Speaker 1: As a guide and hunter, I've spent thousands of days
Speaker 1: in the field. This show is about translating my hard
Speaker 1: won experiences into tips and tactics they'll get you closer
Speaker 1: to your ultimate goal success in the field. I'm Remy Warren.
Speaker 1: This is cutting the distance. Welcome back, friends, I'm glad
Speaker 1: you joined us. It's that mid October time frame and
Speaker 1: hunting seasons are just kicking off. Maybe you're gonna be
Speaker 1: listening to this on your way to a hunt this
Speaker 1: weekend for opening Day, or maybe you're right now sitting
Speaker 1: in your tree stand waiting on a white tail buck
Speaker 1: to step out, jamming on this podcast. Now, when it
Speaker 1: comes to white tail hunting, there's really just a pile
Speaker 1: of information out there about food plots, management, stand locations.
Speaker 1: The list goes on and on, and the reason is
Speaker 1: because they are the most widely hunted big game animal
Speaker 1: in North America. But this week I wanted to break
Speaker 1: down a tactic a little bit different when it comes
Speaker 1: to hunting white tails. I want to talk about hunting
Speaker 1: white tails of the Western Way, often overlooked or really
Speaker 1: a lot of the abundant public lands and white tail
Speaker 1: opportunities from Colorado all the way to Washington State and
Speaker 1: most the states in between. But with the seemingly endless
Speaker 1: mountains and honestly thousands of places and acres for them
Speaker 1: to hide, keen in might seem pretty difficult. So I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna give you some of my favorite tactics for
Speaker 1: locating and hunting white tails from the big timber mountains
Speaker 1: to the open broken country plains. But first, let's go
Speaker 1: on the last day hunt for a big timber white
Speaker 1: tail buck. Now, I definitely get to hunt pretty much
Speaker 1: all the time, but a lot of that hunting has
Speaker 1: spent guiding other people are taking other people out, So
Speaker 1: when it comes to my own personal hunts sometimes it's
Speaker 1: just a weekend warrior deal where I've got a couple
Speaker 1: of days to go out and be successful. This just
Speaker 1: so happens that it was the end of the season.
Speaker 1: I just finished up my last week of guiding, and
Speaker 1: I had the end of the weekend to to hunt
Speaker 1: for myself, So I figured I had already filled my
Speaker 1: ELK tag. I wanted to just chase white tail deer.
Speaker 1: I'd seen some pretty good white tails throughout the season.
Speaker 1: This particular year is just a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: and figured, all right, I'm gonna I'm gonna just go
Speaker 1: all out try to find a good buck for myself.
Speaker 1: The first day, I went out and saw some smaller deer,
Speaker 1: some some younger bucks, which I normally would shoot because
Speaker 1: when it comes down to the tail end, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: just looking for pretty much any meat, and I normally
Speaker 1: end up shooting pretty young white tail bucks. But there
Speaker 1: are good deer around. I'd seen so many good ones.
Speaker 1: I thought, Okay, I'm just gonna try to find one
Speaker 1: of these good ones. I saw a couple of bucks
Speaker 1: that Saturday, and now it's closing time Sunday, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, you can do this revery. So I went
Speaker 1: to one of my favorite spots to hunt. And what
Speaker 1: I what I decided to do was I was just
Speaker 1: gonna check certain areas where I had seen deer in
Speaker 1: the past. There is where I know they like to travel.
Speaker 1: I brought my rattling antlers, I had my grunt tube,
Speaker 1: and it just kind of like doing a method of
Speaker 1: kind of cruising and hunting. So I would go hike
Speaker 1: into these spots, watch for a while, still hunt. There
Speaker 1: was some fresh snow. Unfortunately I really couldn't glass because
Speaker 1: this particular day, the weather was just what I would
Speaker 1: just consider like ship weather. It was those big snowflakes
Speaker 1: combined with fog, combined with some somehow it started to
Speaker 1: rain at one point and then snow again, so it's
Speaker 1: just really bad visibility. Everything was really wet, really wet
Speaker 1: snow good for tracking, good for finding tracks, but not
Speaker 1: necessarily good for glassing. So the first part of the
Speaker 1: morning I actually didn't see anything. The weather was so bad.
Speaker 1: It's just blizzarding conditions, really heavy wet snow. And then
Speaker 1: I decided to go to the essentially the last evening,
Speaker 1: my last and I was gonna go to the spot
Speaker 1: where I had seen some pretty good bucks in the past.
