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 1: Welcome to the.
Speaker 2: Wired to Hunt podcast.
Speaker 3: This week on the show, John Eberhart and Greg Godfrey
Speaker 3: are detailing for us their recipe for success for hunting
Speaker 3: pressured white tails during the peak of the run. All right,
Speaker 3: welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to
Speaker 3: you by First Light and their Camo for Conservation Initiative,
Speaker 3: and we will still be providing you our hunting songs
Speaker 3: of sorts, big white tails and the most Wonderful Time
Speaker 3: to Kill Deer, but we're to put them at the
Speaker 3: end of the episode because my buddy further aka Josh
Speaker 3: doesn't know how to fast forward through parts of the
Speaker 3: podcast he doesn't want to listen to, so to make
Speaker 3: it easier for him, we're going to put at the
Speaker 3: very end of the show. So if you enjoy those songs,
Speaker 3: you can still catch it after our show here today.
Speaker 3: But we do have a great podcast for you. We're
Speaker 3: talking the rut, the peak of the rut the super
Speaker 3: Bowl of our season. It is here, it's going on
Speaker 3: right now, and our guests today are going to help
Speaker 3: us explore a number of different ways to have success
Speaker 3: this time of year, especially if you hunt in places
Speaker 3: where there's a lot of hunting pressure. My guests have
Speaker 3: been on the show before. John Eberhardt is a legend.
Speaker 3: It's likely that you know him. He's the author of
Speaker 3: many books. He's been on this podcast five or six
Speaker 3: times over the years. A absolute og when it comes
Speaker 3: to killing mature bucks in places like Michigan or other
Speaker 3: heavily pressured states. He's also proven these techniques they'll work
Speaker 3: in other states too. He goes to Indiana, Ohio, Kansas, Illinois, etc.
Speaker 3: And then our second guest today is Greg Godford. He's
Speaker 3: one of the co founders of Tethered and another guy
Speaker 3: who's proven to be successful in many different parts of
Speaker 3: the country, especially with this mobile hunting strategy that he's
Speaker 3: really perfected with his saddle system there at Tethered. So
Speaker 3: that's what we have in store for you today. And
Speaker 3: we have had John on the show a number of
Speaker 3: times and we've touched a little bit on some of
Speaker 3: his rut techniques. But today we are getting into a
Speaker 3: level of detail that we've never before. The entire show
Speaker 3: today is just getting into the nitty gritty of how
Speaker 3: he and Greg think about hunting the rut. So we
Speaker 3: cover everything from the various types of locations you'll want
Speaker 3: to focus on during this time period of the year.
Speaker 4: We get into a lot of.
Speaker 3: The philosophy around deciding how long you should stay put
Speaker 3: in a location versus moving and you know, being mobile,
Speaker 3: get into a number of other techniques, decoys, calling, all
Speaker 3: sorts of good stuff. This one will be very actionable,
Speaker 3: very useful for you in the upcoming days, whether you
Speaker 3: hunt in Michigan or Pennsylvania or Georgia or Wio. Whatever
Speaker 3: it is, we got you covered here. It's gonna be
Speaker 3: a good one. John and Greg co authored a book
Speaker 3: that just came out recently. It's called The Ultimate Guide
Speaker 3: to DIY Books. Here it is right here for those
Speaker 3: of you watching. There's actually three books. It's a three
Speaker 3: volume set, so we cover a lot that's mentioned in
Speaker 3: that book as well, So check out those after the
Speaker 3: podcast if you want more from Greg and John. And
Speaker 3: I think that is it. I think we can get
Speaker 3: right into our show today. I will mention that there's
Speaker 3: a new film from myself over on the media or
Speaker 3: YouTube channel, so you can check out my Nebraska whitetail
Speaker 3: hunt from last year. It was a really exciting hunt.
Speaker 3: Things got turned upside down from what I thought they
Speaker 3: were going to be. I had to kind of create
Speaker 3: a brand new plan on the spot found to get
Speaker 3: on some deer on the ground without trees. It's an
Speaker 3: interesting one. You can find it. You can watch it
Speaker 3: at the Meat Eater YouTube channel. I appreciate that, and
Speaker 3: that is it. I think we should get into our show.
Speaker 3: If you are out there hunting right now in mid
Speaker 3: November or that second week, whatever it is, I'm wishing
Speaker 3: you the best of luck. Stuff should be great out there.
Speaker 3: This is what we have waited all year for, so
Speaker 3: enjoy it. Putting the time, stay optimistic. Just remember anything
Speaker 3: is possible this time of year, so I'll be pulling
Speaker 3: for you. That said, let's get to my chat with
Speaker 3: John and Greg. All right here with me back on
Speaker 3: the line. Both of these gentlemen are returning guests. I've
Speaker 3: got Greg Godfrey and John Eberhart. Gentlemen, thank you for
Speaker 3: making time to do this right in the heat of
Speaker 3: the rut and all the excite and that's about to hit.
Speaker 5: Thanks for the opportunity. Always appreciate being on your show.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's always fun to talk to Mark, one of
Speaker 6: the uh what I call the ogs of white Tail
Speaker 6: podcasting content. I think Mark, you kind of started it
Speaker 6: way back in the day, back in the in the
Speaker 6: early Wired to Hunt days, So it's uh, I'm always
Speaker 6: well've been on the show once, but it's really cool
Speaker 6: to be invited back. It means a lot to me personally.
Speaker 6: Well right back at you guys, I appreciate it. And
Speaker 6: and Greg, your product and ideas around that product have
Speaker 6: changed my hunting in a big way. And John, you
Speaker 6: know I've said this to you a thousand times, but
Speaker 6: your your early books and everything were instrumental in my
Speaker 6: journey too. So all the way around this is this
Speaker 6: is good stuff. It's exciting stuff.
Speaker 3: And as we just said, you both have been on
Speaker 3: the podcast before, but we have never done a podcast
Speaker 3: that was strict all things. Let's dive deep into the
Speaker 3: rut and that's what I want to do here today
Speaker 3: because when this podcast drops, it will be November seventh,
Speaker 3: so for a lot of people that's going to be
Speaker 3: like peak rut. This is their rut cation, this is
Speaker 3: when they're taking their time off. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: people over the next couple weeks that are looking at
Speaker 3: this as their super Bowl. And I know you guys
Speaker 3: put some extensive time and effort into discussing this timeframe
Speaker 3: in your latest book series, and so I wanted to
Speaker 3: take this opportunity to kind of dig into the nitty
Speaker 3: gritty of that, and maybe the place to start would
Speaker 3: be in breaking down how you guys look at the
Speaker 3: rut and how dear behavior changes through that, because within
Speaker 3: your book or books, I should say, rather you kind
Speaker 3: of separate it out into three different phases. Everyone's got
Speaker 3: different ways they like to define the rut and how
Speaker 3: they break it down. But you guys kind of broke
Speaker 3: it down by pre rut, peak rut, post rut. Before
Speaker 3: we get into the actually how you set up and
Speaker 3: hunt each one of those different things, maybe John, would
Speaker 3: you kick us off by just walking me through how
Speaker 3: you think about dear behavior changing through those three periods
Speaker 3: of the rut and what the timeframe is that you
Speaker 3: are kind of breaking those three chunks into.
Speaker 5: Yes, pre rut is probably my favorite time of the
Speaker 5: season and the rut in general is like the playoffs.
Speaker 5: You know, it's like, you know, making the playoffs in
Speaker 5: a sport activity, because that's where you want to focus
Speaker 5: your most attention. If you're gonna get any vacation time,
Speaker 5: that's when you want to spend it in the woods.
Speaker 2: But during pre.
Speaker 5: Rut, the mature bucks, which if primarily if you're in
Speaker 5: a pressure area of any semblance, it primarily been pretty
Speaker 5: nocturnal outside the security cover of their betting areas. So
Speaker 5: as testosterone rises throughout the early season and through the
Speaker 5: October lull, it kind of reaches its peak during pre
Speaker 5: rod and those mature bucks actually start searching for early
Speaker 5: estras doves. If you're in an area that's got quite
Speaker 5: a few deer, there's always going to be a dough
Speaker 5: or two here and there to come into estras early,
Speaker 5: and those the testosterone has risen to the point and
Speaker 5: they haven't bred since last year and they want to
Speaker 5: get out there and breed.
Speaker 7: So the cool thing about the pre.
Speaker 5: Rod is not all the not a majority of the
Speaker 5: dos are coming into heat at the same time, where
Speaker 5: during pre rod or i mean peak rut, mature bucks
Speaker 5: typically going to be doughed up most of the time
Speaker 5: he's going.
Speaker 7: To typically be with breeding estras does.
Speaker 5: Because there's so many dogs in the area, usually in
Speaker 5: a pressured area, that probably the three and a half
Speaker 5: year old and older.
Speaker 7: Bucks two other deer.
Speaker 5: You know, be doze bawns, a year and a half
Speaker 5: and two and a half year old bucks. The ratio
Speaker 5: is probably forty or fifty to one. So once an
Speaker 5: extra cycle of the dough he's breeding is over, it
Speaker 5: doesn't take him long to pick up the next estra's dough.
Speaker 5: If he crosses her sentence she's with another buck, he
Speaker 5: just follows her and takes her dakes her away. So
Speaker 5: peak rut to me because the mature bucks are doped
Speaker 5: up so much it's hard to get on one. And
Speaker 5: then also the routines are totally out the window because
Speaker 5: they're with doughs, so they're following dough roads or they're
Speaker 5: in where doors are betting, so pre rut they're following
Speaker 5: set routines. All those scrapes that you find in the woods,
Speaker 5: you know, that's what they're visiting. Because the scrapes that
Speaker 5: they make are always near some sort of area where
Speaker 5: there's a lot of heavy dough activity. An influx of
Speaker 5: DO activity. Usually it's by oaks, apple trees, whatever the
Speaker 5: mast or fruit trees you might have on your property
Speaker 5: are going to be or if you have property and
Speaker 5: you have food plots, there's going to be.
Speaker 7: DO activity at the food plots.
Speaker 5: So that's typically where you're gonna find scrapes along field edges,
Speaker 5: crop field edges, So they follow a routine during pre
Speaker 5: run because they're not breeding.
Speaker 7: They're not breeding those all the time, and so it's.
Speaker 5: Much easier to kill a buck during pre rug, which
Speaker 5: I termed the pre rock running about October twenty five
Speaker 5: to November five up here in the Midwest, and it's
Speaker 5: just easier to get on a pattern if you hunt
Speaker 5: those active scrapes and they have the adequate security cover
Speaker 5: for mature buck activity during daylight hours, you know they got,
Speaker 5: you know, from a betting area to transition out of
Speaker 5: a betting area to these scrape areas. As long as
Speaker 5: there's adequate security cover, they're going to visit those during
Speaker 5: daylight hours. A lot of times it's during midday, so
Speaker 5: pre run's my favorite time. I think a lot of
Speaker 5: hunters mess up their rut phase locations by by hunting
Speaker 5: their rut phase locations too early and they alter the
Speaker 5: dot traffic.
Speaker 7: And therefore, once you alter the dough traffic that you're hunting.
Speaker 5: Location during the October low by hunting it too much,
Speaker 5: that altered dot traffic is also going to alter the
Speaker 5: mature buck activity at that location when they start pursuing
Speaker 5: ester shows. As far as the post rut, post ruts
Speaker 5: really kind of interesting because there's only a few states
Speaker 5: in the country where you can go and hunt bow hunt, and.
Speaker 7: We're ball hunters primarily.
Speaker 5: There's only a few states in the country where you
Speaker 5: can go and physically bow hunt bucks before the gun
Speaker 5: season because if you're in a heavily pressured state and
Speaker 5: gun season opens up like Michigan's October fifteenth, I think
Speaker 5: Missouri is the second Saturday in November, so it's Nebraska,
Speaker 5: so you know, their gun seasons are during the peak ruts.
Speaker 5: So by post rut, those mature bucks are pretty nocturnal.
Speaker 7: Not moving much during daylight hours.
Speaker 5: So the only states really that you can do some
Speaker 5: good post ruck bull hunting would be Iowa, Kansas with
Speaker 5: your draw states, what other draw states or what other states.
Speaker 8: Ohio also has a late dune season, so those those
Speaker 8: are the three primary big buck states where you can
Speaker 8: hunt hunt mature bucks during polst rut and still have
Speaker 8: a good gence.
Speaker 3: So that's that's helpful, John. I guess what I what
Speaker 3: I'm curious about, and maybe maybe this is the best
Speaker 3: place to start. Actually, let me take a time out
Speaker 3: and step one step back, because I forgot one thing
Speaker 3: I did want to ask you, Greg related to what
Speaker 3: John just said, which was, I know you have experienced
Speaker 3: down in the South where rut timing and rut stuff
Speaker 3: is just a little bit different.
Speaker 4: Have you seen anything in your time in.
Speaker 3: Georgia or anywhere else down there where that dear behavior
Speaker 3: is different from pre to peak to post from what
Speaker 3: John's described, or is it basically the same but just
Speaker 3: different calendar dates because of the weird stuff across different
Speaker 3: states down there.
Speaker 6: I think it's option B. I think the deer still
Speaker 6: respond in the South pretty similarly to what John described,
Speaker 6: but the calendar dates are all wonky. For instance, in
Speaker 6: Georgia where I live. In South Georgia and Savannah where
Speaker 6: I live, our rut starts in middle of October and
Speaker 6: it goes through the end of October. It's much more
Speaker 6: aligned with more of a southern deer who, like the
Speaker 6: deer in Florida, can rut as early as August, July
Speaker 6: and August, and in the southeast corner of Georgia they
Speaker 6: rut in October. Well, if you move more towards the
Speaker 6: middle of the state, where a lot of the deer
Speaker 6: were imported in the seventies, sixties and seventies from the
Speaker 6: northern states like Wisconsin, those deer have more of a
Speaker 6: traditional November rut. And then the further west you go
Speaker 6: in the state closer to Alabama, you get a later
Speaker 6: rut where they rut in January. So in Georgia you
Speaker 6: can hunt running deer from October all the way through
Speaker 6: the new year.
Speaker 3: That's crazy. I can't imagine that. So okay, So that's
Speaker 3: that's good to know. So everyone wherever you're listening, you should,
Speaker 3: you know, take this and adjust date specific based.
Speaker 4: On your region.
