Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the Whitetail Woods, presented by First Light, creating proven versatile
Speaker 1: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light
Speaker 1: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
Speaker 2: the show, I'm joined by Jeff Sturtus of Whitetail Habitat
Speaker 2: Solutions to discuss strategies for late season success for both
Speaker 2: private and public land. All right, welcome to the Wired
Speaker 2: to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light and
Speaker 2: their Camel for Conservation initiative. If you're not familiar, it's
Speaker 2: pretty on a cool A portion of every sale of
Speaker 2: First Light's spector Whitetail Camel is given to the National
Speaker 2: Deer Association to help with their mission to do good
Speaker 2: things for deer and deer hunting, which I'm awfully thankful for.
Speaker 2: So all that said, today's episode is all about the
Speaker 2: late season, and it can be a great season if
Speaker 2: you have the right plan in place and if you're
Speaker 2: willing to do the work, push through the cold temps,
Speaker 2: the long well not so long days, but a long
Speaker 2: season getting you up to that point and My guest
Speaker 2: today is a good friend, a great hunter, and a
Speaker 2: wealth of information. Jeff Sturgis. He is the founder of
Speaker 2: white Tail Habitat Solutions. He's written multiple books, he has
Speaker 2: a tremendous YouTube channel. He just pumps out the videos
Speaker 2: there like I can't believe. And he brings an interesting
Speaker 2: perspective because I think a lot of people think of
Speaker 2: Jeff as a private land kind of habitat manager expert,
Speaker 2: and that is probably his not probably, It definitely is
Speaker 2: the thing he does the very most, but he also
Speaker 2: spends a lot of time hunting on public land too.
Speaker 2: He has experience hunting different places that I think can
Speaker 2: be relatable to any kind of deer hunter out there.
Speaker 2: So we're going to talk about today is how to
Speaker 2: have success in the late season, yes on managed pieces
Speaker 2: or yes on private land with ag whatever might be.
Speaker 2: But also how to kill late season deer in the
Speaker 2: big woods, how to kill late season deer in areas
Speaker 2: where there's no management, where you're competing with other folks,
Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff. So I think this is
Speaker 2: going to be really valuable for a large number of you.
Speaker 2: I'm excited about it. I don't want to waste any
Speaker 2: more of your time. I think we should just get
Speaker 2: right into it. But first one thing, I just want
Speaker 2: to take a second here to thank so many of
Speaker 2: you for reaching out, sending me messages and comments and
Speaker 2: emails and so many different notes of support and congratulations.
Speaker 2: After getting my shot at the WY nine last week,
Speaker 2: was very very thankful to have had that opportunity to
Speaker 2: close the deal on that deer and end that hunt
Speaker 2: and get redemption after what happened in October. So very
Speaker 2: thankful for that, and very thankful for all of your
Speaker 2: support along the way, for you following the story over
Speaker 2: the years and sticking with me through through the episode
Speaker 2: of the Downs. So all that said, let's kick off
Speaker 2: this month of December in style with a great conversation
Speaker 2: here with mister Jeff Sturgison. All right, we are here
Speaker 2: now with one of my most frequent return guests on
Speaker 2: the podcast and one of my favorite guests on the
Speaker 2: show and a good friend, mister Jeff Sturgis. Welcome back, Jeff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's great to be here, say frequently spend over
Speaker 3: a long period of time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think you were one of my
Speaker 2: first ten guests. Like I think you're in the first
Speaker 2: maybe even the first four episodes ever, So that's that's
Speaker 2: going back ten years at least. And I think we were,
Speaker 2: you know, working on some articles together and talking for
Speaker 2: a number of years before that too, So it's it's
Speaker 2: crazy how fast it all goes. Doesn't feel like it was.
Speaker 3: That long ago, but it was back in the writing
Speaker 3: days or writing a whole bunch. Yeah, I'd written up
Speaker 3: to one hundred and seventy eighty articles in a year,
Speaker 3: and then when i'd watched those Google Google analytics, I'd
Speaker 3: see a notice come through from Wired to Hunt that
Speaker 3: they something I never knew what it meant, and then
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, I realized that you had this
Speaker 3: wired to Hunt thing, and you'd share articles that I'd
Speaker 3: written during the week in your Friday Friday Post or
Speaker 3: whatever it was. Yeah, that's where that came from. And
Speaker 3: so I knew of the post going out before I
Speaker 3: think I even talked to you or met you at
Speaker 3: that time.
Speaker 2: So yeah, cool, It's funny how that those things bring
Speaker 2: folks together. I'm sure glad that I don't remember if
Speaker 2: if you reached out to me or if I reached
Speaker 2: out to you, but however it happened I'm glad it happened.
Speaker 3: It was over ten years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so so yeah, all that said, thank you for
Speaker 2: making the time. I know you're coming off of the trip,
Speaker 2: busy with hunts and all that. So the thought I
Speaker 2: had for today, Jeff, is to is to cover a
Speaker 2: topic we have not covered yet in detail. And I
Speaker 2: know in the past we've talked a lot about habitat,
Speaker 2: We've talked a lot about some of your thoughts around
Speaker 2: predicting timing of deer activity. We've talked about patterning deer.
Speaker 2: We've covered a lot of ground, but we've never done
Speaker 2: a full episode like this talking specifically about the late season. Sure,
Speaker 2: and coming into December here, I thought this would be
Speaker 2: a perfect time to do that. So my first my
Speaker 2: first question for you, Jeff, is about how you feel
Speaker 2: at this time of year. So bear with me on
Speaker 2: this when I explain what I'm thinking here. Sometimes some years,
Speaker 2: when I get to December, I start to get like
Speaker 2: antsy and nervous because if I've got a bunch of
Speaker 2: tags still in my pocket, I'll wake up in the
Speaker 2: morning just wedding like It'll just be like a little
Speaker 2: bit uneasy. How do you feel if you get to
Speaker 2: this time of year and you've got unfilled tags. Are
Speaker 2: you Are you starting to get worried that we're nearing
Speaker 2: the end or do you still have a lot of confidence.
Speaker 3: I'm sure that uneasiness for you has gone away over
Speaker 3: the last couple of days.
Speaker 2: Yes, things are feeling better now.
Speaker 3: And I think I think that depends. And I've had
Speaker 3: a few twenty ten, twenty twenty. We're both bad years
Speaker 3: for different reasons. And missus wounded animal just it was
Speaker 3: it was a grind, and it really gets to this
Speaker 3: time of year. Most of the time, it's enjoyable. It's relaxing.
Speaker 3: I love going out. Jen's going out tonight, she's going
Speaker 3: to watch a food source and I went out last night.
Speaker 3: And it's more even We're not getting up at four
Speaker 3: and driving fifty minutes to Wisconsin to go sit in
Speaker 3: a rut stand after walking forty minutes up the hill
Speaker 3: to get into a blind and stamp it's and sitting
Speaker 3: in a tree stand and having to be eighteen degrees.
Speaker 3: So there is such a contrast, and I think it
Speaker 3: does boil down to tags and it's not. And you know,
Speaker 3: you and I hunt similar in some ways as far
Speaker 3: as like you shot your target buck and you had
Speaker 3: that that buck in mind. And I had a buck
Speaker 3: last year bow that I was after here in Minnesota,
Speaker 3: and I shot some nice bucks already, but it was
Speaker 3: I hunted till the last day I could hunt them
Speaker 3: last year. But I still had that sense of satisfaction
Speaker 3: that I shot something. And so when you don't have tags,
Speaker 3: it's it's more of a it's not even boy, I
Speaker 3: haven't shot something. It's more when when you have that
Speaker 3: pocket full of tags, it's more like, boy, just what
Speaker 3: could I have done different? What decisions could I have
Speaker 3: made different? Never worried about a dead animal. It's more
Speaker 3: I just it's a quest and it's a journey. But
Speaker 3: when you had those tag fill I shot my target
Speaker 3: buck in Minnesota on my second one, and Wisconsin, and
Speaker 3: then we just went to Pennsylvania and shot a beautiful
Speaker 3: one on public land. It's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 3: you really can step back and enjoy this time of year,
Speaker 3: and it's more of a relaxing hunt. To me, it's
Speaker 3: more about numbers of sets, just when you can get
Speaker 3: out there and enjoy. We sit in blinds more often
Speaker 3: this time of year, watching food sources still get some
Speaker 3: the perfect Rot stand Second Rot morning sets and so,
Speaker 3: but it's more at a leisurely pace, if that makes sense. Yeah,
Speaker 3: such a contrast from I feel personally right now. I
Speaker 3: feel pretty good. I feel I can relax this this
Speaker 3: time of year and have some tags that have been
Speaker 3: filled and have had some great memories too with family
Speaker 3: and friends. So it's a good time right now.
Speaker 2: Now. Now, what do you think about just your chances
Speaker 2: to still have this Not specifically like you this year,
Speaker 2: but I mean if someone's listening and they're going into
Speaker 2: December and they have an unfilled tag and they're thinking
Speaker 2: to themselves, you know, should I be like, is the
Speaker 2: best what I'm getting at? Is the best behind me
Speaker 2: when I get into December? Or do you look at
Speaker 2: December as some people call it December and things actually
Speaker 2: can be pretty darn good still moving forward? How do
Speaker 2: you feel about that?
Speaker 3: I love the Second Rot, especially where we're up here
Speaker 3: in the Upper Midwest where we can plan on some
Speaker 3: scrapes being opened up first part of December and some
Speaker 3: bucks really moving acting like they did during the middle
Speaker 3: of the Rot. Also late season food sources. I wrote
Speaker 3: some on the back on the board just to help
Speaker 3: me with my memory. But really, when you're looking at
Speaker 3: clearcuts on public land and that diversity of habitat where
Speaker 3: highland meets lowland, old forest meet young forest, there's a
Speaker 3: lot of opportunity for browsing deer during the daylight. And
Speaker 3: you look at box that have run ragged for three
Speaker 3: weeks straight and then all of a sudden, now they
Speaker 3: have to replenish that energy that's been lost, and so
Speaker 3: to me, there's a lot of opportunity this year. It's
Speaker 3: a lot different. Back in the late eighties nineties when
Speaker 3: I was hunting Thumb Area, Michigan, we're in ten years.
Speaker 3: During that time, there was one year where I saw
Speaker 3: probably twenty five twenty six different bucks leading up to
Speaker 3: gun season. All those ten years combined, I saw three
Speaker 3: antler bucks. After gun season through the end of the year.
