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 Kenyan, and this week on the show, I am
Speaker 1: joined by the Jake Bush to dive deep into his
Speaker 1: process for patterning big public land bucks. All right, friends
Speaker 1: and family, welcome to the Wired Hunt Podcast, brought to
Speaker 1: you by First Light. We are continuing on with the
Speaker 1: month of Patterning Bucks that is our October series. Here
Speaker 1: in two we kicked it off with my story of
Speaker 1: my opening week success in October, how I developed a
Speaker 1: pattern of these bucks here leading to the opening day
Speaker 1: and end up getting one killed in Michigan. We followed
Speaker 1: that up with a master class with Mr Mark Drury
Speaker 1: talking about how he patterns these deer with some very
Speaker 1: detailed analysis on his private land spots there in Iowa
Speaker 1: and Missouri and those next of the woods. And today
Speaker 1: we're going to take a different angle on this whole
Speaker 1: idea of patterning bucks by talking public land. Yep, we're
Speaker 1: talking about going out there into the masses. We're all
Speaker 1: sorts of folks are out there chasing deer too, and
Speaker 1: gonna see if we can actually dial in a plan
Speaker 1: on a deer and that kind of spot, and our
Speaker 1: guest today has proven that it's possible consistently. Jake Bush
Speaker 1: is a terrific deer hunter who's been getting on some
Speaker 1: really good bucks in Ohio, Kansas, New York. He's got
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting story, which we'll get into a little
Speaker 1: bit here once he hops on. But to give you
Speaker 1: the cliff notes, Jake grew up in New York and
Speaker 1: loved deer hunting so much so that he eventually said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm pulling up stakes. I'm upbroading my life.
Speaker 1: I'm selling my house, I'm leaving everyone I know, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to the big buck land of Ohio and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start a new where I can chase my
Speaker 1: deer hunting dreams. I think a lot of guys have
Speaker 1: that dream, but just talk about it and never do it.
Speaker 1: Jake did it. Jake walked it. He didn't just talk it.
Speaker 1: And now he lives in Ohio and he's killing big, giant,
Speaker 1: kind of freaking nasty bucks in the public lands of
Speaker 1: the southern part of the state, or you know, somewhere
Speaker 1: around the central southern who knows. I'm not asking the details,
Speaker 1: but wherever he's at, there's some big deer and he
Speaker 1: knows how to find him. So we are discussing all
Speaker 1: of that with Jake today, how he locates these deer,
Speaker 1: how he develops you know, develops that pattern, how he
Speaker 1: accumulates all the data he needs to make good decisions
Speaker 1: on how to hunt, on when to hunt. We talked
Speaker 1: through everything he's doing, you know, in winter on to
Speaker 1: the summer, and then a lot about what he is
Speaker 1: doing in season, both data collection in season and analysis
Speaker 1: of that data to help him put together really solid
Speaker 1: hunt plans. And he's kind of in the middle of
Speaker 1: that process right now himself as he's trying to still
Speaker 1: locate a buck he wants to you know, really focus
Speaker 1: on after unfortunate bout of eh D in his area.
Speaker 1: So Jake's dealing with some tough hunting circumstances right now,
Speaker 1: but he's still grinding and I think we can all
Speaker 1: learn from that too. So today, if you hunt, you know,
Speaker 1: pressure private land, if you hunt public land, even I
Speaker 1: think if you hunt private that's great. You're gonna have
Speaker 1: some interesting things you can learn here from Jake. I
Speaker 1: am excited for it, and uh, heck, I think we
Speaker 1: should just stop beating around the bush. We should get
Speaker 1: into the show. This is a good one, patterning public
Speaker 1: Land Bucks with Jake Bush. Check it out. Let's go
Speaker 1: all right here with me on the show. We've got
Speaker 1: Jake Bush. Welcome to the show. Jake, Hey, Mark, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. Yeah, I appreciate you coming on. I've
Speaker 1: been uh, you know, keeping tabs on you from afar
Speaker 1: in in as non creepy of a way as possible,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that we've finally been able to connect
Speaker 1: and uh and make this happen. So, uh, this is uh,
Speaker 1: this is my kind of conversation. We're we're talking Bucks
Speaker 1: in October. We're talking about patterning them, and uh, that's
Speaker 1: one of my favorite things. Would you rate that somewhere
Speaker 1: high on your list of things you'd like to do? Oh? Absolutely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I tell everybody all the time, it's all about
Speaker 1: the chase. For me. The kill is just you know secondary.
Speaker 1: I I really like trying to figure these deer out
Speaker 1: and play the chess match and uh, you know, give
Speaker 1: them their spot and then just try to beat them
Speaker 1: however I can. Yeah, the chess match. That's that's it
Speaker 1: right there. So so you are someone who has I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of us that are obsessed with dear,
Speaker 1: but it seems like you have taken it to a
Speaker 1: slightly higher level than most because you uprooted your entire
Speaker 1: life to get after these suckers and uh as. As
Speaker 1: we already described in the intro. You know you you
Speaker 1: picked up from New York, you moved to Ohio and
Speaker 1: I think you're in year four now being down there.
Speaker 1: I guess my big question for you is this was
Speaker 1: it worth it? Uh? So? Yes, absolutely it was. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, the cool thing about what I did and
Speaker 1: anybody that's done this is you uproot. You uproot your life.
Speaker 1: And you know, I sold the house to quit my
Speaker 1: job and moved down here. And at the time I
Speaker 1: stayed in a little six d square foot apartment for
Speaker 1: the first year. Um, but now I bought my dream
Speaker 1: home close to where I hunt. I have a family.
Speaker 1: You know, I've basically built my life around what I
Speaker 1: love to do now and that just makes everything so
Speaker 1: much sweeter. Um. So yeah, I've I've had a blast. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So what about like expectations, has there been didn't didn't
Speaker 1: meet expectations? Like? What it what it feels like what
Speaker 1: life is like being down there in big Buck Countries
Speaker 1: didn't meet expectations. Has it seated? What's your take there, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's exceeded my expectations. Uh, by a lot. It's been
Speaker 1: absolutely awesome. You know, I live for it. I there's
Speaker 1: something about the hills down here that just kind of
Speaker 1: draw me in and and captivate me. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm getting excited for the leaves to fall off. I
Speaker 1: would say my favorite thing to do down here is
Speaker 1: scout and shed hunt and just try to, you know,
Speaker 1: locate the next one. And I can feel that in
Speaker 1: the air already. Um. I have a tag in my
Speaker 1: pocket still this year, so I get to incorporate that
Speaker 1: tag into that feeling, which is awesome. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: really excited to continue to try to find a good
Speaker 1: deer down here and chase them down and figure them out. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's definitely exceeded expectations. Man. That's that's good news.
Speaker 1: Would be a real bummer to rip your whole life apart,
Speaker 1: show up and be like, oh man, this is not
Speaker 1: what it was all cracked up to be. But man,
Speaker 1: it seems like you've been able to figure it out
Speaker 1: pretty quick down there, and uh put together what seems
Speaker 1: like a year round kind of regiment that that works.
Speaker 1: And I guess that's you know, we don't need to
Speaker 1: beat her on the bush. That's what I really want
Speaker 1: to dive into, is is what that year round process
Speaker 1: looks for you. Because we're we're doing this month Jake
Speaker 1: all about patterning bucks, and you know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of different ways to go about that. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of different definitions I think of what a pattern means.
Speaker 1: You know, we just last week talked to Mark Drewy
Speaker 1: about how he patterns bucks and you know what that
Speaker 1: means for him. And I guess I'm curious right out
Speaker 1: the gate, you know, for you doing you know, what's
Speaker 1: what's seemingly a primarily public land kind of thing. What
Speaker 1: does it mean to pattern a buck for you? You know,
Speaker 1: is that would you define it just like anybody else
Speaker 1: patterning deer on a farm and private land? Or is
Speaker 1: it a looser kind of idea for you on public
Speaker 1: What's how would you define it? What does that mean? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I would say that it's a much more loose idea.
Speaker 1: Um for me, it's really about anticipation. And then capitalization
Speaker 1: on that. So, uh, you know, I'll locate a good
Speaker 1: deer in an area, and when I find a spot
Speaker 1: that I think either could hold a good one or
Speaker 1: I have some sort of actual intel of that deer,
Speaker 1: I like to tear the area apart with just boots
Speaker 1: on the ground. I like to find all the different
Speaker 1: betting areas and like the specific beds within those areas,
Speaker 1: so I can really put my plan together on how
Speaker 1: close I can get when I'm hunting those spots. And
Speaker 1: then once I find the betting areas, I like to
Speaker 1: find the food sources. So I like to find secondary
Speaker 1: food sources, which would be like a briar patch on
Speaker 1: the way to a scrape, or a single white oak
Speaker 1: tree or a single red oak or late season chestnut oak.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of their first thing they're gonna hit
Speaker 1: before they get to their destination for the night. You know,
Speaker 1: there they have a destination in mind, and how are
Speaker 1: they getting there? How can I capitalize on the bed
Speaker 1: to destination movement? But how can I capitalize on that
Speaker 1: early season when they're willing to move in daylight? And
Speaker 1: so I have to be pretty close to the bettings.
Speaker 1: So I'll try to you know, just pick those areas
Speaker 1: apart and look for little weaknesses. Like it could be
Speaker 1: something as simple as there's a betting area here that
Speaker 1: he has a really good visual observation. But I can
Speaker 1: walk up a creek and there's a fallen tree, and
Speaker 1: I can set up on the back side of that
Speaker 1: fallen tree and watch him walk to that scrape at
Speaker 1: twenty yards. But if I access from any other direction,
Speaker 1: he's got me. Or another thing that I'll do is
Speaker 1: I'll find a buck that's survived by UM, you know,
Speaker 1: going down in the drainage a specific way every night
Speaker 1: that there's a northeast wind, for example, like last year,
Speaker 1: and I knew that the only way I could kill
Speaker 1: that deer was making this big giant circle around the
Speaker 1: deer and actually coming in from up the wind of him,
Speaker 1: but staying just off wind enough on my access for
Speaker 1: over a mile to get around him and actually jay
Speaker 1: hooking on him instead of him jay hooking in on
Speaker 1: me and kill him like that. So I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to locate a good deer, locate the betting, locate the food,
Speaker 1: and just find a weakness in between that that I
Speaker 1: can capitalize on UM and then obviously, and to spating
Speaker 1: how he's going to shift throughout the season. That's why
Speaker 1: in a lot of these areas, it's really important for
Speaker 1: me to have multiple betting areas, multiple food sources, because
Speaker 1: when I'm working my way in on a hunt for
Speaker 1: like today, for example, I'll stop at the first food
Speaker 1: source and if that's not hot, well I'm going to continue. Well,
Speaker 1: I just bypassed that first betting area. I'm going to
Speaker 1: go to the next betting area because I didn't find
Speaker 1: what I wanted at that first food source or around
Speaker 1: that area. I'm gonna continue working in and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, okay, well there's a little scrape and there's
Speaker 1: a little rub and things are starting to heat up.
Speaker 1: And then I get into that last white oak flat
Speaker 1: and there's squirrels everywhere, there's acorns dropping, and there's a
Speaker 1: ton of deer. Sign Okay, this betting area is hot now.
