00:00:00
Speaker 1: What is going on?
00:00:00
Speaker 2: Welcome to another episode of Back 40. This is Jake Holfer, and we brought back our guest and panel for this sequence of Back 40.
00:00:10
Speaker 1: We have Bill Wienke, Jeff Sturgis, Aaron Warburton, and Adam Keith.
00:00:14
Speaker 2: And now that it is September, there’s this delicate balance of preparing for this upcoming season and not impacting your odds from pressure or intrusion. And I hope you guys really enjoy this point-blank, The question that I’m providing to the guest is every time I scout, I feel like I’m hurting my chances.
00:00:34
Speaker 1: What should I do?
00:00:35
Speaker 2: And we’re going to kick things off with Bill Winkie and get his perspective on this exact topic. Now that we are in September. Back 40 is brought to you by Moultrie. All right, Bill, it’s officially September. My summer, uh, has flown by and, uh, We’re within days of October and I need to get out there.
00:01:01
Speaker 1: I feel like I need to scout it.
00:01:02
Speaker 2: But every time I feel like I go out and scout, I feel like I’m inherently hurting my chances because people say you don’t want the deer to know that they’re being hunted. I don’t want to go in and pressure things. But I also don’t know what the heck’s going on because I’ve had a million things going on this summer. There’s a lot of people that are listening right now that says, hey, that’s me. So what do you say to someone that says every time I scout, I feel like I’m still hurting my chances for this upcoming season?
00:01:25
Speaker 3: Well, I think you can get away with a lot more than what you think. You just got to do it the right way.
00:01:31
Speaker 4: And the.
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Speaker 3: Trick there is you got to match human activity. There’s two ways you can get away with scouting. One is if the deer have no idea that you’re there. You don’t leave any trace. You don’t leave any scent. Maybe you wear chest high waders while you’re scouting.
00:01:50
Speaker 4: You know, I’ve done that.
00:01:51
Speaker 3: You know, you’re like, on the downwind fringe, the deer have no idea that you were there. That’s one way. But if you can’t do it that way, if you can’t scout in such a way that the deer don’t know that you were there, you’re better off being that farmer. You know, like I said, matching the human activity, go in there with the tractor, start the chainsaw, make a bunch of noise, give them plenty of, of, you know, forewarning, run them out. Um, then, then do whatever it is that you need to do. If you’re going to hang a tree stand or whatever, Like if I’m hanging a tree stand during the season, I’m going in with my tractor. You know, I’m going to get as close to that tree as I possibly can. I’m not putting in there with a four-wheeler. I’m not trying to sneak in. I’m not going to get away with any of that. I’m just going to go, you know, mashing in there with my tractor and I might even leave it running for a while. Like I said, fire up the chainsaw. That stuff doesn’t bother them. It’s like, I remember one time I was duck hunting and I grew up duck hunting and We were back on the islands on the Mississippi River, and it had been kind of flooded for a while, and the bases of a bunch of trees were starting to rot. We could actually knock the trees over. We could go through the woods and just push on them and knock them over, some of them, because they got so rotten. Well, there was three or four deer about.
00:03:06
Speaker 4: Maybe 150 yards away. We were sitting in the duck blind.
00:03:08
Speaker 3: And a tree fell like maybe 75 yards away from those deer.
00:03:15
Speaker 4: It crashed down. They didn’t even look up.
00:03:19
Speaker 3: So it’s the big noises that they just, they know it’s not anything, you know, to be afraid of. It’s that sneaky stuff. They don’t like being surprised. They don’t like looking up and having a person, you know, 20 yards away while they’re in their bedding area, feeling safe. You’re better off just getting them out. So the heavy handed approach actually works pretty well. I’ve had a lot of success that way. I’ve gone, I’ve gone in with the tractor. You’re going to laugh at this. I’ve gone in with the tractor, hung the stand, parked the tractor like 75 yards away, and got into the tree and had deer come by. They aren’t afraid of that in farm country. I mean, obviously, you know, if you’re not hunting in farm country, then it’s different. But let’s say you’re hunting in an urban area. There’s probably cars driving by, people going by in the, you know, sidewalks. Maybe it’s near a park.
