Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the whitetail woods, presented by first Light, creating proven versatile
Speaker 1: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light
Speaker 1: Go farther, stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
Speaker 2: the show, Bill Winkie is breaking down his predictions for
Speaker 2: the upcoming whitetail Rut, tips for patterning deer in the
Speaker 2: pre rut and rut periods, and more. All right to
Speaker 2: welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you
Speaker 2: by First Light and their Camo for Conservation initiative, in
Speaker 2: which a portion of every sale of their Spector Camo,
Speaker 2: which is their whitetail pattern, a portion of all those
Speaker 2: proceeds goes to support the National Deer Association, which is
Speaker 2: doing great stuff for deer dear hunters. So I'm pretty
Speaker 2: stoked about that. I'm also pretty stoked about our plan
Speaker 2: for today's episode, because if you were listening to this
Speaker 2: right about when it comes out, which is the very
Speaker 2: end of October in twenty twenty three, the whitetail Rut
Speaker 2: is knocking on your door. It's just about here. You
Speaker 2: might even already be seeing those early does popping in
Speaker 2: the heat. There might be some excitement in the woods already,
Speaker 2: and if not, it is coming soon and we've got
Speaker 2: a great episode to get you ready for that wherever
Speaker 2: you are. And our guest today is mister Bill Winky. Now, Bill,
Speaker 2: I think probably doesn't need much of an introduction. He's
Speaker 2: been on the podcast in the past. He's been all
Speaker 2: over your TV, he's been in your magazines, he's been
Speaker 2: on your podcast feed. He is an absolute pro when
Speaker 2: it comes to whitetail hunting. And today what I want
Speaker 2: to talk to him about was a few things. Number One,
Speaker 2: what should we be thinking about in these last days
Speaker 2: of October the pre rut, you know, this ramp up
Speaker 2: to the big event. How can you be targeting a
Speaker 2: specific buck at this time of year. He actually is
Speaker 2: starting to shift his favorite week of the year from
Speaker 2: November into this last week of October. So there's some
Speaker 2: great things we discuss on that front, and then we
Speaker 2: dive through all things November, all things white tail Rut.
Speaker 2: Some of you longtime listeners might recall we did an
Speaker 2: episode with Bill about two years ago about his evolving
Speaker 2: approach to the rut and So what I did for
Speaker 2: this episode is I went back and listened to that
Speaker 2: one and made sure that I remember what we talked
Speaker 2: about last time, and then this time tried to ask
Speaker 2: him everything that I didn't cover with him on that
Speaker 2: time around. So what I recommend you do is maybe
Speaker 2: go back and listen to that last one right after
Speaker 2: you listen to this. Then you'll get a very full
Speaker 2: picture of Bill's full approach to the Whitetail Rut, a
Speaker 2: whole lot of different ideas, and I think that'll give
Speaker 2: you a pretty comprehensive set of strategies, tactics and tips
Speaker 2: to consider here in the coming weeks. But before all
Speaker 2: of that, before we get Bill on the line, I
Speaker 2: do have my right man, man, right hand man. What
Speaker 2: I'm trying to say, Tony with me. Yeah, something for
Speaker 2: for quick introductory chat here, we got to catch up
Speaker 2: a little bit on what's going on in our white
Speaker 2: tail worlds. And then I also, Tony was thinking that
Speaker 2: you and I could both maybe give a couple last
Speaker 2: minute rut ideas or or a little bit like a
Speaker 2: pep talk to folks before November kicks off from our
Speaker 2: perspective too, So you down.
Speaker 3: For that I'm down for that, buddy, all right.
Speaker 2: So we got to hear real quick. You just came
Speaker 2: back from a trip in Oklahoma hunting with mister Ranella.
Speaker 2: You want to give me the cliff notes on that
Speaker 2: and any major takeaway as far as a learning opportunity, maybe, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was down in some public land in Oklahoma with Steve,
Speaker 3: and I guess the biggest takeaway I had was I
Speaker 3: went down there. The forecast was supposed to be like
Speaker 3: eighty five and Sonny just about every day. And when
Speaker 3: I got there at a scout, I spent two days
Speaker 3: scouting and then we had four days to hunt. So
Speaker 3: my plan, of course was water because we were hunting
Speaker 3: any deer. I'm like, we're we have lots of tags,
Speaker 3: and we don't have enough time in mid October to
Speaker 3: be like we're going to we're chasing one hundred and
Speaker 3: forties or bus right, So my goal was to just
Speaker 3: to get around deer. And I figured it was going
Speaker 3: to be kind of a staging area scrape thing, and
Speaker 3: it was going to be water. And then I got
Speaker 3: down there and I the first full day I had,
Speaker 3: I put on twenty five thousand steps and I found
Speaker 3: no scrapes, and I found a lot of places where
Speaker 3: there was water at some point that has evaporated and
Speaker 3: moved on to somewhere else on earth. And so I
Speaker 3: did find some limited water. But what it kind of
Speaker 3: became clear to me was my plan. The two parts
Speaker 3: of my plan were just wrong, and I needed to
Speaker 3: be on acorns and per Simmons, so hard and soft mass.
Speaker 3: I've never and I've never worked a per Simmon plan
Speaker 3: in my life, but I started finding them in places
Speaker 3: and you know, pounded under individual trees, and so I
Speaker 3: guess the takeaway from it was, you know, you go
Speaker 3: into going to some kind of hunt. You know, we
Speaker 3: got the rut coming up here, and people are like,
Speaker 3: I'm going to do this. I'm going to ride this
Speaker 3: program out. I'm going to kill one is, give it,
Speaker 3: give it a good shot, but understand that there might
Speaker 3: be something going on where you just need a hard pivot.
Speaker 3: And you know, if those deers show you something different,
Speaker 3: you better listen to them. And it took me. I
Speaker 3: ended up the last place I really scouted ended up
Speaker 3: being this kind of just killing tree area where there
Speaker 3: was one person and mixed into a bunch of oaks,
Speaker 3: and it just happened to be in a place with
Speaker 3: two kind of pretty good funnels leading in there, and
Speaker 3: it was just on fire. And so my whole, my
Speaker 3: entire plan for going down there and what I was
Speaker 3: going to do scrapped and I found something else.
Speaker 2: Well, I think another thing that stands out and we
Speaker 2: talked about this two weeks ago when we were chatting.
Speaker 2: But what you did, I think is so important when
Speaker 2: you're hunting a new place or newer place, when you're
Speaker 2: showing up for a short hunt, you spent a significant
Speaker 2: amount of time on the front end scouting.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 2: So he didn't jump right in a tree and like
Speaker 2: tried to start hunting right away because you're worried about
Speaker 2: not having a lot of times. You want to spend
Speaker 2: every time, every hour you possibly can in the tree. Instead,
Speaker 2: you made sure that you really understood what was going on. So,
Speaker 2: I mean, can you imagine if you just started sitting
Speaker 2: in trees with the game plan that you assumed would
Speaker 2: be the case, It could be a disaster.
Speaker 3: It would have been it would have been terrible. And
Speaker 3: you know, I mean we did. You know, that's a
Speaker 3: good point mark because we weren't doing all days sits
Speaker 3: so we had time in the midday, and one of
Speaker 3: the days I went over and met Steve help him
Speaker 3: pull this one set that I had over just this
Speaker 3: little pond that had some oaks around it, and we
Speaker 3: saw some deer on public driving to him, and then
Speaker 3: when we left, we some so we're like, man, we
Speaker 3: better just go take a peek around in there. And
Speaker 3: the cool thing about the drought down there, it sucks
Speaker 3: that there's no water, but every creek bed is dry,
Speaker 3: so you have this amazing access to weave all over
Speaker 3: through the public. And when we were that's how we
Speaker 3: took to get into where we saw these deer, and
Speaker 3: it just led us to this this a few spots
Speaker 3: where there'd be big oaks hanging over this dry creek bed,
Speaker 3: and it was like those deer knew that was a
Speaker 3: safe buffet because they could walk in there and they
Speaker 3: didn't have to scroungedra on the leaf litter. It's literally
Speaker 3: just laying on you know, kind of hard packed mud
Speaker 3: or sand and like filtering tons of masks down there,
Speaker 3: and so it was kind of like one of those
Speaker 3: light bulb moments where you're like, Okay, you can can
Speaker 3: be because the rest of the country is so dry
Speaker 3: that all the tracks nothing looks fresh like you're kind
Speaker 3: of like, all the sign is really hard to read.
Speaker 3: But when you got down the creek bottom there was
Speaker 3: it was wet enough where you're like, those are fresh
Speaker 3: tracks and there's a billion of them. So then you're like,
Speaker 3: you know, I thought they might be eating acorns. Now
Speaker 3: you look at it and you go, without question, this
Speaker 3: is going on. And the same thing happened with some
Speaker 3: persymmetries there.
Speaker 2: There you go, scout learn, hunt educated versus uh, hunt
Speaker 2: smarter not harder. Sometimes is the is the ticket, that's
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 3: I felt like I had to do both.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, idally, ideally both, but we got to get
Speaker 2: the smarter part right first. Absolutely, that's good man. I'm
Speaker 2: glad you guys had a good hunt. Glad you were
Speaker 2: able to fill some tags there when it was before
Speaker 2: it was all said and done and uh or we're
Speaker 2: we're I'm assuming we'll see that on the mediat or
Speaker 2: YouTube channel someday, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't know where they're going to drop it, but
Speaker 3: it'll be you know, probably next August, September something like that.
Speaker 2: Very cool. Uh, well, I have not had that much excitement.
Speaker 2: Since we've talked, I have hunted more, but just not
Speaker 2: successfully I've been I think when we talked last time,
Speaker 2: I was wrapping up that hunt on the back forty
Speaker 2: and uh Man. We had some close calls for those
Speaker 2: new hunters, but just not quite close enough. Like one guy,
Speaker 2: one of the guys had a big buck just out
Speaker 2: of one night, and the other guy had a dough
Speaker 2: like literally two yards out of range one night and
Speaker 2: super super super close, just not where he wanted it.
Speaker 2: So very exciting though. I think they had a great experience.
Speaker 2: It was fun. I think they learned some things, so
Speaker 2: that was good. Just no tags filled. And then I
Speaker 2: have taken a few more swings for the buck I'm after.
Speaker 2: You know, we talked last time about how I spotted
Speaker 2: him up in that tall grass right and I've not
Speaker 2: seen him since while hunting, but I have seen him
Speaker 2: two more times on nights that I couldn't hunt but
Speaker 2: I could glass for the end of the night, and
Speaker 2: one time he was in that tall grass and another
Speaker 2: time he was coming out of his usual betting area,
Speaker 2: And another time I went to hunt him in the
Speaker 2: oaks next to that betting area and he came out
Speaker 2: on the other side, feeding into one of my food
Speaker 2: plots on the opposite of the betting area. So he
Speaker 2: continues to be kind of centered most of the time
Speaker 2: around this zone, this like eight to ten acre betting area.
Speaker 2: But I've yet to find any kind of consistent pattern
Speaker 2: to where he'll come out of it. He'll go east, north, southwest,
Speaker 2: doesn't seem no matter what the wind is, doesn't seem
Speaker 2: to matter. I've yet to see anything that correlates to
Speaker 2: why he goes in any particular direction. So I'm I'm
Speaker 2: now pulled out for a while, and I'm gonna come
Speaker 2: back in late October because I'm actually taking off for
Speaker 2: another hunt here shortly. So I'm gonna give that spot
Speaker 2: of rest and then hit it hard again late October,
Speaker 2: and hopefully he'll be still around, still moving, and I'll
Speaker 2: be able to push in and continue to just kind
Speaker 2: of work around that betting area and hope to finally
Speaker 2: intercept him. I don't know, he's keeping me on my toes,
Speaker 2: that's for sure.
Speaker 3: Man, when you have one that's you know, pretty low,
Speaker 3: even though he seems random, but he's locked into that
Speaker 3: general area that late October time, Well, that's a that's
Speaker 3: such a good time to catch him just covering all
Speaker 3: of that area during daylight.
Speaker 2: I think that as long as I, like my thought
Speaker 2: is he's he's in there, he's pretty daruncomfortable because I've
Speaker 2: you know, seen or gotten pictures of him move in
Speaker 2: daylight like a decent number of times, like way more
Speaker 2: than some day I've hunted. So as long as I
Speaker 2: don't screw it up in some really stupid way, as
Speaker 2: long as I hunt smart around that, we've got to
Speaker 2: intercept eventually. Now. One thing, and I don't think we
Speaker 2: talked about this last time, but I have like been
Speaker 2: thinking about it, is I'm sometimes guilty of sometimes guilty
Speaker 2: of wanting to get a lot of first sits right
Speaker 2: because first sits are powerful, they're great. So I'll bounce
Speaker 2: around a lot. But I've started wondering, and I actually
Speaker 2: talked to Bill about this later in today's episode two.
Speaker 2: But I've started wondering, if I'm bouncing around all the
Speaker 2: time and he's also randomly bouncing around a lot of time,
Speaker 2: are we cross like criss crossing and missing each other?
Speaker 2: Do I need to pick a spot or two and
Speaker 2: sit them like, you know, several days at a time,
Speaker 2: like I don't want to say volume hunt, but give
Speaker 2: a little bit more time in one particular place so
Speaker 2: that I'll be there eventually when he does cycle through there.
Speaker 2: So that's a thought I'm considering if I can find
Speaker 2: the right place to do that, in the right place
Speaker 2: that's low impact enough that I can get away with that.
Speaker 3: Man that I think that's a bigger struggle than a
Speaker 3: lot of people give it credit for, especially today with
Speaker 3: such good mobile options. Is it's so easy to think
Speaker 3: that you got to keep just like he's killable here, now,
Speaker 3: he's going to be killable here, he's going to be
Speaker 3: killable there. And man, Steve and I went through this
Speaker 3: in Oklahoma because I killed a little buck on that
Speaker 3: first sit in there, and you know, you're like, how
Speaker 3: much of an impact does that cause?
Speaker 2: You know, and then.
Speaker 3: Kill another one in there and it's like are there
Speaker 3: is there going to be anything left? But it's just
Speaker 3: sometimes sometimes it's just the right spot, and if if
Speaker 3: you can get the wind in your favor and you
Speaker 3: have good access, you can you know, like you said,
Speaker 3: maybe not volume on it, but you can spend way
Speaker 3: more time in some of these spots than you think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think what I'm trying to What I've been
Speaker 2: saying to myself a lot is is listen to what
Speaker 2: the deer telling you, Like, don't make a sumptions based
Speaker 2: on what deer' is supposed to do. See what the
Speaker 2: deer are actually doing, and then you know, listen to that.
Speaker 2: But I mean, like, throughout this month of October, I've
Speaker 2: kept on saying, well, you know, he's probably going to
Speaker 2: be not moving in daylight anymore. Sea Price keep pushing
Speaker 2: it so hard. You know, I usually don't hunt as
Speaker 2: many times as I have this year in the early
Speaker 2: part of October, but I keep on seeing him when
Speaker 2: I'm scouting or I get a picture of him, so
Speaker 2: he's telling me that He's telling me I haven't screwed
Speaker 2: it up yet, So it made sense to you know,
Speaker 2: keep trying. But yeah, we'll see. It'll be interesting. It's
Speaker 2: fun to try to unravel these stories and figure out
Speaker 2: each one of these these bucks. That's it's always a
Speaker 2: little bit different. So that will be late October for me,
Speaker 2: and then I'm actually leaving when folks are listening to this,
Speaker 2: I will be up at my family deer camp trying
Speaker 2: to help my dad get a buck up there. So
Speaker 2: I'm very excited about that. That'll be like the biggest
Speaker 2: chunk of time we've probably ever spent up there, and
Speaker 2: high hopes for my dad getting his best dear yet.
