kind of chuckle at because my style of
Speaker 4: hunting is no ways near what you know andres Is
Speaker 4: and and Justin those you know, Justin and Heath's heat Cisco,
Speaker 4: those guys, they do a lot of hanging hunt sets,
Speaker 4: bumping deer. I can tell you probably I can count
Speaker 4: on one hand the number of bucks I've set up
Speaker 4: on their beds and killed them. Most of mine have
Speaker 4: all been travel corridors hunting terrain.
Speaker 2: Could could you break down example of one of these
Speaker 2: terrain features that would be a dynamite set during the
Speaker 2: rut or or a trap maybe one of EA's like
Speaker 2: a real terrain type of graphic feature you would love
Speaker 2: to sit and then more of like a cover related
Speaker 2: travel corridor kind of set. What might an example of
Speaker 2: those two look like?
Speaker 4: Okay, I personally, of course, there again, it's a lot
Speaker 4: of us got to do with where I'm hunting. You
Speaker 4: know this the Midwest, I loved long draws out into
Speaker 4: eg fields, something that you can access. First of all,
Speaker 4: I typically never walk far into the woods. Most all
Speaker 4: of my set stuff is and I won't say along
Speaker 4: the edge, but I'm going to say I've I've got
Speaker 4: creek access or I've got some way to access to
Speaker 4: my stand that is not through the woods, minimally evade invasion,
Speaker 4: you know, to to what So I don't like I
Speaker 4: don't like tipping deer off that I'm there, you know,
Speaker 4: so I try to figure out how can I get here?
Speaker 4: And draws, you know, if you can get in the
Speaker 4: bottom of them, or if you can come in from
Speaker 4: the sides the bag fields. That's typically I approach all
Speaker 4: of the of those type of situations. But there again,
Speaker 4: I'm hunting, uh train and features in a draw you
Speaker 4: normally got low I don't like low ground, typically never
Speaker 4: hunt low ground myself. Thermals killers as far as spacially evenings.
Speaker 4: But you know, the thermals of a morning. You can
Speaker 4: get by with some low ground stuff, but I just
Speaker 4: I don't hunt it. I mean, i'd be the first
Speaker 4: to tell you I'm I might hunt one one piece
Speaker 4: of low ground in five years. I just don't. Ever,
Speaker 4: I've had such bad luck with thermals and the way bucks.
Speaker 4: Bucks know, they know how the thermals operate. They know
Speaker 4: how to get in and out of places, and that's
Speaker 4: the reason a lot of low ground stuff is, to me,
Speaker 4: is unhuntable. But what I'm what I'm looking for in
Speaker 4: a draw is an area that says is kind of
Speaker 4: like a flat or a flatter part that pinches down.
Speaker 4: And normally it's because of the creek or the way
Speaker 4: they draw a lace where pinches down and deer have
Speaker 4: to make a decision do I go to the bottom
Speaker 4: do I stay on top? And those are the spots
Speaker 4: I love. I love hunting draws where there's a pinch
Speaker 4: point because they typically you know a deer's gonna draw.
Speaker 4: Are gonna travel a draw basically the way the draw runs.
Speaker 4: They've got to travel at east west, north south. However
Speaker 4: the draw runs, they're gonna travel it lengthwise. So I'm
Speaker 4: looking for a pinch point. And I love a flat
Speaker 4: a flat area that butts up to a pinch point
Speaker 4: and it kind of the the flat areas kind of
Speaker 4: give them a place to uh, to stage, hang out.
Speaker 4: And then as soon as the buck shows up, it's
Speaker 4: basically during the rut, Well they got it, they're going
Speaker 4: to These deer are gonna go down the draw and
Speaker 4: normally they'll you know, you let all of those go
Speaker 4: by or the smaller bucks and next thing you know,
Speaker 4: well here comes a you know, a decent buck. But
Speaker 4: ends of draws points on draws. If you get a
Speaker 4: draw that goes out and forks, you know, you'll have
Speaker 4: like a two small one big draw forks into two
Speaker 4: smaller draws. Yeah, those areas. I like to hunt those
Speaker 4: points and I like to be on the very tips
Speaker 4: of them, the very ends of them. And it's a
Speaker 4: tough one as far as wind, because wind can swirl
Speaker 4: around those points and it'll suck it back into the draw.
Speaker 4: So you've got to be careful on those points. You
Speaker 4: got to pay a lot of times. I'll be able
Speaker 4: to hunt a point, and it's got to be a
Speaker 4: northwest wind. It can't be north, can't be west. It's
Speaker 4: got to be northwest. And something I would something I
Speaker 4: would really advise people to do. Guys get up in
Speaker 4: their stands and they hang a set, take your phone
Speaker 4: in with you, make sure your phone's with you. Sit
Speaker 4: in that tree and get a good compass app get
Speaker 4: the compass up and know exactly what dration direction you're facing.
Speaker 4: I don't know how many times. And I've got a ground.
Speaker 4: I've hunted this one farm, I've hundred for over forty years.
Speaker 4: And you can sit in that tree and you know
Speaker 4: which way's north southeast. You just know which way it is.
Speaker 4: You push your compass up and you think, man, that's
Speaker 4: a quarter turn off or or a little less you know.
Speaker 4: And so then you think, okay, well I can't use
Speaker 4: straight north. I've got to have northeast or northwest or whatever.
Speaker 4: But take a compass to your tree. And I've talked
Speaker 4: with some guys that are I mean some through the
Speaker 4: years we've got killed big deer, and everybody's pretty well,
Speaker 4: everybody's been in agreement, you know. I don't know if
Speaker 4: you know Jim Ward. Jim does a ton of deer
Speaker 4: management for buck beds and killing big deer. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: Jim and I had this conversation years ago, and he's
Speaker 4: the same way. He's like, Yeah, you go to a
Speaker 4: tree and you think, I know that's north, and you
Speaker 4: know what, you might be a little bit off and
Speaker 4: you can't hunt a north wind. You've got to have
Speaker 4: a little west or little east. Take your compass with
Speaker 4: you and your phone so you know what direction, what
Speaker 4: winds you need, because it's too late when you get
Speaker 4: there the first hunt and you're getting busted left and right.
Speaker 4: It's too late. Yeah, so now you've already boogered up
Speaker 4: a set that you had high hopes on. So but
Speaker 4: I love hunting points, draws, saddles, ridges halfway down the ridge.
Speaker 4: It's seldom in this area do I see bucks run
Speaker 4: the top of a ridge. They're a third or halfway
Speaker 4: down the ridge. They just travel the backside of it.
Speaker 4: According to the wind. Of course, you know you've got
Speaker 4: to got a north wind. They're probably going to be
Speaker 4: on the south side of the ridge. And I've just
Speaker 4: I've also got a kind of an odd thing. I'll
Speaker 4: tell you that through the years, I've noticed if you
Speaker 4: pick out the biggest tree in the woods, if you're
Speaker 4: in the woods, you're looking around, you see one of
Speaker 4: those giant white oaks or a giant giant tree of
Speaker 4: some sort. It seems like, and this is strange, people
Speaker 4: call me crazy, but I swear those huge trees attract
Speaker 4: the mature bucks. I don't know what it is, but
Speaker 4: it looks like, year after year, if I got a
Speaker 4: big tree in the woods, sure buck will go buy
Speaker 4: it every time. And I don't know what it is.
Speaker 4: You can't hunt the tree, obviously, they're too big to
Speaker 4: even put a stand in. But right I'm I'm strictly
Speaker 4: I say, ninety nine percent of the time, I'm hunting
Speaker 4: train train pinch points. And I got a buddy I've
Speaker 4: hunted with for years, and he always asked me, so,
Speaker 4: why do you want to be right here? I mean,
Speaker 4: he's asked me for years, and I get a feel,
Speaker 4: you know, it's it's kind of hard to explain sometimes,
Speaker 4: but you get a feel for where you're at and
Speaker 4: what you think a big deer is gonna do. And
Speaker 4: with a certain wind, what's he going to do? Now
Speaker 4: you'll get you're gonna get fooled. You're gonna you're gonna
Speaker 4: get in there and think you know what you're talking,
Speaker 4: you're doing, and what you're talking about, you're gonna get fooled.