00:04:11
Speaker 4: You know, just have somebody.
00:04:12
Speaker 3: walk in with you and make a whole bunch of noise, like yelling like kids or something, and then just leave. I mean, the deer, they don’t hold that as anywhere near as big of a threat as if they catch you sneaking around.
00:04:26
Speaker 4: They don’t like that.
00:04:27
Speaker 3: So that’s where I never hesitate to do in-season scouting. For sure, it’s better to have it all done ahead of time. So the first time you go in, you know, the deer have, they don’t have any experience with you. But if you’ve got to do some in-season scouting or hang a stand during the season, don’t be afraid to do it.
00:04:47
Speaker 4: Just don’t try to sneak in.
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Speaker 3: You know, that can be, like I said, way worse than just, you know, making yourself very obvious on the way in.
00:05:00
Speaker 2: There’s a handful of people I know that have diesel UTVs versus gas powered. Do you think that’s a crazy approach or do you think that’s overkill?
00:05:11
Speaker 1: Because it makes perfect sense. I mean, it sounds different. It sounds way different.
00:05:14
Speaker 3: It sounds way different. And the deer run away from the ATVs, but I’ve seen them run from the tractors too.
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Speaker 4: I mean, not as much.
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Speaker 3: A lot of times they just kind of step out of the way. And I’ve actually done it where I’ve used tractors to access my stands in sensitive spots. And like I said, I just park maybe 100 yards from the tree and then go in. Well, I’ll have trail cameras set up. for various reasons, not to monitor whether or not the deer are accepting the tractor, but rather just along that route that I used. It’s shocking that if I would walk through an area, it might be a day before I see deer activity back on those cameras in that area. But if I drive through that same area on the tractor, it might be an hour, might be half an hour after I go through on the tractor, there’s a deer on the camera on that same route that I took with the tractor. So I know that it’s less impactful to use a tractor. I’m not 100% sure what the trade-off is between a tractor and an ATV. I do think the tractor is more accepted by the deer. I do think that deep, throaty, rumbly, diesel sound is more acceptable than that high-pitched, whiny ATV engine sound. I’m not sure if that’s something that they pick up by association because they think farmers are safe or if it’s just something in the, you know, in the, in the sound itself that they don’t like.
00:06:42
Speaker 4: I’m not sure, but yeah.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:06:44
Speaker 4: You can definitely get away with more with a tractor for sure.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. I, I think it was the university of Georgia that did a deer study on what noise deer are most scared of. Do you have a guess of what it was?
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Speaker 3: I’m sure it wasn’t gunshots. It had to have been probably an ATV. It’s human voice, human voice.
00:07:08
Speaker 4: Really?
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Speaker 2: Human voices, what they had found to be the most frightening. They had like a, we interviewed them a long time ago when they released a study, but they had like a radio and, you know, like basically it would play noises and the deer would just, that would, you know, not coyote calls, not anything else. That was what scared them the most was human voices, ironically.
00:07:28
Speaker 4: Yeah. Interesting.
00:07:29
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, fortunately, I don’t talk a lot when I’m going to my tree stand.
00:07:35
Speaker 2: So don’t talk to yourself.
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Speaker 4: I got that going for me.
00:07:38
Speaker 1: All right.
00:07:41
Speaker 2: So you’re giving people permission to go hide in plain sight, make the noise, to go do what you need to do because the summer snuck right by, but you want to be prepared, and now is the time to go out and do it.
00:07:54
Speaker 4: Yeah, that’s it.
00:07:55
Speaker 1: Okay. Bill, where can people follow along with what you have going on?
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Speaker 3: You can check it out on the Bill Wienke YouTube channel.