Speaker 3: But in your in your guys's books, the way you
Speaker 3: broke it down was kind of the standard Midwest and
Speaker 3: upper two thirds of the country timing, which is kind
Speaker 3: of that pre rut being late October through maybe the
Speaker 3: first week of November. And then I think you guys
Speaker 3: defined peak rut is somewhere in that middle of November
Speaker 3: week or two period, and then post route was kind
Speaker 3: of like maybe Thanksgiving ish on for a little ways.
Speaker 3: So with that in mind, the next thing I wanted
Speaker 3: to kind of steer us towards was some of the
Speaker 3: specific focus areas you guys detailed as far as rut
Speaker 3: hunting locations, and something I'd be curious each as we
Speaker 3: go through each one of the would be you guys
Speaker 3: to share with me how you would hunt these kinds
Speaker 3: of spots, but then also how that might shift through
Speaker 3: those three phases of the rut. So for example, something
Speaker 3: I know, John, you've talked about a ton in the past,
Speaker 3: and you guys wrote about in the books where you're
Speaker 3: focusing on scrape areas, So maybe let's start there.
Speaker 4: Could you talk about.
Speaker 3: Hunting around primary scrapes scrape areas and detail for us,
Speaker 3: you know, how that shifts throughout the various phases of
Speaker 3: the rut, and specifically like how you find these and
Speaker 3: identify these but then also actually set up on them.
Speaker 3: Because I think people generally understand, you know, hey, if
Speaker 3: I find some great scrapes back and cover, I should
Speaker 3: hunt that, but fewer people know the right way to
Speaker 3: do that. So I'd love to start with this and
Speaker 3: then we'll have a similar conversation around several other rut hotspots.
Speaker 3: You guys detail, But John, can you kick us off
Speaker 3: with your thoughts here on scrapes since that's so key
Speaker 3: for you.
Speaker 7: I'm old and that's hard to remember all that stuff.
Speaker 4: Give me the loadout on primary scrapes.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, scouting is a huge issue to me. To me,
Speaker 5: scouting is eighty ninety percent of the game, you know,
Speaker 5: And I do the majority of the vast majority of
Speaker 5: my scouting during postseason because after deer season's over, you
Speaker 5: can scout places the foliages down the scrapes are still
Speaker 5: very obvious looking branches, rubs or everything is really obvious,
Speaker 5: you know, before greenup. So I'm looking for scrape areas
Speaker 5: of scrapes and mass trees, cruit trees, whatever the case
Speaker 5: may be. And when I find scrapes in there in
Speaker 5: you know, if you're walking through a woods like on
Speaker 5: public land, and you're out in relatively open timber and
Speaker 5: you might find a couple of white oaks or something
Speaker 5: with some scrapes there, you know that that is meaningless
Speaker 5: to me because for scrape activity that I find to
Speaker 5: be worth hunting, it has to have adequate security cover
Speaker 5: around that kill zone where those scrapes are, and it
Speaker 5: has to have adequate security cover to a known betting area.
Speaker 5: So a lot of times those scrapes I find will
Speaker 5: be around perimeters of betting areas. It's very common to
Speaker 5: find active scrapes around a crop field during post season
Speaker 5: pick cornfield, and those scrapes were made during you know,
Speaker 5: if you were going to hunt that those scrapes, you'd
Speaker 5: have to hunt them prior to the corn being picked. Okay,
Speaker 5: so once the corn's picked, with those scrapes being on
Speaker 5: the edge of an open field with pitcorn, the buffer
Speaker 5: mature butck's going to feel too vulnerable to visit during
Speaker 5: day late hours. You're and a half and two and
Speaker 5: a half's yes, if that's what you're after, you know
Speaker 5: you could hunt those, But when you're hunting mature bucks,
Speaker 5: scrapes have to have some semblance of security cover around them,
Speaker 5: an adequate security cover to a known betting area, or
Speaker 5: be around the perimeter of the betting area or in
Speaker 5: a betting area for me personally to hunt them, whether
Speaker 5: it be fre rut, peak rut, or puls drive.
Speaker 7: So the security cover aspect of scrapes is a big deal.
Speaker 5: And at least a very minimum of fifty percent of
Speaker 5: the bucks I've killed over the last i'd say forty
Speaker 5: years have been scrape oriented, so it you know, typically
Speaker 5: it's it may be at a mass tree that has
Speaker 5: some scrapes and apple tree that when it was dropping apples,
Speaker 5: you know, the doors were feeding there, so that's why
Speaker 5: the bucks made the scrapes there, or a chestnut tree
Speaker 5: or some white oaks along the edge, you know, and
Speaker 5: as long as it has the adequate security cover for
Speaker 5: daytime mature bucket activity and movement, you know, that's what
Speaker 5: I'm going to hunt.
Speaker 3: Does that change at all once we get into that
Speaker 3: peak rut time when it's November seven or ten or
Speaker 3: thirteen and we're right in the heat of it, Are
Speaker 3: you still king in on primary scrape areas or does
Speaker 3: that shift as November plots along.
Speaker 5: As the rot phase plots along. I don't hunt the
Speaker 5: peripheral scrapes that I would have hunted during pre rud
Speaker 5: When the root phase comes, I'm in betting areas a lot,
Speaker 5: you know, because bucks, the mature bucks are going to
Speaker 5: push those estra stows into security cover. That's where they
Speaker 5: want to breed them where they feel safe, you know,
Speaker 5: every twenty minutes or half hour, forty minutes getting up
Speaker 5: and breeding, you go and you know, pushing her around.
Speaker 5: They want to feel safe and secure. So I love
Speaker 5: hunting betting areas during the physical rut phases or just
Speaker 5: inside the perimeter edge of the betting area. But during
Speaker 5: pre rod you know, I'll hunt scrape areas along edges
Speaker 5: of cornfield as long as there's security cover butting up
Speaker 5: to the cornfield in the timber or swamp bordering the cornfield.
Speaker 5: Or I'll hunt an apple tree or white oak tree
Speaker 5: that's got adequate security cover around the area and adqut
Speaker 5: security cover to a known betting area. But your question
Speaker 5: was during peak ruts. During peak rut, those peripheral scrapes
Speaker 5: outside the betting areas, they lose the majority of their
Speaker 5: activity because the mature bucks are with doughs most of
Speaker 5: the time because the buck to dope mature buck to
Speaker 5: dough ratios are so skewed it doesn't take them long
Speaker 5: to pick up another dough and they're with them a
Speaker 5: lot time. So obviously there's no requirement for them to
Speaker 5: make strapes or visits rates. So that's why I like
Speaker 5: to be within the betting run.
Speaker 4: Am I right though?
Speaker 3: In thinking that things shift again once you get to
Speaker 3: the post rut because the post rut's kind of similar
Speaker 3: to the pre rup. There's fewer doughs ready to breed,
Speaker 3: so bucks kind of return to that same seeking type behavior.
Speaker 5: You're one correct, but again, if you're in a pressured state,
Speaker 5: that post rut activity is almost totally not ternal. So
Speaker 5: you know in those states I mentioned before, Ohio, Kansas,
Speaker 5: and Iowa, Yeah, post ruts exactly like hunting pre rod.
Speaker 5: In fact, when I we did drawn for Kansas this year,
Speaker 5: we got drawn for Kansas, and we like it going
Speaker 5: during post ruck. We prefer post rut because the mature bucks,
Speaker 5: they've been breeding for two weeks solid, you know, at
Speaker 5: least two weeks solid, they're worn down, their eyes are glassy,
Speaker 5: they've somewhat lost a lot of their security cover or
Speaker 5: I don't know what the word is of their cautiousness,
Speaker 5: I guess, and now the majority of the dose are bread.
Speaker 5: So now they have to do exactly what they did
Speaker 5: during pre rod and go out and physically leave those
Speaker 5: betting area haunts, and now they'll start working their strapes
Speaker 5: again wherever there's no activity, and they'll have a routine
Speaker 5: just like they did during free right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's it's kind of like they get they're so preoccupied, uh,
Speaker 6: for the past two weeks of breeding doz that they
Speaker 6: they they lose a little bit of that safety concern
Speaker 6: that they've had for the rest of the year, and
Speaker 6: so oftentimes you see those big mature bucks making a
Speaker 6: mistake at exactly the time period when you've talked about John,
Speaker 6: when they're they've been screwing around with does for two weeks,
Speaker 6: they're tired, they've been in a whole bunch of fights.
Speaker 6: They've been kicking their buddies' butts, fighting back and forth
Speaker 6: up and down every ridge, and they kind of lose
Speaker 6: a little bit of their safety concern and it's a
Speaker 6: great time to find those big mature bucks that don't
Speaker 6: make mistakes, uh throughout the rest of the year.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Great. Can I throw a stat in there real quick, Mark?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Please do them.
Speaker 5: Get to give people an idea of runt face hunting.
Speaker 5: Midday is a big part of my broad face hunting
Speaker 5: because when you're hunting in security cover areas, whether it
Speaker 5: be pre rock or during the peak rut, I just
Speaker 5: lost my train of thought.
Speaker 7: That's what sucks about getting old.
Speaker 5: Mid midday, midday big part of my kill strategy. I'm
Speaker 5: getting to the point where I can't hunt all day
Speaker 5: like I used to as many all day sits. But
Speaker 5: to give you a stat of my twenty Michigan bucks
Speaker 5: that I've taken the made book that I took between
Speaker 5: November one and November fourteen with a bowl, seven of
Speaker 5: them were shot between eleven and three o'clock in the afternoon,
Speaker 5: while statistically less than eight percent of my time spent
Speaker 5: on stand was between eleven and three.
Speaker 7: O'clock in the afternoon.
Speaker 5: So that's thirty five percent kill rate with less than
Speaker 5: eight percent of on time stand. But it's got it
Speaker 5: has to be. People will just go out there and
Speaker 5: hunter in midday and they're just hunting, you know, in
Speaker 5: open timber or whatever.
Speaker 7: That's a total waste of time.
Speaker 5: It has to be in security, government, a betting area,
Speaker 5: or transitions one between a.
Speaker 7: Betting area and another betting area.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's pretty eye opening. I was gonna I want
Speaker 3: to continue down that line, John, when it comes to
Speaker 3: your midday hunting strategy. But before we leave scrapes really quick,
Speaker 3: I got to ask you, Greg, John has been like
Speaker 3: the profit of scrapes for thirty years now, been preaching
Speaker 3: the benefits of primary scrape areas and everything like that.
Speaker 4: Are you as.
Speaker 3: Bought into hunting primary scrape areas and deepen the cover
Speaker 3: scrapes during the rut as he is, or do you
Speaker 3: have a different take?
Speaker 6: I would say the answer to both of those are yes.
Speaker 6: When John says it about deer hunting, you can pretty
Speaker 6: much believe it that he knows what he's talking about
Speaker 6: and that he's killed seven book bucks in the most
Speaker 6: popular or most heavily pressured states and he's figured out
Speaker 6: a way to get done. So that's the first part. Yes,
Speaker 6: listen to John before you listen to me. Listen to John.
Speaker 6: John knows what he's talking about. But I do have
Speaker 6: a little different take on it. I agree with everything
Speaker 6: that John said, and he's right. I like to focus
Speaker 6: more on those transition areas me personally, John likes to
Speaker 6: get deep into a bedding area and the most the
Speaker 6: hardest place for a hunter to get one of the
Speaker 6: One of the analogies that John uses in his books,
Speaker 6: as he says that I've read in the past bow
Speaker 6: Hunting Pressured white tails is he says, I like to
Speaker 6: pretend like I'm a deer and all the hunters are
Speaker 6: trying to kill me, and where would I go?
Speaker 2: And that's a useful exercise.
Speaker 6: And that's how John he A lot of his a
Speaker 6: lot of his tactics and strategies revolve around that, which
Speaker 6: makes perfect sense. I tend to like to hunt those
Speaker 6: little transition spots that are oftentimes terrain related, a saddle
Speaker 6: in a hilltop, a pinch point because of a river.
Speaker 6: I tend to like to focus on areas like that
Speaker 6: that give me a very decided advantage that also contained
Speaker 6: the things that John talks about. So my ideal rut
Speaker 6: spot would be a big betting area here, a big
Speaker 6: betting area here with a big ridge that separated them
Speaker 6: in a low spot for a buck to cross easily.
Speaker 6: And in that low spot there's security cover and.
Speaker 7: Scrapes.
Speaker 6: That's like my number one spot to find. I like
Speaker 6: spots that I can get into with bulletproof entry and exit.
Speaker 2: Bill Wink wrote an article many, many.
Speaker 6: Many years ago in Bowhunter magazine, probably twenty five years
Speaker 6: ago and the whole article was about access, and he
Speaker 6: talked about how there are tons and tons of good
Speaker 6: spots out there that hunters screw up because they aren't
Speaker 6: concerned learn with their access. So I love a spot
Speaker 6: that I can get into and out of without being detected,
Speaker 6: and it is going to be more of a transition
Speaker 6: spot than a destination spot. That's the only thing that
Speaker 6: I would say I rank higher on my on my
Speaker 6: hunt now factor is that it's which is basically the
Speaker 6: same as John, but it's just a little nuanced.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's interesting. I I wanna I want to touch
Speaker 3: on transitions that you just described there. But another scrape
Speaker 3: relay question came to mind that if I don't ask now,
Speaker 3: I will forget to do it. John, you had you
Speaker 3: had talked about and maybe this is in the book
Speaker 3: that you guys were talking about this, but when hunting
Speaker 3: scrape areas or primary scrape areas, really this this actually
Speaker 3: could apply to many different types of locations. But but
Speaker 3: there had been discussion around the volume of hunts that
Speaker 3: you should give a given scrape or a given betting area,
Speaker 3: and oftentimes we want to hunt new spots all the time.
Speaker 3: That's one of the benefits of the mobile style of
Speaker 3: hunting that all three of us use. But it seems
Speaker 3: like sometimes you have to give a location time to
Speaker 3: actually produce. Can you discuss that a little bit, John,
Speaker 3: as far as how many hunts you would throw at
Speaker 3: a good looking primary scrape area or a good looking
Speaker 3: betting area before you'd say, Okay, I need to move
Speaker 3: on because I've educated too much here, or I need
Speaker 3: to seek out greener pastures.
Speaker 5: Well, first off, when I'm hunting betting areas during the
Speaker 5: pre or rut or the rut phase, I'm I'm in
Speaker 5: the past.
Speaker 7: Anyway, I don't do it as much now.
Speaker 5: I always like to do all days sits where I'm
Speaker 5: in the tree an hour and a half before daylight,
Speaker 5: so to make sure I'm not spooking anything with my entries.
Speaker 7: They're not in there yet, and I.