Speaker 1: There's just one particular opening where it was kind of
Speaker 1: like a meadow and then the hill came down, big
Speaker 1: timber around it, and there's like this one opening and
Speaker 1: this one trail that I've seen probably some of the
Speaker 1: best bucks on this particular trail. Normally I would sit
Speaker 1: there and set up, but I figured with the last day,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to just sit there all day and
Speaker 1: then not see anything and say, man, I should have
Speaker 1: checked these other spots where I've seen good deer too.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, all right for the second half of
Speaker 1: the day, I'm gonna sit here for the evening. Hopefully
Speaker 1: a buck will come out, you know. I'll do some rattling,
Speaker 1: do some calling, and then just plan on sitting. I
Speaker 1: had some really warm clothes on him, all bundled up
Speaker 1: for the good sit. Walking slow, trying not to sweat
Speaker 1: myself into this spot is about a mile and a
Speaker 1: half walk. So I'm walking in there and I see
Speaker 1: a dough. I'm like, oh sweet, okay, and it was
Speaker 1: like not very good visibility, and it turns out to
Speaker 1: be a mule deer dough and I'm like, huh, I
Speaker 1: normally don't see mule deer here. But that's cool, you know.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, all right. So I'm walking into my
Speaker 1: spot and this one particular opening, I don't know what
Speaker 1: it is. It's just like one of the few places
Speaker 1: you can actually see in the timber. And also there's
Speaker 1: like a good, a good trail where the deer come
Speaker 1: out of this big almost like pondo forest. It's like
Speaker 1: the forest kind of starts to open up, so it's
Speaker 1: it's really dark timber all around it, lots of deadfall,
Speaker 1: a canyon with a creek coming by, and then there's
Speaker 1: like this one strip that maybe it was logged a
Speaker 1: real long time ago, thinned out enough where they just
Speaker 1: happened they maybe didn't want to take the ponderos the
Speaker 1: trees or something, or some of the bigger trees. There's
Speaker 1: like just a few sporadic big trees. One clear opening
Speaker 1: that's got like not a lot of stuff on the
Speaker 1: ground or anything like you can actually see pretty good.
Speaker 1: And then it just gets back to forest. And for
Speaker 1: some reason, that one particular spot I've caught some big
Speaker 1: white tail bucks there in the past. So as I'm
Speaker 1: moving in to the spot, I'm kind of like looking looking, looking,
Speaker 1: I look up and now you gotta remember, like the
Speaker 1: visibility is not super great because it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: dark out just with all the real thick heavy clouds,
Speaker 1: low ceiling on the clouds. It's like not even that
Speaker 1: much higher above where this opening is. And I see
Speaker 1: two deer standing in the opening, maybe about two hundred
Speaker 1: yards away. I'm like, that is perfect, Like my rifles
Speaker 1: sighted in for two hundred yards. Sweet I dropped down.
Speaker 1: I'm like I'm kind of caught out in the open
Speaker 1: because I was gonna go to this little patch where
Speaker 1: I like to rattle from where I can rattle and
Speaker 1: kind of get stuff from the creek bottoms to come in.
Speaker 1: But I can also watch this spot and I'm within
Speaker 1: range and normally get set up, and then just like
Speaker 1: moving into the spot and there's two deer standing in there,
Speaker 1: a buck and a dough and then the dough it
Speaker 1: walked off out of sight and that buck is just
Speaker 1: standing there like staring at me. And I dropped down.
Speaker 1: I get the rifle on him, and I'm like, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, all I see is just like this giant
Speaker 1: frame and this dark dear like this deer is just
Speaker 1: like black color. It just came like this thing. It
Speaker 1: just says. It's just screams timber buck, you know, the
Speaker 1: kind of Bucky dream about. And I knew. I'm like,
Speaker 1: that is a giant white tail. I literally just saw
Speaker 1: a mule dear dope like right in this vicinity. I
Speaker 1: know I'm looking at a white tail. I can't see
Speaker 1: it's rear end. I can't really see. I just I'm
Speaker 1: looking through my rifle scope at three powers, so it
Speaker 1: looks even smaller than with the naked eye. And this
Speaker 1: weird thought creeps in my head. That's way too big
Speaker 1: to be a white tail. Even though I'm like, that's
Speaker 1: a white tail. You know, I can tell based on
Speaker 1: like I've seen so many deer, the outline and the
Speaker 1: body shape of a white tail. I can tell a
Speaker 1: yards most of the time with my naked eye, just
Speaker 1: by the way they walk or whatever a white tail.