Speaker 4: Deer's gonna do just the opposite. Wind's going to be
Speaker 4: at his back. He's gonna be hunt traveling thing. You
Speaker 4: can't you shake your head, think, well, how do you
Speaker 4: kill that deer the winter? He's not doing anything close
Speaker 4: to what you think he should have done. But for
Speaker 4: the most part, mature bucks are going to travel either
Speaker 4: with a cross wind or the wind in their nose.
Speaker 4: They just do. And when you get in a draw,
Speaker 4: you know, these big timbers, these big woods are hard
Speaker 4: to shut. You're hard to shut a deer down. I mean,
Speaker 4: they can go anywhere. And part of the reason I
Speaker 4: don't like to hunt big woods is because of that.
Speaker 4: I'll I'll go find something, the smaller something leads up
Speaker 4: to it a fence row, but I I don't. I
Speaker 4: just don't like the bigger timber. I like the smaller stuff.
Speaker 4: I love hunting five ten acre patches. But you got it.
Speaker 4: Details That's a big thing on these, especially on smaller timbers.
Speaker 4: You gotta you gotta pay attention to details. And you
Speaker 4: can't just go stomping in with any wind. You know,
Speaker 4: you just run the set one or two hunts, you're done,
Speaker 4: you know. But boy, if you pay attention to the
Speaker 4: details and you can get into these small area is
Speaker 4: small wood lots, uh fence rose out in the middle
Speaker 4: of nowhere. If you can get into them right win
Speaker 4: right conditions, they can be dynamite for killing mature bucks.
Speaker 2: Yes, So during the rut, I actually.
Speaker 4: Wish I was good or knew more about And I
Speaker 4: don't say no more about, but I just wish I
Speaker 4: was better at what those guys do as far as
Speaker 4: bumping big deer setting up on them, because I'm that's
Speaker 4: just not my game, never has been.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So so with your style of honey, I'll jump
Speaker 2: on him again. Yeah. The the style of hunting that
Speaker 2: you do, then, which is this terrain focus in the rut,
Speaker 2: poses a couple of interesting questions. If so much of
Speaker 2: your hunting is dependent on, you know, being on those
Speaker 2: travel corridors. There's this dilemma that I face a lot
Speaker 2: when I'm trying to figure out the right spot to
Speaker 2: sit in a good looking travel quarter, because there will
Speaker 2: be the pinch point or there there will be the saddle,
Speaker 2: there'll be that head of a draw where they're all
Speaker 2: coming around the ditch. Whatever, it is, And let's say
Speaker 2: that looks great and it's obvious, so that's the spot.
Speaker 2: But what happens when you don't have that perfect tree
Speaker 2: that's perfectly in range of that spot?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: I often will sit there and I'll be sitting there
Speaker 2: trying to pick the tree, and I'll think, well, this
Speaker 2: is the tree that gives me the best shot at
Speaker 2: the twenty yards or whatever to that little crossing or
Speaker 2: whatever it is that I'm hunting. So do you pick
Speaker 2: the tree that's in the perfect location. But let's say
Speaker 2: that tree has no good cover, and maybe there's also
Speaker 2: like a secondary trail down wind of it too, so
Speaker 2: you're risking maybe getting winded a little bit more and
Speaker 2: you're not gonna have much cover. Do you take that
Speaker 2: one still, though, because it gives you the easiest shot
Speaker 2: right to the spot. Or do you take the tree
Speaker 2: that's farther away but it has great cover and there's
Speaker 2: no way you're gonna get winded. But now you're talking, ah,
Speaker 2: you know, well he might be arranged, he might not
Speaker 2: be in ranged in that one. What would you air
Speaker 2: towards in that kind of situation?
Speaker 4: Well, I'm gonna you probably think this is too easy
Speaker 4: But what I would do in that situation is, like
Speaker 4: I talked earlier, that deer's going by a thousand trees
Speaker 4: when he walks that, or a hundred trees, whatever it
Speaker 4: is in that draw, go figure out where's a better
Speaker 4: location to cut him off. And that's typically I mean
Speaker 4: I can spend and I don't mean this, I mean
Speaker 4: hours I can spend on one setup trying to figure out. Okay,
Speaker 4: And I always tell everybody pay attention to how you
Speaker 4: walk personally, when you're walking a draw or you're walking ground,
Speaker 4: pay attention how you walk it. Humans are lazy. Mature
Speaker 4: bucks are dang sure lazy. You're gonna probably walk that
Speaker 4: similar to how mature buck walks that because they don't
Speaker 4: want to go up and down the hill five times
Speaker 4: if they don't have to. They don't want to cross
Speaker 4: the fence. They don't want to you know, these features
Speaker 4: in this ground. They want to walk the easiest way
Speaker 4: they can, but they want to walk it for darn sure,
Speaker 4: with the wind in their favor if they can. So
Speaker 4: I would on what you do the scenary you just said,
Speaker 4: I would probably say, Okay, can't hunt there, but let's
Speaker 4: go down there. Let's go where this buck come from?
Speaker 4: Where's he coming from? Let's go figure out another place
Speaker 4: that you can. You can shut him down. And like
Speaker 4: I said, I've spent hours and got I told you
Speaker 4: I got this one farm. I've hundred forty years and
Speaker 4: two years ago, this draw that I've hunted, I've killed
Speaker 4: probably a handful of one to fifty plus bucks in
Speaker 4: this one draw. Thought that the east end of this draw,
Speaker 4: I thought there's no way to get to it, no
Speaker 4: way to hunt. Just thought. I mean, I just never
Speaker 4: even really tried because I just thought it was unhunted.
Speaker 4: I thought, I'm just going to be blowing everything out
Speaker 4: of here. There's no way to get to it. So
Speaker 4: three or four years ago, I'm standing in there in
Speaker 4: February March, and I'm looking at all these rubs in
Speaker 4: this little flat and I'm thinking to myself, how can
Speaker 4: I get in here? Okay, And there's an old logging
Speaker 4: road that's been in there for I don't know, probably
Speaker 4: been there thirty years now on the other side of
Speaker 4: the draw. So now I've made up my mind. I'm
Speaker 4: gonna walk across this draw to get up to this flat.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna come up this It's it's not really a bluff,
Speaker 4: but it's a real high, real high hill. I'm gonna
Speaker 4: go straight up this hill into my tree. I'm five
Speaker 4: steps off the edge of this this flat. It's been
Speaker 4: a dynamite tree. It's just And in all those years,
Speaker 4: I thought there's no way to hunt it. Well, there's
Speaker 4: there's ways to hunt things, you kind of you know.
Speaker 4: And I think the longer you hunt a woods, the
Speaker 4: worst hunter you become, because you've had success in here, here,
Speaker 4: and here, and you keep going back to that here,
Speaker 4: here and here. Well, dear change, of course, they get
Speaker 4: you patterned as well. So I moved to stand put
Speaker 4: a hung and stand in there. And I first time
Speaker 4: I went in there had three different bucks over one
Speaker 4: forty come by me. I thought, you've got to be
Speaker 4: a kidding. I've never hunted this all these years because
Speaker 4: I thought it was unhuntable. And here we are in
Speaker 4: the rut and they're just they're just piling through here.
Speaker 4: And last year was the second year I hunted it,
Speaker 4: saying I've not killed a buck out of it, but
Speaker 4: I will kill them. I'll kill a good one on
Speaker 4: this on this spot. And I had probably I don't know,
Speaker 4: I had one day, I had eight different bucks by
Speaker 4: me hoping young none of them none of them probably
Speaker 4: were one forty. But eventually it'll pay off. But yeah,
Speaker 4: I just I look at an area and if I think, man,
Speaker 4: I can't I can't hunt here, back up, walk down
Speaker 4: the draw, go go. You know, it's the same deal
Speaker 4: that deer is going to get from point A to
Speaker 4: point B somehow. And if you think, well, this is
Speaker 4: where I want to be, you may be making a mistake.