Speaker 5: Usually like to leave about a half hour after dark
Speaker 5: so I'm not spooking them with my exit. Usually with
Speaker 5: an half hour after dark, they've left the betting area.
Speaker 5: So and also I'm a big, huge sunt lock fan.
Speaker 5: You know, I have used sunt lock since nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 5: and I pay zero attention to the wind.
Speaker 7: I don't get winded.
Speaker 5: Deer can cross my trail whatever, So I'm not altering
Speaker 5: dough traffic by being in a location. And when I
Speaker 5: get in the tree and get down out of the tree, I'm.
Speaker 7: Still leaving residual odor at the spot.
Speaker 5: So if you come in later or pass by later,
Speaker 5: they still smell human odor and then they will avoid
Speaker 5: that spot. So I think the second control for me
Speaker 5: makes a huge difference in what I can get away
Speaker 5: with now during the rut phases.
Speaker 7: If I have a scrape area.
Speaker 5: And it's it, you know, it might have been active
Speaker 5: during pre rut, but it's not active during peak rut,
Speaker 5: and it's along the edge for betting area or in
Speaker 5: transitions on between two betting areas, that's something.
Speaker 7: I will hunt multiple times.
Speaker 5: I may hunt that force sits in a row because
Speaker 5: during peak rud the buck that I'm after may be
Speaker 5: with the dough.
Speaker 7: He may be with a lockdown in lockdown with a
Speaker 7: hot dough.
Speaker 5: So you know that's going to run twenty eight to
Speaker 5: thirty some hours, and so if I hunt it multiple times,
Speaker 5: there's a good chance once he's finished with that does cycle,
Speaker 5: there's a chance that he's gonna, you know, go visit
Speaker 5: those scrapes to find his next dell. He usually doesn't
Speaker 5: take him very long. But you know that's where the
Speaker 5: percentages lie is. You know that's that's a spot he's
Speaker 5: going to go look because that's a spot where there's
Speaker 5: heavy dot traffic is where that scrapes at. So Pope,
Speaker 5: during peak rout, I'll hunt a spot easily four times
Speaker 5: in a row as long as I know I'm not
Speaker 5: altering any dough traffic at that location. During pre ROD,
Speaker 5: I move around a lot. I'll go into season with
Speaker 5: almost fifty trees ready to hunt on public or I've
Speaker 5: got two private parcels that I hunt, So I move
Speaker 5: around a lot. I don't like to burn any of
Speaker 5: my locations out during pre roud, So usually during pre
Speaker 5: rod five hundred.
Speaker 7: The morning in an evening, that's going to be it.
Speaker 4: Okay, Greg, how do you? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Greg, how do you think about that? Because especially, I
Speaker 3: mean John, you're the same way because you use the saddle.
Speaker 3: But but Greg, with you guys having saddle setups and
Speaker 3: you hang out with a bunch of saddle hunters and
Speaker 3: all of you guys are mobile first guys that want
Speaker 3: to get around, want to hunt. A bunch of different places.
Speaker 3: We are all steeped in the gospel of running gun
Speaker 3: freelance hunting. Go make a move based on what you
Speaker 3: see when you get into the rut, the peak rut,
Speaker 3: when it's really on. How do you think about this?
Speaker 3: How do you balance that urge or the benefits of
Speaker 3: hunting new places versus the possible downside of of missing
Speaker 3: out on the action in a given place because you
Speaker 3: just didn't give it enough time.
Speaker 4: How do you handle that?
Speaker 6: It's a great question, and I constantly I've heard you
Speaker 6: talk about this before, Mark in your in your podcast,
Speaker 6: about how you're an adventure heart and you're always wondering
Speaker 6: what's over the next ridge. And you know, I have
Speaker 6: a little bit of that same disease, where there's always
Speaker 6: a booner around.
Speaker 2: The next bend in the river.
Speaker 6: And while that can be beneficial, it can also it
Speaker 6: can also hamstring you. And so I make concerted efforts
Speaker 6: to try not to limit myself into only being a
Speaker 6: hop around hunter, I guess, for lack of a better term,
Speaker 6: a mobile hunter.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 6: For instance, I was just hunting in the suburbs of
Speaker 6: Atlanta this past week, and I hunted the same tree
Speaker 6: every single hunt. I didn't bounce around at all because
Speaker 6: of the spot. So this particular spot, the access was bulletproof.
Speaker 6: Now I'm not I believe in sintlalk. I used scenttwalk.
Speaker 6: Matter of fact, one of John's suits that he designed
Speaker 6: called the wind brace from cent. I don't even think
Speaker 6: they make it anymore, but John got me turned onto
Speaker 6: that scentlock suit and I still use it to this day.
Speaker 6: So I believe in in that, but I don't use
Speaker 6: it religiously like John does. I still do pay attention
Speaker 6: to the wind Anyway. The point of this spot was
Speaker 6: I could get in and out of this tree with
Speaker 6: zero interactions with deer. It was basically bulletproof because I
Speaker 6: was able to access through a waterway and a swamp
Speaker 6: where there were no deer living pop out and I
Speaker 6: was in a bulletproof setup and it was a transition zone.
Speaker 6: There wasn't a whole lot to keep deer in this
Speaker 6: particular area, but there were on either sides and it
Speaker 6: was a perfect little transition spot. So I hunted it
Speaker 6: every day since. Since the deer and Georgia right now
Speaker 6: are starting to get in their pre rup phase, they're
Speaker 6: getting a little bit cruisy. We had one of the
Speaker 6: guys I was hunting with shot a deer that came
Speaker 6: in trailing a dough on full grunt mode, just grunting
Speaker 6: with every step he took.
Speaker 2: So that tells me that the deer there were starting
Speaker 2: to get a little fired up up.
Speaker 6: And I thought that if I, if I sat in
Speaker 6: this one spot is perfect transition zone, that I could
Speaker 6: catch a big one moving through there.
Speaker 2: I didn't, but that's okay.
Speaker 6: So you I think, I think Mark, you're right, you
Speaker 6: have to be cautious of moving too much. But you also,
Speaker 6: you know, if you're not seeing deer, you got to move,
Speaker 6: so you you you gotta you gotta find that fine
Speaker 6: line of of being mobile but also being patient. And
Speaker 6: I'm not always good at it because I tend to
Speaker 6: want to be more mobile, so I have to self regulate.
Speaker 6: And I think that's good advice for for hunters to
Speaker 6: hear both perspectives. And in that John saying you know, hey,
Speaker 6: it's okay to hunt these spots over and over again,
Speaker 6: I would add to the caveat of that it's okay
Speaker 6: to hunt them over and over again as long as
Speaker 6: you're as long as your access is bulletproof and you're
Speaker 6: not spooking deer.
Speaker 2: Like John said the on the in and out.
Speaker 6: I'm totally okay with hunting the same spot over and
Speaker 6: over again as long as those other conditions are true.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but you also have to be you also have
Speaker 7: to be proactive.
Speaker 5: I mean, the biggest buck I've ever shot in my life,
Speaker 5: one hundred and eighty inchure. I was on an all
Speaker 5: days sit and by ten o'clock I was seeing a
Speaker 5: lot of deer activity a.
Speaker 7: Couple hundred yards away. Because it was during the rut
Speaker 7: of foliage was.
Speaker 5: Done, I had a long viewing distance, and so I
Speaker 5: got down at ten o'clock. I pulled my steps. When
Speaker 5: I came down and I moved, I had a decoy out.
Speaker 5: I left that there for my exit. When I was leaving,
Speaker 5: and I went back in and I found a scrape
Speaker 5: area from hell. There was three monster scrapes, you know,
Speaker 5: fifteen yards zone. I set up in it. I was
Speaker 5: in that tree set up by noon. I would say
Speaker 5: someone around noon, and I had deer funneling by me
Speaker 5: all the time, And at four o'clock I shot that
Speaker 5: big buck. And then when I early in my hunting
Speaker 5: career in nineteen seventy six. I still scouted during postseason
Speaker 5: back then, and I prepped the tree and it was
Speaker 5: a red oak, And when I went back to hunt it,
Speaker 5: I didn't go do a speed tour to see if
Speaker 5: it was had masked and was dropping masks. I didn't
Speaker 5: do any of that. So when I went into the
Speaker 5: hunt it, it wasn't didn't have any acorns, so there
Speaker 5: wasn't a deer activity, and so I just freelanced back
Speaker 5: into the woods farther where I'd never been before. I
Speaker 5: found a white oak that actually was dropping acorns and
Speaker 5: had a lot of droppings underneath it, and I set
Speaker 5: up in that tree. I actually climbed the climbed the
Speaker 5: tree physically. They didn't have steps and stuff they have nowadays.
Speaker 5: And I shot at ten points. So you know, freelancing
Speaker 5: when when something's not happening and you know their seed
Speaker 5: better activity, or you go back to a tree and
Speaker 5: it doesn't have it doesn't look good. You know, you've
Speaker 5: got to be proactive as long as you've got the
Speaker 5: gear there to make that move. So I agree with
Speaker 5: everything you said, Greg, But yeah, and you always that's
Speaker 5: the cool thing about postseason scouting and post season scouting.
Speaker 5: You can cover every inch of everything you want to
Speaker 5: hunt on public land because spooking deer is irrelevant. But
Speaker 5: during the season, spooking deer is not irrelevant, so you
Speaker 5: have to be very cautious on how you do that.
Speaker 6: I think there's another little clarification. I would say to
Speaker 6: my previous comments, you got macro moves and you got
Speaker 6: micro moves, So macro move is going to a completely
Speaker 6: different area, completely different ridge system, go around the next bend, whatever.
Speaker 6: But I also think I can illustrate what John is
Speaker 6: talking about with my very my first first time I
Speaker 6: went to Missouri, out of state hunt for me in
Speaker 6: the pre run public land in Missouri, and I would
Speaker 6: say I did a micro set of moves. So day one,
Speaker 6: hunting the tree, see movement like John just described, in
Speaker 6: a different different area, but still within you know, I
Speaker 6: call it my macro area where I was well, I
Speaker 6: moved fifty yards closer and it wasn't quite there. I
Speaker 6: wasn't quite in the right spot. So I made another
Speaker 6: micro move, probably another forty yards into this one little
Speaker 6: tiny zone and that ended up being the spot where
Speaker 6: I tagged out. So John's point is is absolutely right.
Speaker 6: Sometimes you don't have to go a long way, but
Speaker 6: sometimes you have to refine your positioning with a micro
Speaker 6: move inside the betting area, the transition area, the if
Speaker 6: it's a it's a crop field, whatever it is that
Speaker 6: you're key and n on. Sometimes those micro moves can
Speaker 6: really pay off in a big way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great point.
Speaker 3: So so if I were to summarize when someone should
Speaker 3: volume hunt a location, So coming out of this little
Speaker 3: bit of our conversation, you're someone still thinking to themselves, well,
Speaker 3: how do I know when I should be bouncing around?
Speaker 3: Versus how do I know when I should hold tight?
Speaker 3: I would say to summarize what you guys have all said.
Speaker 3: Number one, listen to the deer. So if the deer
Speaker 3: are telling you, hey, it's actually you're a little bit
Speaker 3: off the X most of the actions fifty yards over
Speaker 3: that way, then then yes, make the move if you
Speaker 3: have to make that micro move, because listen what the
Speaker 3: deer are telling you.
Speaker 4: But vice versa.
Speaker 3: If you're sitting in the place and then you feel
Speaker 3: the urge to move just because you feel like you're
Speaker 3: supposed to bounce, but the deer are still telling you, hey,
Speaker 3: we're here. If you are still seeing steady movement. If
Speaker 3: you are still seeing young bucks coming through, or you know,
Speaker 3: if it's happening, don't assume you have to leave if
Speaker 3: you have that good access and exit, YadA YadA, and
Speaker 3: the deer On'm figuring it out.
Speaker 4: So there's number one.
Speaker 3: Number two, if you are in the peak of the
Speaker 3: rut activity time period as you describe, John, if it's
Speaker 3: that time when bucks might be locked down, you if
Speaker 3: you leave too soon, you might not have given that
Speaker 3: buck an opportunity to circle through because he didn't get
Speaker 3: off his dough yet. So that's number two. And then
Speaker 3: the third situation where I think it might make sense
Speaker 3: to volume hunt, and I believe you guys wrote about
Speaker 3: in your book, would be in low deer density areas
Speaker 3: right where there's not a lot of deer. If you
Speaker 3: sit a spot for a day and you don't see
Speaker 3: anything come through and then leave already, that just simply
Speaker 3: might be because these bucks travel long distances in low
Speaker 3: deer density areas, and he might be a mile away
Speaker 3: right now, but if you gave it two or three days,
Speaker 3: he would eventually cycle through.
Speaker 4: Am I right on that, John? Did I describe that quickly?
Speaker 5: When you go to hill country or areas with low
Speaker 5: low deer densities. Yeah, the bucks, the mature bucks have
Speaker 5: a lot bigger core areas, especially during the run. They
Speaker 5: may cover a five mile core area. An excellent example,
Speaker 5: and I'll be briefed. One of the guys that manages
Speaker 5: Jay's Sporting goods, Chad sterns, he was up in the
Speaker 5: up gun hunting and when he went up on top
Speaker 5: of this oak ridge, he bumped a big ten point
Speaker 5: on the other side of the ridge and it just
Speaker 5: he just watched his big antlers and body go over
Speaker 5: the ridge.
Speaker 7: So he hunted it the next day that saying because
Speaker 7: there was a scrape there. There was a big scrape.
Speaker 5: Where he was at, and he called me and he said, John,
Speaker 5: I saw this big buck on this in the scrape
Speaker 5: on this ridge. And I said, Chad, he said, what
Speaker 5: should I do? I said, Chad, you know what, that's
Speaker 5: an active scrape. There's no activity because he said he
Speaker 5: was seeing does. I said that buck will be back eventually,
Speaker 5: I said, just I know, you hate to sit in
Speaker 5: one spot for day long. But he was a big
Speaker 5: sentline guy too, so he wasn't worried about his scent.
Speaker 5: He sat in that spot and on the seventh day,
Speaker 5: Sunday morning, the last day of his hunt, that buck
Speaker 5: came back and he shot it was one hundred and
Speaker 5: forty two inch ten points. It took him that long
Speaker 5: to circle back to that spot because he had such
Speaker 5: a big horror area.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's hard in those situations.