Speaker 1: But the lighting is weird. This deer is so dark
Speaker 1: and it's just so like boxy, blocky, big, like that
Speaker 1: is a giant white tail. But I'm like, you know what,
Speaker 1: never make a stupid decision. I'm just gonna zoom my
Speaker 1: scope in. I've got this thing dead to rites in
Speaker 1: the cross there. I reach up to zoom my scope
Speaker 1: and as I'm zooming my scope magnification of I'm like,
Speaker 1: I just I'm just like I just thought to myself,
Speaker 1: I just want to zoom it in and verify, which
Speaker 1: I would do a hundred times over again. I zoom
Speaker 1: it up. As I'm zooming it up, the buck tucks
Speaker 1: tail and runs that little movement of me reaching up
Speaker 1: to give my rifle extra magnification. That buck whips around
Speaker 1: one eighties and follows that dough through the brush away forever.
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, no, no, it was clearly I knew
Speaker 1: it was a white tail, but the size of this deer,
Speaker 1: like it's body, just the way it was standing. If
Speaker 1: I didn't just see that meal that, I would have
Speaker 1: never even second guessed it, because I knew it was
Speaker 1: a white tail. But for some reason, I just thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna zoom in and just just a double check,
Speaker 1: because that's that buck is just too big to be
Speaker 1: a white tail in this area that I'm hunting, and
Speaker 1: it was a white tail ran into the timber, never
Speaker 1: to be seen again. I of course followed and tried
Speaker 1: to follow. It was so thick I followed the tracks
Speaker 1: and never caught back up to that buck, never saw
Speaker 1: that buck again. Unfortunately. I wish I could tell you
Speaker 1: the story of the big Country, big timber buck that
Speaker 1: I shot the best deer of my life. But it's
Speaker 1: fun to sometimes tell those stories of when you do
Speaker 1: something and it doesn't work out. And now, in hindsight,
Speaker 1: I would have done the exact same thing again. So
Speaker 1: there was no doubts in my mind before pulling that trigger.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's just one of those scenarios. Where
Speaker 1: I got there, the buck was already there. It wasn't right,
Speaker 1: it didn't work out, and that's hunting. And unfortunately it's
Speaker 1: one of those stories where the big buck got away.
Speaker 1: And who knows, maybe next year, maybe this year, I'll
Speaker 1: find that buck again and I can update you with
Speaker 1: a more successful version of this same type of story.
Speaker 1: Ye kind of looking back over my hunting career and
Speaker 1: in the places I've worked as a guide and things
Speaker 1: that I've hunted, you know, I've actually guided a lot
Speaker 1: of different states and hunted a lot of Western states
Speaker 1: specifically for white tails. Some of my first guiding jobs
Speaker 1: were actually big country white tail hunts archery season, and
Speaker 1: then again like later in November when the rut kicked off,
Speaker 1: big public land pieces. Over the years, you know, we
Speaker 1: got some pretty good box out of those spots. Now
Speaker 1: it seems like a lot of that, though, is just
Speaker 1: kind of overshadowed because self admittedly and talking on behalf
Speaker 1: of a lot of the other hunters that live in
Speaker 1: these areas. Most Western hunters are just crazy about meal there,
Speaker 1: and rightfully so. But that's not to say that the
Speaker 1: white tail hunting can't be incredible, and honestly, on some
Speaker 1: public land to boot. That's the best thing about it.
Speaker 1: You know, where a lot of people live or hunt,
Speaker 1: most of the places they're hunting might be small tracks
Speaker 1: or have to get permission. It's awesome to be able
Speaker 1: to just go hunt something and not have to ask
Speaker 1: for permission for it. Now, there are some really good
Speaker 1: hunting places out west on private lands. A lot of
Speaker 1: the guiding that I did for White Tales was and
Speaker 1: some private type pieces, and there's some incredible hunts around
Speaker 1: that agg and some other stuff. But what I want
Speaker 1: to do this week is just kind of touch a
Speaker 1: little bit on kind of finding places to hunt in
Speaker 1: those more public land type spots or places to look.
Speaker 1: And this doesn't necessarily just apply to the West, but
Speaker 1: some of this could probably be used other places as well,
Speaker 1: maybe somewhere closer to where you live the Midwest. I mean,
Speaker 1: I actually worked in South Dakota guiding White Tales as well,
Speaker 1: and a lot of this these tactics kind of come
Speaker 1: from that, but also you know, from Wyoming or even
Speaker 1: maybe some of that Kansas there and just whatever like
Speaker 1: these these tactics hopefully can be used other places. But
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna kind of talk about my experiences and
Speaker 1: the ways that if I'm just going cold turkey into
Speaker 1: a new place that I haven't on a white tails.