Speaker 1: And I already know how to hunt this betting area
Speaker 1: based on my scouting and those weaknesses I've found. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go in and I'm gonna set up on that
Speaker 1: deer and try to capitalize and being able to anticipate
Speaker 1: how they're going to shift like that throughout the year
Speaker 1: is really important to me. I would hate to have
Speaker 1: a betting area and uh oak flat that I'm relying
Speaker 1: on and going there and it's not hot and then
Speaker 1: I don't I didn't anticipate what was going to happen
Speaker 1: when that dried up. You know, where were they going
Speaker 1: to shift to? Where the red oaks at? If it's
Speaker 1: late season, where the chestnut oaks at? If you have
Speaker 1: agg nearby and it's a standing cornfield, how can I
Speaker 1: hunt that? Where's the betting area for that? Specific things?
Speaker 1: So those are all things that I'm trying to factor
Speaker 1: into the equation all year. Yeah, it seems like you've
Speaker 1: got like a huge mass of environmental factors that you
Speaker 1: need to kind of have dialed in, Like you need
Speaker 1: to know where these red oaks are, you need to
Speaker 1: know where these little patches of briars are. You need
Speaker 1: to know where these different betting areas are. Um. You
Speaker 1: know Mark last week was talking about this with you know,
Speaker 1: so many people focus their patterns on just you know,
Speaker 1: what do the trail camera pictures tell me? And then
Speaker 1: what do I think they'renna do tomorrow? But really you
Speaker 1: have to factor in all those environmental parts that impact
Speaker 1: what the deer does and why he does it. This
Speaker 1: has got to take a ton of time to figure
Speaker 1: out where all these betting areas are, where all these
Speaker 1: different food sources are. When does that patterning learning process start?
Speaker 1: Does that start in February? Does that start in the
Speaker 1: summer when you get eyes on a summer buck? What
Speaker 1: does that look like? To be completely honest with the
Speaker 1: market hasn't stopped in the four years I've been down here.
Speaker 1: It's Uh, I really don't take any time off. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's something that I just I love doing that so much.
Speaker 1: It's my greatest passion. Um I. I just enjoy it
Speaker 1: so much, and so I just find myself consumed with
Speaker 1: a year round. Uh. You know, It's it's hunting season
Speaker 1: down here right now, and I've only sat in a
Speaker 1: tree twice, but I've been in the woods ten or
Speaker 1: eleven times, and I've had days where I don't even
Speaker 1: take my bow with me because I'm I'm just out
Speaker 1: there trying to locate a good deer and figure out
Speaker 1: all those weaknesses on the fly and try to capitalize
Speaker 1: on it as quickly as I can. Um. I would
Speaker 1: say my favorite time of year to do that is
Speaker 1: going to be like late December through late April, but
Speaker 1: year round, it's it's possible. And that's what I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to do. Is like you said, it's a ton
Speaker 1: of data that needs to be collected. Um and obviously
Speaker 1: the more time that you give yourself to do that,
Speaker 1: the more thorough you're going to be. I don't want
Speaker 1: to find myself rushing like I'm out in a rush
Speaker 1: now to kill a deer. I I have until early
Speaker 1: February here, so, um, I have plenty of time to
Speaker 1: find one and then come up with some patterns and
Speaker 1: stuff for him and anticipate a couple of things and
Speaker 1: give them some hunts. But yeah, it's just a no
Speaker 1: rush approach. Just take my time and collect the data
Speaker 1: is thoroughly as I can. Yeah, So to quantify this,
Speaker 1: I heard something that was pretty I don't know. I
Speaker 1: opening to me, I heard you say that in the
Speaker 1: typical season, and correct me if I'm wrong on this
Speaker 1: if I got wrong, But I think I heard you
Speaker 1: say typical season, you find up to one hundred mature
Speaker 1: bucks leading into the season or by the season, and
Speaker 1: then you fine tune that down to the top five
Speaker 1: or the top buck or two that you actually want
Speaker 1: to target and hunt. Uh. Is that is that true?
Speaker 1: Is that right? I would say very close to one
Speaker 1: different bucks. Not necessarily mature, you know, even the two
Speaker 1: year old down here is they can be pretty decent deer,
Speaker 1: like they can be a hundred and fifteen inches um,
Speaker 1: but yes, very close to that number. And then normally
Speaker 1: that gets fined down, fine tuned into you know, about
Speaker 1: fifteen deer that are in the one FI plus range,
Speaker 1: and that was about the same thing this year, and
Speaker 1: then I'll have a couple that just stand out, and uh,
Speaker 1: I had one this year that stood out and he
Speaker 1: died a VHD, And so I have two options. Really,
Speaker 1: I could go kill one of those other ones, or
Speaker 1: go hunt down one of those other ones, or I
Speaker 1: could go try to find that in that next level, dear,
Speaker 1: and I just really enjoy that chase of that next
Speaker 1: level deer. And so that's what I'm kind of looking
Speaker 1: for now. I'm just broadcasting my cameras back out, moving
Speaker 1: them around. I'm trying to just locate another one to
Speaker 1: go after. Uh, what would that next level be? Is
Speaker 1: that like just a super unique huge buck or is
Speaker 1: that like man I want the oldest deer in the world,
Speaker 1: or what what's gonna turn you on? You know, I
Speaker 1: asked myself that all the time, and I think that
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily know if I have like an age
Speaker 1: or an antler size that is like the determining factor. Necessarily.
Speaker 1: I think that when I find the right deer, I'll
Speaker 1: just know that that's the one I want to go after.
Speaker 1: That's the one that I want to chase and give
Speaker 1: everything I have towards. Um. And I'm just you know
Speaker 1: that could that could end up being a really old,
Speaker 1: gnarly and massive eight point or something like. I have
Speaker 1: no idea at this point, but I do think that
Speaker 1: once I find him, I'll know that that's the deer
Speaker 1: that I want to chase. UM. Yeah, yeah, man, love
Speaker 1: at first sight, it's real. Um. So you talked about
Speaker 1: how this is like a year round process. Let's let's
Speaker 1: start in those early months. Um, Really, you know what
Speaker 1: you're doing to dial in? Like, like I guess that
Speaker 1: first steps like locating a deer and then starting to
Speaker 1: dial in that process. So in the maybe that's the
Speaker 1: question when you're trying to locate a deer or start
Speaker 1: the actual pattern is is that actually starting, you know,
Speaker 1: in those spring months or is that more so fine
Speaker 1: tune on deer you already know about and then you're
Speaker 1: locating like, oh yeah, this is a brand new buck
Speaker 1: I really want to shoot. Does that happen in summer glassing? Um?
Speaker 1: Or maybe does? Does it not matter because you're just
Speaker 1: doing it all the time and you're slowly building the
Speaker 1: file on new deer and older Yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 1: all the time, and I use all of those so
Speaker 1: um obviously I'll go around in the springtime and I'll
Speaker 1: be checking new areas looking for like, bumping a good
Speaker 1: deer while he still got antlers on his head is
Speaker 1: a really good example. Like that tells you, Okay, I
Speaker 1: just saw uh, really big bodied, mature buck, like he's
Speaker 1: got a lot of potential. That's a deer that I
Speaker 1: could see myself wanting to relocate this summer and then
Speaker 1: this fall to see what he turned into. Um So
Speaker 1: I'll do that. I have a ton of trail camera
Speaker 1: inventory from the past year, Like I run a little
Speaker 1: bit over sixty cameras, so I've got cameras distributed pretty
Speaker 1: much throughout southern Ohio. UM So I'll use that inventory
Speaker 1: to kind of say, Okay, I think these top ten
Speaker 1: deer going to turn into something, and I want to
Speaker 1: keep tabs on these other ones and that whole process. Uh,
Speaker 1: those would be like the two primary things that I'm
Speaker 1: doing early season, like early in the spring. And then
Speaker 1: once I go in and I scout those betting areas
Speaker 1: and I'm I become really familiar with those areas and
Speaker 1: I feel like I have a good idea of what's
Speaker 1: going on, I'll start to venture out throughout shed season
Speaker 1: and shed season for me, like I love picking up antlers.
Speaker 1: I would say normally I pick up anywhere from forty
Speaker 1: to fifty of them down here, and that gives me
Speaker 1: a really good idea, like real time intel, Hey this
Speaker 1: deer is in this general area. And yes, you know,
Speaker 1: they'll shift around quite a bit depending on how the
Speaker 1: location sets up. Um, you know, if it's the right spot,
Speaker 1: they really don't shift a whole lot. It's got a
Speaker 1: lot of clear cuts, or it's got uh different variety
Speaker 1: of oaks, or it's close to agg or things like that.
Speaker 1: They could stay right in that one system. So I'll
Speaker 1: use those antlers as another form of inventory, and I'll
Speaker 1: do the same thing when I find a good antler,
Speaker 1: I'll go through that same area and scout it, just
Speaker 1: like I did the areas for the trail cameras and
Speaker 1: for like finding big tracks, and so I'll have all
Speaker 1: of that scouted out, and then once we get into June,
Speaker 1: I put my cameras out. I don't touch a single
Speaker 1: camera in the woods until September to check them, because
Speaker 1: I'm anticipating that shift that's going to happen. If I
Speaker 1: check them too early, there's a good chance that those
Speaker 1: deer haven't shifted into those areas, and I might pull
Speaker 1: my cameras out, and then a week later a good
Speaker 1: buck moves in on some white oaks. I missed the
Speaker 1: opportunity at that deer. So I stay patient with the cameras.
Speaker 1: But what I do all summer is I glass a lot,
Speaker 1: doing the exact same thing. Just I'll take the girlfriend
Speaker 1: and take my son and we'll go get ice cream,
Speaker 1: and we'll go for an hour drive and just check
Speaker 1: different areas and just see if we can turn up
Speaker 1: a good one like that. And if it's an area
Speaker 1: I have scouted, I can run and throw cameras at it.
Speaker 1: If it's an area that I haven't scouted. I will
Speaker 1: scout in the summertime and do the exact same thing.