Speaker 6: Well, and I think trail camera, my experience with trail
Speaker 6: camera trail camera data would it supports that right in
Speaker 6: my experience. Maybe it's different for other people, but in
Speaker 6: my experience, it's pretty common to see a buck for
Speaker 6: a couple three days and you get a picture of them,
Speaker 6: you know, morning, evening wherever, and then he seems like
Speaker 6: he disappears for three to five days, ever week or
Speaker 6: whatever it is, and then a lot of times they
Speaker 6: come back. It feels like these deer they work on
Speaker 6: little circuits. And I think all of the deer studies
Speaker 6: that I've read, either from MSU or for the deer
Speaker 6: studies that have happened that I've seen in Pennsylvania, seems
Speaker 6: to kind of correlate with that. That is specifically in
Speaker 6: the rut that these these bucks they kind of like
Speaker 6: they have the little circuit and they're here for a
Speaker 6: few days, and then they kind of move to the
Speaker 6: next place, and they're here for two days, and then
Speaker 6: they move and they kind of just make a little
Speaker 6: circuit around their core area. And I think that's a
Speaker 6: real thing, and patience, you know, can sometimes be the
Speaker 6: better part of valor.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's especially the case during peak rut. During pre
Speaker 5: rut they tend to stay in tighter core areas. They're
Speaker 5: not branching out as far. But during pre rout they're
Speaker 5: much more routine. You're much more apt to catch them
Speaker 5: on camera more routinely, maybe every three days.
Speaker 7: You'll get a picture for four four days coming.
Speaker 5: Through with regularity, there's some consistency to it, whereas during
Speaker 5: peak rut it's a crap shoot.
Speaker 3: So, Greg, a second ago, you had mentioned that one
Speaker 3: way you vary from John a little bit is that
Speaker 3: you might prefer those transition zones a little bit more.
Speaker 3: And if I might kind of broaden this idea of
Speaker 3: transition zones, I think the way you were kind of
Speaker 3: referring to it would be not just like a transition area,
Speaker 3: but more like transitions from place to place, that being
Speaker 3: like travel corridors or pinch points, funnels. You said the
Speaker 3: description of like a saddle between two betting areas, So funnels,
Speaker 3: pinch points, travel corridors, that is like bread and butter
Speaker 3: rut hunting location. Anyone who's studied deer or been deer hunting,
Speaker 3: or listened to a few podcasts know that hunting a
Speaker 3: pinch point or a funnel during the rut is a
Speaker 3: solid game plan. But the details of how to do
Speaker 3: that well, or the specifics of setting up on one
Speaker 3: in a smart way, there's a little bit more nuance there.
Speaker 3: Could you share with me a little bit more of
Speaker 3: how you approach those types of setups? What makes a
Speaker 3: really really good travel corridor or rout funnel set up
Speaker 3: for you? Any examples would be really helpful. Basically looking
Speaker 3: for that next level of depth on something that generically
Speaker 3: everybody gets, but maybe we don't understand the details as well.
Speaker 6: That's a great question. I would say a lot of
Speaker 6: it revolves around pressure, a lot of these transition. Maybe
Speaker 6: we're using the wrong terms, but these pinch points, these funnels,
Speaker 6: these corridors that link different travel patterns. A lot of times,
Speaker 6: they're really easy to spot on a map if you
Speaker 6: understand satellite imagery. Not every hunter does, but if you don't,
Speaker 6: you should learn. You should learn how to read a
Speaker 6: topo map. If you're a hunter and you don't know
Speaker 6: how to read a topo map, you are wrong. You
Speaker 6: need to learn how to read a topo map. Watch
Speaker 6: a YouTube video. You'll get it and it will open
Speaker 6: up your eyes to how deer use an area. See,
Speaker 6: deer are creatures of habit. They want to use the
Speaker 6: path of least resistance, and it's oftentimes not that difficult
Speaker 6: to pinpoint those on a map. A saddle, a bench
Speaker 6: that follows a ridgeline. Those are the places that deer
Speaker 6: are going to use with regularity. The trick is finding
Speaker 6: ones that other hunters aren't king in on, okay, because
Speaker 6: they're oftentimes very easy to find.
Speaker 2: So what I have.
Speaker 6: Found to be useful for me is finding ones that
Speaker 6: make sense, yet they're hard to access, either because you
Speaker 6: got to go over water, or it's a long walk,
Speaker 6: or it's really close to a parking lot somewhere that
Speaker 6: hunters are overlooking for whatever reason could be hard to find.
Speaker 6: It could be so simple that nobody thinks that it
Speaker 6: could actually work.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 2: That happened to me in Missouri as well.
Speaker 6: I used a bridge to access a really obvious funnel.
Speaker 6: It was super obvious. Any hunter with any experience could
Speaker 6: have picked this out. It was really really simple. But
Speaker 6: most hunters were they were parking in a different spot,
Speaker 6: and they were coming in from a direction, which was
Speaker 6: really obvious that a mature buck would he would situate
Speaker 6: himself in a bedding scenario to where he could watch that, right,
Speaker 6: because I sure deer knows where the hunting pressure come from.
Speaker 6: That's that's the reason they're four or five years old.
Speaker 6: They've been through these hunting seasons. They know where hunters
Speaker 6: come from, so they will oftentimes bed in a location
Speaker 6: that will allow them to see that pressure coming and
Speaker 6: then they'll pop smoke and they'll take their exit route. Well,
Speaker 6: I think the reason that I was successful in this
Speaker 6: particular hunt was I came in from a weird way
Speaker 6: and I climbed out from underneath the bridge and crossed
Speaker 6: the road where not anybody else was doing that. So
Speaker 6: a lot of times it's about creatively accessing those spots
Speaker 6: and or finding ones that they're just not They're just
Speaker 6: not as no brainers on a map, you know, It's
Speaker 6: it's really obvious to identify a lot of these places
Speaker 6: and if it's a really obvious pinch point and it's
Speaker 6: seventy five yards off a trail, like it's gonna get pounded,
Speaker 6: mark it off, don't hunt it. It's not gonna work
Speaker 6: for the most part. But look for those little pinch
Speaker 6: points that maybe are harder to find on a map
Speaker 6: or oftentimes what I what I find to be true
Speaker 6: is if I'm going to a pinch point, a funnel, whatever,
Speaker 6: I'll oftentimes find little micro pinch points and funnels in
Speaker 6: that area. And a great example of that is you
Speaker 6: might get into a into a pitch point called a
Speaker 6: saddle on a ridge system that's an easy spot to cross,
Speaker 6: but maybe there's a down tree that would funnel a
Speaker 6: deer into a really specific spot. Little stuff like that,
Speaker 6: little micro terrain features can often make a big difference.
Speaker 6: It's really about putting boots on the ground and going
Speaker 6: in and and really understanding the terrain. Uh, That's that's
Speaker 6: kind of what I focus on.
Speaker 3: Okay, John, would you add anything when it comes to funnels,
Speaker 3: pinch points, and kind of the next level of depth
Speaker 3: than just the generic.
Speaker 7: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 5: You know, a lot of hunters follow what they watch
Speaker 5: on TV, and in my personal opinion, most TV guys
Speaker 5: that they had to puntulic land wouldn't have a clue
Speaker 5: what to do. You know, I think fifty percent of
Speaker 5: the bowl owners in the country could probably killed deer
Speaker 5: the same deer that TV guys are hunting, if they
Speaker 5: were hunting the same property, because it's all ultra managed.
Speaker 5: So when you follow what TV guys do, you know,
Speaker 5: TV guys can they can look at aerial maps and
Speaker 5: topo maps, and they can pick out spots on their properties,
Speaker 5: and you know, they can go to them and they
Speaker 5: know nobody else has ever been there. So it's very
Speaker 5: likely that they can go to a pinch point between
Speaker 5: two areas of timber where there's some adequate cover from
Speaker 5: point A to point B, and set up there and
Speaker 5: kill something. A normal hunter hunting public land or heavily
Speaker 5: pressured areas where there's twenty homesteads in a six hundred
Speaker 5: and forty acre section and every homestead's got hunters on it,
Speaker 5: that's a pressured areas.
Speaker 7: Well, you can't do that.
Speaker 5: That's why scouting is such a big part of being
Speaker 5: a successful mature buck hunter. Scouting when you're out there
Speaker 5: postseason scouting or even preseason scouting. I hate scouting during
Speaker 5: pre season, but I do once in a blue move.
Speaker 5: You can see what kind of hunter activities there. You
Speaker 5: can see marks on trees from stands or climbers or
Speaker 5: whatever the case may be. Or if it's super easy
Speaker 5: to access, you can be guaranteed.
Speaker 7: Other hunters are going to mess it up.
Speaker 5: So when I'm looking at pinch points, I'm looking at
Speaker 5: a lot of times river funnels. I've mentioned this on
Speaker 5: your podcast before. River funnels don't People don't pay attention
Speaker 5: to that kind of stuff. But when you walk a
Speaker 5: river way, a lot of times the river will make bends,
Speaker 5: and every time it makes a bend, there's going to
Speaker 5: be a cliff, you know, where the water washes the
Speaker 5: way the dirt under the bend. And then you may
Speaker 5: go a quarter of a mile or half a mile,
Speaker 5: whatever the case may be, and there'll be a one
Speaker 5: hundred yard or a fifty yard flat area. Well, when
Speaker 5: you get to those flat areas, the river's usually wider
Speaker 5: and it's shallower, and that's where the deer are going
Speaker 5: to cross, and they don't have to worry about the
Speaker 5: cliffs on all the bends.
Speaker 7: So you know, it's just like a trout fisherman.
Speaker 5: If you're a trout fisherman, you know exactly if you
Speaker 5: fish it spot a while where you can cross the
Speaker 5: river the easiest, and deer know the exact same thing
Speaker 5: where they live, where they reside, So I look for that,
Speaker 5: and then any any funnel or transition zone has to
Speaker 5: have I can't say this enough security cover.
Speaker 7: Security covered, security cover.
Speaker 5: If you're after mature bucks and there's any semblance of
Speaker 5: pressure in the area you're hunting, a mature buck is
Speaker 5: very rarely going to make himself vulnerable in an open area,
Speaker 5: even if it's in a transition zone like the river
Speaker 5: funnel and they have to cross through fifty yards of
Speaker 5: open timbered across the river there and then go into
Speaker 5: some security cover.
Speaker 7: They're not going to make that fifty.
Speaker 5: Yard vulnerable movement during daylight hours, so it'll be that'll
Speaker 5: be an after dark spot. So no matter the transition
Speaker 5: zone you're in, if you're after mature bucks in it's
Speaker 5: somewhat pressured area, it has they have adequate security cover
Speaker 5: from mature buck to transition, either through the security govern
Speaker 5: or along the edge of the security govern They always
Speaker 5: like they have a quick two or three second exit
Speaker 5: where they're out of a kill range.
Speaker 6: Which is why it's so great to focus on the
Speaker 6: ret phase because that is when they start letting their
Speaker 6: guard down right, and and that's when they will That's
Speaker 6: when these bucks. Because John is one thousand percent right,
Speaker 6: I could not agree more. They just don't make many mistakes.
Speaker 6: That's how they get to be five four or five
Speaker 6: six years old and last through several seasons. But once
Speaker 6: they get in breed mode, they will sometimes make those
Speaker 6: stupid mistakes, and that's how you can capitalize on it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, if they're with a hot dough, they might follow
Speaker 7: her into Walmart.
Speaker 2: They would.
Speaker 3: So with these funnels, with these pinch points, I can
Speaker 3: imagine someone being out there in the woods, maybe public land,
Speaker 3: maybe a permission farm, whatever it might be, and he's
Speaker 3: out maybe he's going out to hunt that day in
Speaker 3: a new area, and he's kind of scouting his way
Speaker 3: into a hunting location. Maybe, let's hypothetically say, and he
Speaker 3: comes across some spots they thinks maybe could be good
Speaker 3: pinch points or funnels. They look like they could be
Speaker 3: one of these micro funnels you mentioned, Greg, and they're
Speaker 3: trying to confirm, like, man, is this the kind of
Speaker 3: spot that a mature buck would move through, and maybe
Speaker 3: he's looking for security cover like you mentioned, John, But
Speaker 3: I gotta believe some people will be thinking, hey, I
Speaker 3: need to see sign that will confirm that, yes, this
Speaker 3: is a good place, Like the terrain looks right or
Speaker 3: the cover looks right, but what is the ruts? What's
Speaker 3: the sign that matters to you during this time of
Speaker 3: the year November seven through twenty or somewhere in November.
Speaker 3: What sign do you need to see. We'll start with you, John,
Speaker 3: when you're trying to say yes, this sign tells me
Speaker 3: that mature bucks will use this funnel.
Speaker 5: To security cover if it's a funnel and it has
Speaker 5: security cover, and it's between two betting areas, which typically
Speaker 5: during the rod. If a mature buck's moving during daylight hours,
Speaker 5: he's looking. If he's not with a dough, he's looking
Speaker 5: for a dough. So he's going to be checking a
Speaker 5: betting area within his core area, and then he's going
Speaker 5: to take the best available transition security cover to the
Speaker 5: next betting area that may possibly within his be within
Speaker 5: his core area, so you know, and also in a
Speaker 5: betting area, to me, when you are physically in a
Speaker 5: betting area during the road phases. That's where bucks, mature
Speaker 5: bucks push the doughs into to do their breeding. So
Speaker 5: if you go set up in a betting area, those
Speaker 5: bucks are going to breed those doughs every twenty minutes
Speaker 5: to forty minutes, and they're going to get up and
Speaker 5: you know they're going to bed maybe fifteen or twenty
Speaker 5: yards downwindo the dough after a breeding, after the breed,
Speaker 5: and then maybe twenty minutes and whatever the case may be,
Speaker 5: he'll get up and he'll go and nudge er and
Speaker 5: they'll play a little thirty to one hundred yard chase game.
Speaker 5: And it's all within security government. So if you're in
Speaker 5: a betting area, you know, as long as you're in
Speaker 5: an area where there's runways going by, there's always the
Speaker 5: chance at any time of day to get an opportunity
Speaker 5: in the mature buck. The only downside for most hunters
Speaker 5: when they're hunting within within a betting area is the wind.
Speaker 5: You know, if you don't have a set control regiment,
Speaker 5: typically on average, fifty percent of the deer you see
Speaker 5: are going to be downwind w because there's no rhyme
Speaker 5: or reason in a betting area Obviously, if you're in
Speaker 5: a betting area and you have the option of being
Speaker 5: in an oak tree that's possibly dropping acorns, or at
Speaker 5: a scrape area that's within a betting area, you know
Speaker 5: that's where you'd want to set up as long as
Speaker 5: there was signed there from the you know, there's deer signed.