00:08:03
Speaker 2: All right, next up, we have Aaron Warburton to get his perspective on this exact topic. What I appreciate with Aaron is he often and throughout the series would tailor it to if he was hunting public ground versus hunting behind his house or hunting a private piece of ground. And so here’s what he has to say in case you’re waffling of what to do in September. You want to be prepared, but you don’t want to impact it negatively.
00:08:24
Speaker 1: Here we go.
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Speaker 2: All right, Aaron, I’m excited to ask you this question. Because this is the dilemma. Spring scouting is over. Summer scouting is wound down. It’s September. We’re leading into season. And this question is geared towards now until the end of the year. But every time I scout, I feel like I’m hurting my chances from the pressure I’m applying to a particular area.
00:08:47
Speaker 1: What do you say to that person?
00:08:50
Speaker 5: Got to have the info. Got to have the intel. That’s the number one thing. If you don’t have it, go get it. That’s kind of a very simple way of putting it, but I mean, I used to run around the barn 10 times on this thing all the time. I was a nervous wreck going out there, tiptoeing around, trying to worry about spooking deer. But I got to know how they move through that environment, especially if I’m going to get in a good high-odd setup to kill them with a bow. I got to know where that trail is, where that fallen log is that’s diverting that movement around the head of this ditch or whatever. And if I don’t know where that is, I got to go scout. So the next question people often ask is, well, how long can you scout before, you know, and then come back and things be back to normal? I don’t know a specific time for that. All I know is that, man, if you go in and you burn through an area, you would be surprised how many deer you spook and how many deer you don’t. There’s so much that you don’t know whenever you go in there. You can burn through an area and find the best spot ever and set up there and have the greatest hunt of your life a day. later, two days later, after you just blew right through it. I don’t worry about that so much anymore. I try to get in there a week or two before and then have some time to leave it alone. But so much is changing in a deer’s world, especially a buck’s. throughout the fall, if you’re talking about September, I mean, basically from now until Christmas, every week, something is changing in their world. Whether it’s food sources or does coming in and out of heat or weather or whatever it is, they’re just, they’re constantly, constantly changing and switching. So the spots that you’re scouting for in late September, you need to be anticipating where they’re going to be moving in mid October or late October or early November or whatever timeframe you’re scouting for. When I’m scouting in mid September or I’m scouting even right now, I’m not necessarily scouting for opening day, you know, which here is September 15th. I might be scouting a spot that would be good for Halloween, or I might be scouting a spot that would be a really good place for a big one to push a dough up against, you know, using as a barrier during lockdown portion of the rut. Uh, I mean, That’s what I’m thinking about when I’m scouting. I’m not as worried about spooking deer, especially if I don’t have the info. Because that’s the biggest thing. If you’ve got 40 acres and you’ve walked every square inch of that property and you’ve been hunting for 20 years and you know where every deer trail is and how deer traverse through the whole thing, then no, you don’t need to go bomb through it. But if you don’t have all that information, I’m going out there. I spend 10 times more scouting time than I do hunting.
00:11:44
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:11:45
Speaker 2: Well, let’s find some middle ground on that where it’s someone that maybe is somewhat familiar with the property and they just feel like, I have a pretty good idea. I have a pretty good idea what the deer are doing. I have some deer I’m excited to hopefully see this season. But the unknown is killing me to where like, I just want to go back in there and look a little bit more or maybe see what I see or maybe find what is not there where they have a baseline of information. but they’re hoping, like, what’s the risk versus reward, and where is that line, in your opinion, is what I’m trying to get to.
