Speaker 1: Welcome to Wired to Hunt's rut Fresh Radio, bringing you
Speaker 1: the latest reports from the White Tail Woods, presented by
Speaker 1: First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand,
Speaker 1: saddle or blind. First Light Go farther, Stay Longer, and
Speaker 1: now your hosts Casey Smith and Tyler Jones.
Speaker 2: The late season is the grind season. It's all about
Speaker 2: food and tempts. This is rut Fresh. Let's go.
Speaker 3: I'm your host, Casey Smith. This has brought to you
Speaker 3: by First Light. You're Tyler Jones is here as well.
Speaker 2: We are fresh off of a difficult hunt, rut, fresh
Speaker 2: off of it run, fresh off of a.
Speaker 3: Difficult oh man.
Speaker 2: So I appreciate the encouragement that we get from some
Speaker 2: of these interviews from folks who actually are singing deer,
Speaker 2: because I didn't see a lot of deer this week.
Speaker 3: Saw a lot more crows, did you. Yeah, I saw
Speaker 3: a few crows. Yeah. Uh. We've been a murder here
Speaker 3: and there.
Speaker 2: We've been hunting here in the South and uh we'll
Speaker 2: give you a good old extra report here in a bit,
Speaker 2: just to kind of sweeten the deal. But I can
Speaker 2: tell you this, man, if you are still out hunting,
Speaker 2: way to go because quite honestly, it gets real hard
Speaker 2: to go. Like if I hunting season was five months long,
Speaker 2: I probably would just kick over.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a lot of output, man.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I think there's some fellers that are younger
Speaker 4: than you still, dude, that wouldn't.
Speaker 2: Just because you're the same age as me for one
Speaker 2: month doesn't mean let's go.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 4: But I think that I was talking to a guy
Speaker 4: in a Sporting Good story the other day who was younger,
Speaker 4: and it would seem that he may not have a
Speaker 4: wife and kids, which can really make a difference when
Speaker 4: you talk about a how tired you are and b
Speaker 4: how many days you can go hunt? May not even
Speaker 4: can but like, are willing to go hunt?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know for sure?
Speaker 2: And I think that we can take a little bit
Speaker 2: from that as a big ol matrure bucks ourselves. How
Speaker 2: are we making the most of our outings right? And
Speaker 2: how is a big buck making the most of his outings?
Speaker 2: I mean he's in the post rut phase as you
Speaker 2: and I are, and so we.
Speaker 3: Are we.
Speaker 4: I feel like I'm just now getting the rut. Are
Speaker 4: you good for crape?
Speaker 3: Last night? I got home.
Speaker 2: You you put on the food bag, you know, you
Speaker 2: get fat and happy.
Speaker 3: That's why. Yeah, I'll be after the rud I'll be skinny,
Speaker 3: you think, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think I am too. I killed four here so
Speaker 2: far this year, and if I kill one more, I
Speaker 2: can go in carnivore for like six months.
Speaker 3: See what we can do with that. Now, you needed
Speaker 3: some ducks, Yeah that I got a federal ducks. Nown
Speaker 3: some fish is what you need? That would be good?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it would be tasty. So Tyler, let's
Speaker 2: shift gears just a little bit here in the late season,
Speaker 2: like we're in right now. There's lots of things to
Speaker 2: deal with. I don't want to bring up a source
Speaker 2: subject for you.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: You from time to time have target deer and then
Speaker 2: those target deer disappear.
Speaker 3: Uh, the ones in East Texas often, Dude, what happened?
Speaker 3: What do you do?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 3: What's what do you do?
Speaker 5: Then?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: What do you do?
Speaker 2: Whenever, like all of a sudden, the target disappears and
Speaker 2: you don't know if you even have a deer to hunt.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: There's a couple of things you could do. One would
Speaker 3: just be enjoy Christmas with your family, yeah. Uh.
Speaker 4: The other might be to go set foot on some
Speaker 4: public ground somewhere, or you could spend some time reaching
Speaker 4: out and saying, hey, I was hoping to put some
Speaker 4: more dear deer meat my freezer. Mister whoever land on
Speaker 4: her you are, and I was going to see if
Speaker 4: I can maybe hunt your property the last couple of
Speaker 4: weeks of dear season.
Speaker 2: It's interesting do you feel as if the the deer
Speaker 2: meat thing is a good motivator for nine hunters?
Speaker 4: I think it's just like a practical thing that you're
Speaker 4: telling a guy, as opposed to I'm going to shoot
Speaker 4: I want to go shoot a big buck. You know,
Speaker 4: you tell the practical some of the practical of somebody
Speaker 4: is not really a hunter, and maybe they're in the
Speaker 4: Christmas spirit and they want to allow you to do that.
Speaker 3: Maybe how hard should you push push? What that like?
Speaker 2: If you if you if they're like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: she just say okay, great day, you all right, have
Speaker 2: a good day, Merry Christmas? Or should you should you
Speaker 2: try a little harder? I think, I mean, I think
Speaker 2: that you try to carry the conversation. I don't know
Speaker 2: that you continue to ask, but you could you could say,
Speaker 2: you know, okay, well if you ever you know, have
Speaker 2: random people out there or whatever, just let me know.
Speaker 2: I'll I can keep an eye on it or for
Speaker 2: you, you know, if they're an absentee or something like that.
Speaker 2: But I don't know, there's just other ways to kind
Speaker 2: of probably I guess push as you're saying. But more
Speaker 2: than anything, I think you just kind of I think
Speaker 2: people like to grab their phone, look at TikTok and
Speaker 2: get some immediate endorphins kicking. And I think that if
Speaker 2: you play a long game of two to three years
Speaker 2: on stuff like that, you actually keep up with people
Speaker 2: and call them back every eight months, then I think
Speaker 2: that it goes a long ways and things change over time.
