Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, home of the
Speaker 1: modern white tail hunter, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon, and this week on the show, I am
Speaker 1: joined by Jeff Sturgis to discuss this perspective on patterning
Speaker 1: bucks during the rut and his process for dialing in
Speaker 1: a plan at all other times of year. All right,
Speaker 1: welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you
Speaker 1: by First Light, and we are wrapping up the month
Speaker 1: of patterning bucks. You heard about how I pattered a
Speaker 1: buck in early October. We talked to Mark Drewy about
Speaker 1: his art form of patterning deer. We talked to Jake
Speaker 1: Bush about patterning deer on public land. And now we've
Speaker 1: got an other mastermind, Mr Jeff Sturgis. And if you're
Speaker 1: not familiar with Jeff, he's been on the podcast a
Speaker 1: number of times. He's one of the best out there.
Speaker 1: He's written a number of terrific books on hunting mature
Speaker 1: deer and habitat management. He runs the Whitetail Habitat Solutions
Speaker 1: YouTube channel and website. He does consulting, he has online classes.
Speaker 1: He has so much incredible content helping folks fine dear
Speaker 1: pattern deer, hunt deer, managed for deer, improved dear habitat
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff. Jeff is is truly um
Speaker 1: I said, all right, he's a mastermind. He's one of
Speaker 1: the people I respect most in this uh sphere. He's
Speaker 1: one of the folks I've learned the most from and
Speaker 1: just really really excited that he's here today to discuss
Speaker 1: this topic and to talk about patterning bucks during the rut.
Speaker 1: How we can do that here in the pre rut
Speaker 1: at the end of October, how that plan needs to
Speaker 1: adjust as we move into November or wherever it is
Speaker 1: that you have, you know, running activity, if that's January
Speaker 1: and Alabama or just member in Texas, whatever. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about what a pattern during the rut might look like,
Speaker 1: how to do that, and then we actually just dive
Speaker 1: into the details of Jeff's entire process to patterning deer,
Speaker 1: whether that's in September or October, December, all points in between.
Speaker 1: We get into the nitty gritty, which I love doing
Speaker 1: with Jeff. We talked through how to use historical data
Speaker 1: and trends, history of what you've learned these deer do
Speaker 1: in the past. We talked about how he uses sign
Speaker 1: to put together the puzzle pieces, and of course you
Speaker 1: can't talk about patterning deer without trail cameras, so we
Speaker 1: dive into that. He's got a really great mock scrape
Speaker 1: strategy that helps him get pictures and really get clear
Speaker 1: data inputs to make these plans. So that is, Uh,
Speaker 1: that's what's in store for today. I'm excited when this
Speaker 1: podcast drops. It is the end of October. The rut
Speaker 1: is staring us right in the face. Man, I mean,
Speaker 1: is there any better time of year to be a
Speaker 1: deer hunter? This is what we dreamed of. We're about
Speaker 1: to step foot into the super Bowl. Friends. This is
Speaker 1: what we've worked for. This is what we've dreamed of.
Speaker 1: This is what we've planned for all these days out
Speaker 1: in the spring and summer. It's all let up to now.
Speaker 1: So let's do this. How about you bear with me
Speaker 1: here for a couple simple kind of leading into the rut.
Speaker 1: Words of wisdom from your old friend Mark Kenyan. Uh.
Speaker 1: Number one, you heard me say this before. If you
Speaker 1: listen to the podcast, You've heard me say all of
Speaker 1: these things before. If you listen to the podcast, but
Speaker 1: I want to you know touch on some of the
Speaker 1: greatest hits. If you are hunting over these next two,
Speaker 1: three or four weeks and you're in the rut, and
Speaker 1: you personally get into a rut if you find yourself
Speaker 1: like torn, kind of confused, paralysis by analysis, stuck, not
Speaker 1: sure what's going on, not sure why you can't get
Speaker 1: on the deer, not sure why you can't find that buck.
Speaker 1: Things aren't going the way you expected them to, and
Speaker 1: you're kind of stuck trafficker out. What should I do?
Speaker 1: Remember at that point in your trip, in your week,
Speaker 1: in your weekend, whatever it is, step back to the
Speaker 1: basics and remember the pillars of rut hunting success. Always
Speaker 1: go back to this whenever you're stuck. Always go back
Speaker 1: to the pillars and think to yourself, well does my
Speaker 1: plan fit into the pillars of rout hunting success? Number
Speaker 1: one one of these pillars hunt the does either dough
Speaker 1: betting areas or dope food sources in the evenings, if
Speaker 1: you're near one of those, if you're in it, if
Speaker 1: you're just downwind of it, that is always a great
Speaker 1: place to be during the rut. These are those locations
Speaker 1: where bucks are gonna be traveling to, so are you
Speaker 1: in or near a dough hotspot? Number two? If you're
Speaker 1: not one of those places, are you in or near
Speaker 1: a funnel something that concentrates deer movement. Maybe that's a
Speaker 1: thin piece of timber. Maybe that is a piece of
Speaker 1: high ground between two ponds and you've got a bridge
Speaker 1: in between the two. Maybe this is a little, I
Speaker 1: don't know, ditch with brushy cover that goes between two
Speaker 1: big fields. Anywhere we're that buck traffic, which is increased
Speaker 1: this time of the year. Anywhere that can be narrowed
Speaker 1: down into a narrow sliver a smaller section is going
Speaker 1: to help you find a buck as they are traveling
Speaker 1: throughout the day trying to find those doughs ready to breed.
Speaker 1: So that's number two. Funnels, and then finally number three.
Speaker 1: During the rut, get your button one of those kinds
Speaker 1: of places, and then give it time. Get out there
Speaker 1: for as many hours as you can during the morning
Speaker 1: through the middle of the day, if you can through
Speaker 1: the evening. You gotta be there for the magic to happen.
Speaker 1: That's it. There's so many of the things we can
Speaker 1: talk about during the rut, but if you can always
Speaker 1: remember those three pillars, you're gonna give yourself a good chance.
Speaker 1: And I want to give you one other thing, one
Speaker 1: other thing here. When it comes to the mental side
Speaker 1: of the rut, stuff's gonna go wrong. Remember that, except
Speaker 1: that be ready for it. You're gonna be thrown for loop.
Speaker 1: Your plans are gonna fall apart. Something bad's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: You're gonna miss you're gonna get lost in the woods.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have trail cameras don't work, you're gonna have trespassers.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have something. Be ready for that. And when
Speaker 1: it arrives, if you have already thought through these things,
Speaker 1: if you've already come to terms that there's gonna be
Speaker 1: tough stuff ahead of you, you'll be better prepared to
Speaker 1: push through that stuff, because now is when mental toughness
Speaker 1: kills deer. So be ready and just push on through,
Speaker 1: grind on through the crap, because good things always lay
Speaker 1: on the other side of those speed bumps, and finally,
Speaker 1: have fun, enjoy this stuff. We've waited all year. We
Speaker 1: talk ourselves up, we we dream about these moments. Like
Speaker 1: I said, already, it's a shame if you let the
Speaker 1: rud arrive and then just stress out about the whole
Speaker 1: time because you're out there all day and then you
Speaker 1: were miserable because you haven't taken a break where you're
Speaker 1: miserable because you haven't shot a deer yet, or you're
Speaker 1: miserable because everybody else seems to be shooting a deer
Speaker 1: and you can't find a single buck. Whatever it is.
Speaker 1: Trying not to let that stuff ruin this thing for you.
Speaker 1: Keep it fun. This is about fun. Enjoy the process.
Speaker 1: And if you ever find yourself kind of leaning towards
Speaker 1: that over stress, I'm not enjoying this kind of feeling
Speaker 1: and vibe, that's a clear warning. Son, Maybe you gotta
Speaker 1: take a step back. Maybe I've taken night off, take
Speaker 1: the family out to dinner. Maybe you need to go
Speaker 1: meet up with your hunting buddies and just get back
Speaker 1: to the commune and camaraderie of this. Maybe you need
Speaker 1: to sleep in for one hour in the morning, get
Speaker 1: your head right, have a good breakfast, take your kids
Speaker 1: to school, remember why you do this thing, and then
Speaker 1: get back out there. Have fun, be a human being,
Speaker 1: push through the tough stuff, stick to the principles. Did
Speaker 1: you do those things? My friends, is going to be
Speaker 1: a great Rutt, and I think Jeff has got some
Speaker 1: other great advice for you as well. Today. I'm excited
Speaker 1: for you tune in. I'm excited to hear from you
Speaker 1: all in the coming weeks. I hope we all have
Speaker 1: a lot of success stories to share. Uh. Speaking of that,
Speaker 1: make sure you're following me on Instagram at wired to
Speaker 1: Hunt if you want to see how my trips are going.
Speaker 1: I'm about take off for the big one week in
Speaker 1: November trip. I'm gonna be heading to uh the ne Bbraska,
Speaker 1: and Ohio. So I can't wait to share those experiences
Speaker 1: along the way. Check them on out over on I
Speaker 1: G and UH. I will have the stories here in
Speaker 1: the podcast as soon as I can as well. So
Speaker 1: without any further ado, let's get in today's show with
Speaker 1: Jeff Sturgis. All right with me now back on the
Speaker 1: show is one of our all time favorite guests, Mr
Speaker 1: Jeff Sturgis. Jeff, thank you for being here. Yeah, thank you, Mark.
Speaker 1: It's always great chatting with you and Uh. It has
Speaker 1: been a long time. I don't remember how many times
Speaker 1: have been on your podcast, but uh, I know the
Speaker 1: years have flown by, but it's been a few years.
Speaker 1: It has been. I mean, you're one of the O
Speaker 1: G s. Jeff. I think that I think you were
Speaker 1: within our first five episodes, if I'm if I'm thinking right,
Speaker 1: I think you were within those first couple ever recorded.
Speaker 1: And I know you and I were talking and you know,
Speaker 1: doing stuff even well before the podcast even started. So
Speaker 1: um oh yeah, yeah, I think well that my food
Speaker 1: plot book was two thousand and fourteen and you wrote
Speaker 1: the forward for that. Yeah, I forgot about that. That
Speaker 1: that was a little that was eight years ago, just
Speaker 1: right there, and we had been talking, you know, for
Speaker 1: years before then too. Yeah. Man, well I've learned a
Speaker 1: ton from you, and uh, I've always appreciated you coming
Speaker 1: on here, and I always know this is going to
Speaker 1: be like one of our best of the year, maybe
Speaker 1: selfishly because I just love the way you think like
Speaker 1: you you think about things, you process things, you approach
Speaker 1: things in a way that very much jives with with
Speaker 1: me and how I like to go about it. You're
Speaker 1: you're super analytical with it, which which just fascinates me
Speaker 1: the way you go about it. And that is why
Speaker 1: I thought this series we're doing this month, that you
Speaker 1: would be one of the perfect people for it. So
Speaker 1: the series is you know, we're we're focusing all on
Speaker 1: patterning bocks. Like the month of October. Everyone we've talked
Speaker 1: to has been all about patterning deer and and this one, Jeff,
Speaker 1: that we're gonna do is going to drop at the
Speaker 1: end of October. So when people send into this, yeah
Speaker 1: it is, they'll they'll be hearing this, you know, hopefully
Speaker 1: end of October or beginning of November. And I think
Speaker 1: there will be some people who might say patterning bucks, Well,
Speaker 1: it's November. Nobody can pattern or buck in November, and
Speaker 1: they might be thinking that this isn't for them at
Speaker 1: this point. So my question for you is this to
Speaker 1: kick it off, Jeff, can you pattern a buck during
Speaker 1: the run, because a lot of people say you can't. Um,
Speaker 1: I sure do think you can. Now you know that
Speaker 1: being said to me to really lock into a core
Speaker 1: home home range, um, from whether it's mid October and
Speaker 1: of October and then all the way through a lot
Speaker 1: of times in early December, and and they'll spend the
Speaker 1: majority of their time what I see in that location.
Speaker 1: And so in that respect, yes, you can pattern them. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a little bit different than I think
Speaker 1: every one thinks about patterning is these these bucks are
Speaker 1: going to an evening food source in September and October,
Speaker 1: and you can pattern them that way. They might even
Speaker 1: have them locked into their going to this betting area,
Speaker 1: which is a little bit more risky hunt. But you
Speaker 1: know they're going there and they're betting there, they're feeding there,
Speaker 1: and they get locked into that pattern. But um, that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that they don't have rutting patterns and that
Speaker 1: you can capitalize on and that they repeat every single year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So how would you define a rutt pattern? Then? I
Speaker 1: mean you used to give great examples of what a
Speaker 1: September October pattern might look like. What can we realistically
Speaker 1: call a rutt pattern or what's an example of something
Speaker 1: like that. I still think they hit, They hit their
Speaker 1: afternoon evening food source. That's a priority to them. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people look at the rut
Speaker 1: as a little bit more random just because you know,
Speaker 1: Preussures applied hunting pressure in September and October and then
Speaker 1: Box seemed to find a way to gravitate towards those
Speaker 1: food sources and habitats that they want to hang out
Speaker 1: during that specific time and really hunting pressure, changing food sources,
Speaker 1: changing the quality of bedding, or the security of the betting.
Speaker 1: They'll move a long ways and I always look at
Speaker 1: I call it the five percent club, but it's really
Speaker 1: those properties five of all properties that really attract mature bucks.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of bucks are leaving their September
Speaker 1: early October areas and going to these locations. There are
Speaker 1: those locations that are capturing them. And then they're still
Speaker 1: hitting their afternoon food sources on a somewhat regular basis.
Speaker 1: If there's water holes that they want to hit, often
Speaker 1: they're hitting those water holes, uh, foods or water hole sources.
Speaker 1: And then at the same time, you really see the
Speaker 1: same box being in the same smaller location between dough
Speaker 1: betting areas and buck betting areas, so you really see
Speaker 1: I'm hunting more and and really during this time some
Speaker 1: of those patterns almost referred to it as vertical um
Speaker 1: perpendicular for where you're looking at bucks are going straight
Speaker 1: from not straight, but they're going from a betting area
Speaker 1: to a food source. And then that can rely flips
Speaker 1: around this year, this time of year where they're more
Speaker 1: paralleling those food sources, paralleling those betting areas and and
Speaker 1: so trails that you didn't hunt in September October now
Speaker 1: become a very pattern of mole because they're they're flipping
Speaker 1: around and they're going between those betting areas, between those
Speaker 1: food sources. It's it's completely different game, you know, stands
Speaker 1: that we don't even use the rest of the year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great point. I really like that that vertical
Speaker 1: versus parallel or horizontal type movement is so true. Um,
Speaker 1: I kind of want to do I'm gonna do a
Speaker 1: weird kind of chronological thing. I want to focus kind
Speaker 1: of first on, you know, these rut ideas and the
Speaker 1: I'm probably going to bring us back and ask about
Speaker 1: some of the things that you're doing outside of the rut.
Speaker 1: But but real quick, if you had to pick like
Speaker 1: the best time of year to have a buck pattern
Speaker 1: and kill a buck on a pattern, what would that
Speaker 1: window be where it's like the primo time to have
Speaker 1: this kind of success. Is it like late October? Is
Speaker 1: it right now or is it that early season time period?
Speaker 1: What do you think or something else entirely? Oh boy,
Speaker 1: that's a tough one. Well, we're talking about the rut,
Speaker 1: so do we need to talk about the early season.
Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of like the early season. You
Speaker 1: have a short window, meaning that um, it seems like
Speaker 1: those early season patterns are fleeting, especially in your home
Speaker 1: state of Michigan where the openers October one. Well, those
Speaker 1: box change your pattern. It might not any have anything
Speaker 1: to do with hunting pressure, but think about all the
Speaker 1: hunting pressure that's applied. Well, when they get locked into
Speaker 1: their fall range where they're really going to hang out
Speaker 1: for late October, November, December. Then to me, that late
Speaker 1: October pre rut time where those aren't necessarily ready but
Speaker 1: the bucks are is just such an outstanding time because
Speaker 1: they'll move a lot more. To me, they move a
Speaker 1: lot more during daylight. They finally moved during the morning
Speaker 1: hours sometimes to me, uh, several times more than they
Speaker 1: do in the afternoon evening where they're more relating to
Speaker 1: that food source movement. In the morning, it's still cool.
Speaker 1: They're still making rob scrapes moving around you the betting areas,
Speaker 1: and they still might not leave a ten acre area,
Speaker 1: but they're really active within that area. So to me,
Speaker 1: for a longer window of time, you have more of
Speaker 1: a predictable amount of time that you can actually pattern
Speaker 1: a box during that pre rod time, and then when
Speaker 1: he gets into the rot he still could hold some
Speaker 1: of those same patterns. But you know, let's stacey, he
Speaker 1: could be on a dough mile oy that he's just
Speaker 1: some ringandom chance that he's over there. Um, you still hunt,
Speaker 1: you know, you still can hunt those same patterns. You
Speaker 1: can still kill that target buck um. But to me,
Speaker 1: he's in that window a little bit less time. He's
Speaker 1: really consistent at the end of October, which might be
Speaker 1: more like early November for someone in Kansas, Tennessee, Arkansas,
Speaker 1: West Virginia. UM, a little bit further song. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: definitely seen that myself in some places where you even
Speaker 1: though there is the crazy rut stuff going on, there's
Speaker 1: still a general kind of cycle that's that's happened that
Speaker 1: you can kind of pattern, like like you mentioned that
Speaker 1: doe betting area, checking doe betting to doe betting. You know,
Speaker 1: I've seen bucks repeat like Okay, they're gonna hit this
Speaker 1: betting area and then they're gonna hit this next one,
Speaker 1: and then they hit that next one, and they're gonna
Speaker 1: come through and hit it again sometime in the next
Speaker 1: day or two or whatever it is. Of course there's
Speaker 1: the chance to get on a dough and disappear for
Speaker 1: two days. But you know, you can kind of develop
Speaker 1: that predictive capability based on some of those observations. So
Speaker 1: I guess that that is relevant because I'm I'm curious
Speaker 1: what specific things are you doing that are unique to
Speaker 1: this time period when you're trying to pattern and buck
Speaker 1: during the rut, that that's different than what you would
Speaker 1: do in September or October. Like, what's what is unique
Speaker 1: to your rut pattern in development or execution for this
Speaker 1: time of year. Boy, there's a few things, mark Um
Speaker 1: I wish I had to lift, But there's one one
Speaker 1: of the things that I think is really critical. And
Speaker 1: we'll just start off in the early season. I'll notice
Speaker 1: when it's really hot, when it's really windy, it just
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like those boxes are moving during daylight. They
Speaker 1: don't have to. Their big bodies, they have a lot
Speaker 1: of fat on them. They're just putting on fat, and
Speaker 1: they seem to be a lot more doscile. They're just
Speaker 1: they're just kind of you know, you can catch them
Speaker 1: in that pattern. But to me, when that weather really
Speaker 1: plays an important role on how far they're going to
Speaker 1: move during daylight and and and it's not that they're
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're moving that much more. It seems
Speaker 1: like it's just they might move ten minutes a half
Speaker 1: hour before dark instead of ten minutes a half hour after,
Speaker 1: same movement, same amount of time, and it's just just
Speaker 1: a little bit different timing where when it gets into
Speaker 1: closer to the pre rod an evening hunt. For example,
Speaker 1: last night was about forty nine degrees when we came
Speaker 1: in from hunting, and that's a really cool temperature. Um
Speaker 1: it was it was after three days of warm up.
Speaker 1: We had some really cool temperatures earlier in the week. Um,
Speaker 1: I think a low of twenty seven in the morning.
Speaker 1: But deer are really active in the evening. And it's
Speaker 1: almost like I don't really need to have that giant
Speaker 1: cold front to go sit on a nice cool evening.
Speaker 1: I'll place more of an uh of a priority on
Speaker 1: hunts in the evening that I wouldn't, you know, say,
Speaker 1: an average temperature day to the average highest fifty two,
Speaker 1: and so we have a day that's fifty four. Well,
Speaker 1: let's not that far off. And when you get into
Speaker 1: the pre roun th box are active and unless it's
Speaker 1: really hot, really windy, there something extreme going on. I
Speaker 1: find that they're moving more during daylight, and so I'll
Speaker 1: focus on more average days during the pre rod where
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have sat those average weather days um during
Speaker 1: September October. If that makes it so, that's one big thing.
Speaker 1: I'll start hunting a little bit more frequent. Those mornings
Speaker 1: are really key on those cold mornings, and so I'll
Speaker 1: start to flip the morning stands during this time of year.
Speaker 1: I've sat one morning now unless I have a box
Speaker 1: pegged in the early season where I I really believe
Speaker 1: that he's betting in this location. And I'll give you
Speaker 1: an example. Let's say, uh would it's surrounded by agg
Speaker 1: fields and one side is planted maybe in corn. Let's
Speaker 1: say they're hitting the bean side. That's where they're at
Speaker 1: every night. Do you think you can sneak in that
Speaker 1: corn side? There's a ditch bank pack there, there's a
Speaker 1: little mound or something where you think those bucks bad
Speaker 1: and you can sneak in. Law you're sitting back in
Speaker 1: the corn because they're not eating that corn. And on
Speaker 1: October five and you're waiting for those bucks to come
Speaker 1: back to you. That's an example of a really good
Speaker 1: morning set up. Maybe you're walking through brush, non deer area,
Speaker 1: swamp water, you cross the creek, river, you get into
Speaker 1: the back of the wood lot, and you wait for
Speaker 1: those bucks to come back in the morning. That's that's
Speaker 1: just a really defined use for a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't have that opportunity. And I normally don't even around
Speaker 1: here on the properties that hunt, So I don't hunt
Speaker 1: a lot of mornings because evening can be so predictable.
Speaker 1: Like we talked earlier, that's just they're doing this, they're
Speaker 1: moving from here to here. But when it comes to
Speaker 1: this time of year in the pre rod, we even
Speaker 1: see on our trail cameras that that the box are
Speaker 1: very active in the mornings. I saw one of the
Speaker 1: five year olds this morning and moving across a small
Speaker 1: food plot about an hour and a half after daylight.
Speaker 1: He hasn't done that all year. We haven't seen that,
Speaker 1: And so right now is when it really starts picking
Speaker 1: up where morning opportunities are great. I'm placing a little
Speaker 1: bit more priority on those average sets in the evening,
Speaker 1: but I'm still looking at it that this is a
Speaker 1: morning stand here, and this is an evening stand here.
Speaker 1: I think it's very important as people getting into November
Speaker 1: in the rout that they talk about, you know, really defined,
Speaker 1: this is a morning stand, this is an evening stand,
Speaker 1: because if you spend all day in the morning stand
Speaker 1: back in betting areas, those bucks are going to focus
Speaker 1: on food in the afternoon, even if they're moving for
Speaker 1: dos that's where the dolls are going. Then you're going
Speaker 1: to spend half of your day in an unproductive stand.
Speaker 1: So I like to really focus on morning and then
Speaker 1: flip around to hunt that evening hunt, even if I'm
Speaker 1: sitting all day. Yeah, that makes sense. One thing that
Speaker 1: I often think about is is, you know, when it
Speaker 1: comes to the rut, is the speed maybe that's beat,
Speaker 1: it's the the duration of a pattern during the rut. So,
Speaker 1: for example, the opposite of this might be a September
Speaker 1: pattern where or in October, let's say like late September
Speaker 1: in early October. Here in Michigan, I had some bucks
Speaker 1: that were, you know, very frequently mature bucks moving in
Speaker 1: the evening in daylight out of a swamp into a
Speaker 1: green bean field. And they would do it almost nightly
Speaker 1: or every other night or something like that. And that
Speaker 1: was going on for for weeks on end. I was
Speaker 1: getting relatively consistent daylight pictures of mature buck doing this thing,
Speaker 1: and I knew, you know, until those beans changed or
Speaker 1: someone went there and blew it out, he was going
Speaker 1: to keep doing that. And so that was a pattern
Speaker 1: I knew had some time on him. But on the
Speaker 1: opposite side of things, when I see something pop up
Speaker 1: during November, Let's say a buck shows up on my
Speaker 1: cell camera and he's in a bean field tonight, or
Speaker 1: a buck shows up on a scrape back in some
Speaker 1: transition cover or something like that. My question to you
Speaker 1: is how fast do you need to jump on a
Speaker 1: pattern if you see something happened twice in a row
Speaker 1: or two times in a week or something. How fast
Speaker 1: you need to jump on something like that during the
Speaker 1: rut or how long will it last? Because my my
Speaker 1: assumption has always been like these things are very fleeting
Speaker 1: during the rut um. Has that been your experience or
Speaker 1: how do you look at the speed of taking advantage
Speaker 1: of something you're observing during that time period. I think
Speaker 1: it depends on the box. So now you you're talking November.
Speaker 1: Let's say it's November five and you have a box
Speaker 1: that you haven't seen all year. You maybe even knew
Speaker 1: he was alive. You made it through the season at
Speaker 1: trail camp Pitchers in February or whatever it might be,
Speaker 1: you're waiting for him to show up. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: he's there. Well, it's almost like he's told you at
Speaker 1: that point of the season that hey, you're not you're
Speaker 1: not right in the middle of my wheelhouse house, but
Speaker 1: you're part of my wheelhouse. And I look at it
Speaker 1: like you need to jump on that immediately. So if
Speaker 1: you see him, he's there, he's cutting through this funnel um.
Speaker 1: Maybe you see him from a distance. You need to
Speaker 1: jump on him right then, because he's going to go
Speaker 1: back home eventually. He's going to spend the majority of
Speaker 1: his time at home. And he's already told you're only
Speaker 1: a part of my wheelhouse. You're not my wheelhouse, you're
Speaker 1: not in the center of it. So you're you're on
Speaker 1: the fringe area of his On the flip side. You
Speaker 1: have this buck that you've been watching, and he's consistently
Speaker 1: started to go hone in on your property more. October tenth,
Speaker 1: October fifteenth, he starts seeing him more often. There's more
Speaker 1: sign popping up that he believes him pictures, whatever it
Speaker 1: might be. That's that box that he's going to be
Speaker 1: in your area half the time. So I'm not saying
Speaker 1: you don't jump on that sign. I'm always looking at like,
Speaker 1: if he just was there this morning, I better get
Speaker 1: there this evening if I think he's coming back. I've
Speaker 1: watched five six year old buck go up with a
Speaker 1: dough assumingly breeder in a certain betting area that he
Speaker 1: went in one way because of the wind. I just
Speaker 1: sit on the other side of that betting area, but
Speaker 1: I waited for him to come back, and you know,
Speaker 1: come out, and he comes out that evening, so you know,
Speaker 1: you just have to jump on that right away. And
Speaker 1: he might have been in back in that betting area
Speaker 1: three days later or four days later. But that's a
Speaker 1: case where a day, you know, the same day matters.
Speaker 1: So really, some of those bucks are there consistently. But
Speaker 1: then you have some of those giants. There's one in
Speaker 1: uh in Wisconsin I'm waiting for I've had one picture
Speaker 1: of them so far. I know he's alive. I knew
Speaker 1: we made it, he made it through the season, but boy,
Speaker 1: i'd love to see him and so when he all
Speaker 1: of a sudden starts to be more consistent on the land,
Speaker 1: I don't want to miss out on that opportunity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's that's not an uncommon thing to have, like
Speaker 1: a a rut buck, like a buck who you never
Speaker 1: see except for a handful of times during the rut um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how do you how do you handle that kind of situation,
Speaker 1: Like how do you plan or put together a plan
Speaker 1: to hunt that buck or develop some kind of pattern
Speaker 1: or idea for how to kill that buck when you
Speaker 1: know that's the situation, Like let's say, like last year,
Speaker 1: this buck did that thing. You now see, Okay, he's
Speaker 1: a rut buck. He list somewhere else, but he's gonna
Speaker 1: come through, you know sometime in this window. Now it's
Speaker 1: two you're expecting that to happen again. What was the plan?
Speaker 1: Maybe you can tell me about the specific buck, or
Speaker 1: if not, just give me a generic example of what
Speaker 1: you're specifically doing to a watch for him for when
Speaker 1: he shows up, and then be how do you approach
Speaker 1: it like in those following days, are you just gonna
Speaker 1: hunt what he did last year? Or are you gonna
Speaker 1: put out more cameras in the area? To try to
Speaker 1: pick up on what he's specifically doing, or how would
Speaker 1: you go after one special deer like that in that scenario?
Speaker 1: What's I love that um type of scenario because a
Speaker 1: lot of people look at it like um. They could
Speaker 1: look at it like, well, I'm gonna sit every day
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna shoot him or I'm gonna have an
Speaker 1: opportunity yet and then and then wonder why they never
Speaker 1: see him, and then other folks who might look at
Speaker 1: like it's just a shot in the dark, you know,
Speaker 1: needle in the haystack. You know, how how are you
Speaker 1: going to get a chance in a box that's just
Speaker 1: a ghost and you're never on your lane? And I
Speaker 1: would say about half of my amateur box the oldest
Speaker 1: ones are have been those kind of box where they
Speaker 1: live somewhere else. And the thing about those boxes for
Speaker 1: two or three years, you might have two years of
Speaker 1: pictures maybe even three that they you might have fifteen
Speaker 1: pictures total, but they've told you that I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: there in this window, be seen November three. He might
Speaker 1: have had one picture. You might add another picture in
Speaker 1: November tenth or twelve, and you know they're going to
Speaker 1: be there during that window, they're going to move a
Speaker 1: lot because they're already they're already moving wherever they're coming from.
Speaker 1: If those bucks are shown up in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night once or twice in October, they're telling you,
Speaker 1: I live a mile away or a mile and a
Speaker 1: half away. So when he gets to you, he's already
Speaker 1: moving a lot, so you can count on him not
Speaker 1: to just sit around. He's there for a purpose. He's
Speaker 1: looking for dose. And so that makes me think that
Speaker 1: I can sit on funnels in that area, whether it's
Speaker 1: joining wood lots or a swamp edge in that area,
Speaker 1: areas that I can blow my scent safely somewhere else,
Speaker 1: and I can pick around and have a reasonable chance
Speaker 1: of of shooting that buck because he's told me for
Speaker 1: two or three years he'll be there, even if it's
Speaker 1: just twelve fifteen pictures. And then when I look at
Speaker 1: that window, he's there. During the peak rod, he's already
Speaker 1: bred a dough or two back home, and so in
Speaker 1: the pre rod he finds it. You know, all the
Speaker 1: bucks get invited to the party. He gets to find
Speaker 1: a dough. Every other buck gets to find a dough,
Speaker 1: and then that second or third one comes a little
Speaker 1: bit harder. They only breed two to four I think
Speaker 1: in that first primary run, and that's any buck. So
Speaker 1: that second or third buck he starts ranging out a
Speaker 1: little bit more, and that's when you start to see
Speaker 1: those trail camp photos. And in our area that would
Speaker 1: be November two, third through the tenth, twelveth somewhere home there,
Speaker 1: maybe even the fourteen fifteen be towards on the on
Speaker 1: the back back side of that window. Well, then if
Speaker 1: he's coming a long ways and he's coming a long
Speaker 1: ways from home to be there during that time, and
Speaker 1: he's told you that for two or three years because
Speaker 1: you just had a handful of pictures, maybe a couple
Speaker 1: of sightings, well then he's not going to move over.