Speaker 1: Some of the tactics here, honestly, you know, for me
Speaker 1: when I think about it, or a lot of guys
Speaker 1: that hunt out west, the mule of your tags, a
Speaker 1: lot of them. You know, you can get some general tags,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the places we hunt or draw
Speaker 1: tags and then the white tails kind of like the
Speaker 1: red headed step child. Unfortunately, sorry if you're redheaded, I
Speaker 1: guess that's not PC. But um, it's like the deer
Speaker 1: that gets ignored out here because everybody is so merely focused,
Speaker 1: merely centric, but everybody ends up hunting white tails because
Speaker 1: that's the tag that your general tag you can use,
Speaker 1: or it's an easier tag to get, or there's more
Speaker 1: availability on season dates and other things like that. Let's
Speaker 1: just break it down. So you're we're gonna just kind
Speaker 1: of make a big blanket. We're gonna throw a big
Speaker 1: blanket on and kind of like the Western. When I
Speaker 1: talk West, I kind of think of like Colorado West,
Speaker 1: but you know that could include like Texas for some
Speaker 1: people in Oklahoma and whatever. Just I'm kind of focusing
Speaker 1: on these areas that have white tails and also large
Speaker 1: tracts of public land. And when you break that down
Speaker 1: in the most part places that I've been hunting like this,
Speaker 1: there's two habitat category types. So there's the big timber,
Speaker 1: which would be like your mountain hunts, your more alpine areas,
Speaker 1: your big forested areas, probably steeper mountains, that mountain country.
Speaker 1: And then there's that broken country. So that broken country
Speaker 1: would be more like your coolies, your breaks, your stuff
Speaker 1: that's like rolling hills, um river bottom type stuff, more
Speaker 1: stuff that's like around agg and other things. So that's
Speaker 1: two different types. You've got kind of like open country
Speaker 1: white tails, which is really fun and awesome place to hunt,
Speaker 1: and you've got like your big mountain timber white tails,
Speaker 1: which can also hold some really good bucks that get
Speaker 1: some age class on them. There's a lot more opportunity
Speaker 1: around public land and can be a great hunt as well.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna break down the hunts and what to
Speaker 1: focus on in those two subsets, those subcategories. So let's
Speaker 1: start with the big timber. Now, these would be what
Speaker 1: I like to call mountain bucks. You might hear me
Speaker 1: talk about like the last couple of years, I've taken
Speaker 1: my dear at nearly the top of the mountain beginning
Speaker 1: of October. My wife actually shot her first white tail.
Speaker 1: Was it even like ninety feet at the end of November,
Speaker 1: which is just like I wouldn't think a white tail
Speaker 1: would live up here then. Yet constantly we're kind of
Speaker 1: finding deer in these random places. But you have to
Speaker 1: understand that these white tails live in large forested areas
Speaker 1: and are different than the white tails that you might
Speaker 1: be used to that you might have grown up hunting
Speaker 1: other places, because these are mountain deer that aren't necessarily
Speaker 1: I wouldn't particularly put them in that category of patternable
Speaker 1: because a lot of these deer actually migrate. So in
Speaker 1: those big forested areas, you're probably gonna have larger mountains,
Speaker 1: and the deer do like a lot of the other
Speaker 1: animals in the area. They go up in the summer
Speaker 1: and down in the winter. They might move a long distance,
Speaker 1: traveling from a summer range to a winter range, and
Speaker 1: you're kind of trying to catch them in this hunting
Speaker 1: season in between. So when you're thinking about those type
Speaker 1: of white tails, you've got to be thinking of, Hey,
Speaker 1: these might not be deer that hold the very small
Speaker 1: area small home range. These are range e deer that
Speaker 1: hold a very broad area. Now, they can be fairly
Speaker 1: difficult to pinpoint a specific deer or you would think, oh,
Speaker 1: they don't really have a pattern. Yet year after year
Speaker 1: I found like some of the similar bucks, same bucks
Speaker 1: moving in kind of like the same area through the
Speaker 1: same time. Or you might get into it an area
Speaker 1: that's like there's no deer here early in the season,
Speaker 1: and then later in the season it's just full of
Speaker 1: white tails, so you might run into that more migratory
Speaker 1: pattern type deer. Now when we're talking about that Broken Country,
Speaker 1: the deer in that Broken Country are more in that
Speaker 1: river bottom. They don't have that big mountain, that big difference.
Speaker 1: So these deer more apt to kind of follow, I
Speaker 1: would say, patterns that are very similar to dear other places,
Speaker 1: maybe your hardwood forests of the Midwest or eastern United States,
Speaker 1: even like you know where most the country hunts their
Speaker 1: white tailed deer. These more broken country bucks kind of
Speaker 1: follow those same type of patterns, same type of things.
