00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to the whitetail woods, presented by First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
00:00:19
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week in the show, I’m joined by avid mountain whitetail hunter Eric Crawford to discuss why and how you can pull off your first Western whitetail hunt. All right, welcome back to the Wired Hunt podcast, brought to you by Moultrie.
00:00:40
Speaker 3: This week in the show we are head and West.
00:00:42
Speaker 2: We’re talking to my friend in diehard deer hunter, Eric Crawford. He is a former Pennsylvania resident turn Idaho backcountry hunter.
00:00:53
Speaker 3: He was a.
00:00:56
Speaker 2: Wildlife CEO conservation officer there in Idaho for a while. He now works for Trout Unlimited, but in his spare time he is walking the rolling hills and mountains of the Western whitetail States, chasing big old mature bucks and big timber. Big hills, big mountains, vast country, the kind of places that a lot of us dream of and some of us hunt. Some of us have been able to head west and do something like this ourselves. Some of us hunt in the eastern version of this, maybe in the northeast or in the Appalachian Mountains Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Tennessee, Maine, whatever it might be. There’s a lot of habitat similar to this that we can chase deer in across the country. And today with Eric, we’re going to dive into what that transition was like for him, going from Pennsylvania to Idaho, and how he discovered a very successful and fulfilling way to chase deer in this new kind of setting. It’s an adventurous whitetail hunt. It’s an active whitetail hunt. He’s got great insight on how to break down terrain and topography, how to find white tails in this kind of country, and then how to actually hunt them down, whether that’s still hunting or setting up in the stand and waiting. Really interesting stuff. It’s got me excited to try something like this myself both out west and probably try to put some of these things into action in future hunts in the Northeast too.
00:02:24
Speaker 3: So, without any further ado, let’s get to.
00:02:27
Speaker 2: My chat with Eric Crawford talking mountain bucks, heading west and having one heck.
00:02:33
Speaker 3: Of an adventure. All right. Joining me on the line now is Eric Crawford. Welcome to the show.
00:02:45
Speaker 4: Eric, Yeah, thanks for having me Mark.
00:02:49
Speaker 2: You have been teasing me with ideas and stories and little hints of Western whitetail hunting excitement and photos for years now, and you’ve continued to try to tempt me out in your direction to try this stuff. And so finally I’m I’m taking you up on it. Eric, I’m here to pick your brain about all things Western white tails with with plans to do it myself here hopefully really soon. So thanks for thanks for taking the time to do this, thanks for continuing to bug me about this every time we get together, and I’m excited to pick your brain here.
00:03:30
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:03:31
Speaker 5: You know, I think you recognize and I recognize our mutual passions for for white tails, and so yeah, looking forward to this conversation and glad that you are finally jumping in with both feet.
00:03:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I should I should clarify I’ve done Western white tail hunting in the past, yeah, as you know, but I have, I’ve never done it quite the way that you do it, and I’m planning on changing that. So so I wanna get right into the first question that I think anyone listening might have, which is just why why should I go west and hunt mountain whitetails in seemingly tough country when I could just go out my back door in the Midwest here in Michigan, or I could go to Iowa, which is famous for white tails, or I could go down south, you know, where there’s.
00:04:23
Speaker 3: Tons and tons of deer.
00:04:25
Speaker 2: Why is a western whitetail hunting in the in the kind of rugged country that you do it. Why is that worth considering in your view?
00:04:35
Speaker 4: Yeah?
00:04:35
Speaker 5: And I mean each one of those locations that you just mentioned, you know, as iconic whitetail destinations, certainly have their you know what, I think some people envision, as you know, the highlight of white tail opportunity. But when I with the hunting that I do now, you know, as we’ve discussed Mark, I grew up in pennsil northeast Pennsylvania, so I’m very familiar you know, with white tail hunting back east and smaller I guess perspective than what I do now. I think the really great thing about the kind of hunting that I do. I do hunt on private land to an extent, but most of it is is public lands and mainly large, very large tracks of national forests, you know, to the point that you leave the road at daylight, you know, and you won’t be back until you know sundown, and during that time, you know, you’re not crossing any roads, you’re not using any trails other than game trails. And for me, it has always been this, well, what’s on the other side of the ridge. You know, many of these places that I do hunt and have hunted over the years, from the extreme northern Idaho to where I am now in central Idaho, if you will offer different opportunities, but there is you know, this idea that at any point in time you could encounter, you know, an actual mountain monarch or you know, a whitetail that has really very little encounters with human beings just because of their locations. And I think that that, you know, for me and any die hard whitetail hunter you know, has been and would be a drive you know to really you know, you never know what you’re going to bump into.
00:06:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s that’s that’s very appealing. But I wonder about what that kind of hurdle to entry was like for you when you came from Pennsylvania growing up doing the standard kind of Northeast white tail hunting, and then you stepped out into the West and you you know, jumped into that new pool. How hard was it to figure things out? What was that transition like?
00:06:53
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was a little bit difficult at first.
00:06:55
Speaker 5: I mean I grew up, I think, like many of your listeners and viewers, you know, hunting in at camp as we know them, particularly in northeast Pennsylvania, with a group of other individuals, you know, with a father that you know, kind of instructed me. And so we had, you know, our stand that we would go to you know, an opening day and then you know, there would be a group of us, you know, that would drive after that initial opening day do deer pushes drives, and so to come out west and suddenly be in this vast landscape of what all of it is white tail habitat, you know, to be honest, to really start to pinpoint where I.
00:07:37
Speaker 4: Should be and what I.
00:07:38
Speaker 5: Should be looking for was a little overwhelming. Although it initially started with an introduction from from a coworker at that time, a good friend. Now, really I think wedding kind of wetting my whistle on it and you know, emphasizing you know, about shed hunting. I know it’s controversial now, but at the same.
00:07:59
Speaker 4: Time, it really gave you gave me an.
00:08:02
Speaker 5: Opportunity pre season to really get out and explore some landscapes at that moment in time where I was in Idaho, particularly up in the Panhandle, and that I concentrated on very large and tracks of national forest with very little access, mainly very little vehicular access, particularly you know, offighway vehicles and motorcycles, and just really started to hike around and kind of get an idea for what these these white tails were actually focusing on or a lack thereof. I will be honest, Mark, I’ve never to this day I’ve really figured out, which is why is this deer in this location? There are some you know, habitat changes that certainly equate to higher densities of deer, partically in these these national forest landscapes and even the private interface, you know, whether it’s corporate tumber lands with particularly clear cuts you know and logging that provides an abundant you know, or early serial habitat for whitetail and many other ungulates. But at the same time out there shed hunting. You know, you’re just kind of wandering around the woods nowhere really to be paying attention seeing old rub lines, you know, no different than any other whitetail hunter in the country seeing old rub lines, seeing that some of these rub lines were generational, you know that years and years and years of grubs have been occurring in these same general areas, and still seeing remnants of scrapes and many of these finger ridges where you would expect to see now where I’d expect to see where I’d expect to see those scrapes, And then adding to that is picking up sheds and being a little bit surprised at the quality in some of these spots of the year that were inhabiting them. Granted, some of these spots were migratory and partial winter range. I think a lot of people don’t really equate white tails with winter range, but they certainly do move critically in specific locations within the state of Idaho and some of these other western populations over in Montana, and they do actually migrate to winter cover winter range, And so that really just gave me the start.
