Speaker 1: As a guide and hunter. I've spent thousands of days
Speaker 1: in the field. This show is about translating my hard
Speaker 1: won experiences into tips and tactics they'll get you closer
Speaker 1: to your ultimate goal success in the field. I'm Remy Warren.
Speaker 1: This is cutting the Distance. Welcome back everyone. It is
Speaker 1: November and for most places, the deer rud is starting
Speaker 1: to kick off pretty good. I've been out pretty much
Speaker 1: every day doing a lot of elk guiding. But during
Speaker 1: it I've been seeing lots of mule deer cruising, lots
Speaker 1: of white tails popping out. Seems like the deer rud,
Speaker 1: at least where I'm at, it's kind of kicking off early.
Speaker 1: A lot actually a lot of red activity this year.
Speaker 1: It just seems like one of those years where the
Speaker 1: deer out and about, and I've been seeing a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of animal movement this year. I've been
Speaker 1: actually in my little cabin here, my guide cabin, get
Speaker 1: the fire going. It's been a long day. So if
Speaker 1: i seem like I'm nodding off, just getting I'm fully
Speaker 1: focused on this podcast. Um. But when you're guiding every day,
Speaker 1: day and day out, and then you sit down to
Speaker 1: do a podcast, You're like, Man, I'm tired. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be getting up here in a few hours. It's PM.
Speaker 1: I will be getting up at three thirty AM, and
Speaker 1: I'll probably have this done and uploaded by about midnight.
Speaker 1: So tomorrow is going to be a grind, but I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have it any other way. When I think about
Speaker 1: grinding out the season, you know, generally I think about
Speaker 1: because some of my favorite topics mule here, the stuff
Speaker 1: that I'm doing. But one thing that also comes to
Speaker 1: mind is big country white tails and rattling them in
Speaker 1: this time of year. It's a really really fun thing
Speaker 1: to do chase white tail box, especially if you don't
Speaker 1: have a mule your tag, or you're in an area
Speaker 1: where there's both white tails and a mule here maybe
Speaker 1: more white tails. I know a lot of the people
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast live in different places, So this
Speaker 1: week we're gonna be talking about some white tail calling tactics,
Speaker 1: everything from setting up, how to set up, choosing that location,
Speaker 1: the calls to make, and what you need to do
Speaker 1: to bring a white tail buck into your setup. But
Speaker 1: before we do that, I want to share the story
Speaker 1: of my best mountain white tail and some of the
Speaker 1: other action that we encountered last season. I actually think
Speaker 1: I'm at the point in the podcast where I can't
Speaker 1: remember what stories I've told. So it might be like
Speaker 1: that your grandpa that it's like, hey, remember that buck
Speaker 1: that I shot up there on Loan Tree Ridge, and
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, Grandpa, you told me that story four times.
Speaker 1: Be like yeah, but it was a good story. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's this. But I was like thinking about white tails.
Speaker 1: And then I remember last season last year about this time,
Speaker 1: did a podcast has probably episodes in the sixties somewhere
Speaker 1: if you missed it, about big country white tales, And
Speaker 1: I told the story of a buck that it was
Speaker 1: like a really big buck, and then he got away,
Speaker 1: and then about now, let's see, that was probably like
Speaker 1: mid October, and then about it was November thirteenth last year,
Speaker 1: I shot that buck or what I'm pretty sure was
Speaker 1: that buck, which ended up being my biggest like public
Speaker 1: Land Mountain white tail. Um. Now, the story behind that
Speaker 1: buck is kind of funny because I was actually not
Speaker 1: trying to shoot that buck. I was trying to get
Speaker 1: my wife to shoot that buck. So you see where
Speaker 1: this story is going now. So anyways, we go, we
Speaker 1: go out and we had some clients. Uh we were
Speaker 1: elk guiding for elk, and we tagged out like one
Speaker 1: to three. We had three l hunters in camp and
Speaker 1: a couple of guys couldn't show up because uh, last
Speaker 1: year a little bit of COVID action and they caught
Speaker 1: caught the bug. So um, we only have three guys
Speaker 1: show up out of the five, and we tagged him
Speaker 1: out pretty quick. It was like we we split up
Speaker 1: and tagged out pretty quick. So we're like, all right, sweet,
Speaker 1: that means more time to hunt for ourselves. My wife
Speaker 1: and I both had deer tags, so're like, well, let's go.