Speaker 7: There and droppings in the area.
Speaker 5: But the set control things is a pretty big b
Speaker 5: because you're going to have deer down wind of you.
Speaker 5: But death in betting areas to me people that leaves
Speaker 5: betting areas as sanctuary areas.
Speaker 7: If you own your own property and you own a
Speaker 7: lot of property.
Speaker 5: And you've got a ten anchor betting area, yeah you
Speaker 5: can leave it as a sanctuary area because you don't
Speaker 5: have to worry about anybody else.
Speaker 7: Killing the deer. You know, on your property, they're staying there.
Speaker 5: So if you're not in that, if you don't have
Speaker 5: that opportunity to own land and you're on public land,
Speaker 5: you've got to be back in the junk where the
Speaker 5: bucks are going to be breeding the dogs during the
Speaker 5: rut phases and so you know, and they and when
Speaker 5: they're pushing those doughs in those betting areas, a lot
Speaker 5: of times as you guys well know it's on uncharted rows.
Speaker 5: You know those those aren't always following runways, they're just
Speaker 5: running through the swamp or.
Speaker 7: Whatever the case may be. So jawning about the ruck.
Speaker 5: The run is something that anybody during the long spot
Speaker 5: could kill something just by accident.
Speaker 6: Yeah, question right, which you define a betting area as
Speaker 6: as how you're describing it? Would you would you just
Speaker 6: talk about all that. I'd like to hear your your
Speaker 6: explanation of what a betting area is.
Speaker 5: I get that question so much, you know, security government
Speaker 5: betting areas because betting.
Speaker 6: Areas already already answered, but I want to I want
Speaker 6: to hear you say it for all the listeners because I.
Speaker 2: Think it will be useful.
Speaker 5: Yeah, betting areas can change from area to area, Like
Speaker 5: if you're in if you're in hill country, they don't
Speaker 5: have swamps like Michigan does and Lake Ohio does and
Speaker 5: some of the other Midwestern states, uh, you know, Southern Ohio,
Speaker 5: Southern Indiana, southern you know that's all hill country or
Speaker 5: West Virginia.
Speaker 7: You know, and bucks there will bed up on the
Speaker 7: tops of the hills.
Speaker 5: You know, they'll bed where the if the wind's coming
Speaker 5: over the hill, they'll bed where they can smell anything
Speaker 5: coming up the other side, and then they'll have a
Speaker 5: visual down down the side they're betted on it on
Speaker 5: the other side of the So that type of a
Speaker 5: betting or is different than where I live, which is,
Speaker 5: you know, betting areas are very identifiable. It's the thickest area,
Speaker 5: the densest area in the area. You know, that's where
Speaker 5: the bucks are going to be. I mean, I'm not
Speaker 5: talking about like a blueberry marsh where you have to
Speaker 5: crawl over the brush.
Speaker 7: I'm talking about just areas where.
Speaker 5: There's autumnolives or red brush or briar bushes, sparse stuff,
Speaker 5: you know, marsh grasses, some cat tails spotted here and there, hemlocks.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 5: Betting areas are basically, if you were the deer and
Speaker 5: everybody was trying to kill you, where are the heaviest
Speaker 5: places of security cover on the property, where you think
Speaker 5: you could go in and feel safe.
Speaker 7: Moving during daylight hours. That's the betting area.
Speaker 5: So in that with that scenario, betting areas are different
Speaker 5: from area to area depending on the topography, but you
Speaker 5: always want to look at it as that's the dnsest area.
Speaker 5: In the safest place where I would feel comfortable moving
Speaker 5: during daylight hours, within this mile section or within this
Speaker 5: public land, and that's where I would I would set up.
Speaker 3: So okay, here's another one we here we already talk
Speaker 3: We talked about pinch points funnels. That's another one that
Speaker 3: everyone knows. Betting areas. Everyone knows you should hunt betting
Speaker 3: areas during the run, especially spots where there's lots of
Speaker 3: does betting. Right, that's we know, go where the does
Speaker 3: are betting. There's gonna be bucks checking them. But it's
Speaker 3: harder to pick the right spot.
Speaker 4: In a betting area.
Speaker 3: Can you discuss how both of you guys like to
Speaker 3: do that? So how do you find the X within
Speaker 3: a betting ear or around a betting ear, however.
Speaker 4: You each like to do it.
Speaker 3: Because there might be a two acre zone where there's
Speaker 3: a whole bunch of deer betted, and when you're bow hunting,
Speaker 3: that's a large area. It might be ten acres, there
Speaker 3: might be a court aker. Obviously they're all different. But
Speaker 3: how do you think about choosing the right spot like
Speaker 3: this spot within the spot.
Speaker 4: Of a doll betting area during the rut?
Speaker 3: Because this is really really important for people to have
Speaker 3: success this time of year or one of the best places. John,
Speaker 3: you want to want to kick it off, continue your
Speaker 3: thoughts there, I'm started.
Speaker 7: All the only ones you go for it? You don't.
Speaker 6: Great, So what what I would do. Let's let's say
Speaker 6: there's a big marsh and big cattail marsh and you
Speaker 6: it's obvious that there are dos.
Speaker 2: And bucks betting in there. Uh.
Speaker 6: You Sometimes you don't have to make it more complicated
Speaker 6: than it needs to be. I'm bad about that. I'm
Speaker 6: bad about making things over complicated. But what I would
Speaker 6: do and what I have done in states, uh, where
Speaker 6: I would encounter a situation like that, So I would
Speaker 6: scout the edges and I would look for the heaviest
Speaker 6: trails runways coming in and out of those spots that
Speaker 6: are marked with sign.
Speaker 2: You're talking abo.
Speaker 5: You're talking scouting in season, not post in season scouting.
Speaker 2: Which is that's right?
Speaker 6: Which is which is a little different than the way
Speaker 6: John typically hunts. Typically, not always, but typically John has
Speaker 6: his spots scouted and prepped in the preseason or what
Speaker 6: John says postseason January February March, whenever snow goes away
Speaker 6: and before green up a lot of times when I'm
Speaker 6: hunting the rut, I'm in a different state that I've
Speaker 6: never been before, and that's a little different than the
Speaker 6: way John does it, which is fine. But what I
Speaker 6: do typically is scout the edges and I'm looking for
Speaker 6: sign that's telling me when or where a buck is
Speaker 6: choosing to enter and exit that and then typically I
Speaker 6: would set up on that not real super complicated, find
Speaker 6: the betting area, take your best guess at how that
Speaker 6: deer that buck is entering and leaving, and then set
Speaker 6: up on it and then adjust fire. Other people would
Speaker 6: call that like an observation hunt, like Dan Infult, he
Speaker 6: kind of popular rise that term on the Hunting Beast forum,
Speaker 6: and so he would say, you know, you would make
Speaker 6: an observation sit where you might hang back a little
Speaker 6: bit further than you typically might, see how the deer
Speaker 6: using that area, and then move in. I've seen my
Speaker 6: buddies from the hunting public do that all over the country,
Speaker 6: and they will go to a new state, they will
Speaker 6: hang back, they'll see how the deer are using this
Speaker 6: particular area, and then they'll move in on the next
Speaker 6: hunt for the kill.
Speaker 2: It's very effective.
Speaker 6: You have to be aggressive you have to be willing
Speaker 6: to blow out the area, and when you're going in
Speaker 6: for a kill like that.
Speaker 5: For freelancing, you almost have to do that, because for
Speaker 5: free lancing, you can't go in in the afternoon into
Speaker 5: physically into the interior of a betting area and scout
Speaker 5: it for signed because obviously.
Speaker 7: You're going to blow the deer out of it.
Speaker 5: So when you're free lancing, you almost are tied to
Speaker 5: doing the perimeter stuff or doing it from a distance
Speaker 5: one day, that's right, readjusting the next. But when when
Speaker 5: I'm postseason scouting and I'm physically going in betting areas
Speaker 5: and I'm covering every inch of it, I can blow
Speaker 5: every deer out of there. I could care less. I'm
Speaker 5: I'm six months from deer season. Those are all going
Speaker 5: to be back in there. Everything's going to be cope
Speaker 5: SETI back to normal by deer season, so I can
Speaker 5: scrutinize every inch of that betting area and every inch
Speaker 5: of the property I want to look at without concern
Speaker 5: about spooking deer like like you'd have to be, you.
Speaker 7: Know, during season.
Speaker 5: So when I'm going into a betting area, I'm looking
Speaker 5: for master trees, a lot of times when I cross
Speaker 5: river with waiters or go across a lake, you know,
Speaker 5: in a boat or a canoe or whatever the case
Speaker 5: may be, I've lost a lot of hunters right there.
Speaker 5: By using waitershi boots and boats. You've lost probably at
Speaker 5: least ninety to ninety.
Speaker 7: Five percent of your competition.
Speaker 5: When we were in Indiana last year, I saw in
Speaker 5: that complete, huge area, I saw one other hunter.
Speaker 7: In a boat, right, do you remember that where we
Speaker 7: were last year?
Speaker 5: Just nobody else does that because it's more work. So
Speaker 5: once you get back into those areas, a lot of
Speaker 5: times they open up. You know, they'll have brush along
Speaker 5: the edge of the river when you cross it, but
Speaker 5: a lot of times you get back into there and
Speaker 5: they open up into a little bit more open, sparse,
Speaker 5: sparse brush and stuff. And you know, I look for oaks.
Speaker 5: I look for the same sign I would look for
Speaker 5: for hunting early season. I'm looking for mass if it's there,
Speaker 5: and if there is, I'll look at to see what
Speaker 5: kind of sign was.
Speaker 7: There from the previous runt. You know, is there rubs
Speaker 7: around that area.
Speaker 5: Is there possibly a couple of old scrapes by these oaks,
Speaker 5: or maybe there's a little opening in a betting area
Speaker 5: and it's got a multiple runways.
Speaker 7: Converging through it.
Speaker 5: I kill the Bucking two thousand and four this way
Speaker 5: in an automolive patch with a twenty yard opening in
Speaker 5: the center of it. So I'm just looking for congested
Speaker 5: sign rubs, you know, I'm looking for taller rubs, possible scrapes.
Speaker 5: But usually when you're in betting areas, you don't see
Speaker 5: a lot of scrapes. It's pretty rare actually to see
Speaker 5: to see scrapes in a swamp.
Speaker 7: So I'm just looking for the most.
Speaker 5: Congested sign because i know if I'm hunting there during
Speaker 5: the run the bucks are the mature bucks are going
Speaker 5: to be pushing the dose around, so they're going to
Speaker 5: be those dos and.
Speaker 7: Bucks are going to be moving around during the course
Speaker 7: of the day.
Speaker 5: And wherever if I'm in the most congested sign and runways,
Speaker 5: I can find odds are And I'm a percentage guys.
Speaker 5: I hunt according to percentages. The percentages are higher that
Speaker 5: something's going to go through that more congested runway area
Speaker 5: that I'm at than someplace else.
Speaker 3: Now, John, I know you don't. You don't factor wind
Speaker 3: direction into your strategy when it comes to avoiding deer
Speaker 3: winding you because of your sink control. But does the
Speaker 3: wind Does the wind direction impact where you want to
Speaker 3: hunt in a betting area at all? Because many times
Speaker 3: folks talk about bucks preferring to check a betting area
Speaker 3: on the downwind side so they can more efficiently do
Speaker 3: travel and check places. Does that is that something you
Speaker 3: can in.
Speaker 4: It at all?
Speaker 5: I actually will set up places where I assume deer
Speaker 5: her coming in from the down wind side because I
Speaker 5: know I'm not going to get winded, and I'll beat
Speaker 5: that opportunity. So in Michigan, I've killed two one hundred
Speaker 5: and fifty inch bucks because I was hunting at a
Speaker 5: scrape area. And I set when i'm when i'm hunting
Speaker 5: in a scrape at a scrape area, if it's in
Speaker 5: a bedding area and a transition zone that's relatively wide,
Speaker 5: that has adequate security government if there's a tree on
Speaker 5: the south side or southeast side, because winds typically out
Speaker 5: of the north or northwest in the predominantly in the fall,
Speaker 5: I will set a tree up about twenty to twenty
Speaker 5: five yards on the down wind side of the scrapes
Speaker 5: where I have a twenty five yard shot to the
Speaker 5: physical scrapes, and I have the twenty five yard because
Speaker 5: I'm only shooting forty pounds, so I only have twenty
Speaker 5: five yard distance. And I also make a shooting lane
Speaker 5: twenty five yards to the south or southeast of the tree.
Speaker 5: So if a deer circles and comes in from down
Speaker 5: wind because he doesn't want to be strape areas are
Speaker 5: always in a little open area, and a lot of
Speaker 5: times when sure bucks don't want to be in that
Speaker 5: open zone during daylight hours.
Speaker 7: So I'll set that up.
Speaker 5: And I've on two different occasions I've had monster bucks
Speaker 5: come in and circle down wind and I've shot them
Speaker 5: on the down wind side.
Speaker 7: That's the cool thing about sun control.
Speaker 5: Also, if you can set up on the down wind
Speaker 5: side and you can use bucks coming in from the
Speaker 5: down wind side to your advantage because you're not worried
Speaker 5: about getting there.
Speaker 3: Greg, what about with you when it comes to wind
Speaker 3: direction and that helping your your kind of scout the
Speaker 3: edge find the sign approach. But I'm assuming wind direction
Speaker 3: factors into that as well though too.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: John pretty much outlined it very succinctly there. But the bucks,
Speaker 6: even if you're John and you don't pay attention to wind.
Speaker 6: The bucks are one hundred percent They live in die
Speaker 6: by their noses, so to.
Speaker 2: Ignore that is not smart.
Speaker 6: I have seen way too many times, and buddies in
Speaker 6: camp that I've been hunting with have seen way too
Speaker 6: many times these bucks cruising the down wind side of
Speaker 6: a betting area. They check the whole thing literally just
Speaker 6: by kind of slowly walking down the edge, sniffing the trails,
Speaker 6: and they know everything that is in that betting area,
Speaker 6: so they don't even necessarily have to go in there.
Speaker 6: So using that to your advantage and setting up on
Speaker 6: the down wind side in a place that it's a
Speaker 6: little easier for John since he doesn't worry as much
Speaker 6: about the wind, so his placement is a little bit easier.
Speaker 6: But for those of us that do pay attention to
Speaker 6: our wind direction and getting busted, it's a little harder
Speaker 6: to set up on that route because you have to
Speaker 6: really pay attention to where you're at and where your
Speaker 6: wind's going. Understanding thermals, understanding how wind currents work is important.