Speaker 4: Don't be where you want to be, be where you
Speaker 4: have to be. I mean, that's that's pretty well the
Speaker 4: way I approach it. It's like, man, I'd love to
Speaker 4: be here, and you look around, no tree to huntin. Man,
Speaker 4: I'd love to be here, but you'd walk away, head
Speaker 4: down the draw one way or the other, or find it,
Speaker 4: you know, find another spot. Yeah, I know, I know
Speaker 4: that almost too simple, but it's that's just the way
Speaker 4: I approach it as far as.
Speaker 2: No, that's a great point. The other part of that equation, though,
Speaker 2: is the wind, right And you mentioned a little bit ago,
Speaker 2: how you know that there's certain things that we think
Speaker 2: a buck's going to do with the wind, and then
Speaker 2: sometimes they surprise us. But usually the buck's going to
Speaker 2: be trying to use that wind to his advantage when
Speaker 2: he's traveling, maybe with it his face or crosswind or
Speaker 2: something like that. So with that being said, a lot
Speaker 2: of folks I know, and myself included, will try to
Speaker 2: find ways to set up, you know, where you can
Speaker 2: hunt where the buck thinks he's using the wind in
Speaker 2: a favorable way for himself, but also you can get
Speaker 2: away with it right cutting the edge or cutting the
Speaker 2: corner or in some kind of way. Can you talk
Speaker 2: about how you do that in these kinds of setups,
Speaker 2: in these kinds of like draws that you're hunting, how
Speaker 2: do you typically like to hunt that? Is it with
Speaker 2: the wind going perpendicular across the draw or do you
Speaker 2: have it almost parallel but just off parallel so it's
Speaker 2: blowing either down into the valley or out into the field.
Speaker 2: How do you typically try to set up and use
Speaker 2: wind in this kind of draw scenario where we've got
Speaker 2: a narrow finger going out into a field or something,
Speaker 2: and you're hunting in there.
Speaker 4: Here it in central Illinois, We've you got about everywhere
Speaker 4: you hunt, you've got aag fields. So I'm typically letting
Speaker 4: my scent blow to the ag fields of a morning.
Speaker 4: And if I've got a situation where I think a
Speaker 4: deer's traveling maybe the edge of a morning, I'll try
Speaker 4: to set up to where the winds over the top
Speaker 4: of him. Typically in the morning setups, the bucks will
Speaker 4: walk the edges. You know, they won't walk out on
Speaker 4: the out in the middle of the field. You know
Speaker 4: where they're going to wind you. But if you can
Speaker 4: get the wind over the top of them, it's a
Speaker 4: big it's that's that's one thing I try to do.
Speaker 4: If I think, Okay, this buck may come along this edge,
Speaker 4: I'll try to get high enough that the wind's over
Speaker 4: the top of.
Speaker 2: Him, blowing out over top of him, but blowing out
Speaker 2: towards the field, so you're into the timber little ways
Speaker 2: and it's blowing above him out.
Speaker 4: Yes, into the bag fields. Yes, yep, I'm blowing my
Speaker 4: sin into the bag field, you know, fifty seventy five
Speaker 4: yards off the edge. Try to get over the top
Speaker 4: of something. Typically in a draw when you've got crosswinds,
Speaker 4: which is what you terribly have to hunt. It's hard
Speaker 4: to hunt a draw with a wind going up and
Speaker 4: down it obviously, yeah, but typically you're dealing with you're
Speaker 4: dealing with a cross wind in a draw. You've got
Speaker 4: to hunt it with a north, south, east west, depending
Speaker 4: which way the draw is running, and I'll try to
Speaker 4: set up to wear the wind. And it's another It's
Speaker 4: another good scenario is when you've got this cross wind
Speaker 4: and you've got this this creek or all that's running
Speaker 4: east west and you're gonna hunt on the say, the
Speaker 4: north side of the draw, so you're gonna want a
Speaker 4: south wind. And as that south wind comes across that
Speaker 4: low ground, a lot of times the wind will pick up,
Speaker 4: it'll lift. It's the thermals it'll lift of a morning.
Speaker 4: So it actually helps you as well, get the get
Speaker 4: the scent a little higher over the top of stuff.
Speaker 4: But I'll typically look for this spot that has a
Speaker 4: piece of the a piece of the draw that jets
Speaker 4: out into a field just and I don't it doesn't
Speaker 4: have to be five yards, you know, just along you edge,
Speaker 4: something that jets out and set up on that set
Speaker 4: up to where you're not really in the main travel
Speaker 4: area of that draw. Just get get away from and
Speaker 4: I'm in the I know, I'm When you get into
Speaker 4: some of these situations, you think, well, yeah, they're that's
Speaker 4: one of a needle in a haystack. Well, it may
Speaker 4: be you may you may walk a whole draw and think, well,
Speaker 4: there's nothing here that interests me. Does that mean you
Speaker 4: can't kill a buck in it. No, it just means
Speaker 4: it's not an ideal situation or an ideal setup. But
Speaker 4: back to your point on the on the wind, Fellip
Speaker 4: told me one time years ago, the perfect wind is
Speaker 4: one that's almost right for the deer and almost wrong
Speaker 4: for you. And when you think about that, you think,
Speaker 4: and that's that is so true. It's almost you know,
Speaker 4: you're just you're constantly playing that win game and you're
Speaker 4: constantly cutting you know, situations that are it's always a
Speaker 4: close call. I mean, it just is. But I square timber.
Speaker 4: I'll tell guys this, square timber, I like to be
Speaker 4: fifty seventy five yards off of a corner. If you've
Speaker 4: got a square corner, get fifty to seventy five yards
Speaker 4: off of the corner and hunt it with a wind
Speaker 4: that don't I don't like a quartering wind when I'm
Speaker 4: hunting a square woods on a corner, because what will
Speaker 4: typically happen is the wind will come through and it'll
Speaker 4: on that corner. That wind will suck right back into
Speaker 4: that corner. Every time. If you've got like a say
Speaker 4: you're on a north end of the woods, fifty seventy
Speaker 4: five yards from the east side, and you think, okay,
Speaker 4: I need to have a south wind here, but I
Speaker 4: could probably get by with say a southwest. Well that's
Speaker 4: that west will be enough for that wind to come
Speaker 4: out to the corner and it'll suck it right back
Speaker 4: in that corner. I don't know how many times I've
Speaker 4: seen that happen. And after you do it two or
Speaker 4: three times and you get winded to think, well, this
Speaker 4: doesn't work. Typically, I tell guys, you know, on a
Speaker 4: square woods and not not every wood's lays directly east
Speaker 4: or west, north and south. But I want to direct
Speaker 4: straight wind in my face when I'm hunting square woods,
Speaker 4: because it will suck it back in the corners. I mean,
Speaker 4: there's a lot, there's a lot of experience that goes
Speaker 4: in to wind and thermals when you're hunting. You just
Speaker 4: it's I can you know you say this like you've
Speaker 4: you've got this figured out, but I can tell you
Speaker 4: many times you that I've gotten busted, you know, thinking
Speaker 4: you had it figured out and that didn't work. Well,
Speaker 4: guess what, start over and learn. Just learn from it,
Speaker 4: you gotta. It's a a lot of experience goes into
Speaker 4: killing mature bucks. As far as you know, you learn
Speaker 4: from your bad experiences more than you do the good ones.
Speaker 4: If this works perfect, let's figure out why it works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was just going to ask, is there anything
Speaker 2: you've found that has provided you a safety net for
Speaker 2: when the wind goes wrong? Do you do you have
Speaker 2: anything control program to try to help you out in
Speaker 2: that kind of position? Do you have any cover cent,
Speaker 2: any anything that's helped you out or is it one
Speaker 2: hundred percent just got to make the wind work?
Speaker 4: You know, I'm I don't know, maybe I'm too hard
Speaker 4: headed on this, but I've got friends that use ozonics.
Speaker 4: I've got friends that use that whatever the charcoal clothing,
Speaker 4: and and every one of them will tell you, yeah,
Speaker 4: I got busted. I've got a two guys I know
Speaker 4: that used two ozonic center tree. Well, like, there got
Speaker 4: out there and you know, in the field in the evening,
Speaker 4: and there's a bunch of dos out there feeding and
Speaker 4: here comes the you know, here comes a buck. They
Speaker 4: want to shoot well, they all the field scattered and
Speaker 4: something picked them off. I'm thinking, I don't think there's
Speaker 4: any shortcuts. I don't think you're beating the deer's nose.