00:10:20
Speaker 4: Of what I would be looking for.
00:10:22
Speaker 5: And then you know, I’m always up for a good adventure, and I will I will be honest, Mark, There’s many days that I have gone into places blind and totally just floundered around. You know, there was low deer densities, lack of really.
00:10:37
Speaker 4: Any sign, you know.
00:10:39
Speaker 5: But it’s all learning experience, right, And I think that that’s the thing that really drives me.
00:10:43
Speaker 4: It’s just going in and being surprised, you know, and and what is there? And what isn’t there?
00:10:52
Speaker 3: Do you?
00:10:53
Speaker 2: And I know this can vary from location to location, but if somebody were coming from what just take what you knew Pennsylvania. If somebody were coming from Pennsylvania and heading out to somewhere like the mountains of Idaho and the Panhandle or Montana or some of these other western states that have similar habitat when they’re coming out, would you say they should expect really low deer densities and they should expect like to not feel bad they see just a couple deer every couple of days. Or has it actually been surprising that there’s yeah, there’s actually some places here where there are similar numbers of deer to what you were seeing in Pennsylvania. I guess just could you give us a sense of expectations around that.
00:11:37
Speaker 5: Yeah, each you know, each place, each habitat is unique in and of itself, particularly when he comes down to you know, are you really hunting that that corporate timber ground and that interface where a bunch of forest management has occurred, or are you looking at really big, expansive timberlands. Each has their own I think individual densities. You know, generally, I think that there’s a lot of transferable skills from from what we know from Midwestern hunters and East Coast hunters. You know, whether you’re a stand hunter, you know, and just want to sit all day and watch a spot, that opportunity definitely can be productive in and honestly has been productive for me. But it coincides with a very specific habitat, similar to you know what some of the Northeast, you know, the big wood hunter, big woods hunters of the Northeast, particularly Adirondacks, you know, the upper parts of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine where they do a lot of tracking. Do you have the right conditions that can be very successful? I would say that there’s definitely higher deer densities than what you know those Northeast northern Northeast hunters experience. But then again, the other I’ve found over the course of my white tail career here in Idaho particularly, it’s still still hunting had been pretty darn productive, particularly at very very targeted times of the year.
00:13:14
Speaker 4: You know, we’re blessed with very long white tail seasons.
00:13:17
Speaker 5: Here in this state from you know, the very end of August all the way through November in most cases, with a transition of various weapons seasons, archery into rifle, very long rifle seasons. But really the bread and butter, I think, like most of us know, is the rut is where it’s really at, you know, and that really is that time where you can see a lot of deer. I’ve had hunts over the years in a very specific location where you’re seeing you know, dozens of deer in a single day and a handful of different bucks.
00:13:54
Speaker 4: Now that’s peak.
00:13:55
Speaker 5: Rut coincides a little bit with that landscape being you know, it’s ponderosa kind of open ridge, more similar to what you would think mule deer would be in.
00:14:09
Speaker 4: But because it is the rut, those deer are moving a lot.
00:14:13
Speaker 5: There’s a little bit of a migration going on, and so that really is a key time to be at that spot. Now, I’ve had other situations. Take this last year for instance, went into a new area, knew that there was likely you know, decent dear numbers in this area.
00:14:33
Speaker 4: Very remote, but still it.
00:14:36
Speaker 5: Is heavily managed for timber harvest and sitting on clearcuts and you would, thank jeez, there should be deer everywhere, and you would see deer tracks, but it was hard to really pin them down until we had a change in temperature and a little bit of snow. We were in you know, the third week of November. You know, some would think peak rut, and it was a little frustrating. At the same time, it ended up being a pretty neat experience.
00:15:03
Speaker 4: Not a lot of deer. We didn’t see a lot of deer, but it’s still it was a really great.
00:15:07
Speaker 5: Experience and I you know, harvested a pretty decent you know buck. But at the same time, I think most people may have may be discouraged by the lack of deer that you would see. But again I think the motivation for me Mark really is this idea like at any second. Again, many of these deer are so remote, have very little human interactions and a lot of them die.
00:15:35
Speaker 4: Of old age, you know, and so I think it’s.
00:15:37
Speaker 5: Just knowing that and that what could pop out. You know, we’re not talking about you know, corn belt two hundred inch deer.
00:15:45
Speaker 4: Although there are there are deer like that, you know in the state. There’s bar and view between. Yeah.
00:15:54
Speaker 2: I love the idea though, of some old, gnarly mountain buck like you said, just just hasn’t been around people. I just imagine huge body, maybe like a dark grizzled forehead, dark antlers. That’s at least what I’m imagining to hear, very very appealing to run across a deer like that.
00:16:17
Speaker 3: Where do you start? I think that’s one of the biggest things.
00:16:20
Speaker 2: Like when I think about it, when I have thought about this in the past, when I’ve considered trying to do the mountain thing, I look at the terrain, I look at the topography, I look at all the different cover and it’s vast.
00:16:32
Speaker 4: You know.
00:16:32
Speaker 2: It’s so different than trying to think through like a river bottom whitetail hunt, which is so simple. It’s like the skinny stretch of cover and you know that white tails are going to be in that thick cover and they’re probably going to move along parallel to that river. And it’s very similar in certain ways to Midwestern white tail hunting, where you can identify a clear obvious food source and you can identify clear obvious bedding areas, and you try to get between the two, or you know, during the rut, you try to find those pinch points and those bedding areas. But when I look at the pan Handle of Idaho, or when I look at you know, northeastern Wyoming, or if I look at parts of Montana or you know, eastern Washington, I just see a lot of big hills and mountains and pines, and I don’t know where to start. When someone’s in that situation, how do you begin the process and then slowly I mean I imagine you’re starting way out and then you’re slowly dialing into a region and then a particular trailhead or drainage and then habitat within that.
00:17:32
Speaker 3: What does that process look like for you?
00:17:35
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think for you know, for me, I’m blessed to have been here for almost thirty years now or over thirty years, and so have you know, gone through that trial and error and still you know, I will just go into an area for the experience, you.
00:17:51
Speaker 4: Know, not not being.
00:17:53
Speaker 5: Overly committed to shooting a deer, but just going for the experience. And so but when I’m looking at new places, I still rely on you know, harvest data that is available through most of these states and their websites. I know, Idaho has a really great hunt planner opportunity. You can actually needle it down into individual units to see what the harvest is, what the effort is percent four point percent, five point so four by.
00:18:23
Speaker 4: Four, five by five.
00:18:26
Speaker 5: And I think that that at least for you know, the experience here in Idaho is a really good good place to start.
00:18:34
Speaker 4: You know.
00:18:34
Speaker 5: The other thing is that there’s so many other resources these days, you know, with the various apps. You know, I think onyx is a really great start, particularly looking at timber makeup and timber harvest, historical wildfire, to really know what that landscape and what that habitat is probably going to look like. You know, with the technique that I primarily use still hunting, there are just places that you know, there might be a deer in there, but there is no way that you can effectively still hunt it. One the topography might not be right, or the vegetation is not right. You’re just making too much noise as you’re trying to still hunt. You know, you can only see you know, twenty five yards. It’s so darn thick, and so you’re spinning your wheels. You’re just gonna spook everything, not only from you know, the noise that you’re making trying to get through that stuff, but then also the topography just isn’t helpful. And so you know, when I initially started looking at it, there was a general topography that I looked at. Every mountain has zones of steepness, and then if you will ridge lines that are usually pretty productive to hunt and or bench const complexes, you know, stare stepped up, and particularly for white tails. I think that that ends up being very very helpful. I mean, even in all these years that I’ve been doing it, you inevitably find yoursel a self on steep slopes, knowing that the likelihood seeing a deer is pretty small. On those really steep slopes, even though they have you know, good mature timber in them, you can see a long way and mainly it’s a transitional habitat as all it is. They’re just varying through it to get somewhere else. And so yeah, you’re going to encounter them probably, but you’re not really in betting area or an area.
