Ep. 936: What Would Terry Drury Do?

00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to the White Tail 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 on the show, I am running Terry Drury through our what would you do? Gauntlet, in which I will be asking him to share with me exactly how he would handle a series of different hypothetical, challenging hunting scenarios and circumstances. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light and their Camel for Conservation initiative. Today in the show, we are continuing are what would you Do series, in which, as I just described, we run a series of different hunting experts through a whole bunch of different really challenging or tricky or confusing hunting circumstances or scenarios to see how they would handle them, what their thought process would be, how they would go about making their decisions, how they would go about tackling this tough deal. And our guest today is one of the best of all time, Terry Drury, of Drury Outdoors. Terry’s been in the show many times before. He’s a great friend of the show, really good guy, terrific deer hunter, but someone who has not yet been on the What would You Do? Series? So he joined me today to talk through a bunch of things that are mostly pertaining to hunting. You know, private land or lightly pressured ground or managed ground. We talk a little bit about some habitat, but mostly it’s patterning deer. Mostly it’s you know, timing your hunts, planning your hunts, you know, dealing with certain circumstances when you’re on standing you see a deer do this, or you have a hunter on a neighboring property doing that. A bunch of different questions along those lines, stuff that’s been super relevant to me when I’m hunting some of my private permission places, like I’ve got an eighty acre piece I have permission on, I’ve got another twenty acre piece I’ve got permissioned on. I hunt another forty. So a lot of the questions that I asked are scenarios that would be relevant to me on a twenty or forty, but Terry could also have relevance to it on a one hundred acres or a four hundred acres, or whatever your search situation might be. I think you’ll be able to take some of the things we learn here today through Terry’s stories and Terry’s kind of thought process for all of this and apply it to your own hunting situation. So that’s the plan. That’s we’re going to get to here today. It’s a great episode, it’s a fun episode. I don’t want to belabor the point I think we should get right to it. I will just give you a couple quick reminders. Number One, we have the Back forty podcast now. It is a limited run mini series on the Wired Hunt Feed. Please check that out if you haven’t already. It features one question per episode answered by eight different experts, is hosted by my buddy Ja Koefer. I think you’ll enjoy it if you haven’t yet, so check that out. It’s on this same feed. Number two, the Wired Hunt hat I’m wearing right now is still for sale as far as I know, over on the Mediator store, so check that out. I’m a big fan. I appreciate all of you guys showing your support by picking up one of these two and without any further ado, how about we just get to the episode today. It’s a good one. Like I said, please enjoy my chat for this what would you do Gauntlet with mister Terry Drewy all right joining me again in the show is mister Terry Drewy. Welcome back, Terry, Thank you. How are things really good? I’m at that phase of the year.

00:03:50
Speaker 3: I imagine you’re.

00:03:51
Speaker 2: Like you’re like me in this case where I have two things rising in parallel. One is that steady excitement and anticipation of the season arriving very soon. But then right in line with that is my panic about all the things I need to get done before the season gets here.

00:04:10
Speaker 3: That couldn’t have been any better said, That’s exactly what we’re doing right now. I know the season is going to be long and it’s somewhat arduous, so we’re trying to wind down and get all those things out of the way that we know we’re not going to have time for once it starts September fifteenth in Missouri, our archery season. So from that date forward till January fifteenth, it’s a grind and everything else gets put on hold, if you.

00:04:35
Speaker 2: Will, yes, yes, so yeah, So that all being said, Terry, I want to be respectful of your time and the fact that you’ve got a lot going on. So today we’re just going to jump right into the main event, which, as you know, as we talked about beforehand, is this kind of what we call the what would you do? Gauntlet? And I ran your brother through this a couple of years ago, and I thought it would be interesting to give you most of the same questions. So if folks wanted, they can go back and listen to the episode with Mark and then listen to the episode with you and see how the two of you might do things the same are different, So that might be a little interesting side project for people to do. Some of the questions are different, so they’re not all gonna line up.

00:05:25
Speaker 3: For what it’s worth, his scenarios are always right, just so you know he’s He’s always right no matter what.