00:12:18
Speaker 5: It just, it kind of depends. If you’re hunting, like, one specific buck that is getting old and that’s using your property a lot, and you can keep tabs on him either via camera or, you know, with your eyes, then you don’t need to go in there. But if you don’t know, if you don’t have that, then… I would go in there a couple of weeks before you plan to hunt and I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I mean, ideal scenario, you go in there and you walk the whole thing after the season and you figure that out. But it’s, it’s a tough, that’s a tough one to, to answer, you know, because I feel like there’s a lot of people in that boat. If you’ve got a stand or two on that property, that is an absolute kill hole that you are planning to kill one in, you know, when you get your vacation at the end of October, early November, then I wouldn’t go in there. you’ve got a plan in place. I would just, I would trust the process.
00:13:13
Speaker 1: Yep. Trust the process.
00:13:15
Speaker 5: I would focus on other areas and do your thing, you know, or focus on scouting around the rim of that spot and just leaving that place alone entirely. But if you, that kind of goes back to what I initially said, it all comes down to if you have that plan and if you have that info, you know, this could all be tossed up in the air depending on your personality. If you’re, if you can’t sit still and you don’t, and you like to move around, then you get a wet windy day, go and comb through that whole thing and with a bow or gun in hand and be ready to kill one right then and there work into the wind, you know, make something happen. So there’s, there’s lots of rabbits you can pull out of the hat there. You know, I mean, you can go, you can go a bunch of different directions with that, but, Um, yeah, I, I personally want to have the information. If I don’t have all that information, I don’t, I’m not at maximum confidence when I go in there. And the time when I kill them is usually when I’m very confident that it’s going to happen right here.
00:14:21
Speaker 2: I feel, and this is my gut feeling on that too. It’s like you go in and you go and tear through it. You look at it and it feels like it’s a ghost town. You just don’t have the vibe. You’re like, all right, well, that’s, that’s helpful as well.
00:14:31
Speaker 3: Exactly.
00:14:32
Speaker 2: Or you go in there and it’s tore up and it’s like, it’s going to happen. You know, there’s this cold front next week or, um, you know, this scrape always opens up sometime in September. And I, you know, I put a camera that like, I think it’s no information’s also just as good as great information in that scenario.
00:14:48
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
00:14:49
Speaker 5: No information is very critical to analyze. It’s all about the confidence level that you have, you know, regardless of how that you want to hunt. I feel like you got to have confidence going in there. If you don’t have confidence, They could be for a wide variety of different reasons. But for me, it’s often because I don’t know how the wind behaves in this spot, or I don’t know enough about this place. I don’t know where the deer are coming from, et cetera. If I don’t have confidence, I’m going to start making mental mistakes and mental errors. And that, that is a huge aspect of it. So. I, that’s what I would use to judge it off of. I know this is kind of, you know, turns into.
00:15:28
Speaker 1: It’s just threading the needle here.
00:15:30
Speaker 5: Yeah. You know, it turns into psychology real quick, but it’s.
00:15:33
Speaker 1: It’s the reality.
00:15:35
Speaker 5: It’s the reality is if you, if you have a property like that and you don’t really know what you’re doing or have confidence in your plan of what you’re going to do, then I would go and walk it. And I just wouldn’t care. I’d blow it up. I mean, if you have to, but you, like you said, you’re going to get the answers. It’s either like, oh, well, I just bumped a big buck and I found a pile of sign. Well, then you can come back in there and revisit it in a couple of weeks. And then if same thing occurs, if you go in there and you don’t find a thing, well, then you can cross it off your list and then you don’t have to waste a bunch of time there in the future.
00:16:10
Speaker 1: Not that you couldn’t kill one there.
00:16:12
Speaker 5: If you’re not confident, you definitely could, but When you have confidence, you’ll sit there longer. You’ll pay attention better. You’ll arrive 15 minutes earlier than you should. You’ll not break that stick in the leaves. It’s a compounding effect. Your senses will be heightened. You’re a hunter.
00:16:31
Speaker 1: You’re a killer.
00:16:32
Speaker 5: Your senses need to be heightened in order to kill these things. So that’s going to be much easier to do if you’ve got confidence in your plans.
00:16:46
Speaker 1: And next up, we have Adam Keith.