Speaker 6: It's it's a bit of an advanced kind of strategy
Speaker 6: or tactic that hunters need to learn, kind of like
Speaker 6: reading a topo map. I would say, if you don't
Speaker 6: understand thermals how they rise and how they fall, and
Speaker 6: how it impacts how the deer use the area, then
Speaker 6: you need you need to spruce up your game there, hunter,
Speaker 6: because you need to understand that because bucks do and
Speaker 6: they always use the wind of their advantage, so you
Speaker 6: got to find a way to use that against them.
Speaker 6: And if you know that there's a betting area in
Speaker 6: a bottom like a lot of times the does will
Speaker 6: bed congregate in bottoms, especially in like hill country, right,
Speaker 6: they'll they'll that's usually the thickest part of the area
Speaker 6: down in the bottom. It's where all the briers are,
Speaker 6: It's where all the brush is, all that stuff is
Speaker 6: typically in the bottoms, and that's typically where a lot.
Speaker 2: Of does bed.
Speaker 6: The bucks typically don't want to go in there just
Speaker 6: for fun. They would rather skirt the edge, smell everything
Speaker 6: that's in there by coming on the down wind side,
Speaker 6: and then if there's nothing in there that it's excitesome,
Speaker 6: they just move on to the next spot. So I
Speaker 6: definitely factor wind in into every hunt, both how I
Speaker 6: can use it to my advantage and how a buck
Speaker 6: in the area would use it to his advantage.
Speaker 4: You mentioned the thermals.
Speaker 3: Greg, One of the rut locations you guys discuss in
Speaker 3: the book are thermal hubs or thermal draft hubs, key
Speaker 3: thing like you mentioned in hill Country. Can you talk
Speaker 3: a little bit about why the first? What does that mean?
Speaker 3: What for folks that aren't familiar, can you describe a
Speaker 3: thermal hub? How do identify it? And then how to
Speaker 3: hunt it? Because as you mentioned, the wind can be
Speaker 3: tricky in these types of locations, and as you describe,
Speaker 3: you need to understand the thermals. But also even with
Speaker 3: an understanding of the thermals, it's still kind of tough
Speaker 3: because there's certain parts of the day when the thermals
Speaker 3: are going to hurt you in these locations, certain parts
Speaker 3: of the day when the thermals will help you. Navigetting
Speaker 3: that timing and where to set up your stand or
Speaker 3: saddle within that location is not simple.
Speaker 4: Can you can you touch on all that?
Speaker 7: So?
Speaker 6: Yeah, and yes, it's a great question. So first of all,
Speaker 6: let's define a thermal hub and it's different for everybody. John,
Speaker 6: why don't you define a thermal hub as as we
Speaker 6: talk about it in the book, And then I'll talk
Speaker 6: about my experience hunting around it has that work for you.
Speaker 7: That'll be fine.
Speaker 5: Thermals in the morning are going up, there's the temperatures rising,
Speaker 5: thermals are rising, your order is rising. In the evening
Speaker 5: is once the temperatures start cooling, your thermals are going down.
Speaker 5: So if you're hunting hill country and let's say you're
Speaker 5: on the you're on a side hell and you've got
Speaker 5: a runway up above you, and you've got a runway
Speaker 5: down below you. No matter whether you're hunting morning or evening,
Speaker 5: one of those runways, there's an excellent possibility of getting
Speaker 5: winded because either way, something's going to be downwind of
Speaker 5: you or thermally downwind of you.
Speaker 7: So a hub is let's say, let's say in the evening,
Speaker 7: when thermals are falling, a buck can actually come down
Speaker 7: in the lower side of in a saddle on the
Speaker 7: bottom side of a hill, and because all the thermals
Speaker 7: are going down, they can actually smell if there has
Speaker 7: been any dough activity up on the side of that
Speaker 7: ridge when they're because all that wind is coming down
Speaker 7: into that saddle, and that's a thermal hub. That's a
Speaker 7: collection area basically for all the thermals coming down the
Speaker 7: side of that hill. I did want to say one
Speaker 7: thing about the cell lock, and I've got a very
Speaker 7: interesting statistic, and I'm not tied in the world of
Speaker 7: cell lock home, but it's the only clothing company because
Speaker 7: they own the pad. I'm using the activated carbon, and
Speaker 7: in my opinion, activated carbon is the only thing.
Speaker 5: That works it controlling your human odor. From nineteen sixty
Speaker 5: five through nineteen ninety six, I killed ten record book
Speaker 5: Bucks when I started using sunt lock correctly, because I
Speaker 5: used sunt lock in ninety six, but I wasn't using
Speaker 5: it properly and taking care of it properly when I
Speaker 5: was in ninety seven. From nineteen ninety seven up until
Speaker 5: last Sunday, I killed.
Speaker 7: Forty six book Bucks. So I've killed forty six.
Speaker 5: Book Bucks while using sunt lock from ninety seven through
Speaker 5: twenty twenty four so far, and ten from sixty.
Speaker 7: Five through ninety six. You do the math. That's a
Speaker 7: pretty healthy difference.
Speaker 4: True.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: What I was going to say about thermal hubs is
Speaker 6: maybe to define it a little bit more clearly. So
Speaker 6: if you think about like some you think about where
Speaker 6: multiple mainly in hill country, where multiple ridge systems kind
Speaker 6: of dump into one Like if you can imagine satellite image,
Speaker 6: you typically would have a bottom and it kind of
Speaker 6: meanders and you got ridges on both sides. And then
Speaker 6: typically that bottom will terminate at a kind of a
Speaker 6: bowl where there will be multiple ridge systems that kind
Speaker 6: of dump into one main bottom. And and that that
Speaker 6: confluence of multiple ridge systems dumping into one location is
Speaker 6: what is typically referred to as a thermal hub. And
Speaker 6: if you think about the math of it, right or
Speaker 6: the physics of it, when the wind, when the when
Speaker 6: the wind is the thermals are kind of falling everything,
Speaker 6: it's gonna follow those low those low points. So it's
Speaker 6: gonna the wind is gonna is gonna drop into those
Speaker 6: ridges of the cuts, ravines, whatever you how, whatever you
Speaker 6: call them in your region, and the wind the thermals
Speaker 6: are gonna fall into those low points, and it's gonna
Speaker 6: follow the ridge system all the way down, and it's
Speaker 6: gonna all congregate right there in that bowl. And what
Speaker 6: a buck can do is he can he can skirt
Speaker 6: that thermal hub. A lot of times he'll do it.
Speaker 6: Uh in the mornings, he'll be low. It's skirting that
Speaker 6: because in the mornings, before the sun comes out, before
Speaker 6: it starts heating up the air, your thermals are falling, right,
Speaker 6: they fall in their cold and they rise when they're hot.
Speaker 6: That's it's it's it's thermal activity. So in the morning,
Speaker 6: before the sun comes up, your thermals are falling and
Speaker 6: they're going down into that into that little thermal hub.
Speaker 6: As soon as the sun comes up and starts warming
Speaker 6: up the air, your thermals start to rise. So a
Speaker 6: rule of thumb that I've kind of learned through the
Speaker 6: years and watching a lot of people have success, is to.
Speaker 2: Hunt low early.
Speaker 6: And then move as the sun warms up. Move because
Speaker 6: once the wind switches and those thermals start rising, anything
Speaker 6: that comes above you, any buck that comes above you, you're busted.
Speaker 2: You're not gonna get away.
Speaker 6: Unless you know you have a full scent locked routine
Speaker 6: and you are confident in it, then that's a different story.
Speaker 6: But for for folks that don't have that system, as
Speaker 6: soon as that wind is, as soon as the thermals
Speaker 6: start rising, you gotta move. And I can illustrate this perfectly,
Speaker 6: my good buddy Carl. Last year, John, you were there,
Speaker 6: you saw this happen we're hunting Indiana on public land.
Speaker 6: And he did that strategy to eight. So Carl found
Speaker 6: a thermal hub, uh so, a ridge system that all
Speaker 6: dumped down into one spot and it was shredded with
Speaker 6: sign all around the thermal hub. Call it the bottom
Speaker 6: third of the hillside. So you know you got a
Speaker 6: two hundred foot hill. The bottom third of that is
Speaker 6: where all the sign was in this particular thermal hub.
Speaker 2: Carl figured that out.
Speaker 6: He found it by scouting, and he realized that he
Speaker 6: had this opportunity to hunt low in the morning in
Speaker 6: case that buck came through there in the morning. He
Speaker 6: had a plan. He called his shot. He said, look,
Speaker 6: the wind, the thermals are gonna switch at like eight
Speaker 6: thirty in the morning. That's when you know the forecast
Speaker 6: is to change. And he said, I'm gonna move up
Speaker 6: the hill as soon as my wind shifts, and I
Speaker 6: found another spot that I think a bench that I
Speaker 6: think that buck is going to walk once it warms up.
Speaker 6: That's what he did. He went in the morning in
Speaker 6: the dark, and he set up low. About two hours later,
Speaker 6: when the wind started to switch and the thermal started
Speaker 6: to rise, got down, he moved up and he shot
Speaker 6: that buck on the exact trail that he called about
Speaker 6: ten minutes after he got in that tree. So it's
Speaker 6: a general rule of thumb you can hunt low in
Speaker 6: the mornings, but then you have to move. You have
Speaker 6: to get out of there before your thermal switching. Then
Speaker 6: everything above you screwed.
Speaker 3: So okay, well I want to take that one step further.
Speaker 3: So if you were going to hunt during the rut,
Speaker 3: and you're hunting a thermal hub location as you just
Speaker 3: defined it, where you've got like a bowl and a
Speaker 3: bunch of ridges dropping down to the bottom. Usually at
Speaker 3: the bottom there there's oftentimes a big hub scrape too,
Speaker 3: or a primary scrape. You know, that's also a concentration
Speaker 3: of sense. So a lot of deer like to hit
Speaker 3: those scrapes and ends up being created there. So you've
Speaker 3: got all these things happened there in the early morning,
Speaker 3: So you're recommending hunt low in the early morning. I
Speaker 3: imagine where the best convergence of those trails is, or
Speaker 3: where that big scrape is or whatever it is, and
Speaker 3: you're hoping that the thermals that are dropping will keep
Speaker 3: your scent pooled down low with you and you can
Speaker 3: kill a deer before he gets down there. When you
Speaker 3: were to move later in the morning for the rest
Speaker 3: of the day. Now you've got a lot of options.
Speaker 3: It's simple when you're trying to hunt down at the
Speaker 3: bottom where that big scrape is or where that convergence
Speaker 3: of all the trails is. But in the afternoon, now
Speaker 3: you've got maybe four different points that are all dropping down.
Speaker 3: You've got ridges on either side all around you. You
Speaker 3: could pick any one of those and you will out
Speaker 3: have an entire hillside to pick from and or a
Speaker 3: ridgetop to pick from. How do you pick the spot
Speaker 3: for your afternoon with the rising thermals when you have
Speaker 3: so many more options, what are you thinking about that?
Speaker 6: It's way harder to pin it down. And that's why
Speaker 6: the phase of.
Speaker 2: The rut is so important for this.
Speaker 6: When you want to when if you're gonna move up
Speaker 6: and hunt, you're exactly right mark where the deer have
Speaker 6: way more options to go. What you really want to
Speaker 6: be is in the say, in the seek phase of
Speaker 6: the rut, the pre rut, where the deer are really
Speaker 6: covering ground, because your chances of a deer walking through
Speaker 6: there are much better as opposed to the peak rut
Speaker 6: where they are traveling less.
Speaker 2: As we learned about earlier the way John.
Speaker 6: Described the peak rut, the deer start moving less, and
Speaker 6: then the post rut when they start traveling again. To
Speaker 6: seek out those that haven't been bred. That is your
Speaker 6: best opportunity to hunt higher on and I would find
Speaker 6: uh what, let's just use Carl's example is what he
Speaker 6: did and it worked. What he did is he found
Speaker 6: a small little bench that gave the deer. It was
Speaker 6: at the top third of the hillside. So on the
Speaker 6: top third he set up on a bench that would
Speaker 6: give a buck and.
Speaker 2: Advantag for travel. Because they're lazy, just like us.
Speaker 6: They don't want to walk on the steepest terrain as
Speaker 6: possible if they can avoid it, they're going to find
Speaker 6: a little bench or something like that that's going to
Speaker 6: give them an advantage. And if you think about, a
Speaker 6: buck could walk that ridge system on the top third,
Speaker 6: and when the wind is blowing towards him, where the thermals
Speaker 6: are rising, he can smell the entire valley below him,
Speaker 6: the whole thing just by slowly walking down the ridge.
Speaker 6: So what it takes is a little bit of experience
Speaker 6: to understand where bucks like to do that and they
Speaker 6: typically like to do that on the top third of
Speaker 6: the ridge. And this isn't my idea. I didn't come
Speaker 6: up with this. Lots of people preach this. You can
Speaker 6: read books about this. Hunters have known this for decades.
Speaker 6: Right that top third of the ridge where the thermals
Speaker 6: are rising. That is, if you can find a little
Speaker 6: bench or some sort of little pinch point in that zone,
Speaker 6: that can be gold for a rut phase.
Speaker 5: Look, yeah, you can mind the does don't have to
Speaker 5: physically be there. If they pass through within an hour
Speaker 5: or two earlier, their sen's going to still rise up,
Speaker 5: you know, in the morning, up the side of those hills.
Speaker 5: One one really cool way of trying to explain thermals
Speaker 5: is if you're sitting around a campfire after dark. Okay,
Speaker 5: the temperatures are dropping, so that means your thermals or
Speaker 5: thermals are coming down. So you've got your fire which
Speaker 5: is hot, so it's hot, so the thermals are going
Speaker 5: up because of the fire, and the thermals environmental thermals are
Speaker 5: coming down, so they're clashing with each other.
Speaker 7: And that's why.
Speaker 5: When you're sitting around a fire, even if there's no wind,
Speaker 5: the smoke from the fire tends to move around the area,
Speaker 5: and you're always getting up and moving if you want
Speaker 5: to stay out of the smoke. It's because the thermals
Speaker 5: are clashing with the environmental temperatures dropping against the thermals
Speaker 5: from the fire heat going up, and they clash, and
Speaker 5: then the wind's just going different direction. Even if there's
Speaker 5: no wind, you know, zero wind on your cell phone
Speaker 5: when you look.