Speaker 2: So fingers crossed with that one too. That'll be good, Yeah, buddy.
Speaker 2: So that's what's going on in our world. Everyone else's
Speaker 2: world is going to be kicking off the white Tail
Speaker 2: rut here any day now, if they already haven't. So,
Speaker 2: I guess I want to leave folks with a few
Speaker 2: thoughts from each of us leading into the rut. Maybe
Speaker 2: a lesson we learned last year, or something that you
Speaker 2: think we all need to be reminded of before we
Speaker 2: take off on our rut cations, anything like that. Does
Speaker 2: anything come to mind for you, Tony, Like if you
Speaker 2: were sitting at the coffee shop or the diner with
Speaker 2: one of your best hunting buddies and they're about to
Speaker 2: take off for the rut cation, what would you tell them?
Speaker 3: I would tell them. I mean, so, I'm kind of
Speaker 3: planning I'm head to North Dakota for my first kind
Speaker 3: of rut hunt. I'm gonna go hunt some public land
Speaker 3: out there, and really my plan is to find maybe
Speaker 3: two or three pinch points. I think I have six
Speaker 3: days total and give each enough time to prove to
Speaker 3: me whether it's worth being there not and then bail.
Speaker 3: And I think we look at it like, you know,
Speaker 3: a quantity of sits versus just putting in the hours
Speaker 3: in one spot, you know, or like giving each sit
Speaker 3: more time. I guess I should say it that way.
Speaker 3: So I know a lot of people go out and
Speaker 3: they treat rut hunts sort of like they do early season,
Speaker 3: where they're like, oh, I'm gonna go sit tonight for
Speaker 3: four hours or whatever. You know, I'm gonna go in
Speaker 3: the morning and hunt before work. Yeah, anytime you can
Speaker 3: get into a tree is great, but this time of year,
Speaker 3: it's just like, figure out a way to put as
Speaker 3: many hours into a spot you believe in as possible,
Speaker 3: and then if it shows you it's not good, then
Speaker 3: it's time to move. But I think we go, well,
Speaker 3: I'm going to put three hours in and I didn't
Speaker 3: see anything, so it's time to move. And it's like, man,
Speaker 3: you know, the rut is. The rout sucks a lot
Speaker 3: of times, Like it's not just a NonStop deer fest,
Speaker 3: Like you have these big blocks of time where nothing happens.
Speaker 3: But when it busts loose or when you just get
Speaker 3: that cruiser, it's worth it. And so you can't really
Speaker 3: treat it like the earlier season sits. If you have
Speaker 3: the time to be in the tree, go be in
Speaker 3: the tree. And I know that's like dumb down, but
Speaker 3: I keep learning that about myself is like quit second guessing.
Speaker 3: Like if I have a pinch point or a train
Speaker 3: trap that I believe in, I just need to give
Speaker 3: it as much time as possible for at least a
Speaker 3: couple of days, and if it doesn't produce, then I
Speaker 3: know I'm off and it's time to move. But instead
Speaker 3: of just hopping around from stand to stand to stand,
Speaker 3: or just being like, well, now now that it's November first,
Speaker 3: I can just go sit that cut cornfield that I've
Speaker 3: been sitting for six weeks and it's going to deliver
Speaker 3: a buck to me, it's like, uh, probably not.
Speaker 2: You know, so, is that two day you mentioned two
Speaker 2: days there in a pinch point? Is that what you
Speaker 2: would say, like your average amount of time you'd like
Speaker 2: to put into a travel cord or something like that
Speaker 2: in the rut before you judge it as boom or bust.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's not so one of the ways that
Speaker 3: I look at it, especially in a place like where
Speaker 3: I'm going, where it's pretty low deer density. There's good
Speaker 3: bucks there, but there's just not a lot of deer,
Speaker 3: and so it's kind of like northern Wisconsin, like you're
Speaker 3: not gonna have a ton of deer come down the trail,
Speaker 3: but every fifth one could be real nice, you know.
Speaker 3: So I look at it and go, is my did
Speaker 3: I read this spot correctly? Even if even if I
Speaker 3: spend all day there and two four key's go through,
Speaker 3: if they if they do what I expect them to do,
Speaker 3: that's a huge confidence boost to me. It's you know,
Speaker 3: and I think a lot of people look at it
Speaker 3: and go, well, I'm not around the big ones. I'm like, man,
Speaker 3: if the scrapper just showed you that he comes from
Speaker 3: there and goes through there right twenty yards past your stand,
Speaker 3: that's huge. And if some does do it or whatever.
Speaker 3: So it's like I'm looking for I'm looking for signals
Speaker 3: from the entire deear hurt because what that little guy does,
Speaker 3: a big one could do tomorrow. And so I think
Speaker 3: we kind of and we kind of outdrive our headlights
Speaker 3: a little bit. We're like, well, I didn't see a
Speaker 3: big deer do anything, so I'm not around the big deer.
Speaker 3: It's like, no, I think you just didn't have the
Speaker 3: big deer come by. You better you better give it
Speaker 3: more time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's so true in the rut especially. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that's that's strong advice. Would I would just
Speaker 2: echo something you kind of led with, which was, you
Speaker 2: know something you and I both talked a lot about
Speaker 2: last season, which is just the expectations we bring into
Speaker 2: the rut, right, And I think we almost always come
Speaker 2: into the rut thinking it's going to be gangbusters, thinking
Speaker 2: it's going to be gung ho, NonStop amazing, and then
Speaker 2: we are always disappointed with it because the reality of
Speaker 2: the rut for ninety nine percent of people is a
Speaker 2: whole lot of monotony punctuated by just a few of
Speaker 2: those special moments. If we're lucky right, if we did
Speaker 2: everything right, we'll get a few of those special half
Speaker 2: days or whatever it might be. So you have to
Speaker 2: like go into it expecting that and being okay with that,
Speaker 2: because such a huge part of being able to capitalize
Speaker 2: when you do got those couple of little moments it's
Speaker 2: like you have to be in the game at that moment.
Speaker 2: You have to still be out there, you have to
Speaker 2: be paying attention, you have to be like mental there.
Speaker 2: And it's so easy, Like I mean, I know we're
Speaker 2: both guilty of this. It's so easy to get like
Speaker 2: down and out when you've sat in the same spot
Speaker 2: for two days and it's dead and you don't know
Speaker 2: what's going on, and your second guessing yourself and you're
Speaker 2: tired or you're hungry or cold or whatever it is.
Speaker 2: It's so easy to lose your focus and if you're
Speaker 2: not with it, when you get that thirty five seconds
Speaker 2: of opportunity, there's your week. There's your week, or there's
Speaker 2: your season, whatever it might be. So it's like I
Speaker 2: feel like the cheat code for that is like going
Speaker 2: in assuming it's gonna be rough for a bunch of
Speaker 2: it and being okay with it and saying, hey, you
Speaker 2: know what this is gonna be. What's gonna be. There's
Speaker 2: gonna be a bunch of time that's not gonna be great.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna learn to meditate, I'm gonna learn to like
Speaker 2: accept that, and I'm gonna scan my surroundings and know
Speaker 2: everything's around me, and I'm okay with the fact that
Speaker 2: this will not be like an outdoor TV show most
Speaker 2: of the time, because I know if I put in
Speaker 2: the time and the work, you know, I'll have a
Speaker 2: couple of special moments I should hopefully. And then the
Speaker 2: second thing I would say along that is just like,
Speaker 2: remember this isn't life or death. Like you've said this
Speaker 2: in the past, like nobody cares what you kill, no
Speaker 2: one but yourself, and like maybe a hunting buttery or
Speaker 2: two really cares. So don't put so much pressure on yourself.
Speaker 2: It's this is not gonna make or break your life
Speaker 2: or your year. This is supposed to be fun, So like,
Speaker 2: get out there, do the stuff you know you need
Speaker 2: to do, but make sure you're enjoying it too, because
Speaker 2: if you're not enjoying it, what's the point. I think
Speaker 2: that's that's such a key thing for many of us,
Speaker 2: The anticipation of the rut ends up being more fun
Speaker 2: than the rut itself because we end up like beating
Speaker 2: ourselves up during the rut and making ourselves miserable. So
Speaker 2: I'm trying to you know, this has been a theme
Speaker 2: over the last couple of years, but the rut in particular,
Speaker 2: is like, man, keep that fun too, Like it's gonna
Speaker 2: be hard work, yes, but like enjoy that process and
Speaker 2: good things come when you can have that attitude. Attitude
Speaker 2: matters so much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'll just I'll add some quick there. One
Speaker 3: of the things I've been thinking about a lot is,
Speaker 3: you know, it kind of was driven home for me
Speaker 3: on this Oklahoma hunt, Like how nice it is when
Speaker 3: deer come in and they're like scuffling around for one
Speaker 3: percentment under a tree and they offer you twenty seven
Speaker 3: shots in a row, or they're they're just milling around.
Speaker 3: Like where I'm going with this is a lot of
Speaker 3: people who are going out to hunt the rut who
Speaker 3: are going to listen to this probably haven't hit that
Speaker 3: stage where they're like a real closer yet, you know,
Speaker 3: like they might be able to get around here, but
Speaker 3: a lot of people struggle with like that the last
Speaker 3: important part of being a killer, and the rut makes
Speaker 3: that situation kind of it kind of injects a little
Speaker 3: adrenalineto the whole situation in a way that those earlier
Speaker 3: season sits you have relaxed deer and the vibe is
Speaker 3: just like slow moving, like you're going to get your
Speaker 3: chain during the rut. A lot of times those deer,
Speaker 3: even if they aren't moving super fast, they kind of
Speaker 3: have that like nervous energy vibe where they're sniffing here
Speaker 3: and they're walking here, and they're they just project something
Speaker 3: to us where we panic like it's gonna be over
Speaker 3: and you know, of course, sometimes they cruise through fast
Speaker 3: or they chase through, so it does happen fast too,
Speaker 3: But most of the time, your encounters are going to
Speaker 3: give you a little bit more to work with, and
Speaker 3: your brain's probably gonna tell you right away, but you
Speaker 3: have to be ready, like you said, like if you're
Speaker 3: if you're sitting there on Instagram and your bow's hanging
Speaker 3: there and you're really not paying attention and that deer
Speaker 3: comes in, you've missed You've missed a window already that
Speaker 3: could cost you. And I know it's hard, but man,
Speaker 3: it's like you really have to pay attention to those
Speaker 3: situations and understand if that buck is really going to
Speaker 3: get in and get out quick, or you're going to
Speaker 3: read it and go, man, he's he's probably gonna just
Speaker 3: give me enough to work with here where I don't
Speaker 3: need to rush this that's a hard thing to get through.
Speaker 2: Yeah, though, that extra twenty seconds catching him sixty yards
Speaker 2: away when he's behind trees and you can like okay,
Speaker 2: here it is, stand up, get positioned like that little
Speaker 2: bit of extra time makes a world of difference in
Speaker 2: keeping your head right in those final moments versus seeing
Speaker 2: him at thirty when he's in range and coming you're like,
Speaker 2: holy crap, and you're just racing. I mean that's chaos.
Speaker 2: Yeahs uh huh, yes it is. Well, yeah, man, I'm
Speaker 2: excited about your North Dakota hunt. I'm excited uh to
Speaker 2: hear how that goes, and to share how my Nebraska
Speaker 2: hunt will go. That'll be where I'm headed after dear
Speaker 2: Camp and after Michigan for a few days. So let's
Speaker 2: get back on here in a couple of weeks and
Speaker 2: share some success stories. How about that.
Speaker 3: I'm jealous, budd. If you need your money to carry
Speaker 3: your boat down there or anything, let.
Speaker 2: Me know, Well, North Cote's not that far away, so
Speaker 2: you could just slip on south for a few days.
Speaker 2: Hunh that's true. True? All right, man, Well, best of
Speaker 2: luck out there, and real quick tease for folks, what
Speaker 2: should they be looking for? If you can remember off
Speaker 2: the top of your head, is there anything on this
Speaker 2: week's Foundations or upcoming Foundations episode that people should keep
Speaker 2: an eye out for.
Speaker 3: You know what, I think I'm well, by the time
Speaker 3: this comes out, I think I'm going to write one
Speaker 3: about shot opportunities during the run, because I think that's
Speaker 3: a topic that needs to get really kind of fleshed
Speaker 3: out nice.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, make sure if anyone listening has not
Speaker 2: been tuning in to Tony's Foundation episodes every Tuesday on
Speaker 2: this feed, make sure you're checking that out. And with
Speaker 2: all that said, let's wrap this intro up and let's
Speaker 2: get Bill Winky on the phone. All right here with
Speaker 2: me back on the show. We've got the one and
Speaker 2: only Bill Winky. Bill, thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's my pleasure. Yeah, thanks for having me Mark.
Speaker 2: I always enjoy our chats. Bill. And I was just
Speaker 2: thinking the other day as I was, you know, preparing
Speaker 2: for this. I don't know if I've ever told you
Speaker 2: this story, but you have a really important role in
Speaker 2: my hunting life. Unbeknownst to you, when I graduated college,
Speaker 2: I took a job with a tech company and they
Speaker 2: shipped me out to their headquarters in Silicon Valley out
Speaker 2: in California, and I'm out there in California in September,
Speaker 2: in October, and I'm miserable. I'm stuck, you know, in
Speaker 2: the big city working at this company. No one around
Speaker 2: me hunts, nobody knows anything about hunting or deer. I
Speaker 2: can't get out and do the things I love. And
Speaker 2: so this time I realized, like this is this was
Speaker 2: just the time that I decided to start Wired to
Speaker 2: Hunt and to start this thing so that I could,
Speaker 2: you know, scratch that whitetail h while I'm far, far
Speaker 2: far away from it. And so my life involved, you know,
Speaker 2: being at the office for eight hours, working all day,
Speaker 2: and then I'd come home and I would do two things.
Speaker 2: I would work on Wired Hunt and I would watch
Speaker 2: every single episode of Midwest White Tail back in two
Speaker 2: thousand and nine to the fall of two thousand and
Speaker 2: nine bills. So this was the early days, and this
Speaker 2: was like just when all your state by state stuff
Speaker 2: was getting out there, and you got me through a
Speaker 2: miserable fall because I could follow along with like all
Speaker 2: these little videos you're posting along the way, and I
Speaker 2: was able to feel like I was kind of a
Speaker 2: part of the season. So so I just thought i'd
Speaker 2: bring that up and thank you for getting me through
Speaker 2: that tough time, and then also to make me realize
Speaker 2: how fast all that time is gone. I mean that
Speaker 2: was fourteen years ago now or fifteen years something like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's to me, it seems like it
Speaker 4: was fifty years ago. That was. You know, someday we'll
Speaker 4: talk about how hard that was. And I know you've
Speaker 4: been around a lot of media and with the mediator
Speaker 4: stuff that you do too. I mean there's there's a
Speaker 4: mass of machine behind the public facing media that people
Speaker 4: see and they don't realize how much work it is.
Speaker 4: And I mean I have an interesting story to tell
Speaker 4: sometime that your jaw would drop when I tell it
Speaker 4: to you about how I was. I quit in two
Speaker 4: thousand and nine. I mean I was like I was
Speaker 4: sitting in church. I decided during church, I'm quitting. This
Speaker 4: is just because I was working like ninety hours a week.
Speaker 4: You know, I was doing the writing, the photography, all
Speaker 4: the standard stuff to pay the bills, and then doing
Speaker 4: this because it wasn't making any money. You know, you
Speaker 4: had to do like four jobs, you know. Well, I
Speaker 4: was sitting there and I said, I'm done. I mean,
Speaker 4: I can't do this anymore. I'm selling the farm, you know,
Speaker 4: I'm in a bag groceries at Walmart. I don't care.