Speaker 1: Normally this time of year, we don't get a chance
Speaker 1: to go hunt for ourselves, so let's go. Let's go
Speaker 1: look for a buck. So we went out the same
Speaker 1: actually the same spot that I was on that buck,
Speaker 1: one of the biggest deer that I didn't get. And
Speaker 1: we're set up and we we go up and there's
Speaker 1: like this little uh there's one little spot where I
Speaker 1: liked to glass room and call from. So we're glassing
Speaker 1: and we saw a really good buck and it's just
Speaker 1: the trouble is like these it's really thick and there's
Speaker 1: a few openings, and I just happened to spot this
Speaker 1: the first year of the day. Like we're walking up
Speaker 1: this um river bottom and I look around the hill
Speaker 1: and there's this like nice buck in the opening, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe like a one twenty let's see, we'll call it
Speaker 1: eastern count nine point something like that. And uh so
Speaker 1: it's over there. I'm like trying to get my wife
Speaker 1: set up, but it just it moved off and then
Speaker 1: just didn't give us a shot and then just disappeared forever.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, all right, so we we'll go around.
Speaker 1: Let's start calling from my my my favorite little canyon
Speaker 1: here and see if we can find I mean, it's
Speaker 1: like pretty much the same the same week ish that
Speaker 1: I encountered that year before. So we go around and
Speaker 1: I get set up. I've got like this, uh we
Speaker 1: kept this little hill and we're overlooking kind of like
Speaker 1: this river bottom, a little short, little gut. It's a
Speaker 1: little bit more open on the other side. And then
Speaker 1: a little bit of timber in there too, and like
Speaker 1: a lot of region like regenerated pines, so maybe it
Speaker 1: was logged or burned, you know, just whatever, and the
Speaker 1: trees are growing back up, but there like small little
Speaker 1: Christmas trees, pretty thick, you can't really see them. Sort
Speaker 1: of set up rattling, and uh, some deer start coming
Speaker 1: out across the hill, but nothing, just like a couple
Speaker 1: of young bucks come through. I'm like, well, we've got time,
Speaker 1: got a little bit time to hunt. Let's keep looking.
Speaker 1: So we go down the canyon, go up to the
Speaker 1: next spot, start calling, and on the way there, I'm like,
Speaker 1: we I see some doughs and like, okay, like keep
Speaker 1: an eye out, and sure enough, here comes as like
Speaker 1: big buck, Like that's that's our buck, that's our boy,
Speaker 1: and he he starts pushing the doughs and like sees
Speaker 1: us and we kind of spooks. So I'm like, crap,
Speaker 1: So I lay out a couple of grunts and we
Speaker 1: hustle up the hill behind usn't super steep, pretty cliffy,
Speaker 1: and I just start I give it a few rattles
Speaker 1: and some grunts, thinking like, I don't know if those deer,
Speaker 1: Like I think we spooked one dough maybe, but I
Speaker 1: don't know if the rest of the deer knew what
Speaker 1: was going on. So they're like kind of doing their
Speaker 1: thing and they're shuffling around and this was just on
Speaker 1: the way to my next call location. So I've got
Speaker 1: a few different places where I like to call from
Speaker 1: where I know that that sound travels real well and
Speaker 1: it's a good setup, and just getting into that calling
Speaker 1: spot spot is some deer bumped him. But the trouble
Speaker 1: is it's pretty thick in there. So we climb up
Speaker 1: the other hillside. I'm like, okay, maybe we can glass
Speaker 1: across and see him. And there's a little opening, bunch
Speaker 1: of timber, another little opening. There's probably half a dozen
Speaker 1: deer in there, and so we climb up, like, don't
Speaker 1: see him, So you just keep climbing up the mountains
Speaker 1: see and try to get a new view, and sure
Speaker 1: enough I spot a deer and I'm like, out of
Speaker 1: the however many deer in there, the one deer I
Speaker 1: spot happens to be the big deer. That doesn't happen
Speaker 1: very often. Normally. It's like you spott a dough, you know,
Speaker 1: like I see a dough, but nothing else. So the
Speaker 1: big buck was still in there. Sweet. So my wife's
Speaker 1: with me and we've just got the one rifle and
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, it's it's just really thick and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: here's the buck. You see him. Yep, she's on him.