Speaker 4: I don't care what you do or what you try.
Speaker 4: People say, well, he was directly down wind of me.
Speaker 4: He may have been directly downwind, but that's not where
Speaker 4: your scent was going. Your scent was going somewhere else,
Speaker 4: either from the thermals, from you know, swirling winds, from
Speaker 4: the from the terrain. Something changed the way you think
Speaker 4: your your scent was going. Something was changing it before
Speaker 4: it got there. A deer doesn't just stand there with
Speaker 4: your scent blowing right to him. I mean, it's just
Speaker 4: not going to happen. So guys say, well, every directly
Speaker 4: down when they didn't smell me. Well, they may have
Speaker 4: been what you think is directly down when, but that's
Speaker 4: not that's not where your scent was actually going. Because
Speaker 4: I don't think there's anything you can do to beat
Speaker 4: the deer's nose. I just don't. I don't think you
Speaker 4: can do it. I mean, if a dog can smell
Speaker 4: stuff the way that you know, you've seen all these studies,
Speaker 4: these dogs pick up stuff it's buried. They pick up
Speaker 4: all this scent and a deers knows what a thousand
Speaker 4: times better than a human's or something, and it's what.
Speaker 4: I don't think you can beat it. I just think
Speaker 4: you're going to have trial and error. Certain places you
Speaker 4: think you can hunt. You it works in certain places
Speaker 4: you think you can hunt, it's not going to work,
Speaker 4: but it's experience is huge. In the woods on that
Speaker 4: thermals and wind.
Speaker 2: You mentioned trying to sometimes blow your wind over top
Speaker 2: of him to do that, Are you trying to get
Speaker 2: to a certain height in the tree usually to be
Speaker 2: able to get away with that sometimes? If so, what's
Speaker 2: that height you like to try to get up at.
Speaker 4: I have hunted, and I've hunted from six feet off
Speaker 4: the ground to twenty five twenty seven feet seldom get
Speaker 4: over twenty to twenty two feet normally is and I'm
Speaker 4: talking actual measured feet. Guys say they hunt thirty feet
Speaker 4: and I look at the tree and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 4: you're about twenty feet, you know, but actual measured twenty
Speaker 4: to twenty two feet is plenty high enough if you're
Speaker 4: on the edge of a field to get the scent
Speaker 4: over the top of them. I shot a buck last year.
Speaker 4: The buck I killed last year sent right over the
Speaker 4: top of him. He walked the edge and sam sort
Speaker 4: of the top of him. But it was a spot
Speaker 4: that I've hunded for years. I knew, I'm pretty well
Speaker 4: knew that. You know, I'd get by with it. But
Speaker 4: twenty feet, you know, twenty feet is pretty high.
Speaker 2: Yeah, can you can you break down that location you
Speaker 2: killed that buck at last year? So it sounds like
Speaker 2: you're in the edge of some kind of field. But
Speaker 2: why was that buck there? How did you set up
Speaker 2: on that and why did he come through the way
Speaker 2: he thought he would?
Speaker 5: This?
Speaker 4: And this is another case if I when I told
Speaker 4: you earlier this buck, no, I have no past knowledge
Speaker 4: of this deer. I didn't even know he existed. It's
Speaker 4: a small wood lot, it might be fifteen acres total,
Speaker 4: and it's a square It is a square corner where
Speaker 4: I'm hunting, and I'm about I'm going to say on
Speaker 4: this one, I'm probably seventy five yards south of the
Speaker 4: north corner, on the east side of the woods. And
Speaker 4: these bucks. Of course, I've hundred for years, hundred since
Speaker 4: I was in high school, so I've kind of got
Speaker 4: the you know, you got a pretty good knowledge of
Speaker 4: the woods. But these bucks like to take this corner.
Speaker 4: They like to make a loop in this corner. They
Speaker 4: don't go clear into the corner. They want to make
Speaker 4: a loop. They don't square it off. They'll round off corners.
Speaker 4: So as they round off these corners. You know, that's
Speaker 4: the reason I say, don't get on, don't stay on
Speaker 4: the corners. You got to get off seventy five yards
Speaker 4: off of the corner. Because a buck won't go to
Speaker 4: the corner and turn left and right, makes square corners.
Speaker 4: They round off corners. And he was in there by himself.
Speaker 4: I don't know. It was ten, ten fifteen in the morning.
Speaker 4: I look up and here he comes walking making his
Speaker 4: loop through the woods. And it's during the rud It's
Speaker 4: the sixteenth, seventeenth of November, and he's out cruising. You know,
Speaker 4: he's lost. He's turned his last dough loose, and he's
Speaker 4: out looking for another dough. And he rounds the corner
Speaker 4: and comes walking right to me. I mean he's oh,
Speaker 4: you can see in the video of it. He gets
Speaker 4: within I must say, twenty yards of me facing me,
Speaker 4: coming right. I mean he's coming right at man it's
Speaker 4: not a very good situation. And he cuts for a
Speaker 4: doe had walked through that morning. He cuts a track,
Speaker 4: he turns broadside. I can't even shoot him. Same thing
Speaker 4: walks and he goes to the outside of the woods.
Speaker 4: And as soon as he goes the outside, he turns
Speaker 4: and walks right down the outside edge. But there's not
Speaker 4: if you if if I took you in that woods
Speaker 4: and you saw the sign in that woods where I'm
Speaker 4: sitting is you would never you would never sit there.
Speaker 4: But experience, you know, knowing the woods tells you know
Speaker 4: you you can learn a lot if you just pay
Speaker 4: attention and carry it over year to year. How did
Speaker 4: it buck? How I saw mature buck in hear whatever
Speaker 4: he was, how did he walk the woods? How did
Speaker 4: he cover it? What was the wind? And keep just
Speaker 4: keep the keep that memory bank, and just keep keep
Speaker 4: remembering that stuff that hey, this is how he traveled
Speaker 4: this woods. Does it make sense? It may not make
Speaker 4: sense to you. You may think, well, it's crazy. Guess what.
Speaker 4: The next year you set up in there where you're
Speaker 4: going to kill that first buck. Here comes the next
Speaker 4: one the next year and he's doing to do the
Speaker 4: same thing. And you think why is he doing this
Speaker 4: or why do they do this? But I've been pretty
Speaker 4: pretty successful being a conservative hunter, so that's you know,
Speaker 4: guys do what works for them. Yeah, And I've just
Speaker 4: been successful being conservative and laying back and letting things
Speaker 4: play out more so than being aggressive. So there is
Speaker 4: times I killed deer that I don't know anything about.
Speaker 4: But for the most.
Speaker 2: Part, but that approach, does or do trial cameras factor
Speaker 2: in at all for you? I mean, it seems like
Speaker 2: you're when you're depending on these train features. It's not
Speaker 2: like you're chasing a deer all over the place. You're
Speaker 2: just waiting for that deer to come through the pipe? Right?
Speaker 2: Do you lean much on cameras or not so much?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I do. I use the cameras strictly for inventory. Okay,
Speaker 4: you know, once you and I got a bunch of
Speaker 4: cell cameras and I run probably too many of them,
Speaker 4: and there's a lot of us, so I don't have
Speaker 4: to go check them, so there's no intrusion. You know,
Speaker 4: you just hang a camera and you don't go back
Speaker 4: till the batteries are dead. But and part of it's
Speaker 4: because I'm an hour away from where I hunt. But
Speaker 4: I use a lot of my camera stuff is strictly
Speaker 4: for inventory. Is there a buck on this farm that
Speaker 4: I want to chase? Some years there's not, And don't
Speaker 4: waste your time. Now. Do cameras tell the whole story? No,
Speaker 4: not at all, not at all. I mean I had
Speaker 4: I had two cell cameras, and this's what I'm telling
Speaker 4: you about. This buck never been on them. So no
Speaker 4: deer can get mature bucks specially can get by cell
Speaker 4: cameras or any camera. And you never they've walked ten
Speaker 4: yards behind the tree or whatever. You don't even know
Speaker 4: they're around. But community scrapes, especially long edges, I love
Speaker 4: those For cell cameras. It just gives you an inventory
Speaker 4: of what's there, and then I make my decisions on
Speaker 4: how am I going to hunt this piece. If I
Speaker 4: know there's a kill a buck I want to kill,
Speaker 4: then I just you know, part of it. And I
Speaker 4: get and I know the guy is going to say, well,
Speaker 4: you know what, I don't have unlimited acreage to just
Speaker 4: to hunt every year, and I get that. I'm fortunate.