Speaker 2: You know, you get new administrations that have better economies
Speaker 2: or worse economies or whatever, and it causes people to
Speaker 2: sell or just be in a better financial position that
Speaker 2: they don't really feel like, you know, they feel kinder
Speaker 2: maybe whatever.
Speaker 3: There's a million different things, you know.
Speaker 2: So I've been playing the long game for about three
Speaker 2: years now on a place in South Texas, have you, Yeah,
Speaker 2: And it hasn't quite panned out yet, A long game
Speaker 2: of asking permission.
Speaker 3: Really, I'm not sure which one that is. I'm trying
Speaker 3: to think about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you've heard we've had. I've been around for some
Speaker 2: conversations with that guy quite a bit with you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but sometimes it doesn't always pay off. But you can
Speaker 2: still just make friends. That's nice. I have a different
Speaker 2: question for you. Okay, late season around the country except
Speaker 2: for the South. The Deep South is having some ruts
Speaker 2: right now. We're gonna hear from some guys here in
Speaker 2: a bit who are experiencing those little nod depart McDonald
Speaker 2: from last week, right and he killed a John?
Speaker 4: Hey, how many people have been on ret fresh and
Speaker 4: killed like the next day, Mike Consucker the week before,
Speaker 4: Jered Larson, Jared Larson, I think Alex Compson, Jery Larson?
Speaker 4: Is that like three times? Yeah, so it's a thing.
Speaker 3: It is a thing.
Speaker 4: I'm pretty sure these guys are getting some information from you.
Speaker 4: I don't even mean to Okay, so my question is
Speaker 4: just hype they're getting it is, dude, we're like just
Speaker 4: bringing the party up in here.
Speaker 2: If you don't have late season food, what.
Speaker 3: Do you do? Man, that's a tough question.
Speaker 2: It's a hard thing to but I think a lot
Speaker 2: of people end up with especially if you're public.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think you go celebrate Christmas.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I don't know how you'd hunt them
Speaker 4: late season without some sort of food. I feel like
Speaker 4: everything is going to gravitate the food late season unless
Speaker 4: you're in the South.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean even here where a rut is in November,
Speaker 4: it's south enough that what's the tempt today seventy five?
Speaker 4: I mean we're looking at the deer. Don't need to
Speaker 4: eat that bad when it's seventy five and there are
Speaker 4: six month old does running around that you know, smell
Speaker 4: like all the dos smelled like a month ago. So
Speaker 4: you know, I think like if it was me hunting
Speaker 4: here right here, I'd probably be hunting like it was
Speaker 4: the rut. If it was me hunting you know, Minnesota
Speaker 4: or you know, Wisconsin or whatever like that. I don't
Speaker 4: know that i'd hunt if I didn't have food right now. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I think that's a good point. The only thing I
Speaker 4: could think that you could do.
Speaker 2: And we're gonna talk to some pretty interesting guests today
Speaker 2: that I'll have some thoughts about this. But I've seen
Speaker 2: Bill Wink in the past like camp out for a deer,
Speaker 2: as weird as that sounds, like in the woods where
Speaker 2: he's gonna hunt. I remember him doing that. He killed
Speaker 2: it deer doing that, and I think that was kind
Speaker 2: of a late rut deer. But you could like get
Speaker 2: into a morning hunt kind of place or even camp
Speaker 2: out and get in really really really early, and maybe
Speaker 2: there's a chance that you can kill it here in
Speaker 2: a morning, if you can get some bedding established. But
Speaker 2: I'm not saying I want to do that. I just
Speaker 2: think if you were like needing to kill a deer,
Speaker 2: it's a way to do it. And here's another thing,
Speaker 2: lower your standards. You know, you have to decide what
Speaker 2: you're trying to do. You're trying to kill a big,
Speaker 2: giant buck. I mean, god, you guys, it's this it's
Speaker 2: the last half of December. You know, Yeah, it's okay
Speaker 2: to shoot a smaller deer or a dough if you
Speaker 2: if you want to eat dear meat, you know, like
Speaker 2: that's that's gonna put that on the table. So it's
Speaker 2: another thing to think about. There's a lot of does
Speaker 2: out there in this world, and uh yeah, they taste
Speaker 2: pretty good. So you might eve could walk around shoot
Speaker 2: one of those if you wanted to.
Speaker 3: You might.
Speaker 2: I could definitely shoot one back here, all right. So
Speaker 2: speaking of guests, this week, who might have some like
Speaker 2: season tactics and success. Who were going to talk to
Speaker 2: you this?
Speaker 4: Well, well, if you're trying to shoot a dud, you
Speaker 4: should a stud. You should talk to duds.
Speaker 3: I'll mess that up.
Speaker 4: But Dudley Phelps from Mississippi, UH is going to be
Speaker 4: talking with us from Mossy Oak and UH. He's always
Speaker 4: an interesting character to give us a look into some
Speaker 4: of that southern stuff. Alex Comstock a guy who's on
Speaker 4: here quite a bit. Just a good friend of ours.
Speaker 4: I've known him for years and years and years, and
Speaker 4: he's a reliable source of information. You can bet that
Speaker 4: if there's something, if he spent time in the woods,
Speaker 4: he has a good thought about what's going on. He's
Speaker 4: been up in Minnesota just sweating it out up there.