Speaker 1: Uh So, yeah, it's just that year round, trying to
Speaker 1: gain as much inventory as possible. Yeah, so let's let's
Speaker 1: start with the first thing mentioned, which was that early
Speaker 1: in the year bed scouting. Um, I understand, like you're
Speaker 1: walking around, covering a lot of ground, trying to find,
Speaker 1: you know, where these ideal bedding locations are. Can you
Speaker 1: tell me what you're like? What's the nitty gritty when
Speaker 1: you're when you're doing that, How how do you pull
Speaker 1: as much data as possible from that? Because some guys
Speaker 1: will walk around a ridge system and they'll go out
Speaker 1: on a point and they'll see a bed and they're
Speaker 1: all right, buck bed, and they go walking onto the
Speaker 1: next one and then they find something else, like a
Speaker 1: couple of beds. All right, got some beds here, And
Speaker 1: you know, maybe the average guy will just keep that
Speaker 1: in their mind or maybe they'll pin it. But what
Speaker 1: are you doing above and beyond that to really pull
Speaker 1: as much info out of that as possible? So it
Speaker 1: starts with the scouting, and I'm trying to locate very
Speaker 1: specific areas that set up a certain way and I've
Speaker 1: just had good success with finding big deer in those areas,
Speaker 1: and then I'll basically go into those spots and eliminate
Speaker 1: them throughout just boots on the ground. So uh, as
Speaker 1: far as he's scouting, I'm really looking for systems that
Speaker 1: set up with a lot of like a variety of
Speaker 1: topography and terrain on leeward ridges. So yes, dear bed
Speaker 1: and live on the windward side of ridges. I just
Speaker 1: feel like the areas that I'm in and I've had
Speaker 1: better success and more success finding more mature bucks on
Speaker 1: those leeward ridges. So what I like to find is
Speaker 1: a system that sets up with a bunch of leeward
Speaker 1: ridges that kind of create a thermal hub down in
Speaker 1: the bottom. That thermal hub generally will have a really
Speaker 1: good scrape in it. I call it a hub scrape.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, if I can whatever I can
Speaker 1: stack into that system will make it better. If there's
Speaker 1: private egg nearby at like the head of the drainage,
Speaker 1: that's a plus. If there's a bunch of clear cuts
Speaker 1: on all the points of those ridges or in the
Speaker 1: bowls of those ridges, that's a plus. If it's good
Speaker 1: standing oaks, that's a plus if it's got a drainage
Speaker 1: that runs to the north or to the east. That's
Speaker 1: a plus in southern Ohio for me because our typical
Speaker 1: wind is south or west. So I'm scouting areas that
Speaker 1: set up the way that I feel like I can
Speaker 1: hunt them efficiently right off the bath. Like, I'm not
Speaker 1: spending a ton of time in areas that would be
Speaker 1: difficult to hunt. And I think that might be one
Speaker 1: of the reasons that I have a little more success
Speaker 1: early seasons sometimes is because these areas just set up
Speaker 1: the right way right off the bat, Like I I
Speaker 1: don't have to go in with a weird wind or
Speaker 1: like have you know, different factors to help me out.
Speaker 1: They just set up really good the majority of the time.
Speaker 1: Um obviously like hunter access. If it's a difficult area
Speaker 1: to hunt or I feel like it's going to be overlooked,
Speaker 1: that will help as well, especially if it's like around private,
Speaker 1: like you have to like go in and circle around
Speaker 1: Private to get back into this hub system, or if
Speaker 1: you have to go up and down a couple of
Speaker 1: ridges that seems to eliminate a lot of people right
Speaker 1: off the bat. So once I find the areas that
Speaker 1: I want to scout. Let's say in a year, it's
Speaker 1: ten different spots that set up that way. I'll go
Speaker 1: into each spot and I'll go down in the hub
Speaker 1: system first, and I'll verify that there's good deer signs.
Speaker 1: Almost every single time I am I getting a hub
Speaker 1: down here, there's really good buck sign and there will
Speaker 1: be that hub scrape. And then once I find that
Speaker 1: scrape and I verify, okay, the system is getting used.
Speaker 1: It it looks like what I thought it would and
Speaker 1: it's not too steep or too narrow or brushed out,
Speaker 1: or there's not like mud slide or a bunch of
Speaker 1: down trees in the bottom, and it's actually usable by
Speaker 1: deer and it provides what they need. Then I'll branch
Speaker 1: out into the points of all of those ridges that
Speaker 1: kind of point down into that hub, and I'll just
Speaker 1: start looking for deer sign I'll start looking for you know,
Speaker 1: basically going to and from their betting areas and um,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll pick out all the betting areas that
Speaker 1: I can on a map, but a lot of times
Speaker 1: I get into these locations and the betting will be
Speaker 1: set up a little bit differently. Uh you know, if
Speaker 1: it's uh area with a bunch of clear cuts, it's
Speaker 1: gonna set up differently than area that's just like old
Speaker 1: standing timber um. They use them totally different. And what
Speaker 1: I found is like the train position lines will show
Speaker 1: you pretty much what you need to know as far
Speaker 1: as clear cuts to standing timber um. But yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: get up on on the points of these ridges, I'll
Speaker 1: look for beds. I'll look for beds in the bowls
Speaker 1: of the ridges, and then once I start verifying those
Speaker 1: specific beds, I'll start marking all of those down on
Speaker 1: the map. And then once I had that information, I'll
Speaker 1: start branching out to the trails leading to and from
Speaker 1: all the destination food sources and trying to pick out
Speaker 1: this specific food sources. Okay, do you do any more
Speaker 1: fine detail work on specific beds? Like I know some
Speaker 1: guys and I think I've heard you say this before
Speaker 1: something like this, but a lot of guys like to
Speaker 1: get in the beds and really think through how close
Speaker 1: can I get? What are they? When are they bedding here? YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: Are you going to that level of detail yet at
Speaker 1: this point or are you gonna wait until you fine
Speaker 1: tune down to your top Bucks and then be thinking
Speaker 1: through Okay, if these are the real, you know, top
Speaker 1: couple of spots I want to focus on, now, I'm
Speaker 1: going to dial it. So it depends on the situation. Um.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'll wait until I find the food sources that
Speaker 1: I'm looking for, and sometimes I will always do it
Speaker 1: regardless of the deer that I find there. Basically, but
Speaker 1: it depends on at what point I do it. It It
Speaker 1: could be the first dam in there when I'm finding
Speaker 1: the beds. It could be the second day in there
Speaker 1: when after I locate all the food sources. The one
Speaker 1: thing that I like to do, yes, absolutely get down
Speaker 1: in the beds. In each bed I like to be
Speaker 1: able to see what they can see, kind of like
Speaker 1: visualize what they would be able to hear, what they
Speaker 1: would be able to smell. I'll do a lot of
Speaker 1: wind mapping in this time, um, and I'll also verify
Speaker 1: that it's like an annual bed like year after year
Speaker 1: by going through the different layers of leaves. If it's
Speaker 1: not completely worn to the ground and you start pulling
Speaker 1: back different layers of leaves and you find hair and
Speaker 1: all of those different layers, well, now you know it's
Speaker 1: not just the winter bed or like a seasonal bed,
Speaker 1: it's used a lot like they're they're they're more often
Speaker 1: so those are priority beds for me. And normally when
Speaker 1: you get in these systems like you can, you can
Speaker 1: find the primary beds and they're they're typically in uh,
Speaker 1: like let's say, like a the acres circle, and then
Speaker 1: you'll see like subordinate betting, which is a lot less used,
Speaker 1: or it doesn't set up the right way, or it
Speaker 1: has like a direct weakness right next to it, like
Speaker 1: they would be out in the open, or they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have cover behind them or things like that. The best
Speaker 1: beds will always be, in my opinion, where the biggest
Speaker 1: bucket is going to be. Um, he's kind of taken
Speaker 1: over that spot over time. But yeah, I'll go through
Speaker 1: all those different things and then just try to formulate
Speaker 1: how close that I can get based on that food source.
Speaker 1: And that's gonna be the really important thing is It's
Speaker 1: not it's not just finding the betting for me. It's
Speaker 1: finding the betting and saying, Okay, if he's betted here,
Speaker 1: he's feeding here, and if he's feeding over on this
Speaker 1: other ridge, he's not betted here, he's betted over in
Speaker 1: the other betting area the majority of the time. So
Speaker 1: if he's if he's betted here and he's feeding there,
Speaker 1: how can I get close to him. Let's say subs
Speaker 1: on that route and I don't really care about the
Speaker 1: other routes leaving this betting. I care about this specific
Speaker 1: route to that, like one white oak. How can I
Speaker 1: get close to that? And That's what I'm trying to
Speaker 1: really come up with these spots. It's like that one,
Speaker 1: that one weakness that he has that I can kill
Speaker 1: him on, and then I would just move to the
Speaker 1: other system once I once I find what I need
Speaker 1: in that first one. Yeah, So with that level of detail,
Speaker 1: like on just one of these locations. And then also
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're thinking through a well, they're feeding on
Speaker 1: this thing probably in September, but once we get to
Speaker 1: late October, maybe they're off the acorns and they're on
Speaker 1: something different. So maybe you've got a couple of different
Speaker 1: transitions throughout the year planned in your head to for
Speaker 1: each of these different possible locations, and then you've got
Speaker 1: dozens of these locations. How do you keep track of
Speaker 1: it all? Do you do you take notes? Do you
Speaker 1: have like I don't know, do you have just all
Speaker 1: of this on Onyx or whatever map app tool you use,
Speaker 1: or how do you keep track of not just like
Speaker 1: where these things are, but then also like all the
Speaker 1: different betting defeating combinations and when stuff is happening, and
Speaker 1: how do you do that? So for him mental worry,
Speaker 1: I have an Excel spreadsheet and then I have a
Speaker 1: bunch of folders of these pictures based on like the
Speaker 1: specific deer. I'll break it down to specific wind directions
Speaker 1: or even food sources for that specific buck. Um. As
Speaker 1: far as like actual routing goes, like how I think
Speaker 1: he's gonna get up and move, or how close I
Speaker 1: can be, or pictures of my access routes. You know,
Speaker 1: I'll take pictures and say like, okay, you need to
Speaker 1: go under this log because if you go over this log,
Speaker 1: he could see you for the two seconds it would
Speaker 1: take for you to get over top of it, or um.
Speaker 1: Things like that. I will use a journal, Like so
Speaker 1: I had a journal that I would just write down
Speaker 1: for a long time. I've moved to journaling just in
Speaker 1: my apps, and that's that's helped me a lot. That way,
Speaker 1: it's it's easier to go through. It's a little more
Speaker 1: mobile for me. Um. But yeah, I'm logging every single
Speaker 1: thing I do. I mean, there's there's no way that
Speaker 1: I could keep up with all that information. Um. And
Speaker 1: then one thing I really like to do too is
Speaker 1: I like to make sure I'm zoomed all the way
Speaker 1: in on my app when I'm laying down, like a
Speaker 1: pin for a bed or a pin for a specific
Speaker 1: food source. And then I'll draw like the travel route
Speaker 1: lines with just like the line tool to and from
Speaker 1: that betting that I think they're going to use. And
Speaker 1: that helps me a lot too, because you know, checking
Speaker 1: these areas in the spring and then only going in
Speaker 1: one time, it looks a lot different. Typically when you're
Speaker 1: gonna hunt late September early October, and I find myself,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm staring at my phone the entire way
Speaker 1: into the woods when I'm accessing these spots. The only
Speaker 1: the really the two things that I'm doing is I'm
Speaker 1: staring at my phone. I'm throwing milky at the entire
Speaker 1: time on an access for a hunt. I mean, it
Speaker 1: takes like I I really don't. I typically don't hunt mornings,
Speaker 1: especially early October, because I like the whole plan of
Speaker 1: the afternoon that I have where I'll leave the house
Speaker 1: around ten or eleven o'clock. I'll do the exact same
Speaker 1: thing today. Actually, i'll leave the house probably around eleven.
Speaker 1: I'll go out to an area and I'll just like
Speaker 1: methodically work my way in, and a lot of times
Speaker 1: it takes me. Let's say it's a half mile access,
Speaker 1: I might not be in the stand for four or
Speaker 1: five hours even. I mean it is a very like
Speaker 1: I do a lot of crawling. I do. I make
Speaker 1: sure that there's some sort of other noise when I'm
Speaker 1: stepping over anything that's loud, like if it's crunchy leaves,
Speaker 1: I'll take one step every five minutes. If I have
Speaker 1: to waiting on like a squirrel, the chatter or the
Speaker 1: wind to blow. Because I just with all, with all
Speaker 1: this work that goes into a year round, I would
Speaker 1: really hate to mess up my access and blow that
Speaker 1: deer out when I could have just taken my time
Speaker 1: and been methodical. And on the flip side of that too,
Speaker 1: I don't want to miss any intel on the way in, like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's this tree is hot, and I didn't catch this
Speaker 1: one in my scouting. Maybe I need to set up
Speaker 1: a little bit differently, But yeah, I'm I'm paying a
Speaker 1: lot of attention to the to the logs and my phones.