Speaker 3: Lots of deer, lops of dose, but we weren't in
Speaker 3: the areas that we had small little woodlots an acre here,
Speaker 3: five acres here, ten acres there, a corner of a
Speaker 3: field here, and all those box were back in high
Speaker 3: stem count areas, more remote locations. They've been pounded by hunters.
Speaker 3: So it's cool about public land. You can go out
Speaker 3: and find those areas you need to get away from
Speaker 3: where you'd normally hunt potentially for a rout. But then
Speaker 3: at the same time, on private land, if you have
Speaker 3: the right conditions, you can build it. So either one can.
Speaker 3: We have some of our best hunts third day a
Speaker 3: gun season, fourth day, seventh day, ninth day, all the
Speaker 3: way out through Muzzli order in the first part of December.
Speaker 3: Some of our best hunts have been during those times
Speaker 3: where we see a good number of deer and we
Speaker 3: still have an opportunity at what bucks are remaining. So
Speaker 3: I'm full hoped when we get into this time of year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you make you make a lot of good points there.
Speaker 2: And something you mentioned that being, you know, find this
Speaker 2: different kind of habitat on public land, like you can
Speaker 2: still have late season success on public land, where I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people assume it's a lot harder
Speaker 2: and assume, you know, the late season's kind of a
Speaker 2: private land food plot game. Sure, but you were just
Speaker 2: in Pennsylvania on public land and killed a really nice
Speaker 2: buck in late November. It was that kind of a
Speaker 2: late season type set up in any kind of way
Speaker 2: or how did you pull that off? Because that feels
Speaker 2: kind of late to me.
Speaker 3: It is, and that was shot quite a few bucks
Speaker 3: out there this time of year because it always opens up.
Speaker 3: The used to open up the Monday after Thanksgiving. Now
Speaker 3: it's the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I was there in twenty
Speaker 3: nineteen when it opened up the first Saturday ever, and
Speaker 3: then you had Sunday off, and then I shot my
Speaker 3: buck on Monday. Now they can hunt Sundays. But really
Speaker 3: there's a combination of things going on. For one, we're
Speaker 3: looking for people pressure and people hot zones and trying
Speaker 3: to get in the middle of campgrounds, boat access along
Speaker 3: where we hunt, a reservoir, parking areas, main trail systems.
Speaker 3: And then you're looking for if it's big open woods,
Speaker 3: you might have a good hunt in the afternoon if
Speaker 3: they're coming up and hitting acorns, beach nuts or cherry,
Speaker 3: depending on what they're hitting. That time of year. Right
Speaker 3: now is acorns everywhere. But we're looking for a high
Speaker 3: stem count. And so it's not that the bucks are
Speaker 3: on the sell facing slopes soaking up the warmth. It's
Speaker 3: the self facing slopes in a national forest are the
Speaker 3: ones that have a higher vegetation leve or a stem
Speaker 3: count per acre, and so we're gravitating to stem count
Speaker 3: per acre and then trying to put yourself in position
Speaker 3: with a lot of funnels, saddles, benches and points and
Speaker 3: draws that come together so that you can capture that
Speaker 3: big X of movement if anyone pushes a deer. So
Speaker 3: this this bot came in by himself. He just came
Speaker 3: cruising through. He was actually on an old scrape line.
Speaker 3: He wasn't working scrapes or anything. He was just coming through.
Speaker 3: And where he was going was he was leading angling upwards.
Speaker 3: And we have a broad hilltop that just has a
Speaker 3: lot of self facing exposure with a lot of stem count,
Speaker 3: and it's it's not necessarily thick, it's thick for there,
Speaker 3: but it's higher stem count. So then he'd have brows
Speaker 3: during the daylight during his betting hours. And he was
Speaker 3: five after eight to a shooting lighter on around quarter
Speaker 3: after seven or seven, So I think he was just
Speaker 3: heading up to bed. He might have been pushed, you know,
Speaker 3: from a long ways away, but he was kind of
Speaker 3: just easing on through. It's you for a nation, I think,
Speaker 3: And if it was a different weather, I'd be looking
Speaker 3: for different conditions too.
Speaker 2: Or different. Yes, So then tell me that. I guess, So,
Speaker 2: how would you shift things at two fouls? How would
Speaker 2: you shift that up if it was different weather? And
Speaker 2: then secondly, if you were hunting out there public land,
Speaker 2: same kind of place out there in Pa, but you
Speaker 2: were doing this three weeks later now it's not that
Speaker 2: first few days of gun season. Now we're talking like
Speaker 2: December December, would you approach it differently then?
Speaker 3: No, I'd be hunting similar locations. And the thing about
Speaker 3: out there, we used to have a cabin with family
Speaker 3: that I'd go out there, so we would actually literally
Speaker 3: cross country ski back in this federal land and see
Speaker 3: where the tracks were all winter long, a hike in
Speaker 3: the off season, so you got to have a good
Speaker 3: flavor of pretty good feel where the deer were most
Speaker 3: of the year. Right now you're hunting more of that
Speaker 3: late season pattern. The difference is if it's really snowy,
Speaker 3: I would be down towards the bottoms where the hemlocks are,
Speaker 3: the hemlock line meets the hardwoods. I would have been.
Speaker 3: So if it was snowing this trip, we would have
Speaker 3: been down towards the bottoms. It was crunchy, cold and dry,
Speaker 3: so we were hunting more at the top where there's
Speaker 3: more food sources, So a lot of times they'll be
Speaker 3: down the bottoms more thermal protection, and then they'll go
Speaker 3: up to the tops to feed just in the afternoon.
Speaker 3: And so even going out with this season, I mean
Speaker 3: right now, if it would have been snowy, we would
Speaker 3: have been depending on how much snow we would have
Speaker 3: been either in transition areas or more towards the bottom
Speaker 3: to get closer to that hemlock line.
Speaker 2: Okay, what about mornings for that kind of setup. I
Speaker 2: know there's a lot of talk about you know, when
Speaker 2: you're hunting food sources in the late season, a lot
Speaker 2: of folks avoid the mornings. It's hard to get in
Speaker 2: or out. But when you're hunting big woods like that,
Speaker 2: are you are you hunting mornings still just the same
Speaker 2: or or how what does that look like in a
Speaker 2: late season public land, no ag kind of situation.
Speaker 3: The morning or daybreak? You know, I'll side of opening
Speaker 3: day a gun seas were we were there for the
Speaker 3: first two days, so we're going to be out there
Speaker 3: in the morning, and but outside of that, if I
Speaker 3: was just going out to hunt Ran December December sixth
Speaker 3: if you can get into areas and it's pretty cool
Speaker 3: out in public land. It's so it's so different on
Speaker 3: private because everything is concentrated. You know, you're looking at
Speaker 3: food sources, betting area, transition areas for all their daylight
Speaker 3: movement in a one hundred acre box or less or
Speaker 3: two hundred acres or forty whatever you have to work with.
Speaker 3: We're here, it's thousands of acres and so it's thousands
Speaker 3: of acres open timber, so that the betting areas, the
Speaker 3: food sources are very scattered and the movements in between.
Speaker 3: What that means is if I want to go out,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't necessarily want to be in there right in
Speaker 3: a food source right at daybreak or around there, because
Speaker 3: I look at like deer might be bedding nearby. You
Speaker 3: might spook them going in the cold part of the
Speaker 3: days in the morning, are they feeding? Are they in
Speaker 3: their beds to conserve energy? But boy, when it gets
Speaker 3: to at nine o'clock, ten o'clock and you're on a flat,
Speaker 3: an oak flat where you've seen some indication of feeding.
Speaker 3: We've had bears feeding out there. We went through bear
Speaker 3: sign on the way in on opening day, so the
Speaker 3: bears are feeding up on top. That would be an
Speaker 3: area that you could sneak in like eight nine o'clock
Speaker 3: and then sit for the rest of the day with
Speaker 3: the thought that you're coming in on a flat point.
Speaker 3: You're not expressing yourself over the sides and spooking deer
Speaker 3: that might be down in the hollow. You're getting in
Speaker 3: the position and blowing your scent off to a non
Speaker 3: deer area, maybe further top up top or towards an
Speaker 3: open area, waiting for deer that possibly might want to
Speaker 3: feed mid morning because they were bedded down at daybreak
Speaker 3: when it was super cold. So I like that that
Speaker 3: approach good morning, and then I brought the spicy feed
Speaker 3: all day us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeap, that makes sense. You brought the second rut
Speaker 2: a couple of times a question. I've got a couple
Speaker 2: questions related to that. But one thing that I've heard
Speaker 2: is that you will be more likely to see a
Speaker 2: second rut in places where there's a very healthy deer
Speaker 2: population and healthy dough fonds that will come into Maybe
Speaker 2: I'm maybe getting this backwards. I guess answer me this
Speaker 2: before I go run in my mouth. Do you see
Speaker 2: a second rut more often on your highly managed private
Speaker 2: lands or on public lands or is it about the
Speaker 2: same either way, Like, is that just as likely to
Speaker 2: happen on that public land PA hunt for you or
Speaker 2: is it probably not?
Speaker 3: We don't because because we're only hunting. So in the
Speaker 3: twenty one seasons I've hunted out there, I have averaged
Speaker 3: about two days on hunting, so I don't go back.
Speaker 3: I'm hunting for opening day the second day. True, I
Speaker 3: think eighty percent of those let's say sixty five to
Speaker 3: seventy percent of those days I shot my bucket opening day,
Speaker 3: so you're not really hunting much past that.
Speaker 2: But it's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's I know there's a second rut in those
Speaker 3: big public land areas and so and I think sometimes
Speaker 3: you look at it like maybe there's better sex ratios,
Speaker 3: But the bucks have to travel a lot far further
Speaker 3: between dough family groups. So to me, if there's not
Speaker 3: a lot of deer, you could almost say that little
Speaker 3: dough groups could be missed for that first rought. No
Speaker 3: different than if you have an unmanaged herd that's really
Speaker 3: out of balance, then you have some leftover dos and
Speaker 3: fauns that box just couldn't take care of because they
Speaker 3: didn't have time they came out of estrus and they're
Speaker 3: coming back in a month later. So I don't I know,
Speaker 3: like a zoga up in the up of Michigan. He
Speaker 3: had told me. I think it was around eighty percent
Speaker 3: of the does are bred in that first primary rut,
Speaker 3: but then there's about fifteen percent that are bred in
Speaker 3: that second rut. And that was kind of up Wi
Speaker 3: where they did their studies based on fetuses in ultrasounds
Speaker 3: for dose that they I think it was over two
Speaker 3: thousand doors they ultrasounded along the side of the road
Speaker 3: over a twenty five year period. Whatever it was, it
Speaker 3: was pretty good on a data. So and we see
Speaker 3: it even where we have good sexual racials around here
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, versus Wisconsin where we have a little
Speaker 3: bit higher do't count there because of some neighborly things
Speaker 3: going up. Then we see second rut in both those
Speaker 3: places too. So I'm just trying to think of the
Speaker 3: different areas where I've hunted. We still see that that
Speaker 3: second rout pretty prevalent.