Speaker 4: Jake Hofer a good friend with a good smile, and
Speaker 4: he's in Illinois, which is where he lives. It's the
Speaker 4: home state, and he's he's got a pretty crazy story
Speaker 4: about some success he's had recently. And then our man
Speaker 4: Christian Babcock, he's been out in the Oklahoma area doing
Speaker 4: the thing. And they pretty much I think they owned
Speaker 4: that state, actually they owned everything. They're part of Indian
Speaker 4: You know, so.
Speaker 3: Awesome, man, Let's get him on the phone.
Speaker 2: I have got Mississippi's coolest cat, Dudley Philps with Massioak
Speaker 2: Native nurseries. He's been Actually he just got down out
Speaker 2: of the stand to talk to us guys, which is wild.
Speaker 3: Dudley.
Speaker 2: First off, I can't hardly believe that you hunted ten
Speaker 2: to two today and that was your your plan. What's
Speaker 2: the grand scheme of the idea of being in the
Speaker 2: stand from ten to two.
Speaker 6: I don't know if that's a Mississippi or Southeast thing,
Speaker 6: but me and my buddies have always just we'll go
Speaker 6: do a ten to two, especially during the rut when
Speaker 6: the moon is bright at night. It seems like, I
Speaker 6: don't know, I get a lot of pictures on scrapes
Speaker 6: and things from from ten to two when the moon is.
Speaker 3: Really bright and so interesting.
Speaker 6: That's just what I decided to do. You know, that
Speaker 6: was that was the window I had to hunt.
Speaker 3: You put my weight into the moon besides the brightness.
Speaker 2: Or do you do you think like you know, as
Speaker 2: far as like moon phases are different. Are you just
Speaker 2: thinking that there's a good light all night? So there's
Speaker 2: a lot of movement.
Speaker 6: You know, I'm kind of mixed because there's some new
Speaker 6: data that kind of downplays how much you know, the
Speaker 6: full moon impacts deer. But just I've been doing it
Speaker 6: my whole life. Everybody I know has been focusing on
Speaker 6: the full moon. I've had some great luck with mature
Speaker 6: deer in the middle of the day hunting the full moon.
Speaker 6: So you know, it makes me confident, and when I'm confident,
Speaker 6: I seem to be luckier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you tell me this. You were talking about
Speaker 2: scrapes earlier. Are we still in a stage in Mississippi
Speaker 2: where scrapes are a good thing to hunt over?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 6: And you know, Mississippi has really weird rut dates. So
Speaker 6: in the in the northeast corner, I would say peak
Speaker 6: of Estris is probably around the tenth to fifteenth of December,
Speaker 6: So I mean they're like lockdown right now, and you
Speaker 6: go down to the southern portion of the state and
Speaker 6: it's not until you know, mid to late January. So
Speaker 6: the Missisispi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks put out
Speaker 6: a map several years ago. It's like a rut date map,
Speaker 6: and it's pretty consistent. And I like to go by
Speaker 6: that if I'm going to be moving around, you know,
Speaker 6: the different areas to hunt.
Speaker 4: So with scrapes being something that you think is effective,
Speaker 4: does that mean you're in the heart of the rud
Speaker 4: or you're on the front edge of the rud.
Speaker 3: Or where are you atl?
Speaker 6: Where I am? Where? You know, we're probably two weeks
Speaker 6: from the peak, and so in my mind this is
Speaker 6: like the peak of checking scrapes, and I've always had
Speaker 6: good luck about two weeks before that peak date hunting scrapes.
Speaker 3: What's the mass crop like there in Mississippi right now?
Speaker 6: So I would say we had a no go across
Speaker 6: the board. Wow, white oaks a little, you know, they
Speaker 6: were early this year we had a few we had
Speaker 6: a few things dropping and it was mainly the earlier
Speaker 6: producers that we had an insane draft. And then a
Speaker 6: couple of years ago we had a crazy polar blast
Speaker 6: that came through in December. And then we've had late
Speaker 6: frosts the last two years. So you most likely won't
Speaker 6: find acrens. It's uh in Mississippi. So we're we're hunting
Speaker 6: a lot of food plots and feeders and things like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, is there any other wild vegetation out there that
Speaker 4: you could spend time on if say you were on
Speaker 4: public or something like that.
Speaker 6: Honeysuckle and greenbrier looked pretty good this year. In fact,
Speaker 6: I just saw a bunch of honeysuckles earlier today. We've
Speaker 6: had a couple of cold fronts, but it's been relatively warm,
Speaker 6: so a lot of that native brows is still kicking.
Speaker 6: The stuff that can handle a couple of frost is
Speaker 6: still going.
Speaker 2: Does deer eat the Japanese honeysuckle as well as to
Speaker 2: do the coral honeysuckle.
Speaker 6: Much more so?
Speaker 3: Really?
Speaker 6: You know, it's a non native, and we like to
Speaker 6: talk about how we don't like non natives, but deer
Speaker 6: absolutely love Japanese honey.
Speaker 3: So we've seen the same around here for sure.
Speaker 6: So it's it's kind of already too far gone. You know,
Speaker 6: we burned a lot to set it back. But uh,
Speaker 6: if it's there, that's where the deer is gonna be eating.
Speaker 6: There's not much food.
Speaker 3: Around, okay.
Speaker 2: So if we have still kind of some warmer temps
Speaker 2: ahead and you're looking at you know, maybe still being
Speaker 2: a little bit off the rud, are you gonna still
Speaker 2: trying to be trying to do your best to get
Speaker 2: out there because it's the South and it just is warm,
Speaker 2: or you gonna kind of buite your time and.
Speaker 3: Wait on a good front.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and you know, as a matter of fact, I
Speaker 6: think it's you know, when things start warming up after
Speaker 6: a cold front, you know, deer down here get cold. Yeah,
Speaker 6: freezing cold. They're not boothing, you know. So yeah, they're
Speaker 6: they're kind of like us in the South. They just
Speaker 6: don't They don't like to be cold either, I.