00:05:35
Speaker 2: I know. People like that, So so yeah, it might be interesting to see that this first question is a little bit different than one that I gave Mark. So you’ve got a you’ve got open runway on this one with nothing to compare against. But here’s here’s the scenario. Tare Imagine that you just picked up a forty acre property, and it’s a square forty acres unimproved raw. It’s mostly tillable, with just two small fingers of cover extending out into your forty acre field. Okay. The neighboring property, though, has got a lot of cover, a lot of good things going for it, and you imagine that that’s probably where a lot of these deer bedded. You have picked this property up though, in late August, so you only have a handful let’s say, two weeks in August and two weeks in September until your September fifteenth opening day there in Missouri, So you’ve got one month. What would you do in this four week window that we have before the season opens to try to improve your chances of getting a mature buck to come to your side of the line and spend a little bit of time there and imagine you know, yeah, I’ll leave with that. What would you do in this four weeks to try to improve your scenario?

00:06:53
Speaker 4: So is this forty acres of tillable?

00:06:55
Speaker 3: Is it in the Midwest where it would be planted in either corner beans by chance?

00:07:01
Speaker 2: Yes, so I’ll say it’s a Missouri and yes, it’s going to be corner beans right now, now.

00:07:05
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, if that’s the case. If it is corn, it automatically gives you a veil an apron that you can slip into your spot undetected. And the first thing I do, obviously is called the farmer. And you know, if you’re if if you if he has the piece, it’s the same farmer that’s actually farming the tillable, then you obviously you want to make you want to make contact with him and find out if you can purchase some of that standing crop. Whether it be beans or corn, it doesn’t matter. Corn gives you that veil or that apron where you can slip in there without going detected.

00:07:41
Speaker 4: You know, you’ve got the wall of cover.

00:07:44
Speaker 3: I’d really be careful on wind direction, you know, depending on how that forty acre lays, and then how those two little bitty you know, patches a timber extend out into that I’m assuming that’s a ditch or some type of revetment that’s carrying the water. You know, they can’t plant it, obviously, but it’s not uncommon for deer to bed in there, even though the neighbor may have all that betting if the food is right there, depending on morning or evening. You know, you’d really really want to be careful about sliding in there. I would use the carn and if he would let you, if he would let you take out one row, we do what we call a guest row, where you can slide in and around those corn fields without making any noise.

00:08:27
Speaker 4: If he’ll let you take one row of carn.

00:08:29
Speaker 3: Out where you can slide in there without touching any of the leaves which out without making any noise, and get into a spot, I would place a blind out in the middle of that field. Whether it be corn or beans. Carn gives you a little more cover. Beans will still do the same thing, and it’s not uncommon for deer to be bedded in the beans. When you start getting to that latter part of the season, the carn is turning, so they may or may not be in there. Beans would still be green, so they could be in there. So there’s a little bit of a different scenario between corn and beans, obviously, But I would do whatever I could about buying a standing crop so that once he comes in and he harvests the rest of the carn or the rest of the beans, I’d make dog unsure that I had my blind place, so that depending on what the prevailing wind is for that particular spot and how it lays. You know, you want to be able to slide in there, you know, either in a cover of darkness, which then you’ve got to worry about sometimes bumping deer off the field if it’s already been harvested. But I would make sure that I had a blind place over that food that I purchased. I’d try and get a half acre or maybe an acre if he would be willing to sell it. And sometimes if it’s tucked along the edge of the timber, it’s not that great anyway, meaning there’s been a lot of browse pressure. You know, the roots from the tree line will suck some of that moisture out. So it’s always a little bit suspect as far as you know what type of crop you’re going to be buying. But oftentimes they’ll sell that crummy crop in lieu of their best standing corner, their best standing beans. But that’d be the first thing I do, is buy a standing crop, and I would try and make sure that I could slide in there and until he harvests. Now, once you harvest that carn, then you’re going to have an open field behind you, so you’d be able to access it readily. Same way with the beans. Once he harvests the beans, you got an open field, you’re gonna be able to access readily. But that’d be that would be what I would do, And i would sit it of a of a morning with a setting moon and maybe catch them. And I’m going to say setting moon where it might be setting at eight a thirty nine, nine thirty. I’d go in there at four or four thirty in the morning and try and catch them nibbling just a little bit before that moon sets and they go back to bed. Would not be uncommon to see embedded in those ditches that you talked about, those little bit of revetments. Beans might be a little bit different there. I would want a rising moon in the afternoon and evening, especially if they’re still green, right before they start to defoliate, so you’d want to get in there early. But i’d want to see when that moon is coming up in the afternoon and evening at three, three alreaty four o’clock, I’d want to be sitting there and try and catch them coming in to get a little bit of a bite on those green soy beans, so carn I’d be there in the mornings.