Speaker 2: What's what's the window when you see that most often?
Speaker 2: Like if you had to put a date window on
Speaker 2: it in your area, what would the date window be
Speaker 2: and how how long do you usually see that as
Speaker 2: something like you're going to go into hunt planning to
Speaker 2: ki in on, Like is this like a few day window?
Speaker 2: Is this a week? Is this two weeks? What are
Speaker 2: we talking in which you're actually thinking, like the second
Speaker 2: rut is a legitimate part of my strategy and I'm
Speaker 2: hoping to plan for it.
Speaker 3: It'd be about a week to ten days, and that'd
Speaker 3: be for us right around right now or it's end
Speaker 3: of November early December and we're not seeing any We
Speaker 3: have what's kind of nice in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and
Speaker 3: I know this is a luxury, and I know this
Speaker 3: number might be off putting to some people, but we
Speaker 3: have good partnerships with people in the industry, and we
Speaker 3: have right now close to sixty cell cameras in Minnesota
Speaker 3: and Wisconsin on our properties on and if you looked
Speaker 3: at those, they're spread out over less than three hundred acres.
Speaker 3: So we have a lot of cell cameras out now,
Speaker 3: and the majority of those we're probably at eighty percent
Speaker 3: around mock scrapes, and so we get a really good
Speaker 3: view of what's going on with running activity. And I
Speaker 3: can say it's almost non existent right now, but I
Speaker 3: would guess, is it the twenty ninth today or is
Speaker 3: it the thirtieth?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it says the twenty ninth.
Speaker 3: Yep, yeah, I would say it's Wednesday. By this weekend
Speaker 3: we'll start seeing some activities picking up. It'll probably peak
Speaker 3: seventh or tenth of December, and then it'll go back
Speaker 3: downhill pretty quick. But I was hunting both season in
Speaker 3: Wisconsin maybe four years ago. Had one of my target
Speaker 3: bucks come through in early January, just breaking brush, making scrapes,
Speaker 3: throwing snow all over the place, dirt on top of
Speaker 3: the snow, and he was following a dough, a small
Speaker 3: uh probably fondo, and she curved in front of me.
Speaker 3: He grunted, she spooked, and he ended up chasing her
Speaker 3: and she came right by me. He didn't. But we
Speaker 3: see a lot of that even in that that just
Speaker 3: a short window in the early January. It's all about
Speaker 3: that that time where he just to me, it's see
Speaker 3: during the middle of the rout, you know, a buck
Speaker 3: could be coming off a dough any day, and another
Speaker 3: doe could be coming in. He might have to search
Speaker 3: for a while. It's a lot more random. But when
Speaker 3: you start at the beginning of the rut, it's like
Speaker 3: all the bucks are ready, they're just waiting for the doughs.
Speaker 3: You have one or two doughs come in, there can
Speaker 3: be some malacious fights sometimes between some molder box then
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, the high percentage of dose start
Speaker 3: coming in and all these bucks are waiting. And to me,
Speaker 3: that's the time when they're they're all on dose pretty quick.
Speaker 3: It's the way I view it anyways, And that to me,
Speaker 3: if they're all on dose pretty quick and you have
Speaker 3: a large percentage coming in, then they miss them. And
Speaker 3: then you just fast forward thirty days and twenty eight
Speaker 3: days whatever it is, and it's about that same time
Speaker 3: every year in December, and then you can do the
Speaker 3: same into January.
Speaker 2: So when you get to that time period first week
Speaker 2: or ten days of December, are you hunting? Like if
Speaker 2: you're going to a hunt, is it always with the
Speaker 2: mindset like, hey, this is a second rut type hunt
Speaker 2: and I'm going hunt a location to take advantage of that.
Speaker 2: Or do you look at your data from cameras to
Speaker 2: tell you whether or not there is running activity and
Speaker 2: if there's not running activity, you hunt standard late season
Speaker 2: bed to food type pattern.
Speaker 3: So if I was planning on hunting, let's just throw
Speaker 3: you know, like next Tuesday morning because it's second rut.
Speaker 3: Then I'm going to go in to some of my
Speaker 3: favorite morning rout funnel stands and go take a seat.
Speaker 3: And yeah, if I have celcam data to back it up,
Speaker 3: or I have open scrapes where I've walked into another
Speaker 3: stand and seeing there's open scrapes, then that might determine
Speaker 3: an area of the property I go to. But just
Speaker 3: taking a total guess, I go in and hit my
Speaker 3: favorite rut stands in the morning and see what happens.
Speaker 3: And then it's different now because we have muscloder season.
Speaker 3: I like shooting deer with a bow. I hunt with
Speaker 3: my boat hearing gun season at times, but I also
Speaker 3: enjoy sitting over a food source with muzzleloader looking for
Speaker 3: a bunch of does. And so this time of year,
Speaker 3: if I think it's second Rut, I don't want to
Speaker 3: hunt some out of the way spot where I think
Speaker 3: a buck might be feeding because it's near as betting area.
Speaker 3: I want to go to the source of the bottom
Speaker 3: of the funnel where a lot of dos are coming
Speaker 3: in to a food source. And it seems like when
Speaker 3: we start seeing that dough herd meaning seven eight ten
Speaker 3: doers that are out an hour before dark, then good
Speaker 3: things happen. You're bucking around somewhere, which so we'd hunt
Speaker 3: with the boat during the rock because we're not hunting
Speaker 3: those big open food sources with we have food sources,
Speaker 3: we can't hundle the boat because if we go in
Speaker 3: and hunt, we're gonna spook the deer, So we kind
Speaker 3: of in the betting areas that go along with them
Speaker 3: the property too.
Speaker 2: So so food that seems so much of what we
Speaker 2: do in the late season revolves around food. Can you
Speaker 2: can you tell me a little bit about the types
Speaker 2: of food sources that you like to key in on
Speaker 2: at this time of year, whether that be you know,
Speaker 2: how you plan like create food sources with that in mind,
Speaker 2: or just if you're hunting land. They don't necessarily have
Speaker 2: control over how you might approach that.
Speaker 3: So, like, you know, even going back to Pennsylvania in
Speaker 3: that public land, I don't want to be out in
Speaker 3: the big open hardwoods unless I ask some indication that
Speaker 3: there's still acorns and that's where they're feeding, you know,
Speaker 3: tore up ground snow. I really want to be in
Speaker 3: the high stem count areas where you have lots of regeneration,
Speaker 3: lots of habitat coming in, think upland cover. If you
Speaker 3: can find it on public land, it's hard. But where
Speaker 3: you have shrubs, bushes, briars Harvard region, maybe on the
Speaker 3: edge of a swamp, it's all coming together. Where there's
Speaker 3: a lot of different habitat groups coming in together, that
Speaker 3: means there's a lot of brows. And to me, as
Speaker 3: opposed to a wide open oak flat where deer been pressured,
Speaker 3: hunters have been out too, they might feed there more
Speaker 3: at night, it's safe, it's social, they can see predators
Speaker 3: for a long distance. I'd rather be tucked up against
Speaker 3: that high high stem count diversity and brows and public land.
Speaker 3: And then when you go on to private if you're
Speaker 3: managing your own property, you want to definitely have a
Speaker 3: lot of younger timber coming in and diversity of habitat.
Speaker 3: But then you're looking at either high volume greens like
Speaker 3: braska if it's towards the north, or corn beans that
Speaker 3: are standing late if you can get that. But and
Speaker 3: then adjacent to that same type of cover where you
Speaker 3: have really thick cover. So if I'm hunting in the morning,
Speaker 3: i want to be by that thick cover, high stem count,
Speaker 3: and then I might flip stands and go hunt a
Speaker 3: more food source stand related for the afternoon on private land,
Speaker 3: but on public land that might be all in the same.
Speaker 3: It might be your hunting on the edge of a
Speaker 3: very thick area that deer might transfer out of to
Speaker 3: go to an open food source like a big oak
Speaker 3: flat during the afternoon.
Speaker 2: If you had to rank order late season food sources from,
Speaker 2: like what your very best would be down the list,
Speaker 2: how would you do that? Because I'm imagining, like I've
Speaker 2: been in this situation where I've hunted agg country and
Speaker 2: I've got some grain food plots, and then there's a
Speaker 2: neighboring cornfield, and then there's another field next to this beans,
Speaker 2: and then there's you know, some cuttings on the neighbors
Speaker 2: and I know there's like some thick natural brows in there,
Speaker 2: and I'm trying to think where should I hunt tonight?
Speaker 2: And I got all these different food sources to choose from,
Speaker 2: and I'm trying to think, Okay, what's going to be
Speaker 2: the absolute most attractive for this time of the year.
Speaker 2: If you're in if you have the luxury of that situation,
Speaker 2: how would you rank order what would potentially be most attractive?
Speaker 2: And then as a follow up, and I'm giving you
Speaker 2: making this even more tricky, but as a follow up,
Speaker 2: would conditions change that order? So if I told you
Speaker 2: it was a forty degree December day versus a ten
Speaker 2: degree December day, how would you reorder things as well?