Speaker 1: But we're gonna be talking about that broken Country and
Speaker 1: that Timbered Country in combination because there's gonna be one
Speaker 1: key factor that we're pulling out of here. So the
Speaker 1: broken country deer, you know, you've got your river bottoms,
Speaker 1: you've got a lot open surrounded by maybe some like
Speaker 1: draws that are thicker that will provide the cover and
Speaker 1: other things. It might also be an area where there's
Speaker 1: a little bit more agriculture, grasslands, prairie type stuff. So
Speaker 1: why we're talking about these two seemingly opposite ends of
Speaker 1: the spectrum is one because that's the two types of
Speaker 1: white tail habitat that we're gonna be focusing on. But
Speaker 1: what we're gonna be trying to do is identifying adequate
Speaker 1: features that the deer like and use that is not
Speaker 1: readily available everywhere. So let me break that down. This
Speaker 1: is all going to start making sense here in a second.
Speaker 1: So you've got the timber country that holds white tails
Speaker 1: and you've got more open country and are generally in
Speaker 1: two completely different regions. So you might be like in
Speaker 1: one area of a state and then four hours away
Speaker 1: is this other type of country or whatever. It's it's
Speaker 1: two completely different subsets of terrain, but we're looking for
Speaker 1: the same type of thing in both, but different things.
Speaker 1: So in that more open country. You've got a lot
Speaker 1: of open expanses, You've got a lot of things. Now,
Speaker 1: what we're going to focus on when we're looking for
Speaker 1: white tails is the thing that's more rare but they need,
Speaker 1: and that would be that cover. So in the big open,
Speaker 1: more breaks type country, what the white tails really like
Speaker 1: is that thicker cover. When you think about breaking down
Speaker 1: a white tails habits and habitat, they're more of a
Speaker 1: forest dwelling animal. Their home ranges are often smaller. A
Speaker 1: lot of places they live and they use security undercover.
Speaker 1: They like to be near that cover. Now, when you're
Speaker 1: talking about open country, there isn't a lot of cover available.
Speaker 1: So in those few areas where it provides the adequate
Speaker 1: cover that they like, thickets, creek bottoms, river bottoms that
Speaker 1: have a combination of a lot of trees on the
Speaker 1: edge of feed, stuff like that is where we're gonna
Speaker 1: be focusing in on. Now, the same kind of thing
Speaker 1: is true for the big mountain white tails, but in
Speaker 1: the opposite fashion, covers everywhere. So what's the most rare
Speaker 1: thing that these dear need. Well, they're gonna need that feed,
Speaker 1: and that feed might be a lot less available in
Speaker 1: some of that stuff that's really covered. So in that
Speaker 1: particular scenario where everything's covered, I look for the areas
Speaker 1: that are more open. It also is because of my
Speaker 1: hunting style and tactic and being able to kind of
Speaker 1: pinpoint deer in this such a big area into one
Speaker 1: narrow spot. Where am I going to find the deer?
Speaker 1: So I'm looking for something that they like that's more
Speaker 1: rare and then pinpointing those areas. If I'm just let's say,
Speaker 1: e scouting on my onyx maps or whatever, and I'm
Speaker 1: looking for places where I might potentially find white tails,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pick an area first where Okay, I know
Speaker 1: there's a population of white tails. We have done some research,
Speaker 1: there's white tail tags in the air area, they've got deer,
Speaker 1: and then I'm going to narrow it down to okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do an overview look and say, okay, what
Speaker 1: kind of country is Is this a really open country?
Speaker 1: If it's real open, where are those creek bottoms, where
Speaker 1: are those areas that they can hide, Where are those
Speaker 1: areas that are a little bit brushier, places that might
Speaker 1: be close to agriculture, on the edge of agg where
Speaker 1: they might be going in and out of those agricultural areas,
Speaker 1: and then where are they going to bed from there?
Speaker 1: They like that safety and security to bed, So I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna pull out my map and focus on that.
Speaker 1: When I get in the area, I'm also going to
Speaker 1: kind of look around and try to key in on
Speaker 1: places that I think there's a higher likelihood of holding deer.
Speaker 1: The same goes for the timbered areas the mountain bucks.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be doing that same thing, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be looking for clear cuts, open timber pockets that will
Speaker 1: provide maybe different food sources. Another thing that I look
Speaker 1: for in those big mountain white tails is what I
Speaker 1: call tree changes. So it's like maybe there's a pine
Speaker 1: forest and you've got this creek running down the bottom,
Speaker 1: and you notice, hey, there's different kinds of trees in there.