00:11:09
Speaker 4: Beans, I’d probably be there in the evening.

00:11:13
Speaker 2: Now, what if I threw one more curveball in here for you? And this might be a good thing in your mind, this might be a bad thing. But let’s say that this place that you purchased was not already planted. They left a fellow, so the previous owner did not plant this year. So now when you pick up this farm, now it’s just a forty acre field of overgrown weeds. How is your answer different.

00:11:35
Speaker 3: Substantially, but with the same frame of mind, I would use all that overgrown cover as a bedroom.

00:11:45
Speaker 4: I probably wouldn’t do a lot with that.

00:11:47
Speaker 3: I would maybe tuck some food plots, and I would probably go with a green food source, either biologic radishes or winter bulbs and sugar beets. I would try and tuck it close to the timber. I would probably go a little bit bigger rather than the corn and beans. I would maybe go with an acre and a half or two acres, something almost like a destination field, but not quite, to try and suck more deer out out of the neighbors cover that you were talking about, but I would not be surprised that if you wouldn’t be holding several deer. If he left it follow and it was grown up, I would expect to see a few deer bedded out in there. And in the mornings that could be a robber room, an absolute playground where you’d want to where you’d maybe want to stay off of that food a little bit and use it as an observation spot. I would probably do a little bit of observation first and watch where they’re coming out, how they’re getting to and from. But they I could see them, particularly during the rut in the first ten days of November, I could see them running all over that standing field. I would be tickled to death to have that scenario in all reality. And then in the evenings i’d hunt those green food sources a little bit closer to the timber.

00:12:55
Speaker 2: Sounds like you’ve got this is no challenge at all for you, Terry. This is an easy, wonderful scenario. Sounds like in your view, I love it. Well.

00:13:05
Speaker 4: I guess you mess up enough, you’re bound to learn something.

00:13:08
Speaker 3: Over the years, we’ve screwed up every scenario possible.

00:13:13
Speaker 2: Right there with you, Okay, I want to pivot a little bit, Terry. Let’s let’s put you back home on one of your your main you know farms, the owner lease, and imagine that you have a buck this year that is truly top top tier for you. This is a buck that would be, you know, right up in the category of like the biggest year you’ve ever got to hunt. So you’re very excited about him, and you’ve done all the all the homework leading up to opening day, got your cameras, You’ve got your property laid out just perfect, You’ve you’ve dotted your eyes and crossed your t’s. You have photos of him leading up to opening day. Let’s say maybe three out of six days he daylights leading up to opening day. So things are looking very good. But when you look at your five day forecast, the first couple days of the season are very hot. Let’s say eighty degrees your first two to three days of the season. What do you do. Do you hunt the first couple of days regardless of that heat because all the history of the last couple of days have been so good, or are you going to wait and do something different? What are you doing that scenariotire?

00:14:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, you just painted a picture of a deer that we killed a couple of years ago, almost identical to what you’re saying. And because of his rack and because of the close proximity to some public roads, some county roads, I literally piled in after him and hunted the devil out of him.

00:14:47
Speaker 4: I really did. And that’s something we rarely do.

00:14:50
Speaker 3: Mark and I are really really weird about not over hunting a spot because every time you go into that spot and you and you have to leave the spot, almost departures works worse than entrance because the deer on the field and you got to clear the field, You’ve laid down a cent trail. YadA, YadA, YadA. So we absolutely hate over hunting a spot. But when you get a record book type deer or the biggest deer you ever have an opportunity at harvesting, you change your tactics just a little bit. And there are several people in the outdoor industry that have killed giants, and those guys have one common denominator.

00:15:28
Speaker 4: They’re all pretty aggressive.

00:15:31
Speaker 3: You know, they mash in Stan Potts, Jay Gregory, Mark Drury, Lee Lakowski. You know those guys have been don Kisk. Those guys have been killing giants for thirty years. And that common denominator is they know when to mash in and when not to. But they all mash in, they all get in on them, and they.