Speaker 3: Guarantee you so.
Speaker 4: On a scale of one to ten, and the next week,
Speaker 4: what do you think buck movement is going to be like?
Speaker 6: But it's gonna be it's gonna be a perfect ten.
Speaker 6: It's that time, all right.
Speaker 3: I like it, dude.
Speaker 6: I mean it's prime time, you know, right before the
Speaker 6: peak of rut, when bucks are running around looking. That's
Speaker 6: the most fun time to be out there. In my opinion,
Speaker 6: It's been a bit of a slow start just talking
Speaker 6: to people. We've had a lot of rain on the
Speaker 6: weekends when everybody's hunting things like that. I hadn't seen,
Speaker 6: you know, cruising social media, I hadn't seen a whole
Speaker 6: bunch of them dead buck picks, and not many around
Speaker 6: my friend groups, so hopefully things will pick up.
Speaker 3: A little bit, hopefully.
Speaker 2: So dude, thanks for the uh the hype there with
Speaker 2: the ten dude, and I hope that comes to fruition
Speaker 2: for you and you get a big old buck here
Speaker 2: pretty soon.
Speaker 6: Well, thank you. Yeah, next week should be golden where
Speaker 6: I'm hunting.
Speaker 3: Oh, let's go.
Speaker 4: This is one of my good friends, Alex Comstock from
Speaker 4: white Tail DNA. Alex is a hunting full and been
Speaker 4: doing it all year long, to the point of causing
Speaker 4: himself to be sick.
Speaker 3: Other than that, how are you, Alex?
Speaker 7: Other than that, I'm doing pretty good.
Speaker 3: How are you guys? Oh? Good?
Speaker 4: You know, busy and like like it always is for
Speaker 4: everybody this time of year with Christmas coming up and
Speaker 4: everything else. But you've been in Minnesota and just it's
Speaker 4: the exact opposite of what it is here, and we
Speaker 4: you probably this is like broken record, right every time
Speaker 4: we talk to you.
Speaker 3: But it is.
Speaker 4: It is warm outside today, and I've seen on your
Speaker 4: story some snow.
Speaker 8: It looks like, yeah, we've had some some up and
Speaker 8: down cold. Actually though today it's pretty warm here. It's
Speaker 8: like dang near forty degrees.
Speaker 3: So well, man, sloshy.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, very sloshy out there today.
Speaker 3: What is what does that warmth to do for you?
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 4: Is it a good thing when it's been cold for
Speaker 4: a little while or what does that look like?
Speaker 8: You know, I like a little bit of a warm
Speaker 8: up when it's super cold, but not to like this degree,
Speaker 8: you know, like I like it when it jumps up
Speaker 8: to that, you know, like single like just nice single digit.
Speaker 9: That to me is like it's a sweet spot. But
Speaker 9: when it jumps way up.
Speaker 8: I mean I didn't hunt yesterday for the first time
Speaker 8: and probably a week, and cams were dead everywhere and
Speaker 8: real same thing today.
Speaker 4: So yeah, so the cams, the camp, so the movement
Speaker 4: was not happening as it warmed up in your opinion,
Speaker 4: compared to what it had been.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I would say that's correct.
Speaker 3: It's in the late season.
Speaker 2: I'm guessing it's kind of just a cast in nit
Speaker 2: with the trail cameras and show I find a pattern
Speaker 2: on a big buck.
Speaker 3: Is that kind of the tactic right now?
Speaker 9: Pretty? Yeah? Exactly for me. You know, with my season,
Speaker 9: I've had a tough year.
Speaker 8: A lot of the bucks I've been after all year
Speaker 8: either got killed or by hunters or cars or whatever.
Speaker 8: And so as we got into December, I did exactly that.
Speaker 8: I just spread sell cams everywhere, found ub up to
Speaker 8: go after. And now I've just been pretty much hunting
Speaker 8: that deer over and over and over.
Speaker 7: Given then I've got like twelve days left of my season.
Speaker 2: So man, yeah, that's uh, that's the grind. As they say, right,
Speaker 2: what's getting that deer on his feet?
Speaker 8: You know, I'm just I think what he's doing is,
Speaker 8: you know, I'm doing a lot of suburban hunting, and
Speaker 8: he's going to you know, neighborhoods to feed.
Speaker 9: And you know, if I got on this.
Speaker 8: Particular deer, I've got permission on one little five acre chunk,
Speaker 8: so I'm pretty limited where I can hunt him.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 8: Honestly, if there was more time, I'd probably try to
Speaker 8: like door knock a ton and get cameras up in
Speaker 8: other areas.
Speaker 9: But I know he's coming through here.
Speaker 8: I mean I had an encounter with him a few
Speaker 8: days ago and wasn't able to make it happen. So
Speaker 8: I just when the wind's right, which I only really
Speaker 8: there's only one wind direction, I can't hunt it. I'm
Speaker 8: just pounding away at the same tree, just waiting for
Speaker 8: him to come through again in daylight.
Speaker 3: Gotcha cool?
Speaker 2: So this week that we have coming up here envelops
Speaker 2: the shortest day of the year on the calendar year
Speaker 2: as far as daylight period. How do you how do
Speaker 2: you hunt deer when there's only just you know, your
Speaker 2: way up north up there, right? I mean, I don't
Speaker 2: know for sure, but you have like probably less than
Speaker 2: eight hours of good hunting lot, I think right or
Speaker 2: somewhere like that.
Speaker 3: Are you standing in there all day or are.