Speaker 1: She's sitting there waiting and like being pretty patient, and
Speaker 1: the bucks just like does not your shot. He's behind
Speaker 1: the trees. No shots are like okay, waiting, waiting, and
Speaker 1: then the buck beds down, like perfect, he's bedded. We
Speaker 1: can move over. I think if we move over a
Speaker 1: little bit, we'll be able to get the trees lined up.
Speaker 1: And you have a perfect broadside shot on this deer.
Speaker 1: It's like sweet. So we start coming across the mountain
Speaker 1: and it's like shale and sleep steep. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: if you're thinking white tail country, this is not white
Speaker 1: tail country. This is like mountain goat country. And we
Speaker 1: just happened to find white tails here. And so we're
Speaker 1: like going through and rocks are rolling down. It's hard
Speaker 1: to stay on and oh, mind you. She's also like
Speaker 1: three months pregnant, and so they're like all right. So
Speaker 1: we're moving across the hillside and there's this one like
Speaker 1: log like a down to tree, and we got to
Speaker 1: climb over this thing. And I'm like okay, so I
Speaker 1: crawl over and we're trying to be slow because he
Speaker 1: could see across. He's probably two hundred and eight three
Speaker 1: hundred yards something like that, close enough that if he
Speaker 1: sees us, he's not going to stay there. So I
Speaker 1: crawled over the log and I get set up and
Speaker 1: I'm like okay, now, now crawl over and the bucks
Speaker 1: just bedded there perfect, and his head's behind a tree.
Speaker 1: I'm like okay. And so as she's crawling over, she
Speaker 1: crawls over and I'm like, okay, gets set up. She
Speaker 1: gets set up, and just as she gets set and
Speaker 1: I'm like, we've got I was like, just take your time.
Speaker 1: We've got all the time in the world. This buck's bedded.
Speaker 1: And as soon as I say that, the buck gets
Speaker 1: up and just just goes and I'm like, no, is
Speaker 1: he gonna start chasing? Does? What's he doing? So he
Speaker 1: goes and goes into the trees. She's following him with
Speaker 1: a scope and then he goes into like this little
Speaker 1: patch and she's like I can't find it, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: he's he's just you know, I'm trying to guide her
Speaker 1: into it. And she's like, you see him, why don't
Speaker 1: you shoot him? And I'm like, no, you shoot him,
Speaker 1: and she's like, you shoot him, and I say, and
Speaker 1: I see him, like, take one more step, and I
Speaker 1: know that he's just gonna be gone forever. There's like
Speaker 1: one last little opening and she can't find him in
Speaker 1: the trees because it's like it's pretty difficult now. It's
Speaker 1: like I just see a little piece and I'm like,
Speaker 1: he's going to this opening. You're gonna have a split second.
Speaker 1: And she's like, you shoot him, And I said, okay,
Speaker 1: I will shoot him because I've encountered this buck before
Speaker 1: and I just didn't want him to get away this time.
Speaker 1: So I take the rifle, I line up. He's in
Speaker 1: the timber, I you know, pick my spot. He takes
Speaker 1: one more step, boom, I shoot. He runs and goes down,
Speaker 1: and I'm like sweet. So we both walked up there.
Speaker 1: She was pretty excited that I got it. I was
Speaker 1: pretty stoked that we ended up getting that buck and
Speaker 1: didn't let him slip away into the timber one last time. Uh,
Speaker 1: that bucket evade me once. Shame on me. That buck
Speaker 1: didn't evade us twice. So that was the story of
Speaker 1: my Biggest Buck. And then the next week we went
Speaker 1: back into that same place. We're actually a similar place,
Speaker 1: and uh, I had actually did a backcountry Hunters and
Speaker 1: Anglers kind of like giveaway. The winner of that hunt
Speaker 1: shot a nice or shot his first elk on the
Speaker 1: I think it was the first day of hunt, climbed
Speaker 1: up the mountain. We actually hiked a long ways that
Speaker 1: day and then shot a bull elk. So and he
Speaker 1: actually had a combo tag, so I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: let's go shoot him. Obviously my deer was sitting there
Speaker 1: on the right by the cabin. I was like, I
Speaker 1: had the school up, like, yeah, there's some big bucks around.