Speaker 1: When it's let's say northern Ohio, I don't know what
Speaker 1: the average high is in early November, but I would
Speaker 1: guess that it's low fifties to mid fifties, just just
Speaker 1: a guess, maybe high forties, but somewhere around in there,
Speaker 1: let's say it's seventy five and thirty five hour winds.
Speaker 1: I just don't think he's gonna make that long track.
Speaker 1: It's too windy, it's too stressfully, can't hear can't see
Speaker 1: as well. I just don't think he makes that that
Speaker 1: long trek over to the land. If it's really really windy,
Speaker 1: thunder lightning, extreme temperatures, extreme wind, extreme snow hail, sleep,
Speaker 1: whatever was, I just don't think he makes that track.
Speaker 1: So you look at that ten day forecast around there,
Speaker 1: from the second in November to the fourteen in November,
Speaker 1: and you say, you know, these are three or four
Speaker 1: really solid cold front days, or these cold fronts passed.
Speaker 1: This cold fronts passed through, nice morning lows. The winds
Speaker 1: are subsided, not necessarily, kind of like when there's a
Speaker 1: little bit of wind, but instead of being thirty five
Speaker 1: November winds, they're now twelve or fifteen hour winds or
Speaker 1: eight miles and and so that that front has gone by.
Speaker 1: So I'm looking at like you could take that ten
Speaker 1: day window and say, you know what, I bet if
Speaker 1: he's here, it's going to be on one of those
Speaker 1: three days. So then I put a priority on hunting
Speaker 1: those funnels where I know that he's been around in
Speaker 1: the past, making that assumption he's going to be through
Speaker 1: that funnel, And it's amazing how you show up the hunt.
Speaker 1: One rolls on a good cold front evening or morning,
Speaker 1: and he falls right into your lap. Here a bucket
Speaker 1: only after twelve pictures of over a two to three
Speaker 1: year period, and you haven't even seen that year um
Speaker 1: yet on the land. And then you check. You might
Speaker 1: check the trail Cameron here. There's three or four pictures
Speaker 1: on there that he's been around. But to me, it's
Speaker 1: not that much of an needle in a haystack when
Speaker 1: he's told you for two or three years you're a
Speaker 1: part of my wheelhouse. When you can narrow down to
Speaker 1: those good cruising days for him with the assumption he's
Speaker 1: traveling a little ways to get there, and then you
Speaker 1: can sit on some known rut funnels in that area
Speaker 1: that are a little bit thick might be inviting to him.
Speaker 1: You know, he's actually probably be out through an open
Speaker 1: hardwood wood lot or open field. He's going along a
Speaker 1: thick edge somewhere, and then you're going in and popping
Speaker 1: in for him and you shoot him, and it's it
Speaker 1: makes it sound easy, but it's almost like you you
Speaker 1: plan on that happening. He's told you he's going to
Speaker 1: be there. You watch the weather, if you look for
Speaker 1: the good days of set you go sit on a funnel,
Speaker 1: and you've done everything to prepare for that moment, and
Speaker 1: it's really he hasn't told you he's going to be
Speaker 1: there the seventeenth of December, or mid December, or even
Speaker 1: mid January, or August or September, early October, even the
Speaker 1: end of October. He's told you he's gonna be back
Speaker 1: during that window in early November. He's gonna be there
Speaker 1: during daylight. And you just narrow it down and pick
Speaker 1: the right stands and you hunt. You can hunt three
Speaker 1: or four steps for that box if you're just picking
Speaker 1: around on those funnels, and you might find that you
Speaker 1: moved by two of your other stand locations that day too,
Speaker 1: because he's moving around so much. So to me, you
Speaker 1: hunt a buck like that and it becomes a lot
Speaker 1: easier than you might think. Yeah, so you touched on
Speaker 1: one of the topics I was curious about, and I'm
Speaker 1: wondering if your perspective on it is different outside of
Speaker 1: the rut. So one of the things I was curious
Speaker 1: about is what happens in your mind when a historical trend,
Speaker 1: like an annual pattern, those dates arrive, but the conditions
Speaker 1: don't match. So his window of of showing up for
Speaker 1: you is usually like the seventh of the twelfth, let's say,
Speaker 1: And this year, though, the seventh of the twelfth comes
Speaker 1: up and you've got high creddy weather. Um, so what
Speaker 1: you just told me during the rut would be, well,
Speaker 1: you're gonna try to find the best cold weather days
Speaker 1: within that window or close to it, because he won't
Speaker 1: make that move on the hot weather day. Um. What
Speaker 1: about if this situation, if this was a historical trend
Speaker 1: we were trying to take advantage of not during the rut.
Speaker 1: So if this was like man for whatever reason, he
Speaker 1: always shows up mid October and he hangs out for
Speaker 1: a week or something like that, or maybe same thing
Speaker 1: but December. Um, does the match between dates and conditions
Speaker 1: matter more or less outside of the rut? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a good question that to get depend on. You always
Speaker 1: have to ask yourself why is he's showing up at
Speaker 1: that time? Um. For example, we had a spot in
Speaker 1: Wisconsin that we would have some odd box show up
Speaker 1: in mid October. Well, then we found out the neighbors
Speaker 1: from Chicago were coming over and that's when they would
Speaker 1: go into their cabin and they had a big hunting
Speaker 1: weekend and they were in the middle of a hunter
Speaker 1: and sixty acres mostly open hardwoods or cabins in the middle,
Speaker 1: and they gross uh, side by side ATVs to their stands,
Speaker 1: and it was just a big moment to push deer
Speaker 1: off their land. And so if you knew that they
Speaker 1: were there, we got to where we would actually drive
Speaker 1: over and see if their date was open or not
Speaker 1: to know what stands to sit in, because we would
Speaker 1: make the assumption they're gonna push deer off their land
Speaker 1: as soon as they came, as soon as they showed up,
Speaker 1: as soon as they went hunting. And then in December,
Speaker 1: I see a lot of cool boxers. A buck last year,
Speaker 1: I was really hoping to hunt him, you know, shoot,
Speaker 1: even though I only had two or three pitchers of
Speaker 1: them throughout the entire season. I shot him during the
Speaker 1: middle of muzzleloader season in early December in Wisconsin, and uh,
Speaker 1: it was the first time I saw him in person,
Speaker 1: and I was just hunting late season food sources and
Speaker 1: I was making sure that it was with muzzleloader. I
Speaker 1: shot him at like a hundred nine yards. It was
Speaker 1: a little ways away, but it was a spot where
Speaker 1: I could let those food sources sit not disturb them,
Speaker 1: and uh, and just wait for that buck to show up.
Speaker 1: And there's one other one I would have liked of
Speaker 1: shot too, But between the two of them, you're just
Speaker 1: waiting for one of them show up. And so I
Speaker 1: guess you'd have to ask for the conditions. And in
Speaker 1: those conditions right there where they're on feeding conditions, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really windy and stormy, they're probably not out there.
Speaker 1: And um, and then in that early season, um, whether
Speaker 1: you know, maybe they're making a transition from their their
Speaker 1: summer range to their fall. Um, maybe they only stick
Speaker 1: around because you know, there's a lot of people to
Speaker 1: overpressure their lands. So this box shows up, they come
Speaker 1: in and get a couple of sits in there and
Speaker 1: spook them off. Um. You know, so there's a lot
Speaker 1: of When I go to clients, it's always interesting because
Speaker 1: it's kind of an interview of yeah, we have this
Speaker 1: big buck that shows up now, And so you start asking, well,
Speaker 1: when do you hunt? When do your neighbors hunt? When
Speaker 1: your food sources peak? Are your food sources dwindling at
Speaker 1: that time? Do your food sources run out the end
Speaker 1: of October? Um? You know, there's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: conditions that you could you could really discuss and explore
Speaker 1: with that, and that's part of the you know, like
Speaker 1: you like to geek out that stuff too. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like not just accepting that he's doing that, but
Speaker 1: why he's doing that. And when it comes to that
Speaker 1: that early November time, you know, I look at it
Speaker 1: like you have about a ten day window, and and
Speaker 1: you're gonna have about three really good days during that
Speaker 1: ten day window. You're probably gonna have three or four
Speaker 1: average days. I'd still hunt those average days, of course,
Speaker 1: and then you're gonna have probably two or three dud
Speaker 1: days and not say you don't hunt. A lot of
Speaker 1: people have a rudcation and they need to get out
Speaker 1: in the woods. So but I would slant my best
Speaker 1: efforts are best fans towards those best weather days, and
Speaker 1: us you're just constantly picking around and and kind of
Speaker 1: going in making like jabs, kind of looking at like,
Speaker 1: well this is uh, even though it's ten days, it's
Speaker 1: still a marathon, not a sprint, and you're still making
Speaker 1: smart decisions. So yeah, I guess we touched on a
Speaker 1: few few things there. But I always ask yourself why
Speaker 1: there's That's the fun part about it, is why why
Speaker 1: is he showing up and leaving? Why is he not?
Speaker 1: So speaking of one of those wise and a condition
Speaker 1: of sorts that I'm always wondering about when I'm looking
Speaker 1: at pictures or observations and I'm trying to ask why
Speaker 1: was he here? And do I think he'll come back again,
Speaker 1: you know, tomorrow or whatever day I'm trying to plan out.
Speaker 1: One of the factors that I always wonder how important
Speaker 1: is is is the wind direction? So like, was he
Speaker 1: here because it was a south day? A south wind day?
Speaker 1: And do all my pictures of him in this spot
Speaker 1: end up being south wind days? Or is there some
Speaker 1: kind of correlation between direction and him showing up in
Speaker 1: these places or not? Um? Do you look at wind
Speaker 1: direction as being one of those big things that dictates,
Speaker 1: you know, if a buck will show up in a
Speaker 1: certain place or bed in a certain place, or travel
Speaker 1: in a certain way? Um? And how important is that
Speaker 1: to you? And looking at a historical trend if the
Speaker 1: wind direction you have coming up doesn't match even though
Speaker 1: the dates match in history or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that question. One of the things I really
Speaker 1: look at it. I look at it very methodically, meaning that, um,
Speaker 1: there's a buck moving in a certain area, whether it's
Speaker 1: historical patterns that you've seen or you see current patterns.
Speaker 1: And I have two stands in that location, I feel
Speaker 1: like I can get in and out to one a
Speaker 1: little bit better from morning, want a little bit better
Speaker 1: for evening. Maybe I get into them both from morning
Speaker 1: and evening, and I'm going to pick out. Okay, I
Speaker 1: want to hunt Thursday. It's a decent day, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to go hunt to stand that's best for the
Speaker 1: wind and hope to see him. And I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: look at it like he's only moving in that area
Speaker 1: on a south wind day or north one day. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna look at more of the absolute or lowest hole
Speaker 1: in the bucket, meaning that I only have those two
Speaker 1: stand locations. I'm only going to hunt him when the
Speaker 1: wind is good for each stand. I want to try
Speaker 1: to shoot that box, So I'm gonna go in and
Speaker 1: try to shoot him regardless of what that wind direction
Speaker 1: is that I think he's moving on. I want to
Speaker 1: just go hunt the stands based on those winds. So
Speaker 1: then I just I never even consider that, um, that
Speaker 1: he's only moving in the spot in the north wind,
Speaker 1: because I'll see the same buck moving the same spot
Speaker 1: with even betting area locations. You'll move in or out
Speaker 1: of that with different winds. And so I think you
Speaker 1: get kind of into a trap where almost overthinking or
Speaker 1: over analyzing that he's only gonna move on this wind.
Speaker 1: He's moving somewhere during the other wind. And so I
Speaker 1: want to make sure that I have a south wind stand,
Speaker 1: and that means i'd hump this side of the betting area,
Speaker 1: and if I have a north wind stand, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: hump the other side. You know, they're they're different conflicting winds,
Speaker 1: and that's what I got. You know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like these If I mean he's in the betting area,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to miss the stop spot to hit
Speaker 1: him because I only think he's moving on north winds.
Speaker 1: And uh, I'm gonna try to have stands for alternate
Speaker 1: winds and just just chip away at him. And that's
Speaker 1: what I've found. Just you chip away at him two
Speaker 1: or three times and you get lucky. I feel like
Speaker 1: I need to bring us back to the beginning a
Speaker 1: little bit too, even better understand how you're getting some
Speaker 1: of this information because I got ahead of myself a
Speaker 1: little bit because of the rut. But but probably to
Speaker 1: get the information that you're talking about, this historical information,
Speaker 1: these real time pictures, these observations, we got to talk
Speaker 1: about how you get that data, um, because that then
Speaker 1: gives you the tools you need to make a decision
Speaker 1: on November one or October, November twelve, whatever it is. UM,
Speaker 1: So can you walk me through what your process looks
Speaker 1: like when you are trying to pattern a deer. Let's
Speaker 1: just say the previous season had ended, it's the last
Speaker 1: it's the first day of a new season, UM, and
Speaker 1: in your mind, you know, hey, there's there's a buck
Speaker 1: I know made it and I really want to kill
Speaker 1: him in whatever so you want to be in. Can
Speaker 1: you talk me through what you're doing throughout the year
Speaker 1: to build or to determine what that pattern is. Everything
Speaker 1: from what scouting matters in this patterning process to what
Speaker 1: camera work you're doing matters for this process. Two, if
Speaker 1: you do any observation stuff that might build this out. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, I know you're doing lots to have a
Speaker 1: test that there's tons of other things you're doing, but
Speaker 1: just specifically to the trying to develop a data set
Speaker 1: to help you pattern on this deer. What does that
Speaker 1: part of your process look like leading up to this season. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good question. There's um I again, I love
Speaker 1: talking about this stuff with you, Mark, It's fun. But
Speaker 1: the uh, there's you could fast forward that all the
Speaker 1: way to write current in the season and all the
Speaker 1: way to the last day. You know, the day after
Speaker 1: this season ends. You know, for one thing, you're knowing
Speaker 1: that he's there, and you know, knowing it easy or
Speaker 1: whether whether it's by personal observation, troll camera or signed
Speaker 1: and so you know a lot of times when we'rend
Speaker 1: privately and around here, we know what bucks made it
Speaker 1: through the season. You know, neighbors might share a picture,
Speaker 1: you might see them, you might get your own picture.
Speaker 1: You might find a shed you always around. Then you
Speaker 1: start thinking about all the places that you saw and
Speaker 1: you really start to narrow down. Now, some people will
Speaker 1: go to a go to a map, you know, I
Speaker 1: use hunt Wise, I use Onyx, and you know whatever
Speaker 1: someone uses. But you can start placing pins for those box.
Speaker 1: Some people take a paper map and they'll actually put
Speaker 1: it on a whiteboard. Almost they're marking where they think
Speaker 1: that Buck is I I just remember my head, you know,
Speaker 1: where where we've had pictures where we've seen them before,
Speaker 1: and then I'm making a reasonable estimation when I'm out
Speaker 1: shed hunting, walking the property in the off season, you know,
Speaker 1: especially right after season ends, is what kind of sign
Speaker 1: am I seeing to back that up? And you're looking
Speaker 1: at like me and that you know, I've gotten pictures
Speaker 1: of buck this certain buck here, and here, I found
Speaker 1: a shed here, I got pictures here, and then I'm
Speaker 1: finding this really good sign in between, and you start
Speaker 1: to like put the pictures together. When he comes through
Speaker 1: this area, he's moving in this location. And then you're
Speaker 1: going into the season with how can I have a
Speaker 1: plan of attack where I can hunt here, here, and
Speaker 1: here with different winds. Maybe a morning stand here that's
Speaker 1: closer betting, an afternoon stand here that's closer to food.