Speaker 1: I study those journals and those notes before I go
Speaker 1: out every day, and I just try to be as
Speaker 1: methodical as possible with that one fall up on the sheds.
Speaker 1: You were talking about the shed hunting aspect two of
Speaker 1: your spring scouting, um, and the fact that that that
Speaker 1: does help you a little bit, But I'm just curious.
Speaker 1: You know, the actual location of a shed you find
Speaker 1: a big angler? Is that? You know? How important is that?
Speaker 1: I know that it's important. I know it tells you,
Speaker 1: oh wow, big one made it. But do you actually
Speaker 1: look at that bed you found the shed and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: even though this is February or March, this is still
Speaker 1: an important data point or in your mind, are you thinking, man,
Speaker 1: he's not gonna be anywhere near this come October next year.
Speaker 1: I know he's somewhere within a mile, or I know
Speaker 1: he's somewhere within fids, But I'm not too obsessed with
Speaker 1: this actual aler location, Like how much does that factor
Speaker 1: into a pattern. There's a lot of factors that will
Speaker 1: that I'll base my decision on that around um, you know,
Speaker 1: It could be if it's a really warm spring and
Speaker 1: we have a bunch of south winds and I find
Speaker 1: his shed in a betting area that sets up for
Speaker 1: a south wind, like let's say it's like a northeast
Speaker 1: slope because we don't have any snow. Um, then yes,
Speaker 1: that that's gonna hold quite a bit of value for me. Now,
Speaker 1: if we have a foot of snow and these deer
Speaker 1: moved into the only chestnut oak ridge within five miles,
Speaker 1: that's dropping any acorns, that's gonna hold a little less value.
Speaker 1: But I will still say, Okay, he's in this system somewhere,
Speaker 1: and then I can I can work on going through
Speaker 1: my maps and picking out those leeward ridges for hunting
Speaker 1: season again, so the south ridge or the north facing
Speaker 1: ridges for like a south wind h and things like that. Um.
Speaker 1: And then it depends on how close it is to
Speaker 1: like a specific food source. There's gonna be a lot
Speaker 1: of different factors. And that's really for hill country too.
Speaker 1: And my thought process when I was in New York
Speaker 1: was totally different because we would get anywhere from you know,
Speaker 1: we could have two ft of snow on the ground,
Speaker 1: we could have four ft of snow on the ground
Speaker 1: up there, and it would shift the deer a lot,
Speaker 1: like it would shift them miles. We're down here in
Speaker 1: southern Ohio. We're lucky to get a couple of inches
Speaker 1: of snow a year, and I don't feel like they
Speaker 1: moved there. They shift their patterns as much um. Another
Speaker 1: factor to that is a lot of the areas that
Speaker 1: I'm targeting, I'm trying to find spots where I think
Speaker 1: the deer will spend more of their year there. So
Speaker 1: if I find like there's two areas for example, so
Speaker 1: the first area is a hub system that has a
Speaker 1: bunch of clear cuts and a variety of oaks. The
Speaker 1: second system is an area that has private egg out
Speaker 1: at the head of the drainage, very few oaks and
Speaker 1: no clear cuts. Well, the egg was let's say it
Speaker 1: was a standing cornfield that got cut way early, like
Speaker 1: late September, for example, and there's no food left in
Speaker 1: that field, and then there's no oaks up in the
Speaker 1: ridges and there's no brows for these deer, They're going
Speaker 1: to shift a lot. But if it's in and they'll
Speaker 1: shift throughout the year, and it's gonna be more difficult
Speaker 1: to pattern those deer. But that first area that I
Speaker 1: described has the clear cuts, so it has brows that
Speaker 1: has better thermal cover for winter, it has better bedding
Speaker 1: cover in the summertime they're eating that browse. There's a
Speaker 1: variety of oaks throughout the fall to where they can
Speaker 1: kind of stay in that system, like it's just going
Speaker 1: to hold deer better. And so I will focus more
Speaker 1: on spots like that because I can get more intel
Speaker 1: out of that location than I can an area that
Speaker 1: they only spend a month in. Yeah, it's a great point.
Speaker 1: So let's some let's push more into the summer now
Speaker 1: and focus a little bit more. And what you talked about,
Speaker 1: you do a lot in the summer, which is taking
Speaker 1: the family out for drives, glassing up deer. Um, can
Speaker 1: you give me a little more detail about the specific
Speaker 1: specifics of that. I understand you're covering ground, getting glass
Speaker 1: on these fields that you know, last hour daylight or
Speaker 1: whatever it is, but you know, do you get specific
Speaker 1: do you get that for specific bucks and like obsess
Speaker 1: over a specific field or two because you know your
Speaker 1: number one is hopefully in that area, or you know,
Speaker 1: more generally if it's not that kind of thing, you know,
Speaker 1: how are you keeping tabs on this stuff, and how
Speaker 1: important is that summer sighting? Again, back to these patterns,
Speaker 1: is it just okay big bucks in this area, or
Speaker 1: is it okay big buck is in this specific field
Speaker 1: with a westerly wind. So I think, you know, since
Speaker 1: this is August, he's betting here in October, that might
Speaker 1: mean X or Y, Like how detailed does it get
Speaker 1: for the summer settings. So that shifted a lot since
Speaker 1: I've been in Ohio. When I was in New York,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of success glassing like alf alpha
Speaker 1: fields all summer and then making a play on that
Speaker 1: deer the first day or two of season when I
Speaker 1: had the right conditions. Uh, And that would work quite
Speaker 1: a bit. Down here, the focus is a lot different. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of our egg that I'm glassing
Speaker 1: is bean fields, Like the majority of it's going to
Speaker 1: be bean fields, and those beans typically will dry up
Speaker 1: and get cut before season. This was an odd year
Speaker 1: down here. They planted him late, so that we still
Speaker 1: have some green some green beans actually around my area. Um,
Speaker 1: but typically those beans will get cut. And so all
Speaker 1: I'm trying to do is just get that visual observation
Speaker 1: of a good buck, and I only need it one time, Like,
Speaker 1: if I know he's there one time, there's no sense
Speaker 1: of me going back and watching him go to the
Speaker 1: bean field five nights a week when I know that
Speaker 1: that's gonna get cut and then he is going to
Speaker 1: revert back to the acorn flat three quarters of a
Speaker 1: mile away. Um, And my cameras are up on those
Speaker 1: flats anticipating that shift that's gonna happen. They're not like
Speaker 1: even on public egg around here. My cameras aren't necessarily
Speaker 1: on the public egg because I can glass at, but
Speaker 1: I utilize them better back into the woods where I
Speaker 1: believe they're gonna shift come early September. So that's something
Speaker 1: that I focused on. But but yeah, mainly it's just
Speaker 1: once I get an eye on a good one in
Speaker 1: that area, I kind of you know, okay, there's a
Speaker 1: good buck here. I think that he's gonna do this.
Speaker 1: I already have my camera staged or I don't, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to go in and put those cameras up
Speaker 1: based on that, and then I'll moved to a new area.
Speaker 1: Um And you know, every once in a while we
Speaker 1: might just make a drive and go past that same
Speaker 1: field as like fun thing. To do, or maybe it's
Speaker 1: closer to home and we don't have a bunch of
Speaker 1: time or anything like that. But yeah, typically I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna keep moving and keep finding different deer and just
Speaker 1: try to add it to that list as many deer
Speaker 1: as I can, so casting a pretty wide net in
Speaker 1: those early months. Um, you mentioned cameras. What are the
Speaker 1: trail camera locations you use generally at this you know,
Speaker 1: for this kind of patterning and is it you know,
Speaker 1: can you talk through how that might shift throughout the
Speaker 1: season two? Yeah, So for the most part, they're gonna
Speaker 1: be in the same locations year round for me, And
Speaker 1: it's just whether it's early season, whether it's summer, whether
Speaker 1: it's the rut. I find these deer using these hubs
Speaker 1: a lot. Um. You know, you talked to like Andy
Speaker 1: May for example, and Andy hunts a lot of these
Speaker 1: hub systems are like where there's a lot of UH
Speaker 1: topography that comes together during the rut and he's the
Speaker 1: best hunter out there. So they work. They obviously work. Um,
Speaker 1: But yeah, so I run my cameras and I'm pretty
Speaker 1: much year round, and I have inventory on these hub
Speaker 1: scrapes pretty much year round. I mean, now, whether it's
Speaker 1: February or whether it's June or October, November. I'll have
Speaker 1: bucks hitting these scrapes year round own down in these
Speaker 1: hub systems because they're dropping out of these beds, and
Speaker 1: because the points of these hubs that drop down set
Speaker 1: up for a lot of different winds typically, like they'll
Speaker 1: even set up for a lot of north winds, especially
Speaker 1: northwest if the drainage goes east. Um. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: I'm running the majority of my cameras on hubscrapes. And
Speaker 1: now it could be the primary hub down in the bottom,
Speaker 1: or it could be like so, okay, where the where
Speaker 1: the main ridges come down. So you have two drainages
Speaker 1: that turn to one, so you'll have three ridges. You'll
Speaker 1: have like the center ridge that's facing east, and then
Speaker 1: you'll have a ridge that faces north in a ridge
Speaker 1: that faces south. They meet at like that X. That's
Speaker 1: gonna be probably the best spot for inventory. And I
Speaker 1: run cameras and pretty much every one of those that's
Speaker 1: in a system that I like. And then as you
Speaker 1: go up those two drainages that converged, typically what you'll
Speaker 1: have is you'll have more hubs as you go further
Speaker 1: into those drainages, and you gain a little bit of
Speaker 1: elevation where you'll have like sub ridges or even a
Speaker 1: lot of times better bedding ridges because they're smaller, they
Speaker 1: don't get as much activity that will dump down and
Speaker 1: create another hub, and those are like secondary hub systems.
Speaker 1: I'll run cameras in those secondary hubs as well, and
Speaker 1: then uh, and then I'll run them in like some
Speaker 1: of the terrain features up higher in elevation, like it
Speaker 1: could be at the top of a hog's back when
Speaker 1: in between betting and a white oak, for example. I
Speaker 1: run cameras in a lot of spots like that. UM.
Speaker 1: But yeah, typically it's going to be in some sort
Speaker 1: of trail convergence in these systems, and if I don't
Speaker 1: do that, it's gonna be on like terrain feature to
Speaker 1: just try to catch a general movement. Every once in
Speaker 1: a while. You mentioned that you usually find these hub
Speaker 1: scrapes down the bottomost thermal hubs. What if you don't
Speaker 1: find one there, do you make one? Do you make
Speaker 1: a mock scrape or do you just place it where
Speaker 1: you think that convergence is, UM, tell me about that.
Speaker 1: So I've started doing mock scrapes recently and now, yes,
Speaker 1: I will do that down the bottom for a long time.