00:20:24
Speaker 4: That they’re going to want to be in. And so.
00:20:28
Speaker 5: Terrain or topography is one of the first starting points. Is really trying to figure out, well, is it going to be manageable for me to hunt that, you know, is it going to be too steep, or is it you know, otherwise just not you just can’t see, And then doing that vegetative layer and really starting to needle in some places you might you know, I guess have a false positive you think that it looks like mature timber from you know, a Google Earth image or satellite image.
00:20:54
Speaker 4: And it actually is. They couldn’t.
00:20:56
Speaker 5: And so but the good news is is that if these are of those really large tracks of national forest, you can usually get to an open timber stand with very little effort from where you are, and so that has really been the focus.
00:21:14
Speaker 4: It’s really looking at the topography and then looking.
00:21:18
Speaker 5: At those vegetation layers, whether or not there’s been timber harvest and or wildfire in those landscapes, and whether or not it’s going to be effective to get through you know, critically and still hunting phase, and those those are I think are really the best bets for trying to figure out. And then you know, again I put a very strong emphasis on the lack of access in the form of like, I don’t want other people being there. I don’t want to be you know, I hate to sound selfish. I don’t want to share the woods with somebody else. You know, it’s just it’s just a matter of fact. And so I avoid, you know, as I said earlier, any place that has really good motor vehicle access, partically TVs or otherwise, and really avoid them. So looking at very large tracks of public land.
00:22:08
Speaker 3: How far.
00:22:10
Speaker 2: Away are you trying to be from a road or a trailhead like when you I know, you want to get away from it as much as possible, But what’s the scale of a way that you’re trying to achieve here?
00:22:22
Speaker 5: Yeah, ideally each place is is you know, certainly different. You know, I have shot I’ve shot mature deer, you know, a quarter mile from a road, you know, and it was rut they’re moving, it was on my way somewhere else.
00:22:42
Speaker 4: I mean, inevitably, you know, it happens.
00:22:46
Speaker 5: But generally I want a piece of piece of country that I’m gonna be able to spend the day in.
00:22:52
Speaker 4: Now.
00:22:52
Speaker 5: Granted I’m not you know, put miles extreme miles on like a wood elk hunting, but it is similar to that concept. I don’t have a minimum distance, you know, but I know that I don’t want to walk across the road anytime during the day. I want to be as far as way as I can. And I mean what I’ve found mark over the course of my experiences here hunting and otherwise.
00:23:17
Speaker 4: I mean, once you’re.
00:23:18
Speaker 5: A half mile off a road, You’re not going to see very many other people, you know, And that’s really what I’m looking for because you know, thinking about maybe that that half mile buffer. You know, I have done hunts, particularly over the last several years, where there are no roads where I’ve been hunting and have found myself almost you know, six miles away from from camp, you know, in a given day, and that’s white tail hunting.
00:23:44
Speaker 4: You know.
00:23:45
Speaker 5: Granted, I’ve been able to you know, get somewhere fairly quick and not hunting that hole six miles, but at the same time, like putting that many miles one way away from camp, you know, just the experience that I’ve looking for.
00:24:01
Speaker 4: And so people might say, well, why do that.
00:24:03
Speaker 5: You know, there’s there’s white tails, you know, if you will in the front country. And I kind of refer to the country like anything really close to the road, you know, and and there are and and I think a lot of people can find success, and however they define success close to roads.
00:24:22
Speaker 4: But for I think.
00:24:24
Speaker 5: Anybody that is really looking for an exceptional white tail hunting experience, and particularly that wants to get away and hunt big woods, they can find that, you know, you know, with a minimum of a mile away from the road, you know, and so, and that’s just my personal preference and what I’m looking for.
00:24:45
Speaker 4: Again, it’s not to.
00:24:46
Speaker 5: Say that you you might not you may encounter a trophy white tail buck or a mature trophy buck, however you wanted to find what a trophy is, you know, close to a road. But at the same time, that’s not the experience that I’m looking for, and so, and it’s not always about you know, yeah, every year I go out to shoot a mature sure white tail buck, but some years it doesn’t work.
00:25:11
Speaker 4: And oh and that’s just kind of how it goes.
00:25:24
Speaker 2: What what’s your experience with how these white tails react to hunting pressure. And I feel like in eastern and midwestern white tail areas, we’re limited to like, hey, I’m on forty acres, and if I blow them off my forty acres, you know, I’m not going to see them again today because I can’t go any more than fifty yards this way and one hundred and twenty yards that way.
00:25:45
Speaker 4: Right.
00:25:46
Speaker 2: But out west, you know, when we think about things, we’re thinking about much larger areas. But then you also think about some animals like elk that might go a whole drainage over miles away and it takes them five minutes and you won’t see them again for a week, maybe because they moved so much. How are these white tails? Are they kind of similar in that they can their ranges are vast because the available habitat is vast. Or do you think that they’re still kind of finding a little nook and cranny and they just stick to it, sort of like these deer out here still do.
00:26:16
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I think I think it’s that they still find a little nook and cranny, particularly on these big, vast pieces of public lands, and and and that is really based off of the sign that you see, like I’ve referenced earlier, you’ll see these generational rub lines, and it’s just like, well, it’s got to be the same buck that’s coming back year after year to this general core area, whether or not there are a bunch of dos in that area, and that’s why he’s coming back to it. But then in other instances, some of the hunts that I’ve had, you know, in the more recent years, these these animals are covering covering incredible amounts of country, you know, and are you know, in the midst of not only a migration, but they are looking for dose to breed and very low low density populations, you know. And and you may see a deer, you know, on the first day of your hunt. You know that you’re like, well, that’s that’s a pretty decent buck. But it’s the first day of the hunt. You’re there for, you know, five six days. You’re not going to see that that buck ever again. That that thing is gone, regardless if you spook it or not, or if it even knows at your present period, you’re you’re never going to see it again. And so and that really I think it’s hard to just because of the way the habitat is the way the topography is. You know, I’ve had experiences you can definitely come back to, you know, some of that more managed forest, particularly clearcuts and such, and kind of get a pattern going on those deer and understand like, okay, I likely will see that deer again. But a lot of what I do mark is it’s dropping into a spot, it’s hunting it for an entire day, you know, seeing whatever you see. You might see small bucks, you might see dose, you know, putickly, peak, peak, rut. But then I might not even go back to that spot. I might go to another spot, and maybe I will go back there, you know later in the season, a week later, two weeks later. But I generally don’t keep running into the same dear. You know, it’s not that same experience of sitting on you know, some kind of food source where you can, like clockwork, the sun’s going down, you know you’re gonna see them again. You know, I do have some private property that I’ve hunted over the years that is is very similar to that. Sit either on in the ground blind or up in a free stand, and it’s like clockwork, you know, I’ll see the same deer come through and those tactics that most of white tail unders across the nation are familiar with are effective. Just once you get into these this big timber country and chase them out, whitetails, it’s really hard to get them better, and there’s just really no rhyme nor reason to what they’re doing. And because the densies are so low, particularly during the rut, those those deer are just covering a lot of ground.