Speaker 1: You have that stand assemblance for that box, and then
Speaker 1: you're actually going in and just chipping away at him
Speaker 1: at that time where your pictures, your personal observations, the
Speaker 1: signs popped up that you think is his, and then
Speaker 1: you're just going and for me, I picked those better
Speaker 1: weather days. So if I was going in for a
Speaker 1: buck like that, then I want to make sure that
Speaker 1: the wind is perfect, that the weather is decent, and
Speaker 1: then I'm going in with all that leading up to it.
Speaker 1: I think he's moving through this funnel. I think I
Speaker 1: can hunt this stand, and I'm not so much worrying about,
Speaker 1: you know, what the wind direction is or anything like that,
Speaker 1: other than I have these these three stands I have
Speaker 1: set for this book. He moves through this area and
Speaker 1: it's that time of year where he's around the signs
Speaker 1: popping up. I'm getting pictures on whatever or historical and
Speaker 1: so then I'm just making that methodical decision. While it's
Speaker 1: a southwest wind, it's the evening stand I have. I
Speaker 1: can hunt this one stand, So I go in on
Speaker 1: it and I don't put much thought into it. I
Speaker 1: kind of go at it a little bit more black
Speaker 1: and white so that it doesn't cloud my my thoughts,
Speaker 1: you know, you just just what I have. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go on them, and and that can even apply to uh,
Speaker 1: Like there's a real nice buck to the shot. I
Speaker 1: think it's going back to a little boy two thousand
Speaker 1: eleven on public Land in the up of Michigan. I
Speaker 1: went to scout for opening day of gun season, and
Speaker 1: I'm way out in the swamps, raised to hunt on
Speaker 1: public land, going about forty five minutes. My son Jake
Speaker 1: and I were actually their last chant opening day in Michigan, UM,
Speaker 1: which was a different story, but uh that. Uh. I
Speaker 1: went in there and there are some giant rubs. And
Speaker 1: when you find rubs out in the public lane in Michigan,
Speaker 1: you start looking for bait piles. And if there's no
Speaker 1: bait piles, then in these rubs are a few and
Speaker 1: far between. You start to think, man, this is a
Speaker 1: daytime pattern. You know, it's way out away from bait piles,
Speaker 1: other people, other access points. You start to think, man,
Speaker 1: this I could be onto something. So here I'm hunting
Speaker 1: sign I'm hunting big robs, a couple of big scrapes.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, okay, I can go through this marsh, I
Speaker 1: blow my scent out. I can sit in here in
Speaker 1: a little cluster of conifer. I actually took the boys
Speaker 1: out on opening day with me, drug them back there.
Speaker 1: They were like eight and ten chairs and pop up
Speaker 1: and everything. Sit there all day. Dante, my stepson, thought
Speaker 1: he saw a giant bucket one o'clock in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: I didn't see it other than a body. He said
Speaker 1: it was really big, and he's not one to make
Speaker 1: things up. We said we had a four point walk
Speaker 1: right bias. And so that was a Tuesday opener, I believe.
Speaker 1: And then two days later on Thursday, I went out
Speaker 1: there and went out for a morning hunt, and he
Speaker 1: ended up walking right into my lap. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: that was the buck that was making that sign, ended
Speaker 1: up being close to hunter point. He's beautiful. If that
Speaker 1: was an example where I'm hunting sign, I'm hunting funnels,
Speaker 1: I'm hunting. This is what I have. I can hunt
Speaker 1: with west winds. I don't care what you know. It
Speaker 1: doesn't I don't know what windy's moving on, but I
Speaker 1: can only hunt with westerly winds on the edge of
Speaker 1: that swamp. I'm not gonna walk through this funnel where
Speaker 1: I think he's moving through. So it worked out on
Speaker 1: Thursday that happened to be a pretty good co front
Speaker 1: that moved through Tuesday night Wednesday, so I went out.
Speaker 1: It was chili frosty and and uh, he ended up
Speaker 1: coming right through to me, and that was I didn't
Speaker 1: I didn't know what do you look like? Until literally
Speaker 1: I walked up to him, and he was dead, you know,
Speaker 1: other than partial mature antler big buck, you know, at
Speaker 1: forty yards or whatever it was and shot and and
Speaker 1: I got lucky and fun so kind of the same scenario.
Speaker 1: This is what I have for stands in that area.
Speaker 1: That's where I think he's moving. This is the time
Speaker 1: of year. I have evidence these there, whether it's i'm pictures,
Speaker 1: personal observation. And then you're going in with your planet
Speaker 1: of attack, being careful. You're not going in too soon,
Speaker 1: You're not going in too often. Meaning I have some
Speaker 1: people someone asked you that are day on YouTube. They said,
Speaker 1: what what happens you want to hunt this box certain
Speaker 1: stand location? What happens if the wind's wrong. I just
Speaker 1: don't understand. I don't even consider it. It's it's just
Speaker 1: something that I have. These three stands are good for
Speaker 1: these winds. This one, these two are evening. This one's
Speaker 1: morning wind, you know morning stands. And UM, and I
Speaker 1: look at like, okay, when I get that wind and
Speaker 1: that's a decent day, I'm going in for him. I
Speaker 1: can't remember if we've talked about this, Jeff. If we did,
Speaker 1: it's been a while. Um, what's your take? I mean,
Speaker 1: you sort of answered this when I asked you about
Speaker 1: that wind direction correlation or not correlation to whether they
Speaker 1: moved there or not. But but a lot of folks,
Speaker 1: you know, talk about hunting spots where the wind is
Speaker 1: right for the buck, where the buck can quarter in
Speaker 1: or have the wind in his face, and then the
Speaker 1: hunter tries to set up with a just off win
Speaker 1: like a wind that's just gonna cut off the corner
Speaker 1: of where they think this buck's coming. Do you do
Speaker 1: you what do you think about that? Is that something
Speaker 1: you I think we've talked about that. Now. If if
Speaker 1: I had my preference, it would be a little bit
Speaker 1: um in the buck faver where they have that assumption
Speaker 1: of you know, it's kind of like when we're hunting
Speaker 1: in the hills around here and we're hunting high in
Speaker 1: the morning. He's got those thermals rising from below, and
Speaker 1: I think he's walking because he has that advantage of
Speaker 1: scent checking down down below him. Um. You know, he's
Speaker 1: walking to a purpose like that, um and uh. And
Speaker 1: so for the rock this ideal, he's walking between embedding
Speaker 1: areas you can send check down below for a hundred
Speaker 1: hundred fifty yards. But again I'm looking at that um.
Speaker 1: You know, a buck I shout out here two years ago,
Speaker 1: Kermit um there was. I went out to that stand
Speaker 1: a day or two days earlier, and it's a stand
Speaker 1: we called the Kermit Stand now. But I went out
Speaker 1: to the Kermit stand. Had a reasonable expectation that he
Speaker 1: would in this area based on trail cameras. I hadn't
Speaker 1: seen him personally, and uh, we had trail cameras starting
Speaker 1: the end of June, but I he wasn't. We didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of pictures of him, but enough to
Speaker 1: know he was in this area. I was in his
Speaker 1: wheelhouse and went out to that stand. And the wind
Speaker 1: so imagine I'm looking into the woods, not even thinking
Speaker 1: about direction or anything. I'm looking into the woods, and
Speaker 1: the wind was kind of light, and it was going
Speaker 1: like from left to right, a little bit of an
Speaker 1: angle out behind me, if that makes sense. I'm looking
Speaker 1: straight downhill into the woods. The problem is is because
Speaker 1: it was forecasted to let's say, three or four miles
Speaker 1: an hour at dark and then getting calm two to
Speaker 1: three hours after dark, the wind always basically foreshadows what's
Speaker 1: going to happen, and so I'm sitting there three hours
Speaker 1: before dark, and I'm looking at like, Okay, this wind
Speaker 1: is really good for favorable for him if he comes
Speaker 1: from the right side. Where he comes from the left side,
Speaker 1: I'm on a bench point. There's a deep steep drawings
Speaker 1: in front of me about thirty yards, so he comes
Speaker 1: through this pinch. The problem is the closer it got
Speaker 1: too dark. I knew as I sat there. I'm sitting
Speaker 1: there three hours before and when the wind let up,
Speaker 1: my sons starting to go right back downhill because the
Speaker 1: carminals were gonna eventually pull it right downhill. So I
Speaker 1: actually left that stand and went to another stand where
Speaker 1: I could count on the wind in a better location.
Speaker 1: Went back two days later, and now the winds right
Speaker 1: in my face, blowing right out to the field behind me.
Speaker 1: So in that case, it's a ninety degree wind. Um
Speaker 1: it's he would have had to move through ninety grees.
Speaker 1: He has zero, um zero benefit of that wind. But
Speaker 1: I went in there and I ended up shooting him
Speaker 1: that night. So it's kind of one of those where
Speaker 1: if I got too hung up, but I needed to
Speaker 1: hunt that quarter wind where it's kind of a grangle
Speaker 1: and it's coming into his face a little bit. What
Speaker 1: happened is after I shot him went down there, we
Speaker 1: pulled that camera card on that scrape mock scrape that
Speaker 1: I have right there. He came in that night where
Speaker 1: I first sat. He came in from that direction of
Speaker 1: the wind, and I think more than fifty chance he
Speaker 1: would have winded me and I would have never shot
Speaker 1: that buck. That would have been my opportunity. So if
Speaker 1: I would have held on too much to that quarter
Speaker 1: wind instead of just making sure that it's a safe
Speaker 1: wind mostly and just hunt with what the stands I
Speaker 1: had available, that I think, uh, I think I would
Speaker 1: have ruined that hunt if I would have placed too
Speaker 1: much for a priority on that. So um, again it
Speaker 1: goes back to these are my stands. And you know,
Speaker 1: of course, if I could move in and set up
Speaker 1: you know, hanging hunt really quick and get that done.
Speaker 1: I've done that in the past, um and and had success.
Speaker 1: You know, it's crazy they did that in the past.
Speaker 1: And it was two thousand three, shot a real nice buck,
Speaker 1: and and it was I did a hanging hunt and
Speaker 1: he came from the exact opposite direction. I thought it
Speaker 1: all worked out. But you know, it sounds so smart
Speaker 1: that I saw him go in here. I saw him
Speaker 1: fight in the morning. I tried sneaking up on him
Speaker 1: with my socks on, and frosty Grass got close and
Speaker 1: didn't realize how close he was. He ran off on
Speaker 1: another buck and the dough. They weren't a certain to reaction.
Speaker 1: I thought he'd come out a one betting area. It
Speaker 1: came out the exact opposite. I happened to be on
Speaker 1: the downwind side of both, you know, kind of that
Speaker 1: barbell in between, and uh, and it worked out. But um,
Speaker 1: you know again, it was more this is the wind
Speaker 1: I had for the conditions, and you just go go set.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned with that public land buck that you
Speaker 1: had really used that sign to key in on him,
Speaker 1: because you know, rubs are not a super common thing
Speaker 1: in that big woods public land kind of stuff, So
Speaker 1: when you see a concentration of him, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a particularly good sign. That brought to mind the question
Speaker 1: for me of how helpful physical sign is to patterning
Speaker 1: specific bucks, Like I know, like general sign will tell you, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm in an area with with good deer, maybe like
Speaker 1: if you're just trying to shoot a deer, but if
Speaker 1: you're trying to shoot like the deer you mentioned. You
Speaker 1: mentioned that sometimes you'll try to you signed to clearly
Speaker 1: tell you something. But I guess what I'm trying to
Speaker 1: get here is is what kind of sign or how
Speaker 1: what level of detail have you ever been able to
Speaker 1: get with sign tying it to a specific Bucks pattern?
Speaker 1: Like have you ever found a unique thing on a
Speaker 1: Bucks track and use that? Or have you ever looked
Speaker 1: at rubs and said, okay, anytime I find a rub,
Speaker 1: this got this super huge guage right down the middle.
Speaker 1: That's got to be this one buck with a sticker
Speaker 1: point or is there anything like that that you look for? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess you know. With um just sign in general.
Speaker 1: I love historical sign and so when I'm looking for
Speaker 1: where he might go through a funnel, UM, I want
Speaker 1: to find old robs, new robs, and just something about
Speaker 1: sign in general. When you're hunting public land, like I
Speaker 1: I'm hunting big public land in southeast Ohio, um Shawnee
Speaker 1: State Forest, Wayne National Forest, or uh, you know something
Speaker 1: big like that, the rubs can be few and far
Speaker 1: between unless you're near private land and they have food plots,
Speaker 1: and so you you might be out there looking for
Speaker 1: sign and you need to realize a big rob on
Speaker 1: a funnel might be every two yards, like it wasn't
Speaker 1: the Up of Michigan, where it's big, big open wilderness area.
Speaker 1: It might not be concentrated, meaning concentrated for that area,
Speaker 1: where on private land that might be really clustered. In short,
Speaker 1: I had a buck in the up of Michigan, um
Speaker 1: going back early two thousand's maybe, and he had a
Speaker 1: broken track, so on one of his tracks you could
Speaker 1: tell his toe had had broke off, So it was
Speaker 1: kind of blunt and uh and short, you know, half
Speaker 1: instry corn. It was very distinguishable. And so I actually
Speaker 1: kept scrapes opener patches on the land we owned and
Speaker 1: out on the public land, so that I could when
Speaker 1: he came through that area. It was very easy to
Speaker 1: tell whether it was on our sand trails, on a scrape,
Speaker 1: or on an open patch on a trail that was
Speaker 1: in front of a tree stand that I had made
Speaker 1: a patch. It wasn't even necessarily a scrape. Then I
Speaker 1: could tell when he came through, and it was interested
Speaker 1: him because when he came through, he'd come from the east.
Speaker 1: He'd go into the property, and then he'd go north
Speaker 1: and and then i'd lose them. So it's almost like
Speaker 1: an l of movement. And that l was half mile
Speaker 1: that way in three quarters a mile to a mile
Speaker 1: to the north, and so the pretty long area. It
Speaker 1: was interesting when he came through, he kind of make
Speaker 1: that whole loop. So I'd find this track here here here,
Speaker 1: and so again it was okay, I can hunt him
Speaker 1: with this wind and this stand, this wind, with this
Speaker 1: stand maybe more morning here. I thought he was coming
Speaker 1: from the north, moving south and then cutting east, so
Speaker 1: I consider that, and it was in the evening. I
Speaker 1: shot him on the northernmost most trail right made a
Speaker 1: clearing and I just found his track and I shot
Speaker 1: him right on that same spot. Um with a bow.
Speaker 1: I was a December time, and he ended up having
Speaker 1: that broken track. And that's the first time I actually
Speaker 1: knew what buck he was. You know, that was him
Speaker 1: with the track, and it was a medium sized track.
Speaker 1: I would say that he was a two and a
Speaker 1: half to three and a half year old buck. Um.
Speaker 1: In fact, I would I would lean or towards two.
Speaker 1: Um at that time was about twenty years ago. So
Speaker 1: but um, he was a you know, that was a
Speaker 1: fun one. Gouges. What I really like is is looking
Speaker 1: behind the rub and above, so you have the face
Speaker 1: of the robb, i'd call it, and then you can
Speaker 1: his antlers are angled, and so that upper beam that's
Speaker 1: on the back side. That can tell you a lot too,
Speaker 1: because you can start to guestimate about how wide that
Speaker 1: buck was that made that rub. You can see if
Speaker 1: there's any stickers or kickers. And when you're in an
Speaker 1: area like some of the big wilderness, serious public land
Speaker 1: that might not have as good a habitat or food sources,
Speaker 1: then it's it's uncharacteristic to have non typical genes expressed.