Speaker 1: You know. That's what as a guide not for. You
Speaker 1: shouldn't show everybody what you shoot on your days off.
Speaker 1: I think you're I think you're saving all the big
Speaker 1: ones for yourself, but it's generally not the case. It's
Speaker 1: just the fact that we can walk further normally than
Speaker 1: my people, so we can hunt a little bit harder.
Speaker 1: But that aside. So anyways, um back country hunter and
Speaker 1: angler hunt and the hunter had tagged out, so we
Speaker 1: go back in there and I actually had some I
Speaker 1: couldn't find my good rattling, so I just had a
Speaker 1: little set rattling a couple of deer the first day
Speaker 1: and passed on him and the next day were like,
Speaker 1: all right, maybe we'll go back and see if we
Speaker 1: can just shoot some meat getting whatever. Buck comes in
Speaker 1: comes in so rattling, and his deer ran in, like
Speaker 1: I mean, just hauled in, and it was so close
Speaker 1: it's like you couldn't even throw the gun up. You'd
Speaker 1: have to shoot from the hip, and the sound of
Speaker 1: the safety clicking off spooked the buck and he ran off,
Speaker 1: like well, so you just give it a dobleat waited,
Speaker 1: probably waited about thirty minutes, and there's some does on
Speaker 1: the other side, and then yeah, it's like almost like
Speaker 1: the forgot what happened, So you give it another rattle,
Speaker 1: and sure enough that buck comes straight at us bline
Speaker 1: and Chris bulls up, makes a good shot and the
Speaker 1: rest is history. Two bucks within the same general area
Speaker 1: on you actually calling in that one at that time
Speaker 1: figure might as will throw in some calling stories, but
Speaker 1: one of my best bucks ever, and then calling in
Speaker 1: a buck a few days later, it was pretty awesome
Speaker 1: last season action on the white Tails. When it comes
Speaker 1: to calling white tails, I guess, especially Western white tails,
Speaker 1: you first have to ask yourself why, Well, there's a
Speaker 1: couple of reasons for me. I just really enjoyed the
Speaker 1: experience of calling in animals. It's extremely fun. If you
Speaker 1: haven't done it, you really need to of it to try,
Speaker 1: because there's nothing like it. It doesn't really matter what
Speaker 1: it is, whether you're calling elk, meal, dear. I like
Speaker 1: to call meal there as well, ducks, turkeys, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: You get this interaction with an animal and get to
Speaker 1: witness behavior, oftentimes up pretty close you might not get
Speaker 1: to see otherwise you can kind of be a part
Speaker 1: of this animal behavior, and so calling animals, tricking animals
Speaker 1: by calling is extremely exciting, extremely fun. The other side
Speaker 1: to that is, you know, if you're used to Western
Speaker 1: white tail hunting, where you're like, okay, well I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna spot in stock them, and if you're an open country,
Speaker 1: that works really well, but it doesn't work everywhere. One
Speaker 1: of the main reasons that I use calls for white
Speaker 1: tail hunting wherever I'm at is because one, I like
Speaker 1: to be kind of active in the calling, and to
Speaker 1: I guess this would be number three. I like to
Speaker 1: be able to pull out dear that I can't see.
Speaker 1: You can only glass what you can see. But there's
Speaker 1: a lot of country in the white tails or the
Speaker 1: mountains or wherever they live, where they're gonna be timbered up,
Speaker 1: where they're gonna be in those brusher areas. They're gonna
Speaker 1: be traveling certain areas and you aren't gonna be able
Speaker 1: to see them. So by using those calls, you can
Speaker 1: often draw an animals that are gonna be maybe would
Speaker 1: have missed. And I find that there's areas that all
Speaker 1: glass and then I'll start calling and I'll start pulling
Speaker 1: out yours, like where the heck did that buck come from?
Speaker 1: Where the heck did these deer come from? Um, I've
Speaker 1: I've said it before. I'm not the most patient when
Speaker 1: it comes to sitting, but the calling allows me to
Speaker 1: be active, and so I think that the first thing
Speaker 1: we're gonna do, I'm gonna go through the stages that
Speaker 1: I go through when I set up and start calling
Speaker 1: for white tails, whether it's Western white tales or whatever.