Speaker 1: There's more maybe some hardwoods. Maybe there's some oak trees
Speaker 1: in there. Maybe there's some aspen trees in there. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's another kind of tree other than the pine that
Speaker 1: might provide not only a food source, but maybe like
Speaker 1: a different type of cover change. Where there's some thickets
Speaker 1: and some rose hips in there. That's like, hey, around
Speaker 1: that water source, everything's open. Everything is timbered, it's all
Speaker 1: bear grass and really bad forage. And then you've got
Speaker 1: this one wet spot that's got other grasses that might
Speaker 1: have who knows, like some different types of trees, and
Speaker 1: then like rose hips and other things that these deer
Speaker 1: can browse on, and so I look for those types
Speaker 1: of changes. Now, once I find those kind of things,
Speaker 1: my hunting tactic is a lot different than most white
Speaker 1: tail I would say, like where you sit and wait tactic,
Speaker 1: you're ambush tactic. I use a combination of a few things.
Speaker 1: The first thing would be a combination in open country
Speaker 1: major glassing. And that's what's so fun about it is
Speaker 1: you can glass cover a lot of country with your
Speaker 1: eyes either way. Though, what I'm doing is I'm moving
Speaker 1: a lot and trying to cover a lot of country
Speaker 1: because it's such a big area. I'm trying to narrow
Speaker 1: down where are the deer at. So I first go, okay,
Speaker 1: what kind of habitat in this particular environment are they
Speaker 1: probably most likely going to be around, depending on whether
Speaker 1: it's the open country or the mountain country, And then
Speaker 1: I'm kind of do this what I call like cruising
Speaker 1: for white tails, it's essentially a lot of moving until
Speaker 1: I find the pockets that hold the deer. I've hunted
Speaker 1: a lot of places where it's really low density for
Speaker 1: white tails, and so I've developed this tactic for that.
Speaker 1: But it also works really well on that more big
Speaker 1: broken country that you can't really see everything in glass everything.
Speaker 1: I do a lot of walking and I do a
Speaker 1: lot of spotting as well, in a combination of still
Speaker 1: hunting and walking. So I'll be walking in areas that
Speaker 1: look really good where they've got that something different than
Speaker 1: the deer. Like I go really slow, I start to glass,
Speaker 1: I start to really pick it apart. I look in
Speaker 1: a lot of areas, and then if I don't see
Speaker 1: anything that I'm looking for, I move now. Sometimes I
Speaker 1: will bump year you think, oh man, you messed up
Speaker 1: your opportunity or whatever. That's not always the case, because
Speaker 1: I know this sounds like a very aggressive tactic. I'm
Speaker 1: not just trying to like run through their blowing deer out.
Speaker 1: But if I do kick a deer up, then I
Speaker 1: analyze that spot. Okay, what was it doing? Was a
Speaker 1: betting here? Now I know, Okay, well this is an
Speaker 1: area that's holding white tails. If I if I jump
Speaker 1: a dope. Okay, this is an area that's holding deer,
Speaker 1: especially if I'm hunting during the rut or something, when
Speaker 1: I can expect now is time where I start to
Speaker 1: slow down. So you've got to realize, like you've got
Speaker 1: all this land, You've got all these places to check.
Speaker 1: It's like the density of white tailed deer might not
Speaker 1: be what you're used to if you come from somewhere
Speaker 1: like Wisconsin or Minnesota or Texas or Iowa. We like
Speaker 1: there's just hundreds of white tails per square mile whatever,
Speaker 1: at least what it appears on TV, and some places
Speaker 1: that I've checked out, there's just like a lot more
Speaker 1: deer density than you go out west and you go, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be five white tails in five square miles,
Speaker 1: good luck, go find them. So you have to kind
Speaker 1: of covered country and understand, hey, this is where the
Speaker 1: deer at. Once I have found that, and that's just
Speaker 1: like a combination of scouting maybe with your on X
Speaker 1: or your maps, finding those those preferred habitat types for
Speaker 1: a type of country hunting, and then honestly just doing
Speaker 1: that cruising. Once I find the spots that they're going
Speaker 1: to prefer, that's when I switch my tactics over to
Speaker 1: more of a sit and wait tactic, but just on
Speaker 1: a different scale. Now I have done it where I've
Speaker 1: I've gone in there, set up a blind or maybe
Speaker 1: like a tree stand in some places where I know,
Speaker 1: like I know their patterns, I know their trails and
Speaker 1: other things. But at that point, like what I'm doing
Speaker 1: now is sitting and waiting, so I'll get in. I
Speaker 1: might still hunt those areas really well, like really slow
Speaker 1: still hunting, glass ng looking, especially if it's like maybe
Speaker 1: a potential betting area, and then glassing maybe more feeding
Speaker 1: areas mornings and evenings, and just identifying here's where the
Speaker 1: deer are, here's maybe where they're feeding, here's maybe where
Speaker 1: they're betting, and then I just my tactics to that.