Speaker 3: You know, kind of it to back up just a
Speaker 3: little bit, you know, like you mentioned, it's you have
Speaker 3: all these available, what choice would you make? But a
Speaker 3: lot of times, especially if people are building it or planting,
Speaker 3: and on private land, you're not looking at what sebast
Speaker 3: You're looking at what sebast that would be available. And
Speaker 3: so a lot of times someone could say ten degrees
Speaker 3: late December standing beans, pretty hard to beat degrees late
Speaker 3: December standing beans, I'd probably I'd rather shift to corner
Speaker 3: or greens. But then at the same time, even beans
Speaker 3: that ten degrees late December, someone has to have either
Speaker 3: fences or a large amount of acreage of beans to
Speaker 3: make them last till that time. So I see people
Speaker 3: beat themselves like I love beans late like that, But
Speaker 3: if they're not there, then it doesn't really matter what
Speaker 3: your scale one to ten would be. And then also
Speaker 3: you have to look at what's the most unpressured. So
Speaker 3: let's say just someone could say, okay, mid December hunt
Speaker 3: let's just say December twelfth. There's a little bit of
Speaker 3: the rout left last, you know, upper midwest, upper third
Speaker 3: of the country. And you have a choice of a
Speaker 3: bean field in a cornfield, but the bean field's been
Speaker 3: pressured and hunted heavily, then I'm gonna go pick the
Speaker 3: corn and you might even find there's a lot of
Speaker 3: dozen falls in the bean field because they can take
Speaker 3: lot more hunting pressure, human pressure. I'd rather cheat over
Speaker 3: towards that corner the brask that deer are still coming
Speaker 3: to and there's still does come into it. Obviously, if
Speaker 3: dose aren't going to it, why would a buck. I mean,
Speaker 3: he wants some good food too, But unpressured should be
Speaker 3: the first, you know, the first requirement of a late
Speaker 3: season food source. And then you start looking at what's best,
Speaker 3: and you know, if it's forty degrees, it seems like
Speaker 3: they really like greens. If it's warmer, so if they
Speaker 3: have high volume greens, even if they have steaming wheed
Speaker 3: a rye mixed with various greens, clover down in Kentucky,
Speaker 3: West Virginia, southern Illinois, southern Indiana where you might even
Speaker 3: get a little growth of clover in November because it
Speaker 3: hit sixty seven degrees a few days. So that's a
Speaker 3: little bit different too, versus something you might want to
Speaker 3: do in central Michigan or focus on so heavy greens
Speaker 3: of some kind when it's a little warmer later and
Speaker 3: then certainly those grains, but again it has to be unpressured.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. And your point about
Speaker 2: it all being relative to what's the best available at
Speaker 2: that time really important to remember.
Speaker 3: If one thing real quick, mark, consider that a mature buck,
Speaker 3: mature buck, the whole range of a mature buck probably
Speaker 3: has probably five times more in a doll family group.
Speaker 3: So always remember that that mature bock, he's willing to
Speaker 3: travel a long ways to go find that unpressured food source.
Speaker 3: And so to be very deceiving when you have a
Speaker 3: pile of dolls and fawns in the young box and
Speaker 3: you're thinking, you know, everything's doing really well, but if
Speaker 3: you've overpressured your land, those are the deer that can
Speaker 3: take that pressure. That mature buck might be a mile
Speaker 3: and a half two miles away.
Speaker 2: So on that point, it seems like there's a transition
Speaker 2: in where deer spend time to find that best available
Speaker 2: late season food. But how does betting change as we
Speaker 2: get into a late season in your view, how have
Speaker 2: you seen and maybe buck betting in particular, have you
Speaker 2: found that they start betting closer to the food themselves
Speaker 2: or are they pushing farther back because now there's less
Speaker 2: cover and there's been more pressure and it's harder for
Speaker 2: them to feel safe.
Speaker 3: I think it depends on the food source and how
Speaker 3: much pressure's been there. You know, Eventually, if they get
Speaker 3: pushed too far away, do they even relate to that
Speaker 3: food source on a daily basis? So I think they
Speaker 3: still want to keep that window that's comfortable and they
Speaker 3: want to conserve energy getting to it. It's not like
Speaker 3: they're betting ten yards away from the food source. And
Speaker 3: then that depends on if it's big open hardwoods next
Speaker 3: to the food source, they might be four hundred yards
Speaker 3: away just because that's how far they have to go
Speaker 3: back where they feel comfortable because it's so open. Where
Speaker 3: if it's super thick and that upland cover some conifer
Speaker 3: mixed in some high stem count briers. They might be
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty yards back, and so it really
Speaker 3: depends on habitat right there. And what I see something
Speaker 3: that's a lot different out here is where we have hills.
Speaker 3: And you can say that you know, half of all
Speaker 3: white tail areas have some type of elevation change. But
Speaker 3: you really notice those deers starting to not bet up
Speaker 3: on the tops and be exposed to the winds. And
Speaker 3: they'll bet on the north facing slope. If the high
Speaker 3: wind is coming from the south and it's twelve degrees,
Speaker 3: they have to get out of the wind and so
Speaker 3: they can't be on the wind swept tops. We have
Speaker 3: a point I'm thinking in Wisconsin where we hunt, it's
Speaker 3: just beautiful. It's rimmed with some red seedar and on
Speaker 3: that point there's rubs all the time. You know, just
Speaker 3: a monster's up there in October, but he's not there
Speaker 3: in December, just totally exposed.
Speaker 2: If you were and I don't know, maybe you've had
Speaker 2: people like this, but if you're someone who wants to
Speaker 2: set up a property or part of their property specifically
Speaker 2: for late season, like I don't know, maybe you own
Speaker 2: land in Iowa and you want to go there, for
Speaker 2: their gun season or something, or their muzzle over season
Speaker 2: or whatever might be. There are certain states like that,
Speaker 2: if you were going to set up a place, you know,
Speaker 2: particularly or specifically for a December hunt, how would you
Speaker 2: do that, Like what would be your ideal design or
Speaker 2: way you would set up a food source with betting
Speaker 2: to make it like extra special for a December late
Speaker 2: season hunt.
Speaker 3: You still want to have the same bedding cover. You
Speaker 3: still want high stem count cover. When deer in their beds,
Speaker 3: you know they're feeding five times in twenty four periods,
Speaker 3: so during their beds betting hours, that means twice every
Speaker 3: four or five hours, sometime in the morning, sometime in
Speaker 3: the early afternoon. So they have to have that stem count.
Speaker 3: They have to have food to eat and that browse,
Speaker 3: and so that browsey enjoy in February is the same
Speaker 3: brows that they would enjoy and enjoy in October. So
Speaker 3: that aside, you still want food. So if it's private land,
Speaker 3: you want food that's available when deers start to look
Speaker 3: to their fall ranges we talk about that fall shift
Speaker 3: sometime late September to late October. We want to have
Speaker 3: that food that captures them at that time. So at
Speaker 3: that time, I let green clover, rye peas, brassicas those
Speaker 3: combinations depending on what works best in your area. And
Speaker 3: then if you can have the space for the grains,
Speaker 3: especially corn and then beans, then you'd want that for
Speaker 3: late season. The key is, though I've heard people say,
Speaker 3: well I just plant beans because I'm just looking at December. Well,
Speaker 3: then you didn't attract deer in September, October, November as much.
Speaker 3: And if those deer an't attracted to your land, why
Speaker 3: are they all of a sudden going to show up
Speaker 3: in December. And let's say they do all of a
Speaker 3: sudden show up in December, you're getting the leftovers. So
Speaker 3: I'd rather set my land up where I have deer
Speaker 3: attracted in September, October, November and then they carry on
Speaker 3: in December. It's almost like October November is more important
Speaker 3: than December, because if you don't have those deer attracted
Speaker 3: to the land, why are they going to be there
Speaker 3: all of a sudden. I've even had people say, well,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna plant this Braska crop over here on this
Speaker 3: one acre because it's an area I want to hunt
Speaker 3: here in the late late season. But if they've establish
Speaker 3: or fall residency and pattern somewhere else. Why are they
Speaker 3: all of a sudden going to move over there a
Speaker 3: quarter mile and feed over in that location when that
Speaker 3: hasn't been a part of their fall pattern the entire
Speaker 3: season up to that point. That's like you're trying to
Speaker 3: establish a pattern of use, and that takes more resources
Speaker 3: because you can't just say on a plant OF's late
Speaker 3: season food source and just let them come Eventually. They
Speaker 3: have to stage it so that there's pieces available, covers
Speaker 3: still the same, it's high stem count, you know, brows,
Speaker 3: they have to have that during the day anyways, either way,
Speaker 3: but you really want to establish that pattern.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you mentioned with the grain, if you were going
Speaker 2: to get corner beans in there, you had to have
Speaker 2: enough space. What is that minimum size that you think
Speaker 2: you need to have to get a bean or cornfield
Speaker 2: to work and last to the late season.
Speaker 3: I'll give you some like parameters. Where So I've been
Speaker 3: to a half acre quarter acre beanfield that was just
Speaker 3: getting pounded in January, no fence, but it was next
Speaker 3: to an eighty acre beanfield literally right next door, and
Speaker 3: so the deer didn't have any reason to hit it
Speaker 3: during the summer. They had plenty of beans standing. If
Speaker 3: the beans weren't picked until sometime mid to late October,
Speaker 3: then they didn't even start coming over to that bean field,
Speaker 3: probably till it got really cold then in November December,
Speaker 3: so there's no reason for them to be there. But
Speaker 3: you plant that same bean field in a big wooded
Speaker 3: section with no ag it probably doesn't make it to
Speaker 3: September and so like around here, for example, I'd want
Speaker 3: one to two acre bean fields times three or four
Speaker 3: spread out over two three hundred acres, along with complimentary
Speaker 3: food sources. And that's another thing too. If you don't
Speaker 3: have the other food sources, then they're going to put
Speaker 3: an unfair amount of pressure on that bean or corn.
Speaker 3: Corn is the same thing. They start to hit our
Speaker 3: corn pretty good here mid to late November, but it's
Speaker 3: it's going to go pretty quick when you consider all
Speaker 3: the other critters that are hitting it too. So you
Speaker 3: have to have another complimentary food source. And then what's
Speaker 3: on your neighbors. There's a big difference for how much
Speaker 3: food you need when you have either neighbors with food
Speaker 3: sources or food plots or ag land versus if you're
Speaker 3: in a wooded section even with fewer deer, because then
Speaker 3: your food is that it's only game in town, so
Speaker 3: you probably need two, three, four times more food. And
Speaker 3: some of those big wooded areas versus ag area where
Speaker 3: you have the compliment and support of other food sources
Speaker 3: around you. It's hard to give a You can't really
Speaker 3: give a because you have to know deer numbers, what
Speaker 3: your neighbors are doing. What if your property is the
Speaker 3: only property without a lot of pressure, so de'er spending
Speaker 3: more of an unfair amount of time overall on your property,
Speaker 3: which is a good thing because you're doing well with it,
Speaker 3: but you're going to go through more food at that
Speaker 3: point too.