Speaker 1: A lot of these tactics you can use anywhere. We've
Speaker 1: just used these in big countries, mostly public land. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of miles in between. So if you're a
Speaker 1: Western white tail hunter, you kind of understand that, yeah,
Speaker 1: you might be hunting public land. There's a lot of space.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of places without white tails, and so
Speaker 1: you need to cover a lot of country. So the
Speaker 1: first thing I do is I try to pinpoint a
Speaker 1: good calling location. What I'm looking for when i'm calling
Speaker 1: is I try it doesn't really matter whether you're hunting
Speaker 1: the mountains, hunting more of a breaks type country. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've used these tactics everywhere from um I guess, like
Speaker 1: the Dakotas all the way through Montana, Wyoming River bottoms
Speaker 1: into the mountains as well, like up at six seven
Speaker 1: thousand feet even late in the season. And what I'm
Speaker 1: looking for is kind of the same everywhere. It's it's
Speaker 1: a calling location where it's got a good travel corridor.
Speaker 1: I often look for areas where okay, maybe they're they're traveling.
Speaker 1: Oftentimes I try to find like some kind of ravine
Speaker 1: where it kind of it chokes their movements down. And
Speaker 1: then I also look for something near heavy cover, something
Speaker 1: that I can't just look into very well. That's that's good,
Speaker 1: dear habitat. Good white tail habitat. White tail habitat is
Speaker 1: fairly easily identifiable, especially if you're in somewhere that has
Speaker 1: like not great white until abbatide. If you're in the
Speaker 1: big mountains. There's a lot of places in the Panhandle
Speaker 1: of Idaho and other places where you know it's big
Speaker 1: mountains that there's white tails around. Um, but you kind
Speaker 1: of look at and you go, well, what what part
Speaker 1: of this is white tail country? And it's often that
Speaker 1: stuff that's a little bit brushier, a little bit more cover,
Speaker 1: a little bit thicker. Maybe it's that thick region pine.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's those clear cuts and those edges where they've
Speaker 1: got that cover. They tend to be animals that like
Speaker 1: to be near that cover. They really value that, that
Speaker 1: privacy and the cover. Now, if you're in an area
Speaker 1: that's wide open, more like planes, um, let's say it's
Speaker 1: like more breaks country, the same thing goes. It's those
Speaker 1: those bottoms of those canyons, those creek bottoms where there's cover. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they'll be up out in the open feeding and doing
Speaker 1: other things and that stuff. But once you've got that
Speaker 1: thick cover, that's where all of those doughs are gonna
Speaker 1: be feeling safe. They're going to feel in that security zone,
Speaker 1: and then the bucks will be cruising through their finding
Speaker 1: those deer. Another another good calling location is something where
Speaker 1: let's see. I mean, one thing you wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: overlook is is looking near agg out west. We kind
Speaker 1: of give the moniker of like land carp to white
Speaker 1: tails or field carp because they end up being like
Speaker 1: around a lot of agg there. You know, you could
Speaker 1: go hunt the mountains all day, and yet you go
Speaker 1: down in the bottom the river bottoms where there's fields
Speaker 1: an agg and all that stuff, and they're just loaded
Speaker 1: with white tails. So one thing I'd like to do
Speaker 1: is I like to pull out my my go hont maps.
Speaker 1: I'll look for the boundary lines of places that I
Speaker 1: can get close to and hunt some of those property
Speaker 1: edges where it's like I know that they're probably maybe
Speaker 1: there's some agriculture, but here's some cover on the other side.
Speaker 1: Here's a good travel corridor that those deer might be
Speaker 1: going to. Maybe the does are flocking to that, but
Speaker 1: I can catch some when they come off and start
Speaker 1: to go to bed you know, they'll move from that
Speaker 1: feeding area to that bedding area. Or here's a piece
Speaker 1: of public around some of that private and that's a
Speaker 1: good place to call from. It might even be something
Speaker 1: where you might attract a deer that is on some
Speaker 1: private um off to where you can shoot. I don't like,
Speaker 1: I'm not like picking spots where it's like near people's
Speaker 1: houses or anything. But maybe some agg where it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: here's some public a little bit of ways away. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a really good like travel corridor, and I
Speaker 1: can hunt this area. It's legal for me to hunt.