Speaker 2: You you know, kind of going in like high noon
Speaker 2: or what's that look like?
Speaker 8: I've just been going in for the last couple hours
Speaker 8: of the afternoon. So I mean here right now, sunset
Speaker 8: is like four twenty, and it's been pretty consistent where
Speaker 8: I've been hunting. There's a big group of does, and
Speaker 8: the does typically are coming through between three thirty and
Speaker 8: three forty five, so I'm just trying to make sure
Speaker 8: I'm set up usually by like two thirty. And I
Speaker 8: mean when I almost shot him the other night, he
Speaker 8: came through that day with two minutes of legal light left,
Speaker 8: So I mean it's like right at the end.
Speaker 4: So well, will a cold front affect that in other words,
Speaker 4: will will it get on his feet just a little
Speaker 4: bit earlier if you get a cold front.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So he had hit cam a few days in
Speaker 8: a row within well, the first time I hit cam
Speaker 8: it was like nine o'clock at night. The next time
Speaker 8: it was like five thirty, and then when I saw
Speaker 8: him would have been this past Thursday, and it was
Speaker 8: I want to stay at the windshiels like negative thirty two.
Speaker 8: So I mean like that cold front got him up early.
Speaker 8: So that's my where I'm at as my one concern
Speaker 8: is if we don't have like some deep cold tempts,
Speaker 8: if he's.
Speaker 7: Going to be coming by me in daylight at all.
Speaker 8: But we do have some forecasted cold temperatures coming up,
Speaker 8: which got me hopeful.
Speaker 3: There you go, man.
Speaker 4: So with that hope, what what would you rank buck
Speaker 4: movement in the next week on a scale of one
Speaker 4: to ten. If you're looking at the weather thinking this
Speaker 4: may help you out.
Speaker 9: I'm gonna give it.
Speaker 8: I'm gonna go with the six just because we're gonna
Speaker 8: have some temperatures.
Speaker 9: That I really like.
Speaker 8: You know, we've got highs in the you know, pretty
Speaker 8: much around the eight nine ten, with lows the coldest
Speaker 8: low is negative five on Friday, and so I like
Speaker 8: it when it's when you've got that little bit getting
Speaker 8: up there on ten degrees as a high and the
Speaker 8: low in the negatives. You know, it's not like going
Speaker 8: to be crazy where it was because sometimes those deep
Speaker 8: deep negatives, I think after if you get like a
Speaker 8: long stint of that will kind of curtail deer movement.
Speaker 9: So I like it to be right. If it's right
Speaker 9: around zero, I'm liking that. So I'm gonna go ahead
Speaker 9: and give it a six.
Speaker 4: All right, man, Well that gives us promise going into
Speaker 4: the last few weeks of deer season here. For a
Speaker 4: lot of people I know down in the South either
Speaker 4: just getting started. But for you guys, you know, you
Speaker 4: start out and early and you get closed up when
Speaker 4: it starts getting into those temperatures. I can promise you
Speaker 4: I would struggle once it got to those temperatures. But
Speaker 4: you guys are built for it. And I'm glad to
Speaker 4: watch from afar through your story and your Instagram there,
Speaker 4: why I tell DNA. So thanks for everything you've been
Speaker 4: putting out man, and for the report there in Minnesota
Speaker 4: this week.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I appreciate that, and good luck to you guys too.
Speaker 5: H m.
Speaker 3: M m m m m m m m m.
Speaker 5: M m m hm.
Speaker 3: This is my friend Jake Hoefer of wat tail Master Academy.
Speaker 2: He's been doing some hunting in Illinois and actually successful
Speaker 2: hunting Illinois.
Speaker 3: If you know Jake, you know that this guy.
Speaker 2: Is the most unassuming, unassuming killer in the world, probably
Speaker 2: when it comes to whitetail, right, just mister smiles and
Speaker 2: last but kills them all.
Speaker 3: If smiles could kill.
Speaker 10: What's up, bro, Hey, not too much. It's a it's
Speaker 10: a pleasure to chat again here. It's it's always a
Speaker 10: good time to share what I'm seeing and to in
Speaker 10: to hear what.
Speaker 9: Everyone else is.
Speaker 7: It's right across the country.
Speaker 2: And I probably shouldn't say unassuming because you definitely know
Speaker 2: what you're talking about. It's just you're so nice, you know,
Speaker 2: but and you're not sough to share that information with us.
Speaker 9: I know.
Speaker 3: Illinois is like what you would call kind.
Speaker 2: Of the heart of the Midwest and so very far
Speaker 2: from like actual rut dates. And you killed a really
Speaker 2: big buck. Was he doing anything ruddy at all?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 9: He was not. Nope, So how what was he doing? Yeah?
Speaker 9: So I would say there's even last week.
Speaker 10: Early last week, based off of some cameras, I would
Speaker 10: say there was some rutting activity still going on a
Speaker 10: couple of different farms. I would say this year specifically
Speaker 10: this year had been hanging out on a specific range
Speaker 10: of the farm, and ironically I didn't have any cell
Speaker 10: cameras that were setting me pictures, so I was just
Speaker 10: kind of going on a whim. And the fact that
Speaker 10: we had a really good cold front roll in Thursday,
Speaker 10: really cold, and I was pretty hopeful for Friday just
Speaker 10: because it was still cold, but not the nasty, nasty
Speaker 10: middle of.
Speaker 9: The front weather.