Speaker 7: At aci weather or whatever it may be.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I know that that that's a very it's
Speaker 6: a pretty basic concept. But I talk to hunters all
Speaker 6: over the country who don't know what thermals are. They
Speaker 6: they has never heard of it, or you know, whatever
Speaker 6: the reason might be. But as a general rule, your
Speaker 6: thermals are they're a slave to the temperature. If the
Speaker 6: temperature is falling, thermals are falling. If the temperature is rising,
Speaker 6: thermals are rising. It's just a general rule. It's an
Speaker 6: easy way to think about it, uh for a hunter.
Speaker 6: If you're if you're not, if you if you've never
Speaker 6: understood wind currents and stuff like that. I'm not a meteorologist,
Speaker 6: but I do know that when temperatures fall, thermals fall,
Speaker 6: and when temperatures rise thermal it's an easy way to
Speaker 6: think about it.
Speaker 5: In no country, you better to know how to hunt
Speaker 5: thermals in flat land. It's not yeah, white as as bad,
Speaker 5: but still in the it's if there's no wind and
Speaker 5: you're in flat country.
Speaker 7: You know, in the.
Speaker 5: Evening, you got to be cautious, you know, because your
Speaker 5: thermals are falling and if something comes close to your tree, uh,
Speaker 5: they could very well win you because of the thermals
Speaker 5: coming down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, tricky. Thing isn't like a hill country set up
Speaker 3: like you just described, Greg. You have two shifts that
Speaker 3: happened during the day. So you've got like you want
Speaker 3: to have a want to have a low spot early
Speaker 3: in the morning, but then part way through the morning
Speaker 3: warms up, so now you want to move high. And
Speaker 3: then that works pretty good until primetime in the evening,
Speaker 3: and then again they're falling again, so then you want
Speaker 3: to move low again. So it can be tricky if
Speaker 3: you're trying to chase that. But it could be tricky. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you're not just chasing the thermals.
Speaker 5: You're chasing how the bucks use the thermalsh You're not
Speaker 5: right and they're gonna Yeah, they're going to definitely they're
Speaker 5: going to definitely move according your thermals in the yellow country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'm I'm heading to hunt some Kentucky public
Speaker 3: land next week, hill country, just like we're describing.
Speaker 4: And this is not my bread and butter.
Speaker 3: So I'm asking a lot of questions about this because
Speaker 3: I'm trying to get spruce stuff and ready for it making.
Speaker 7: Yes.
Speaker 3: Yes, Okay, So we have a bunch of things that
Speaker 3: we have not gotten to cover yet that I wanted to,
Speaker 3: but we are using up a lot of your time,
Speaker 3: So I want to kind of shift into like a
Speaker 3: rapid fire type mode here, guys, where I'm going to
Speaker 3: ask you guys for your quick thoughts on a topic
Speaker 3: and in your mind, try to do like the one
Speaker 3: minute summary, like the fast here's the most important thing
Speaker 3: you got to know about this one thing, and we're
Speaker 3: going to try to rapid fire roll through a few
Speaker 3: more important rut things just to make sure someone listening
Speaker 3: on November seventh, twenty twenty four has a little bit
Speaker 3: of everything they can use over this next week.
Speaker 4: Okay, So.
Speaker 3: Rapid fire greg really quick calling during the rut. What
Speaker 3: are your few couple quick most important thoughts for calling
Speaker 3: during peak rut.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 6: I love rattling. I'm not afraid to rattle. I don't
Speaker 6: typically get real super aggressive with it. I typically like
Speaker 6: to do a little bit more of like a sparring
Speaker 6: type session that I actually learned from John. He describes
Speaker 6: it in some of his other books, and we talk
Speaker 6: about rattling in this book. But yeah, I love rattling.
Speaker 6: I am a fan.
Speaker 2: I do it.
Speaker 3: Frequently, John, same question to you. Quick thoughts on calling
Speaker 3: during the rut.
Speaker 5: Okay, we have a complete chapter on using fake tactics
Speaker 5: in the book. But I exactly like Greg described I
Speaker 5: it's pretty rare if I'm hunting in the interior of
Speaker 5: the vetting area during the rut that I don't do
Speaker 5: a couple of sparring sequences early in the morning, maybe
Speaker 5: forty five minutes after daylight, you know, sometime around eight o'clock,
Speaker 5: and do two sequences on an evening sin about an
Speaker 5: hour before dark. So I'm not a big grunt called guy.
Speaker 5: I've had a lot more success doing spiring sequences. When
Speaker 5: I'm out of state, I will do more aggressive rattle
Speaker 5: sequences because there's a lot more mature bucks. They're used
Speaker 5: to hearing that aggressiveness like you see on TV. But
Speaker 5: when I'm hunting in Michigan, it's almost always subtle sparring sequences.
Speaker 5: I think that arouses their attention and.
Speaker 6: One one other, one other thing before we go to that,
Speaker 6: before we go Uh, don't rattle. If you're in an
Speaker 6: open area where the deer can see, where a buck
Speaker 6: can see you from.
Speaker 2: A long way away, it won't work.
Speaker 6: What that buck will do is he will come to
Speaker 6: the point just close enough to where he can see
Speaker 6: where the where the rattling came from, and if he
Speaker 6: does not confirm it with his eyes, he will not
Speaker 6: come in. So do not rattle in a big open woods.
Speaker 6: It won't work at least for a mature deer maybe
Speaker 6: a one year older two year old to come in,
Speaker 6: But a big deer isn't coming in. You have got
Speaker 6: to be obscure. Your location has to be obscure. So
Speaker 6: a thick betting area's thick something. If you're going to
Speaker 6: rattle for that buck to come in in bowl range,
Speaker 6: he can't see the source of the noise.
Speaker 2: That is important because you.
Speaker 6: Will screw it up like I have done many times
Speaker 6: by rattling 're deer.
Speaker 3: Conceiving now maybe though maybe there is an asterisk next
Speaker 3: to that, which is unless you are using a decoy possibly,
Speaker 3: And that was okay, fair, That's the next question I
Speaker 3: had because I grew up by living by the Gospel
Speaker 3: of Precision Bow Hunting by John and Chris Eberhart, and
Speaker 3: within that book early on, one of the major themes
Speaker 3: in that book is to not use a lot of
Speaker 3: things that draw attention to you in places like Michigan,
Speaker 3: so decoys being a perfect example of that. So I
Speaker 3: grew up for a long time being terrified by the
Speaker 3: idea of using decoys because I thought it would spook
Speaker 3: every deer in the world in a heavily pressured place
Speaker 3: like Michigan. But I see in one of the chapters
Speaker 3: in your new book, John, you're talking about using dough decoys.
Speaker 3: So I'm curious, real quick, fast summary, what's your evolved
Speaker 3: view on decoys these days?
Speaker 5: Not really, it's not really evolved. I still very, very
Speaker 5: rarely use a decoy in Michigan. I use decoys a lot.
Speaker 7: When I go out of state.
Speaker 5: I would never go out of state without taking a
Speaker 5: decoy with me, a hard body three D decoy. They're
Speaker 5: they're paying to carry around. But I'll tell you what,
Speaker 5: if you're doing a rattle sequence and you're in a
Speaker 5: more open area, and I've done multiple times in i
Speaker 5: Went Kansas, if you put a decoy out and a
Speaker 5: deer is coming and it's one hundred yards away and
Speaker 5: he sees it, he'll come right in.
Speaker 7: If he's not with a dough, he'll come right in.
Speaker 5: I've actually put a decoy out on the corner of
Speaker 5: a big cornfield in Iowa where you know there's like
Speaker 5: here's here's a corner, and I had the decoy up
Speaker 5: here so you can see it from either direction, and
Speaker 5: I had to come out.
Speaker 7: I bet it was. I'm here half a mile probably
Speaker 7: three eighths of a mile down the field edge. He
Speaker 7: saw that decoy and he came right to it.
Speaker 5: But in Michigan, because we've got so many dos and
Speaker 5: we've got just got so many deer, the odds of
Speaker 5: a doe coming in and spooking from the decoy, coming
Speaker 5: in within three to five yards and doing the peekaboo
Speaker 5: deal and then blowing and then running off is really
Speaker 5: really high. So I don't do it in Michigan very
Speaker 5: very often, because unless I'm in an area where I know.
Speaker 7: I'm only gonna see a couple of deer, then I
Speaker 7: may use it.
Speaker 5: Bit if I'm in an area where the chances of
Speaker 5: seeing multiple dos and bonds and some ordnan bucks where
Speaker 5: they might come in and hit it with their antler
Speaker 5: and then spook and blow.
Speaker 7: I just rarely use them in Michigan anymore. I've killed
Speaker 7: a couple bucks.
Speaker 5: With him in the you know, in the eighties, but
Speaker 5: they were two and a half year olds, so on
Speaker 5: three and a half.
Speaker 7: Older bucks in Michigan, I don't use the bit out
Speaker 7: of state. I use them a lot.
Speaker 2: Greg, and a decoy I don't have with decoys, So.
Speaker 6: I'm sure John is one hundred percent right in that
Speaker 6: they can be very effective. But I'm a minimalist at
Speaker 6: heart with gear, so I don't. I don't carry stuff
Speaker 6: like that ever, so I can't speak to that. I
Speaker 6: can say that without a decoy, if you're in an
Speaker 6: open area and you need a big buck to come
Speaker 6: in mature into bowl range and he can see your
Speaker 6: area from one hundred yards away, he ain't coming in.
Speaker 2: Yeah without a decoy.
Speaker 3: Okay, another one for you, then, Greg advice for making
Speaker 3: all day sits more comfortable or enjoyable, especially especially if
Speaker 3: you're doing what we do. Let's just hunt in a saddle.
Speaker 3: Any any advice on saddle hunting, comfort tips for all
Speaker 3: day or or any other part of the all day piece.
Speaker 6: Quick thoughts here, It's just hard, you know, an all
Speaker 6: day sit. I I used to love listening to your
Speaker 6: live the early days of Wired to Hunt, when like
Speaker 6: the Holy Field days, when you would you would start
Speaker 6: talking about, okay, it's like time for all days since
Speaker 6: to start, and there was always this little trepidation with
Speaker 6: you because you're like, you know, It's like it's like,
Speaker 6: I know I need to sit all day, but it sucks.
Speaker 6: It's hard, and it feels like grinding. I've yet to
Speaker 6: figure out a way around that. Maybe a box line
Speaker 6: would do that with maybe a fridge in there, find
Speaker 6: maybe some Wi Fi. Yeah, maybe that would make an
Speaker 6: all days sit easier. But man, they're just hard. So
Speaker 6: I find myself almost never sitting all day. I haven't
Speaker 6: sat in the in a tree from daylight to dark
Speaker 6: in several years. Now, I will hunt all day, meaning
Speaker 6: I won't leave the woods.
Speaker 2: I'll come down.
Speaker 6: I'll maybe move to a different air, yeah, maybe move
Speaker 6: one hundred yards away, or do a little mid day
Speaker 6: scouting and slowly kind of slip through an area and
Speaker 6: then find another spot for the last four or five
Speaker 6: hours of the day. But man hunting all day in
Speaker 6: the same tree without getting down, it's just hard. It's
Speaker 6: more discipline in mind and willpower.
Speaker 2: Than it is anything else.
Speaker 6: Because I don't care what saddle you're in, what tree
Speaker 6: stand you're in, you are gonna get uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: I don't care who it is.
Speaker 6: You are gonna get uncomfortable, and you just have to
Speaker 6: grit your teeth and go through it. And I'm soft.
Speaker 6: I don't like to be uncomfortable, so I I find
Speaker 6: myself not doing much of that anymore.
Speaker 4: All right, John, what would you say on that one?
Speaker 5: Well, as you do, Mark, I've done a ton of
Speaker 5: all day sets, and I've killed a lot of bucks
Speaker 5: during the middle of the day. Hunting all day is
Speaker 5: very grueling, especially if it's sunny out, because it gets
Speaker 5: so hot in the middle of the day and you
Speaker 5: don't see a lot of deer in the middle of
Speaker 5: the day, and so many hunters will give all day
Speaker 5: sits maybe one or two shots, and because they don't
Speaker 5: see much, they give up on it. Well, if you
Speaker 5: went out as a hunter, an avid hunter, and you
Speaker 5: hunted two evenings in a row and you didn't see
Speaker 5: much for deer activity, would you quit hunting evenings?
Speaker 7: Of course you wouldn't.
Speaker 5: But you know, I'm a percentage guy, and like I said,
Speaker 5: I've killed seven out of my twenty book bucks in
Speaker 5: Michigan that were shot between November one and fourteen. We're
Speaker 5: during eleven to three o'clock, so I know the advantage
Speaker 5: of hunting midday an all day sit, you know, if
Speaker 5: it's in the right type of area, and it's during
Speaker 5: the rut phases.
Speaker 7: So I don't have any issues with this comfort.
Speaker 5: I can go to the bathroom one or two in
Speaker 5: my saddle, either way, it doesn't matter without getting out
Speaker 5: of my tree.
Speaker 7: I always take food.
Speaker 5: I on an all day sit will I will literally
Speaker 5: change my clothes four times on an all day sit
Speaker 5: because I will walk in really light clothed. You know,
Speaker 5: we're very light, slight on overheat. Once I it up
Speaker 5: in the tree, my body cools off. I'll take off
Speaker 5: my salte jacket, put on some undergarments, put my sun
Speaker 5: lot jacket back on, and then when it gets like
Speaker 5: ten or eleven o'clock that starts heating up, I'll do
Speaker 5: the same. I'll take off my salat jacket, take off
Speaker 5: my undergarments, put them in my backpack.
Speaker 7: So I'm lighter, so I'm not overheating. In the middle
Speaker 7: of the.
Speaker 5: Day, two three o'clock, as it starts to cool, I'll
Speaker 5: rechange and put my layers back on.
Speaker 7: This is only on my top, now my bottom. It's
Speaker 7: top the top.
Speaker 5: And then before I get out of the tree, because
Speaker 5: I'm gonna have a long walk out, I will again
Speaker 5: take off my jacket and take off my undergarments so
Speaker 5: I don't overheat and sweat on my ass.
Speaker 6: You're insane that you are insane, Jo man, you are insaney.
Speaker 7: Comfortable.
Speaker 4: I just can't.
Speaker 3: I'm over here having a hard time not breaking down
Speaker 3: laughing here you're doing it. I just I just want
Speaker 3: to make sure I heard right. Did you say that
Speaker 3: you're going number two while staying in your cell?
Speaker 7: Absolutely? Yeah? You want to have them?
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 7: You don't want to. I don't know. It's so easy.
Speaker 2: Oh no, don't don't do it.