Speaker 1: I've got access to it, and it's a good place
Speaker 1: to call because it draws those deer to my specific location. Now,
Speaker 1: the second thing I'm gonna look for is somewhere where
Speaker 1: I can let that sound travel. To do that, I
Speaker 1: like to get elevated. I kind of take the same
Speaker 1: approach as I would when I'm calling for ELK when
Speaker 1: I'm calling whitetail. So if I find that river bottom,
Speaker 1: that goalie, that that good travel kind of pinch point
Speaker 1: where they're going to be moving through, I like to
Speaker 1: get elevated. And I don't do that by using a
Speaker 1: tree stand. I just use the topography. That's what we're
Speaker 1: very blessed with that out west, you've got some topography.
Speaker 1: So I like to get up higher and use my
Speaker 1: calling stands up higher, even in like if I'm in
Speaker 1: breaks country, I'll be up on top of the ridge
Speaker 1: where I can look down. I've got a good view.
Speaker 1: If I'm in the mountains, I kind of climb up
Speaker 1: one side of the drainage whichever way the wind is going.
Speaker 1: I just get on that, you know, get the wind right,
Speaker 1: Get up on that drainage in an area where my
Speaker 1: sound will travel into that area, because if they can't
Speaker 1: hear you, they can't come to that call. Now you
Speaker 1: can drawing deer that are cruising by, So you could
Speaker 1: keep calling, keep calling, and deer moving when they're cruising.
Speaker 1: You know, you might get a new deer that now
Speaker 1: can hear you. I like to be able to project
Speaker 1: that sound, make it like I do when I bugle.
Speaker 1: When I bugle, I want that echo to travel. I
Speaker 1: want that sound to carry because then I can draw
Speaker 1: animals in from a further distance. If I get up
Speaker 1: above some of that brush line where I've got a
Speaker 1: good view and I can make that noise, I find
Speaker 1: that it's a lot more effective calling in more animals
Speaker 1: because they can hear it from a further distance, especially
Speaker 1: in really big country where you go. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're hunting, you know there's places where there's really high
Speaker 1: population densities of deer. I think if you're probably from
Speaker 1: like the Midwest or eastern US, you're like, well, you
Speaker 1: might be hunting small tracts of land, but they have
Speaker 1: lots of deer on them. It's not the same when
Speaker 1: you're hunting out west. Oftentimes you might be hunting uh
Speaker 1: hundred thousand acres as you know, a very low density
Speaker 1: of of a certain species. So those white tails will
Speaker 1: be okay, here's a few, even in areas where there's
Speaker 1: high populations of them, but they aren't the same densities
Speaker 1: that there are other places. So you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: cover a lot more country. And to cover a lot
Speaker 1: of country, I like to let that sound cover that
Speaker 1: country for me, especially because I'm hunting that thicker cover.
Speaker 1: I'm hunting those funnel areas, and I'm trying to draw
Speaker 1: those animals out to where I can see them. Now.
Speaker 1: The third step is essentially the rattling itself. When it
Speaker 1: comes to picking antlers for rattling, I've tried a little
Speaker 1: bit everything. I've got a little set antlers. It's like
Speaker 1: it's tiny little three by three tickle. Those tickle those
Speaker 1: times tend to call in small bucks. Um, what I
Speaker 1: do now is like I use just like a bigger,
Speaker 1: heavier set of antlers. I think for the main reason
Speaker 1: that the sound travels a little bit better. It's all
Speaker 1: about that sound, and I found that I still call
Speaker 1: in those little bucks, but I tend to call in
Speaker 1: more mature deer when I've got bigger antlers making heavier sounds.
Speaker 1: I generally start out just kind of like rattle, rattle, rattle, crash, crash, crash.
Speaker 1: Don't get super aggressive. I just kind of gradually start
Speaker 1: getting into it or working into it. So if there's
Speaker 1: a deer, like I mean, I've I've done that, like
Speaker 1: a couple of clicks and a deer runs in from
Speaker 1: probably fifty sixty yards away that you had no clue
Speaker 1: was even there, just behind some brush that you thought, oh,
Speaker 1: I can see in this little opening. I can see here,
Speaker 1: and there's a deer in the cover pretty close by.
Speaker 1: So I always start out a little bit lighter. I've
Speaker 1: used a little bit of everything. I mean, I have
Speaker 1: used rattling bags. I've used shoulder blades, like shoulders from
Speaker 1: de year just after I cook it up, just shoulder
Speaker 1: but actually it makes a pretty solid sound. They work
Speaker 1: really good for moose paddles to like using a moose
Speaker 1: shoulder blade to rake, or it sounds like a antler raking,
Speaker 1: and I'll throw those and so use those antlers. But
Speaker 1: I found like real antlers seem to work the best.