Speaker 2: Speaking of that pressure, pressure in the late season, so
Speaker 2: much I feel of late season is managing pressure, but
Speaker 2: then taking advantage of other people's pressure, right because at
Speaker 2: this point there's been all sorts of other hunters around,
Speaker 2: and any deer that are still alive in December have
Speaker 2: been through the ringer, and you know, in my experience,
Speaker 2: their heads are on a swivel, they are jumpy, and
Speaker 2: they are gravitating to those places, those pockets where they've
Speaker 2: felt safe. So I've always approached the late season, maybe
Speaker 2: even more surgically than I approach other parts of the year,
Speaker 2: which I'm still pretty strategic with, but then when it
Speaker 2: comes to late season, I feel like you've got to
Speaker 2: be just right about how often you go in, When
Speaker 2: you go in, where you go in, because you have
Speaker 2: fewer chances than at any other point to make a mistake.
Speaker 2: That's a long win, a way of getting to scouting
Speaker 2: and figuring out like where to hunt, when to hunt,
Speaker 2: what's the pattern? How do you figure out these deer
Speaker 2: that you're after in December without them catching on to
Speaker 2: you anything you're doing differently with your cameras, with any
Speaker 2: form of intel gathering that you're doing that allow you
Speaker 2: to have an informed hunt in December.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like, you know, you're you're looking at
Speaker 3: the lowest hole in the bucket as far as you're
Speaker 3: taking out, you know, the top portions are the best food,
Speaker 3: the best cover. Like if you're looking on public land,
Speaker 3: the lowest hole in the bucket, you know. Pressure, So
Speaker 3: I'm looking at the major parking areas and major trails
Speaker 3: and major campgrounds and major boat access points. And even
Speaker 3: if you're throwing a beaver dam, you have to cross
Speaker 3: here and there. Well, you can look at it on
Speaker 3: paper and say probably about a late season. If there's
Speaker 3: any bucks left or mature box, they're going to be
Speaker 3: in this area because they've been pushed from all sides
Speaker 3: and whittled down into the spot. And so you could
Speaker 3: make an educated guest without even knowing the lay of
Speaker 3: the land or the property. Public land, for example, we
Speaker 3: I hadn't been out to that public land spot in
Speaker 3: four years in that entire area. But you can make
Speaker 3: an educated gas based on the people movements and where
Speaker 3: people are. They're hot zones where you can get into
Speaker 3: an area where you kind of have an area to yourself,
Speaker 3: and if that meets your habitat requirements of good stem
Speaker 3: count diversity, and it's hidden, then you're going to have
Speaker 3: a reasonable expectation there's going to be deer there, older
Speaker 3: bucks there, just because you're whittling it down to that
Speaker 3: and you don't even know anything about the land other
Speaker 3: than what you see on an aerial photo. And then
Speaker 3: private land is different because if you set the table
Speaker 3: and you've left it alone, even if you have no
Speaker 3: cameras out and you have good food, good cover, there's
Speaker 3: a reasonable expectation that you go out there and have
Speaker 3: a really good hunt. And what's a little bit different
Speaker 3: during the late season when you're not talking bull is
Speaker 3: that we can watch our food sources right now, and
Speaker 3: we can watch the same food source sometimes over and
Speaker 3: over again, because we're not spooking deer when you get
Speaker 3: in and out, because we're using a muzzle over. So
Speaker 3: shooting a deer at a one hundred and ninety five
Speaker 3: yards two hundred and fifty five is another one that
Speaker 3: shout over the last four years with a muzzleoder, and
Speaker 3: those deer had no clue you're even there, and so
Speaker 3: you can get and watch them over and over again.
Speaker 3: Where with a bow, I had to stay off those
Speaker 3: food sources and I have to hunt transitions. So then
Speaker 3: you're being careful. You know. It's like during the rut,
Speaker 3: you can afford to get in next to a betting
Speaker 3: area because what are the odds that he's there when
Speaker 3: you're going in in the morning, But if you go
Speaker 3: in during wintertime, not only is it crunch here, but
Speaker 3: they can see better the leaves are off the tree.
Speaker 3: So I have to stay further away from those betting
Speaker 3: areas and get more into transition areas between food and betting.
Speaker 3: With a bowl or on a small food source on
Speaker 3: the way to a big food source, something like that.
Speaker 3: But you're almost looking at like, Okay, deer are going
Speaker 3: to go through this funnel, but they're probably not there,
Speaker 3: And I'm staying away from the food and the betting,
Speaker 3: getting in between that barbelle of movement so that I'm
Speaker 3: not spooking out either, because, like you said, once you
Speaker 3: spook them out late season, they're just going somewhere else.
Speaker 3: Even if it's just that over buck you're after, he's
Speaker 3: going somewhere else.
Speaker 2: So when you're hunting late season on your on your land,
Speaker 2: are you not chasing a pattern, not trying to really
Speaker 2: dial in a specific spot, a specific but you're more
Speaker 2: so like, Hey, I'm gonna volume hunt a food source
Speaker 2: that I know checks off the boxes he needs, and
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do it enough times because I can do
Speaker 2: it from afar and he won't know.
Speaker 3: I'm looking at more. It's different on private land because
Speaker 3: we get to know what bucks are in which area,
Speaker 3: and so if I go out to our seventy seven
Speaker 3: acre personal it's all connected, but the seventy seven acres,
Speaker 3: then I'm I'm expecting to see Isaac Barry, Isaac and
Speaker 3: Barry would between I'm expecting to see Junior, but he's
Speaker 3: not one we're after this year. Isaac and Barry would
Speaker 3: be the two ones over there. So then I'm hunting
Speaker 3: Isaac and Berry movement on that area. And I'm using
Speaker 3: my morning stands as if I would hear the second run,
Speaker 3: as if I would during the rut, going in with
Speaker 3: the expectations I might see Isaac or Berry, and I'm
Speaker 3: letting the wind determine which stand that I go to.
Speaker 3: And so I'm looking at like they should be there
Speaker 3: for these reasons. Either I have a troilcamp photo with them.
Speaker 3: Scrapes are opened up. Even without trail cameras, you know
Speaker 3: that there's big track scrapes, there's no new rub, there's
Speaker 3: some shavings on top of the on top of the snow.
Speaker 3: And then you're going in there thinking I'm hunting this buck.
Speaker 3: But I'm hunting. I'm still chipping around. I'm not spooking
Speaker 3: out the food sources. I'm hunting this betting area in
Speaker 3: the morning, this betting area or this movement based on
Speaker 3: the wind and my access, and I'm trying to chip
Speaker 3: around a little bit. And it'd be the same on
Speaker 3: public land. If I thought a buck was moving to
Speaker 3: this clear cut from this knoll or swamp edge in
Speaker 3: the distance, I might hit them from one side of
Speaker 3: the transition with one wind, and then I might circle around
Speaker 3: hit him another side another day. I might get closer
Speaker 3: to the food or closer to the bedding. And so
Speaker 3: you're still hunting that certain bock, but you're using multiple
Speaker 3: stands or access routes to make sure that you're limiting
Speaker 3: your pressure in or out. And it's a similar feature.
Speaker 3: The only difference is when you get to this time
Speaker 3: of year is that there's areas that are devoided deer.
Speaker 3: You just see that there's snow, there's no deer using
Speaker 3: this corner, there's no food, the cover's not good, there's
Speaker 3: neighboring pressure that's keeping the deer away from there, and
Speaker 3: they've where it can be a little bit more. We
Speaker 3: have more stands available, let's put it that way, early
Speaker 3: to mid November than we do early to mid December.
Speaker 3: Just because I don't feel comfortable with some of the
Speaker 3: things are company.
Speaker 2: Yeah, is it true that sometimes you can have too
Speaker 2: many deer at this time of year. Yeah. In that so,
Speaker 2: so I'm imagining like the situations that I think a
Speaker 2: lot of people have where they're hunting land that they
Speaker 2: don't get to manipulate themselves. So you're hunting permission or
Speaker 2: lease or whatever in which there's ag and there's stuff
Speaker 2: out there, but it's not set up ideally for hunting,
Speaker 2: right it's just big open cut cornfields or pick bean
Speaker 2: field or whatever, and there's a pile of deer out there,
Speaker 2: and you want to hunt them, but then you're thinking,
Speaker 2: how the heck do I get out of here? How
Speaker 2: do I get in? There's deer catching.
Speaker 3: On, So it's one thing of your hunt with a
Speaker 3: muzzle order, because then you can come into some you know,
Speaker 3: if you feel comfortable shooting out to two hundred yards,
Speaker 3: then set up for one fifty one seventy five and
Speaker 3: get off to the side and a fence rol But
Speaker 3: a lot of people really push it. They see all
Speaker 3: those deer coming out into a certain corner, they feel
Speaker 3: they have to get in there with a bow and
Speaker 3: try it. Where I'd rather go sit all day and
Speaker 3: sit on the back side of that bedding area or
Speaker 3: in the bedding area with my wind blowing to a
Speaker 3: safe area, get in there very early in the morning
Speaker 3: and then just wait to see what happens. If I
Speaker 3: can get out at a lot or twelve because I
Speaker 3: don't see any deer and I have safe passages to
Speaker 3: get back the way I came and get out of there,
Speaker 3: that's fine, But I'd rather take my chances back in
Speaker 3: that thick area on an all day hunt, or at
Speaker 3: least sitting until late morning when I feel I can
Speaker 3: get out, then going and playing around with all those
Speaker 3: dozes and young bucks and all those eyes. I'd rather
Speaker 3: get back in that bucks bedroom. And you're playing that,
Speaker 3: you're playing that game where it's a game of balance
Speaker 3: where you look at it like you I want to
Speaker 3: get in that movement, but I don't want to be
Speaker 3: so far in that I'm spooking the movement. And then
Speaker 3: the other thought is too. It was a buck that
Speaker 3: used to watch a lot of hunting videos, and I
Speaker 3: want to say it was a KISSI outdoors one back
Speaker 3: in the day, and there's this buck that they had
Speaker 3: five or six years of sheds, So this buck was
Speaker 3: eight years old, and all these deer were coming in.
Speaker 3: They had a muzzle order into this big food source,
Speaker 3: and he just wasn't coming till an hour or two
Speaker 3: after dark. Well, they ended up shooting him like seven
Speaker 3: to eight hundred yards away out of this little corner
Speaker 3: of the habitat where they thought he was betting. They
Speaker 3: shot him right at dark as he was slipping through,
Speaker 3: not going to get to the food source for another
Speaker 3: hour or two, and they went back into that buck
Speaker 3: area where it was well behind all the doves and
Speaker 3: young bucks and commotion, where he had lived and felt safe.
Speaker 3: And I still look at like they're like a grumpy
Speaker 3: old man. They just like getting away from everything else.