Speaker 4: I'm just not living like this anymore, sitting there all dejected.
Speaker 4: After the church ended, and there was a fella in
Speaker 4: the church. If there was anybody that, you know, God
Speaker 4: would appoint as an angel, it'd be this guy.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: He's kind of a simple fellow, you know, not you know,
Speaker 4: and his name was Bob. And Bob kind of up
Speaker 4: to me and he said, he said, if you fold
Speaker 4: it up now, you're not going to be any good
Speaker 4: to anybody. And he walked off, and I'm like, I
Speaker 4: guess I can't fold it up because I had decided
Speaker 4: that was done. I mean, as soon as I got
Speaker 4: away from church, I'm like, this is over. I'm not
Speaker 4: doing any more of this. So that was the legacy
Speaker 4: of Midwest white tail. I mean it was I did
Speaker 4: it because I had to. Almost It was brutal, but
Speaker 4: I mean not to complain. I mean a lot of
Speaker 4: people go through rough, you know, rough startups, but nine
Speaker 4: was that was such a hard year. Wow, I mean
Speaker 4: latly exhausted every single day, you know, and trying to
Speaker 4: scratch around to find sponsors. Nobody understood what we were doing,
Speaker 4: you know, and then you know, eventually it took off.
Speaker 4: Obviously I did it did well, but gosh, it was tough. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Those Uh, it's so funny people look at something like
Speaker 2: that and they think, oh, overnight success, like a yeah,
Speaker 2: Bill just started this web show and then it blew
Speaker 2: up and everyone loves it, and few people ever see
Speaker 2: what happens behind closed doors, and just how how hard
Speaker 2: so many of these things are when you're trying to
Speaker 2: start something from scratch.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, because there's so if you skip some of
Speaker 4: the details, the whole thing implodes. Yeah, you know, and
Speaker 4: speak that like fifty things at once, and it's yeah, anyway,
Speaker 4: I'm not, like I said, I'm not going to complain.
Speaker 4: We got through it. But I think if I had
Speaker 4: to do it again, I wouldn't do it because I
Speaker 4: think that's the beauty of ignorance, is bliss because if
Speaker 4: you see how high the mountain is, you don't start climbing. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but you think it's not a mountain, It see a hill,
Speaker 4: start climbing, and then there's like you know, twelve hills
Speaker 4: later you realize there's.
Speaker 2: A lot of false summits along that route. That's for sure.
Speaker 4: Not too off topic. I thought you get a kick
Speaker 4: out of that.
Speaker 2: I did. I'm glad that you were able to push
Speaker 2: through it and that your friend there at church gave
Speaker 2: you that little bump because a lot of folks have
Speaker 2: benefited because of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a cool machine now. I mean, I'm not
Speaker 4: part of it anymore, but what the guys are doing
Speaker 4: with it now is still you know, speaks you know,
Speaker 4: really well to the white tail community.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, no, you're they're carrying on your legacy well.
Speaker 2: And you sure started a great thing, and it's exciting
Speaker 2: that you've got something new again. I'm glad that you are,
Speaker 2: you know, back out there sharing your stories because so
Speaker 2: many of us have enjoyed following along and learning along
Speaker 2: the way. And I guess that that is kind of
Speaker 2: where I did want to take us Bill today, as
Speaker 2: we talked about, you know, before we start recording, when
Speaker 2: this podcast drops, it'll be like October twenty fourth or fifth,
Speaker 2: right around that ballpark, so folks will be just about
Speaker 2: to launch into you know what most of us consider
Speaker 2: that best time of the year, right late October all
Speaker 2: the way through November. It's it's what we waited, you know,
Speaker 2: the previous ten eleven months for. So I want to
Speaker 2: walk through, you know, as much of the detailed inner
Speaker 2: sanctum of your mind, bits and pieces of your pre
Speaker 2: rut and rut strategy that we can, and I want
Speaker 2: to try to do it in a way that's different
Speaker 2: than some of the previous conversations we've had, because we
Speaker 2: did have a good rut conversation a couple of years ago,
Speaker 2: and so I thought we could start with what you
Speaker 2: are actually doing right now leading into that time period,
Speaker 2: which is, I know you're targeting, you've got a specific
Speaker 2: buck and I think in one of your videos you
Speaker 2: mentioned maybe you've got two deer that year after this year, right,
Speaker 2: is that correct?
Speaker 4: There's two that I would like to shoot, and there's
Speaker 4: one I'd like for my daughter to get a chance at.
Speaker 4: So there's really three on the farm that we've picked out.
Speaker 2: Okay, So one of the videos he posted a few
Speaker 2: weeks ago, maybe was a month or so ago, you
Speaker 2: did a really great job of breaking down like how
Speaker 2: you develop a pattern for a deer, and you talked
Speaker 2: about the buck you killed last year, and you went
Speaker 2: kind of site by sight and talked through different camera
Speaker 2: locations and how you use photos and observations to kind
Speaker 2: of zero in on where he lived. Yep. I'm kind
Speaker 2: of in a situation right now where I'm trying to
Speaker 2: do something like that with my target deer here in Michigan.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to selfishly ask you a lot of
Speaker 2: questions just to help my own personal mission here. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but could you start by telling us how you're doing
Speaker 2: that this year for those two bucks a year after.
Speaker 2: What's that process looked like so far for you?
Speaker 4: So that's the that's the fascination of whitetails, I think,
Speaker 4: because you know, every buck is different, and where the
Speaker 4: deer I killed last year was unique was he had
Speaker 4: a really small range and he was a little bit
Speaker 4: daylight active within that range, so he was kind of
Speaker 4: easy to nail down because he wasn't hitting a lot
Speaker 4: of cameras outside of a small area. So that meant that,
Speaker 4: you know, I had him pretty well peg. So there
Speaker 4: was no big urgency as far as trying to scatter
Speaker 4: stands all over the place and have this complicated strategy.
Speaker 4: It was more about picking two or three spots that
Speaker 4: really worked out well for me, and then just putting
Speaker 4: my time in and because that's the way to hunt
Speaker 4: if they've got a small range, you just pick a
Speaker 4: couple of really good, complimentary spots that work for you,
Speaker 4: and you don't get too crazy because he's there, you know,
Speaker 4: the you don't have to run all over the countryside
Speaker 4: trying to find him. Well, that's the the two time
Speaker 4: after this year are the opposite. They're all over the
Speaker 4: farm and you know, I figured it's going to be
Speaker 4: a challenge. They're old deer, so they move a lot
Speaker 4: during daylight, which is which is a unique characteristic of
Speaker 4: older deer, and that's something we can get off topic
Speaker 4: on someday, but they are moving a fair amount in daylight.
Speaker 4: They're just all over the place. You know, like one
Speaker 4: night they'll be on this end of the farm, and
Speaker 4: then the other night, you know, the next night they
Speaker 4: might be a mile away on the other end on
Speaker 4: my cameras, So just being able to figure out, you know,
Speaker 4: where can I put stands somewhere in that massive range
Speaker 4: that makes any sense, that's the challenge with these two.
Speaker 4: And then of course I was telling you and before
Speaker 4: we started last night. I had him. I had him
Speaker 4: speed it up, you know. After all of that, you know,
Speaker 4: and some of it. When you own the land, you
Speaker 4: can set the farm up a little bit for those
Speaker 4: deer because you can anticipate from one year to the next,
Speaker 4: you know which bucks are probably going to be there,
Speaker 4: roughly where their ranges are going to be. Maybe you
Speaker 4: make a little Heidi Whole food plot somewhere in that
Speaker 4: area and you say, Okay, I'm gonna that's where I'm
Speaker 4: gonna get him. Well, I had that in mind when
Speaker 4: I set up this location, and I was hunting there
Speaker 4: last night, and as I told you, I mean, I
Speaker 4: was doing something out the window with the GoPro, doing
Speaker 4: a little pan you know, and pulled the pulled my
Speaker 4: arm back in and closed the window. Well it clicked,
Speaker 4: and he was fifty yards away making a scrape, and
Speaker 4: I saw it just as I clicked the window shut.
Speaker 4: And of course he snapped his head up and looked,
Speaker 4: and you know, I thought, well, maybe I'll get lucky
Speaker 4: and he won't figure this out, you know, and I
Speaker 4: can grab my bow, you know. So I might have
Speaker 4: been moving inside the window and he saw me or
Speaker 4: whatever body he bounded off. He didn't blow it, he
Speaker 4: didn't bust out, but he was fifty yards away making
Speaker 4: he was coming. He would have been you know, anyway, heartbreak,
Speaker 4: you know, all of that, all of that thought and effort,
Speaker 4: and then it came down to, you know, twenty seconds
Speaker 4: of bad timing, you know, because if I'd had my
Speaker 4: arm in twenty seconds earlier, you know, we'd probably be
Speaker 4: talking about the deer I killed last night. But anyway,
Speaker 4: so the getting back to that, every buck is different
Speaker 4: and how you hunt them really depends a lot on
Speaker 4: how much you've learned about those deer, and sometimes it
Speaker 4: takes a couple of years to figure them out. And
Speaker 4: that's I mean, that's the fascination, but a little bit
Speaker 4: of the frustration too. So these two I'm having to
Speaker 4: have spread a really wide net and try to be
Speaker 4: more i would say generic in the way that I'm
Speaker 4: hunting them, Like I don't have them pinned down, So
Speaker 4: I'm hunting within this large range, just spots that make
Speaker 4: sense when a buck is moving during the But this
Speaker 4: is where he's probably going to go, Like he's probably
Speaker 4: going to check this betting year and he's probably going
Speaker 4: to go through this funnel. You know, I just have
Speaker 4: to get lucky that you know, within that massive you know,
Speaker 4: half a mile plus you know, long range that I
Speaker 4: just happened to be in the right place at the
Speaker 4: right time. And I do think they'll move a lot.
Speaker 4: Like I said, during the rut, they're both old and
Speaker 4: that's they're not huge, but there they'll be fun to hunt.
Speaker 4: So anyway, getting back to that is is, uh, depends
Speaker 4: on how much you know about the deer. That's kind
Speaker 4: of the starting point. And you know, so I'll throw
Speaker 4: it back to you, I guess, and maybe you can
Speaker 4: ask me specific questions. But that's the challenge. Every deer
Speaker 4: is different, you know, and you have to approach him
Speaker 4: very specifically because there's no generic answer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, so what does your process look like, Bill,
Speaker 2: for trying to build out like that personality profile for
Speaker 2: a buck you mentioned, like you can have previous year's
Speaker 2: history and then is what they're doing this year? How
Speaker 2: do you one of the I can make. I'm assuming
Speaker 2: I know what the things are you're looking at, but
Speaker 2: I'd love for you to talk to me about what
Speaker 2: the specific things are that you are using to develop that.
Speaker 2: We'll call it a profile and then how do you
Speaker 2: keep track of it or analyze that stuff to figure
Speaker 2: out what to do with it?
Speaker 4: Well, for sure, any sightings that you had the year
Speaker 4: before are critical. Trail camera pictures from last year and
Speaker 4: this year. I think in Michigan, can you put bait
Speaker 4: in front of a trail camera? No, not anymore because
Speaker 4: it used to be able to write.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it got outlawed once for CWD and they got
Speaker 2: brought back for a little bit, and then again it's
Speaker 2: gone okay.
Speaker 4: So that's the easiest way to get a quick pattern
Speaker 4: is just to pour it back a corner front of
Speaker 4: a trail camera and come back in a week do
Speaker 4: what you got. Well, that's what I do, and then
Speaker 4: I stop running cameras. I've got cameras scattered around the
Speaker 4: farm now that are sitting on open gates and trails
Speaker 4: and stuff like that. But the information I get from
Speaker 4: those is much less useful, or I shouldn't say useful's
Speaker 4: super useful. Just don't get much of it, you know,
Speaker 4: because when you put it on a just even a
Speaker 4: small you know, pilot corn, you're going to concentrate the
Speaker 4: deer in that area, so you know where they live.
Speaker 4: So all I really want to know is where they live.
Speaker 4: I don't have to know exactly what they're doing each day.
Speaker 4: I want to know roughly where where their core is
Speaker 4: and how big their range is. Those are the keys
Speaker 4: because inside of that, I don't want to know more
Speaker 4: because it takes some of the fun out of the
Speaker 4: hunt for me, you know, I want to know. I
Speaker 4: want to be able to rely on some woodsmanship skills,
Speaker 4: you know, a little you know, experience with deer. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's it's not about you know, whether I kill every
Speaker 4: single one or you know, the most or whatever. It's
Speaker 4: about just enjoying the experience of hunting mature white tails.
Speaker 4: So anyway, that's my strategies. I'm always trying to figure
Speaker 4: out where their core is and how big their range is.
Speaker 4: And once I know those two things, and you throw
Speaker 4: a little bit of information in there, how how daylight
Speaker 4: active they are. That comes from the trail cameras too,
Speaker 4: and then you can you can figure them out. You
Speaker 4: don't really need to know more than that. You almost
Speaker 4: don't need to know even if they're daylight active, because
Speaker 4: those those opportunities are going to come now, you know,
Speaker 4: as we get into the tail end of October.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So when you're trying to figure out that core area,
Speaker 2: how you know, is there a certain way that you
Speaker 2: are setting up your cameras in a certain range or
Speaker 2: in a certain position to establish, you know, a core
Speaker 2: area to make that decision, because I think that if
Speaker 2: you just put a couple of random cameras out, you're
Speaker 2: not really learning a whole lot other than a single
Speaker 2: point or two in that random area that you that
Speaker 2: you don't know. So how do you cast that net
Speaker 2: and then you know, determine what this means for a
Speaker 2: zone on the map.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, once you find one excuse me, that you
Speaker 4: want to hunt, then you move more cameras around that area.
Speaker 4: You have to be really careful about how in true
Speaker 4: if you are with those camera locations, and you know,
Speaker 4: I always try to stay on trails, not not deer trails,
Speaker 4: excuse me, on like field lanes, anything that you can
Speaker 4: drive through with the four wheeler and the beer, don't
Speaker 4: care or for a truck. If I have to walk
Speaker 4: to someplace, I'm always wearing waiters at least you know,
Speaker 4: waist high waiters, So I don't leave any cent I
Speaker 4: try to avoid spots that I have to walk to
Speaker 4: because you know, for one, it just takes longer, and
Speaker 4: for two, you know, it's more usually more intrusive. So
Speaker 4: there's lots of lanes and trails and corners and field
Speaker 4: edges and stuff like that where you can stick cameras
Speaker 4: where there's scrapes and you know, funnels that you can
Speaker 4: drive to. I mean, and granted they may get visited
Speaker 4: more at night, but they're going to be right at
Speaker 4: the edge of legal shooting time. That's going to tell
Speaker 4: you the core. The core is where they're most day
Speaker 4: lot active. You get a picture of a buck at
Speaker 4: three in the morning, haven't learned anything really, Maybe you're
Speaker 4: in his range. You know, you're in his range right now,
Speaker 4: but that might change in two weeks. To find his core,
Speaker 4: you've got to get, you know, photos that are closer
Speaker 4: to daylight. And I don't want to be right on
Speaker 4: top of his betting area, but I want to be
Speaker 4: just outside of it, you know where That's where I
Speaker 4: want my cameras or just outside of the betting areas,
Speaker 4: because they're going to get hit, you know, right on
Speaker 4: twilight or you know, first light in the morning as
Speaker 4: he's going back into bed. In some some bucks are
Speaker 4: pretty narrowly, you know, they have a really small range.