00:29:23
Speaker 2: You brought up topography earlier as being one of those major things you focus on, and you mentioned something along the lines about kind of stair step benches and then some of these these ridge lines that maybe they’re using. But could you describe that ideal topography a little bit more like when you’re looking at these maps and you’re trying to say, Okay, this is a place worth focusing on and this one’s not. Can you can you really paint a detailed picture of what those key topographic features look like that that would separate like a not so great place from a oh yeah, this is where I want to focus.
00:29:55
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:29:55
Speaker 5: And the one thing I did leave out mark and I forgot to mention is bosure. You know, north south east west exposures that has huge differences here in the West and particularly you know, in this northern Rockies area.
00:30:12
Speaker 4: You know, those north slopes are.
00:30:13
Speaker 5: Generally going to be very very you know, heavily timbered, damp, usually a lot colder versus sun Southern exposure is a little bit drier, probably a little bit brushier in most instances. So those are some of the things you got to look at. But as far as the topography, you know, I want something that’s going to be a just a general you know, gain and elevation. You know, if if anybody that’s familiar with Western hunting, particularly if you’ve seen any kind of show on meal deer hunting or elk hunting, you can you know the reality of how steep things can be. I don’t really see white tails favoring that like you do meal deer.
00:30:56
Speaker 4: It just seems like they just.
00:30:58
Speaker 5: Rather have general gentle pular ground and topography. And so I’m going to look for, you know, kind of broad ridge lines and you can find I’m just looking at the tapo layer on anything, and just a really broad broad ridge line you know, can be anywhere from one hundred yards wide.
00:31:19
Speaker 4: You know, to you know, a quarter mile wide. Just a ridge line that is surrounded.
00:31:25
Speaker 5: By you know, a tributary or another drainage, you know, and they’re going to frequent that generllar topography. And then same thing with the stairstep idea. The idea with the stairstep is that one you can probably get on an elevation line and stay on one of those steps for quite a while and work around to your favor, you know, still hunting through it. The same thing with the stair stepping is that usually you know, it’s a broader a broader landing, if you will, maybe one hundred to two hundred yards before you have to gain another step of villainy. And so I see them favoring that. They just for whatever reason, you know, anything that’s steep. It seems like white tails, you know, are using it as transitional habitat or travel cord or that is not consistently traveled, if that makes sense.
00:32:17
Speaker 2: You know, have you found any particular elevation sweet spot that they prefer, or or even just like a percent like if we’re say the top of the ridge is one hundred percent, you know, is it is it three quarters of the way up the ridge? Maybe there’s a lot of travel or betting like, Yeah, that’s that’s kind of a generality. You hear a lot about in the northeast and other areas of hill country and typical white tail worlds. Or are they right on top of those big broad ridges right in the spine? Where, if at all, do you focus when you find these places?
00:32:53
Speaker 5: Yeah, I wouldn’t say that I focus on any elevational band. You know, I’ve hunted from the extreme north of Idaho close to the Canadian border where you’ll find those deer literally on the tops of those mountains anywhere in between two uh, you know where I am now in central Idaho, and they can be again anywhere in between. There is a habitat type that they generally don’t you know, associate with, and that’s really that sub alpine hat or habitat type that you really equate with with with mule deer, you know, there’s a subalpine fur.
00:33:31
Speaker 4: It’s a lot more open, you know.
00:33:34
Speaker 5: You see a lot of low bush huckleberry up there in Faalse huckleberry. You generally don’t see white hills in that kind of habitat.
00:33:42
Speaker 4: You know.
00:33:42
Speaker 5: It really is more in this this timbered habitat and brushy habitat.
00:33:48
Speaker 4: So but no, no specific elevation band.
00:33:51
Speaker 2: Okay, So when it comes to that vegetation, yeah, question you mentioned your north slopes are going to be damper, darker, more timbered. Your south facing slopes maybe a little bit more open, maybe a little bit more brushy.
00:34:08
Speaker 3: Is there?
00:34:09
Speaker 2: Like, I guess how do they favor that at different parts of their year or different parts of their day. You know, I might make the assumption that the dark timber might be where they want to stay hidden and cool, and then they might come out and feed on the on the brushy, open south facing slopes.
00:34:25
Speaker 3: Is that true?
00:34:26
Speaker 2: Or how do you consider those exposures that you mentioned earlier into how you actually hunt a spot and think about how these deer using it themselves.
00:34:36
Speaker 5: Yeah, much of it is related to as the season progresses right there. You know, you can go out, you know, late summer, early fall, September and glass clearcuts and you’re probably going to spot a bunch of deer in them at varying times, usually you know, the early morning, late evenings, and so you’re probably going to see that consistently. I think that these deer have you know, they’re born where they’re born, and that’s what they know.
00:35:08
Speaker 4: And then so there are these.
00:35:09
Speaker 5: Varying little bits of habitats within these areas that I hunt that are are this matured chimber that you’ll see, you’ll find a lot of bedding in there, although you will find them in that thick stuff bedded for whatever reason, whether it’s avoiding predators or such. And you know, that’s an entirely different, complicating portion of this conversation with with all the predators that we have that can be pretty effective on white tails and change change that.
00:35:41
Speaker 4: But at the same time, I think we.
00:35:46
Speaker 5: It just I haven’t really found I mean a lot of my what motivates me, Mark is how what the conditions are for hunting, you know, and how easily you can get through these habitats and actually see deer with minimal noise.
00:36:03
Speaker 4: And such.
00:36:04
Speaker 5: And so this this last year, like I said, we went into a new area. There is very little mature timber. Over thousands and thousands of acres, there is very little mature timber.
00:36:18
Speaker 4: It’s been so.
00:36:20
Speaker 5: Heavily logged that there’s just different ages of clear cuts and so you have to be really selective of where you’re going. But what we what we were finding is that if you.
00:36:29
Speaker 4: Found you know, generally.
00:36:32
Speaker 5: Up to probably maybe a ten year old clearcut. You know, they’re really going to be favoring in that as far as a hunter’s perspective because you can still see through or into that clear cut. And so that and that’s what we saw. And it was in you know, November that we were there. There was a little bit of cold snap, a little bit of weather snow, and although we’d be been seeing tracks everywhere, we just can never really pinpoint where these animals were. And it wasn’t until the cold and that the snow put everything in the perspective kind of figured out a place to really target and actually just sit down and slow things down and sit and watch, you know. And so but they had so many different habitats adjacent to them, you know, both for feeding and for bedding and for cover that you know they were probably weren’t.
00:37:25
Speaker 4: Really traveling very far.
00:37:26
Speaker 5: And so again a lot of it comes down to my personal preference of how easy it.
00:37:31
Speaker 4: Is going to be to hunt and how a DEVI is going to.
00:37:34
Speaker 1: Be to hunt.
00:37:36
Speaker 2: So how do you how do you actually like execute a day in the field, How do you plan your route plan when you’re gonna arrive to a place in the morning and start doing whatever you’re going to do, and then.