Speaker 3: So if you think about that, either going in the
Speaker 3: morning or where you would potentially slip in in the afternoon,
Speaker 3: you're not hunting the huge numbers of deer. You're hunting
Speaker 3: that buck that compliments that movement of huge numbers of deer.
Speaker 2: It just seems so incredibly risky to try to do
Speaker 2: that in the late season when there's so little cover
Speaker 2: on the trees now, the deer are so on pins
Speaker 2: and needles. It just seems like everything's loud in the
Speaker 2: woods in December. Sound carries forever. I'd be so worried
Speaker 2: to try to slip deep into the cover. How do
Speaker 2: you how do you deal with that? How do you
Speaker 2: count for that what needs to be done to make
Speaker 2: sure that those things I'm worried about don't run hunt.
Speaker 3: And that really depends on your terrain, you know. Like
Speaker 3: around here, we're sneaking up on the backside of ridges
Speaker 3: a lot, so we're not cresting over a ridge and
Speaker 3: pronouncing ourselves all the way. Even wore we went in
Speaker 3: for Pennsylvania, we were very careful. There's a point I
Speaker 3: like going up, and we go up the point on
Speaker 3: the backside from where you expect to see deer on
Speaker 3: the other side of the point or in the draw.
Speaker 3: And then when we walk across the top, we're being
Speaker 3: very careful to walk right in the middle of the
Speaker 3: top so that we're not projecting our sound and presence
Speaker 3: over the sides as far as possible, so we're staying
Speaker 3: on that flat and then we're going in slow or
Speaker 3: avoiding breaking sticks. I like walking, like when we're out there,
Speaker 3: when you're starting to the closer you get to your
Speaker 3: your blind or we were just sitting in chairs in
Speaker 3: the forest against a tree, but the closer you get
Speaker 3: to that point, you're almost stalking your spot. And I
Speaker 3: like walking heel the toe to where you're setting your
Speaker 3: foot down in front before your back foots off the grounds.
Speaker 3: It's almost like a continuous just movement. But we're very
Speaker 3: careful in those cases where and then in some cases
Speaker 3: it's kind of like if you if it's so loud
Speaker 3: that you can't get into a stand without spooking out
Speaker 3: of betting area. It's just that balance of knowing or not.
Speaker 3: If it's risky, I don't do it. And so then
Speaker 3: I I'm looking at like, if I think I can
Speaker 3: get into one hundred yards away from where he's betting
Speaker 3: because of the lay of the land, because there's soft
Speaker 3: snow out because it's damp, and the leaves are damp,
Speaker 3: they're not crunchy, then I'll I'll do that. But if
Speaker 3: I think I need to be two hundred yards away
Speaker 3: from that spot, then I'll find that where I think
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure if I go in, I'm not spooking
Speaker 3: him out of there. And that's really the question you
Speaker 3: have to ask yourself, is you're backing up to the
Speaker 3: point where you think you might not have a chance
Speaker 3: at him, but you know it's safe to go in.
Speaker 3: I'd rather do that hunt them get five or six
Speaker 3: sits out of that and hunt with the wind in
Speaker 3: the right location, rather than going in one time and
Speaker 3: spooking it before you start your even begins. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I trying to assail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how late into the year would you do that
Speaker 2: morning sit like you described pushing in there like that?
Speaker 2: Is that just during the second rut time period or
Speaker 2: would you keep trying that even like when we're beyond
Speaker 2: you know, or any real chance of second rut? Like
Speaker 2: would you do that in January? I know you mentioned
Speaker 2: that once you saw that, but no.
Speaker 3: We've seen it. I've seen that a lot, and I've
Speaker 3: seen it in February on a client property that was
Speaker 3: the latest ever saw it, where literally there's fresh scrapes
Speaker 3: and peelings on top of the snow. That was a
Speaker 3: very high dough density area and so lots of deer.
Speaker 3: But but I'm looking at when I think the scrapes
Speaker 3: are open, I'm using my running tactics, rout tactics for
Speaker 3: going in. But then also there's also that tactic of
Speaker 3: a lot of deer when it's super cold will feed
Speaker 3: mid morning because the warmth is starting to come up,
Speaker 3: that's sunny, whereas if they're moving it might be let's
Speaker 3: say it's eight degrees at daybreak, but by eleven o'clock
Speaker 3: it's twenty one and it's going to warm up to
Speaker 3: thirty two. Then they're going to move to me. I
Speaker 3: find they move more mid morning late morning. In that
Speaker 3: condition where it's a little bit warmer, they can feed
Speaker 3: and can serve energy at the same time, and that
Speaker 3: can be ideal for going in even after daybreak where
Speaker 3: you're lighting the deer settle down. You're going in because
Speaker 3: you know they're not betting in this open woods. You
Speaker 3: know you can walk to this line of swamp where
Speaker 3: there's a lot of conifer and you can get on
Speaker 3: the edge of that or just poke in a little
Speaker 3: bit to a movement, or you're walking in on the
Speaker 3: backside of a ridge. You're walking across an open field
Speaker 3: where they're not at at daybreak, and you're getting into
Speaker 3: a funnel between woodlots. But you're utilizing that axis. And
Speaker 3: then you're going down, sitting mid morning and seeing what
Speaker 3: happens till early afternoon. And it might be a spot
Speaker 3: because of where they're moving in the evening that you're
Speaker 3: actually sitting there until dark and you're going in at nine.
Speaker 3: So definitely some ways to sneak in and still hunt
Speaker 3: the morning or all day. That might be favorable, more
Speaker 3: favorable than going in three hours before dark. You're starting
Speaker 3: to move and feed a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really good point. So what about this scenario.
Speaker 2: Imagine you have got permission on a mixed timber and
Speaker 2: egg property. Let's call it one hundred acres to make
Speaker 2: it simple, and we'll say fifty of it is a
Speaker 2: harvested cornfield. Fifty of it is mixed mature timber and
Speaker 2: swampy brushy stuff. So there's some bedding in there, and
Speaker 2: then there's a big open food source, and there's a
Speaker 2: bunch of deer that are coming and feeding in that
Speaker 2: cornfield every night. You're bow hunting mid December, and your
Speaker 2: only available access is through the field, so the only
Speaker 2: road access is from the field side, so all the
Speaker 2: cover is in the interior of the property. You can't
Speaker 2: get to that without crossing that field. How would you
Speaker 2: do what you just described and hunt mornings but go
Speaker 2: in after daylight when the field is cleared, and just
Speaker 2: poke into the cover then and then you know, bail
Speaker 2: for the evening because you know you can't get out
Speaker 2: of it without spooking deer, or would you try to
Speaker 2: hunt in the evenings and have some other way to
Speaker 2: get out of that thing, knowing that you have to
Speaker 2: get across that cornfield somehow after dark? Like, how would
Speaker 2: you do something like that? Because I know, like I
Speaker 2: have places like that. I know so many friends who
Speaker 2: hunt places like this where they just don't have a
Speaker 2: strong option to get out because there's fields in the
Speaker 2: way of where they want to hunt and where they
Speaker 2: have to park. What do you do?
Speaker 3: I definitely would wait till after daybreak to go in,
Speaker 3: make sure the field is cleared so I can at
Speaker 3: least get to the woods. Hopefully there's a thick area
Speaker 3: of the woods or some conifer, maybe a little bit
Speaker 3: a little bit of elevation change where I can get
Speaker 3: in and not spook the deer in the woods. And
Speaker 3: then I'm going to sit and blow my scent to
Speaker 3: one side of the field or the other where I
Speaker 3: think it's less likely the deer going to be, and
Speaker 3: push that balance of how close can I get to
Speaker 3: their movement in the afternoon evening, and then you at
Speaker 3: least get a fresh set and you just have to
Speaker 3: hunt that way. And it's one of those things where
Speaker 3: if you spook deer getting out, even if you're cheating
Speaker 3: to the side of the field that you see as
Speaker 3: fewer deer and you spook a bunch of deer and
Speaker 3: it's the only way you can hunt. But I wouldn't
Speaker 3: ruin my hunt by walking in before daybreak just for
Speaker 3: the thought that why I have to get in there
Speaker 3: an hour before daylight and then be there when it
Speaker 3: wakes up. I'd rather at least get to my stand
Speaker 3: and have a reasonable chance that I haven't spooked deer
Speaker 3: for an afternoon hunt, then ruin it before it even
Speaker 3: gets daylight and so, and then you're just hoping you
Speaker 3: can get out after or hopen you shoot something actually
Speaker 3: and then it doesn't matter if you get out. Yeah,
Speaker 3: But bottom line is, I'd rather at least have one
Speaker 3: good hunt and then maybe you you wait four or
Speaker 3: five days and go try it again, because if you
Speaker 3: keep gitting it and spooking deer after dark, even if
Speaker 3: you have to get out, what it's just, it's going
Speaker 3: to turn into a dud property pretty quick.
Speaker 2: Yeah. What's your take on wheeled access? So using a
Speaker 2: e bike or golf cart or something like that to
Speaker 2: clear the field on your way out knowing that, like, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna bust a bunch of deer when I come
Speaker 2: out of here, but at least I'm doing it on
Speaker 2: a vehicle some kind versus walking out on two feet.
Speaker 3: Well, if I didn't have a choice, I'd rather take
Speaker 3: an electric vehicle out to smoke deer if that was
Speaker 3: my only option. Obviously, I'm not going there with the
Speaker 3: ATV in that condition because it's probably spooking out the
Speaker 3: woods before I even get off the ATV. But at
Speaker 3: least something electric would be And we've to be honest,
Speaker 3: we've done that out here a couple of times. But
Speaker 3: it does, It does affect the hunt. I even had.
Speaker 3: I have a neighbor out here that has one of
Speaker 3: the new players evs, and I didn't know we had one.
Speaker 3: And so when I was sitting nearby, I heard him
Speaker 3: go back go by. It dark. I sit till a
Speaker 3: shooting light, you know, till end of shooting light where
Speaker 3: he got out a little bit early. But I heard
Speaker 3: him go by, and it sound I told Jen, it
Speaker 3: sounded like a It sounded to me like a golf
Speaker 3: cart with loose golf clubs driving by. What happened in it,
Speaker 3: but you could hear it was like a rattle and
Speaker 3: a whirr, if that makes sense. And he went by
Speaker 3: probably two hundred and fifty yards away across the open field.