Speaker 4: I've hunted some really really cool bucks that had you know,
Speaker 4: twenty or thirty acre ranges pre range, not even core areas,
Speaker 4: like that's all the ground they covered during the rock
Speaker 4: side cameras all around those spots, and they never he
Speaker 4: never picked up on any of them. So anyway that
Speaker 4: I've had others like gosh, I've hunted a few that
Speaker 4: seemed like they had a square mile you know that
Speaker 4: you just couldn't peg him. So I'll throw it back
Speaker 4: to you.
Speaker 2: Well, with those cameras that you're putting up, and that's
Speaker 2: helping you establish these points within that possible range. And
Speaker 2: then you'll, I'm sure you look at these camera pictures
Speaker 2: and then you start seeing where are the most where
Speaker 2: the most pictures, and where are there are a few pictures,
Speaker 2: and where there are no pictures, And I imagine that
Speaker 2: helps you start drawing a circle, maybe on a map
Speaker 2: or something. But I've also heard you, sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 4: The other thing you pay attention to is what direction
Speaker 4: he's he's approaching from, exactly asked. I'll tell you quite
Speaker 4: a bit too.
Speaker 2: Can you elaborate on that a little bit? How you're
Speaker 2: thinking about.
Speaker 4: That, well, it's best if it's closer to legal shooting time.
Speaker 4: But he's gonna approach from in the evening there you
Speaker 4: where ebedded, probably and in the first picture you get
Speaker 4: of them, whatever direction his back end is pointing is
Speaker 4: probably pointing toward his betting area. Sometimes they loop around,
Speaker 4: you know, and you get some weird stuff. But you
Speaker 4: have to take each situation kind of separately. If there's
Speaker 4: a lot of ways he could get to the camera,
Speaker 4: you know, on without wasting a bunch of time, then
Speaker 4: it's not as valuable. But if you're like, okay, this,
Speaker 4: if he's betting here, he's going to come to the
Speaker 4: camera from this direction, and if he's not, then he's
Speaker 4: probably not betting there, you know. So some of that's
Speaker 4: just you know, the woodsmanship again of just kind of
Speaker 4: anticipating how deer move. But you can a lot of
Speaker 4: times you can figure out where they bed. You can
Speaker 4: get within i don't know, maybe ten fifteen acres you know,
Speaker 4: of where they're betting. You know. Unfortunately that changes and
Speaker 4: with some bucks they've got a lot of different areas
Speaker 4: where they bed. But that's uh again, that's the fascination
Speaker 4: of hunting them because they're all different.
Speaker 2: I've got a buck this year that is one of
Speaker 2: these small home range bucks. As far as I can tell,
Speaker 2: I mean, I've drawn a circle and I think his
Speaker 2: like place where I'm seeing him or getting pictures of him,
Speaker 2: it's it's maybe like thirty acres something like that, and
Speaker 2: he's not showing up on the outlier cameras that I've
Speaker 2: got pretty far away from that. I actually can glass
Speaker 2: from a couple different places, like near the road and
Speaker 2: see into edges of that, and so I've seen him
Speaker 2: a number of times, so I've got a strong understanding
Speaker 2: of where he spends a lot of time. This is
Speaker 2: the fourth year that I've been watching this year, so
Speaker 2: I've you know, I know he's in this area lot.
Speaker 2: What's interesting about him, though, is while I know where
Speaker 2: that core is and I could tell you, I can
Speaker 2: draw like a ten acre circle and say, man, I
Speaker 2: think he's betted in that ten acres, and a lot
Speaker 2: of the time I've yet to be able to get
Speaker 2: him to a consistent pattern of what he does leaving
Speaker 2: that betting year. Because he's got food, he can go
Speaker 2: to the west. He's got food, he can go to
Speaker 2: the southeast, he's got fooding goes straight south, so he
Speaker 2: seems to randomly choose which direction he heads out of
Speaker 2: there from. I can't correlate any kind of movement with
Speaker 2: a wind direction. It's not like, well, with a west wind,
Speaker 2: he's going to go this way or anything like that.
Speaker 2: I can't figure out any rhyme or reason to how
Speaker 2: he's gonna leave that bed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, depend it because a lot of people think that
Speaker 4: they only travel with the wind in their face, but
Speaker 4: that's not true. Yeah, and you start finding that out,
Speaker 4: especially on the trail cameras. But even when you're setting
Speaker 4: up ambush sites, I don't set up ambush sites where
Speaker 4: the deer has any kind of advantage because at some point,
Speaker 4: you know, whether that's the rut or whatever it is,
Speaker 4: you know he's gonna he's gonna travel with the crosswindo
Speaker 4: or the wind at his back. But anyway, the only
Speaker 4: thing you can do there, I think is is, uh,
Speaker 4: just hunt whatever works best for you and put your
Speaker 4: time in. I had a buck like that that I hunted,
Speaker 4: and it took me two years to kill him, but
Speaker 4: I never spooked him. You know, he lived in a
Speaker 4: really small area like that, and I never went into it.
Speaker 4: I only hunted the fringes of it. And people were
Speaker 4: watching the videos and you know, saying, well, why don't
Speaker 4: you just go in and go get him. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean, if you get him then then it's awesome.
Speaker 4: But if you don't, you run a really high risk
Speaker 4: of educating him. And I've got a mature buck on
Speaker 4: a very narrow core area. Why do I want to
Speaker 4: take any risk? So I know, you've got a ticking
Speaker 4: clock with you know, November fifteenth gun opener, But you've
Speaker 4: got plenty of time if you've got the days to
Speaker 4: hunt where you can just be patient and just set
Speaker 4: up in those spots that work for you, and eventually
Speaker 4: he's gonna come out of there, and he's he's gonna
Speaker 4: come your way.
Speaker 2: You mentioned in the in a situation like that, whether
Speaker 2: you've got a buck that's in a small zone that
Speaker 2: you would just pick a couple perfect spots and hunt
Speaker 2: those kind of over and over. Yeah, So how I've
Speaker 2: thought about doing that, But then I worry about that,
Speaker 2: you know, the over application of pressure hunting the same spot,
Speaker 2: you know, multiple days in the row or significant number
Speaker 2: over the course of the next couple of weeks, like
Speaker 2: how many like how much volume of hunts would you
Speaker 2: try in that kind of situation?
Speaker 4: And the spot will tell you, you know, if I
Speaker 4: was standing there with you and I could see your
Speaker 4: entring eggsit route and how well the wind works for
Speaker 4: you and where the wind blows, you know, what is
Speaker 4: the likelihood what is the percentage likelihood that some deer
Speaker 4: is going to know you were there? That's going to
Speaker 4: dictate how often you can hunt it because there are
Speaker 4: key days. Maybe there's five or six days between now
Speaker 4: and November fifteenth when you need to be there for sure.
Speaker 4: You know, do you want to be there all twenty
Speaker 4: days or whatever? You know, yeah, you want to, but
Speaker 4: maybe it doesn't work. You know, I've got stands. I've
Speaker 4: hunted locations you could hunt every day, you know, as
Speaker 4: long as the wind was out of the west, the
Speaker 4: southwest or the northwest, you were never going to get busted,
Speaker 4: you know. But I've also hunted spots that, you know,
Speaker 4: because of the entring eggsit route, usually you're not going
Speaker 4: to be able to get away with it very often.
Speaker 4: And you know, it's not just the target deer that
Speaker 4: you've got to you know that eat because if you
Speaker 4: start educating dose. Then the body language of those deer
Speaker 4: starts transferring through to their whole herd, you know, and
Speaker 4: he gets the picture. You know that they're they're sharp.
Speaker 4: They know if if the deer acts spooky in a
Speaker 4: certain area, there's a reason, you know, So they watch
Speaker 4: those doughs. And if the dos are getting antsy because
Speaker 4: they've had bad experiences in a certain spot, he's he's
Speaker 4: going to wait it out. So you can't just say, well,
Speaker 4: I didn't spook him, so it's all good. No, you
Speaker 4: can't spook anything. And that's the hard But that's why
Speaker 4: I was only few, right, That's why even if you've
Speaker 4: got thirty acres, you might only have two spots, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know where you can consistently do it without the
Speaker 4: deer knowing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been I've been trying to play this don't
Speaker 2: mess it up game, like I'm being conservatives. So far,
Speaker 2: I've I've hunted a little bit more for him than
Speaker 2: I usually do at this time of year. But it's
Speaker 2: because we've had this great weather and he keeps moving
Speaker 2: in daylight.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2: He seems to be telling me that he's, you know,
Speaker 2: still there and doing his thing, and I'm seeing him,
Speaker 2: you know, on the days I can't hunt, I can
Speaker 2: glass for the last ten minutes. A day later or something,
Speaker 2: I'm seeing him moving, or I've gotten a few daylight
Speaker 2: camera pictures. So it's it's telling me to go for him.
Speaker 2: At the same time, I don't want to mess it up.
Speaker 2: So I've been on those edges and it's it's tough though,
Speaker 2: because you feel like, is this a waste of time?
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not quite in it, but I'm on
Speaker 2: the edges of it. And one of the things I've
Speaker 2: started thinking about is this randomness of his behavior and
Speaker 2: the randomness of how I usually hunt. I'm sometimes Bill
Speaker 2: someone who has fallen prey to the idea of like,
Speaker 2: I want to bounce around a lot because I want
Speaker 2: to keep the deer off, you know, I don't want
Speaker 2: them to pattern me, so I frequently will I'll sit
Speaker 2: here and if there's nothing going then I'm going to
Speaker 2: move and adjust and try another spot, try another spot.
Speaker 2: I have that like tendency. I guess I've started wondering
Speaker 2: if you take my random not random, but if I
Speaker 2: bounce around and he's bouncing around, it becomes very likely
Speaker 2: that we'll bounce around each other and never actually connect.
Speaker 2: So I've started done.
Speaker 4: You can second guess yourself forever. Your randomness could coincide
Speaker 4: with his randomness too. So the only thing that matters
Speaker 4: is you cannot The deer can't know you're hunting him.
Speaker 4: That's it, you know. So whatever you have to do
Speaker 4: within that bigger, that bigger issue, whatever that is, you
Speaker 4: know that then and if you're in his you know,
Speaker 4: small range, you're eventually gonna get it. He just can't know.
Speaker 4: And and ideally none of the deer know like that.
Speaker 4: One dear I hunted. I think I hunted one hundred
Speaker 4: a buck one time, I think for three or four years,
Speaker 4: and he never once knew that I was hunting him.
Speaker 4: And he would he would show up in Dale. He
Speaker 4: was a giant deer, and he'd show up in Dale
Speaker 4: I just about every day on the cameras. You know,
Speaker 4: it was like so tempting to say, well, why did
Speaker 4: I just press you know, well, eventually killed him. But
Speaker 4: and maybe I could have killed him quicker if I depressed,
Speaker 4: But there was also that risk that he would have
Speaker 4: known that I was hunting him. So I think that's
Speaker 4: the overriding principle involved in this in your situation. I mean,
Speaker 4: if it's a deer covering a big range, it's like, like,
Speaker 4: my dear, It's like, you know, how do I know?
Speaker 4: You know, how do I know if I'm impacting them?
Speaker 4: Because it could be here, you know, I'm sneaking right
Speaker 4: past where he's betted and he's never bett it there before.
Speaker 4: You know, so anyway, in your situation, time is on
Speaker 4: your side. You know, it's not on his side. You know,
Speaker 4: if something changes and he starts, you know, ranging out
Speaker 4: and and he will but you know, maybe you have
Speaker 4: to press a little bit more then and maybe we
Speaker 4: can talk about that. But no, I think you're doing
Speaker 4: the right thing. You just have to be you have
Speaker 4: to know that you're sort of in the game. You're
Speaker 4: not in the middle of the game, because you know,
Speaker 4: you educate a lot of deer when you're in the
Speaker 4: middle of the game. And if you don't get it
Speaker 4: done right away.
Speaker 2: Does it ever make sense to stick it out in
Speaker 2: one location. I've started thinking that maybe I need to
Speaker 2: pick the spot that has like the best wind and
Speaker 2: access and exit, and then you do two or three
Speaker 2: days there in a row, just knowing that eventually he'll
Speaker 2: cycle through versus me trying here, trying here, trying here.
Speaker 2: Does that make sense?
Speaker 4: Yeah? No, I mean I think it's still that that
Speaker 4: whole thing. You just got to pick those few spots
Speaker 4: where you can hunt him without the deer knowing, and
Speaker 4: that's where you put your time in. If it's really
Speaker 4: marked all the way around, then you've got to pick
Speaker 4: and choose your hunts a little bit more. You can't
Speaker 4: be maybe saturating as much as you'd like. It's not
Speaker 4: every farm, not every excuse me, not every situation sets
Speaker 4: up for you know, a lot of hunting pressure though.
Speaker 4: Not only do you have to play the deer, but
Speaker 4: you also have to play the area where you're hunting him.
Speaker 4: You know, the chessboard. But no, I think you just
Speaker 4: you figure out, you know, where are the places where
Speaker 4: I can hunt this year without him knowing, and then
Speaker 4: whenever the wind is right, you hunt one of those.
Speaker 2: Yeah, excuse me. Can you walk me through how you
Speaker 2: went through this process with that deer you were hunting
Speaker 2: last year which was kind of similar to you know
Speaker 2: this year I'm talking about, and then I had that
Speaker 2: smaller home range. I know you ended up killing him
Speaker 2: on Halloween. I think I think folks would be interested
Speaker 2: to hear a little more detail about how you pulled
Speaker 2: that out during that period too.
Speaker 4: He was, Yeah, because I had I think I had
Speaker 4: four or five cameras out and he was only showing
Speaker 4: up on a couple of them, and it was kind
Speaker 4: of easy to predict where he was betting because of
Speaker 4: the direction he would come to those cameras in the evenings.
Speaker 4: And there was a bottom field, you know, that was
Speaker 4: below one of his betting areas, so it was the
Speaker 4: primary food in that area, you know, and that's where
Speaker 4: the doughs were going to be going. I mean, it
Speaker 4: was kind of a no brainer, you know. Granted, you know,
Speaker 4: I wasn't hunting on his bedding area, and I wasn't
Speaker 4: going to, but I was hunting where he would be
Speaker 4: most likely to go when he left it, and I
Speaker 4: didn't hunt it a lot, I mean, obviously, you know,
Speaker 4: I think it was the second time in was when
Speaker 4: we killed him. We hunted on the October eighteenth, and
Speaker 4: then we hunted on Halloween, and I got him on Halloween.
Speaker 4: But he was out there with seventy degree day. He
Speaker 4: was out there two and a half hours before the
Speaker 4: end of legal shooting time on a seventy degree day.
Speaker 4: He was comfortable. So that's that's the key is he
Speaker 4: felt like it was his world, you know, and there
Speaker 4: was nobody else living in it, you know, and you
Speaker 4: want to do that as much as you can. But
Speaker 4: I would have put more pressure on him as time
Speaker 4: went by, you know, I just didn't didn't have the
Speaker 4: chance to hunt. I had other projects going on and stuff.
Speaker 4: I was trying to help my daughter, you know, shoot
Speaker 4: her first year with the bow and stuff like that,
Speaker 4: So you know, I probably would have put a little
Speaker 4: bit more pressure on him, but that it's more time
Speaker 4: frame specific. But your bucks are moving in the daylight,
Speaker 4: so you don't you don't quit, you know, you just
Speaker 4: keep hunting him every time it makes sense, every time
Speaker 4: you've got a wind that makes sense for a location
Speaker 4: you think you can get in and out of, and
Speaker 4: eventually your paths cross. You know. It's just I tell people,
Speaker 4: it's like you know, you're dropping, you know, drops of
Speaker 4: water on sandstone. You know, if you're trying to make
Speaker 4: a hole in it. You could take the pressure washer
Speaker 4: and blast away and hope to make a hole, but
Speaker 4: you might destroy the sandstone. You know while you're at it.