Speaker 1: I talked about it on the Q and A. But
Speaker 1: plastic antlers or I don't know if I talked about,
Speaker 1: but plastic antlers. I've used those, and they tend to
Speaker 1: break when it's really cold. I've broke more of those
Speaker 1: than I know what to do with. So pick up
Speaker 1: a piece a couple of sheds and give it the rattle.
Speaker 1: Start out light, start out easy, just tickling times. And
Speaker 1: then as I as it goes on, time goes on,
Speaker 1: I get more aggressive, making louder noises. I don't I
Speaker 1: mean I think that I don't know. This is just
Speaker 1: what I do, and I found a lot of success.
Speaker 1: But I'm also hunting really big country and I need
Speaker 1: to cover a lot of country to find what it
Speaker 1: is deer are, So I actually call quite frequently. I'll
Speaker 1: rattle probably for two or three minutes. I'll let sit
Speaker 1: for three to five minutes, and I'll rattle again. If
Speaker 1: there's deer that here. They generally come in the ones
Speaker 1: that aren't interested. I'm not interested in. So step four
Speaker 1: is find the bucks that want to play. When you're
Speaker 1: hunting big country white tails, you have the opportunity to
Speaker 1: move around and you aren't just stuck on one particular
Speaker 1: stand one particular area. Now you can you can do
Speaker 1: the same tactic by setting up a tree standard area
Speaker 1: where getting a lot of deer movement. It's like, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe deer moving all day, You've got the patients to
Speaker 1: sit for it. But for me, I'm just looking for
Speaker 1: those bucks that are like real aggressive and want to
Speaker 1: come into that call, want to come into that rattling,
Speaker 1: Because that's pretty much the tactic I'm gonna be using
Speaker 1: in the spots that I'm setting up. I could sit
Speaker 1: and wait, but they probably won't have a good shot
Speaker 1: or they won't be I'm not going to spend the
Speaker 1: time to figure out where their movements and patterns are.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go out each day and try to
Speaker 1: find the deer that want to come into that rattle
Speaker 1: by picking the best locations for calling them in somewhere
Speaker 1: where I can get elevated, where they've got a good
Speaker 1: travel corridor, where I see that sign and I know, hey,
Speaker 1: there's deer in this area, but here I'm going to
Speaker 1: attract them to a place where I can get a
Speaker 1: shot or get eyes on them. And so what I'm
Speaker 1: really focusing on is, you know, being essentially fairly aggressive
Speaker 1: with the calling um and using that rattling to draw
Speaker 1: those deer to my location. Now, I also mix in
Speaker 1: grunts and also a few like um dough bleats as well,
Speaker 1: so I'm mixing other deer sounds. I like to mix
Speaker 1: in that grunting. I'm pretty heavy on the grunting. I
Speaker 1: think that that works pretty well. One thing I found,
Speaker 1: like compared to probably deer other places is mountaineer tend
Speaker 1: to be pretty vocal, uh because it's a lower density,
Speaker 1: so they're using their nose a lot. But they're also
Speaker 1: when they're getting together. When you're seeing these deer interacting
Speaker 1: with each other, they're they're grunting a lot. So I
Speaker 1: do the same thing I do the grunts. I make
Speaker 1: a lot of noise with big antlers, let that noise
Speaker 1: travel and try to find the bucks that want to
Speaker 1: come in and want to be aggressive. So timing is
Speaker 1: a little bit of everything as well. You want it
Speaker 1: to be that time of the route where bucks are
Speaker 1: fighting for does and you can gauge that based on
Speaker 1: what you're seeing around you. And then the fifth thing
Speaker 1: is I move. If I'm not seeing what I want,
Speaker 1: then I moved to an area and keep doing stands.
Speaker 1: I kind of take that approach just like I do
Speaker 1: with l hunting. It's big country. I need to cover
Speaker 1: that country. So I'm picking the highest percentage place where
Speaker 1: I could call in a deer. I give it some time,
Speaker 1: maybe an hour or two, and if it doesn't pan out,
Speaker 1: then I move and I moved to the next spot.