00:16:48
Speaker 2: Adam, throughout this series, you’ve probably picked up very measured, analytical, has things squared away. This answer may or may not surprise you, but here is Adam’s perspective on I’m behind the eight ball. What do I do now? Adam, welcome back to Back 40. We’re diving into something. It’s Labor Day. It’s early September. And, you know, hopefully the temperatures are cooling off a little bit. And the excitement for season, if you’re an October 1 opener, it’s here very soon, but I feel like there’s this conundrum and there’s different schools of thought when it comes to white tail hunting, but this is more related to private land piece that you worked on all off season. You’ve worked on it for multiple years, but I’m going to run this conundrum of every time I scout, I feel like I’m actually hurting my chances.
00:17:34
Speaker 1: Yeah. What do you say to that? I would probably agree that you definitely are.
00:17:40
Speaker 6: Unfortunately, um, Maybe I’m only wired this way, but probably most of the guys listening or watching this are in agreement. But I’m like one of those that, oh, I kind of found this decent-looking spot if I am scouting. Maybe that next 200 yards is better. And so before you know it, you’ve walked the whole place. And so that’s a real struggle. Generally, I would say do your scouting in the offseason. That’s the best foot forward, in my opinion, is going get out there in the winter when there’s no snow on the ground. You can still see the trails, the scrapes, the rubs. That’s the preferred system. But you’ve missed the boat. Life was busy then. So now you’re scouting. It’s after Labor Day or it’s, you know, right here in early to mid-September, even late September. How is your scouting? This is where I would lean more on scouting food sources, whether it be persimmon, you checking a few of those big crop trees that historically rain some acorns just to confirm that there are some deer usage or there’s a lot of acorns that have been produced by those trees. That’s generally how my scouting is that time of the year. We’re rolling in and kind of just putting our nose just ever so slightly into some of these historical feeding areas just to confirm that they are there. And then immediately, there’s no scouting that I’m doing in September or October that I don’t have trail cameras close to me. So I can stick one of them out to just kind of confirm what I found. So I may have found a bunch of acorns on the ground. And so it’s time for me to figure out who’s there. And yeah, there’s some rubs. Let’s stick a trail camera up. And if that trail camera tells me, yeah, it’s a nice group of younger bucks, but he ain’t there, then I’m not putting that pressure on it because I’d rather kind of isolate and leave those deer alone. Or it’s I’m scouting for places to shoot does because I need to be harvesting does. early as as soon as season opens up so.
00:19:54
Speaker 2: If someone summer flew by they’re like oh gosh it’s September now and yeah I feel like I need to do something but I don’t want to be fully you know irresponsible or reckless yeah in this scenario it sounds like kind of tiptoe around maybe find Scrape on the edge of some bedding. You don’t have to go in and find and turn every leaf over, but have a backpack of trail cameras in this scenario and throw up a floater would be your strategy? I would be two scenarios, and they’re so drastically different that it may sound a little bit oxymoron, but I would rather scout in a soaking rain or right at the beginning of rain so a lot of the scent’s going to be washed away. A lot of, you know, there’s a lot of new scent that’s going to happen with that rainstorm and once the rain leaves.
00:20:43
Speaker 1: So I would like to scout like that.
00:20:45
Speaker 6: Or also in the middle of September has been historically the driest month of the year through much of the Midwest and even the South.
00:20:53
Speaker 1: Ask any fall food plotter. Exactly.
00:20:57
Speaker 6: It’s exactly why I changed so much of my fall food plot strategy because of that.
00:21:00
Speaker 1: But it’s hot.
00:21:02
Speaker 6: It’s dry. there’s less scent in the air because everything is so powdery dry. Then I’m going to tiptoe around in that middle of the day, maybe even with some wind and just, just what I’m avoiding are those early in the morning, late in the evening, higher humidity times where there’s scent that’s going to linger.