Speaker 4: My my strategy is just be that drop drop, drop,
Speaker 4: drop drop, and eventually you got a hole through it
Speaker 4: and the sandstone is still there, you know. And a
Speaker 4: lot of people they get impatient or they're forced, you know,
Speaker 4: by a lack of time. You know. We have to
Speaker 4: realize too that some people don't have the luxury have
Speaker 4: been able to hunt, you know, often then they have
Speaker 4: to use the pressure washer and hope for the best,
Speaker 4: you know, and hope they don't you know, blow the
Speaker 4: sandstone piece to to you know, bits, but you don't
Speaker 4: have that that ticking clock yet. They just you're you're
Speaker 4: the drop of water, drop drop, drop drop, and eventually
Speaker 4: you get him.
Speaker 2: I like that analogy. I heard you talk at one
Speaker 2: point about the three green I think you call him
Speaker 2: green flags or green lights to know when you want
Speaker 2: to go in and kill a deer like this. So
Speaker 2: so in my case, like he has been showing up
Speaker 2: in daylight and that's a pretty clear green light to
Speaker 2: go after him. But could you walk through what those
Speaker 2: green lights are? Was it flags or lights? I'm not
Speaker 2: sure what it was. Tell me whatever it was green, Okay,
Speaker 2: what were those things for you that typically are the
Speaker 2: most important before you're going to you know, take those
Speaker 2: drop drop drop strikes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, obviously, like we talked about, if he's on a
Speaker 4: daylight pattern, Now, if you know that at least some
Speaker 4: percentage of the time he's coming out in daylight, you
Speaker 4: gotta hunt him, you know, carefully, but you gotta hunt
Speaker 4: him because that's what it's all about. I mean, with
Speaker 4: a bow, you're hunting natural movement. So the deer have
Speaker 4: to be coming out in daylight, well they are, you
Speaker 4: got to hunt. So that's that's you know green light
Speaker 4: number one. Number two is anytime you've got a coal front,
Speaker 4: you know, unfortunately we've had a you know, pretty cold October,
Speaker 4: you know by you know, normal standards, but if you've
Speaker 4: got a front coming through, that's usually going to be
Speaker 4: one of those times when he breaks his nocturnal pattern
Speaker 4: and comes out maybe an hour sooner or half an
Speaker 4: hour or fifteen minutes sooner or whatever. So the coal
Speaker 4: front is critical, and usually it's the day it goes
Speaker 4: through and then the day after, so you've got that
Speaker 4: high pressure you know, on the second day of the
Speaker 4: cold front that can be really good. And then the
Speaker 4: third one is just as you get closer to the rut,
Speaker 4: and you know, I call it, you know October, late October,
Speaker 4: you just start hunting him even if they're not going
Speaker 4: daylight because any day that they're going to break that,
Speaker 4: you know they're going to start, you know, moving more
Speaker 4: in day. And the biologists say they're moving during the
Speaker 4: day anyway, they just aren't doing it in the places
Speaker 4: where they're vulnerable. Yeah, they're back in where they bet.
Speaker 2: Yes, what are your thoughts on the situation we've had
Speaker 2: here where it's it's been cooler than normal, so it's
Speaker 2: been great, but now it's just kind of stagnant. See,
Speaker 2: at least from what I've seen a lot of places,
Speaker 2: it's cool, but there's not these big fronts coming. It's
Speaker 2: just kind of staying kind of cool. Does that lose
Speaker 2: its you know, impact after a while because that consistency
Speaker 2: now or how what are you thinking?
Speaker 4: I don't know, it's so rare. I don't have a
Speaker 4: lot of anecdotal you know, experience related to this. What
Speaker 4: I'm seeing is, you know, I like the middle of
Speaker 4: October for a couple of days anyway, because there's sort
Speaker 4: of like a false rut, you know, there are some
Speaker 4: does that come into Esther's the middle of October. You know,
Speaker 4: people don't realize that. They just kind of flash in
Speaker 4: and then they you know, kind of flash back out
Speaker 4: again because you know, there's always those early born fawns,
Speaker 4: so there's always a few dos getting bred and out October.
Speaker 4: But anyway, uh, that's going to pass now. You know.
Speaker 4: I saw that buck last night making a scrape. I
Speaker 4: think he'd have been there because it was cool, beautiful,
Speaker 4: high pressure, a little bit of a north wind. I
Speaker 4: just think he just thought that's pretty nice out. I'm
Speaker 4: going to get up and walk around, you know. So
Speaker 4: I don't know if it changes now, if it stays cool,
Speaker 4: you know, I think every day is going to be
Speaker 4: consistently pretty good, you know, right up right up to
Speaker 4: the rut, I don't think, you know, I think it's
Speaker 4: going to drop off a little bit past the middle
Speaker 4: of October because if there was that flurry related to
Speaker 4: the first few dohs, then that's going to drop off quick.
Speaker 4: So if there was something kicking that movement up you know,
Speaker 4: this past weekend, in past few days, then that influence
Speaker 4: is going to drop away. But we're rolling up on
Speaker 4: the timeframe when you know it's it's coming, you know,
Speaker 4: full full on, you know, I mean I always figure
Speaker 4: October twenty fifth is the shall start date, you know,
Speaker 4: of the deer season, you know, and any or that's
Speaker 4: a bonus. So we're rolling in towards the twenty fifth,
Speaker 4: So there's no reason now to think that it's going
Speaker 4: to drop off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've heard you in recent years talk about the
Speaker 2: fact that you've started debating what your favorite week of
Speaker 2: the rut is. Now you're you're starting to consider maybe
Speaker 2: you like late October, maybe just as much as early November.
Speaker 2: Where do you stand on that here now? Today?
Speaker 4: I think it's still you know, I just did a
Speaker 4: video for our channel. In fact, I think it's live.
Speaker 4: Just went live a couple of minutes ago. While we
Speaker 4: were talking. My daughter was working on the thumbnail for
Speaker 4: the video. But that's I really picked, you know, looking
Speaker 4: at the calendar, you know, the twenty ninth is a Sunday.
Speaker 4: Twenty ninth is one of my favorite days now, So
Speaker 4: the twenty eighth is a Saturday. That weekend is awesome. Okay,
Speaker 4: that's going to be an awesome weekend. If the weather
Speaker 4: quick up breaks, do you go if you're gonna take
Speaker 4: a four day weekend. Do you go Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday,
Speaker 4: or do you go Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. I think
Speaker 4: you go Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. I think there's a
Speaker 4: really good opportunity coming up because that takes you from
Speaker 4: the twenty eighth all the way through Halloween, and that
Speaker 4: should be a killer. And the beauty of that time
Speaker 4: is the bucks are starting to feel their oats. Maybe
Speaker 4: there's a few dos coming in, you know, maybe just
Speaker 4: a few, you know, just to get them thinking, you know,
Speaker 4: but they haven't left their core areas very much yet.
Speaker 4: They're still in that range where you sort of have
Speaker 4: them pegged. Yeah, you know, once the rot really breaks loose,
Speaker 4: thumb bucks really range out. Others don't. I mean, some
Speaker 4: of them still stay in that thirty acres, but some
Speaker 4: of them will expand their range and you kind of
Speaker 4: lose them for a while. They come back, but they're
Speaker 4: not there all the time. So now they're there all
Speaker 4: the time, and then you know, it's a great opportunity
Speaker 4: for us and if we have a deer more or
Speaker 4: less peg to be just a little bit more aggressive.
Speaker 4: I haven't felt like I was aggressive yet. But I
Speaker 4: do feel like, you know, during that time frame, let's
Speaker 4: say the twenty eight through the thirty first, you would
Speaker 4: be a little bit more aggressive and then you can
Speaker 4: back off again, you know, and kind of let things
Speaker 4: you know, coick, you know, rebound.
Speaker 2: Okay, do I know you've been pretty strong in the
Speaker 2: past around you know that the fact that the rut
Speaker 2: is relatively consistent because a photo period changes and all
Speaker 2: of that, and weather can influence what we see. Yep,
Speaker 2: has your mind changed at all or been? Go ahead?
Speaker 4: I think the moon can influence how much daylight movement
Speaker 4: there is. It doesn't change the rut dates. Know, all
Speaker 4: the all the biological data would suggest that the rut
Speaker 4: dates are locked in based on photo period. But nothing
Speaker 4: says that the buck has to move during the day,
Speaker 4: you know, So what is it that causes him to
Speaker 4: move during the day versus just breeding only at night?
Speaker 4: Because and I've I've hunted Michigan before, and I've hunted
Speaker 4: Iowa before. When it was seventy five degrees during the
Speaker 4: first week of November, you didn't hardly see anything. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And they're like, well there was no rut this year,
Speaker 4: Well yeah, there was. I mean those deer they breed,
Speaker 4: they just do it at night. Yeah, So anyway, that's
Speaker 4: that's my whole everybody's got like a magic recipe for
Speaker 4: the rut. But I think the dates are pretty locked in.
Speaker 4: You know, north of a certain line, you know, and
Speaker 4: the bile just know where that line is. You know.
Speaker 4: South of it, there's all kinds of different rut dates,
Speaker 4: but north of it, it's pretty consistent. You know, the
Speaker 4: peak of breeding is November fifteenth, plus or minus a day,
Speaker 4: and you know, you back up from that. You don't
Speaker 4: really want to hunt the peak of breeding because that's
Speaker 4: when so many dolls are an estrius and the bucks
Speaker 4: are locked up, and you know, see you want to
Speaker 4: be on the on the front end of that. And
Speaker 4: that's why I like November seventh so well. It puts
Speaker 4: you about a week ahead of that. There are dose
Speaker 4: in estris, but not a ton of them, so you've
Speaker 4: got a lot of movement, a lot of general movement.
Speaker 4: So anyway, that's that's my thoughts on it. I could
Speaker 4: be wrong, but I've talked to an awful lot of
Speaker 4: biologists and and the ones who don't have a chip
Speaker 4: in the game, you know, financially to say well, I've
Speaker 4: got this moon guide or I've been doing this or whatever.
Speaker 4: They all tell me that there's no correlation with the
Speaker 4: RUT dates. They also tell me there's no correlation with
Speaker 4: almost anything they can figure out. Mark Juri is a
Speaker 4: really strong proponent of the barometric pressure, and I think
Speaker 4: he's onto something there, you know. I do think that
Speaker 4: rising pressure at certain times, you know, really is a trigger.
Speaker 4: But there aren't very many predictable triggers. The other thing
Speaker 4: that gets really weird too is you know, you can
Speaker 4: be out there and see nothing and then a hot
Speaker 4: dogum comes by. You see fifteen bucks. Yeah, it's the
Speaker 4: greatest run. And the guy one ridge over says today
Speaker 4: was terrible. So it gets it gets kind of quirky,
Speaker 4: you know, once you get past a certain date in
Speaker 4: the rut. Yeah, it's all there's so much of it
Speaker 4: that's random, and there are so few certain certainties you know,
Speaker 4: within this. But again I always come back to the
Speaker 4: basic ones. If you know where he lives and you
Speaker 4: don't he doesn't know you're hunting him, you got a
Speaker 4: pretty decent chance of killing him eventually. I mean, it
Speaker 4: just keep it super simple.
Speaker 2: You mentioned that you might give a little credence to
Speaker 2: the moon impacting maybe how much of that rud activity
Speaker 2: we see during the day. Have you looked at what
Speaker 2: the Moon's gonna be this these next thing, you know,
Speaker 2: three four weeks, and have you thought at all how
Speaker 2: that might impact you know, this.
Speaker 4: Period, because I'm gonna hunt those dates regardless, you know.
Speaker 4: I mean, the moon isn't going to change when I hunt,
Speaker 4: because I think an over arching force is that is
Speaker 4: the you know, the hormonal aspect, you know, when the
Speaker 4: dose are in estris, you know, and that's that's really
Speaker 4: not dictated by the moon. So you know, I feel
Speaker 4: like that overweights maybe days when the moon sort of
Speaker 4: aligns with whatever. You know. I guess maybe I haven't
Speaker 4: studied it enough, you know, maybe there's more to it
Speaker 4: than what I know. I've just used that drip drip, drip,
Speaker 4: you know mindset for so long that I just hunt
Speaker 4: right through everything you know, and then you know it
Speaker 4: eventually it probably works, you know. It's just, uh, there's
Speaker 4: so few it sounds bad. I mean, I should have
Speaker 4: some formula, but there are so few things that are
Speaker 4: totally predictable, you know. It's just kind of hard to
Speaker 4: tell somebody here's the magic formula. So anyway, I don't know,
Speaker 4: maybe I didn't help you very much there.
Speaker 2: No, No, it's in line with what I with what
Speaker 2: I imagine would be the case. It makes a lot
Speaker 2: of sense to me. Okay, that all being said, then, Bill,
Speaker 2: if we're not too worried about what the moon's doing
Speaker 2: and we can't see what the weather forecast is going
Speaker 2: to be, you know, for November, right, I think we
Speaker 2: can see right now what that last week of October
Speaker 2: looks like. I have seen that in the weather forecast,
Speaker 2: and at least for Michigan and some of the you know,
Speaker 2: I think probably over by you two, it looks like
Speaker 2: pretty good right now, is what it's looking so far.
Speaker 2: If if someone listening can only take one long weekend
Speaker 2: of vacation, so they could do kind of like what
Speaker 2: you talked about. They could take like a Friday and
Speaker 2: a Monday or something like that, and they can only
Speaker 2: pick one. I'm curious which of these weekends you'd recommend
Speaker 2: they take. And I'm gonna give you two scenarios. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna tell you if the guy is after one specific buck,
Speaker 2: or if the guy just wants to kill any buck. Okay,
Speaker 2: So if the guy is after one specific buck, should
Speaker 2: he take that weekend of the twenty eighth, twenty nine
Speaker 2: to thirtieth, like you just talked about, or should he
Speaker 2: take the weekend of the fourth and fifth of November
Speaker 2: or the eleventh and twelfth of November.
Speaker 4: Well, I don't like the eleventh and twelfth as well,
Speaker 4: unless it's the rest of them are too warm, you know,
Speaker 4: so you really wish that you didn't have to set
Speaker 4: your vacation time until you know, a few days in advance,
Speaker 4: so you can play weather. It's such a big factor
Speaker 4: in how much daylight activity there is. It's it's really
Speaker 4: hard weather forecast. Aside, if you're hunting one buck, gosh,
Speaker 4: I do like that time frame, let's say, from the
Speaker 4: twenty eighth to the thirty I really do like. And
Speaker 4: it does look like it lines up with some cooler
Speaker 4: temperatures this year, so it's maybe a little bit more
Speaker 4: of a sure thing. But if you're just hunting any
Speaker 4: buck and you just you don't really care, you want,
Speaker 4: you know, a decent buck or a legal buck or whatever,
Speaker 4: then I think that that weekend of the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh,
Speaker 4: you know, throw two days in at the end and
Speaker 4: make a four day weekend out of that one. Excuse me,
Speaker 4: I think that one's better than the next one. I
Speaker 4: think the next one. You get too close to that
Speaker 4: peak of when the most those are estrus. Closer you
Speaker 4: get to November fifteenth, the less bucks are going to
Speaker 4: be cruising. They're going to be tied up with dose.
Speaker 4: And that doesn't mean you can't kill deer. As you
Speaker 4: get close to that peak. You just have to have
Speaker 4: a hot dough near your tree stand, you know. And
Speaker 4: they tend not to travel a lot. They don't like
Speaker 4: to get chased, you know. They kind of hide, and
Speaker 4: then the bucks have to go find them, you know.