Speaker 1: When they're younger, they don't have a lot of stickers, kickers,
Speaker 1: little forks. And so when you start seeing that in
Speaker 1: some of those areas that are kind of remote, you think, man,
Speaker 1: this could be a this could be an older box
Speaker 1: just because it's got some stickers and kickers that aren't
Speaker 1: that common and on those cleaner racks when they're younger,
Speaker 1: and so something like that too, or I'm really I like, like,
Speaker 1: I don't take a lot of I don't put a
Speaker 1: lot of credibility and that that same box is gonna
Speaker 1: go right back by that same rob. But it lets
Speaker 1: me noise in the area, and then I'm back down
Speaker 1: to hunting funnels and how can I get in and out?
Speaker 1: I think people can get wrapped up and Okay, he's
Speaker 1: got to be moving through here. But then you forced
Speaker 1: to stand location because um, there's really not a good
Speaker 1: spot to sat or you have to walk through that
Speaker 1: area and leave your scent when you could shoot him
Speaker 1: just as easy on a funnel nearby. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: this is kind of an interesting thing. I just realized
Speaker 1: we've been talking about patterning deer for like forty seven
Speaker 1: minutes give a take, and and we have almost not
Speaker 1: talked about trail cameras at all, Like it's been kind
Speaker 1: of referenced a little bit lately, but we haven't really
Speaker 1: hammered it yet. That's kind of incredible that we've talked
Speaker 1: for forty seven minutes and not gotten into cameras because
Speaker 1: so many people rely on cameras almost for their scouting
Speaker 1: and patterning. Um, so I'm glad that's actually been the
Speaker 1: case because I think it's important to point out to
Speaker 1: folks that patterning deer is not just a trail camera game. Right.
Speaker 1: There's there's all these other things. There's the observations. There's
Speaker 1: the history, there's what are gonna say, Well, yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what's interesting. You might have trail camp pictures from
Speaker 1: two or three years ago, but if you know that
Speaker 1: box around you, for whatever reason, you've had the historical
Speaker 1: movement and patterning, you just neem to always there to
Speaker 1: go and kill him. I was gonna mention though, is
Speaker 1: it's interesting you'll see uh, you know public land hunters
Speaker 1: that do something a certain way privately and hunters that
Speaker 1: do something and and I know, Mark, you've flunted a
Speaker 1: lot I'm privately and on public land, and I know
Speaker 1: you it's I know you know, it's darned hard on
Speaker 1: both for different reasons. It's interesting. I saw a mean
Speaker 1: going around where, you know, someone had eight camera locations
Speaker 1: on a forty acre property or a d acre property,
Speaker 1: and someone that public land hunts was saying, you know,
Speaker 1: you know something making fun of that kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's pattern this spot. This is gonna be difficult.
Speaker 1: And you know, eight cameras on forty acres, you know
Speaker 1: how many cameras ruin it for people? Meaning that they
Speaker 1: go back, they can't leave them alone. They're they're going
Speaker 1: in and checking them all the time, they're changing batteries,
Speaker 1: they have too many a box TM, it can spook
Speaker 1: them away. And it's really hard on forty acres because
Speaker 1: if you mess up on forty acres for a particular
Speaker 1: buck and you're using trail cameras and you're really pushing
Speaker 1: things too hard, you have nowhere else to go. You
Speaker 1: might not be back. You might not be back that
Speaker 1: season where I'm publicly and you can at least go
Speaker 1: a half mile away over here, quarter mile away over here.
Speaker 1: I mean how you can drive fifty miles away and
Speaker 1: hunt some other spot. And so I'm not saying it's
Speaker 1: easier on one day or the other. But I think
Speaker 1: it's funny that you know, traill cameras can be picked
Speaker 1: on a little bit um as it makes it easier.
Speaker 1: When the way a lot of people use them, I
Speaker 1: think it makes it harder for them. They know the
Speaker 1: bucks there um and but there's a certain percentage out
Speaker 1: there or it can really hurt their hunt. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: make a great point, and I guess that's you're doing
Speaker 1: a wonderful job of helping me as a host here,
Speaker 1: because that's a perfect segue to the next thing. I
Speaker 1: think we had to cover. How do we how do
Speaker 1: you recommend we use cameras two pattern deer and not
Speaker 1: do what you just said, which is educate the deer.
Speaker 1: Mess this up, make it harder than it has to be. UM,
Speaker 1: I know you've I've watched lots of videos. I've heard
Speaker 1: you talk about your your thought process behind placing cameras
Speaker 1: where you hunt, like right at your stand locations, which
Speaker 1: is another thing most people don't do. UM, could you
Speaker 1: talk a little about your location choices and then how
Speaker 1: you're doing that so that you get the data you
Speaker 1: need to pattern a deer without educating him. Sure, I've
Speaker 1: you know, and it's I really like, UM, And I
Speaker 1: do this out on public land where identify a natural
Speaker 1: scrape and a funnel that I want to hunt or
Speaker 1: want to know about. You know, it seems like it
Speaker 1: might be that X of movement between clear cuts away
Speaker 1: from people, lay the land, uh pinch point of something,
Speaker 1: and so you're you're putting a camera on a scrape.
Speaker 1: But I'm I'm using those cameras. I would say, my
Speaker 1: cameras are are within bow shot of my stand locations,
Speaker 1: and I'm doing that because I want to know effective
Speaker 1: that stand location is for one. UM, I like getting
Speaker 1: pictures at my stand locations. We use mock scrapes. But
Speaker 1: I what I'm doing with those cameras, and I'm making
Speaker 1: sure that they're not part of the picture, meaning that
Speaker 1: they're most of the time there are six ft high,
Speaker 1: or they're hidden back in a v meaning that um,
Speaker 1: there's covering on both sides, the profiles hidden. UM, it's
Speaker 1: just kind of like they're shining out in a cove
Speaker 1: and there's really not much of a reason for you
Speaker 1: to walk by. M C M. Notice some I'm using
Speaker 1: blackout cameras so that um or low glow, so you
Speaker 1: don't have this red glow UM. So that time you
Speaker 1: play them high, you place them on something typically that's wider,
Speaker 1: typically their profiles hidden. Then it becomes a non fact
Speaker 1: to the deer. And then I'm only changing that card
Speaker 1: when I actually hunt that stand, And it might be
Speaker 1: that I hunt a stand, and then on the way
Speaker 1: out in the evening, I know those deer feeding somewhere
Speaker 1: all night away from where I'm hunting, so I might
Speaker 1: change to other cards on the way back because it's
Speaker 1: a similar access route. So I'm not taking this eleven
Speaker 1: o'clock drive on the a t V to go out
Speaker 1: and change trail camera cards. I'm keeping the cameras hidden.
Speaker 1: And then what I really like about that is when
Speaker 1: we use a mox scrape and it's right at that location,
Speaker 1: a lot of times you have that buck come in,
Speaker 1: they're focusing on that mock scrape. They're they're literally staring
Speaker 1: at the scrape. They don't notice the camera, they don't
Speaker 1: know this us in the stand. And whether that's a
Speaker 1: natural scrape that you're hunting on public land or a
Speaker 1: mox scrape on private land, it's a really good tool.
Speaker 1: I mean even for younger hunters or inexperienced hunters where
Speaker 1: you can actually have take the focus away from them
Speaker 1: potentially moving in the tree and a deer looking up
Speaker 1: at them when they're really focusing on We see those
Speaker 1: and pons focus on those scrapes just as much as
Speaker 1: those those bucks that come through too. Yeah, kind where
Speaker 1: uses cameras? You know, I I use him at I
Speaker 1: like having him at the stand locations. And at the
Speaker 1: same time, you know, of course cellular cameras um are
Speaker 1: our big advantage, but it can can aggravate you because
Speaker 1: you're hunting one spot and last night Dylan and I
Speaker 1: were at one stand hunting and the buck were afters
Speaker 1: at another stand, and when he left that camera, I
Speaker 1: didn't even tell Dylan til later. We're both hoping each
Speaker 1: show up, obviously, but if he would have come our way,
Speaker 1: we've got another one or two pictures of them, and
Speaker 1: by him only giving us one picture, that means he
Speaker 1: turned left and went away from us. So it can
Speaker 1: be frustrating because you know, unless you make some giant
Speaker 1: loop or something active, god happens, he's not He's not
Speaker 1: coming our way, so or he's there and it's close
Speaker 1: to dark and he's not where you're at. I want
Speaker 1: to come back to the cell camera thing, but before that,
Speaker 1: I want to touch on the mock scrape thing a bit,
Speaker 1: because you you have a unique approach. You've done some
Speaker 1: great videos on it. So I definitely recommend folks that
Speaker 1: if if they hear about this and they're intrigued, they
Speaker 1: should go to your YouTube channel watch the videos. But
Speaker 1: could you give us the quick cliff notes on that again,
Speaker 1: just in case someone hasn't heard you talk about this
Speaker 1: in the past. How do you make these mock scrapes?
Speaker 1: It just seemed so they seem particularly effective for getting
Speaker 1: these deer to stop in front of that camera and
Speaker 1: give you that information you need, you know, for patterning
Speaker 1: or a shot. Well there, Yeah, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of fun and um you know, I kind of stumbled
Speaker 1: upon it because in the past there's people like Tonio
Speaker 1: la Pratt in southern Michigan, I would say late nineties,
Speaker 1: early two thousands. Um, there are other other individuals to um.
Speaker 1: I want to say bow hunting told the Wenzel brothers
Speaker 1: might have used this in the past two maybe that's
Speaker 1: where Tony got it from. But anyways, they're using a
Speaker 1: rope um and hanging up for um a branch And
Speaker 1: so I'd see these ropes in the early two thousands,
Speaker 1: and I'd go to start going to properties and I'd
Speaker 1: see I went to one property, they literally had five
Speaker 1: scrapes on two acres and they're all robe and a
Speaker 1: few of them are getting hit here and there, but
Speaker 1: nothing really that jumped out of here. And then I
Speaker 1: start seeing these. Some of my favorite natural scrapes I
Speaker 1: see on client properties are scouting in general for myself
Speaker 1: are our vines that are hanging down and it's just crazy.
Speaker 1: And some of the first scrapes I ever saw back
Speaker 1: in the eighties, back in Clarkston in Michigan, in that area.
Speaker 1: Now it's all deerwoods estates and subdivisions, but you had
Speaker 1: these noles back in the hardwoods. I didn't even know
Speaker 1: those scrapes where I had to show a guy out
Speaker 1: bigger from church, So what are these like these deer
Speaker 1: around here, like those are scrapes or making them under
Speaker 1: those vines and so anyways, I got the idea of
Speaker 1: just hanging those and who broke jackpine branches in the
Speaker 1: up and Michigan and then hanging those vines. And what
Speaker 1: I found was is that when you put a camera
Speaker 1: on them, we'd hang these vines and more of a
Speaker 1: deer trail area, not off to the side of the
Speaker 1: traditional scrape at the edge of the like at the
Speaker 1: edge of the field. We put it where they're coming
Speaker 1: in and out in the trail or on a funnel.
Speaker 1: And every year that walks by, because it's right in
Speaker 1: the trail, we hang him at waste time. Instead of
Speaker 1: a traditional looking branch, it's chest tie where a buck
Speaker 1: would mostly hit. So then when they come by and
Speaker 1: it's about waste tie, it's right in the middle of
Speaker 1: the trail, we have dose fawns and box leaving their
Speaker 1: scent on it, the preor oble to gland scent every
Speaker 1: time they come through. And so then to me, the
Speaker 1: more scent that included on that, the more deer hit it.
Speaker 1: It just becomes a part of their travel pattern. And
Speaker 1: I really strongly feel that. You know what, when you
Speaker 1: have a scrape like that and it's a vertical scrape
Speaker 1: paint over a branch where all deer can participate, then
Speaker 1: including phones, we have some really cool lots of footage
Speaker 1: of fawns coming in and dancing around the scrape, playing
Speaker 1: with it, going back. You can imagine this fall. It's
Speaker 1: not even two months old. They don't even know what
Speaker 1: all those smells are. Their tails are flickering, they're curious,
Speaker 1: they run around, they come back to it. But when
Speaker 1: every deer's leaving their scent there, you can take four
Speaker 1: or five trails Nario and narrow it down to one
Speaker 1: where that's where they're going to go. And so then
Speaker 1: we put a camera on it. What I find is
Speaker 1: during the summertime, well I'll have cameras on my cruising
Speaker 1: scrapes just to know when a buck comes through. They'll
Speaker 1: always tell you they're alive, you know, meaning that maybe
Speaker 1: they only come through once in July, a couple of
Speaker 1: times in August, couple of times in September, but they'll
Speaker 1: come through that that funnel where you expect to shoot
Speaker 1: him in the fall. And so all of a sudden
Speaker 1: he comes through. Anything. Man, that's that buck. I want,
Speaker 1: that's him, that's that target buck. And he's he's coming,
Speaker 1: he's licking at and then I think he likes all
Speaker 1: that smell. I' it's you know, we we can't comprehend
Speaker 1: their noses. You know, we go buy and smell bread.
Speaker 1: They go buy and smell the ingredients and approximately which
Speaker 1: one stronger than the other. So they're they're they're completely
Speaker 1: I mean, think about a beagle where they hit a
Speaker 1: track of a rabbit, no snow, no rain, no mud,
Speaker 1: and they know exactly in the moment which way to
Speaker 1: turn and follow that rabbit based purely on set. So
Speaker 1: their noses are so unique. So they go by and
Speaker 1: they small these liking branches and those that peri over
Speaker 1: the gland scent. To me, it's that accumulation of all
Speaker 1: those gear together, and so they're about waist high I
Speaker 1: hang roast those branches like jack pine up north vines
Speaker 1: down here. Um oak branches work really well. It's anything
Speaker 1: that traditionally gets rubbed quite a bit or scraped under
Speaker 1: hemlock in some areas well. Then I'm hanging that. Usually
Speaker 1: there are five to seven ft long. I'm hanging them
Speaker 1: from a rope a branch. Typically, if it's really open,
Speaker 1: say you're hanging it like in a two track area
Speaker 1: where there's a big hardwin on both sides, not a
Speaker 1: lot of branches. I might make that vine or branch
Speaker 1: more like eight feet long seven or nine ft, and
Speaker 1: then I'll put a rope um twelve feet up in
Speaker 1: the air or thirteen feet up, stand on the back
Speaker 1: of the tailgate of the truck, or use the steps
Speaker 1: on a from a ladder to get up a little
Speaker 1: bit on either side. And uh and so it looks
Speaker 1: more natural. You don't want to have this one ft
Speaker 1: piece of vine just there. I think that's unnatural to them.
Speaker 1: So a little bit longer when it's more open like that,
Speaker 1: but we're usually using three quarters of an inch to
Speaker 1: an inch. It seems like smaller will still attract them,
Speaker 1: but it's not as visible. But it'll break and then larger.
Speaker 1: At some point it's just too big, you know. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was a baseball bat hanging there. They might rub it,
Speaker 1: they might not, but it seems to be that sweet
Speaker 1: spot that we found about three quarters of an inch
Speaker 1: to an inch. We've had those scrapes last for five,
Speaker 1: six seven years before we've had to change them, and
Speaker 1: so it it's crazy. We have footage of box mature box,
Speaker 1: five six year old box that go up to those
Speaker 1: and after they leave their scent on it, they literally
Speaker 1: moved their antlers away from the scrape the licking branch
Speaker 1: and keep walking as if it's sacred or something. They
Speaker 1: just left their scent. It's a former communication and so
Speaker 1: it's really cool to watch the behavior of the box
Speaker 1: around there. You can you know, they can regressive for
Speaker 1: about ten days out of the year, maybe another week
Speaker 1: during the second roun, but other than that and might
Speaker 1: have some snap but for the most part, um they're
Speaker 1: leaving them alone, they leave their scent. They might play
Speaker 1: with them hard here and there during the peak of
Speaker 1: the rut or right at the pre rod or something,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, it's crazy to see the
Speaker 1: number of bucks we have that literally move their head
Speaker 1: away from it to walk around, and they know exactly,
Speaker 1: of course how wide their antlers are, just to not
Speaker 1: touch it with their antlers after they left their sun so. Um,
Speaker 1: we usually put them in definitely on a flat surface
Speaker 1: within shooting distance of the stand location. And I'll start
Speaker 1: those a lot of times in May, June, July, and
Speaker 1: cleared out three or four feet, kick it down door.