Speaker 11: Don't do it.
Speaker 4: Just don't do it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, blog bagg and you take the saddle.
Speaker 12: You either pull it up under your shoulders, under your armpits,
Speaker 12: or you slide the saddle down above your knees and
Speaker 12: you just under your pants and go in the bag
Speaker 12: and then wipe and put the bag back in your
Speaker 12: back back and pull your pants off and pull a
Speaker 12: saddle back up card.
Speaker 7: It's literally easy.
Speaker 4: So remember it's amazing.
Speaker 6: So the first time I heard this story, Mark John
Speaker 6: told us at hunting camp that that he likes to
Speaker 6: take craps in gallon ziploc bags.
Speaker 4: And then I had the part that got us.
Speaker 2: It broke us down.
Speaker 6: While he said, but he squeezes all the air out,
Speaker 6: you know, to like zip it up, so there's I
Speaker 6: through them in all that all the ship smell is just.
Speaker 4: And then he puts it in his bag.
Speaker 11: This is this is one of the this is one
Speaker 11: of the all time, all time best Wired Hunt moments
Speaker 11: in all the decade plus years who've done these episodes,
Speaker 11: that right there, that's one of the best.
Speaker 3: Thank you for that, John, welcome, I'm sure multiple times.
Speaker 6: So there's it. Whenever we do an update on the
Speaker 6: books for version two, we'll make sure that John details
Speaker 6: that process with illustrations in detail to show you how
Speaker 6: to get maximum crap air out of your ziploc bag
Speaker 6: to take up the less room in your past.
Speaker 2: Greg Donald's.
Speaker 7: That's in the book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was talking about it.
Speaker 6: The detailed, the detailed process about it with illustrations and everything.
Speaker 7: That's amazing. It's really easy to do, to be honest with.
Speaker 3: Absolutely amazing, And I think maybe that might be the
Speaker 3: best place to end the whole episode right there. There's
Speaker 3: there's so much in these books. Because you guys are crazy.
Speaker 3: You don't just write one book and release it. You
Speaker 3: launched three at a time, so there's.
Speaker 4: Three of these.
Speaker 3: Can you give me a quick rundown other than what
Speaker 3: we've talked about. We've covered a lot of the rut
Speaker 3: side of things, and there's still more that we haven't
Speaker 3: got to cover, and then so so much more outside
Speaker 3: of the rut could could one of you or both
Speaker 3: of you give me a quick take on what folks
Speaker 3: can expect to see in the book and then where
Speaker 3: they can.
Speaker 2: Buy it there is, Greg, I would love it if
Speaker 2: you would go jo.
Speaker 5: Everything to do with deer hunting and whether you're a
Speaker 5: ball hunter, a gun hunter, crossbow, muzzleoder, everything to do
Speaker 5: with hunting deer. I don't care what type of property.
Speaker 5: If you're un managed property, public land, you know, heavily
Speaker 5: pressured rural areas.
Speaker 7: The information is in this book.
Speaker 5: Uh Now, the book's key on hunting pressured areas because
Speaker 5: once you become successful at hunting any semblance of pressured
Speaker 5: areas for mature bucks, you can go any place else
Speaker 5: in the country and be relatively successful and be a
Speaker 5: threat to the mature bucks you're hunting because when you
Speaker 5: go to a less pressured area, it's just easier, and
Speaker 5: you've got all the foundation for running pressured areas, so
Speaker 5: it's that much easier.
Speaker 7: There's twenty seven chapters in this book.
Speaker 5: We actually mark you contribute you to a couple of
Speaker 5: short kill stories to this book.
Speaker 7: So did Andy may So?
Speaker 5: Did Garret crawl from di yt Yeah?
Speaker 2: And then sports Yeah.
Speaker 7: Ernie has a couple of kill out. There's eighty four
Speaker 7: in Greg and myself.
Speaker 5: There's eighty four short condensed three to five paragraph killed
Speaker 5: stories within this book.
Speaker 7: There's photos of the kills.
Speaker 5: There are in locations within the book that lend credibility
Speaker 5: to what you're reading at the time. But again, there's
Speaker 5: twenty seven chapters in When we wrote this it was
Speaker 5: like going to be eight hundred and some pages, and
Speaker 5: we just couldn't put it out in a single book.
Speaker 5: So you know, each one of these, each one of
Speaker 5: these books is basically the same length as all three.
Speaker 7: Of the other books I wrote. So we had to
Speaker 7: do it in three volumes. It's the only way we
Speaker 7: could do it. And it's it's available on Tethered's websites.
Speaker 7: So if you.
Speaker 5: Google www dot tether that's t E t h R
Speaker 5: D dot com, slash.
Speaker 7: Di y bucks, it'll take your right to the right
Speaker 7: to the page and that there's no stone on turned
Speaker 7: in these books. This covers everything, would.
Speaker 6: You I'd like to describe it a little bit differently, Mark, Yes.
Speaker 6: Every single topic that you is even remotely related to
Speaker 6: bow hunting is in this book. Preseason, postseason, scouting, the rut, scrapes, rubs, everything,
Speaker 6: how to hunt corn, how not to hunt corn, how
Speaker 6: to rattle. Everything is in this book. When John came
Speaker 6: to me a year and a half ago and said
Speaker 6: he was thinking about writing his final book, of which
Speaker 6: he's written many and they have influenced me in a
Speaker 6: great number of hunters a great deal. And John came
Speaker 6: to me and he said, Greg, I want to distill
Speaker 6: down my fifty plus years of bow hunting experience into
Speaker 6: one book. And I was like, holy crap, that's that's
Speaker 6: got potential to be like the most inclusive book on
Speaker 6: hunting that's ever been written, and so I was really
Speaker 6: excited about it. And that's what John did. He distilled
Speaker 6: fifty years of successful big buck hunting in pressured areas
Speaker 6: any he distilled it all down into three volumes. So
Speaker 6: it's a lot of information, but everything you could hope
Speaker 6: to know about bow hunting is in there. And John
Speaker 6: put all of his experience in there, and a bunch
Speaker 6: of us helped him, right like Mark, you helped, I helped,
Speaker 6: and Andy and all these people helped John do this.
Speaker 6: But ultimately, what this book is is John's incredible record
Speaker 6: of success in three volumes. And I promise you every
Speaker 6: single hunter on the planet will learn something. It might
Speaker 6: not change your life, it might not revolutionize how you
Speaker 6: hunt if you're an experienced hunter, but I guarantee you're
Speaker 6: going to learn things from this book that you didn't
Speaker 6: know before you read it.
Speaker 5: Ye will make you think about the way you're hunting,
Speaker 5: and it'll probably make you want to change a lot
Speaker 5: of the ways that you are hunting it, and it
Speaker 5: was written and written in such detail that any novice
Speaker 5: or experienced hunter can easily understand what we're talking about.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, I know there's a lot of folks who listen
Speaker 3: to our podcast that we did earlier this year, John,
Speaker 3: who have been waiting for the books because we kind
Speaker 3: of tease the books of them, but they weren't available yet.
Speaker 3: So I know, if folks haven't already seen the news
Speaker 3: online or somewhere, definitely take note. They're available now over
Speaker 3: there at the Tethered website.
Speaker 4: They're great. I haven't got to read every part of every.
Speaker 3: One of them yet, but I've been looking in various
Speaker 3: locations for relevant things as I'm thinking through ideas and
Speaker 3: as I was preparing for this, and as I knew
Speaker 3: it would be lots of lots of great stuff. And
Speaker 3: then this wonderful surprise number two tip as well that
Speaker 3: everyone will have to search for in the book, and
Speaker 3: and we will will have this moment, this podcast moment
Speaker 3: will live on forever. I still I still having a
Speaker 3: hard time processing it. So with that in mind, gentlemen,
Speaker 3: thank you so much for taking the time to do
Speaker 3: this for sharing maybe the best story we've ever had
Speaker 3: in the podcast, and for helping me as a hunter
Speaker 3: so much over the years. Both of you have been
Speaker 3: great friends, great teachers, and I appreciate you both.
Speaker 7: Thanks for the opportunity.
Speaker 4: Mark all right, and that's it for us today.
Speaker 3: Again, I'll plug John and Greg's book here, the Ultimate
Speaker 3: Guide to DIY Books. And without further ado, let's get
Speaker 3: you out into the woods, into a tree or a
Speaker 3: blind or whatever you're doing. Get out there, have a
Speaker 3: great time hunting. Good luck, and until next time, stay
Speaker 3: wired to hunt.
Speaker 9: It's that time of the year again. I'm back. Marcus Kenyon.
Speaker 9: How are you, your son of a gadwall.
Speaker 10: You look terrible. I'm just kidding a remma. I'm sorry,
Speaker 10: I'm late. I crashed my recumbent bicycle into the side
Speaker 10: of a quiz nose and I know what you're thinking.
Speaker 10: I am as sober as a newborn blue crab. I
Speaker 10: swear to you, this is just kombucha. I'm watching the
Speaker 10: gut health. You gotta do it as you get older.
Speaker 10: And also I'm wearing this ankle bracelet that makes a
Speaker 10: beep beep sound if I have a drop of the stuff. Also,
Speaker 10: alerts the authorities, who in turn alert my parole officer.
Speaker 10: So there'll be none of that in the studio today,
Speaker 10: I promise you.
Speaker 9: Let's get go. Oh you're queueing it up already. Okay.
Speaker 9: I thought we'd learned a lesson this year, but I
Speaker 9: guess not. Here we go.
Speaker 13: I love those beagy big big white tages, those bee
Speaker 13: agie bi big wad tails. I love those be achie
Speaker 13: b doya eight chats eat eat tales. I love those
Speaker 13: be achie b wat.
Speaker 14: Tails, big white tails, big white tails, big white tails
Speaker 14: are great.
Speaker 10: Oh, what fun it is to sit in the freezing
Speaker 10: cold tree all day?
Speaker 14: Big white tails, big white tails, big white tails are great.
Speaker 10: Hold, what fun it is to sit in the freezing
Speaker 10: cold tree all day? Dashing through the woods for the
Speaker 10: morning light, turns grave across the fields and draws, creep
Speaker 10: in all the way, climb into the tree. Big bucks
Speaker 10: are on the wave? What fun it is to sit
Speaker 10: and wait for my gosh.
Speaker 9: Dan deer all day?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 9: Big, I'm sorry? What is this? Pisocado strings? Who do
Speaker 9: you think? I am ya? Get this out here. I
Speaker 9: don't want to hear it. Thank you, Big.
Speaker 10: White tails, big white tails, big white tails are great,
Speaker 10: hold fun it is to sit in the freezing cold
Speaker 10: tree all day. I hope sand dreams are high.
Speaker 9: He's finally here.
Speaker 10: Mark said, it's the most wonderful time to kill o
Speaker 10: whitetail deer bingch points and pettings. Where you'll find me
Speaker 10: hanging twenty feet in a tree, grunt tubes, my bowel
Speaker 10: inspector camos really campy be.
Speaker 9: He or two ago.
Speaker 10: I thought that this was fun, But now I'm frozen
Speaker 10: to my seat, and the good times they are gone.
Speaker 9: I've ate up all my.
Speaker 10: Snacks, my hands and toes unnumb and we're gonna climb
Speaker 10: down from my stand. That son of a but decided
Speaker 10: to come.
Speaker 13: I love those beeg beeg white takes, those big bee
Speaker 13: big white takes.
Speaker 10: I love those be ig big dug Yeah, eight shot
Speaker 10: ge eat tails. I love those big white tails all
Speaker 10: dam I don't know why this is happening, I swear
Speaker 10: to God, Oh, officer, what seems to be the problem here?
Speaker 9: Oh?
Speaker 12: This?
Speaker 10: I don't know why this is happening. It must be
Speaker 10: a malfunction, you know. Sometimes it happens when the batteries
Speaker 10: running low. You don't know, you don't need to smell
Speaker 10: that that's just kombucha. I okay, yes, you've got me.
Speaker 10: It's ever clear and Pacific cooler. Caprice Son. I am
Speaker 10: so so sorry. I don't know why my life has
Speaker 10: brought me here. Mark Marcus, I'm so sorry. Enjoy the
Speaker 10: rut or whatever.
Speaker 9: Good luck boys, Good to see you. Hayden. It's been
Speaker 9: a while. Hey, sorry, I'm late.
Speaker 10: I crashed my pontiacastec into a light pull and had
Speaker 10: to walk through rest of the way.
Speaker 9: But I'm here now. That's what matters.
Speaker 10: Give me a glass of scotch, please, Hayden, just two
Speaker 10: rocks in there.
Speaker 9: I don't like ice.
Speaker 10: We're starting already, this is happening. Okay, just give me
Speaker 10: the give me the glass, thank you. Okay, here we go.
Speaker 10: It's the most wonderful time to kill deer. With the
Speaker 10: run now, just starting and dashing and totting and veins
Speaker 10: cutting clean. It's the most wonderful time to kill deer.
Speaker 10: There's far too much isonus glass. It's the half happy
Speaker 10: seeds of all. There's gotta be at least twelve cues
Speaker 10: with grunting and bleeding and cold fronts and sleeping.
Speaker 9: The last weeks of fun.
Speaker 10: It's the half happy seedssin of ame. There'll be pictures
Speaker 10: for posting and bragging and boasting and truck beds with
Speaker 10: big Bucks in toe.
Speaker 9: There'll be narrow miss.
Speaker 10: Stories and tales of your glories of booner bucks missed
Speaker 10: with our bulls. It's the most wonderful time to kill dear,
Speaker 10: not just one baby two. There'll be no dose of
Speaker 10: blowing and looming knocks glowing and blood trails so clean.
Speaker 10: It's the most wonderful time to kill deer.
Speaker 9: Excuse me? Can I have a napkin? Please? I just
Speaker 9: spilled some scotch on my loafers. I can't have dirty
Speaker 9: loafers in the studio.
Speaker 10: Thank you tailgate beers for drinking, and Big Bucks is
Speaker 10: slinking and chasing and s jacking does They'll be fighting
Speaker 10: and scraping and no more escaping and arrowshot true hitting.
Speaker 10: Oh key change. But no one told me that it's
Speaker 10: the most wonderful.
Speaker 9: Time to kill deer. I was very unprepared for this.
Speaker 10: There will be much morning sitting in cold fronts of
Speaker 10: hitting the down Kristen clean. It's the most swonderful time, Oh,
Speaker 10: the most swonderful time, Yes, the most swonderful time to kilty.
Speaker 9: There's too much ice in the glass. Two rocks,