Speaker 1: So normally what I'm doing is, once I've found the deer,
Speaker 1: now I s down. I focus in on that smaller
Speaker 1: area because it's like, Okay, this is preferred habitat, there's
Speaker 1: deer here. Take it slow and kind of switch over
Speaker 1: to that still hunting or sitting tactic if I don't
Speaker 1: get too impatient. Many times me personally, I get some
Speaker 1: my impatients. So what I do is I go to like,
Speaker 1: let's just pick one. Let's say we're hunting mountain bucks.
Speaker 1: Checked all the clear cuts. I found a clear cut
Speaker 1: where they're signed. I've seen deer. Cool. This is gonna
Speaker 1: be my clear cut that I'm probably gonna hunt most
Speaker 1: of the days for the rest of the trip or whatever,
Speaker 1: because I don't know exactly what's going to be there.
Speaker 1: So what I would do is in the morning, I
Speaker 1: would be glassing the edges of the open for deer
Speaker 1: to come out into that open. They do like some
Speaker 1: of the smaller shrubs, their browsers. They like that that
Speaker 1: stuff that grows in the open if everything else is timbered.
Speaker 1: Some mornings, I'm gonna be glassing that first thing sun
Speaker 1: comes up. I'll be glassing until midmorning. Then what I'm
Speaker 1: probably gonna do is me, I'm going to start moving now,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna start looking like hunting or still hunting
Speaker 1: through areas where I think they'll bed. So some of
Speaker 1: the thicker stuff gonna just kind of like work my
Speaker 1: way through their stop look, stop, look real slow glassing.
Speaker 1: Then I'm gonna in the evening go back to an
Speaker 1: area that I would think would be a feeding area
Speaker 1: glass and hunt that try to spot something move in
Speaker 1: spot and stock style. The same goes for the open territory.
Speaker 1: I'll do that same thing, but within the open stuff,
Speaker 1: I tend to glass a little bit more, find those
Speaker 1: good vantages. Middle of the day, I'm often you know,
Speaker 1: moving slow through areas where I think the deer might
Speaker 1: be moving, constantly glass and constantly looking, and then set up,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to ambush or intercept when they're either
Speaker 1: going out to feed or maybe you know, getting on
Speaker 1: hunting those fringes or those edges around agriculture or other
Speaker 1: habitat where they might be prone to use. I also combined,
Speaker 1: when we're just kind of touching on tactics, I do
Speaker 1: a lot of calling in the thicker stuff, a lot
Speaker 1: of rattling, a lot of grunt tube, all that stuff.
Speaker 1: Like I'll set up in an area where I know
Speaker 1: there's good trails and other things where I've seen sign
Speaker 1: of deer, and I'll use those calling and and other
Speaker 1: tactics as well. Your standard white tailed tactics that work
Speaker 1: everywhere also work out west too. So if you're a
Speaker 1: guy that's really good at that, honestly bring your tactics
Speaker 1: with you because there's a lot of people out here
Speaker 1: that live out west that don't hunt that way, and
Speaker 1: it can be very very effective at some of the
Speaker 1: like targeting specific deer if you can find them, but
Speaker 1: it does take a little bit to go from this
Speaker 1: broad hey where the deer at to pinpointing those those
Speaker 1: specific spots that they like. One thing you will find
Speaker 1: is once you find that spot where those deer are, like,
Speaker 1: you get these like micro pockets of white tailed deer.
Speaker 1: It's like, hey, all the white tails like this area.
Speaker 1: You'll continually find white tails there. I know personally a
Speaker 1: lot of the places that I've hunted and guided and
Speaker 1: hunted different places that west. There might be just an example,
Speaker 1: one place in Wyoming whereas like, all right, you look
Speaker 1: around and there's mule deer here, and this mule deer country,
Speaker 1: muleer country, and in this one pocket there's white tails.