Speaker 4: I've got half a dozen different farms that I hunt,
Speaker 4: so I can bounce around. If you don't have anything
Speaker 4: to kill go to a different farm, you know, find hunt,
Speaker 4: hunt where you've got something you want to shoot and there. Again,
Speaker 4: that sounds simple and easy, but don't waste your time
Speaker 4: somewhere that there's not something you want to shoot. But yes,
Speaker 4: I use cell cameras, I use I use a lot
Speaker 4: of them, and and I I just use it for inventory,
Speaker 4: you know, to so I just so I know what
Speaker 4: farm I to avoid or what farm I want to hunt.
Speaker 2: Yees. So if you get a picture of the buck
Speaker 2: you're after, or one of the bucks you're after, you know,
Speaker 2: showing up Dave yesterday, let's say, will you ever chase
Speaker 2: that picture? Will you ever say? All right, well he
Speaker 2: was in that funnel yesterday, I should go spend some
Speaker 2: time there or are you too late at that point?
Speaker 2: And it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 4: Well, see, that's the problem with the way I hunt.
Speaker 4: That is one drawback is typically I'm hunting the rut.
Speaker 4: So just because you saw him there yesterday at ten
Speaker 4: o'clock in the morning, no, will I go set up
Speaker 4: there to the next day at ten o'clock in the
Speaker 4: morning to try to kill that specific Now Number one,
Speaker 4: if the wind's right, I might go in there the
Speaker 4: next day but typically you're chasing your tail at that point.
Speaker 4: And that's the reason Andre doesn't. You know, these guys
Speaker 4: that are trying to kill a specific buck on their bed,
Speaker 4: that's the reason they don't like. It's because there's no
Speaker 4: consistency to what that buck's doing. But that's what I'm
Speaker 4: banking on, is the inconsistent movement of mature deer. I'm
Speaker 4: banking on, you know, that buck's going to come through
Speaker 4: the certain corridor that I'm hunting, or the set up
Speaker 4: that I'm hunting. I'm banking on if I'm there for
Speaker 4: two days, I'm banking on he's coming through there at
Speaker 4: some point. You know, if I sit all day for
Speaker 4: two days during the ret he's coming through unless he's
Speaker 4: you know, unless he's pinned down with another dough or something.
Speaker 4: But I'm banking on if he's moving, he's coming through here.
Speaker 4: It doesn't always, it doesn't always pan out, but you're
Speaker 4: only looking for you know, in a year's time, you're
Speaker 4: only looking for two times. You got to be in
Speaker 4: the right spot, yeah, and things have got to go right,
Speaker 4: of course, you know, you still have to make the shot.
Speaker 4: But for the most part, I'm banking on that deer's
Speaker 4: coming through here when he's out cruising, he's coming through
Speaker 4: here at some point. You know, in a couple of days,
Speaker 4: I'll get him killed. But doesn't always work, But need
Speaker 4: to setting up on the deads.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Is that usually what you do when it comes
Speaker 2: to assuming the wind works when you're hunting these train
Speaker 2: features where you are depending on you know he's going
Speaker 2: to come through eventually. Do you usually try to do
Speaker 2: two days at a time to give that window of
Speaker 2: opportunity or three days at a time. Is there a
Speaker 2: typical number of or number of hours or days where
Speaker 2: you will sit a great location like that, assuming the
Speaker 2: winds are.
Speaker 4: Right, Assuming the wind's right, you don't get it, you know,
Speaker 4: if the wind doesn't change for a day or two,
Speaker 4: which sometimes that's the way it is around you, we
Speaker 4: might get four or five days in a row the
Speaker 4: same wind. But I don't typically hunt more than two
Speaker 4: days in one spot. But my first day, normally, if
Speaker 4: I go to a spot, they'll tell me a lot
Speaker 4: of whether I'm coming back the next day or not.
Speaker 4: If I go to a spot like that. And let's
Speaker 4: say I go there and I sit all day and
Speaker 4: I don't see hardly anything, and I know, I know
Speaker 4: during the rut it's a dynamite spot. I've been there before,
Speaker 4: I've seen them come through here. You know it's I'm
Speaker 4: going back the next day because I know the odds
Speaker 4: are in my favor. It's going to pay off at
Speaker 4: some point. And if you don't see anything one day,
Speaker 4: you can about bet the deer just weren't on that
Speaker 4: part of the farm. Uh, you're the next day they'll
Speaker 4: you'll probably you'll probably have a better day. But I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't like to hunt a spot more than two
Speaker 4: days in a row. I'm normally bouncing, bouncing around, okay,
Speaker 4: and I normally have I'll have normally twenty five sets hanging.
Speaker 4: By the time the rut gets here, I'll have twenty
Speaker 4: five stands out, twenty two, twenty three, twenty five, somewhere
Speaker 4: in that range most every year. And and then if
Speaker 4: you know, you get something where you're chasing a buck
Speaker 4: that you don't have any sets as you think you
Speaker 4: can kill him. It's hanging hunt, climbing stand or hanging hunt.
Speaker 4: You know, I don't. I don't mind doing it. If
Speaker 4: I'm after a certain buck in a certain area and
Speaker 4: I think I can't get him killed out of all
Speaker 4: my presets, but I I do typically hunt presets stands.
Speaker 2: So so back to kind of that decision of which
Speaker 2: of those places to hunt. Yeah, I know we've talked
Speaker 2: about like there'll be a buck here after you kind
Speaker 2: of figure out where his core is. So let's say
Speaker 2: like this buck that you know about this year, he's
Speaker 2: in this spot by that fence. I imagine then there might
Speaker 2: be a number of different terrain features or travel corridors
Speaker 2: that maybe extend out from there. So I don't know,
Speaker 2: I obviously don't know the specifics, but let's just say
Speaker 2: there's like two draws and then there's like two other
Speaker 2: travel corridors. So maybe we'll say there's like four different
Speaker 2: places where maybe his movement might pinch down eventually at
Speaker 2: some point where you could catch him. And you're thinking
Speaker 2: on any the night before the hunt or the morning
Speaker 2: of the hunt, and you're making the decision of, Okay,
Speaker 2: where should I hunt today? Is it solely based on
Speaker 2: what's the wind and then a hunch based on history
Speaker 2: or are you ever doing any other level of scouting
Speaker 2: or anything else is gonna help you choose where you're
Speaker 2: gonna hunt on that given day. Maybe the better way
Speaker 2: to phrase this is just what are the variables going
Speaker 2: through your head when you're trying to pick? Okay, which
Speaker 2: of these corridors? Which of these features? Do I hunt
Speaker 2: tomorrow morning?
Speaker 4: So I'm able to bounce around. Like I said, I
Speaker 4: got enough stand home normally that I can bounce around,
Speaker 4: and it's you're right, it's my My decision is going
Speaker 4: to be one hundred percent based on the wind. I
Speaker 4: look at the wind projections for the next day on
Speaker 4: an app on my phone. Then I started going through
Speaker 4: my mind. Okay, I've got this, this and this stand
Speaker 4: to hunt with this wind? Have I been there yet
Speaker 4: this year? Is there a buck there I want to shoot?
Speaker 4: And if I've not been there, I'm going. I mean
Speaker 4: I like to hit. I like to hit every stand
Speaker 4: at least once, you know, during the rut and see
Speaker 4: what see if I'm right or wrong on m my
Speaker 4: hunch on And there's some stands I never hunt, I'll
Speaker 4: hang them. I never hunt them. But uh yeah, my
Speaker 4: decision making is one hundred percent based on wind where
Speaker 4: I'm going to go the next day, And not very
Speaker 4: often do I get up of a morning and change
Speaker 4: my plan from the night before. Now, if the wind's changed,
Speaker 4: is not quite what it was supposed to be or
Speaker 4: something like that, I might. I might change, but not
Speaker 4: very often. If I make a decision, I'm going to
Speaker 4: go here, there, whatever. And there's times I'll think, dang,
Speaker 4: I haven't hunted that's stand I forgot, that's that's perfect
Speaker 4: for this wind. I might go to it. But normally
Speaker 4: I make a game plan the night before and that's
Speaker 4: where I'm going, and it's it's all based on wind.