Speaker 1: If I didn't find that hub scrape, To be completely
Speaker 1: honest with you, I wasn't as fired up about that area,
Speaker 1: and I would just try to find one that had
Speaker 1: like that natural scrape because that's telling me that there's
Speaker 1: been mature deer in that area, like kind of battling
Speaker 1: over that section for a long time. If you find
Speaker 1: like a big, old worn in the ground community scrape,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of activity there. If you don't
Speaker 1: have that, I kind of asked myself, like, is there
Speaker 1: not any good bucks here? Is there only like maybe
Speaker 1: one good buck and the system doesn't hold a multiple
Speaker 1: good bucks? Because that's what I'm really looking for, is
Speaker 1: I'm looking for that competition between deer. Like let's say
Speaker 1: you have two to three deer in one of those
Speaker 1: systems that are four or five years old. Because of
Speaker 1: all the different subridges and little bowls and little pockets
Speaker 1: that they can bet in, it will hold more than
Speaker 1: one good deer. They just seem to use that scrape
Speaker 1: more often. So I've kind of noticed that on my
Speaker 1: cameras too, Like if I do create a mock scrape,
Speaker 1: they do work, especially for one deer, but they might
Speaker 1: not get as much activity in some of these spots
Speaker 1: because they're not like the activity wasn't there to begin with,
Speaker 1: So I'm trying to just like create that activity almost.
Speaker 1: Um with these cameras. What is your you know, breakdown
Speaker 1: between standard traditional cameras versus cell do you do you
Speaker 1: use cell cameras? If so, do you place those in
Speaker 1: any kind of different location or do you have a
Speaker 1: different way of utilizing those. So southern Ohio doesn't have
Speaker 1: a ton of cell service. Um, if it did, I
Speaker 1: would use them differently than I do. I would probably
Speaker 1: run more cell cameras down in like the hub scrapes.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's probably that's one of the most
Speaker 1: lethal things that you could do in in hill country
Speaker 1: with the cell cameras running on one of those hub
Speaker 1: scrapes in the bottom. Do you have service and then
Speaker 1: if it heats up, I mean you can go and
Speaker 1: kill that deer on the right condition without intruding and
Speaker 1: checking cameras. That is a huge advantage. UM. What I
Speaker 1: do with them, Like, I run probably six or seven
Speaker 1: cell cameras and they're on the tops of ridges and
Speaker 1: they're really trying to catch a deer like shifting over
Speaker 1: the ridge mid day if if there's like a wind
Speaker 1: shift day, and that's just like inventory that I could
Speaker 1: use to my advantage come season, even if it's in
Speaker 1: let's say early September. I get a buck at ten am.
Speaker 1: He was betted down for a south wind and we
Speaker 1: just had like a south and north wind change around
Speaker 1: that time. What I've noticed, if that wind shift happens
Speaker 1: early enough, is a lot of these deer will shift
Speaker 1: sides of the ridges, especially if the top of that
Speaker 1: ridge is brushy and it has a little bit of cover. Um.
Speaker 1: What I've started to find is I'll find these scrapes
Speaker 1: on the top of ridges that are in between those
Speaker 1: betting areas that he's using, and he'll check that scrape
Speaker 1: mid day on that wind shift. Well, now I know
Speaker 1: that that deer is in the area. So for me,
Speaker 1: it's an inventory thing. I can say, Okay, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to kill that deer there there. I probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: even set up on top of the ridge to kill
Speaker 1: that deer unless I had like the perfect condition, and
Speaker 1: I'm not using it to target that deer there. But
Speaker 1: what it's telling me is that deer was in the
Speaker 1: betting area that is for the south wind on the
Speaker 1: specific day, and he probably uses it more often. The
Speaker 1: only reason I caught him was due to that wind shift.
Speaker 1: But at least I know that he exists in that area,
Speaker 1: and now I have a beat on him, like I
Speaker 1: know he's there. I know that I can make a
Speaker 1: play on that deer on this condition if this oak
Speaker 1: flats hot and it could be like I said, it
Speaker 1: could be a south wind all day and I could
Speaker 1: go target that deer. But I caught him on that switch. Interesting.
Speaker 1: It's very it's very interesting to see those little kind
Speaker 1: of little habits that you can identify with cameras that way.
Speaker 1: So if most of your cameras then are traditional cameras,
Speaker 1: and it sounds like a lot of them, you're running
Speaker 1: deep in these thermal hubs, a few up on the
Speaker 1: ridges and stuff. Um, I guess the question is how
Speaker 1: do you access those cameras and when do you access
Speaker 1: those cameras to get data that you can actually use.
Speaker 1: I know you mentioned you put them out in the summer.
Speaker 1: You check them for the first time in mid September ish,
Speaker 1: that's going to give you your first read on Okay,
Speaker 1: who's in my area. Now that that September shift has happened,
Speaker 1: what about from that point on, how often you check
Speaker 1: them from that point on, and how and when do
Speaker 1: you do that so that you're not messing up your hunts.
Speaker 1: So it really depends on what the first camera poll
Speaker 1: gives me for intel on how I'll go in and
Speaker 1: check those spots. But I do have a rotation this year,
Speaker 1: for example, where I don't have my tag field yet,
Speaker 1: and so I'm basically on the on the correct on
Speaker 1: the on the day that the conditions are correct to
Speaker 1: go into that spot and hunt it, that's the day
Speaker 1: that I will go on there and check those cameras
Speaker 1: and I'll normally check him with my stand on my back,
Speaker 1: take my my tree stand, my camera gear, everything that
Speaker 1: I need, and I'll hunt my way into that spot
Speaker 1: just like I typically would, and I'll check that hubscrape
Speaker 1: camera and if that hubscrape camera is hot. Like let's
Speaker 1: say that I had a target buck on there three
Speaker 1: days over the last two weeks, but it was on
Speaker 1: like a southwest wind every day. Well, I'm going to
Speaker 1: take a shot at that deer and if he was there,
Speaker 1: and if he was coming off of multiple ridges and
Speaker 1: you can see him entering at different angles. That's going
Speaker 1: to change my approach a lot. If that's the case,
Speaker 1: I'll out the hubscrape, especially if he was daylighting. Um,
Speaker 1: but if he's there like right after dark a lot
Speaker 1: of times, what that tells me is I need to
Speaker 1: push up onto that ridge system and get closer towards
Speaker 1: that that secondary food source that I was telling you
Speaker 1: about earlier and try to hunt him going to that
Speaker 1: secondary food source. Um. I'm only going to be as
Speaker 1: as aggressive as I need to be in that situation
Speaker 1: to like, like I said, if i can kill him
Speaker 1: on the hubscrape, I'm absolutely going to do that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: basically I will. Like today, for example, I put uh
Speaker 1: four cameras out last week in a different location. It
Speaker 1: had really active food source. The white Oaks and red
Speaker 1: Oaks were dropping like crazy, and it had a really
Speaker 1: good hub that had a ton of sign in it,
Speaker 1: and so I put some cameras on that. It sets
Speaker 1: up good for a southwest wind where they're better than
Speaker 1: a clear cut that's facing north. So today, after the podcast,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get all my gear ready and put my
Speaker 1: stand on my back and I'm just gonna work my
Speaker 1: way up that drainage, and I'm gonna check the two
Speaker 1: different hubscrape cameras that I have, and if they're hot,
Speaker 1: I can make a play on that deer. And if not,
Speaker 1: my thought process is, I have four cameras in the
Speaker 1: truck and I'll just back out. I'll put my stand
Speaker 1: in the truck, I'll grab those four cameras and I'll
Speaker 1: go into a totally different system and lay four more
Speaker 1: cameras out. Um. And that's just kind of how I'm
Speaker 1: how I'm doing that right now. I'm checking cameras early,
Speaker 1: and if it's ready to hunt, I'll hunt it, and
Speaker 1: if not, I'll back right out and I'll go to
Speaker 1: a new spot and lay down more cameras, and if
Speaker 1: it's completely dead or the food source dried up, I
Speaker 1: will even pull those cameras so I have more for
Speaker 1: the next spot, you know, a couple of days later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what about this? What if you go in there to
Speaker 1: day and you get like the one on camera but
Speaker 1: it's not daylighting yet, but you you get one that
Speaker 1: gets all your fuzzies up and you're like, oh wow,
Speaker 1: this is this is the one I've been looking for,
Speaker 1: and he's showing up here an hour after dark still,
Speaker 1: but he's around. Are you going to change your camera
Speaker 1: or patterning process in any way now that you've found
Speaker 1: like the one Are you all of a sudden going
Speaker 1: to put four more cameras in this zone? Or are
Speaker 1: you going to take those other three and zoom them
Speaker 1: all in tighter to the one spot he was a bunch?
Speaker 1: Or do you do anything different to start collecting data
Speaker 1: once you've narrowed it down to to the one buck
Speaker 1: you want? That would be really situational. Um, but I
Speaker 1: would say that I could I could see myself doing
Speaker 1: all of that, and I could also see myself if
Speaker 1: it's an area that I'm a lot a lot of
Speaker 1: the spots where I'm putting cameras right now, I already
Speaker 1: have scouted pretty good. It's just I didn't run cameras
Speaker 1: there because I had like my top five locations. But
Speaker 1: say that this is like number ten or number eleven,
Speaker 1: and he's just there. I knew it had potential, but
Speaker 1: I don't think it has as much potential year after
Speaker 1: years the other spots. So so you know my top
Speaker 1: five spots didn't do good this year. Um, so go
Speaker 1: into like number ten for example, and the situation that
Speaker 1: you just you just said happens. I already have a
Speaker 1: lot of that scouted, and I would probably take a
Speaker 1: shot on that deer and just scout my way up
Speaker 1: further based on my previous scout acknowledge. And that's what's
Speaker 1: so useful about having all my logs and journals on
Speaker 1: my phone for those spots and then having like those
Speaker 1: specific routes. I could say, Okay, he hit the scrape,
Speaker 1: you know three times. The wind that day was south wind.
Speaker 1: Okay for a south wind, he's there's two betting areas
Speaker 1: that set up here. This food source is hot, but
Speaker 1: he's not getting here till after dark. He's probably in
Speaker 1: that other food store and the other betting area, and
Speaker 1: I have the secondary food source marked for that other
Speaker 1: betting area. I'm gonna go take that chance of that
Speaker 1: deer right now, Like I'm gonna be really aggressive and
Speaker 1: just go for it. Um. But that would be situational.
Speaker 1: That wouldn't be something that I do every time. If
Speaker 1: it would just have it would depend on the situation. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I want to dig into something you've mentioned there. You
Speaker 1: talked about like you found the pictures you saw that
Speaker 1: it was all in south wind and you happen to
Speaker 1: have a south south wind that day, So you would
Speaker 1: take a step when you look at this data like
Speaker 1: your pictures, how tight do the conditions of the appearance
Speaker 1: on camera? How have to line up with the conditions
Speaker 1: on a day you're considering hunting for you to actually
Speaker 1: try to use that pattern, you know? I mean, like
Speaker 1: for example, in Iowa private land, you might say, well,
Speaker 1: I know that when this buck you know comes back
Speaker 1: into this betting area on trail camera with anything with
Speaker 1: a westerly wind, I know he's gonna come back out
Speaker 1: to this food plot, like you can really tightly sometimes
Speaker 1: figure the connections out. Or if there's a high pressure
Speaker 1: cold front and day, I know he'll come out in
Speaker 1: daylight on a public land situation like you're describing, do
Speaker 1: you do you obsess over that specific link like you
Speaker 1: just mentioned the south and south because of the betting
Speaker 1: or will you say, well, he showed up on south winds,
Speaker 1: but I only have a west wind today and tomorrow,
Speaker 1: so I gotta go for it, yes or no? Any
Speaker 1: of that. I that's a really good question. So I
Speaker 1: would say that it's it's pretty loose to be honest
Speaker 1: with you, and it it's gonna be on how they like.