Speaker 10: And so I actually bundled up hunted Friday morning and
Speaker 10: saw quite a bit of deer, not the deer I
Speaker 10: was after, And then I still got to work to
Speaker 10: make a living that day, you know, like three o'clock,
Speaker 10: and I said, okay, where can I go and slip
Speaker 10: in really fast where I have an opportunity to kill
Speaker 10: buck that I would like to shoot. And so we
Speaker 10: had some standing beans and in an area where this
Speaker 10: deer had been hanging out based off of historical data
Speaker 10: and also just kind of a whim, and he just
Speaker 10: came barreling off the hill and hungry, for some soy.
Speaker 3: Beans that's sick.
Speaker 2: So are you targeting standing crops then for that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff or is that a cut field.
Speaker 10: That this is standing crops. Actually planted two acres of
Speaker 10: beans here. And what is also interesting, we had an
Speaker 10: east wind on Friday. I killed my buck earlier this
Speaker 10: year on an east wind. I think I like east winds,
Speaker 10: and I think part of the reason is just because
Speaker 10: half the farms I hunt.
Speaker 9: Can not really well on an east wind. And that's
Speaker 9: the root of it.
Speaker 10: And so this particular plot, think a lot of people
Speaker 10: make a mistake of overhunting it, and it's the shiny
Speaker 10: new toy they always want to go play with. And
Speaker 10: this would have been the second true sit over this
Speaker 10: food plot. And we had an east wind where I
Speaker 10: could hunt it and was sitting on the ground, and
Speaker 10: I mean it's ultimately worked out.
Speaker 2: So how does the mature buck like that approach a
Speaker 2: good food source on a wind direction? Do they have
Speaker 2: the wind in their face on their tail at a
Speaker 2: ninety what did he do?
Speaker 10: This was more of a crosswind, and so this is
Speaker 10: more of a cross wind. And I think every plot
Speaker 10: probably makes a little bit of a difference. There would
Speaker 10: have been a zero percent chance he would be vetted
Speaker 10: to the west in this particular spot, and so this
Speaker 10: field is kind of in a bottom and half stadium
Speaker 10: seating around it, and so meeting he's going to be
Speaker 10: vetted up on that back now.
Speaker 9: More than likely truly on an east wind. I don't
Speaker 9: know exactly where he was vetted or.
Speaker 10: What ridge he may have been vetted on. I could
Speaker 10: pick a couple guesses, but I don't know that for fact.
Speaker 10: And it was the classic late season big buck hunt, right,
Speaker 10: A dough family group come off the hill, and then
Speaker 10: I had another buck that was really busted up.
Speaker 9: I'm not sure which one it was.
Speaker 10: And he was a half rack, and and even the
Speaker 10: half rack that he did have, that one was all
Speaker 10: busted up too. So he came into the plot pretty
Speaker 10: slow after the dose already went in there, and I
Speaker 10: was just sitting back and waiting, like, Okay, when's the.
Speaker 9: Buck I'm after going to come coming down the hill?
Speaker 10: And sure enough he did, and he got into the
Speaker 10: He came down the hill pretty quickly, and then he
Speaker 10: would not enter the plot for quite some time. And
Speaker 10: late season hunting is really fun and it's also really
Speaker 10: hard in the sense of during the run.
Speaker 9: A lot of times it's you and the buck here after, right,
Speaker 9: or maybe you and the buck and a dough.
Speaker 10: It's not eight eyeballs or twenty four eyeballs or you know,
Speaker 10: whatever it is. And so those doughs were already in
Speaker 10: the plot, and I felt like they had seen my
Speaker 10: silhouette as I was sitting on the ground, and they
Speaker 10: were getting pretty pretty curious and walking towards me.
Speaker 9: And this plot was about one hundred and.
Speaker 10: Fifty yards long, and they got to seventy yards eighty
Speaker 10: yards and doing the head snap looking around at me,
Speaker 10: and I'm like, oh, oh boy, I really need him
Speaker 10: to get him this plot before I get busted, because
Speaker 10: I was about to get busted, and ultimately he did.
Speaker 10: And what's most interesting too, and this is probably interesting
Speaker 10: for a lot of people as they're hunting late season.
Speaker 10: This is I'm guessing he's over five years old. I've
Speaker 10: known him for two years and in October Man his
Speaker 10: body was big. He was the epitome of a mature
Speaker 10: Midwestern buck, really fat. And when he walked into that
Speaker 10: food plot, the body comparison of the broken up buck
Speaker 10: and the deer I shot, he looked like a two
Speaker 10: year old.
Speaker 9: I mean, he just loo emaciated.
Speaker 10: And I was really questioning if it was the right
Speaker 10: deer or not because he did not look like he
Speaker 10: when I last saw him right, And I think that's
Speaker 10: something to really consider. Late season is number one this
Speaker 10: year had a bunch of different injuries full of infection.
Speaker 9: My guess is he was fighting a pretty nasty.
Speaker 10: Fever and was not healthy, and after I shot him,
Speaker 10: one of his antlers popped off. So you know, this
Speaker 10: is one of those deals where late season, I feel
Speaker 10: it can be really really hard to edge a buck
Speaker 10: on the fly just because of how much body weight
Speaker 10: they lose from the rut and also a potential injury.
Speaker 4: Do you expect that, uh, in the next week that
Speaker 4: you could find the similar situation in Illinois happening where
Speaker 4: uh maybe maybe and actually it's still a healthy buck,
Speaker 4: but a hungry buck ride that's been through the rut
Speaker 4: uh and is and is run down a little bit
Speaker 4: from from calorie output. Do you expect that you could
Speaker 4: find a deer using a similar situation with some beans
Speaker 4: that are standing or something like that coming in before dark?
Speaker 9: Yeah, I think it's very possible.