00:37:50
Speaker 3: Throughout the day.
00:37:51
Speaker 2: I guess maybe it’s just walk me through an example day of how you plan it and what you’re doing throughout that would be helpful, I think.
00:37:57
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, So you know, I have a number of places throughout northern Idaho that I’m willing to hunt and look forward to hunting every year, and how that plays out on any individual day is really no different than anybody else walking into a stand. Right, I’m gonna, you know, pull up to my wherever I decided to park.
00:38:20
Speaker 4: My rig, and I’m gonna check the wind. You know, the wind.
00:38:24
Speaker 5: The wind is so critical, part brilliant and still hunting that I’m gonna check it. And in most times, I’m letting the wind dictate how my day goes and.
00:38:34
Speaker 4: Where I’m gonna go. You know, I want the wind, you know, in my face all day and I’ll I’ll let I’ll.
00:38:41
Speaker 5: Just wander through the timber, you know, hopefully the wind’s going to play it to my advantage that I can get to some topography that I’ve already noted or am familiar with from years past that I know that there’s always activity in these little spots, and how am I going to be able to get there or am I going to have to deviate from that and go somewhere different, you know on my hunt? But yeah, I mean I leave again at the beginning at first light. You know, there’s no reason for me to to get going in the dark because you know, again you could run into a mature buck, you know, right off the road and then stay till stay till almost dark or dark at some cases. And so it is very much dictated ark by the wind, you know. And just over thirty years, I have enough places that I’ve learned, no you know, potential places that I’d like to be on that mountain. But at the same time, if the wind’s not right, then I’m not going to get there on that day. So that’s really how it’s going to dictate it.
00:39:46
Speaker 4: Now.
00:39:47
Speaker 5: If I’m going to employ sitting on a on a clear cut, that’s much different.
00:39:51
Speaker 4: You know.
00:39:52
Speaker 5: I’m gonna you know, try to sneak in there as best as I can, you know. And again I’m.
00:39:57
Speaker 4: Picking clear cuts.
00:39:59
Speaker 5: I have no no real access to them any longer, you know, a road’s been decommissioned there is no motorized vehicle. It could be a couple mile hike into these into these cuts, and then I’m just going to get in there and sit for the day on these cuts. And so it just kind of depends on which which activity that you want to do, and what time of the what time of the season it is, and and how how far along the rut really is. I mean, I feel like early November is pretty darn unproductive here for white tail hunting, particularly in these scenarios that I’m mentioning. For whatever reason, it seems like late October early November, you’re hard.
00:40:43
Speaker 4: Pressed to even see a deer.
00:40:45
Speaker 5: They’re still there, they didn’t go anywhere, but for whatever reason, they just kind of disappear. I don’t know if that’s a function of pressure from you know, elk hunting and a little bit of carryover from that, or it’s just a natural cycle. But once you start getting into that second to the third.
00:41:05
Speaker 4: Week of November, you know, and.
00:41:07
Speaker 5: Much of this northern rokies, that’s really when the rut starts to kick in and you really start to see just a lot more deer activity. And so that’s really going to change that too. I Mean, I’ve you know, I have a brother that I hunt with who is also here, and we hunt pretty exclusively together, you know, and we’ve been out el hunting and he’s he shot one of his best way to help bucks, and we’re we’re we’re elk hunton sitting on clearcuts for elk, you know. And so it just goes to show you don’t know when, you know when or where they’re going to show up. But I think knowing that there are mature and quality bucks out there, that’s that’s the real thing that motivates I think, or should motivate anybody that’s thinking about a Western hunt.
00:41:55
Speaker 3: So how long does that sweet spot last?
00:41:58
Speaker 2: You mentioned maybe like that mid November time period as being a particularly good period.
00:42:03
Speaker 3: Does that last? Is that a week? Is that two weeks where it stays good? What’s that been for you?
00:42:08
Speaker 5: Yeah, I would say, you know, there’s generally about two weeks, right, you know, And and again I used to preface it off of you know, a couple of days before after the fifteenth, but you know, you can definitely run through all the way at the end of November, you know, and you definitely, or at least I always used to see a little bit higher, higher harvest, you know, later in November.
00:42:34
Speaker 4: But I think that that was just the function of Thanksgiving and a lot more people being out right.
00:42:38
Speaker 5: I don’t think it was a function of deer being any more active. I think it was just a function of more pressure and so more more animals were getting harvested. But I think generally, you know, starting around the fifteenth you can count on, you know, a pretty active def rut.
00:42:56
Speaker 4: You know, you never.
00:42:58
Speaker 5: Really fully see you know, those those those various stages of the rut, you know, the chasing and all all of that. You just it’s very hard to see that here. But you will see, you know, definitely, you see the box just cruising the timber. And that’s usually how we end up encountering in them is they’re just out cruising, you know, don’t really have much of a care in the world. They’re still hard to hunt, they’re still you know, they’ll still get your wind and spook. But generally that’s how you encounter them is that they’re cruising. You very rarely find a buck that is locked down, if you will, although you know, one of the spots.
00:43:42
Speaker 4: That I’ve hunted over the last several.
00:43:44
Speaker 5: Years, you would see all the phases, the classic state phases of the run. You would see chasing, you would see lockdown, you would see search, you know, you would see everything. But that is pretty unusual and really a unique just for that specific location. And so these larger tracks that I’ve been referring to you just you don’t really have that opportunity. You know, again, the densities are pretty low, and so you’re gonna you’re really just trying to stumble into them, you know, with the mindset of being in the right putting yourself, you know, in the best circumstances you can, with the conditions that you’re provided, you know, and granted, you know, I think like all of us experience, there’s weather events that, boy, you.
00:44:31
Speaker 4: Don’t want to mess being in the woods.
00:44:33
Speaker 5: On very specific weather events, whether it’s a good snowstorm, you know that we’ll.
00:44:38
Speaker 4: Get here, that really.
00:44:39
Speaker 5: Gets the deer back up on their feet trying to feed. One of the better situations that we found are windstorms, which sounds kind of interesting, bizarre, but what happens is that you have, you know, a bunch of trees that ended up getting pushed over or fall over, blown over, and those those deer are really keying in on the lichens. I don’t know what actual species they are. I think most of us refer to him as old man’s beard, you know, that really stringy liking the roads on many of the conifers here in the Northwest anyway, and they’re really keyed in. And if you can find, you know, some dispersed blowdowns, fresh blowdowns, you’re going to find deer on them. It’s it’s a pretty incredible situation to get out there after a windstorm, and I think a lot of people would not really think about that, but it ends up being a pretty unique situation, you know. And then cold snaps too. I mean, they’re going to be up on their feet all day long feeding and such, so cold snaps are going to be really good too.
00:45:49
Speaker 3: Hm.
00:45:50
Speaker 2: Never would have thought that old man’s beard would be a focal food source out there.
00:45:55
Speaker 3: That’s that’s interesting.
00:45:57
Speaker 4: Yeah, it’s kind of yeah, Yeah, it is bizarre. You know.
00:46:00
Speaker 5: I don’t think they generally have access to them, because they’re how to reach. But when they when you do encounter blowdowns, particularly when you have a little little bit of snow where you can identify you know, fresh tracks, I mean, you can just you can.
00:46:14
Speaker 4: Just see they’re concentrated on them. I we had a really big.