00:15:50
Speaker 4: Get them dead.

00:15:51
Speaker 3: So I would get pretty aggressive, and I did that with this particular deer. I hunted a spot over and over and over. It was eighty five or ninety degrees. We were inside of a blind because this is where we were getting his picture.

00:16:06
Speaker 4: It was hot.

00:16:07
Speaker 3: It was a little bitty tiny water hole, and this blind is not far from the water hole, and we went the extra mile. We left the windows closed, so it’s one hundred and forty degrees inside this thing. We’re sweating like no tomorrow. We took a cooler with ice in it and took some fans to try and pull a little bit of cool air out of there, which didn’t work at all. It might have lowered the temperature maybe two degrees. So we were literally miserable every day. But we hunted him for eleven or twelve days, almost religiously, out of that same spot.

00:16:44
Speaker 4: And we just don’t do that, we never do that.

00:16:46
Speaker 3: But I mashed in there because we kept getting pictures of him, and said if we continue playing this cat and mouse game, We’re going to get an opportunity. He was such that we had one encounter with him in eighty five or nine ninety yards, saw him another evening at you out there at a distance.

00:17:04
Speaker 4: So we were in the roundhouse.

00:17:06
Speaker 3: We were close, but I mashed in and stayed in on him and we finally killed him. And we just normally don’t do that. I’m one of those guys that usually sits back and studies. I’ll study him and go, Okay, he’s slipped up here, he’s slipped up there.

00:17:19
Speaker 4: Here’s where I can kill him.

00:17:21
Speaker 3: But we knew where he was going every day for the most part because of our camera information. We were using stealth cams. We were using one of those revolvers. We had it in the middle of the water hole, so we were getting pictures of him around all edges and all that stuff of the water. And we said, if we continue going back to this spot, we’re going to get a chance. And we did, and that’s how we killed him.

00:17:40
Speaker 2: Wow, what about this kind of makes me think of another scenarre with a buck like this. Imagine that you have a buck that you know made it through the past season. You get a picture or two of him throughout the summer that makes you realize, oh, yeah, he made the big jump. He’s going to be that kind of deer that really I want to put all my chips in on. But it’s incredibly infrequent. He went from being a homebody. In the past, let’s say two three years, you’ve seen this buck go from three to four to five or four to five to six, whatever it is, and he’s always been all over your place. But this year in the summer different than every other year. Now, it’s just like a couple signs of life. But then ghost tone. What do you do leading into opening day? Different? With that being the case, do you scramble things? Do you change camera positions? Do you put on a full blown offensive to find out where he is now? Or are you still still going to hang back and wait for opening day expecting him to come back to some sense of normalcy.

00:18:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, that scenario is substantially different than the last one. That this one would be we would be studying this chess match is a lot different, and we really really live and die by our camera information. So I would go back last year’s information, the year before that, and maybe the year before that and find out where he was at on October twenty seventh or October twenty eighth, wherever those pictures popped up, whatever date they were, whether it be November the eighth, you know, November seventeenth, you know. And I would bank on going to that spot on that day if I had the right wind, or I would be in a close proximity, or I would hang another set so that I could get in that roundhouse. But I would be exactly one year later or two years later, I would be in the exact same spot where he was two years ago or the previous year.

00:19:38
Speaker 4: And we’ve We’ve killed a lot of deer doing that.

00:19:40
Speaker 3: I swear there are creatures a habit and you can’t believe that they even show up, but within a day or so, they oftentimes will revisit that spot. So lack of information is difficult. But if you’ve got a history with him, then you’re still in the game.

00:19:57
Speaker 4: You still have a chance.

00:20:05
Speaker 2: So I’ve found myself in that scenario too, and I’ve gone that same route you just described, where I’ve tried to lean on historical patterns what he did the previous year or the year before that. But what I have found for the circumstances that then like turn me into another bow is when the weather and wind conditions don’t match up with what he did. So I’m sitting there trying to weigh Okay, what matters more the date on the calendar the fact that last year and the year before that he was very active from October twentieth to twenty third. Okay, so that should tell me I should be hunting him hard on October twentieth to twenty third. But what if this year on that window, I have really warm credit temperatures or I have like a funky wind that we usually never have in that scenario, what’s more important to you that date on the calendar, looking at the historical trend or the subpower weather conditions.