00:21:22
Speaker 2: There’s a lot more scent being produced and held around. So that’s what I’m avoiding. How, how much behind the eight ball of someone? You can give them some guilt right now. How much behind the eight ball are they if they’re like, yeah, I didn’t do my homework, but I would still like to get an A on the test?
00:21:40
Speaker 6: I would generally be more a glass half full kind of guy unless I’m on a blood trail and then that glass is totally empty.
00:21:51
Speaker 1: But I would say.
00:21:52
Speaker 6: That you’re pretty stinking far behind the eight ball.
00:21:56
Speaker 1: And I would rather… Let’s just say this.
00:21:58
Speaker 6: I would rather you do 80% of your scouting in the winter months, in early spring, and do 20% in September, October. But if your scouting is 70% or 50 plus in September, you are.
00:22:13
Speaker 6: I am surprised you haven’t hired me yet or somebody else.
00:22:17
Speaker 1: Because the success can’t be that high.
00:22:19
Speaker 6: Yeah.
00:22:20
Speaker 4: Well, I think.
00:22:21
Speaker 2: Do you feel that… Maybe think of some clients of yours in the past, too, where.
00:22:28
Speaker 2: There might be someone else on this panel on this episode that says, I would tear through absolutely everything I would do.
00:22:33
Speaker 1: I would be reckless in your words. And then it’s like, so what would you say to that person? Like, no, I disagree.
00:22:40
Speaker 2: I would go in and I would go in for a day and cover every inch of the farm.
00:22:45
Speaker 6: Yeah, I would not do that, obviously. The reckless approach is what I do on public ground. For better or for worse, that’s totally how you do it because it’s, you know, it’s a Hail Mary pass every time you hunt and I’ve got no problem with it. Um, but on public or on private ground, I, I, I’ve, I’ve had this conversation with my business partner, Matt and my brother, uh, multiple times. Like if I’ve owned a farm for 10 plus years, what am I even scouting for? Like if I have to scout every year, what have I, what have I been doing the last 10 years? Like I should have a really good feel for what trees are producing and where the deer bed, where they move, where they feed. Like, why do I have to scout? And so the reckless approach should be, it’s a new farm, you just gained access, and it’s solid timber, and the acorns haven’t started falling yet.
00:23:42
Speaker 1: There’s a pretty good chance the deer aren’t in there. They haven’t moved in there.
00:23:46
Speaker 6: So get in there, figure out where the terrain features are.
00:23:50
Speaker 1: Maybe you can see some past trails. Go get them. add this scenario here.
00:23:56
Speaker 2: So let’s say you do have some experience with this property and typically the deer, the bucks would show up late September, early October, or maybe even when the crops come out and it’s like, man, really, you know, I might have some velvet pictures throughout the summer, but it doesn’t really feel like they move into this property until October 15th. Yeah.
00:24:14
Speaker 1: Do you give those folks the pass? Yeah. I would totally let them do their, do their thing.
00:24:20
Speaker 3: Okay.
00:24:21
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:24:23
Speaker 1: I like it.
00:24:23
Speaker 6: I wouldn’t want to, but, It’s the alternative of where we’re at today. So you don’t know anything. You’ve completely, you don’t know the property. You just gained access. It’s better to go in there and do that than not at all.
00:24:36
Speaker 2: Do you, has there been a story or a year or a buck where you’re like, man, if I would’ve went in there and looked around, I probably would’ve figured this out. Or is that not something that, and think of your main farm where you hunt the most.
00:24:48
Speaker 1: Oh, I’m trying to think. Not really.
00:24:54
Speaker 6: Maybe there’s one slipping through the cracks, but for the most part, I mean, my family farm, I’ve hunted it my whole life. My grandpa bought it in the 1950s, so I grew up hunting it. I have a really good feel for what the deer do. The only thing that really changes is the food sources and whether my food plots didn’t get killed.