Speaker 3: I didn't see him, but it was it was fairly dark,
Speaker 3: and I'm not sure that would have been you look
Speaker 3: at it, like if he was walking, he would have
Speaker 3: been dead quiet, and if something was close, something had
Speaker 3: been close to spook it. But we went by with
Speaker 3: that machine and that clicking and cleaning, and even though
Speaker 3: there's in a little whirr in that case his machine,
Speaker 3: it's and I found out later it was that the
Speaker 3: new player CV. But it would have spooked here three
Speaker 3: hundred yards away, So I guess it depends on the machine.
Speaker 3: You know, a lot of those electric golf carts are
Speaker 3: pretty just a hunterized golf cart with locking red differential
Speaker 3: knobby tires. You know, they can be pretty quiet. Yeah,
Speaker 3: unless you have a bunch of loose golf clubs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, make sure put those in the garage before you
Speaker 2: take off for the hunt.
Speaker 3: We do that a lot. We use our bikes around
Speaker 3: here because we have top level access in Minnesota, and
Speaker 3: we have areas where it's an eight minute bike ride
Speaker 3: a full wide open to get to uh to get
Speaker 3: to a spot where we're even going to stage and
Speaker 3: put the bike before we walk in a couple hundred
Speaker 3: yards to get to a spot.
Speaker 2: YEP. And they they're definitely more forgiving of that, right.
Speaker 3: I would say they're more forgiving unless you're sound from
Speaker 3: the machine is pushing across two or three hundred yards,
Speaker 3: So it's kind of like if it's if it's a noisy,
Speaker 3: so you have to be really careful. We even have
Speaker 3: like our quiet cats, we have fenders on them, and
Speaker 3: if you don't use the fender, not with rubber washer,
Speaker 3: they'll bounce up and down and vibrate and I just
Speaker 3: can't stand it. I was halfway across the field we
Speaker 3: had fenders on. I almost stopped to cut the fender
Speaker 3: off because I didn't like that chat or going across.
Speaker 3: And what we did is we just zip tide them
Speaker 3: and just made it so they But you really just
Speaker 3: have to be careful with that because some little noise
Speaker 3: that it's almost like have a friend stand one hundred
Speaker 3: yards away, one hundred and fifty and just see if
Speaker 3: you know what they're back to you, and see if
Speaker 3: they can hear you go by, and if they can,
Speaker 3: it's probably you're probably better off walking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's such an interesting balancing act.
Speaker 3: Well, you're just in anything you do, you're trying not
Speaker 3: to spook the deer. So it's like every decision you make,
Speaker 3: and it is it's kind of like we were looking
Speaker 3: over some of the ridges in Pennsylvania and it's just
Speaker 3: so I say it all the time. It sounds kind
Speaker 3: of goofy, But would you look over that ridge down
Speaker 3: onto a bench that's one hundred yards away if a
Speaker 3: deer had a gun and if you walked loudly across
Speaker 3: the top and you didn't care, if you walk to
Speaker 3: a big tree and you just silhouetted yourself and look down,
Speaker 3: you'd be dead. So think about walking across that top
Speaker 3: and looking over, or getting to a stand where you're
Speaker 3: accessing through a field. Can you access through there without
Speaker 3: a deer knowing you're going by and shooting back if
Speaker 3: they had guns? Obviously I probably wouldn't hunt if they
Speaker 3: had guns.
Speaker 2: But the whole, the whole New Ballow acts, that's for sure.
Speaker 3: But anyway, it's always that balancing act of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of the balancing act, then another one of
Speaker 2: the things, and we we kind of danced around this
Speaker 2: a little bit, But it seems like in the late
Speaker 2: season there's a lot of talk and a lot of
Speaker 2: thought around when to hunt, like what are the right
Speaker 2: days to hunt? And I know you're really big on
Speaker 2: picking these high you know, high odds days you have
Speaker 2: you know, contributed your your thoughts to the algorithm for
Speaker 2: the hunt. Oh gosh, I'm having a brain fart. Jeff,
Speaker 2: what's the app? Hunt cast? Hunt?
Speaker 3: Yeah cast?
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, So you've got that predictive algorithm you helped
Speaker 2: develop to pick the right days to hunt. When it
Speaker 2: comes to the late season, are there any particular conditions,
Speaker 2: any particular variables that are more important at this time
Speaker 2: of year than any other, Like, what are the things
Speaker 2: you're really really keying in on for a December or
Speaker 2: January hunt? What are you looking for?
Speaker 3: It seems like during the rut, you can have a
Speaker 3: fifteen mile an hour win, twenty mile hour win. That's
Speaker 3: something that's above moderate, not extreme, like thirty five mile
Speaker 3: hour wins or thirty. But you can have something that's
Speaker 3: moderate during the rut that doesn't have as much effect
Speaker 3: as when it's fifteen degrees in December and you have
Speaker 3: that same wind. It seems wind because there's no running
Speaker 3: activity or very little unless it's the second rot, they're
Speaker 3: just food source movements. It really seems like wind can
Speaker 3: shut down movement quite a bit. At the same time,
Speaker 3: I've been out in some super calm conditions where they
Speaker 3: just don't seem to move. It's so still, it doesn't
Speaker 3: seem like much moving. So you know, a little bit
Speaker 3: of wind seems like it's always good, but not not
Speaker 3: a lot of wind. I really like when there's a
Speaker 3: I can think of some really good wet snow times
Speaker 3: where we have what snow coming down to the point
Speaker 3: where there's an inch or two a fluff on your
Speaker 3: body after an hour and a half of sitting in
Speaker 3: a stand. But I've had some really good movement times
Speaker 3: during snow and I don't and I think deer or
Speaker 3: sometimes moving. It's like if it's snow and it's cold,
Speaker 3: they're moving to get out of the wind, they're moving
Speaker 3: on the least side of the ridges, they're moving to
Speaker 3: more stands of conifer. And so I think sometimes when
Speaker 3: it's snowing, and obviously that's usually not happening in September October,
Speaker 3: for the most part that that really I love hunting
Speaker 3: those snow conditions. And then I'm always being mindful too
Speaker 3: that if it's super cold, how like we had eight
Speaker 3: degrees this morning, ten degrees something like that, and we
Speaker 3: hardly had any movement on our cameras at daybreak, and
Speaker 3: then all of a sudden, you see a little bit
Speaker 3: of movement mid morning, and then we'll see a lot
Speaker 3: if the conditions are decent, not too windy, this afternoon,
Speaker 3: we'll see a lot more. We're at daybreak, you can
Speaker 3: count on if it's extreme cold, which might be eighteen
Speaker 3: degrees and you know, northern Kentucky might be eight degrees here, whatever,
Speaker 3: but they're they're really not moving to conserve energy.
Speaker 2: Speaking of that, I've heard some people say that they
Speaker 2: see a bump in activity on warm trends, Like a
Speaker 2: lot of us want to see the big cold front
Speaker 2: in the late season, right, I'm looking for that eight
Speaker 2: degrees and snow. But then I've heard other people mention like, hey, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's great, but then also when it bumps up to
Speaker 2: forty five after a bunch of that cold, or they
Speaker 2: all of a sudden feel more comfortable moving. Again, have
Speaker 2: you seen anything like that, is that something you subscribe
Speaker 2: to something.
Speaker 3: I think I touched on this in my book, you know,
Speaker 3: all other white Tails. But it was when the snow
Speaker 3: was soft, and so those same conditions when it hasn't
Speaker 3: been snowing. Obviously, if it's just forty all the time,
Speaker 3: forty five all the time, it's just kind of boring
Speaker 3: warm this time of year. But if you just had
Speaker 3: snow and there's snow on the ground, obviously got down
Speaker 3: to the twenties, low thirties at the warmest. So then
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, when it's warm, snow out and
Speaker 3: it's softer conditions. Boy, it seems like I can remember
Speaker 3: a lot of really nice times either tracking deer that
Speaker 3: would shot in the snow or hunting in the soft
Speaker 3: snow meaning it's getting packy. It's a really good, really
Speaker 3: good condition too. So I think it's relative to what
Speaker 3: happened before those temperatures.
Speaker 2: Yep, that makes sense. Okay, So to put a bow
Speaker 2: on all this, what do you think is the biggest
Speaker 2: mistake folks make when it comes to late season? Like,
Speaker 2: are what are we getting wrong? What's the average hunter
Speaker 2: doing wrong at this time of the year, Because I
Speaker 2: think We've covered a lot of stuff that will help
Speaker 2: you do it right. But what's that thing where you
Speaker 2: hear a lot of folks are missing.
Speaker 3: The same thing that we fail as hunters all the
Speaker 3: time is we just do the same thing. And so
Speaker 3: that spot where you saw that monster and end of
Speaker 3: October early November might be a quarter mile from where
Speaker 3: you should be hunting in the late season, and so
Speaker 3: late season deer heard up. There's not a lot of
Speaker 3: food sources, there's not a lot of safe food sources,
Speaker 3: and there's not a lot of good and safe betting areas,
Speaker 3: and so they tend to congregate a lot more and
Speaker 3: to me, a much smaller percentage of the habitat, whether
Speaker 3: it's on public or private land, actually hold and have
Speaker 3: the potential to hold decent bucks. So if you do
Speaker 3: what you did in October November, meaning you like I
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier, we have a much higher percentage of stands
Speaker 3: that are in play end of October November than we
Speaker 3: do end of November and December, just because of dead
Speaker 3: areas and the habitat, wind swept areas, food sources that
Speaker 3: are not available, food sources that have been pressured, neighboring
Speaker 3: betting areas that have been pressured heavily during gun season,
Speaker 3: and so I really need to make sure you follow
Speaker 3: the deer. And the cool thing about the late season
Speaker 3: is whether it's fresh rumps with a lot of shavings
Speaker 3: on top of leaves, or snow fresh scrapes, so you
Speaker 3: can actually you can actually see those are pretty easy
Speaker 3: to see, let alone lots of fresh pellets and betting activity.
Speaker 3: It stands out pretty good. And so I can remember
Speaker 3: even the thumb area in the nineties, where we would
Speaker 3: want to hunt a certain wood lot, we just had
Speaker 3: to do a half mile loop around the wood lot
Speaker 3: a lot of times on the road just even see
Speaker 3: if there's tracks going that way. If there weren't, we
Speaker 3: went to the wood lot where their tracks going to
Speaker 3: it, it might be completely three quarters of a mile difference from
Speaker 3: where we thought we'd be hunting in the afternoon. So
Speaker 3: I think, you know, following the deer, being mindful that
Speaker 3: there's a much smaller percentage of the habitat that's actually
Speaker 3: going to hold deer the deer grouped up. If you
Speaker 3: just do that, following the deer and then being careful
Speaker 3: going in, a lot of people look at it like
Speaker 3: kind of like we were talking about in the beginning.