Speaker 1: These areas all set up differently. Like, for example, my
Speaker 1: betting area could be bull in between two sub ridges
Speaker 1: that jut out on the main ridge, but it could
Speaker 1: like work out into those ridges where it provides better
Speaker 1: betting for like different winds. Um, I have spots that
Speaker 1: set up only for a south or only for a west,
Speaker 1: but a lot of these areas do set up for
Speaker 1: like a southwest or you know, a version of that wind.
Speaker 1: I would say, as long as it's as long as
Speaker 1: it's close, I would I would take that opportunity as
Speaker 1: long as I think that I have the advantage at
Speaker 1: the spot I want to kill him, So like can
Speaker 1: I get in there? Can I Can I be clean
Speaker 1: with my access? And can I just take a shot
Speaker 1: at him? Um? I would probably do that, And that's
Speaker 1: that's probably pretty aggressive. I find myself doing those more,
Speaker 1: those sort of sits more often. UM. But if it
Speaker 1: was like a north wind, for example, then I wouldn't
Speaker 1: probably be in that system unless it's set up really
Speaker 1: good for north wind betting. It's just it's gonna be
Speaker 1: it's gonna be really situational. UM. But yeah, I would
Speaker 1: find myself probably, I don't know. It's situational. Man, that's
Speaker 1: a tough one. Well, how about this one. Here's another
Speaker 1: kind of situation that I think pops up. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: get a handful of great you know, either observations or
Speaker 1: daylight photos of a buck year after and he's daylighting
Speaker 1: over the course of a week, and you finally go
Speaker 1: in there and check your camera and you see that
Speaker 1: you say, oh, wow, the last six days or whatever,
Speaker 1: he has daylighted three or four times in here. That's great.
Speaker 1: And you're in there right now and you've got a
Speaker 1: couple of days off and you can hunt today or
Speaker 1: tomorrow on the next day. The problem is the conditions
Speaker 1: you have right now are are not good. So maybe
Speaker 1: he was daylighting when it was kind of cool and nice,
Speaker 1: and today and tomorrow the next day it happens like
Speaker 1: really hot. Do you push it, like you just described,
Speaker 1: even in that circumstance, even though he was moving on
Speaker 1: the cold front, and now it's hot because you know
Speaker 1: he was daylight yesterday or two days ago, So I
Speaker 1: gotta go for or would you back out because man,
Speaker 1: I realized now, like it's just too hot and creuddy
Speaker 1: or it's like winds or something that's not really would
Speaker 1: make you back out, I would hunt it. I would
Speaker 1: definitely hunt that. And uh the reason being is a
Speaker 1: lot of these hubs and a lot of these cameras
Speaker 1: that I have are within like let's say, maximum like
Speaker 1: two yards from the betting and so I don't see, uh, like,
Speaker 1: those cold fronts are great for general movement, but when
Speaker 1: I'm hunting that tight to betting, I don't see a
Speaker 1: lot of difference. And whether it's a cold front or
Speaker 1: it's ninety like two out of the last three years,
Speaker 1: I've killed my dear in over eighty five degrees. My
Speaker 1: biggest buck ever was ninety five degrees at three in
Speaker 1: the afternoon, but I was sixty yards from his bed,
Speaker 1: and so that's something like I would definitely take that opportunity.
Speaker 1: As long as my wind isn't completely wrong, the conditions
Speaker 1: wouldn't matter, wouldn't hold a lot of weight for me
Speaker 1: at that point in time. As long as I have
Speaker 1: a good wind where I'm not going to just blow
Speaker 1: out the betting area, I would definitely take a shot
Speaker 1: at that. Interesting, what about any of these other factors
Speaker 1: that folks like to obsess over. Do you do you
Speaker 1: give any credence to move own stuff? Barometric pressure stuff,
Speaker 1: does that factor whatever? As I get later into season,
Speaker 1: into the rut, I think that I could find myself
Speaker 1: focusing a little more on barometric pressure, um the moon.
Speaker 1: I've never paid any attention to, to be honest with you, I've,
Speaker 1: like I said, I'm just so close to the betting
Speaker 1: normally that if the deer is there for that specific
Speaker 1: win day and the food source is hot, I'm like,
Speaker 1: typically he he doesn't have to move more than thirty
Speaker 1: or forty yards and I can shoot him. And so
Speaker 1: that's what I'm more focused on. I'm focused on just
Speaker 1: like just the betting plan and how close he's gonna be,
Speaker 1: and like where he's gonna travel. And I think that
Speaker 1: I don't. I've never seen barometric pressure hold a deer
Speaker 1: in his bed until dark. Like I feel like they,
Speaker 1: at least in my experience, they typically if they're in
Speaker 1: that bed, they will get up and move a little bit.
Speaker 1: It might be ten yards or twenty yards, and it
Speaker 1: might be at last light. But I always feel like
Speaker 1: there's a little opportunityy there, and that's what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to capitalize. On like I. Yeah, I could sit back
Speaker 1: in some of these spots and hunt them four yards away,
Speaker 1: and then I'm sure I could wait for the stars
Speaker 1: to align and wait for all those factors to come
Speaker 1: into play, like barametric pressure and like a red moon
Speaker 1: uh day where the movement times up perfectly and all
Speaker 1: those things. But being on public and having other people
Speaker 1: hunting these deer and having these deer shift around a
Speaker 1: lot based on food sources, when the opportunity is in
Speaker 1: front of me, I just have to go in tight
Speaker 1: to the bedding and take the shot. Yeah, that makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. You know, one thing we haven't
Speaker 1: talked about, and I gotta believe you have. Some of
Speaker 1: this is history from previous years, you know, whether it
Speaker 1: be sightings from past years or pictures from past years.
Speaker 1: Does that factor into your patterns at all? Or with public?
Speaker 1: Does that stuff not hold up? Daniel patterns not hold
Speaker 1: up in your neck of the woods, No, it definitely does.
Speaker 1: That's something that I focus on quite a bit where
Speaker 1: if I have a buck that I've been following for
Speaker 1: two or three years, and I've had cameras in that area,
Speaker 1: and then I see like how he's shifting through that
Speaker 1: system throughout the fall. I will definitely play that to
Speaker 1: my advantage and I'll use it for like planning my
Speaker 1: access routes and to kill that deer. For how I
Speaker 1: want to lay my cameras out, you know the following year,
Speaker 1: how I would want to check them um, and then
Speaker 1: basically how I would how I wouldhunt that deer. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm looking at that inventory and the intel a lot um.
Speaker 1: You know, I've had a lot of deer that as
Speaker 1: they ship, like I might have my tag field already,
Speaker 1: but I'm still gaining that every year. Uh two years ago,
Speaker 1: I chased the deer based on that information, and I
Speaker 1: knew that a specific spot really heated up with his activity,
Speaker 1: like he would be on the scrapes every day in
Speaker 1: this one betting area late October it was like the
Speaker 1: November four There was like a six or seven day
Speaker 1: window there, and I targeted that deer based on that
Speaker 1: and had two or three different encounters with him and
Speaker 1: just couldn't seal the deal. But it got me in
Speaker 1: the game on that specific deer where I could have
Speaker 1: been out somewhere totally different if I wouldn't have had
Speaker 1: that in that until Yeah, what would you say is
Speaker 1: the best time of the season two pattern a buck
Speaker 1: on public lands pattern kill a buck. I've heard you
Speaker 1: talk a lot about the early part of the year.
Speaker 1: Is that is that the time? Is that why you
Speaker 1: love that time of year or is there some other part?
Speaker 1: Early season is to me, hands down the best opportunity
Speaker 1: at targeting a deer and killing him like and the
Speaker 1: reason being is you you can spend all year gaining
Speaker 1: that data for that one hunt, all summer gaining data.
Speaker 1: You can put all the pieces together and then go
Speaker 1: in and just take that shot at him, if you know,
Speaker 1: like this year, for example, early seasons come gone and
Speaker 1: we're coming into mid October now and things are gonna
Speaker 1: start changing. So I would say that the best opportunity
Speaker 1: for me to do that now would be late season here,
Speaker 1: so we get to hunt in January, and I would
Speaker 1: say that early season has been like through camera data
Speaker 1: and then being out in the woods, early season has
Speaker 1: been the time that I found like the most consistent
Speaker 1: deer movement and the most like I can just I
Speaker 1: can I know what they're generally gonna do. But late
Speaker 1: season would definitely be second. Like January, I have just
Speaker 1: as many good bucks that are very consistent that time
Speaker 1: of year is just normally I'm tagged out. Um, but
Speaker 1: I do try to get other people those deer. And
Speaker 1: so that's something that you know I have in the
Speaker 1: back of my head this year is I have spots
Speaker 1: that heat up late season, where like I haven't located
Speaker 1: a good buck yet, but some of these spots, like
Speaker 1: a chestnut oak ridge that's dropping really good, We'll have
Speaker 1: deer from miles come to that ridge late season in
Speaker 1: some of these areas, and so there's a good chance
Speaker 1: that there would be a good one there, like there's
Speaker 1: been the last two years, and I can get on
Speaker 1: him and chase him based on not only that the
Speaker 1: annual data like we were talking about the historical data,
Speaker 1: but based on the fact that he's just gonna shift
Speaker 1: back into that area for that food source. YEA, So
Speaker 1: early season, late season best times of year to pattern
Speaker 1: a buck. What do you think about the rut? Can
Speaker 1: you pattern a deer in your kind of area? I'm
Speaker 1: public land during the rut or at that point do
Speaker 1: you throat all off the window? Um, I'm I'm probably
Speaker 1: the worst person to talk to about the rut because
Speaker 1: I love early season. I focused on that so much,
Speaker 1: and I've been fortunate enough to feel quite a few
Speaker 1: of my tags in that first like week time frame. Um.
Speaker 1: I did fill my tag in the rut two years
Speaker 1: ago though, and I ended up filing my tag hunting
Speaker 1: a buck betting area like I've walked in. One day,
Speaker 1: I found a bunch of scrapes opened up in a bottom,
Speaker 1: and I told myself, he's in that betting area and
Speaker 1: he's gonna come out just like he normally would like, Yes,
Speaker 1: he's probably going to go look for doze that night,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna hunt him just like he said in
Speaker 1: his bed, and he's dropping down out of this drainage.
Speaker 1: And I went in and he did. He stood right
Speaker 1: up out of his bed and came to eighteen yards.
Speaker 1: Uh so yeah, for me, I don't I can't find
Speaker 1: a pattern there. Maybe the only pattern would be that
Speaker 1: historical like three to four day windows when some of
Speaker 1: these maybe the dough groups are are going into heat
Speaker 1: or uh like the deer just filtering through these areas
Speaker 1: for whatever reason. But typically for me, it's a free
Speaker 1: for all. It's they're all over the place, and I
Speaker 1: feel completely out of my element because I'm not playing
Speaker 1: the chess match necessarily, um, and there's guys that can
Speaker 1: do that and that are very good at playing that match.