Speaker 4: So it's not like once they've you know, it's not
Speaker 4: like these hot doughs are running all over the place,
Speaker 4: you know, dragon bucks here and there. It's a really
Speaker 4: frustrating time in my experience, from about the twelfth to
Speaker 4: the seventeenth or eighteenth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've always felt the same way. But then I
Speaker 2: have been seeing this trend and I don't know if
Speaker 2: this will continue, but I've been I've been wanting to
Speaker 2: go back and look at this and try to actually
Speaker 2: get the data to back it up. But I'm going
Speaker 2: to have to deal with anecdotal evidence. For now. It
Speaker 2: seems like over the last ten to fifteen years, we
Speaker 2: have had a whole lot of years where that beginning
Speaker 2: of November is warm. We've had a lot of warm
Speaker 2: beginnings in November, and I've started wondering when I'm planning,
Speaker 2: like my rut vacation, you know, do I want to
Speaker 2: push it a little bit later so I can get
Speaker 2: that cooler weather because I'm sick of hunting November second
Speaker 2: and it's eighty degrees.
Speaker 4: I know, And that's what I'm saying. The weather is
Speaker 4: such a big factor, but it shouldn't be it shouldn't
Speaker 4: be warm. Then, you know, there's not like you know,
Speaker 4: global warming doesn't just affect a one week time frame.
Speaker 4: Let's say, even if warming right, it's not narrow to say,
Speaker 4: oh it's global warming the first week of November, but
Speaker 4: not the rest. So it's just a bad coincidence. It's
Speaker 4: just a bad of luck because I've seen years when
Speaker 4: that first week of November was cold and it was
Speaker 4: just like bedlam. I mean, it was everywhere, making scrapes
Speaker 4: running and just crazy, awesome, unbelievably good hunting. And then
Speaker 4: like you say, you'll run into those years when it's
Speaker 4: seventy degrees or seventy five degrees and it's just you know, dead.
Speaker 4: So assuming seasonal temperatures, you know that that timeframe is
Speaker 4: really good. But you know, if you know the weather
Speaker 4: is going to be good the tail end of October,
Speaker 4: you could roll the dice and say, well, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: I'm gonna go with this, you know, because I know
Speaker 4: the weather is so important, I'm not going to risk
Speaker 4: it being warm past the forecast window. I don't know,
Speaker 4: it's I wish I had the answer to that, because
Speaker 4: everybody wants to know what's the magic day, and you
Speaker 4: can tell them when it should be, but you can't
Speaker 4: tell them when it's going to be because of the weather.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, speaking of last year, we had that really
Speaker 2: brutal stretch for most of the country that was so
Speaker 2: warm there during the windows that we would hope would
Speaker 2: be great. Where do where do you land these days
Speaker 2: as far as how to hunt those warm rut days?
Speaker 2: How do you make the best of that situation. I
Speaker 2: hope we don't have it this year, but I'm trying
Speaker 2: to make sure I'm prepared just in case.
Speaker 4: Well, you got to hunt morning specifically, because if you
Speaker 4: think about it, like I'm sitting out here right now
Speaker 4: outside the building and it was thirty degrees. There was
Speaker 4: frost on the ground when I got up. It's still
Speaker 4: pretty chilly. I mean, it's probably thirty six right now.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm sitting out here with my hands down
Speaker 4: in my pockets trying to keep them more. But by
Speaker 4: let's say five o'clock tonight, it might be sixty degrees
Speaker 4: and it may not cool down until after sunset. So
Speaker 4: you have more hours of cool temperature in the morning
Speaker 4: than what you do in the afternoon. So the mornings
Speaker 4: tend to be better when it's really hot because they
Speaker 4: had that benefit of that cooler night in order to
Speaker 4: bring all the you know, the average temperatures down. So
Speaker 4: there's going to be more daylight movement on the tail
Speaker 4: end of the nighttime cooler than there would be on
Speaker 4: the front end, you know, when it's still warm in
Speaker 4: the afternoons. So I mean, hot dough Trump's all of that,
Speaker 4: you know, because she's going to bring them out no
Speaker 4: matter what, you know. But you know, without a hot
Speaker 4: dough dictating the behavior, I believe the mornings are better.
Speaker 4: And you got to be close to the betting areas
Speaker 4: because you know, that's uh, they're they're betting down earlier
Speaker 4: than normal, so you know, hunting mornings close to betting areas.
Speaker 4: I can't remember what year it was, it was in
Speaker 4: the late nineties, I think or early two thousands. There
Speaker 4: was one year when it was eighty plus degrees excuse
Speaker 4: me every day during that first week of November, and
Speaker 4: I ended up filling the buckouts after. But it was
Speaker 4: a right first light in the morning, right near a
Speaker 4: betting area is where I finally got him. And that
Speaker 4: was that was hard, hard hunting, you know, because of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we talked about your I'm gonna call it
Speaker 2: your drip drip drip strategy, Bill, and you should coin that.
Speaker 2: We should coin it as your Bill Winki's drip drip strategy.
Speaker 2: We talked about that how you you know, how you
Speaker 2: use that when you're targeting a specific buck in October.
Speaker 2: But what about when we get into November and we
Speaker 2: get to that period where they start shifting around a
Speaker 2: little more and start doing some funky things. You know,
Speaker 2: what does your approach look like now in November when
Speaker 2: you're still after that one deer that becomes a lot
Speaker 2: more difficult. I think in the eyes of a lot
Speaker 2: of people, how are you shifting your approach? Then?
Speaker 4: Well, see again, I'm unique, fortunate, blessed. Stay what you will.
Speaker 4: The state of Iowa, we can hunt the whole month
Speaker 4: of or November with a bow, you know. So there's
Speaker 4: there's another phase of the ret that I can wait for.
Speaker 4: But let's say you're in Michigan and you know the
Speaker 4: gun seasons coming in on the fifteenth, and so you
Speaker 4: have the block. I don't live frog here, but you
Speaker 4: definitely want to become more aggressive. The closer you get
Speaker 4: to that, you know, it makes sense to start going
Speaker 4: maybe into some of those more high risk you know,
Speaker 4: und of stand locations, and maybe the entry exsit isn't perfect,
Speaker 4: but you know that there's a ditch crossing where every
Speaker 4: buck in that whole area crosses it eventually, but you
Speaker 4: could get caught there, you know, whatever the case may be.
Speaker 4: There are spots that probably get more traffic than others,
Speaker 4: but in the most people will hunt those, unfortunately, but
Speaker 4: those are high risk, high reward. I don't like the
Speaker 4: risk side of that, you know. I would rather have
Speaker 4: low risk, average reward and then just put my time
Speaker 4: in because if you don't get him on that first
Speaker 4: or second hunt, you probably ruined that spot and he
Speaker 4: knows you or enough oh that you've now compromised that
Speaker 4: whole part of your property. So I save those in
Speaker 4: that situation until you know you're you're up against the
Speaker 4: end of it. So like let's say you've got a
Speaker 4: rud hunting vacation, as you get closer to the last
Speaker 4: couple of days, you might as well ramp up the
Speaker 4: you know, the aggression. Don't don't be dumb, because it
Speaker 4: still doesn't do any good to go in there and
Speaker 4: spoop deer, you know, but you can take those calculated
Speaker 4: risks a little bit more and again, like for me,
Speaker 4: we got another period from about the twentieth to the
Speaker 4: twenty sixth of November when it's really good. Again, not
Speaker 4: as good as the front end of the peak, but
Speaker 4: it's pretty good, you know. So you know, I don't
Speaker 4: I don't even when I wind down that first you know,
Speaker 4: I call it buck activity peak right before the does
Speaker 4: are all in estrus. If I haven't gott him yet,
Speaker 4: I don't get too too stressed because I know he's
Speaker 4: going to come back to food in daylight right after
Speaker 4: the peak.
Speaker 2: You know, a lot of folks throw a Bucks pattern
Speaker 2: out the window once you get to November because they assume,
Speaker 2: you know, there's off to the races checking out for doughs,
Speaker 2: and they'll just sit funnels, or they'll sit doll betting areas.
Speaker 2: Have you found that there is still some value to
Speaker 2: what you learned about that buck even in November, like
Speaker 2: in this small core range type buck, would you just
Speaker 2: be hunting the dough betting air is right tight to
Speaker 2: that still or would you change that in any way?
Speaker 4: No, I think I'd still hunt in your situation unless
Speaker 4: he starts leaving there, which he may, but let's say
Speaker 4: he doesn't. Because I'm hunted some that never never left
Speaker 4: their thirty forty acre range. Then you don't need to
Speaker 4: ever do anything different.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: Maybe you get a little bit more aggressive right before
Speaker 4: the fifteenth, but you just got to stay in the game,
Speaker 4: you know, and just put your time in. The worst
Speaker 4: thing you can do is let him know you're hunting him,
Speaker 4: you know. So you know, I think to answer that
Speaker 4: question is I don't think they get as crazy as
Speaker 4: what people think they do. You know, I think they move,
Speaker 4: they move a little bit more until they find that
Speaker 4: dough and then they hole up with her for you know,
Speaker 4: who knows how long. I mean, I've seen some crazy
Speaker 4: stuff from the tree stand on how much time a
Speaker 4: buck spends with the dough. I've seen I've seen bucks
Speaker 4: run up, breed a dough, and run off. I mean,
Speaker 4: I I'll just talk about this two day courtship ritual.
Speaker 4: I saw one to one time get bred by two
Speaker 4: different bucks in a five minute period that just ran up,
Speaker 4: bred the dough, ran off, another one ran up, and
Speaker 4: then they finally figured out, you know, through d n
Speaker 4: I DNA testing that twins aren't necessarily from the same buck. Well,
Speaker 4: you know, I saw that. In the real world is chaos,
Speaker 4: you know. So some of this stuff that we think
Speaker 4: is how this works is more organized than what everybody
Speaker 4: what it really is. So you can throw a lot
Speaker 4: of this is how the ret works out the window
Speaker 4: because it can be anything. So I would assume that
Speaker 4: he's not going to go crazy all over the place.
Speaker 4: I would assume he's going to stay there until he
Speaker 4: shows you otherwise, we rarely over the years have killed
Speaker 4: bucks that we didn't have pictures of during the rut.
Speaker 4: It's not like they're coming from all over the neighborhood,
Speaker 4: you know, to our farm. I talked to a big
Speaker 4: outfitter in southern Iowa, and he covers a lot of
Speaker 4: ground and I said, how many strange bucks you know,
Speaker 4: strangers do you guys kill? And he said almost none.
Speaker 4: He said, we are almost always killing bucks that we've got,
Speaker 4: you know, some history with from that season in that area.
Speaker 4: So I just don't think you have to be You
Speaker 4: don't have to change your strategy a whole lot. I
Speaker 4: do think you move in on the dough betting areas,
Speaker 4: but you can start doing that at the tail end
Speaker 4: of October a little bit. But I don't like it
Speaker 4: too much in October. I like it better in November
Speaker 4: because I just feel like it's a little too early.
Speaker 4: In October. You don't have to be there because those
Speaker 4: bucks are going to be out looking in the food,
Speaker 4: at the food sources more. You really don't need to
Speaker 4: press in in October, But in November it makes sense
Speaker 4: to press into those dough betting areas a little bit more.
Speaker 2: What about in your situation this year, You've got these
Speaker 2: two roaming bucks that are all over what's the rut approach?
Speaker 2: Going to be for you. Let's let's I hope you
Speaker 2: kill them soon, but let's just say you don't get
Speaker 2: killed until November. And you've got these deer, They're spread
Speaker 2: out over a half mile. What do you do. You
Speaker 2: have a few spots in mind already, you think, like, man,
Speaker 2: this is probably where I'm gonna spend a lot of time.
Speaker 2: What's what do those places look like?
Speaker 4: They're they're betting areas. I'll spend almost all my time
Speaker 4: mornings and evenings in the betting areas and in this
Speaker 4: area that I hunt. They're very pronounced. If you can
Speaker 4: see behind me, and you know, the two dimensions doesn't
Speaker 4: do justice to it. But this country is really vertical,
Speaker 4: and they bet up on those ridges. I mean there's
Speaker 4: I could look around me and say, well, I mean,
Speaker 4: I can kill him right up there. I mean, I'm
Speaker 4: just pointing, you know, three hundred yards to a to
Speaker 4: a bluff top, and there's a betting area up there.
Speaker 4: You know, if I just spend my time on those
Speaker 4: ridge tops near those betting areas in the morning and
Speaker 4: evening all day sits if I really had, if I
Speaker 4: wasn't hunting with the cameraman, I would sleep you know,
Speaker 4: at the base of the tree. More. That really does work,
Speaker 4: because the only way you screw up those bedding areas
Speaker 4: is the coming and going part. Right. You know, once
Speaker 4: you're in there, you know a lot of times you've
Speaker 4: got it, you know pretty much. You know, it settles
Speaker 4: in and life's good. And then you climb down and
Speaker 4: it's you know, still out. You crunch through the leaves
Speaker 4: and every deer and the whole countryside knows you were there.
Speaker 4: And then you come crunching in the next morning and
Speaker 4: it's the dead still out.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 4: You know, if you go in at midday when the
Speaker 4: wind is blowing, they don't notice. You get into your tree,
Speaker 4: you hunt the afternoon, you get up the next morning,
Speaker 4: climb back in the tree. You know, it's like it's awesome.
Speaker 4: That's why I like hunting blinds a little bit more
Speaker 4: now too, because I'll just sleep in the blind. It's
Speaker 4: the it's the coming and going that ruins it. And
Speaker 4: so anyway, my my point being, if I didn't have
Speaker 4: to worry about other people like cameramen and my daughter's
Speaker 4: hunting and stuff like that, I would never leave those
Speaker 4: betting areas, you know, I would just go in and
Speaker 4: stay until I killed him, and it would work, you know,
Speaker 4: but it's not. Unfortunately, once I started doing this video again,
Speaker 4: I had to give up that style of hunting. But
Speaker 4: it works. I mean I've had come back to me
Speaker 4: and you know, hear me talk about it and say,
Speaker 4: you know, I use a canoe and I go down
Speaker 4: the river and you know, I don't leave until I
Speaker 4: get him. I'm like, yeah, I mean, it really does work,
Speaker 4: you know, because the coming and going that's where they
Speaker 4: get you.
Speaker 2: Now, these ridge betting area spots that you hunt, I've
Speaker 2: heard you in the past describe them. And I can't
Speaker 2: remember if it was when we talked on the podcast
Speaker 2: or if I heard this somewhere else, but I know
Speaker 2: you like to set up in places on a ridge
Speaker 2: where a couple draws meet up towards the top, and
Speaker 2: so you have like three lines of movement. You've got
Speaker 2: the up and down the ridge, You've got deer that
Speaker 2: curl around each of those draws, and then you have
Speaker 2: deer that cross the saddle. Is that still your favorite
Speaker 2: kind of rut set up on a ridge or is
Speaker 2: there any other tweak on that or more nuanced that
Speaker 2: I'm missing?
Speaker 4: I think that's good. I think the main thing because
Speaker 4: it's it's kind of general movement where the dose bed.
Speaker 4: You know, the bucks come in there and they just
Speaker 4: kind of move, you know, not randomly, but they usually
Speaker 4: stay on the downwind fringe of the ridge top and
Speaker 4: you're gonna be there anyway, because you're gonna have your
Speaker 4: scent blowing off the ridge down down into the valley
Speaker 4: behind you. But that's a really good pattern, So it's
Speaker 4: not if it's a really wide ridge. If you can
Speaker 4: find those draws that come up, then that does create
Speaker 4: that pinch you know at the top where they go
Speaker 4: around the contours, so you get a little bit more activity,
Speaker 4: you know, across the top of the ridge, and then
Speaker 4: you get the deer going around you know, those contours,
Speaker 4: and you do narrow them down in those spots. But
Speaker 4: you know, I wouldn't I'm looking at the spot right now,
Speaker 4: or I think I can kill him. I mean, it's
Speaker 4: just off to my right, and I would just go
Speaker 4: straight up and just sit on the downwind fringe and
Speaker 4: not worry about it and just let the you know,
Speaker 4: the random buck movement and then the fact that I'm
Speaker 4: on the down wind fringe of that betting area and
Speaker 4: that's usually how they circle around those. If I could
Speaker 4: stay there for four days, five days then not have
Speaker 4: to come and go, I'd get them. It's not it's
Speaker 4: not for everybody, and it's kind of a you know,
Speaker 4: really strange, maybe almost hardcore a way to hunt. But
Speaker 4: it's so effective, you know. And I've even thought about this.