Speaker 1: I'm kicking out ruts and everything with my feet. Um.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'll actually pee on the scrape when I leave.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they don't, and and then we put a camera
Speaker 1: on it and see what happens. Yeah, it's interesting you.
Speaker 1: I think a key thing to point out is that
Speaker 1: you're saying that not only do these mock scrapes help
Speaker 1: you get the pictures to confirm you know there's deer here,
Speaker 1: but it's been at your experience. This is actually tightening
Speaker 1: the funnel of deer movements. So not only are you
Speaker 1: identifying when they're coming through more often because this camera
Speaker 1: location is so great, but it actually is a draw
Speaker 1: that takes what might have been four trails that buck
Speaker 1: might have possibly taken in an area, and now instead
Speaker 1: he's almost always taking this one. So it's it's giving
Speaker 1: me giving you grant great data, and then it's tightening
Speaker 1: and making the data coming through even more consistent because
Speaker 1: it's an attractive location. Um, So that's and two two
Speaker 1: things with that too, markets what's cools. We've had some
Speaker 1: mature box we've never had on a scrape, a scrape
Speaker 1: that's only two months old, and they'll literally will see
Speaker 1: them walking from it away with their head pointed right
Speaker 1: at their nose pointing at the scrape like they can
Speaker 1: smell it or see it at night they can smell it.
Speaker 1: They walk right to it and work it like they've
Speaker 1: been doing it all the time, and it's it's really cool.
Speaker 1: And I was just gonna mention now. The second cool
Speaker 1: thing is that's free except where we figured out I
Speaker 1: think it was likety cents for a parachute cord for
Speaker 1: ope usually on average, so it's next to nothing. We
Speaker 1: don't use any scent. But it really is cool how
Speaker 1: they'll see that from a long ways away and just
Speaker 1: come right into it like they've been, you know, first time.
Speaker 1: It seems like the first time anyway, So here's here's
Speaker 1: the next question. Then, though, what if someone's listening today
Speaker 1: on October or November one or something, and he hears
Speaker 1: this and he's like, oh wow, this sounds like a
Speaker 1: great way to get better trail cam data or or whatever.
Speaker 1: We've talked about the various benefits. Um, is there any
Speaker 1: way to use some portion of your mock scrape strategy
Speaker 1: still at this point or is it too late? I mean,
Speaker 1: what's your what's how would you approach this if you
Speaker 1: were starting now, like you're on a weeklong rut caastion
Speaker 1: and you don't have these places all set up, but
Speaker 1: you've got four cameras in your truck, and you showed
Speaker 1: up at your lease with a seven day period ahead
Speaker 1: of you, and you're thinking, man, I gotta get some intel,
Speaker 1: and maybe for whatever reason you don't have stuff out already.
Speaker 1: Is there some way to put up new mock scrapes
Speaker 1: right now, put your cameras on and still get some
Speaker 1: available intel for the next few days or is it
Speaker 1: too late for all that? Yeah? Definitely, and especially if
Speaker 1: you're putting cameras out already. To me, the disturbance of
Speaker 1: putting a camera out, you might as well hang a
Speaker 1: mox scrape if you can, you know, especially if it's
Speaker 1: off the branch um. We're cutting a fresh vine or
Speaker 1: a fresh stick, trying not to put your handprint down there.
Speaker 1: That can stay there for a while, but we've had
Speaker 1: deer hit it within a day even with doing that.
Speaker 1: And then we're putting it right over a trail fare
Speaker 1: we expect to shoot a deer hou we're putting it
Speaker 1: in shooting distance from that stand. So if you're going
Speaker 1: in to either do a hanging hunt or put a
Speaker 1: trail camera out, then you might as well throw a
Speaker 1: mock scrape out there, especially if it's before a lot
Speaker 1: of rain, you know, true, if it's if it's moist
Speaker 1: or damp out, then that's I used to warn beetles
Speaker 1: a lot well that was that was a great scenting
Speaker 1: condition for the dogs. It was damp, wet, snow wet ground.
Speaker 1: But when it becomes saturated, there's a lot of rain
Speaker 1: that washes sent away. So there's that tipping point. So
Speaker 1: if you see that there's really good in coming, what
Speaker 1: a great time to go out right before that rain
Speaker 1: and put your mock scrapes out and make them look natural.
Speaker 1: Of course, that's why we're using longer vines, longer branches.
Speaker 1: We always recommend at least five to six feet, but
Speaker 1: when it's an open you know, seven eight feet and
Speaker 1: uh about waist high right in the center of the trail.
Speaker 1: Just scratch up a big area. If I scratch up
Speaker 1: a big area of the stick, I throw the stick
Speaker 1: in the brusher. I take it out with me. If
Speaker 1: I clear any branches for that camera, I take those
Speaker 1: out with me. Try to use the saw grab with
Speaker 1: one hand, cut with the other. But UM definitely can
Speaker 1: get those out now. If you're going back into your
Speaker 1: favorite run stand in the morning and you haven't been
Speaker 1: there all year, and you have high hopes and you're
Speaker 1: getting into that stand, I wouldn't take the time to
Speaker 1: go put a mock scrape in that situation. But there's
Speaker 1: definitely whether it's on the edge of a food source,
Speaker 1: or you have rain coming, or it's in an area
Speaker 1: that's well away from betting your feet and you can
Speaker 1: get into on the side of that movement. Add that
Speaker 1: make an addition real quick, not leave a lot of
Speaker 1: scent behind. UM. I would say that in most locations,
Speaker 1: you'd say about those areas you could you could add
Speaker 1: a mock straight right now and get us out of that.
Speaker 1: If you're careful. That raises another question when you bring
Speaker 1: up this idea of you know, going into a spot
Speaker 1: to hang a camera, and in my mind, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about the impact you're making to hang that camera. And
Speaker 1: one of the you know, one of the things you
Speaker 1: talk a lot about is in a trail camera strategy,
Speaker 1: you know, not letting those cameras hurt you by going
Speaker 1: in to change batteries or SD cards or whatever too
Speaker 1: often or at the wrong times. And that's why you
Speaker 1: put these at your hunt locations and only check them
Speaker 1: when you're gonna hunt. But you mentioned this earlier. Cell
Speaker 1: cameras have changed the game. How do you utilize cell
Speaker 1: cameras two pattern deer differently than with traditional cameras, if
Speaker 1: at all? Do you play them in different kinds of places?
Speaker 1: Do you value that data differently? Is there anything different
Speaker 1: with your cell cam tactics versus traditional Um, I'd say, boy, there,
Speaker 1: I think with the cell cameras the only way it'd
Speaker 1: be a little bit different as I have a tendency
Speaker 1: to place still cell cameras in locations where I can't
Speaker 1: where I'm I'm not going to walk by, I'm only
Speaker 1: going to go in there and hunt that location. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty remote. We have one cell camera here in
Speaker 1: Minnesota that's in a spot where we just can't hunt,
Speaker 1: and so we pack it with fresh batteries before the
Speaker 1: season begins and let it ride and it's on a
Speaker 1: natural vine scrape that's hanging down and uh so I
Speaker 1: just I have that there just because it's good for inventory.
Speaker 1: It's a cool spot. In fact, Mark you were there
Speaker 1: because I threw a track on the side by side
Speaker 1: right down there. It was down there, that exact location.
Speaker 1: I we threw a track. I threw a track, Mark
Speaker 1: and Dylan just just watched me, uh being idiot. But anyways,
Speaker 1: but it was we had fun. But uh but regardless
Speaker 1: of it was, Um, that's the one spot down there.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, I'm putting my cell cameras
Speaker 1: in a little bit more invasive areas where it be
Speaker 1: harder for me to change batteries and cards. But overall, um,
Speaker 1: it might be that you know, you have six cameras
Speaker 1: three or cell camera three or not, you have nine
Speaker 1: cameras three or cell cameras six or not or four
Speaker 1: or five, whatever it is, I put every other one then,
Speaker 1: so I'm using them purely for inventory. I just want
Speaker 1: to know more immediate. Obviously, you can make hunting decisions
Speaker 1: more immediately. UM like that, So are a little bit
Speaker 1: different than a regular cam. UM. But the regular cam
Speaker 1: two is we get to see that buck behavior. We
Speaker 1: get to see a little bit clearer picture of exactly
Speaker 1: where they're coming from and going to. We get to
Speaker 1: see that behavior around the mock scrape it else if
Speaker 1: they're being really aggressive or not, I can tell you
Speaker 1: about the personality of a book a little bit differently. UM.
Speaker 1: You might have one that comes in super aggressive. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine going out and sitting that evening and using
Speaker 1: a grun call or something. He might come right into
Speaker 1: it because he's aggressive. Or you may have one that
Speaker 1: seems super shy and comes in and just barely touches it,
Speaker 1: kind of as you can tell he's timid. You can
Speaker 1: see those things with video on our regular trail cameras, UM,
Speaker 1: where we get a fifteen second, ten second or twenty
Speaker 1: second clip, or a cell camera, you can't see some
Speaker 1: of those behaviors. So that's why I still like both. Um.
Speaker 1: They're both both fun, and I think the differences. You know,
Speaker 1: a cell camera might use it a little bit more
Speaker 1: of an invasive spot. Yeah, so here's a scenario that
Speaker 1: I think has popped up more often now. Well, absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's popping up more often now that people have cell cameras.
Speaker 1: There's you know, let's say we're in the season and
Speaker 1: we have this plan. Um, we have a pattern that
Speaker 1: we've been kind of working on based on all these
Speaker 1: things that you and I have been talking about. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's a window when we know he traditionally starts to daylight,
Speaker 1: and we've got some stuff set up to hunt there,
Speaker 1: and so we're kind of waiting for that window to
Speaker 1: show up, or or the right conditions to appear, whatever
Speaker 1: might be. But what happens if he daylights all of
Speaker 1: a sudden you get a daylight photo of him and
Speaker 1: you weren't expecting it. Some would you How do you
Speaker 1: value a single daylight photo? Do you say, oh, he
Speaker 1: daylight last night, so immediately the next day you gotta
Speaker 1: go in there and try to hunt him the next morning,
Speaker 1: the next evening. Or if not that, what how do
Speaker 1: you use that or what do you need to see
Speaker 1: an addition to the simple daylight activity to move Yeah.
Speaker 1: I really like that strategy because again it goes back
Speaker 1: to the y question. Um. For example, sometimes we'll get
Speaker 1: a daylight picture of a buck and he's hurrying through
Speaker 1: and it's on Saturday at nine o'clock and we're next
Speaker 1: to public land or next to our property. There it
Speaker 1: might be someone honey invasively. And I'm not saying he's
Speaker 1: not coming back, but why is it they are at
Speaker 1: that time? Or maybe this is a traditional time. You're
Speaker 1: waiting every day from the move in, and then when
Speaker 1: he moves in and you get that daylight picture. Well,
Speaker 1: if it's daylight, let's say he's going to a spot
Speaker 1: and it's um six forty in the morning, it gets
Speaker 1: shooting light at five to seven, so fifteen minutes later
Speaker 1: may mean he didn't have enough time to cross a
Speaker 1: big field or open hardwoods to get back home. So
Speaker 1: then you ask what betting areas in? And isn't it
Speaker 1: you know I have a stand here, I have stand there.
Speaker 1: It's again, it's kind of like you went into this
Speaker 1: betting area you're about because you don't think he could
Speaker 1: go anywhere else in that time frame. He's probably pretty
Speaker 1: close because he's going to bed soon and uh, and
Speaker 1: then you're going in and saying, well, I have this
Speaker 1: camera for the or this stand for this win? Did
Speaker 1: this stand for this win? You're making that game time
Speaker 1: decision no different than UM. You know, he comes out
Speaker 1: of a certain area in the evening, it's daylight, and
Speaker 1: you think, dang it, that buck was in that betting are.
Speaker 1: He had to be because he and move where where
Speaker 1: he came out of. There's no way he could have
Speaker 1: moved that far to get to that location from any
Speaker 1: other direction. He had to be betting there. Well, then
Speaker 1: as he dived in bed there the next morning, there's
Speaker 1: a good chance it's not, but it's you know, maybe
Speaker 1: chance for twenty it's good chance whatever it is. So
Speaker 1: then if you have a stand that you can take appropriate,
Speaker 1: you know. And that goes back to I don't it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter to me what way the winds blowing, other
Speaker 1: than I have a stand for this wind. It's on
Speaker 1: the edge of that betting here, I'm gonna go on it,
Speaker 1: you know, and make that decision. That and so that's
Speaker 1: how I use that, UM like a cell camera to
Speaker 1: that effect. UM that that But you know, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think of, trying to think of I've had stands
Speaker 1: where or sits or locations I've funted specifically for that.
Speaker 1: It always it always seems like when I go in
Speaker 1: there that time, that I don't shoot him, I end
Speaker 1: up shooting the next day or the next day on
Speaker 1: a different stand nearby, a on a funnel, just kind
Speaker 1: of looking at it like well, I'll hunt here and
Speaker 1: then i'll hunt over there with the wind, and and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden you shoot him. And it
Speaker 1: was on a on a spot. You didn't even have
Speaker 1: a picture of him. You just knew he was home,
Speaker 1: or he knew he's back on your your property. You
Speaker 1: said kind of along these lines. You said something earlier
Speaker 1: about how you know when you know a bus in
Speaker 1: the area, either with the cell camera picture that tells
Speaker 1: you he's here, or a historical trend that tells you what,
Speaker 1: I know he's in this zone during a five day
Speaker 1: window or something. You've you've said this twice, I think
Speaker 1: where you say you'll take two or three stabs at
Speaker 1: him and kind of like you know, poke around, take
Speaker 1: two or three stabbs, poke around. Do you typically do
Speaker 1: like a cluster of sits like that? Is that a
Speaker 1: thing like you're doing on purpose and you're not doing
Speaker 1: an isolated hunt? If you if you think he's in
Speaker 1: the area right now, you're gonna actually say, well, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna hunt him three days or two days, so you
Speaker 1: you you poke around several options so that eventually one
Speaker 1: of those three times you intercept him. Is that Is that?
Speaker 1: Am I reading that right? Is that on purpose? Or yes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's not necessarily on purpose, just more opportunity. Where typically
Speaker 1: I'm clustering stands. So if it's good enough for one stand,
Speaker 1: it's good enough for two or three in this area
Speaker 1: this five or ten acres, and so I can come
Speaker 1: into this stand from this angle, and then I can
Speaker 1: come into the east two from another angle. Out of
Speaker 1: those two ones of morning stand, one's an evening stand.
Speaker 1: For these reasons, um or or the winds, for example,
Speaker 1: especially around here with the thermals, I can use this
Speaker 1: with a um let's say a south wind, and then
Speaker 1: because I'm on the side of this ridge, it'll trend
Speaker 1: downwards at night, so I can use that. But if
Speaker 1: I use that that stand in the morning with the
Speaker 1: south wind, it's gonna stay up top on the ridge
Speaker 1: where the deer are and all. If that makes sense.