00:20:59
Speaker 3: Well, that’s a coin toss, it really is, because typically Mark and I live and die by wind, and if we don’t have the right wind, we just won’t go to a spot. Now, if we have a blind like a hawk or a muddy that you can close it up tight, you know, and we’ll go in there. We’ll put extra extra seal around the door and extra seals around the windows.

00:21:21
Speaker 4: And you know, we’ll tighten them up.

00:21:23
Speaker 3: But because if he’s been there a year in advance, there’s a really good chance you may get an eyeball on him and seeing that year later. But the last thing you want to do is bump him out of there, so you you know, the wind particularly access if you kind of got an idea where he’s betting just a little bit of an inkling, then you really got to be careful about getting in there and not bumping him out before you even get to your set, you know, or your spot tree standard be tough. You know, if you’ve got hot weather conditions and wind is wrong, you know, then you’re stuck out there and your scent might be you know it depending on the thermals or what the ten are doing, but temperaures thermost might be dropping down to where he’s bedded. So you know, that’s a that’s a tough scenario. But we we typically live or die by the wind, and I’d say we probably wait and go a little later in the season when when the conditions were right. We would probably say and I know Mark would say, no, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to bump him and screw him up. I’ll wait for another opportunity. And unless we have a blind in the right spot and we can close it up. Mark does that all the time, where they lock in there and it’s one hundred and forty degrees inside, they’re sweating like you know, no tomorrow. So I’ve seen him do that too, depends how big the deer is.

00:22:42
Speaker 2: You guys have really specialized, I think in a certain way with making decisions around timing, you know, with with determining whether now is the time to mash in or if now’s the time to hang back and be a little bit careful. So I want to run a couple mid October scenarios past you. I feel like from the outset looking in, you guys have historically been very conservative with that October lull mid October timeframe, but maybe in more recent years a little bit more aggressive in certain scenarios. So I want to toss two out there and see what your thoughts would be. Number One, imagine it’s mid October, we’ll say October fifteenth, and it is a great moon for an evening hunt, but mild weather, warmish, mild weather kind of subpar on that front. How would you approach that hunt? How good of a stand would you hunt? What’s your what’s your plan for that scenario? And for people who maybe aren’t familiar, could you also give us a brief explanation of how you look at the moon and what means a good moon versus a bad moon.

00:23:46
Speaker 3: Well, that that scenario, we’ve hunted that, you know, a gazillion times that that perfect moon and have been you know, stemy, you know, and not have not seen what we expected to see because of the weather can do that you just described. But in conversely, we’ve also seen giants that get up on their feet even though it might be eighty degrees and you’re going, why are they out there? You can’t understand why they’re in the middle of a green beanfield or why they’re out on a cloverfield and it’s eighty five degrees and.

00:24:17
Speaker 4: The flies they’re all you know around them and all that jazz.

00:24:20
Speaker 3: So there’s a chance that you may see or kill that the biggest year of your life if the moon is right. And what do I mean when we’re talking about the correct moon that you’re referring to When it is rising in the afternoon and the moon’s dislike the sun, it rises in the east sets in the west, but when it’s rising in the afternoon and it coincides with their normal feeding pattern. And I like to say that if it’s coming up about two or two thirty in the afternoon, so that by four o’clock, you know, the moon is already up in the sky. And I prefer a waxing moon, where it’s waxing full in lieu of wane in little waning to where it’s going to go into dark of the moon. Dark of the moon for us is dreadful. Full moon for us is money, always has been, always will be. And I’m going to guess at about eighty five to eighty seven percent of all the bucks we’ve ever killed historically are in and around the full moon, you know, within a number of days waxing or waning. And that’s data, that information is correct. We watch it each and every year. How many of them get killed in and around the full moon. Dark of the moon is usually pretty bad for us, really really poor. Is it the style that we hunt? Maybe, you know, because we may not be in their bedroom or something. A lot of times we’re out on that food source where they’ve got to get up on their feet and they come to it. So I’m not saying that you can’t kill one dark of the moon, because you certainly can, and we’ve done it, but we’ve just had better success on waxing full moon or a waning full moon. So I would love to see October fifteenth a waxing waxing full within a day or two, rising about two in the afternoon or two thirty, and even though it’s eighty or eighty five degrees, I’d probably still hunt it, and I would try and get it on a correct wind. You know, if I’m hunting a tree stand, I want to be in a correct wind. If I’m in a blind we’re going to keep it closed up, completely shut, and then sit over that food source with the windows shut. A bad moon a little bit different if it’s if it’s a waning moon or going to dark of the moon, but it’s still rising, because it can still be rising at two or two thirty in the afternoon, but it’s a dark of the moon or waning I probably would not I probably would not go sit that food source.