Speaker 4: Have I been there? You know? Is there is there
Speaker 4: a reason to go? That's your first thing is there's
Speaker 4: no reason to go there, don't go? But I do.
Speaker 4: I do most all my hunting based on wind. What
Speaker 4: stands I'm going to be in it is going to
Speaker 4: be based on what the wind's going to be.
Speaker 2: Do you usually stick in these spots? I know you
Speaker 2: say you do all day sits a lot, But are
Speaker 2: are those all day sits in the exact same location
Speaker 2: through the entire day or do you ever switch midday
Speaker 2: or in the afternoon to a different evening focus spot
Speaker 2: or can these work the entire day?
Speaker 4: There are some locations that that I hunt that are
Speaker 4: terrible morning or afternoon. You know, you think, okay, well
Speaker 4: this is a great spot in the morning, it's terrible
Speaker 4: in the evening. It could be because you can't get
Speaker 4: out of there. You know, it could be a location
Speaker 4: that the now the deer are going to be in
Speaker 4: the field. They're all going to wind you once they
Speaker 4: get out there. And I do move some, but typically
Speaker 4: if I'm hunting pinch points, I'm you know, you've got
Speaker 4: betting areas on some part of either one end or
Speaker 4: the other of what you're hunting. You've got reason for
Speaker 4: bucks to be either coming by going to betting areas
Speaker 4: or coming out of betting areas in the evening. So
Speaker 4: I've got I've got several places that i can hunt
Speaker 4: an entire day and never move. And it's all because
Speaker 4: of where betting areas are and how they're coming. Either
Speaker 4: they're going to them in the morning or they're coming
Speaker 4: out of them in the evening, so you're able to
Speaker 4: catch them either direction. But there are some places as
Speaker 4: you can't. You can't sit there in the evening, and
Speaker 4: because you know, if it's wind blowing out in the
Speaker 4: agfield and that's where they're going out to feed, you know,
Speaker 4: all you're doing is educating deer in the evening. Then
Speaker 4: I then I'll move midday, I'll get out out of there.
Speaker 4: But I'll tell you something else that's kind of strange
Speaker 4: for me personally, is all the bucks I've killed, I
Speaker 4: would say, and I'm not being I'm telling you a
Speaker 4: truth here. This isn't I've killed probably five or less
Speaker 4: in the evenings. So it's got to do with the
Speaker 4: way I'm hunting. And I for me to put a
Speaker 4: finger on why, I can't tell you that because I've
Speaker 4: thought about it, I've talked about it with and I
Speaker 4: got guys that despise hunting mornings, and I would give
Speaker 4: up three evenings to hunt one morning. But it's just
Speaker 4: it's got to do with my style of hunting, obviously,
Speaker 4: because I'm killing most of them, all my deer in
Speaker 4: the mornings. Now, I've killed some midday, I've killed some
Speaker 4: ten o'clock in the morning. But the biggest buck ever
Speaker 4: killed was in the evening. So it's not that I
Speaker 4: haven't killed good ones in the evening. But I I
Speaker 4: think I could probably count on one hand out of
Speaker 4: all the deer I've killed that have been killed in
Speaker 4: the evening. Almost everything's mornings. So that's got to do
Speaker 4: with my style obviously.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this style. As I'm hearing you and as
Speaker 2: we've talked, I feel like I'm starting to get a
Speaker 2: more well rounded picture of your approach here. You're very
Speaker 2: rut ish focused. You're very focused on catching these bucks
Speaker 2: once they get to traveling, as they're cruising their territory
Speaker 2: and they're checking dose and they're getting after it in
Speaker 2: late October all the way through November. And so to
Speaker 2: do that, you're in these pinch points or in these
Speaker 2: terrain features where deer movement gets concentrated using the wind
Speaker 2: the right kind of way. I'm starting to get a
Speaker 2: good picture here. But I'm curious if you were a professor,
Speaker 2: you were teaching a class on this, and you were
Speaker 2: standing up in front of your class today it's the
Speaker 2: end of class, and you want to make sure that
Speaker 2: someone who's listened to you today would remember three things
Speaker 2: like the three rules of hunting the Brad Davis way.
Speaker 2: What would those three things be that you'd want folks
Speaker 2: to walk away with today at the end of your class?
Speaker 2: Could you think of those three most important takeaways either
Speaker 2: when it comes to you know, choosing the train or
Speaker 2: stand sites or any of the things we've talked about,
Speaker 2: or something else entirely. What would those top three things be.
Speaker 4: One one thing I've not even touched on that I
Speaker 4: think is huge that seldom gets talked about. I mean
Speaker 4: I could do a whole I could do an hour
Speaker 4: talking with people on how to approach your stand, getting in,
Speaker 4: getting out. Nobody hardly talks about it. But I think
Speaker 4: it's one of the major reasons guys run a set.
Speaker 4: They either they're tripping through. You know, there's always almost
Speaker 4: always a way that you can get to a stand
Speaker 4: with minimal disturbance. And that's one reason, not all the
Speaker 4: whole thing, but that's one reason. I love my electric bike,
Speaker 4: and I just I've only been using it. I think
Speaker 4: this will be my fourth or fifth year using electric bike.
Speaker 4: But I always hated walking in because deer know the
Speaker 4: cadence of a person walking. They know. I mean they
Speaker 4: can you can have deer one hundred yards from you
Speaker 4: in the woods take off running. You hear them running
Speaker 4: into dry leaves because they know a person's coming. They
Speaker 4: haven't figured out yet, now will they. I suppose as
Speaker 4: more guys use bikes or they get used to it,
Speaker 4: they may figure out there's danger with a bicycle, but
Speaker 4: you can drive up to deer forty fifty yards away
Speaker 4: on a bicycle because there's no human foot cadence to
Speaker 4: it that they know. But getting in and getting out
Speaker 4: is I mean. I try to find depressions, creaks, low ground,
Speaker 4: anything that gets me an advantage, and a lot of
Speaker 4: times it's extra work. And that's the reason a lot
Speaker 4: of guys don't do it. A lot of times that
Speaker 4: you've got to go around the long way you got
Speaker 4: to you gotta cross something you don't want to cross. Whatever.
Speaker 4: But when I hang a set, I look for the
Speaker 4: best advantage point for me to get to it with
Speaker 4: the least disturbance. And we've not even talked about it,
Speaker 4: but there's there was an old barn that was on
Speaker 4: one of my farms I used to hunt. I would
Speaker 4: actually walk through that old barn and it was falling in,
Speaker 4: but I would walk through it because the the dirt
Speaker 4: floor in the barn, well, you know what, old dirt,
Speaker 4: pulverized dirt. It was so quiet, it was like walking
Speaker 4: on sand. You could walk through it. And I was
Speaker 4: ten yards from that corner of that barn, I just
Speaker 4: pop up in my tree and I made no noise,
Speaker 4: But getting in and getting out is huge to me.
Speaker 4: I just sink too many deer figure out, hey this
Speaker 4: guy this he's walking in this direction. I mean, they
Speaker 4: cut your track, they know there's something up, They track
Speaker 4: you to your tree. You know, you see deer do
Speaker 4: stuff when you're in the tree, But when you leave,
Speaker 4: they're doing the same thing. When you leave they cut
Speaker 4: your track, they're still tracking it to the tree. They're
Speaker 4: still smelling your steps, ear sticks or whatever. But I
Speaker 4: just think getting to your tree, wind in your face
Speaker 4: and getting there undetected is it's just huge. I think
Speaker 4: at the least amount of disturbance you have with deer
Speaker 4: figuring out, hey, somebody's hunting me or somebody's here, I
Speaker 4: think that's big. Nobody's hardly ever. I mean, you can
Speaker 4: do hours and hours and nobody talks about getting in
Speaker 4: and out of your set. How do you get to it,
Speaker 4: How do you get out of it? How do you
Speaker 4: get out of it at dark? When you know deer
Speaker 4: out in the field is if you've got a way
Speaker 4: to get out of there without running all the deer off,
Speaker 4: if you have to wade through them to get out
Speaker 4: and if you do, you probably need to figure out
Speaker 4: a different way to get out or not hunt it
Speaker 4: in the evenings. That's one thing that I think guys
Speaker 4: should really pay attention to. And if you've got to
Speaker 4: walk in out extra mile, you'll be glad you did.