00:46:18
Speaker 5: Windstorm out here earlier in the year, almost catastrophic windstorm, and I had hyped into an area adjacent to a place to that hunt, you know, just to get some exercise, but you know, open maybe I’ll.
00:46:33
Speaker 4: Find a shed antler.
00:46:34
Speaker 5: But it was it looked like a barnyard around a lot of these trees where you know, the white tails had been really concentrated on them. And there’s just you know, deer droppings everywhere around these conifers where they had consumed those old man beards.
00:46:51
Speaker 4: Wow.
00:46:52
Speaker 2: So you mentioned that when you start off your day like this, you’re gonna look at the wind and of course think about how you can use that as you move in towards these areas of good habitat. But what does good still hunting actually look like in your opinion? I mean, there’s a lot of different versions. Everybody has a different speed that they can handle that they think is slow, but maybe isn’t that slow. But I’m curious, you know, how slow are you actually going? How often are you trying to cover ground versus just stand in glass? How long do you glass for? How often do you sit and wait. I’m just curious a little bit more specifically, like how much ground do you actually cover in a day like this. That kind of stuff would be interesting to understand, and any other tricks you’ve picked up over the years to do this effectively.
00:47:39
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think, you know, on a fast day, you know, I might be covering maybe two miles, you know, and that’s you know, a loop in some way to the vehicle.
00:47:53
Speaker 4: You know.
00:47:53
Speaker 5: Initially, you know I’m going to leave the vehicle, and I do try to get away from the vehicle and away from the road pretty quick, you know, even though you can get like a sit en counter I’m mature, dear right off.
00:48:04
Speaker 4: The road, but I try to get away from it pretty quick. But then I’ll just really slow down. I mean, I might, you.
00:48:10
Speaker 5: Know, take a handful of steps over the course of several minutes to get you know, twenty five yards at a time, and stand there for upwards of twenty to twenty five minutes, classing you know, my surroundings, you know, either with binoculars or just with the naked eye, you know, and really trying to pick out any kind of movement. The important thing is is how far can you actually see. You know, I’m trying at the outset. You know, it’d be great if you could see you know, one hundred and fifty yards through the timber, but that’s that’s not likely. You know, that’s probably an extreme still hunting distance generally, and so you’re a lot closer.
00:48:49
Speaker 4: But ideally, you.
00:48:50
Speaker 5: Know, you want to be in timber where you can see at least one hundred yards, you know, and at least you know that way, you know, maybe they aren’t seeing you. Yeah, and that’s you know, the difference here is that you’re hunting conifer stands primarily.
00:49:04
Speaker 4: You’re not hutting through a deciduous forests like we know.
00:49:07
Speaker 5: Them in the east, and so the ground is pretty much quiet, you know, particularly if it’s wet like it is in November, and so other than stepping on a stick and really breaking the stick, you’re you’re not making that much noise if it is an open timber stand, And that’s ideally what I’m looking for. You know, maybe at the offset about one hundred and fifty yards. Would it be great if it was a little bit further, Yeah, of course, But I think anybody that’s been in you know, in a mature stand of timber knows that you know, you know, in one direction you might see one hundred and fifty yards to two hundred yards, and then on the other section you look to your right and the trees just line up perfectly and you can only see thirty yards. And that’s this whole idea of really going slow and really creeping, because you know, not only are you still hunting, but generally those deer are just standing around or they might be feeding. You know, there’s certainly situations where you’ll come across the buck that is actually you know, on the move pretty quick, coming through the timber, grunting and actively searching for a doze, you know, and you know that’s a good one to run into because they’re not paying much to minds anything else except looking for a dough.
00:50:23
Speaker 2: And so, yeah, what what about when you come across really great sign, like if you’re working your way along a ridge and then it’s just blown up with like four or five big scrapes all on one zone or a bunch of these fresh rubs, does sign ever change your plans?
00:50:42
Speaker 5: So Mark, they should, they should, but they don’t. Yeah, I mean, you know, there’s different weather events, you know, that you can tell the freshness of a sign right and or a scrape, and so you’re you look at it and maybe you’ll come across, you know, a handful of scrapes and a general in a location and you’re like, well, I should probably sit here for a while and watch.
00:51:09
Speaker 4: But I do.
00:51:10
Speaker 5: I do slow down a lot more under those circumstances, and I should probably particularly on those really big community scrapes that you’ll you’ll run into, and you still find things like that, particularly in this big timber, particularly on those little finger ridge. You know, you’ll you’ll see a scrape that’s you know, six feet across and it just torn the heck and you know that there has to be a bunch of different bucks visiting that particular scrape, and I should sit on it and spend the day and invest in it. But inevitably, you know, my lack of discipline maybe gets the best of me, and I want to know what’s on the other side of the ridge, and then what’s on the other side of that ridge and so and then you know, there’s been plenty of times mark that I’ve come back, you know, and through a place that i’d in, you know, on my return trip back to the truck visit that same scrape, and clearly it had been freshened up since I’d been there earlier.
00:52:09
Speaker 4: And they the day and I just like, why did I leave? Why did I leave?
00:52:13
Speaker 5: But you know, but those are the signs, you know that. I think that anybody that wants to do this type of hunting, you know, can relate to it. There are large community scrapes and and I know a bunch of people that are very very successful sitting on a community scrape for you know, days on end, waiting for mature buck to come to it, you know. And it’s just a matter about having that discipline and the patients to really sit on it and put it in because you may see only one year visit it all day for you know, a week’s time.
00:52:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, that’s tough.
00:52:48
Speaker 2: You mentioned though, that you mentioned though that sometimes you do use a stand and and will kind of post up what is the situation, the ideal situation where you would like to actually do that and you’re willing to have the discipline to wait it out.
00:53:03
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:53:04
Speaker 5: So I think this last year was a pretty good example of recently employing that, particularly on what I think most people would say is really backcountry hunting. And granted, there were clear cuts in roads in proximity, you know, in a road, a gated road that we hiked into to get to this clear cut, but it was a spot that we could see. I mean, this is big mountainous country, and it was a it was a cut that we could see from a very long distance that you know, was probably anywhere between that five to ten year old cut. There was some tama ract that had started to grow back up into it, there was some brush it burned over, the wildfire had gone through some adjacent timber stands close to it, and for whatever reason, it just really stuck out to my brother and I as being we need to figure out how to get into that place. And so again the weather had turned, it got older, dropped about twenty degrees, and then it and it snowed a little bit, snow that stopped about eleven am that day.
00:54:15
Speaker 4: And so in the process of trying to figure.
00:54:17
Speaker 5: It out and get to the gate that we needed to to get in there, we noticed that there’s just this really a pretty significant increase in deer activity. You’d see fresh deer tracks on these roads. And so then so we just hyped into this. You know, I had my son with me and I said, hey, we’re going to go over here to sit in Wahich. You know, you could see the furtherest you could probably see was about four hundred yards and then there was a little bit closer, but there was some timber stringers in the riparian going up that would provide really good transition cover if a buck was cruising through, and then there was just generally fee well. As we started to hike in there, mark it was apparent that there there was a you know, a significant amount of deer in this general area. Just by the number of fresh tracks, you could tell that there were it appeared probably several bucks cruising around in this area just by the way, you know, looking at these tracks, looking how they’re moving. They weren’t you know, dough groups, you know, a dough and a yearling and fawn moving around. It was clearly a single deer, big deer.