00:25:10
Speaker 1: In the drought. And then outside of that, not really. There’s not places.
00:25:19
Speaker 6: I’ve hunted it so much over the years that I’ve hunted every spot and paid attention to the wind, and now it’s like, oh, yeah, can’t do it. Don’t even try. That wind just swirls like a top in there.
00:25:29
Speaker 1: No way.
00:25:31
Speaker 6: Okay. All right.
00:25:32
Speaker 2: Well, what’s your last word of encouragement for someone that’s listening to this today, September 3rd, and they’re like, oh, man.
00:25:41
Speaker 6: Try to find those conditions that, you know, the rain’s coming. Probably not September. It doesn’t rain, but look for those really dry conditions. Go in the middle of the day. You’re going to sweat like crazy, but at least you’re not sweating when it’s… You’re going to sweat regardless. I’d rather you sweat in the middle of the day when the deer aren’t really moving. And then just go in there with an idea of what you’re actually looking for.
00:26:07
Speaker 1: Don’t just walk blindly.
00:26:09
Speaker 6: Kind of have an idea of going, okay, where is the possible bedding areas? Look at the the satellite images, see if there’s changes in the canopy in specific terrain features and go, okay, let’s just put our nose in there. If we bump a deer, okay, that’s fine. Just don’t blow your scent into it. And then kind of go with that approach. Have something in mind when you’re going in.
00:26:33
Speaker 1: I like it. Where, once again, where can people find you?
00:26:37
Speaker 6: You can search on all the major social media platforms, Landon Legacy, and as well as the podcast platforms.
00:26:44
Speaker 1: So just like.
00:26:45
Speaker 2: Missouri, where Adam lives, we have Jeff Sturgis to close out this episode, who hunts primarily in Minnesota and Wisconsin with earlier open dates than, let’s say, Illinois, which is October 1, or Iowa, or many of the other states. So this answer somewhat fluctuates based off of the opening date. But here’s Jeff Sturgis’ perspective.
00:27:04
Speaker 4: Here we go.
00:27:04
Speaker 1: All right, Jeff, it’s September.
00:27:07
Speaker 2: And there’s been a lot of people, I’m sure, that went to 18 baseball tournaments and 18 golf outings. And they’re looking at the calendar and it’s September and time is ticking and they feel like, gosh, I’m simply behind. I don’t have everything done that I wanted to. However, every time I go and scout or hang cameras or want to go hang tree stands or do these, you know, somewhat important projects, but also impactful in terms of the farm. And the root of it is every time I go and do something like that, I feel like I’m hurting my chances instead of helping my chances. So what do you say to someone that is in that boat?
00:27:44
Speaker 7: You know, we’ve done a lot of activities early September from hanging stands to installing water holes to finishing our fall food plots, changing trail cameras. And I would encourage someone to get those things done if you have a weekend where you can just knock everything all out at once. Because I’m really looking for that whitetail shift and that whitetail annual buck shift where they’re taking a place. They’re shifting from their summer habitat to fall habitat. And that typically takes place mid-September to mid-October. So I’m looking at, you’re going into early September, you still have two weeks, three weeks of some really good activity to get in and hunt and really get on and get, say you’re getting in there and getting work done and then setting up a good hunt later because those mature bucks aren’t going to be there yet anyways. Now, if you’re finding that you have mature bucks already there, a lot of times that’s reflective of bucks that are going to leave to go to someone else’s fall property for the entire fall winter. Because there’s habitat that’s changing, either it’s open habitat, it’s going to be overpressured or lack of food or all three. And so I find that in that case, you have to identify that property. Is this typically a really good October, November, December property? And it’s going to pay off getting as much work done as possible right now because the buck shouldn’t be there anyways. And I really want to set up a great hunt for later. already identified that property that’s all open, mature hardwoods. They’re feeding on neighboring beans or alfalfa. That movement’s not going to be the same the end of September, early October. It’s going to be really waning. Then I might want to, hey, I need to stay off. I need to just sit off on the outside, maybe trail camera or watch some fields in the evening, see where they’re coming out and then go in for the kill on opening day of bow season or early in the season and really just chip away at that time. And then look at it like, you know, that’s my shot early season with a property like that. The next shot is hoping that random buck comes through during the rut, you know, late October, November, especially more early in November where they’ve already bred a couple does and they really start reaching and driving and looking across a larger landscape. and they might come by on your property. So in that case, you really sit back, wait for that early season to happen, get a couple good hunts in, and then go full bore setting up for the rut, then stay out of there until the rut. And so two different type of properties. I like to develop the property that they’re coming to and they’re holding for the season because then I find that you get to hunt the same bucks every year, build a history with them, get to know them, and really at a high percentage of time, really become successful on those target bucks over a long period of time.