Speaker 1: I just down here in the hills, I haven't had
Speaker 1: very much success doing that. Yeah. Well, I don't think
Speaker 1: you're too unique in that. I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people that heather heads scratched, the scratching their heads
Speaker 1: when it comes to uh early in mid November when
Speaker 1: they're after specific deer at least, it's it's it's definitely
Speaker 1: a little bit wilder. Um. You know, something we didn't
Speaker 1: talk a lot about, but I mean you've mentioned here
Speaker 1: and there, but what about like the physical actual sign
Speaker 1: on the ground when you're doing this in season patterning.
Speaker 1: You know, let's say we're we're you've you've cast your
Speaker 1: wide net already and you've narrowed it down like there's
Speaker 1: a deer year after, or there's a couple of deer
Speaker 1: year after and a couple of zones you're focusing on.
Speaker 1: You've got your cameras in the hub scrapes, you've checked
Speaker 1: them a time or two. You have a little bit
Speaker 1: of history with these deer. So so there's a lot
Speaker 1: of data not to work with. How does you know
Speaker 1: actual tracks on the ground or bigger rubs or scrapes
Speaker 1: factor into you know, your data set, is it? Do
Speaker 1: you not even need that stuff because you've already scouted it,
Speaker 1: you already had the pictures and now you're just hunting
Speaker 1: or you still looking at that stuff and tweaking and
Speaker 1: fine tuning stuff. You know, in October or whatever time
Speaker 1: of year, it is, yeah, that that ground data is
Speaker 1: going to be hu especially this time of year, starting
Speaker 1: to get into mid October, when the deer shifting around,
Speaker 1: like almost on a daily basis, some of these white
Speaker 1: oaks are drying up and they're shifting off the white
Speaker 1: so on the reds, or they're shifting over to some
Speaker 1: sort of bag, or you know, they're bouncing around a
Speaker 1: lot um. So a lot of times I can get
Speaker 1: into the right drainage and within like fifty yards of
Speaker 1: walking into that drainage, in my head, I know whether
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be close to killing one or not. And
Speaker 1: it's just like you start walking in and it's like scrape, scrape, scrape,
Speaker 1: They're all opened up. Well, I know that those are
Speaker 1: the secondary scrapes where he's just running out the strainage
Speaker 1: at night, But I know where his primary is and
Speaker 1: if these are open and his big tracks are here
Speaker 1: and they look like they got kicked up this morning
Speaker 1: while I'm in the game, and I'm gonna go in
Speaker 1: with you know, I'm going in to kill um. But
Speaker 1: if you get into the you know some of these
Speaker 1: drainages that have historically had that really good sign, if
Speaker 1: I go in there and they're just dried up, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have a lot of different approach to that,
Speaker 1: especially this year with the h D thing down here,
Speaker 1: that's gonna play a big role because if I get
Speaker 1: in the areas and there's just no deer sign, like
Speaker 1: you know, before the podcast, we were talking about a
Speaker 1: couple of these white oak flats I found that have
Speaker 1: very little deer sign on them and they're actively dropping. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a problem there. Something something's not right, and I'll
Speaker 1: probably just vacate that area and not spend a ton
Speaker 1: of time there because there should be a bunch of
Speaker 1: sign there and historically there has been, and something is
Speaker 1: just off this year. So you know, if I go
Speaker 1: into pull cameras and my cameras are telling me there's
Speaker 1: nothing there and there's no sign, it's it's I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna vacate that area now if I go in to
Speaker 1: pull my cameras and my cameras aren't hot, but there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of sign and I'm just off with my cameras. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna figure out how to hunt that spot and
Speaker 1: figure out what kind of deer is in there and
Speaker 1: how I can target him because I'm just not set
Speaker 1: up right. Yeah, you know that brings up a question, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, actual observations of deer in season when you've
Speaker 1: got us scenario like that where you where you think
Speaker 1: there's something going on in the area, but your cameras
Speaker 1: haven't quite told her what it is. Do you do
Speaker 1: you do observation type sits in that kind of habitat?
Speaker 1: Is there a way to do that where you're, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to be low impact and learning with your eyes,
Speaker 1: but you know, not necessarily plunging right in for a
Speaker 1: kill hunt. Can you Can you do that on public
Speaker 1: land and you're kind of habitat? Yes? Absolutely, And the
Speaker 1: more the leaves fall off, the better those opportunities get.
Speaker 1: So by late October when most of the I would
Speaker 1: say the majority of the leaves are off down here, Um,
Speaker 1: I can sit on an adjacent ridge with like a
Speaker 1: south wind in my face and watch that north slope
Speaker 1: all morning with just glass. I can glass like you
Speaker 1: would be out west and just watch the deer filter
Speaker 1: back into those betting areas and then I can make
Speaker 1: a play based off that. And that's something that I
Speaker 1: will do quite a bit this year, especially late season,
Speaker 1: like late season, having that having the eyes on the
Speaker 1: deer that morning is going to be huge to me
Speaker 1: if I get in that situation. Um, And I'll even
Speaker 1: do it now, Like the sits that I've taken this
Speaker 1: year are are basically observation sits because there was signed
Speaker 1: in that area, so I haven't had the data that
Speaker 1: I need or basically knew there was a buck there
Speaker 1: I want to target and I don't want to completely
Speaker 1: blow out that area, so I can sit back and
Speaker 1: just watch an oak flat from afar with a good
Speaker 1: wind and make sure I can get out of their
Speaker 1: clean And I'm just observing some of these spots. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's something that I focused on quite a bit. Do
Speaker 1: you do any kind of UM, I guess I don't know,
Speaker 1: is is UH is shining or anything like that legal
Speaker 1: in Ohio. I can't remember what it is down there. No,
Speaker 1: it is not legal in Ohio unfortunately. Okay, do you
Speaker 1: ever do evening drives and and actually look for deer
Speaker 1: on the edge of fields at all in season? I
Speaker 1: don't know if these big bucks ever rolling down to
Speaker 1: egg in daylight at that point. Probably, But is that
Speaker 1: something that ever happens when you're really struggling to find
Speaker 1: these deer or something like that. I haven't done it
Speaker 1: a whole lot down here, to be honest with you.
Speaker 1: And it's a lot of that has to do with
Speaker 1: the egg just getting cut and enroll and then it
Speaker 1: dries up within a couple of days, it seems like,
Speaker 1: after getting cut. But yeah, the majority of it's going
Speaker 1: to be trying to find spots that I can observe
Speaker 1: in the woods, like in the hard woods. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's let's zoom out just a little bit more. I
Speaker 1: feel like we've got a good sense of you know,
Speaker 1: how you're getting all this data. I'm kind of I
Speaker 1: wonder if I wonder what your nights look like. Well,
Speaker 1: this is gonna sound weird, you know, Like on an
Speaker 1: in season October night, I'll be sitting on my computer
Speaker 1: or sitting a bell on my phone. And there's that
Speaker 1: scene in The Hangover. I don't know if you remember this,
Speaker 1: but there's the scene the Hangover where Zach Galafanakis was
Speaker 1: playing something in Vegas and then he's doing the whole
Speaker 1: rain Man thing where you see like all these numbers
Speaker 1: in his head and he's like trying to dial in
Speaker 1: exactly what's going on. There's a great little gift the
Speaker 1: people share these this time of year, where basically he's
Speaker 1: thinking through every possible scenario that could happen in his
Speaker 1: card game. I feel like that's me in season, where
Speaker 1: every night I'm like looking at my pictures and looking
Speaker 1: at my spreadsheet and looking at the weather and looking
Speaker 1: at the wind direction and looking at my maps, and
Speaker 1: my nights are just this endless analysis of what might
Speaker 1: happen tomorrow. Where should I go tomorrow? Or or when
Speaker 1: should I shift to this place during the weekend. What
Speaker 1: does the typical in season night, if that's when you
Speaker 1: do this kind of stuff look like for you? And
Speaker 1: can you kind of walk me through an example of
Speaker 1: of how you pair down or come up with a
Speaker 1: plan for the day. You know, are you looking at
Speaker 1: a really wide area still and thinking there. Well, today,
Speaker 1: I could do this, but I don't have the right
Speaker 1: wind or these cameras tell me x So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do something different, Like what does the analysis part of
Speaker 1: your process look like in the season. So you pretty
Speaker 1: much nailed it, honestly. I mean it's hours and hours
Speaker 1: every night, whether it's on the couch or at the
Speaker 1: table or laying in bed, just going through my phone,
Speaker 1: going through all my logs, going through any data I have,
Speaker 1: trying to come up with a with a plan for
Speaker 1: the next day. Um. You know, last night I was
Speaker 1: on my maps going through everything, and I decided, after
Speaker 1: looking at the wind, looking at the hourly data, looking
Speaker 1: at like windy for the specific directions of the day,
Speaker 1: and how I think these currents are going to play
Speaker 1: into some of these areas, I came up with an
Speaker 1: access route for today for that one spot to check
Speaker 1: the cameras I was telling you about. And then if
Speaker 1: I get in there and that's dried up and those
Speaker 1: cameras aren't telling me anything good, I'll back out. And
Speaker 1: then you know, last night I found a new area
Speaker 1: that's uh probably twenty miles south of there that I
Speaker 1: want to go check. And it's it sets up good
Speaker 1: for the wind of the day, and that's one of
Speaker 1: the biggest things. It's like sets up good for a
Speaker 1: for a southwest or a south wind. Uh So I'll
Speaker 1: go into that system and then I'll lay down those
Speaker 1: new cameras And that's kind of just my same process
Speaker 1: over and over right now until I located Deer. Now,
Speaker 1: once I located Buck, that's gonna change a lot. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna really fine tune on that specific area right now,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm just casting the giant net out and
Speaker 1: then as soon as I get a hit, I'll say, okay,
Speaker 1: I need to really find too and focus in. I
Speaker 1: might pull resources from from other areas if I need to.
Speaker 1: If it's an area that I'm really familiar with, I'll
Speaker 1: have a better idea what's going on. But it's going
Speaker 1: to be the same process, going through the maps, going
Speaker 1: through the weather data, going through everything that I have,
Speaker 1: trying to just come up with that game plan for
Speaker 1: the day. Yeah, that's sometimes the most fun. At least
Speaker 1: I love that stuff. Oh yeah, absolutely all right. If
Speaker 1: you were to look back over your years of doing this, Jake,
Speaker 1: what would you say is the biggest mistake you've made
Speaker 1: When it comes to trying to pattern during public claim,
Speaker 1: does anything jump out to you that now looking back,
Speaker 1: you realize out what a dummy I was. I would
Speaker 1: say early on the biggest mistake was just not being
Speaker 1: aggressive enough and trusting my gut. And I've went to
Speaker 1: the complete opposite side of that spectrum now where if
Speaker 1: I have the gut feeling, I just go with it. Um.
Speaker 1: What I've learned over the years is like you know
Speaker 1: how it is, you get into a spot and you're like,
Speaker 1: should I should I push on? Should I stay here?
Speaker 1: Like my guts telling me this, my brains telling me this.