00:55:29
Speaker 4: On the move.
00:55:30
Speaker 5: And it it ended up being worthwhile being in there because that initial evening we hiked in there about midday and we were going to sit till dark, and it ended up shooting a buck that was just out cruising. It was clear that he had been cruising all day and it just happened that he came to where we could see him. Now, we had sat the day prior, probably a half mile from there in a different clear cut, and I think just the clear the conditions just weren’t right and we never even saw a deer, you know, getting there at first light, sitting and watching the conditions just weren’t right, and the deer weren’t moving.
00:56:07
Speaker 4: And then it was just like some switch.
00:56:09
Speaker 5: But it was that combination of you know, you got some timber stringers that provide good cover and sometimes you know, you might be looking at a select cut, which that is they only removed a portion of the trees, so it ends up opening up the canopy significantly to provide a pretty good food source, and it’s just pretty unproductive, I think for the deer, and they want to be in there. And so that was a really good example of of kind of learning the spot and concentrating.
00:56:38
Speaker 4: On, you know, what we think those deer would be looking for, and then taking advantage of a weather event that really triggered a change in their attitude. You know.
00:56:48
Speaker 5: We we went back in there the next morning because of how much tivity we saw and we my son and I sat in a different spot and ended up seeing a little or buck come down off a finger ridge to the edge of what was you know, probably a little bit too old of a clear cut, but it stopped.
00:57:12
Speaker 4: You know when we saw it.
00:57:13
Speaker 5: It was you know, raking its antlers in a tree and making a scrape and then slowly disappeared into the timber, never to be seen again. But you could tell that there was heightened activity in that general area. Whether or not that was because there was a higher density of doze or a number of dos had come into heat, I’m not quite sure what really happened there, but it was clear that there was a higher density of deer and that you know, it is literally out in the middle of nowhere.
00:57:45
Speaker 2: What uh, this is gonna showcase my Western ignorance. But what do you mean when you say a timber stringer?
00:57:54
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so good question.
00:57:56
Speaker 5: So you’ll see in a lot of you know, you know, timber is generally harvest under various management regimes. In Idaho, we have the Idaho Forestry Act, which prohibits removal of timber within riparian I can’t remember how many yards it is from the wetted area outside on either side. So that is generally what I would refer to as a timber stringer. There might not necessarily be a creek there, but it’s definitely a wetted area where harvest isn’t allowed. And so when you look at a cut, you know, you’ll see it might be flat, but it’s a little bit rolly. And so where you have these draws, that’s just generally where they’ll leave the timber right because it is wetted and it is a riparian area in the you know, the higher order of a stream, and so the timber is left there, and so you’ll see that deer will really concentrate on that for travel corridors.
00:58:59
Speaker 4: You know, for cover in safety.
00:59:01
Speaker 5: Although that makes sense, there’s instances when when the rod is on and those white tail bucks kind of lose their mind and you know, in the classic sense, they’re just out cruising, cruising big country and it’s it’s pretty neat to see.
00:59:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, So what about rattling and calling. I could see that if these are deer that rarely see people, I would think that maybe they rarely hear fake.
00:59:27
Speaker 3: Calling or rattling to them.
00:59:30
Speaker 2: But then on the other hand, I could imagine that in some of these places where there’s lower deer densities, they just don’t hear stuff in general a lot, and so maybe that’s just not something they key into as much. What’s what’s your take on that.
00:59:43
Speaker 5: When I first started started hunting Idaho, I still had a lot of that Eastern roots in me and really concentrated and spent a lot of time rattling and grunting, particularly you know, prior to a peak rud At that point in time, my success rate and this was in the over the course of a day, mind you mark and and but over the course of a hunt, you know what, I came to found out that one in six times when in six sets you would have a buck come in like and I and that I kind of felt like was pretty darn successful. For whatever reason, I don’t do it so much. And these were in very very large tracks of national forest. And what triggered was an abundant of rut sign, rubs and scrapes in a general area. Being able to see a little bit, you know, so if I because I’m just sitting on the ground, I mean, there’s no not carrying around a saddle or anything, but but just find a spot that you could see and set up with good sign and then go from there. And one in six times it worked, you know. And and I don’t do it as much as I used to for whatever reason. I can’t really explain why, but I but it is it can be I think, extremely effective. I don’t really know many others that do it, you know, as far as all the western runners that I know.
01:01:14
Speaker 4: That I you know, to talk to, I just don’t know that many that actually spend the time to do it. Part of it’s having the confidence.
01:01:23
Speaker 5: Right and yeah, you know, and keeping your eye out because of the way the land is, thepography of the timber. I mean, you could have a buck come in, but you just might not ever see it, you know, And so that will really discourage you from continuing to do.
01:01:40
Speaker 2: It, if you If you kind of talking about going from your Pennsylvania experience to then showing up in Idaho, what if we reverse to what if I picked you up and took you away from the West and dropped you off back in Pennsylvania. Is there any one particular lesson or technique or approach to whitetail hunting that you’ve picked up in Idaho that you would bring back with you to Pennsylvania that you think, oh, yeah, this this I would do now, or this would really help me now in Pennsylvania, or I’m going to be a lot more successful now in PA because of what I learned there.
01:02:27
Speaker 3: Does anything come to mind?
01:02:32
Speaker 5: Well, I think if there’s one thing I learned Mark, is you know, even where I grew up in northeast Pennsylvania, you know, for east coast, there’s pretty big tracks of either state forest, state game land, in some instances national forest, pretty large tracks, you know, and not many people, you know, go very deep into them. And so all the things that I’ve learned here, paying attention to topography, not really being worried about how far I go, you know, not worrying about getting a deer out hole, you know, dragging it out hole like we see so often there. Those are really transferable skills. And of course, you know, I’ve just I think, gotten to.
01:03:18
Speaker 4: Be a better deer hunter. This was just when I was young.
01:03:21
Speaker 5: It was you know, I think opportunity, you know, and so I just went with what everybody else was doing. I’d go to a stand and sit on stand and hopefully deer would come to me. I didn’t pay much attention to massed crops, particularly agcorns, which are very very abundant, which you know, as most of your listeners, can relate to changes year to year, you know, across a large landscape. What you know, what may have been very very productive and as an oak stand the year before may not have any egg worns. And so I’m in a better understanding of that, and just I’m in.
01:03:58
Speaker 4: A better appreciation for deer.
01:04:00
Speaker 5: Deer and deer habits is certainly, I think one of those transferable skills. I will say it’s been it’s been quite a while since I’ve been back to whitetail hunt, but you know, after some things that I had learned here, you know, really did employ them and went pretty far from from where the camp that I used to hunt out of, and I think, you know, there were a lot of comments like, boy, you’re going deep. It’s how they would refer to it, and in places that you know, we’re talking about sixteen seventy year old guys that have hunted this mountain forever had never even gone to you know, that’s how they looked at it.
01:04:37
Speaker 4: Granted it was a mile and a half from camp. It wasn’t a big deal for me.