Speaker 1: But we'll we'll have stands like that that. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: one's better towards morning. This one's better than evening towards evening,
Speaker 1: and so I might have two or three stands in
Speaker 1: that spot. And so then I'll look at Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm getting northwest wind, cold front winds. They're turning westerly
Speaker 1: to southwest, and then it's going back to a stable
Speaker 1: wind for three days of the south southeast. And so
Speaker 1: they're right there. I know this bucks in the area,
Speaker 1: and I can go in and hunt them on northwest
Speaker 1: wind here in the morning, hunting on a southeast wind here,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna southwest morning stand coming in from this one.
Speaker 1: And so you're kind of chipping away at them, and
Speaker 1: each one to me because you might find the you know,
Speaker 1: if let's say you have cameras and you pulled cards later,
Speaker 1: he walked by two out of three of those stands.
Speaker 1: Almost every day you're in daylight, it's just a matter off.
Speaker 1: You're making the smart decision of which I wanted to
Speaker 1: hunt by wind, not wrapping yourself up too much that
Speaker 1: I gotta hunt this standard that stand, just looking at
Speaker 1: more methodically that you're you're hunting those clusters stands by opportunity.
Speaker 1: You can get in and out pretty low impact. You're
Speaker 1: not putting one stand in the center of that spot
Speaker 1: and going all in for broke, because then you have
Speaker 1: a lot of you have more probably more chance you
Speaker 1: spook them than not. And now you're now you're done
Speaker 1: for that buck. So I'd rather lightly take a jobs here,
Speaker 1: take a job there, and uh, overall your your your
Speaker 1: odds are really good. Um, you know you're taking a
Speaker 1: job every time job instead of going off for broke
Speaker 1: at losing them. If if the wind is the same,
Speaker 1: let's say over a three day period and you've you've
Speaker 1: determined you want to start taking some shots, you you
Speaker 1: just describe a situation there where you bounce from this
Speaker 1: stand to one little over to one that's a little over.
Speaker 1: Is there ever scenario where you'll have that same wind
Speaker 1: and you've got three days with decent conditions, you know
Speaker 1: he's in the zone. Where is there a scenario where
Speaker 1: you say, actually, just staying in the one spot and
Speaker 1: hunting all three days in that same spot is the
Speaker 1: right approach because you know that he might not show today,
Speaker 1: but I know within the next three days he's eventually
Speaker 1: going to come through here because I have this pattern.
Speaker 1: Is that ever I think it depends on the stand location.
Speaker 1: So some stands are more invasive than others. Um where
Speaker 1: you know, getting down here, it's a little risky getting
Speaker 1: in or out, and so in that case you might
Speaker 1: you might take a different approach where, yeah, you have
Speaker 1: this cluster stands here, you go in there and hunt it.
Speaker 1: But it was pretty invasive. Maybe even spooked the dough
Speaker 1: or fallen or something else. You know something that ran
Speaker 1: um a couple of dolls that come in a young buck.
Speaker 1: Do you think, man, I might have buggered this area up.
Speaker 1: So instead of just going back and sitting in there,
Speaker 1: I'd rather go on a an adjacent stand that might
Speaker 1: be two hundred yards away. Three hundred yards. Well, if
Speaker 1: I spooked him here maybe and it was light, meaning
Speaker 1: like I didn't spook camp, I spooked another deer, kind
Speaker 1: of buggered up that area, Maybe I'll go two hundred
Speaker 1: yards over there to that betting area, the back side
Speaker 1: of that betting area, because I can hunt with that
Speaker 1: same wind, different approach, and he'll be none the wiser.
Speaker 1: So if I spooked him in this location, he'll probably
Speaker 1: be over there. I had a spot I went in
Speaker 1: this year, and I've hunted to stand five times. It's
Speaker 1: actually a blind down the bottom where we get away
Speaker 1: with Once we're there, we get away of northerly winds.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool spot. Usually go down there and I
Speaker 1: haven't spooked any deer, and so I went down there
Speaker 1: this time, and sure enough there's a doop high spooked him.
Speaker 1: There was um, a really nice the tur buck down
Speaker 1: in the draw to my right, about sixty yards away.
Speaker 1: I spooked to me, went right up the other side,
Speaker 1: watched them. I think I know what buck it was.
Speaker 1: And then I got down to the blind and there's
Speaker 1: a deer blowing at me on the other side. Well,
Speaker 1: the very next night, that main buck I was after,
Speaker 1: and this is that was a bad one. That was
Speaker 1: really bad for for six for me. I don't normally
Speaker 1: spook a lot like that, so it was really bothered me.
Speaker 1: I just looked at like, I'm just gonna relax here
Speaker 1: in the blind and have a nice night. And I
Speaker 1: didn't see any deer and um, but the very next night,
Speaker 1: UM on a spot about two hundred fifty yards away,
Speaker 1: on a water hole that box names bowl. He showed
Speaker 1: up on that water hole, which happened to be I
Speaker 1: think the fifteenth of her sixteenth of October, So it
Speaker 1: wasn't that long ago sixteenth. He was on the sixteenth
Speaker 1: there where I buggered him up on the fifteen and
Speaker 1: so baby buggered him up, but it kind of and
Speaker 1: then that was the last time we saw him there, Dylan,
Speaker 1: I said, there last night, we didn't see him. We
Speaker 1: haven't had any other trill Camp pictures of him there.
Speaker 1: We haven't seen him around any any other location. So
Speaker 1: it makes you wonder that bump him there. And and
Speaker 1: then I've had opportunities like that where you know, if
Speaker 1: I would have been thinking and it was the right wind,
Speaker 1: maybe I could have gone over and hunted that adjacent standing.
Speaker 1: That would have been a good play. So you're not
Speaker 1: forcing it in the same spot, especially being spook, But
Speaker 1: then you have those other stands red going, you know,
Speaker 1: spook anything you feel really good about your act, and
Speaker 1: that's what he kind of goes back. You get back.
Speaker 1: If you're hunting with some somebody's you get back, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's cool to talk about what you saw,
Speaker 1: But what did you spook? You know, that's a really
Speaker 1: good question, is what did you spook? Where did they go?
Speaker 1: Where'd they run? And Uh, And that's often it is
Speaker 1: just as important as as what what you saw in
Speaker 1: an area. But if you get in and out really
Speaker 1: clean and you feel good about it, I definitely humped
Speaker 1: that stand three days in a row if it's the
Speaker 1: same wind. So it really really depends on the stand,
Speaker 1: location of sets, what happened on the set. Uh. This
Speaker 1: whole idea of what did you spook? Brings to mind
Speaker 1: another kind of situation I'm often and where I'm thinking about,
Speaker 1: you know, usually not always, but usually you have to
Speaker 1: give up something, you have to sacrifice something like every
Speaker 1: time you take a hunt, you're always there's always the
Speaker 1: risk of educating deer. There's always the risk of your win,
Speaker 1: your winds gonna blow somewhere, right, there's always something. Um,
Speaker 1: what is the scenario when you are building out a
Speaker 1: pattern and figuring out where you want to take a
Speaker 1: stab at and when you want to take it a
Speaker 1: stab at a deer? What's the scenario the data point
Speaker 1: or set of data points that you would be willing
Speaker 1: to like swing for the fences knowing that you're going
Speaker 1: to have a high impact, Like it's a spot that
Speaker 1: it's gonna some deer will know you're there. You have
Speaker 1: to push into the interior. You have to go into
Speaker 1: a spot that's tough and in some reason or way,
Speaker 1: what do you need to see to make you confident
Speaker 1: in that. What are the pieces of data or circumstances
Speaker 1: where you're willing to do that. It's more timing, So
Speaker 1: I wouldn't do that, UM for a general set or strategy,
Speaker 1: meaning that I think a box in there, summon to go.
Speaker 1: Do you know I'm gonna go sit in a standard
Speaker 1: I know that's there or whatever and take a chance. Um.
Speaker 1: I would look at like, um, it's I have nine
Speaker 1: days of rutcation since the last two or three days. Um,
Speaker 1: I know the spot is in this betting room in
Speaker 1: our bedroom. I can go do a hanging hunt. It's
Speaker 1: going to be a little bit invasive or risky, um,
Speaker 1: and I'll go kind of off for broken go in.
Speaker 1: So it'd be more of a timing where, um, I'm
Speaker 1: there for it's October and I'm not coming back until
Speaker 1: the sixth of November. I can afford to be a
Speaker 1: little risky because I have three weeks of forgiveness for
Speaker 1: the local deer heard. Um, So I'm looking at it
Speaker 1: more like that, not that this is an actual option
Speaker 1: on the table. For me, it's I don't want to
Speaker 1: be risky like that. I want to live to hunt
Speaker 1: another day. Kind of going back to the private land thing,
Speaker 1: where on private land it doesn't matter if you have
Speaker 1: five hundred acres two acres a D forty five. If
Speaker 1: you make mistakes, you can really mess up that property.
Speaker 1: Where public land I can just go somewhere else. So
Speaker 1: public lands a different story. There were I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be more invasive when I know my time is
Speaker 1: limited and running out um on a on a private land.
Speaker 1: Personal public land, on the other hand, that's a little
Speaker 1: bit different because if you're scouting public land a lot
Speaker 1: and you know you know several good spots, and you
Speaker 1: know you might have several good bucks that you're familiar with,
Speaker 1: or or maybe good spots that have a good box.
Speaker 1: Maybe you don't even know what bucks are in there.
Speaker 1: Then I can go in the morning and you're looking
Speaker 1: at like man in those public land hunts, you might
Speaker 1: have be able to afford to let a spot just
Speaker 1: mature all season, and you go in there at the
Speaker 1: perfect time in early November. You might want to hit
Speaker 1: that hard in early October, you might want to hit
Speaker 1: it again. You might have more pressure, so do are
Speaker 1: being moved around a little bit more, and so public
Speaker 1: plan is different. I would be a little bit more aggressive.
Speaker 1: And then and then you know, of course you have
Speaker 1: some of the areas where you might have a small
Speaker 1: parcels surrounded by agg and some of the big buck
Speaker 1: rich areas Kansas, Kentucky, I will western Illinois and you
Speaker 1: look at like, I know this area always holds mature box.
Speaker 1: You go in there and you spoke a buck out, Well,
Speaker 1: another one just takes this place in the next two
Speaker 1: or four days. I don't have those areas to hunt,
Speaker 1: but there are areas like that. Then you can be
Speaker 1: aggressive too. You can go in there and so so
Speaker 1: again kind of back to the y when. Um, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of different conditions. But and for me personally
Speaker 1: my general hunting, I don't push I don't push it
Speaker 1: or take chances, because, um, they'll have a devastating effect
Speaker 1: on the property so much so that even when we
Speaker 1: go get deer, we go get them after dark, if
Speaker 1: if it's cold enough, and I shoot a buck and
Speaker 1: I had them on the ground during gun season, Um,
Speaker 1: even both season and you went into a certain betting area. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's nine o'clock in the morning. If I can
Speaker 1: sneak out, I will, If not, I'll stay there until dark.
Speaker 1: We'll go in there with leave the machine running voices low.
Speaker 1: You're just trying to do anything you can on that
Speaker 1: privately and not to spook here and and so lope,
Speaker 1: that makes sense, you know. I think there's a case
Speaker 1: to be aggressive, but not as a general strategy unless
Speaker 1: you're on public land. But it's completely different. But then
Speaker 1: you might ask some of those areas that you know
Speaker 1: it's your back back to our public land or this
Speaker 1: is where you go hunt public land in Michigan, Well
Speaker 1: you might want to look at it like, you know,
Speaker 1: you're going in a wage you're not seeing a lot
Speaker 1: of other hunters that you can almost look at it
Speaker 1: like you're managing that area as if it was a
Speaker 1: big private land chunk. Yeah, yeah, that that does make
Speaker 1: sense for sure. I want to I want to start
Speaker 1: tying the ball in this and wrapping it up so
Speaker 1: you can get out and get your packing ready for
Speaker 1: your big trip. Um. So just a couple of quick
Speaker 1: last questions. One thing that's that's more of a general
Speaker 1: question but I have forgotten to ask you about it.
Speaker 1: You know, we've talked through the sign that you're seeing.
Speaker 1: We've talked through the historical trends that you're observing and
Speaker 1: keeping tabs of. We've talked through how you're getting pictures
Speaker 1: of these deer and how that helps you pattern them.
Speaker 1: But what we haven't touched on is is how do
Speaker 1: you actually actually keep track of all this data and
Speaker 1: organize it? Do you do you write any of this
Speaker 1: stuff down in the journal? Do you have a spreadsheet
Speaker 1: or anything where you track deer sightings and observations or
Speaker 1: daylight photos or anything. Do you have a way you
Speaker 1: organize your photos on your computer? Is there anything like
Speaker 1: that that helps you keep track and analyze all this stuff?
Speaker 1: Mark this is gonna be, um, not helpful to your listeners.
Speaker 1: And I'll and I'll say this, um uh, my memory
Speaker 1: is really good. Um where I remember certain box, certain
Speaker 1: times of the year, leaves or no leaves, early season,
Speaker 1: late season, morning evening there in the day. Those those
Speaker 1: things really stick out, stick out the sign that goes
Speaker 1: with it. I see it like a big puzzle in
Speaker 1: my head. And it's kind of like when I go
Speaker 1: to a client property there's client party. I could just
Speaker 1: about redraw my first property. I went to drew it
Speaker 1: on graph paper with a pencil and ruler back at
Speaker 1: oh five in the eastern side of the up. And
Speaker 1: there's things like that that stick in my head. I
Speaker 1: would read a history book in high school and get
Speaker 1: to the end of the page and after re read it,
Speaker 1: I don't even know what I just read. And Hunting
Speaker 1: magazine I can tell you, and I bet you this
Speaker 1: same way. I can tell you just about to the
Speaker 1: page number where a certain ad was on a Field
Speaker 1: and Stream magazine when I was ten, and so like
Speaker 1: it doesn't help because I don't keep journals. I don't um,
Speaker 1: you know, use any fancy software. We had some software
Speaker 1: back in the day for keeping track of boxing where
Speaker 1: they were and it wasn't that it was a bad software.
Speaker 1: Is this that for me? Well, you know me, with
Speaker 1: like sponsors, partners, products, I don't use them unless I
Speaker 1: don't I don't partner with somebody unless I'm gonna use
Speaker 1: the product. And and we don't have like product days
Speaker 1: where we just go out and take videos of a
Speaker 1: bunch of sponsored stuff. We we actually use it. And
Speaker 1: so if I'm not going to use it like that
Speaker 1: data collection for Carol Camera. Then it wasn't a good
Speaker 1: partner to have. And so it doesn't matter how much
Speaker 1: money they give me, I'm not gonna do it. Um.
Speaker 1: So that was kind of it's it is bad for me. Um.
Speaker 1: If I had to organize it in my head, it
Speaker 1: would be certain colors or letters for certain bocks, and
Speaker 1: where I've had pictures of them in the past, I'd
Speaker 1: probably change the color is something I thought about in
Speaker 1: the past to be cool to do. But I'd probably
Speaker 1: changed the color to the frequency. So it was red,
Speaker 1: he's there all the time. If it's yellow, he's not
Speaker 1: there that much. If it's green. You know, I'd have
Speaker 1: different colors so that I could look at a map
Speaker 1: and see those hot spots of where that buck would
Speaker 1: be the most. But it's kind of like I already
Speaker 1: had those in my head where he's at. And then
Speaker 1: it comes back down to that cluster stands in this
Speaker 1: thirty acres or this edge, And if I know he's
Speaker 1: in that thirty acres, I'm gonna chip away at him
Speaker 1: on the outside with the right wind, and they'll stands.
Speaker 1: And it's it's amazing how if you it's the little things.