Speaker 10: I think the proximity of the betting next to the
Speaker 10: main food source is going to be the biggest factor
Speaker 10: if you're going to be successful or not. And that
Speaker 10: would be so if I'm wondering, Okay, how am I
Speaker 10: going to PLU? I have a couple days off, I
Speaker 10: want to go hunt, I'm probably gonna think of the
Speaker 10: best food source closest to a primary betting area, or
Speaker 10: I suspect a buck that I want to shoot hanging out, Yeah,
Speaker 10: and not not all that doesn't always pan out, but
Speaker 10: I think it's very possible.
Speaker 9: I think the odds are pretty low. Looking at the
Speaker 9: extended forecast here and there's it's pretty stagnan.
Speaker 10: I mean, it was really really cold on Friday morning,
Speaker 10: and I think it was like nine degrees when I
Speaker 10: got out of my truck in the morning, and then
Speaker 10: when I shot my buck, it was about twenty eight
Speaker 10: twenty nine degrees, So it warmed up quite a bit
Speaker 10: even throughout the day. Sure, and so we don't have
Speaker 10: those kinds of tempts in the extended forecast, but I
Speaker 10: think that if we, I mean, it's the.
Speaker 9: Game of the game of weather and waiting at the year.
Speaker 10: And I think the other thing to really consider if
Speaker 10: you're planning to go with. It's on a lot of
Speaker 10: these lazy lacies and food sources that feels like you
Speaker 10: maybe get two or three chances unless your access is bulletproof,
Speaker 10: and more times than not, it's it's often not that
Speaker 10: you're hunting a permission farm or something that's not set
Speaker 10: up perfectly, and so you really want to be pretty
Speaker 10: cautious of going in and educating the deer because more
Speaker 10: likely you're going to get busted when you leave, or
Speaker 10: you're going to get the wind's going to shift, or
Speaker 10: one of the dose matriarch doos are going to see you.
Speaker 9: And so it's kind of late.
Speaker 10: Season's fun because their core short quick hunts, but they're
Speaker 10: pretty pressuring because you have a high house to getting busted.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, Hey.
Speaker 4: On a scale of one to ten, what do you
Speaker 4: think that buck movement is going to be like in
Speaker 4: the next week, considering those tempts are not quite what
Speaker 4: you want them to be?
Speaker 10: I am pretty bearish. I'm gonna say the three and
Speaker 10: a half or four, and probably more towards the three
Speaker 10: and a half.
Speaker 9: I like it.
Speaker 3: We'll call it a three point seventy five. I like it.
Speaker 4: Hey, Jake, Thanks for doing this, man, and I hope
Speaker 4: that you are able to find one more deer to kill.
Speaker 4: I think it may have to be in another state,
Speaker 4: but I hope you find another deer.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 9: I appreciate it. Thank you, guys.
Speaker 2: All right on the phone, I've got Christian Babcock with
Speaker 2: Hunter's Advantage. He's been doing some hunting all over the country,
Speaker 2: but in particular Oklahoma. He's founding some success there. What's happening, brother,
Speaker 2: Oh not a lot, guys.
Speaker 9: How are you?
Speaker 3: Guys all? We're doing good.
Speaker 2: Kind of sweating it up here in Texas. You know,
Speaker 2: it's late season, but it's hot, which is kind of
Speaker 2: how it goes. How do you first of all, First off,
Speaker 2: congrats on the big buck. How do you deal with
Speaker 2: these warmer temperatures when you're doing some late season hunting
Speaker 2: in the state that's kind of maybe used to being cooler?
Speaker 5: Oh man, it stinks. You Just sweat a lot and
Speaker 5: try not to curse under your breath. That's my main tactic.
Speaker 5: But no, I know, I know a lot of people
Speaker 5: are not hunting mornings this time of the year, but
Speaker 5: I still am still the coldest part of the day.
Speaker 5: I'm getting right in the middle of some betting areas
Speaker 5: and really risking it at this time of the year.
Speaker 7: I don't I'm like most people.
Speaker 5: You don't got a whole lot of hunts left, so
Speaker 5: I don't mind messing some stuff up to get success
Speaker 5: this time of the year.
Speaker 3: No, that's a great point, man.
Speaker 2: So how are you establishing what actually is a risky
Speaker 2: but worth worthy thing to do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm getting super tight to some areas. I know
Speaker 5: some bucks are in. Like I slipped in a bedding
Speaker 5: area the other day when I shut that buck and
Speaker 5: I bust four year out of this betting area before
Speaker 5: I even got in the tree and ended up seeing
Speaker 5: seven bucks that hunted and shoot it. Didn't see a
Speaker 5: dough which I wanted to shoot one of those too.
Speaker 5: But I'm I think a lot of things are risky
Speaker 5: right now, you know, just getting back in cover. But
Speaker 5: like I said earlier, I'm not afraid to do it
Speaker 5: this time of the year, and I'm not afraid to
Speaker 5: hunt morning.
Speaker 7: So that's kind of what I do.
Speaker 3: Got you.
Speaker 2: So, in Oklahoma, are you focusing on crops as food
Speaker 2: sources and what would that be or what does the
Speaker 2: food look like right now?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 5: The place that I hunt in southwestern Oklahoma this time
Speaker 5: of the year is really good on winter wheat. So
Speaker 5: you see you'll see a lot of your deer piled
Speaker 5: up and stuff like that. Obviously, you know anybody that's
Speaker 5: throwing on a corn pile, that's another good option if
Speaker 5: you're a southern hunter. But yeah, we hunt a lot
Speaker 5: of places next to wheat, and so that's why we
Speaker 5: can hunt a lot of those mornings. We're catching a
Speaker 5: lot of deer coming back to bed. But winter wee
Speaker 5: it's a pretty good food source over in the eastern
Speaker 5: part of the state. It be it'd be red oaks
Speaker 5: if I was still hunting the mountains right now, but
Speaker 5: mostly wheat.