Speaker 4: We're really getting off topic now, but I've even thought
Speaker 4: about digging in, you know, like they have these underwater
Speaker 4: water tanks, you know, or underground water tanks that hold
Speaker 4: say I don't know how many five hundred gallons or
Speaker 4: a thousand gallons or something, just digging those into the
Speaker 4: ground and then you know, just coming down out of
Speaker 4: the tree and getting in one man, you know, because
Speaker 4: it's like a little apartment. Then you know, wow, that's
Speaker 4: once you start doing it, it's just addictive because you know,
Speaker 4: think about the coming and going and how many deer.
Speaker 4: I mean, if you didn't have to leave, how easy
Speaker 4: would this game be.
Speaker 2: So we did talk about this a little bit last time,
Speaker 2: because you were just you were talking about sleeping at
Speaker 2: the base of your tree that year. This would have
Speaker 2: been I think twenty twenty one, when you were still
Speaker 2: on that permission or lease piece. And I always wondered.
Speaker 2: I kept thinking about that, and I wondered about the impact.
Speaker 2: I know that you were avoiding the in and out,
Speaker 2: but I always worried about like you staying in one
Speaker 2: place for twelve hours overnight and that scent pool just
Speaker 2: kind of slowly just growing around you. You've done it, now,
Speaker 2: have you not seen? I must assume that's not been
Speaker 2: an issue for you, right.
Speaker 4: Scent pool, not if you do it right, because I
Speaker 4: would have deer. You find some really really weird and
Speaker 4: interesting and hair raising things that happened when you're sleeping
Speaker 4: up on the ridge, you know, and two in the morning,
Speaker 4: you know, and and stuff comes crunching around. You know,
Speaker 4: it's like, what is it going to step on me?
Speaker 4: Because as I had a sleeping pad, a warm bag,
Speaker 4: and I had a bivy sack and the waterproof you know,
Speaker 4: so it's not going to be letting your scent out.
Speaker 4: You put everything inside that bivvy sack and then you
Speaker 4: get down inside that bivy sack. So you're laying right
Speaker 4: on the ground, super low profile. The wind is blowing
Speaker 4: over you. You know, it's not scent anywhere. There is
Speaker 4: no scent it's leaving that bag, except maybe your breath
Speaker 4: if there is you know, human scent in breath, which
Speaker 4: is debatable. Put all my gear in a rubber canoe bag,
Speaker 4: you know, for two reasons, to keep the scent, but
Speaker 4: also to keep any dew or frost, you know, from
Speaker 4: getting on your gear. So when you get up in
Speaker 4: the morning, you stand on that rubber bag, get dressed,
Speaker 4: and then you sneak over to your tree. Pretty it's
Speaker 4: a pretty cool system. It's boring. But they didn't they
Speaker 4: didn't pick me up. I mean they'd come in and
Speaker 4: they'd make circles around me. I had a six pointer
Speaker 4: one one time that he saw me climb down from
Speaker 4: my tree, and you know, he couldn't get over the
Speaker 4: fact that I never left, you know, because it was
Speaker 4: like I went over to a down tree and my
Speaker 4: camp was already set up, and I just slid right
Speaker 4: into my bag inside the bivy sack and you know,
Speaker 4: laid down. Well, he spent hours circleared that down tree
Speaker 4: trying to figure out where I went. He did not
Speaker 4: like the fact that I didn't go down the hill.
Speaker 4: He never smelled me in there. Yeah, but uh so,
Speaker 4: I don't think it's quite as much intrusive as what
Speaker 4: people think, as long as you take some steps to
Speaker 4: keep your scent bottled up, you know. The I think
Speaker 4: the snoring probably gets you more than anything. If you're
Speaker 4: a snorer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't bring your seapat machine in, I think
Speaker 2: on these kind of hunts.
Speaker 4: So if you fishing that you snore, and you better
Speaker 4: not sleep that way because you're gonna have every and
Speaker 4: and they're waiting for you to wake up.
Speaker 2: All right, So that ridge top betting situation, that makes
Speaker 2: a lot of sense. What about back in the day
Speaker 2: when you were hunting southern Iowa and you didn't have
Speaker 2: quite that much topography. I know, there's all sorts of
Speaker 2: other places that can be great dough betting areas you
Speaker 2: can set up on. And we all know that being
Speaker 2: downwind to dough betting areas is a great place to be.
Speaker 2: But are there any other little details that have helped
Speaker 2: you pick like the spot within the spot to make
Speaker 2: that downwind of dough betting air the best possible location
Speaker 2: you can get for this time of year.
Speaker 4: I think the movement is is just general enough that
Speaker 4: you don't have to zero in too much. Okay, you know, again,
Speaker 4: like you've got those draws that create those funnels. There
Speaker 4: is one other type of stand location that is really
Speaker 4: really good throughout the whole rut, and that is you know,
Speaker 4: I don't know, you can call them whatever you want to,
Speaker 4: but those little microplots next to betting areas. If you
Speaker 4: have a blind on one of those, like say it's
Speaker 4: a quarter of an acre and a half an acre,
Speaker 4: and you can get in there in midday, the deer
Speaker 4: are going to move really well through that morning and evening.
Speaker 4: I mean, you can hunt those things all day every
Speaker 4: day because you're so close to the betting areas that
Speaker 4: they become more like I call them staging area plots,
Speaker 4: or you know, there's almost like a singles bar. You know,
Speaker 4: the bucks will come through and they'll hit every scrape,
Speaker 4: the doughs come out and grab a couple of bites
Speaker 4: of clover before they do anything else. You know. It's
Speaker 4: those spots are really really good. But a lot of
Speaker 4: times you don't have the opportunity to create those. I
Speaker 4: mean I don't have them on this farm, but I
Speaker 4: had like ten of them on that farm in southern Iowa.
Speaker 4: So I spend lots and lots of my time hunting
Speaker 4: those kind of locations too, because they're so deadly and
Speaker 4: they're so easy to hunt.
Speaker 2: How close does a plot like that have to be
Speaker 2: to the betting area to be that effective? Like are
Speaker 2: we talking like literally right in the edge, or it
Speaker 2: can be one hundred yards? What are we talking?
Speaker 4: I think the closer the better. One hundred yards is
Speaker 4: probably more than I usually do because you can sneak
Speaker 4: into them, you know, if you set them up right,
Speaker 4: you can sneak within thirty yards of a betted deer.
Speaker 4: You know, if if it's thick in the situations right
Speaker 4: and there's a little bit of wind, you you just
Speaker 4: have to be quiet, you have to move slow, and
Speaker 4: you got a glass ahead, you know, so it's not
Speaker 4: like you've got to be a long ways away to
Speaker 4: make it work. But you'd like to have some kind
Speaker 4: of a buffer between you and the betting area, whether
Speaker 4: it's thick cover or something that you know, you don't
Speaker 4: want it to be open. If it's an open betting
Speaker 4: area and you have some control, you need to get
Speaker 4: the chainsaw out and you know open, you know, open
Speaker 4: the canopy, make it thicker so the deer can't see
Speaker 4: you coming and going, But I mean I'm within probably
Speaker 4: thirty to forty yards maybe of a lot of them,
Speaker 4: maybe one hundred at the most, because you're getting a
Speaker 4: little far away there, because they've got a lot of options.
Speaker 4: Then when they get up, you want it where they
Speaker 4: don't have any options. They get up and they come
Speaker 4: to your little thing, whereas if night are away, they
Speaker 4: get up and they go this way or that way
Speaker 4: and they don't have to come right to you.
Speaker 2: Okay, that makes sense. So those types of areas work
Speaker 2: great during that prime rut period. Are you still gonna
Speaker 2: hunt these standard rut locations once you get to that
Speaker 2: middle of November lockdown ish period when you know there's
Speaker 2: a lot of deer that are with a lot of
Speaker 2: bucks with doughs, although as you talked about, they don't
Speaker 2: always do that thing. Does anything change during the lockdown
Speaker 2: ish period?
Speaker 4: There are probably people who have a system that know
Speaker 4: how to hunt that better than me. I always just
Speaker 4: hunt wherever I think the most dos are going to be,
Speaker 4: you know, and they're not coming to food anymore, so
Speaker 4: you might as well throw that out the window. The
Speaker 4: only ones come into food are the ones that have
Speaker 4: already been bred. So and they're going to get some attention,
Speaker 4: but they're not going to get attention from the bucks
Speaker 4: that you're interested in. They know, so you're still staying
Speaker 4: closer to the dough betting areas, maybe funnels between two
Speaker 4: dough betting areas. Those can be really really good during
Speaker 4: any phase of the rut, and generally they're easier to
Speaker 4: hunt than the bedding area itself. Those are those are
Speaker 4: always a prime candidate even during that timeframe, but probably
Speaker 4: when most of the dose are in Estris, you're just
Speaker 4: trying to be near a spot where a dough is
Speaker 4: in Estres because there's still little general cruising from the bucks.
Speaker 4: You know, if the buck to dough ratio is really
Speaker 4: you know, in the favor of bucks, you'll see more
Speaker 4: general movement of bucks during that time. But if there's
Speaker 4: a three plus does for every buck, you don't see
Speaker 4: a whole lot of buck movement during that time when
Speaker 4: most of the dos are in Estrs. So you got
Speaker 4: to be right where that Estras dough is.
Speaker 2: What if you see that Estros dough with the buck
Speaker 2: you're after locked on or sneak up on it, have
Speaker 2: you got Yeah, you'll do that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean Stan Patzi used to do that quite
Speaker 4: a bit. And the areas that he under in Illinois,
Speaker 4: he could glass big areas and there's a lot of
Speaker 4: cr and he'd see a buck and a doe off
Speaker 4: in the CRP. He'd sneak after him and he killed
Speaker 4: deer like that. And I've had some close calls, but
Speaker 4: a lot of what I hunt is pretty heavy timber,
Speaker 4: so I don't have that option maybe of seeing a
Speaker 4: lot of country, But that would be a good strategy,
Speaker 4: you know, if all else fails, just get in an
Speaker 4: observation stand and just watch a bunch of country, and
Speaker 4: especially in the mornings, just see those bucks kind of
Speaker 4: following the doughs real slow out into maybe a little
Speaker 4: thicket out in the middle of the sea. Or yeah,
Speaker 4: I go sneak up on him. My friend Jim Hill
Speaker 4: killed a really nice one eighty plus buck doing that
Speaker 4: on one of the farms that we hunted. He saw
Speaker 4: the deer, he saw them go off. What he really
Speaker 4: saw was the buck chasing other bucks off. He was
Speaker 4: in a fence line. That's a dead giveaway. You know,
Speaker 4: when you run away from somewhere there's a hot dough
Speaker 4: and a dominant buck right in that spot where he
Speaker 4: ran from. You don't have to see him to know
Speaker 4: he's there. But anyway, he just snuck in and snuck close.
Speaker 4: He did sneak right up to them, but I think
Speaker 4: you got within about fifty yards and then when the
Speaker 4: buck stood up, you know, or when she stood up,
Speaker 4: and you know, he was able to get like a
Speaker 4: thirty yard shot because they kind of drifted his way.
Speaker 4: But yeah, that's that's a really good strategy too. I've
Speaker 4: not employed it because the country that I hunt usually
Speaker 4: isn't open enough for that, but that would definitely work.
Speaker 4: If you see a buck lockdown with a dough, that's
Speaker 4: a really good chance to sneak up on him because
Speaker 4: he's not gonna leave even if he sees you. You know,
Speaker 4: it's weird.
Speaker 2: It's really weird, as long as you don't spook her, right, Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I found in that situation that at least a few
Speaker 2: times I've seen this, and I think this is usually
Speaker 2: what goes on, but a few times I've been able
Speaker 2: to take advantage of it. Where you see that buck
Speaker 2: locked on the dough and they don't want to move
Speaker 2: a whole lot, like over the next day or two,
Speaker 2: they're kind of in that same little zone. So I've
Speaker 2: always thought, like, if I see the buck I'm after
Speaker 2: locked in with a dough, I'm going to get in
Speaker 2: as tight as i can and playing on doing the
Speaker 2: same thing again tomorrow, because they're probably they get pushed.
Speaker 2: He's probably gonna push her back into that little pocket
Speaker 2: or something. Have you done something similar.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure, And I think you need to be
Speaker 4: more aggressive than that. I think your window every minute
Speaker 4: that you wait, the likelihood of them going someplace else,
Speaker 4: you know, increases. So if you see where a buck
Speaker 4: and and dough or hold up, get down from your
Speaker 4: tree and do everything you can to sneak close. And then,
Speaker 4: even if you can't get right onto them where you
Speaker 4: can get the shot, at least find a place where
Speaker 4: when they get up and they mill around a little bit,
Speaker 4: maybe you can get a shot that way. But yeah,
Speaker 4: I think you'd be super aggressive then, because it's you
Speaker 4: got nothing to lose, and by being cautious and saying, well,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna try to get him out of my stand
Speaker 4: by moving closer or whatever, a lot of times it's
Speaker 4: they've moved on, or maybe they're one hundred yards down
Speaker 4: the line or whatever, it's pretty rare that they'll go
Speaker 4: to the exact same spot two days in a row.
Speaker 4: They're gonna move so they're not gonna move far, and
Speaker 4: they're not going to move fast. But if you see him,
Speaker 4: you gotta go right now.
Speaker 2: Now, what if that buck and dough is on their
Speaker 2: feet and they're walking but they're out of range, do
Speaker 2: you try a hail Mary call? Or is it a
Speaker 2: waste of time and not worth it?
Speaker 4: All is a waste of time. But again, you know,
Speaker 4: it depends on how good you are at sneaking figure
Speaker 4: out where they might be headed, and get down and
Speaker 4: run around and get in front of them. I mean,
Speaker 4: he's not coming to you, He's going where that dough
Speaker 4: is going. End of story, you know, and a reason
Speaker 4: for the doe to come closer to you. You may
Speaker 4: never see him again, you know. So I've had bucks
Speaker 4: like that too. I mean there's one in our one
Speaker 4: of the farms, one hundred in southern Iowa, just a giant,
Speaker 4: one ninety plus buck following a dough really slow across
Speaker 4: the food plot. The other end of it, I thought,
Speaker 4: oh man, I'm gonna get this buck. I'm gonna sit
Speaker 4: here all day and I never saw him again, of course,
Speaker 4: I mean I should have just got got down and
Speaker 4: what if it got to lose, you know, and sneak
Speaker 4: in the direction where they went. Just go slow, sneak, sneak,
Speaker 4: sneaks neat glass in the head. You got the whole
Speaker 4: rest of the day. You know, maybe you can spot
Speaker 4: the dough, maybe you can spot him.
Speaker 2: So this this seems to fly in the face though,
Speaker 2: of so much of your approach to hunting a specific deer,
Speaker 2: which is no risk, which is like, do not let
Speaker 2: them send you, do not let them see you.