Speaker 3: We are anxious, we were stressed. We want to get it,
Speaker 3: we want to fill it. If we have a tag
Speaker 3: this time of year, and you tend on mistakes and
Speaker 3: you tend to push things a little bit more so,
Speaker 3: if you can identify those deer hot spots this time
Speaker 3: of year that are always shrinking, and if you can
Speaker 3: be careful and measured how you go on and approach.
Speaker 3: To me, that's where the hope and the potential comes
Speaker 3: for this time of year. It's really really high if
Speaker 3: you don't spook the deer and you don't get trapped
Speaker 3: into doing what you did in September, October and maybe
Speaker 3: during the rut November.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I think some of the things you just
Speaker 2: mentioned will fall into this, but I want to have
Speaker 2: you reframe or prioritize a little bit. If you had
Speaker 2: to have a stone tablet in front of you and
Speaker 2: you were going to carve into it your three commandments
Speaker 2: for late season success, this is going to be Jeff
Speaker 2: Stur just as late season success. It's going to be
Speaker 2: here for eternity. Everyone's going to see this when they
Speaker 2: wake up in the morning on December twenty seventh and
Speaker 2: they're going to go out for the hunts. The first
Speaker 2: thing they see, what would be the three things you
Speaker 2: would carve on that stone tablet for late season success.
Speaker 3: Well, that's tough. I know. The first one would be
Speaker 3: fine the deer, and that seems to be just overly obvious,
Speaker 3: but it's not considering that only a small percentage of
Speaker 3: the habitat holds the majority of the deer, and so
Speaker 3: again not getting trapped into that. You know, hunting the
Speaker 3: same place as you always have, be mindful of that
Speaker 3: deer are going to congregate, there's going to be a
Speaker 3: lot of sign where they're at, and really need to
Speaker 3: gravitate your hunting, even if that means quickly changing where
Speaker 3: your stand locations are, maybe even sitting in new, brand
Speaker 3: new stand locations. That would be step one. And then
Speaker 3: doing everything you can to protect your hunt, meaning don't
Speaker 3: spook the deer. And again that's an overly obvious one,
Speaker 3: but again we rush things this time of the year,
Speaker 3: and it's a lot easier as we talked about, to
Speaker 3: spook here this time of year. So if you can
Speaker 3: find the deer, preserve the movement, and then always be
Speaker 3: mindful that although the afternoon food source movement is king
Speaker 3: this time of year. Bucks are replenishing themselves, doze or congregated,
Speaker 3: They're aating these major food sources. There should be lots
Speaker 3: of tracks, lots of sign the second rut is real
Speaker 3: and it opens up a whole new morning opportunity to
Speaker 3: hunt like you would deer in the rut, being mindful
Speaker 3: of where the deer are located this time of year,
Speaker 3: so you're really looking at the potential for morning stands
Speaker 3: and afternoon stands, hunting that food source movement, making sure
Speaker 3: you don't spook out the deer herds that you do find,
Speaker 3: and then always look for those deer and expect them
Speaker 3: to be in a lot smaller percentage of the habitat.
Speaker 3: And if you're finding those areas consistently, you're going to
Speaker 3: be on the mature box because they'll move a long
Speaker 3: ways out of the way to find those conditions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, Well, I do still have one Michigan tag
Speaker 2: left for the late seasons, so I'm going to see
Speaker 2: if I can get that transcribed and printed on a
Speaker 2: poster that I can put in my bedroom so that
Speaker 2: I remember those three commandments for the next three four weeks.
Speaker 2: Of hunting here because I think.
Speaker 3: That's general, but it's it's fun this time of year
Speaker 3: when you can locate those herds of deer, the bigger
Speaker 3: deer numbers, find all that sign I remember going back
Speaker 3: to when I was a kid. It's it's a whole
Speaker 3: lot of fun. We have a lot of used to
Speaker 3: hunt till early January every single season in Michigan. It
Speaker 3: could only help the weekends and hunted most of them,
Speaker 3: so a lot of fond memories this time of year.
Speaker 2: It's a great time. I really do. You mentioned it earlier,
Speaker 2: the fact that it's slightly more relaxed. Actually, if you
Speaker 2: don't feel that pressure that you have to get another
Speaker 2: tag field, if you can kind of go into this
Speaker 2: and enjoy it in a little bit different way. Man,
Speaker 2: it's a lot of fun. So I think there's a lot.
Speaker 2: There's a lot we can learn from this one. Jeff.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you sharing all this and re igniting the
Speaker 2: fire for me to continue the rest of these final
Speaker 2: weeks in what's in strong form.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you real quick on that that more relaxed time.
Speaker 3: When it was the rout, I couldn't even consider bringing
Speaker 3: my twenty month old Jackson out into the woods. It
Speaker 3: just didn't seem like a realistic opportunity. We're here to
Speaker 3: go into a food source that's starting seventy five yards away,
Speaker 3: keeping the window of the blind shot, bringing a bunch
Speaker 3: of snacks, throwing him on a big old camping chair
Speaker 3: with a blanket and the heater. It just I mean,
Speaker 3: the reason I'm doing that is because it's relaxed, because
Speaker 3: you can it's not there is a potential spooking something.
Speaker 3: But we're sitting more at long distance with the muzzleoders
Speaker 3: and and so. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't go
Speaker 3: out in the woods if I didn't think there was opportunity.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it doesn't mean you don't have great opportunity.
Speaker 3: At the same time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna be doing the same thing with my
Speaker 2: two boys over this coming weeks. And I'm excited. Great, Yeah,
Speaker 2: they are, They're very excited. So Jeff, real quick, where
Speaker 2: can folks find your latest content these days? Is there
Speaker 2: anything in particular you would say that they should check
Speaker 2: out in particular this time of year or anything you
Speaker 2: want to highlight.
Speaker 3: No, We're I'm pretty methodical on both YouTube and Instagram.
Speaker 3: Under White toil Habitat Solutions. And the one thing different
Speaker 3: with YouTube is I think since early October, I've probably
Speaker 3: uploaded maybe eighteen shorts, so I've been hitting the shorts
Speaker 3: more often that shows. Actually will have a hunt coming
Speaker 3: out about my Pennsylvania hunt, but I put that out
Speaker 3: on Monday right away. It's just so easy to put
Speaker 3: a minute video out kind of a recap, and then
Speaker 3: try to be pretty active on Instagram with the reels,
Speaker 3: and then also getting into the off season, whether it's
Speaker 3: building betting areas or scouting, there's a lot of quick
Speaker 3: tips that I try to do and try to put out,
Speaker 3: whether it's the short videos or Instagram reels. Put out
Speaker 3: those more often the pictures, and we're very very strict
Speaker 3: on that. And we still haven't missed four videos per
Speaker 3: week pace of our longer videos since the summer of
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen, so we keep a really strict pace on that.
Speaker 3: And so we put out two hundred and eight a
Speaker 3: year on that, and we'll priape on out right now
Speaker 3: about that pace about one hundred YouTube shorts a year
Speaker 3: or two, but we'll see how that goes. So between
Speaker 3: all of that and I try to put out fresh
Speaker 3: content In fact, if I create a video for YouTube,
Speaker 3: I don't put it down in Instagram advice versa's try
Speaker 3: to get fresh stuff out and fresh ideas and kind
Speaker 3: of just follow what's going on in the white tail
Speaker 3: strategy world. Three sixty five. So we know through our
Speaker 3: website we have our lot Seed Company now it's all
Speaker 3: on white to apitat solutions dot com. We have a
Speaker 3: couple other products you might be launching this year. We're
Speaker 3: in the discussions of those, so we'll see in the
Speaker 3: future on that too. But we're just trying to eat
Speaker 3: the needs of our audience and what they're looking for.
Speaker 2: So if you were going to recommend one of your
Speaker 2: blends from your food Plot Seed Company for late season,
Speaker 2: what would be the thing you'd plant if you were
Speaker 2: looking for lates and success?
Speaker 3: Oh boy, Well, Ourbraska blend is built to be a
Speaker 3: balance of blends where it's not all hard bulbs like
Speaker 3: purple top, turnop, green Globe, and it's not all radish,
Speaker 3: which is more of an early blend, and it's not
Speaker 3: all leaf, so it's kind of a blend of in between.
Speaker 3: Some of the blends are more slanted towards the big
Speaker 3: bulbs purple tops green globe that are usually more late season,
Speaker 3: so we want something that again establishing that pattern of
Speaker 3: use early like what the radish is. But then we
Speaker 3: have our fall Power greens, which is more a workhorse.
Speaker 3: We top with Rye more month later after planting Bolt
Speaker 3: as your plant in early August, Rye about a month
Speaker 3: later on the fall Power greens. So that's more of
Speaker 3: a kind of a do it all what someone would
Speaker 3: play it in the north and uh, and then we
Speaker 3: actually have a Northernbraska blend we're coming out with, like
Speaker 3: a non agg blend that we're coming out with going
Speaker 3: into this next season. So some of those green blends,
Speaker 3: a couple of different ones would be I recommend them
Speaker 3: as great.
Speaker 2: Well, you are a busy man, Jeff. You you are
Speaker 2: a content machine. So I watch him afar in amazement
Speaker 2: and admire your work because it's it's always good, it's
Speaker 2: always helpful, and your cadence is crazy. So good for
Speaker 2: you for pumping it out. I can't pump out as
Speaker 2: much stuff as you do, so thank you.
Speaker 3: It helps to have a good editor in Dylan, so
Speaker 3: he I just I just talk and build them. He
Speaker 3: just he edits everything, puts it together.
Speaker 2: So's Yeah, Dylan is Dylan's great? Dylan? Yeah, awesome. Well,
Speaker 2: thanks you, thank you for this, Jeff. I really enjoyed
Speaker 2: it as always, and I'm sure a lot of folks
Speaker 2: will today.
Speaker 3: Well, I appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker 2: All right, Thank you everyone for tuning in. Hopefully enjoy
Speaker 2: that as much as I did. Lots to learn from
Speaker 2: Jeff as always, So get out there, enjoy this late season,
Speaker 2: put some of his ideas into action, and I truly
Speaker 2: believe you can still fill some tags here in these
Speaker 2: final weeks of the season. So that all said, thanks
Speaker 2: for being here, have fun out there, and stay wired
Speaker 2: to hunt.