00:26:36
Speaker 4: I would wait. I would wait till I have the correct moon.

00:26:39
Speaker 2: So so to the first scenario, so so good moon, bad weather, and let’s imagine we have like four tiers of stands of ambush locations. A tier you know maybe if it’s still numbers tier one, two, three, four. So tier one is our absolute best spots for that particular day and wind and on down. With that scenario, good moon, bad weather, what tier location would you be picking with that set of circumstances.

00:27:08
Speaker 3: I had picked two or three, I probably would not go to my best spot, not yet, not until I knew if that if you had given me the conditions where the wind or the temperature was maybe ten degrees below average, I’d have.

00:27:21
Speaker 4: Been at number one.

00:27:22
Speaker 3: I’d have been in my number one spot, but with it being twenty or thirty degrees above average, yeah, maybe even three or four.

00:27:29
Speaker 2: You know, let’s flip flop it. So let’s say lousy moon, but slamming cold front, just the cold front of cold fronts on October fifteenth, but the moon is dead wrong. What’s your thought process? What do you do in this scenario? And then give me your tear.

00:27:48
Speaker 4: There too.

00:27:48
Speaker 3: I would probably switch up on the tier a little bit, but you know, those those cold fronts, Mark and I live and die by it. We always say the temperature Trump’s moon, and it does if you get the temperatures and their ten or fifteen degrees below normal, and you’ve got a major northwest coming in or a northeaster coming in. Then I would I would set a food source and I would hunt it. But because we’re getting to be such big babies, i’d be in a blind, I’d have the window shut. We’d be comfortable. I wouldn’t have to worry about sweat running down my back, so you know, we’d still be on a food source even though it’s a crappy moon with the temperatures, because temperatures do trump moon.

00:28:31
Speaker 2: Did you make a point to try to want to hunt more from a tree stand last year or the year before, Yes, I did.

00:28:38
Speaker 3: I did, and we get such feedback market that people said, you’re getting away from your roots and the way you used to do it and all that. And I absolutely love hunting out a tree stand, always have, always will.

00:28:50
Speaker 4: So we did do that, and I hunted it. I had a pretty good deer.

00:28:54
Speaker 3: Hunted him forty seven or forty eight days out of a tree, and I’ll be damned, we went to a blind one night. I killed him the first night I sat there, no joke, killed him the first evening We sat there, which tells you number one, that the blinds are in the right spots. You know, we’ve got him in the right spots, and the deer creatures a habit, we kind of know where they’re going to go. But I intentionally hunted tree stands trying to kill him, and I should have had him dead. I had him one morning, which I love hunting mornings, and that’s my perfect scenario is hunting the morning, crystal clear twenty twenty five degrees thermost going up a setting moon, and I had him at twenty five yards and didn’t get him dead. I was on the wrong side of the tree, or he was however you want to look at it. He was wide open for the camera guy and he could have killed him ten times over. But make a long story, shark, I should have killed him that morning.

00:29:45
Speaker 2: And didn’t, Heartbreaker, But you did. You did get it done later, So.

00:29:49
Speaker 3: I did get it done. Yeah, the first night I sat a blind the very first night we sat it line and killed him.

00:29:55
Speaker 2: It was It was funny though, because I saw that that episode and I noticed I was like, what feels different. I was like, oh, wow, it’s it’s because there’s all these tree stand shots and it was great. It was great to see you in the woods. It was great to see in the tempera.

00:30:07
Speaker 3: I love that and we’re going to do it again this year.

00:30:09
Speaker 4: Yeah. Forrest and I are both big tree stand guys.

00:30:12
Speaker 3: I love. As matter of fact, it’s a hell a lot easier to kill a deer out of a tree than.

00:30:17
Speaker 4: It is out of a blind.