Speaker 4: So the the betting that you're squeezing in on, is
Speaker 4: it dough betting, buck betting? Do you have any sort
Speaker 4: of differentiation there now?
Speaker 5: I just I'm just calling it betting at this point
Speaker 5: of the year. You know, what used to be betting
Speaker 5: in October was so thick and luscious looks less and
Speaker 5: less like betting in December.
Speaker 7: You know, it starts to get more sparse.
Speaker 5: But I'm hunting around river bottoms, just around around the river,
Speaker 5: so there's a lot of marshy nasty type of stuff,
Speaker 5: and it's holding a lot of deer right now because
Speaker 5: a lot of that other cover's gone, so they'll use
Speaker 5: that as they head out to the other more sustainable
Speaker 5: food sources in the evenings. That's kind of looking.
Speaker 3: Out, gotcha. Gotcha.
Speaker 4: So when you crash in there and you spook deer,
Speaker 4: you're just hoping that it's not like a big buck
Speaker 4: or are there are lots of big bucks around, and
Speaker 4: you're like, we're good. I mean, I guess what I'm
Speaker 4: saying is like if you were going in there and
Speaker 4: you knew it was dough betting, but you bust something out.
Speaker 3: To me, it's like, no big deal.
Speaker 4: But if if I saw a big buck leave, I
Speaker 4: might just go face down in the leaves, you know what.
Speaker 3: I just cry.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 5: If I only had one decent buck, maybe maybe it'd
Speaker 5: be more of a consideration. But in this particular spot
Speaker 5: is a least that I'm losing at the end of
Speaker 5: the year. And there was two or three good eight
Speaker 5: points in there, and I say, any of these will do,
Speaker 5: and I'm probably gonna have to sacrifice one to hunt too.
Speaker 7: And I was completely okay with that.
Speaker 5: And one of the good ones that I was hunting
Speaker 5: did run off on my a en but shot as buddy,
Speaker 5: so I'll call that a win.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, that's cool.
Speaker 2: So Ben, that area where you have pretty decent deer
Speaker 2: dnasty like that, is calling still working this late in
Speaker 2: the year or are you just trying to ambush?
Speaker 5: I'm I'm mainly trying to ambush. I did here a
Speaker 5: little bit of grunting, and I watched a probably a
Speaker 5: two year old hit a scrape the other day, which
Speaker 5: was pretty cool, but Calin is not. I'm sure it
Speaker 5: could work, but it's not a tactic that I use
Speaker 5: this time of the year, not very much at all.
Speaker 3: Actually, yeah, yeah, I gotcha. Cool.
Speaker 2: So are you using cameras much right now to kind
Speaker 2: of collec data on these deer?
Speaker 3: I am.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 5: We've had a lot of a lot of bucks in
Speaker 5: the last two weeks that we hadn't seen for a
Speaker 5: month that we're seeing back on camera, which is encouraging.
Speaker 5: Some of those bucks made it past that rifle season
Speaker 5: in Oklahoma has and but yeah, I'm watching the cameras
Speaker 5: pretty heavy right now. It's not something that I'm not
Speaker 5: over hunting places because you know, as good as much
Speaker 5: as I do. Those December deer can be really, really spooky,
Speaker 5: so I'm only going in when I got something worth hunting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, gotcha, cool man.
Speaker 2: All right, So, if you're looking at the next week
Speaker 2: in Oklahoma, if you could give me a rating on
Speaker 2: buck movement on a scale of one to ten, what
Speaker 2: would it be.
Speaker 7: I'd probably put it at a four.
Speaker 5: You still got some of those cooler temperatures, but you're
Speaker 5: heating up in the mid part of the day, you know,
Speaker 5: going from thirties in the morning to mid sixties and
Speaker 5: maybe nigh fifties in a lot of places. So I
Speaker 5: think you're going to see a good amount of movement
Speaker 5: in the evenings or in the mornings and then the
Speaker 5: evenings right before dark. But it's still late season deer.
Speaker 5: A lot of those deer have been shot up and
Speaker 5: pushing around, So I'd give it a four.
Speaker 7: It's not impossible.
Speaker 5: It can still happen, but it's not a not something
Speaker 5: I'd be too eager to hunt this week.
Speaker 3: Cool all right, man. Appreciate all the great information.
Speaker 7: Christian, Yeah, man, take it easy.
Speaker 2: Lots of good reports around the country. There's still deer
Speaker 2: to be killed. It makes me excited to maybe get
Speaker 2: out in the woods at some.
Speaker 3: Point in time. I don't know, guys, I got to
Speaker 3: re listen to make sure.
Speaker 2: But anyways, if you do need to have a little inspiration,
Speaker 2: Adam Moore over on the Wire to Hunt feed has
Speaker 2: a article for three reasons to hunt the late season,
Speaker 2: and he gives some pretty compelling arguments of why you
Speaker 2: still need to be in the woods.
Speaker 4: I have an argument where you should still be in
Speaker 4: the woods. That's because you have plenty of time to
Speaker 4: get on your social media on your phone un somewhere
Speaker 4: there's a reception, right, and you can look at the
Speaker 4: element social media Instagram, TikTok because Casey be putting stuff
Speaker 4: over there, controversial broadhead content over there, that's right, but
Speaker 4: no animals will be harmed on TikTok. So if you
Speaker 4: want to see harmage being done, you need to go
Speaker 4: to some Instagram or Facebook for the element.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I go check those out. Awesome, guys, this
Speaker 3: has been rough. Fresh, Keep it fresh.