Speaker 4: So so how do you I might not do that
Speaker 4: on bucks that I'm after and I know they're range
Speaker 4: and I got him narrowed down, I might wait until,
Speaker 4: you know, after the peak of the rod. But I'm
Speaker 4: just saying in general, okay, like maybe you don't do
Speaker 4: it either. But let's say it's November fourteenth, you know,
Speaker 4: the gun season in I mean, unless that area just
Speaker 4: you know, he's not going to get shot during the
Speaker 4: gun season. He can wait it out. But I would
Speaker 4: get down and go after him. Now, for most people,
Speaker 4: they if they don't have a buck pattern and they
Speaker 4: see a shooter that's following a dough and they're not
Speaker 4: like chasing running acting silly. But he's locked on that
Speaker 4: dough and they're walking slow, and you know that he's
Speaker 4: not leaving her until he's utter two or three times.
Speaker 4: You might as well just go after him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, does does anything that we've talked about not apply
Speaker 2: for the late rut you mentioned? Like in Iowa, you
Speaker 2: guys uniquely can still hunt running white tails with a
Speaker 2: bow when you get to that Thanksgiving time period or
Speaker 2: whatever it is, do you do anything different than what
Speaker 2: we've discussed.
Speaker 4: I'm I tend to back off the morning hunts. You know,
Speaker 4: a lot of guys continue with it. So much of
Speaker 4: the activity then focuses on food. You know, as soon
Speaker 4: as the primary rut is over, the bucks are still
Speaker 4: thinking about does, but they're thinking about eating too, And
Speaker 4: most of the doze by that time that are coming
Speaker 4: into esters late excuse me, are going to be around
Speaker 4: the food also because all the craziness has gone out
Speaker 4: of it. Now is just business, you know, Like the
Speaker 4: young bucks are worn out. They're not chasing anything anymore,
Speaker 4: you know. Now it's like these older bucks they kind
Speaker 4: of say, well, it's just you know, I just need
Speaker 4: to find heer breeder move on, you know, it's not
Speaker 4: the excitement has gone. That's why the front end of
Speaker 4: the rut is so much more buck movement. By the
Speaker 4: tail end, it's just all business. But the business takes
Speaker 4: place around the food sources, and I'm sure it takes
Speaker 4: place around the bedding areas too. I just don't you know,
Speaker 4: after a month of it, you know, I'm kind of
Speaker 4: burned out too, so I'll back off the mornings, you know,
Speaker 4: by by that second peak, you know, I might still
Speaker 4: hunt set the mornings until say the twenty fourth or something,
Speaker 4: maybe the twenty fifth of November. But from there until
Speaker 4: the shotgun season comes in, the food sources is where
Speaker 4: the actions at. Okay, and that's just that's just states
Speaker 4: like ours. I mean, there's so few Ohio, Kansas, Iowa,
Speaker 4: there's probably a couple others, you know where you can
Speaker 4: you can hunt with the bow right up until the
Speaker 4: December time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, that's pretty nice to We'll do that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's one aspect of this time of year, this you
Speaker 2: know peak late October through November, but we haven't discussed
Speaker 2: and that is the mental side of it. And you've
Speaker 2: you've hunted almost every day of the rut. For thirty
Speaker 2: plus years, I've heard you say you know this better
Speaker 2: than almost anyone. You've had to grind through what is
Speaker 2: ahead of all of us right now, many many, many times.
Speaker 2: Sitting where you sit now on the backside of so
Speaker 2: much experience, What have you learned about the mental preparation
Speaker 2: we need to do leading into it and keeping our
Speaker 2: head right in the game over this six week period
Speaker 2: or five week period.
Speaker 4: And I think depending on how much time you get
Speaker 4: to hunt. You know, my situation is unique because I
Speaker 4: don't have a limitation. I mean, I do have to work,
Speaker 4: you know, So it's not like I can hunt every
Speaker 4: single day, so I still have to pick the days.
Speaker 4: But I could hunt maybe a morning and then work
Speaker 4: in the afternoon. Or I could hunt an afternoon and
Speaker 4: work in the morning. So I could probably hunt almost
Speaker 4: every day. You have to appreciate the fact that it's
Speaker 4: a marathon and not a sprint. But in some situations
Speaker 4: it is a sprint, you know, because you've only got
Speaker 4: you know, four days or a week or whatever. You know.
Speaker 4: So so for me, it's more I see these young
Speaker 4: guys that are interning for me, and you know, Ethan
Speaker 4: is an employee, you know, a part time employee, and
Speaker 4: they're just like eight up and crazy. Now I'm like, guys,
Speaker 4: you know, it's a long season.
Speaker 2: It relax.
Speaker 4: You don't just like burn stuff out just because you've
Speaker 4: heard a couple of people that have killed big deer. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean I almost killed that buck ouse after last night.
Speaker 4: But I'm not like eight up thinking, oh, I got
Speaker 4: to get right back on top of him. You know,
Speaker 4: time is still into your favorite It's just that patience,
Speaker 4: you know. And maybe that's the one perspective I've gotten
Speaker 4: now that I didn't have when I was younger. But again,
Speaker 4: it's unique to my situation and somewhat to your. I'm
Speaker 4: sure that we get to hunt more, you know, so
Speaker 4: we have the luxury of being patient. Yeah, and and
Speaker 4: but gosh, you know, if I I hunted seventy five
Speaker 4: straight days one year, it was a long in my
Speaker 4: late thirties, I think early thirties, early thirties, yeah, early thirties.
Speaker 4: So I had all that energy, you know, and and
Speaker 4: I never got burned out. I mean I loved it.
Speaker 4: I mean I went to I remember towards the end
Speaker 4: of that timeframe, I was at Walmart and I saw
Speaker 4: the banner, you know, hanging down on the other end
Speaker 4: of the building. I was trying to figure out, you know,
Speaker 4: maybe I was looking for something specific, and I thought,
Speaker 4: I wonder what that banner says, and I reached down
Speaker 4: to my chest you under, grab my binoculars. So you
Speaker 4: just get it just gets so like I didn't get out,
Speaker 4: you know, it just became a part of, you know,
Speaker 4: my day. It's like I had to be out there.
Speaker 4: You know, it's kind of like it became who you
Speaker 4: are to be in the tree. But now I can't
Speaker 4: do that. I mean, I'm a lot older now, and
Speaker 4: I mean it's I'm going to burn out if I'm
Speaker 4: not careful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, any tricks you can.
Speaker 4: Probably hunt every day, can you.
Speaker 2: You know, I certainly do it, but I still get
Speaker 2: burnt out too. Plus the you know, the unique thing
Speaker 2: that I'm encountering now is trying to balance the drive
Speaker 2: to go NonStop with the you know, young kids, family
Speaker 2: stuff too. It's like, how do you do that the
Speaker 2: right way? That's a trick that I'm still figuring out too.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's uh, it's easy to get excited, it's
Speaker 2: easy to get fully locked in on it. And then
Speaker 2: find yourself though on day fourteen or if it's a
Speaker 2: we're at vacation, day seven in the morning, if things
Speaker 2: aren't going your way. You've woken up at three am
Speaker 2: every day for seven straight days. It is easy to
Speaker 2: have a tiny little lapse, and if you have a
Speaker 2: tiny little lapse at the wrong time, it can cost
Speaker 2: you everything. And that's been the hardest thing for me,
Speaker 2: is like, how do you not have those little lapses
Speaker 2: or what do you do to give yourself a tiny
Speaker 2: buffer so that doesn't happen? You know?
Speaker 4: Yeah, because as soon as you start hunting sloppy, you
Speaker 4: have to hunt every day like that's the day, you know,
Speaker 4: because if you don't, if you start to get a
Speaker 4: little bit sloppy in your approach, then you're going to
Speaker 4: screw it up. So I think that that is more
Speaker 4: just a discipline thing. You have to say, this is
Speaker 4: the day I have to hunt today, as if I'm
Speaker 4: going to kill him, as if I know I'm going
Speaker 4: to kill him. Otherwise, rather than sneaking in the way
Speaker 4: that you normally sneak in, you take the path of
Speaker 4: least resistance, you know, and now you you know, you
Speaker 4: screw it up. You just don't feel like doing all
Speaker 4: the little things that you did when the threat vacation started.
Speaker 4: You get lazy, get sloppy, start to lose hope. But
Speaker 4: the last minute of the last day can be just
Speaker 4: as effective as the first minute of the first day. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know what, I long as you keep that mindset,
Speaker 4: that's that's super important, because I find myself you know
Speaker 4: I have done that too. You know where you start
Speaker 4: to get discouraged and you start getting sloppy and you
Speaker 4: just do like, oh, I don't feel like it. I'm
Speaker 4: gonna look at my phone. I'm going to watch a
Speaker 4: football game. Well then you look up and the buck
Speaker 4: just walk through your shooting lane. You're like, oh gosh,
Speaker 4: dang it.
Speaker 2: You know we better win this game. Yeah. Yeah, It's
Speaker 2: one of those easier said than done things, but so important.
Speaker 2: I've been on the bad end of that deal a
Speaker 2: couple of times, and I've regretted it, that's for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, last or maybe second to last question, but last
Speaker 2: big question here, Bill. If if you had someone sitting
Speaker 2: down for coffee with you this morning, and let's say
Speaker 2: they're a pretty darn good hunter, like they've killed a
Speaker 2: lot of deer. They've killed a lot of like three
Speaker 2: year old bucks. Maybe they've killed a few four years.
Speaker 2: They've killed a lot of three and four year old bucks.
Speaker 2: But they're trying to take it to that next step
Speaker 2: and they're going for you know, very mature bucks, maybe
Speaker 2: after one specific buck. So it's that kind of hunter.
Speaker 2: They're gung ho. They've got all the good gear, they've
Speaker 2: listened to all the podcasts. This is like their lifestyle,
Speaker 2: all right. That's the person you're talking to. And before
Speaker 2: they walk away, before they leave that coffee shop, you're
Speaker 2: going to write down three things on a napkin that
Speaker 2: you're going to give them to help them take this
Speaker 2: next step. You get to give them three final pieces
Speaker 2: of winki wisdom for the upcoming five weeks. What would
Speaker 2: you put on that napkin for this person to take
Speaker 2: that next step.
Speaker 4: Well, they've got to know that he's there. You can't
Speaker 4: hunt a ghost, you know. I mean, there's nothing worse
Speaker 4: than saying I'm gonna only shoot a big deer and
Speaker 4: then not have any big deer around. So they've got
Speaker 4: to know that whatever whatever their goal is, that it's attainable.
Speaker 4: Because you don't want to make this sport unbearable. You know,
Speaker 4: it's supposed to be fun, we're supposed to have success,
Speaker 4: So it has to be a huntable deer. It's not
Speaker 4: a huntable deer. Cross it off and move on, or
Speaker 4: just be satisfied with what's in your area. So first off,
Speaker 4: you know, he's got to be a huntable deer. And
Speaker 4: then I think it's that ratcheting up being able to
Speaker 4: recognize risk versus reward, Like how much risk am I taking?
Speaker 4: What's the likelihood of the buck that I'm hunting being
Speaker 4: on his feet today? You know, because when you start
Speaker 4: taking risk, you're going to you're going to educate deer.
Speaker 4: And if the upside isn't high enough, like the likelihood
Speaker 4: of this buck being on his feet today isn't really high,
Speaker 4: then the risk versus reward equations bad really good at
Speaker 4: at understanding risk and reward and not unbalancing that thing,
Speaker 4: because if you're going to take the risk, you need
Speaker 4: to know that the chance of him being on his
Speaker 4: feet that day in that area where you're going is high.
Speaker 4: I think being able to understand that because that way,
Speaker 4: even if you don't have a lot of time, you know,
Speaker 4: you can ramp up that risk versus reward side of it.
Speaker 4: So that's just that's a super important skill. And then
Speaker 4: I still think rule number one. The most important thing
Speaker 4: any of us can do is spend hour after hour
Speaker 4: figuring out how to sneak in and out. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's that's where the game is won and lost. That's
Speaker 4: the that's the chess match that we play. It's not
Speaker 4: really when you're on the stand, because usually we all
Speaker 4: know how to play the wind. You know, we can
Speaker 4: find stand locations that are you know that's set up well.
Speaker 4: But gosh, I've just bumped so many deer coming and going.
Speaker 4: You know, they don't necessarily, like I said, have to
Speaker 4: be your target. They can be any deer, you know,
Speaker 4: because now that that that body language just kind of
Speaker 4: works its way through the whole herd, and before you
Speaker 4: know it, everybody in that area, every deer in that
Speaker 4: area is more cautious and they're not moving naturally in daylight.
Speaker 4: Those are those are the keys. I think. You know,
Speaker 4: if you're going to kill a big deer, I think
Speaker 4: if you do those three things well and then you
Speaker 4: have enough time, you know, you're eventually going to get
Speaker 4: you more. You're going to have an opportunity. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: some bucks just don't move much during the day, you know,
Speaker 4: they just aren't. I mean, some of the four and
Speaker 4: five year old bucks I've hunted just weren't very daylight active.
Speaker 4: So you just have to kind of get lucky too sometimes.
Speaker 4: But that's uh. I've hutted some that were stupid. They
Speaker 4: were awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those are my favorites.
Speaker 4: I loved it when the stupid ones big.
Speaker 2: They just don't come around often enough.
Speaker 4: No, they sure don't.
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 2: Uh Well, I hope that a couple of these deer
Speaker 2: that year after. I hope they get dumb here soon
Speaker 2: and give you an opportunity. Where where can folks go
Speaker 2: to see what you got going on, to see your story,
Speaker 2: to to get more information from you, because you're putting
Speaker 2: out a lot of good stuff here. Where should folks
Speaker 2: find that?
Speaker 4: Just the Bill Winkie YouTube channel we try to have.
Speaker 4: We try to be really current, you know, with what
Speaker 4: we're doing and what we're talking about. We started producing
Speaker 4: an episode every Wednesday now called the White Tail Watch,
Speaker 4: where maybe we look ahead to the coming weekend and
Speaker 4: look at the weather forecast because by Wednesday we kind
Speaker 4: of have an idea we know what the deer in
Speaker 4: our area have been doing, so maybe we can start
Speaker 4: to project, you know, some behavior forward and coincide that
Speaker 4: with the weather and then come up with a forward
Speaker 4: looking plan. I think that's kind of a cool series
Speaker 4: that we're doing. But yeah, the Bill Winki YouTube channel
Speaker 4: has got pretty much everything that we're doing now perfect.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, I certainly will vouch for that one.
Speaker 2: I've I've enjoyed everything you're putting up there and glad
Speaker 2: to see you're back in the game because we were
Speaker 2: missing you there for a while. Though.
Speaker 4: Well, I appreciate it, Mark, and I'm looking forward to
Speaker 4: hearing you know, the story of how you kill this
Speaker 4: spear that you're after. I mean, it's it sounds like
Speaker 4: you got it figured out now. It's just a matter
Speaker 4: of time and getting a little lucky.
Speaker 2: It's going to be the drip, drip, drip. So we'll
Speaker 2: see if it happens here short, short term or a
Speaker 2: little bit later. But I think as long as the
Speaker 2: neighbor doesn't get a poke at him before I do,
Speaker 2: I think his days are probably numbered.
Speaker 4: Yeah I do too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks exciting, Yeah, it is well, Thank you, Bill.
Speaker 2: I always enjoy our chats. I appreciate taking time, especially
Speaker 2: at this busy time of year, So thank you and
Speaker 2: good luck here in these coming days.
Speaker 4: All right, thanks Sam, to you Mark.
Speaker 2: All right, and that is going to do it for
Speaker 2: us today. Hope you guys enjoyed that conversation with mister
Speaker 2: Bill Winky. I know I did. Me and Tony are
Speaker 2: hitting the field here shortly. We're gonna be chasing some
Speaker 2: rutting bucks ourselves, so we'll get back to here soon
Speaker 2: with some stories and some lessons learned from our hunts,
Speaker 2: and until then, best to luck out there and stay
Speaker 2: wired to hunt.