Speaker 4: If you kill a good you know, if you kill
Speaker 4: a ma at your buck and you've had to walk
Speaker 4: an extra mile at the end of the day, you'll
Speaker 4: be thrilled or the And I think I don't mean
Speaker 4: this to sound bad, but there's a lot of guys
Speaker 4: are just lazy. And I don't mean that as in
Speaker 4: in general terms. They're lazy. They hunt lazy. They think, man,
Speaker 4: I can ride my four wheeler up here. I can
Speaker 4: you know, I can drive my truck and park the
Speaker 4: truck right here and I won't have to walk as far.
Speaker 4: It's you're only cheating yourself. You know, you're you're the
Speaker 4: one that's going to be paying the paying for it
Speaker 4: because it's just going to run a set or guys say, well, dear,
Speaker 4: don't pay attention four whiders, Dear, don't pay attention to
Speaker 4: this or that. Yes, they do sit in a tree
Speaker 4: in the dark and watch somebody, you know, the farmer
Speaker 4: next door, take his four wheter out to his tree.
Speaker 4: You got deer blowing carrying on. He can't hear it
Speaker 4: four wheels running, he's driving to his tree stand. I
Speaker 4: just think getting in and getting out out undetected is
Speaker 4: a big, big thing. That would be one thing I
Speaker 4: would tell, especially new hunters, you know, guys that are
Speaker 4: just getting into it. That's that's one thing. The other
Speaker 4: thing I would I always say is, you know, it's
Speaker 4: a long learning curve. And I'm not even I mean,
Speaker 4: I been doing this for a lot of years, but
Speaker 4: I still learn stuff every year. Wind and thermals. It's just,
Speaker 4: you know, lay aground is changes everything. When you think
Speaker 4: you got something figured out, the ground lays a little
Speaker 4: different than you figure and it does something different in
Speaker 4: this spot than it did in that spot. But the
Speaker 4: wind is it's huge. But if I had to tell
Speaker 4: some young hunter the best thing to do, like just
Speaker 4: starting out, I would tell them to stay back, spend
Speaker 4: more time watching an area before they just dive into it.
Speaker 4: Hunt from a perimeter spot that you're not doing any damage.
Speaker 4: Hunt two or three evenings from that spot, and watch
Speaker 4: what the deer doing, how are they traveling that draw,
Speaker 4: how are they traveling that woods? And where are they
Speaker 4: coming out of the woods? You know, where are they
Speaker 4: going into it? Just pay attention and then make a move.
Speaker 4: It's easier to not mess up a spot staying back
Speaker 4: and watching than it is to just dive in. Some
Speaker 4: guys just want to dive in right off the bat,
Speaker 4: and of course that's never been my approach, but some
Speaker 4: guys are successful with it. Some guys can can dive
Speaker 4: in and and they've got it, They've got that part
Speaker 4: figured out. I never have been able to. That's just
Speaker 4: not the way I kind of approach it. I just
Speaker 4: always like to lay back and watch and see what's
Speaker 4: going to happen, and then make a move and try
Speaker 4: to set something that hey, I know I can get
Speaker 4: there of a morning, or I can get there in
Speaker 4: the evening. I can be there they don't know I'm there.
Speaker 4: And that's that's probably the three things that I think
Speaker 4: guys making mistakes is diving in and not really knowing
Speaker 4: for sure, they're just it's a crapshoot. Some guys don't
Speaker 4: have a lot of time to hunt. That's the you know,
Speaker 4: when you when you spend six weeks a year can
Speaker 4: hunt every day. It's a lot different than the guy
Speaker 4: that's got one week off from his job to hunt.
Speaker 4: You know, he can't sit back two or three evenings
Speaker 4: or two or three mornings and see what's going to happen.
Speaker 4: So and I understand that part, but guys need to
Speaker 4: pay attention and remember what they what they see a deer,
Speaker 4: a mature buck do what they see him do. He
Speaker 4: didn't just do it once. He did it for a reason.
Speaker 4: And even if you don't see him move through that
Speaker 4: piece of woods again, the next mature buck's probably going
Speaker 4: to move through it very similar. They just have a
Speaker 4: certain way they want to move through a block of
Speaker 4: woods or a piece of timber or all whatever. There's
Speaker 4: certain ways they want to move through it with the
Speaker 4: wind in their in their favor, and and you know
Speaker 4: you always have that outlier. Well, I just got this buck.
Speaker 4: Was he came through here with the wind of his bike. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm sure he did. He had to get from there
Speaker 4: to there, and that's the only way he was going
Speaker 4: to get there that day. Yeah. But I just I
Speaker 4: think if you're you're three things that you're talking about,
Speaker 4: I think the getting in and getting out with the
Speaker 4: least disturbance, at least amount of cent on the ground.
Speaker 4: Pay attention to the wind, and pay attention to what deer.
Speaker 4: And I don't mean deer in general, I mean mature deer.
Speaker 4: When you see three, four or five year old deer,
Speaker 4: dou bucks do something, pay attention to it. They did it,
Speaker 4: they did it for a reason, and it may not
Speaker 4: pay off this year, may not pay off next year.
Speaker 4: But if you've got a piece of ground that you
Speaker 4: can hunt three years from now, you may kill a
Speaker 4: buck exactly doing the exact same thing that buck did
Speaker 4: that you saw, you know, two three seasons before. Because
Speaker 4: they go through, they travel, They travel a piece of timber,
Speaker 4: piece of ground the scene for a reason. So pay attention,
Speaker 4: you know, just don't it's not just happenstance that they
Speaker 4: do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and.
Speaker 4: Probably not giving you I've probably not given you near
Speaker 4: the details stuff you want to hear. But that's how
Speaker 4: I approach you. I mean, I'm pretty conservative. I I
Speaker 4: just I And I also think there's a lot of
Speaker 4: guys overthink stuff. You know, it's it's not rocket science.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of trees. Like I told you, earliers,
Speaker 4: you just think about how many trees in a day's time.
Speaker 4: I mature buck could be killed out of. I don't
Speaker 4: care what the wind is. There's still trees every day
Speaker 4: that you could kill mature buck out of. You just
Speaker 4: gotta have You got to have one around. I mean
Speaker 4: that's if you don't have one around, you can't kill it.
Speaker 4: You can't kill what's not there. Yeah, that's you know,
Speaker 4: it's easy to say, but it's just the truth. And
Speaker 4: living here in central Illinois typically.
Speaker 2: Have Yeah, you make this great point though, about how
Speaker 2: there's so many different trees that they walk by that
Speaker 2: you could be sitting in. It's it's almost you can
Speaker 2: get stuck in this analysis paralysis when you do overthink
Speaker 2: things and you think, oh gosh, I have to pick
Speaker 2: the single one tree that it'll work from. And you
Speaker 2: make this great point that that's not necessarily the case.
Speaker 2: You do enough of the right things, and you put
Speaker 2: in your time and you're smart about it, with the
Speaker 2: right access, you know it'll it can come together. So
Speaker 2: that I think almost relieves a certain burden off of
Speaker 2: you mentally, so you can kind of go into the
Speaker 2: hunt maybe a little bit. I don't know if this
Speaker 2: is the right word, but almost lighter. When you're not
Speaker 2: stressing so much about having to have that one perfect tree,
Speaker 2: you go in with it a little bit. I don't
Speaker 2: want to say loose, and you don't want to be
Speaker 2: lacks of daisical. But just knowing that, hey, you don't
Speaker 2: have to have this two thousand percent the perfect tree
Speaker 2: because there's all these other options and you can it
Speaker 2: can come together when you do these three, four or
Speaker 2: five core things right. So that's a great takeaway from
Speaker 2: this today, Brad. I appreciate you sharing this.