00:30:34
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:30:36
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:30:36
Speaker 2: So what about the, in terms of we’re taking away prep. So in that scenario, we’re under the assumption, they kind of knew where they needed to hang a tree stand. They kind of knew where they needed to hang a trail camera or put in a water hole, but for the scenario where they just got this piece. And so now they feel like they need to go tear through it and try to figure it out. Now is it, where does the risk reward fall in your, in your mind?
00:30:59
Speaker 7: Again, I’d try to assess what type of property it is. And most of the time, like if I was getting a new piece, I’d want one that was pretty diverse, had good thick habitat. And I’m looking at this is going to be a really good October, November, December hunt or at least October, November. And in that case, you know, it’s interesting the property we bought here in Minnesota when we first bought it in 2020. We worked on food sources, access, mock scrapes. changing that culture of hunting where we’re developing this interior area that we’re not going into. We’re saying, okay, this is a bedding area. And out of all the acreage that we purchased in 2020, we probably weren’t in 80% of it until after the season because we really wanted to stay on those outside funnels, movements, protect the core and not infringe on it because we knew we couldn’t hunt those areas without spooking deer. We hadn’t fully developed it. And so that paid off big time just that first year by hunting carefully around the outside, hunting those pinch points and funnels. And I think that’s a better approach where you’re identifying funnels from the air. You’re identifying habitat changes, maybe on-off parcel movements from big movements across several parcels where they cross on a fence or a road. And you’re hunting those exterior areas, keeping that core area intact, just chipping away on the outside safely, but at good locations. And I find that’s a really good way to just take a new parcel, take advantage of it by hunting smart, hunting on the exterior, saving that core on the inside. And then over long roll, you’re looking at like this is a marathon. I’m not expecting to shoot a buck or a deer on opening day. I’m expecting to chip away at this property, get to know it over the season safely so I can play the long game. And by November, December, you’re really dialing it in. And you have a parcel that hasn’t been pressured, which really every day that passes during the season gives you a leg up on most every other property.
00:33:03
Speaker 1: In the area.
00:33:04
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:33:04
Speaker 1: I think that’s, I think that’s great. All right. Where can people find you?
00:33:07
Speaker 7: Uh, white till habitat solutions, YouTube, Instagram, uh, Google website, all that kind of stuff. And, uh, Um, you know, really you can even use a search function on Google and YouTube and look up any kind of whitetail strategy, habitat or hunting related and, uh, and find the site or the channel and articles or videos.
00:33:26
Speaker 3: So.
00:33:27
Speaker 1: All right, there you guys have it.
00:33:28
Speaker 2: Hope you guys enjoyed this week’s episode of Back 40. Our next episode, we’re going to be covering scheduling vacation time, picking the week, and maybe you don’t actually have to pick vacation time, but when is the time to put all the chips in the center of the table and really give it your all, give it your best opportunity, your best chance based off of decades and decades of experience and observations. So next time we’ll be talking about picking the best week.
00:33:53
Speaker 1: We’ll see you. Hope you have a great rest of your week. We’ll see you. Bye.
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