Speaker 1: I don't. Is there more rubs up there? This is
Speaker 1: really hot and it looks really good, but maybe I
Speaker 1: need to push further. Like now, I just whatever my
Speaker 1: gut tells me, I do, And a lot of times
Speaker 1: I'm still wrong. But I feel like you just evolve
Speaker 1: so much better from trusting that instinct, and then your
Speaker 1: instinct changes over time and it becomes, you know, correct
Speaker 1: more often like you get you end up being closer,
Speaker 1: you get like that spiky sense feeling. Uh So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say definitely, hands down. The number one thing
Speaker 1: that I've learned is just to really trust myself to
Speaker 1: be very confident in what I'm doing, and sometimes that
Speaker 1: requires like a false face of confidence, but it works.
Speaker 1: I'll find myself. Like if I tell myself when I
Speaker 1: leave the house, I'm killing today that buck is beded
Speaker 1: in that bed and I'm gonna go and find the sign.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna figure out how to set up on him.
Speaker 1: I'm going to kill him. I hunt a lot differently
Speaker 1: than if I go out and I say, well, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna kind of like meander out into the woods
Speaker 1: and see what happens. I just like I'm so much
Speaker 1: more fine tuned and focused on the minor details when
Speaker 1: I go in with that killed mentality. So that's one
Speaker 1: thing I either hopefully have for the day or I'll
Speaker 1: try to like put on that face for the day,
Speaker 1: um before I go out. Dude, those are the best days.
Speaker 1: I love that feeling so much. When you like have
Speaker 1: that feeling like this is a kill set, that is
Speaker 1: just the the thing I live for that. Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's it's an awesome feeling, and it's like
Speaker 1: it's so hard to explain, you know, Like you get
Speaker 1: the goose bumps on the back of your neck, and
Speaker 1: your hair stands up and you're just like, Yeah, today's
Speaker 1: the day I'm going for it. Yeah, that's that's the
Speaker 1: good stuff. So so here's like a flip side kind
Speaker 1: of that question, which is, you know, can you think
Speaker 1: back to any specific moment when you had like that
Speaker 1: very most important ah ha kind of moment. Is there
Speaker 1: any hunt or deer or or day where you can
Speaker 1: think back like all of a sudden there was like
Speaker 1: a light switch event where you're like, ah, this is
Speaker 1: what I need to do or oh, this is how
Speaker 1: you pattern deer down here? Is there any specific kind
Speaker 1: of situation that you can think back on like that
Speaker 1: that that you could talk about. Uh, I would say
Speaker 1: it happened before I came down here. I grew up
Speaker 1: kind of hunting the same type of terrain, Like it
Speaker 1: was a little more mountainous, not quite as much egg,
Speaker 1: but it's set up really the same way where they
Speaker 1: were betting Leeward and they were kind of having they
Speaker 1: had the same like general routes and things like that. Um.
Speaker 1: But growing up, yes, I had a ton of those moments.
Speaker 1: And one that really sticks out to me. Funny enough,
Speaker 1: isn't really a hill country Aha, moment. It's an an
Speaker 1: egg moment. But when I when I could first bow hunt,
Speaker 1: I would go all with my dad and my grandpa
Speaker 1: all the time, and we had like typical New York
Speaker 1: like hunters. It was just how we were all brought up.
Speaker 1: We would sit in the top of this big shooting tower,
Speaker 1: so it was they had a coffee pot down below
Speaker 1: that they go downstairs and brewing coffee. And this is,
Speaker 1: you know, early October, we're doing that, and we would
Speaker 1: just sit out there and we would never be really
Speaker 1: close to killing a deer. We would wash them all
Speaker 1: in the fields all the time, but we were two
Speaker 1: yards away from the field, so you got to see
Speaker 1: a lot, but you were never really in the game.
Speaker 1: And one day I told my my dad and my grandpa,
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm gonna go like we had We've
Speaker 1: been sitting up there and we watched this buck across
Speaker 1: the corner of this field like three nights in a row,
Speaker 1: and every night we knew when he was going to
Speaker 1: come out, but we all just kept sitting up on
Speaker 1: top of that shack. And this was like the mobile
Speaker 1: hunter moment for me, where I told my dad and
Speaker 1: my grandpa was like, hey, I'm gonna go down there
Speaker 1: and sit on that hedgerow and I'm gonna kill that deer.
Speaker 1: And they both looked at me like I had twelve eyeballs.
Speaker 1: They were like, you're not gonna get anywhere close to that, dear,
Speaker 1: you have no chance. And my dad he's passed now,
Speaker 1: but he used to tell the story that him and
Speaker 1: like I got down and they see me take my
Speaker 1: bow and I'm going through the ushed and I'm headed
Speaker 1: over that way, and they're like, this kid's nuts, like
Speaker 1: what is he doing? And I couldn't They couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: But like thirty minutes later, that buck popped out in
Speaker 1: the corner of that field and I'm at like five yards,
Speaker 1: and uh, it was really cold, and I couldn't. I
Speaker 1: drew my bow back and I had a glove on.
Speaker 1: I couldn't reach the trigger of my release because I
Speaker 1: had an old flect hunter back in the day. But
Speaker 1: I was full drawn on this like really good three
Speaker 1: or four year old buck for New York at five
Speaker 1: yards and they were just watching this whole thing happened.
Speaker 1: They couldn't believe that it happened. And the deer ended
Speaker 1: up running off and everything but like that was the
Speaker 1: moment for me. I was like this this works, Like
Speaker 1: if you see him doing something, just go over to
Speaker 1: where they were. And that's how that evolution started for me,
Speaker 1: where it was as simple as watch it be on
Speaker 1: the you know, the tree stand the field and watch
Speaker 1: him come down and then just go ground hunt over
Speaker 1: by that spot the next day. And that's how I
Speaker 1: killed deer as a kid. Like that was how it
Speaker 1: all started for me. Um, yeah, it's just evolved. That's awesome. Alright,
Speaker 1: So last question, want to wrap up tie a bow
Speaker 1: on this thing if you were to, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Let's say you're writing the three Commandments a Patterning Deer
Speaker 1: on public Land, written by Jake Bush, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: take this and put them on a piece of rock
Speaker 1: on a mountaintop that all the deer hunting folks that
Speaker 1: want to be like Jake could go to and read
Speaker 1: your through your three commandments for patterning deer in public land?
Speaker 1: What would these three commandments be? These three most important
Speaker 1: rules two dialing in the pattern on these big old
Speaker 1: deer on this tough ground where everybody else can hunt
Speaker 1: them too. Can you can you come up with us
Speaker 1: three most important things, Jake, and I'm sure we've talked
Speaker 1: about them, but the highlight those three most important rules
Speaker 1: for me, I would say boots on the ground scouting,
Speaker 1: and that's putting as many miles as you can a
Speaker 1: year on your boots. Like I try to be roughly
Speaker 1: around five miles a year scouting around the hills looking
Speaker 1: for a dere uh. Sometimes it's a little less, sometimes
Speaker 1: it's a little more, but that mileage is what gives
Speaker 1: me that data. Without that, I'm just throwing guesses at
Speaker 1: the wind and I'm not even gonna be close. I
Speaker 1: could look into one every once in a while, but
Speaker 1: that's where that's the fund. Like, the foundation of this
Speaker 1: is just being willing to put the work in to
Speaker 1: go find the deer and find the data that you need.
Speaker 1: After that, I would say that it's gonna be just
Speaker 1: really trusting your thought process and your beliefs and staying
Speaker 1: focused on what you need to do. Um. I have
Speaker 1: a lot of guys that I know that are really
Speaker 1: really good hunters that kill every year, that want to
Speaker 1: be better at the early season game, but they just
Speaker 1: don't trust themselves enough. And a lot of times, like
Speaker 1: a lot of my buddies, I will tell them, you
Speaker 1: have everything that you need. You did all the work,
Speaker 1: You've done, the scouting, you've done, the boots on the ground,
Speaker 1: you have him on camera, you know where he's betted.
Speaker 1: Why are you sitting back two or three yards away
Speaker 1: from that deer? Go kill him? And like, well, what
Speaker 1: if he's not there? Just you gotta trust what you did,
Speaker 1: Like you did all the work. If if you trust
Speaker 1: your gut and your thought and you go in there
Speaker 1: and you get like you you're going to be close
Speaker 1: to killing him. And if you don't, you're gonna learn
Speaker 1: a really valuable lesson. So that is a is a
Speaker 1: huge thing. And then uh number three would really be
Speaker 1: just the willingness to adapt throughout the season, throughout your scouting. Um,
Speaker 1: you know this, this is constantly changing due to the
Speaker 1: e h D thing. This year. I could just give
Speaker 1: up and I could either go kill of a different
Speaker 1: deer or I could just give up on the season.
Speaker 1: But like I'm adapting and I'm trying to just go
Speaker 1: try to trying to go find another deer and then
Speaker 1: continue that process. Um and or like out West for
Speaker 1: example last year, where I kept running into hunters in Kansas,
Speaker 1: and then I went to like six or seven spots
Speaker 1: in a day and a half. It kept running into hunters.
Speaker 1: I got back in my maps. I just you know,
Speaker 1: I told myself, Okay, everything you did the scouting wise
Speaker 1: is wrong. You need to adapt. You need to come
Speaker 1: up with a different plan. I found a spot I
Speaker 1: didn't have many trees, and I went in the first
Speaker 1: time day two and killed my book. And so just
Speaker 1: the willingness to adapt to anything that can arise is
Speaker 1: going to help all out to Yeah, great advice. Well, Jake,
Speaker 1: if folks want to follow along with you either this
Speaker 1: season or see some of the past success you've had,
Speaker 1: where can people see that and connect with the online yep?
Speaker 1: So the Jake Bush on Instagram, Jake Bush on Facebook,
Speaker 1: and then Legends of the Hunt on YouTube was where
Speaker 1: most of my hunts are filmed and posted. Awesome, man,
Speaker 1: I really appreciate this is this has been fun and
Speaker 1: it's great to get to, uh get a peek behind
Speaker 1: the curtain of how you're doing this year. You're getting
Speaker 1: on some awesome deer down there, whether it's Ohio or Kansas.
Speaker 1: And I know you had a lot of success in
Speaker 1: New York. So it's it's really cool to see how
Speaker 1: that all comes together. So thank you for sharing this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me Mark. I appreciate it and that
Speaker 1: will do it. Thank you all for tuning in a
Speaker 1: couple of quick updates. Make sure you are following me
Speaker 1: on Instagram at wired Hunt to be able to kind
Speaker 1: of follow along with my worry throughout the rest of
Speaker 1: the season. Please head on over to the meat either
Speaker 1: YouTube channel and check out Dear Country. The whole season
Speaker 1: is out now, all six episodes. I hope you've been
Speaker 1: enjoying that. If you haven't been able to give it
Speaker 1: a watch, please do so. Give it a like, go
Speaker 1: to subscribe, let me know what you think. Thank you
Speaker 1: for that. Uh. Otherwise, get out there, get hunting. We
Speaker 1: are quickly approaching the rut the Super bowls almost here,
Speaker 1: but we've got some good stuff right now, so take
Speaker 1: advantage of it. Enjoy these late October days. Stuff is
Speaker 1: getting good. Let's have some fun. Thanks for tuning in
Speaker 1: and stay Wired to Hunt.