Speaker 4: I know that one other thing I was going to
Speaker 4: tell you, and you know a lot of guys, everybody
Speaker 4: wants to be way back. Everybody wants to go deep.
Speaker 4: Everybody wants to well, guess what that buck he may
Speaker 4: be back a mile off the road, but he's not
Speaker 4: there all day long. It's basically during the rut. So
Speaker 4: why go clear back there? If you know he's gonna, Hey,
Speaker 4: he's got to come out of this piece of timber
Speaker 4: on this point, or he's got to come if he's
Speaker 4: traveling from A to B, he's coming out of there somewhere.
Speaker 4: Why go clear in there? Why I have to be
Speaker 4: deep in the woods when you can catch him coming
Speaker 4: out or you might catch him coming into the woods.
Speaker 4: You just cut down your disturbance of and basically you're
Speaker 4: not warning them every time you're there that hey i'm
Speaker 4: in here, you know, I just I love hunting. Minimal disturbance.
Speaker 2: Yep, Yeah, you can never go wrong with that. That's
Speaker 2: always going to be a good rule of thumb. Keep
Speaker 2: it low impact, keep him unaware, hunt with the right wind,
Speaker 2: putting the time in those right keyspots.
Speaker 4: You know, you get guys that think that. You get
Speaker 4: guys thinking that their way is the only way. And
Speaker 4: I'm probably the I think there's I think there's a
Speaker 4: million ways to kill the big deer. You just got
Speaker 4: to have one around. And you know, if I if
Speaker 4: i'm if I'm hiring somebody, If I've got a business
Speaker 4: and I'm going to hire somebody and I'm talking to
Speaker 4: a guy and he hunts, he's a hunter, and he's
Speaker 4: success a successful trophy hunter, I'm hiring him because I
Speaker 4: guarantee you he's not willing, he's not afraid of work.
Speaker 4: The guy that kills the biggest deer is paying his
Speaker 4: dues every year. Every year he's out working. The guy
Speaker 4: that wants to kill one, but doesn't spend the time
Speaker 4: doing it. There is no part of no part of
Speaker 4: what gets done on killing mature bucks that you take shortcuts.
Speaker 4: The guy that's willing to put in the time every year,
Speaker 4: year after year, pay attention to details, put in the work.
Speaker 4: That guy is going to be a heck of an
Speaker 4: employee too, because that's the way you know he's not
Speaker 4: afraid of work. So if you tell me you're a
Speaker 4: deer hunter, you never kill a big deer. And there's
Speaker 4: a guy next to you that's applied for a job,
Speaker 4: and these guy's killing him every year. I think this
Speaker 4: guy he's putting in the work. He knows, he knows
Speaker 4: I'm not afraid to work, or I know he's not
Speaker 4: afraid to work. I probably hire him every day because
Speaker 4: I know how much work it takes to kill a
Speaker 4: chure bucks year after year. It's not easy, even if
Speaker 4: you've got him around, it's not easy. And there's guys
Speaker 4: that think, well, they're behind every tree. No, they're not
Speaker 4: behind every tree. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, man, you make a great point about deer hunting
Speaker 2: success helping with hiring decisions. We might see a whole
Speaker 2: new trend in folks in the deer hunting world having
Speaker 2: higher employment because of that.
Speaker 4: Well you do, you do these podcasts all the time.
Speaker 4: You know, the guys that are successful are not guys
Speaker 4: that are laying on the couch. They're not guys that
Speaker 4: are afraid to go out and do the extra work.
Speaker 4: You know, they're not the guy that's afraid to hang
Speaker 4: twenty tree stands to know that only one of them
Speaker 4: is going to pay off. And there's a lot of
Speaker 4: work and dedication that goes in to kill them ature
Speaker 4: deer year after year.
Speaker 2: There just is Yeah, that might be the only thing.
Speaker 2: Just content. Yeah like that. You mentioned that there's so
Speaker 2: many different ways to skin the cat, and there are,
Speaker 2: but the one thing every good deer hunter has in common.
Speaker 2: Though their styles and their approaches might be different, they
Speaker 2: all work hard. That's that's the big thing. That that's
Speaker 2: the through line.
Speaker 4: Every one of them is putting in their time to
Speaker 4: do what they do. You know, whether it's whatever your
Speaker 4: approach is, every one of them is putting in the
Speaker 4: time and the work you that you just have to
Speaker 4: you know, you got guys. Well, I'll just throw Andre
Speaker 4: out for an example. Yeah, he kills big deer every year,
Speaker 4: but it's not because he doesn't. It doesn't these go
Speaker 4: out tnsay I'm going to go kill this buck tonight
Speaker 4: and not putting time in to do it. He's got
Speaker 4: it figured out too. I mean, he spent the time
Speaker 4: and he's paid the dues and he knows. Obviously, you're
Speaker 4: the curve probably does flatten. With a more experience you have,
Speaker 4: that curve probably does flatten. But you still don't just
Speaker 4: kill big deer by by not putting in the time
Speaker 4: and doing your legwork and the homework.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very true, well bred. I just want to thank
Speaker 2: you so much for taking the time to do this
Speaker 2: and share your perspective. I think you've got a style
Speaker 2: and an approach to this that I think is really
Speaker 2: helpful for a lot of folks to think about, because
Speaker 2: these days, one thing that is kind of common is
Speaker 2: this over complicating of deer hunting and and I think
Speaker 2: you've got something here that folks could benefit from to
Speaker 2: kind of simplify it a little bit down to a
Speaker 2: couple core key things and then just do that well.
Speaker 2: And that's a smart approach in a lot of cases.
Speaker 2: So so thank you for joining us for that. Thanks
Speaker 2: for sharing that, Brad. I'm sure you're gonna have great
Speaker 2: hunting season, but I'll be pulling for you and cross
Speaker 2: my fingers for you too.
Speaker 4: Thank you. I appreciate it, enjoyed it me too. And
Speaker 4: good luck to you guys. Good luck to you as well.
Speaker 2: All right, and that's going to do it for us today.
Speaker 2: Thank you for tuning in. I want to give you
Speaker 2: two quick updates. Number one, if you were listening to
Speaker 2: this the week it came out, that being the week
Speaker 2: of October ninth, be sure if you are in the
Speaker 2: area of Kentucky or southern Indiana, southern Illinois, southern Ohio,
Speaker 2: anywhere in that neck of the woods, come on out
Speaker 2: this Saturday, October fourteenth and join me and mister Janie
Speaker 2: poutell Us at our last Working for Wildlife Tour event.
Speaker 2: We'd love to see you down there. We're gonna do
Speaker 2: some work collecting acorns for a native reforestation effort on
Speaker 2: the Daniel Boone National Forest. We're gonna do some good work.
Speaker 2: We're gonna have a great time. We're going to share
Speaker 2: some hunting stories, talk cunting tips and strategies, all sorts
Speaker 2: of good stuff while we're out there volunteering on public land.
Speaker 2: Would love to see you spend a little time midday
Speaker 2: doing some good stuff out there. So if you want
Speaker 2: to do that, if you want to join us, just
Speaker 2: go ahead and google working for Wildlife Tour Kentucky and
Speaker 2: that will be probably the easiest way for you to
Speaker 2: find the link to the registration page with all the
Speaker 2: details and with the sign up link. Hope to see
Speaker 2: on Saturday number two, Tony wanted me to mention that
Speaker 2: the Foundations episode this week, which would be coming out
Speaker 2: on the what date would that be? October tenth, it
Speaker 2: would have come out that is very similar in theme
Speaker 2: to the conversation we just had here with Brad, kind
Speaker 2: of talking about ways to simplify and refocus your efforts
Speaker 2: during the hunting season and not chasing every squirrel running
Speaker 2: around in the distance. So good stuff to think about.
Speaker 2: I think our conversation here with Brad was a great
Speaker 2: reminder that sometimes you just got to stick to the
Speaker 2: fundamentals and do them well and do them consistently. That
Speaker 2: is a why piece of advice. So hope you enjoyed
Speaker 2: this one. Best of luck out there in the woods,
Speaker 2: and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.