Speaker 1: And then my best spots I do at the highest
Speaker 1: productive time, so like mornings and evenings, and then I
Speaker 1: go and once I've got dear to come into an area,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll end up staying there, but until I find
Speaker 1: exactly wearing the majority of the deer moving and concentrating.
Speaker 1: Because it is such a big country, I move until
Speaker 1: I find that. I sit down, I get up high,
Speaker 1: I do all the steps, do all the rattling, do everything,
Speaker 1: and then move. If it's not productive, I'll go to
Speaker 1: another spot. And once I find the spot where they
Speaker 1: tend to be that day, then I'm going to kind
Speaker 1: of focus in. Maybe I'll sit there all day. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'll focus in on these couple of drainages here and there.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll space out my calling a little bit, use
Speaker 1: my eyes a little more, and be more patient. But
Speaker 1: until that point, I'm moving a lot, trying to figure
Speaker 1: out where the animals are and try to kind of pinpoint. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is their movement pattern, this is kind of the
Speaker 1: time of day they're hitting these spots. And now that
Speaker 1: I found that spot, then I can kind of focus
Speaker 1: in and really hunt it and be super effective that way.
Speaker 1: I hope that inspires a few people to grab a
Speaker 1: couple of shed antlers and head out into the mountains.
Speaker 1: I think that you'll find a lot of success. If
Speaker 1: you haven't called before, definitely give it a try. You know,
Speaker 1: western white tail hunting, I think it's overshadowed a lot
Speaker 1: by elk and mule deer, and and I obviously understand
Speaker 1: why sometimes when you've got these other species that you
Speaker 1: grow up hunting, and you're just like, that's why people
Speaker 1: head out west is to chase elk, to chase mule
Speaker 1: there to chase wronghorn, because there's white tails everywhere else.
Speaker 1: I think that because the white tail hunting gets overlooked
Speaker 1: in in a lot of Western states. It's probably some
Speaker 1: of the best kept secret. There is some great white
Speaker 1: tail hunting around, especially when it comes to public land
Speaker 1: white tails. I mean, I would say that probably Western
Speaker 1: states have the best opportunity for some good public land bucks.
Speaker 1: That then probably a lot of places on the east
Speaker 1: eastern half of the US. So just something to think about.
Speaker 1: I think next week we're gonna start diving back into
Speaker 1: some elk and some other you know, just more western,
Speaker 1: more western topics, but cannot disregard the white tail tactics.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure a lot of you will be headed
Speaker 1: out a lot of white tail tags because man wait,
Speaker 1: tail tags are fairly easy to come by, their general
Speaker 1: units for in a lot of states, there's leftover tags
Speaker 1: for some of that kind of stuff if you're traveling
Speaker 1: out of state, because it is the one species that
Speaker 1: probably gets a little bit overlooked. So it's just something
Speaker 1: to think about. If you're coming out west, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a western white tail hunt might be the first
Speaker 1: step in your journey because it's something that you're familiar with,
Speaker 1: but also you're you're hunting it in a completely new way.
Speaker 1: So there's something that are the same and a lot
Speaker 1: of things that are different. But it gets that kind
Speaker 1: of big country experience under your belt. So when you
Speaker 1: do draw a meal of your tag or and elk
Speaker 1: tag or or have that opportunity, you've got a little
Speaker 1: bit of experience as well. So just something to think about.
Speaker 1: But I hope you enjoy it. Um, keep me posted, man,
Speaker 1: I've been getting a ton of great photos, so much success,
Speaker 1: some great stories of people, um, you know, listening to
Speaker 1: this podcast finding some value in it and being successful.
Speaker 1: A lot of people that have hunted elk for many
Speaker 1: years and say, oh, check out this bowl. You know,
Speaker 1: this is this tactic or whatever. I've been enjoying checking
Speaker 1: that out. When I get a little bit of service
Speaker 1: throughout the day or I come back at night. I've
Speaker 1: got this sweet satellite internet now, so I can actually
Speaker 1: like kind of stay in touch when i'm not um,
Speaker 1: when it's like dark and I'm back at the cabin.
Speaker 1: So keep sending those photos and all that stuff. I
Speaker 1: really enjoy it. Until next week. I'm just gonna say,
Speaker 1: rat along, right along, man, Rat along,