Speaker 1: And you can go back to that pocket year after
Speaker 1: year and there's always white tails in there, and everywhere
Speaker 1: else around there's not very many white tails and there's
Speaker 1: some good bucks. You know, it's just because that's the
Speaker 1: one pocket. Once I've kind of use that and understood,
Speaker 1: then I can start focusing in and hunting white tails however,
Speaker 1: you enjoy hunting them. A lot of times I would
Speaker 1: get into that particular spot. I mean I've set up
Speaker 1: tree stand many places waited, Like if I'm bow hunting,
Speaker 1: I've definitely you know, set up a tree stand, try
Speaker 1: to catch them moving from feed to betting area, what
Speaker 1: have you. But then you can kind of focus in
Speaker 1: your tactics, narrowing it from big to small, just by
Speaker 1: trying to identify what is something that they need that
Speaker 1: they don't have a lot of in this particular area.
Speaker 1: I've actually got, you know, quite a bit of white
Speaker 1: tail hunting coming up in in my future. It looks
Speaker 1: like because most of the meal of your seasons for
Speaker 1: me or my meal, your tags are closed, are over,
Speaker 1: and I don't know, I just it's there's just something
Speaker 1: really fun about chasing, especially that those open country white tails.
Speaker 1: You can get some really good bucks and it's just
Speaker 1: like this really fun spot and stock game because they're
Speaker 1: so on edge. But like when you can see them
Speaker 1: especially oh it's like in the rut when they're running
Speaker 1: around and then they go bed out in the tall grass,
Speaker 1: You're like, okay, cool, time to crawl in. That can
Speaker 1: be really exciting. Can also be frustrating because it's kind
Speaker 1: of like it reminds me of spot and stock animal hunting,
Speaker 1: where they just get up and run away for no reason,
Speaker 1: chasing dose or whatever, and there's seven miles and two
Speaker 1: counties away by the time you get to them. But man,
Speaker 1: it can be a really exciting, exciting hunt. You know.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of hoping maybe if I still have my
Speaker 1: dear tag around Thanksgiving, maybe my wife and myself will
Speaker 1: head out and just go on a full scale white
Speaker 1: tail mission. I haven't decided though, whether they're gonna go
Speaker 1: open country. You're big timber mountain bucks. There's just something
Speaker 1: cool about like getting a big mountain buck I like
Speaker 1: to call them. It's not like hunting white tails other places.
Speaker 1: When you hunt in the mountains, those deer just act
Speaker 1: so much different than the deer everywhere else in the US,
Speaker 1: and there's just something fun about that. I kind of
Speaker 1: I kind of think of them like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I didn't mention it. It's more similar to like hunting
Speaker 1: coos deer, but just more cover. So it can be
Speaker 1: very very exciting. On a On a side note, though,
Speaker 1: I checked my email and I drew a public Land
Speaker 1: Texas white tail tag. So I am pretty stoked about that.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna doing that in January, a muzzleoader hunt, and uh,
Speaker 1: for me, that's going to be the opposite of what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. It's gonna be go in you know,
Speaker 1: pick your stand location. I've got some ideas of how
Speaker 1: I'm going to hunt it. Um really looking forward to
Speaker 1: doing that. Where that's most people like listen to this
Speaker 1: podcast because they either you know, like the Western hunting
Speaker 1: tactics are thinking about you know, coming out this way
Speaker 1: and doing that more spot and stock style hunt, and
Speaker 1: then here I am like all fired up to do
Speaker 1: the opposite style where I'm going to test my patients
Speaker 1: because I am a wander and I know that in
Speaker 1: those in certain scenarios, these tactics aren't for everywhere. If
Speaker 1: you've got a small area to hunt, you're gonna really
Speaker 1: make some people mad if you're just sending their cruising
Speaker 1: around all day. So that won't be me. Don't worry
Speaker 1: if if you also have the tag with me, but
Speaker 1: I'm I'm really looking forward to that, so that'll be
Speaker 1: kind of cool. I hope that this kind of like
Speaker 1: kind of shifts your mindset to if you're if you're
Speaker 1: big into white tail hunting or maybe where your white
Speaker 1: tail hunt, You're like, you know, it's just another thing
Speaker 1: to think about. And there's actually a lot more opportunity
Speaker 1: in most states to hunt white tails, and I think
Speaker 1: people just don't even think about it. There's some incredible
Speaker 1: hunting that I think it's overlooked. I'm probably gonna piss
Speaker 1: a lot of people off because I'm exposing like the
Speaker 1: probably the last best kept secret. I'm not giving away
Speaker 1: any states or any specific spots. I'll let everybody else
Speaker 1: figure that out on their own, because I'll say one
Speaker 1: thing and then I just don't want to make too
Speaker 1: many ripples in the pond and mess something up for myself.
Speaker 1: But there are some really good white tail hunting and
Speaker 1: it's just it's definitely a really fun opportunity. So until
Speaker 1: next week, catch you later.