Speaker 1: If you're if you're being smart how you hunt, you're
Speaker 1: not making a lot of noise, you're blending into the woods. Um,
Speaker 1: you can even get away with a little bit less
Speaker 1: strategy and still be very consistent on shooting those target
Speaker 1: box just because you're not buggering them out and you're
Speaker 1: hunting safe and you're making smart decisions on when to
Speaker 1: go in. Yeah. Yeah, well so yeah, Like I said,
Speaker 1: it's kind of gonna help your listeners. So, but it's
Speaker 1: just it's kind of um. I think we can get
Speaker 1: so bogged down in those details. It's information overload. I'm
Speaker 1: the type of personality that I keep those in my head.
Speaker 1: If I wrote them down and made charts or graphs,
Speaker 1: to me, it would almost take the fun out of it.
Speaker 1: But that's me. That's just my personality. I'd rather spend
Speaker 1: more time scouting or having friends is over setting around
Speaker 1: the fire. I don't know, you know, it's more um.
Speaker 1: To some people, that's really cool, you know, like they
Speaker 1: love doing that. I don't blame I have a friend Tim.
Speaker 1: He records and he's a really close friend of mine
Speaker 1: up in the up and Michigan, up in Market Michigan.
Speaker 1: But Tim keeps a journal and he records literally the weather,
Speaker 1: the movement, how many hunters around the land, what deer
Speaker 1: he saw, where they came from, and and imagine the
Speaker 1: history that he could look back on twenty years from now,
Speaker 1: thirty years his grandkids. So you know, I'm missing out
Speaker 1: on some of that stuff. I know, well, I can
Speaker 1: tell you as one of those people, as one of
Speaker 1: those crazy people, sometimes it ken lead to some stress
Speaker 1: and over analysis. So there's pros and towns. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's where yeah, there's already. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's we're both really busy with what we do. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like you gotta you getta balance what uh
Speaker 1: you make a priority and what you don't. It's not
Speaker 1: that you don't have time, it's as you spend your
Speaker 1: time on almost a list of priorities, which you podcast.
Speaker 1: You know, like you said, we're getting ready to going.
Speaker 1: But I always, I always love talking to you. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of like when Mark Kenyon calls, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do a podcast today. You know, we get
Speaker 1: request for podcasts all the time, but I've always enjoyed
Speaker 1: the history with you and and talking about this stuff,
Speaker 1: because um, it always leads this down a rabbit hole
Speaker 1: of good rabbit hole of um a lot of detail
Speaker 1: and strategy that some people either gloss over or they
Speaker 1: just don't care to talk about or really relate to. Yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I I really really really appreciate you taking the time
Speaker 1: to do this, and uh and I too really enjoy
Speaker 1: how we can geek out and get into this level stuff.
Speaker 1: So let's just do one last question and then get
Speaker 1: you out the door. If if you had to right down,
Speaker 1: like if I had a stone tablet in front of you,
Speaker 1: like a big chunk of granite, and I gave you
Speaker 1: big old piece of metal you could scrape, you could
Speaker 1: engrave some words into this stone tablet, and I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, Jeff, right for me, your top three rules
Speaker 1: for patterning Bucks. You can write these things in stone
Speaker 1: and everyone will see for the rest of time. Jeff
Speaker 1: sturgises Keys to patterning Bucks. You've got three things you're
Speaker 1: gonna write on this stone tablet. We're gonna stick it
Speaker 1: on top of a mountain, and every deer hunter in
Speaker 1: Wisconsin and Minnesota has got to make a pilgrimage to
Speaker 1: it and see this to help them kill deer in
Speaker 1: the future and many other states as well. What would
Speaker 1: you engrave on that stone tablet Jeff Three? Three main rules.
Speaker 1: I put an asterisk down the bottom. Mark Kennion only
Speaker 1: allowed me three. But anyways, I'll think of things tomorrow
Speaker 1: when I'm driving to where we're on. It's gonna be
Speaker 1: But um, I know the one of the first things
Speaker 1: is look in the past almost more than you look
Speaker 1: in the future. What I mean by that is look
Speaker 1: for historical sign look for historical presence. Um you're looking
Speaker 1: for this historical patterns. Those historical patterns might be a
Speaker 1: Bux you knew, or it might be in a new area,
Speaker 1: and you're finding different ages of robs and the presence
Speaker 1: of scrapes, and knowing that multiple bucks have used this
Speaker 1: over a number of years. And so I think sometimes
Speaker 1: we look forward so much and we think we're planning
Speaker 1: all these great making these great strategies, and we forget
Speaker 1: about all this stuff that's been there for two or
Speaker 1: three years behind us. The second one of the things,
Speaker 1: just these are three things that popped into my head
Speaker 1: is the second thing is really, um, learn to hunt
Speaker 1: like a predator. And one of the ways to do that,
Speaker 1: And I know this sounds corny, is to really imagine
Speaker 1: the deer head guns? You know, would you would you
Speaker 1: use that stand whether its noise or or stick out?
Speaker 1: Would you use that stand if the deer had a
Speaker 1: gun and doesn't allow you to hide? Are you really hiding? Um?
Speaker 1: Would you sit in that area and take that chance
Speaker 1: around that deer? If that deer could shoot you if
Speaker 1: a knew you were there? Um? Your approach in and out?
Speaker 1: How how would you hunt? Different? If you had to
Speaker 1: be more like a sniper on a hill? How would
Speaker 1: you how would you ambush? I think about a mountline
Speaker 1: or a cat sitting on a ledge and the unsuspecting
Speaker 1: prey that goes by. I think that's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: That's the way I like to hunt. The other guys
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania they made fun of us from Michigan for
Speaker 1: coming out and sitting they call the sitters and where
Speaker 1: they like to walk and still hunt and and they
Speaker 1: shot bucks too. So it was just that's how I like.
Speaker 1: I like to be blend into the woods, be a
Speaker 1: part of the woods, and then you get to kind
Speaker 1: of soak in everything to you're not an obtrusive, unwanted guest.
Speaker 1: You're you're part of the woods, and then you can
Speaker 1: to me, you can enjoy it more. So you know,
Speaker 1: first of all, look look in the past. Second, really blend,
Speaker 1: and then third when you do choose to hunt, really
Speaker 1: choose to hunt by um picking the conditions. There's something
Speaker 1: that I had to do in the early nineties because
Speaker 1: I had two weeks vacation, I could take a half
Speaker 1: day off of the time, and and I didn't have
Speaker 1: And then when it got a two kids in the
Speaker 1: early two thousand's, I had to hunt for two or
Speaker 1: three days at a time, So I had to pick
Speaker 1: my days. I was. I was lucky as it got later,
Speaker 1: I was a real estate appraiser for eleven years on
Speaker 1: my own business. So I kind of slant my hunts
Speaker 1: towards the good weather and the good days where I
Speaker 1: thought dear would move. And so that's been a gift
Speaker 1: to me to be able to do that, because it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter like it's a weekend, you have wh I
Speaker 1: could take a Friday or a Monday. We'll just slant
Speaker 1: it towards the best weather days. At the best weather
Speaker 1: day is Monday. Kind of look at it black and white.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm gonna go and maybe Saturday stinks for
Speaker 1: the weather, so spend some time with the family. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you get less hunting time, but you're able to spend
Speaker 1: time with your family and friends a little bit more too.
Speaker 1: Maybe at work, maybe you're able to impress your boss
Speaker 1: a little bit more because you said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'll come in on Saturday, and do you mind if
Speaker 1: I take Monday off instead of Friday or so whatever,
Speaker 1: But you can slant it a little bit and so
Speaker 1: not you know, not holding. I talked about this all
Speaker 1: the time that it. You know, people say you can't
Speaker 1: kill him from the couch. I think that saved more
Speaker 1: dear more bucks than any other phrase and in the
Speaker 1: history of hunting, because people look at it like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go sitting that stand ten days in
Speaker 1: a row. And what you find is there's a diminishing
Speaker 1: return every time you sit there. And uh. And so
Speaker 1: if you if you really look at the past, if
Speaker 1: you learn to blend, and then you learned to really
Speaker 1: pick your approach on those high percentage days, then to me,
Speaker 1: you combine those right there. And even if you're hunting
Speaker 1: out a poor property or habitat property, smaller property a
Speaker 1: little bit more pressured land, and you're gonna be successful
Speaker 1: a lot more than than you're not. I love it.
Speaker 1: Those three things. Those are good. Those are good things.
Speaker 1: And uh and I know that if if folks visit
Speaker 1: those granite tablets and read through your top three rules,
Speaker 1: they're gonna say to themselves, Man, I want more from this, Jeff, guy, Jeff,
Speaker 1: where can folks go to get more from me? Because, um,
Speaker 1: well your stuff is great. That's really some of the
Speaker 1: best out there. Well, I appreciate that, market really do.
Speaker 1: And you can tell. I mean, I lived this stuff.
Speaker 1: So this is what I do. You know, whether it's
Speaker 1: with clients, um around a hundred a year being in
Speaker 1: the woods hunting, and I like to do a lot.
Speaker 1: I think we're going as a family down to hunt
Speaker 1: Public Land in Ohio this year for their gun season.
Speaker 1: Opener Um. I like to do a lot of do
Speaker 1: it yourself and so that comes through. And for that,
Speaker 1: I feel like even on client properties, we get to
Speaker 1: learn every time we go on another client and so
Speaker 1: then when I think I learned something, I love to
Speaker 1: teach that. So the YouTube channel white till abitat Solutions
Speaker 1: dot com. Um we have over a thousand videos now
Speaker 1: on there for people to cruise to. I try to
Speaker 1: categorize them so like you mentioned mock scrapes, I think
Speaker 1: we have almost sixty mock scrape videos in that playlist.
Speaker 1: I try to put them in playlists. Advanced hunting strategy
Speaker 1: is probably the largest and right and be a couple
Speaker 1: of hundred, and there of course food plots, habitat provement.
Speaker 1: I also try to spend quite a bit of time
Speaker 1: and I go through streaks on this depending on how
Speaker 1: much time I have. But Instagram, White Till, Habitat solutions
Speaker 1: there too. And then Dylan and I who Dylan he's
Speaker 1: goes to clients to who he's worked with me since
Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen Independent works for a A is a
Speaker 1: great dude. And you you know Dylan Dylan has worked
Speaker 1: with U Meat Eater. Um, you know, he's worked with
Speaker 1: a lot of different hunting industry personalities and people and
Speaker 1: entities and companies and so. But um, Dylan and I
Speaker 1: I worked with them about once a week shooting videos
Speaker 1: and he sits in a tree with me too. We
Speaker 1: playing a strategize a lot together and we started a
Speaker 1: podcast and um, you know we've talked to you about
Speaker 1: being our first guest. We're hoping that will work out
Speaker 1: here in the next couple of weeks. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: we're we're looking forward that we've already talked about the
Speaker 1: topic with you to talk about so but kind of
Speaker 1: a blend of Western do it yourself whitetail hunting and
Speaker 1: hunting industry questions and stuff. So, um, you know, get
Speaker 1: into a talk about that. But bottom line is, um,
Speaker 1: we've shot three uh not shot, we actually have recorded them,
Speaker 1: but we've filmed them and recorded them and those those
Speaker 1: should be on my website. We have white tab tat
Speaker 1: solutions dot Com. There I have over six d white
Speaker 1: Till articles. I've written strategy articles and we'll be hosting
Speaker 1: the podcasts supposed to be done by about October thirty one,
Speaker 1: the first of November, and we'll try to consistently put
Speaker 1: out about one a week on those. So that's that's
Speaker 1: another way. You know. Of course you have books, web classes,
Speaker 1: we go visit people site, visit we even sell seed now,
Speaker 1: whs wildlife flens. But again, you know, I have over
Speaker 1: a thousand videos on YouTube, bring out the podcast, over
Speaker 1: six articles and um that's all for free and so
Speaker 1: I don't hold anything back. Um, it's you. You try to.
Speaker 1: When I've learned something, I keep a running tab of
Speaker 1: notes I might have shown you, Mark, but it's a
Speaker 1: couple of thousand long in my in my phone, and
Speaker 1: it's um. You know, when I think of something i'm
Speaker 1: on a client property, I get excited and geeked out
Speaker 1: about it. I can't wait to tell people, and so
Speaker 1: I do that through Instagram, YouTube, now, the podcast, books, writings, whatever. Man,
Speaker 1: it's awesome. We've all we've all benefited from it. So
Speaker 1: uh on the on behalf of everybody listening here, and
Speaker 1: all the folks have watched your videos, read your books,
Speaker 1: read your articles. Let me just for I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: heard a million of these, but let me just do
Speaker 1: it all more time. Thank you well, Mark, thank you.
Speaker 1: You know, I really appreciate it. It's uh, it's been uh,
Speaker 1: it's been fun rewarding, you know, this entire process. But
Speaker 1: most of all, I hope you know. I always say,
Speaker 1: if the information is not helping anybody, then it's why
Speaker 1: I put it out until UM. I love hearing that feedback.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. I love hearing the feedback and the
Speaker 1: comments on YouTube, and uh in Instagram to um YouTube
Speaker 1: tells me I answer about ten tho comments a year
Speaker 1: on YouTube, So I try, I try. I try to
Speaker 1: answer as many as possible. Um. But you know, the
Speaker 1: whole the whole mission is to try to help. So
Speaker 1: I hope it comes true. And I really appreciate that feedback.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Mark. Yeah, well, hey, you're you're doing an
Speaker 1: awesome job. But now I've got one last thing for it, Jeff,
Speaker 1: you need to hang up this phone, finished packing and
Speaker 1: go kill a buck in Saskatchewan. All right, my friend,
Speaker 1: that's that sounds really good. Mark, We're that's Uh. I
Speaker 1: thought that was a dream hunt. I'd go on and
Speaker 1: when I'm in you know, ten years now or something,
Speaker 1: but um hunt wise made it happen this year. It
Speaker 1: was a random call in January. They let me know
Speaker 1: Jen's going to and um Dante's actually coming to film.
Speaker 1: We found out that in the last couple of days
Speaker 1: he worked at Matthews, my stepson, and he uh, they
Speaker 1: gave him time off unpaid. So we're helping him out
Speaker 1: with that and getting him he's gonna film us, and
Speaker 1: so we're even at six am. It's kind of a
Speaker 1: dream hunt I've always wanted to hunt those chocolate horn
Speaker 1: monsters up north. Yeah, and we're gonna be able to
Speaker 1: do so here pretty soon. So very very fortunate. Alright, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be crossing every one of my fingers and
Speaker 1: toes for you. Thank you, Mark. I'm open to just
Speaker 1: see a giant that'll be. That'll be nice, it'd be,
Speaker 1: it'd be awesome. So just to be up there, that
Speaker 1: sounds awesome. All right. That's it, my friends. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed it. Thanks for joining me. Follow along my
Speaker 1: story over at wired to Hunt on Instagram. Be sure
Speaker 1: to check out the Wired to Hunt page over on
Speaker 1: the mediator website. That's the meat eater dot com slash wired.
Speaker 1: You can follow along on Facebook our YouTube channel. We've
Speaker 1: got the Dear Country Show over on the meat Eater
Speaker 1: YouTube channel. Be sure you're subsided or subscribed to the
Speaker 1: Meat Eater newsletter, which you can do over on that
Speaker 1: meet of your website. You'll get a weekly email with
Speaker 1: an update on all the content we've got. What I'm
Speaker 1: trying to say is we're putting out a lot of
Speaker 1: deer hunting stuff for you folks who love deer hunting,
Speaker 1: just like me. But it's time to hunt, so let's
Speaker 1: stop talking, let's get in the woods. Best of luck,
Speaker 1: have fun, and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.