01:04:41
Speaker 5: And that just like used some topography, looked at the habitat adjacent to that topography, and and went to that spot, and you know, conned my brother who had been was back with me and an old hunting partner to go up there. And in that day we each the first time hunting there, we eat a shot a buck in that same general area, sitting on stand, you know, just picking the remoteness of it. And so I think that there are a bunch of those transferable skills. But it goes the same way, right, There is nothing other than the expansiveness, which can be intimidating that it’s not transferable to any single whitetail hunter, to western whitetail hunting, you know, whether it is you know hunting, you know, you know that bag interface, you know, river corridors or big timber. There’s so many transferable skills. They are still white tails, they still behave in the same same way, you know, to an extent. Like I mentioned earlier, they do have a number of more predators that they have to worry about that you know, really them significantly, you know, particularly mountain lions and bobcats are pretty significant predators on them, So it’s it’s something that generally, you know, puts them at a heightened, heightened position.
01:05:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, So I’m going to force you to put your money where your mouth is on this whole idea of of these skills being transferable and put.
01:06:07
Speaker 3: You on the spot.
01:06:08
Speaker 2: If you were forced to place odds on on my likelihood of being able to transfer my skills from where I live and hunt and the other places that I’ve lived and hunted.
01:06:20
Speaker 3: Over the years.
01:06:21
Speaker 2: Here, what would you say my chances are if I were to spend a week in this kind of country that we’re talking about, and we’ll say it’s it’s like a November rifle hunt. Knowing a little bit of what you know about me and what we’ve talked about in the past, give me, give me your give me your odds. Do I have a fifty to fifty chance? Do I have like a twenty five percent chance, a ten percent chance? You’re you’re welcome to totally crush my hopes and uh and tell me it’s way worse than that.
01:06:51
Speaker 3: But if I put you on the spot, what do you think? What do you like? Do you like my own Mark.
01:06:55
Speaker 5: Yeah, No, I think, knowing what I know of you in your white tail experiences, you know, i’d honestly put you well over seventy five percent odds.
01:07:08
Speaker 4: You know, you you.
01:07:11
Speaker 5: You have an immense amount of white tail experience in varied habitats that again are very transferable. Uh And now granted, you know, you know, are we talking about killing a mature.
01:07:25
Speaker 4: Trophy class white tail? Are we just talking about killing a white tail, you know, a white tail buck?
01:07:32
Speaker 5: Those are two different things. But in general, I think once you start looking at, you know, these landscapes and generally getting boots on the ground, there’s so many transferable skills, you know, And I think the biggest one is patience and perseverance and overcoming the difficulties that come along with this that can be so not only demoralizing but intimidating.
01:07:59
Speaker 4: You know.
01:07:59
Speaker 5: And I think time and time again, all of us as listeners and viewers, have seen you come through that time and time again, that those are probably some of the most important skills. I mean, I can tell you that, you know, on that hunt that I did last year with my brother and son, over the course of that I guess we were only.
01:08:21
Speaker 4: There for four days.
01:08:22
Speaker 5: Over the course of that four day hunt, my brother never saw a buck. My son and I every day, every sit we saw at least one buck. And so but you know, he grows to expect it, you know, and he knows you know that, well.
01:08:36
Speaker 4: This is just what comes with the territory. Yep.
01:08:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s probably the most underrated, most important skill for any kind of hunters is just patience, perseverance, and just dogheaded optimism, stubbornness, something like that to keep on keeping on. Here’s the problem, though, is that you just now put all this pressure on me because you just said that that there’s higher than seventy percent odds that I can.
01:09:03
Speaker 3: Get it done.
01:09:03
Speaker 2: So now I really better get it done. And if I don’t, you I give you, I give you permission to give me a lot of crap.
01:09:10
Speaker 3: If I don’t manage to pull it off, now.
01:09:12
Speaker 5: Well, I mean i’ll give you I’ll reduce those odds. If you’re just out there floundering around in October or September for whatever reason, you know, Yeah, you got to be in the woods at the right time. And I think that those odds you know, are up there well above seventy five percent. You know, to connect on on a whitetail buck and potentially a mature one. I mean, that’s part of it, right, is understanding that there is a potential for running into a mature buck.
01:09:37
Speaker 4: And that’s something that we haven’t really talked about.
01:09:39
Speaker 5: But what I have seen through harvest over the years throughout the Northern Rockies. I always like to think that you know, you were talking earlier about these, you know, grizzled old white tail bucks, gnarley antlers, you know, and I always equate that with the northern expanses of Idaho and Montana. The actual rate on the Canadian border. I always get the sense that they’re they have a little bit of an influence from those Canadian populations for whatever reason and what that’s worth. But you definitely see a different body size and antler size up their morphology compared to as you group slowly go south. You know, it’s just your more general typical you know, four and five points.
01:10:26
Speaker 3: So interesting.
01:10:29
Speaker 2: All right, Well, this probably won’t be the last time you’re gonna hear from me. I’ll be keeping you posted if if this hunt comes together the way I’m hoping it will, I’ll be I’ll be sharing updates or picking your brain. So thank you for sharing all this with me. I want to ask you one more question, and it’s a really really hard pivot, like completely unrelated to what we’ve been talking about, but I have you on the phone, and your day job, the main stuff you deal with is salmon and steel head and everything going on there with the Snake River in that region of the country, in the Pacific Northwest, and I just want to give you, like a sixty second elevator pitch opportunity here for anybody who likes to fish and who is not aware of what’s going on up there. Could you give us a really quick rundown of what it is that’s going on in the Pacific Northwest, what you work on, and where people could go if they like to fish and they’re interested in learning more.
01:11:26
Speaker 4: Yeah.
01:11:26
Speaker 5: So my day job I work for Trout Unlimited. I am the Snake of Her campaign director. It’s a Trout Online Limited one a Trout Unlimited, It’s national priority campaigns. It’s s physically focused on recovering wild salmon and steelhead out of their risk of extinction. All of our four salmon species within the Stink of Her Basins are threatened into endangered, and part of that is trying to come up with a comprehensive solution to recover and restore them through the position is breaching the for lower snake over dams, but with the understanding that we need to replace those services associated with the hydrosystem and uplift the entire Northwest.
01:12:10
Speaker 4: And so that that’s my day job.
01:12:13
Speaker 5: If people are interested and or at one time hope to catch a salmon and steelhead on the snake or salmon or clearwater rivers, you can follow much of our work and Trot Unlimited, particularly our campaign work at tu dot org forward slash Lower Snake. That’s our landing page for that, but other than that, tu dot org has a very robust we have a very robust website that highlights a lot of our work nationwide and throughout the West.
01:12:43
Speaker 3: Awesome.
01:12:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, you guys are doing great work. I appreciate to you immensely. I appreciate your work trying to make sure these incredible fish don’t disappear, and I appreciate you sharing some of this hard earned whitetail knowledge to Eric. So thank you for all of that. Thanks for being here.
01:13:00
Speaker 4: Well. I appreciate your time mark.
01:13:02
Speaker 2: Thank you all right, and that’s going to do it for us today. Thank you for joining us here on the Wired Hunt podcast. I appreciate you being with me here for so many years. Thanks for tuning into both my episodes as well as everything else we’ve got coming out here on the Wired Hunt Feed the Back forty podcast with Jake Koefer, Foundations, episodes from Tony, other episodes from Jake as he dives into more whitetail topics in our standard interview format.
01:13:32
Speaker 3: We’re trying to diversify the lineup.
01:13:34
Speaker 2: We’re trying to give you as many different opportunities to learn about white tails, whitetail deer hunting, how to make sure we can enjoy this amazing lifestyle well into the future in so many different ways. So thanks again and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.
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