00:30:18
Speaker 3: All these windows, right, they can say anything they want to, but what can go wrong will go wrong. When you’re hunting out of a blind. It’s like having a straight jacket on. Now with a gun or a crossbow, yeah, that’s a little bit different. But boy, when you’re hunting, hunting with a bow ar tree tackle, I’m telling you, it’s not easy.

00:30:35
Speaker 4: So I would much rather hunt out a tree.

00:30:38
Speaker 2: It’s just it feels claustrophobic in those blinds. Sometimes when you’re in a stand and you can just look around and you see everything, that’s that freedom is pretty nice.

00:30:46
Speaker 3: That range of motion, you know, being able to swing is just oh yeah, you know, I call it into your hand and away from your hand. Forrest is right handed, I’m left handed, Mark’s right handed, Matt’s right handed.

00:30:57
Speaker 4: So we set our sets differently.

00:30:59
Speaker 3: For a lefty than we do righty and bull riders talk about it all the time, into your hand or away from your hand. If you’re going into your hand, I can swing right almost completely behind me, but I can’t swing left, and vice versa. For a right hander, there’s just the opposite. So we we hang our sets with that in mind, so that we can go into our hand, meaning I could I can turn this on the stand, yeah you know, and shoot that way. But I can also turn this way and literally almost shoot behind you. So we set them accordingly for that, depending on the trail or the food plot or whatever we’re setting over.

00:31:32
Speaker 2: Makes sense, all right, This is a little bit of a shift away from what we’ve been talking about, but maybe not entirely, because this is in addition to moon and temperature, you guys have broken up. Actually, all of these things are all in line with your themes now that I think about it. You you’ve talked about the different phases of the season, right, and you guys have done a great job teaching a lot of folks about how the season might be broken up into these micro chunks.

00:31:59
Speaker 3: Right.

00:31:59
Speaker 2: You talked about your thirteen different phases. Let’s consider a scenario in which your expected phases possibly get scrambled. So let’s imagine you’re out on a hunt. We’ll say, let’s say that your brother invites you to hunt up in Iowa. And yeah, and it’s somewhere between October fifteenth and October twenty first, okay, okay, and you’re sitting on stand and this is an evening hunt, and you see a dough just getting dogged by bucks. And it’s not just the year and a half old bucks like you see a year and a half old like they do in two year old. But then you see a legit, you know, five year old on his feet really getting after it, chasing this dough. So we’ll say, over the course of an hour and a half, you see five different bucks come following that trail, and one of them was like a four or five year old type buck. But it’s October sixteenth or seventeenth or eighteenth in this scenario, what do you do? Do you hunt like it’s October fifteenth or seventeenth or eighteenth like you typically would, or is your scenario? Is your strategy going to change because of this early running type indication that you’re seeing.

00:33:14
Speaker 4: Well, historically, each and every year, October yields some really really big deer, and it’s not uncommon for I think a dough or two, depending on the moon phase, to come into Estras a little bit early. And if she’s got four or five different bucks that might be sniffing around or pushing around, nudging her around, there is a chance that she might pop early and come into Estras. So I would probably go back and hunt that. I’d hunt that scenario pretty hard.

00:33:47
Speaker 3: If I saw her and it looked like she was getting ready to come in, I would probably hunt that and hunt that and hunt that pretty aggressively. Because each and every year you see these guys killing these one eighties and one nineties, and you go.

00:33:59
Speaker 4: Damn, how do they do that? Well, that can happen that scenario.

00:34:02
Speaker 3: We’ve seen it happen in years past, where dough it just takes one and sometimes that first available Estras dough will always have a giant they sniff them out before all the young bucks do. Now, there’s a big difference between a year and a half nudging her and two year old nudging her, because the bucks are always ready. The moment they drop that velvet, they’re ready to go. The difference is the does are not, so you kind of got a look at the moon phase. When did it wax full? It’s not uncommon if it waxes in and around the tent, you know, then seven to ten days after that first waxing full, there’ll be some does that pop. It’s just not a lot, but it’s a few. But when it does, boy, it creates a frenzy around them. So I would hunt that pretty hard.

00:34:45
Speaker 2: And would you just go right back to that same place that you saw them, or would you hunt in some different spot knowing what you know in some other.

00:34:54
Speaker 3: Way that time of the year, she’s not traveling real far. My guess is she’s a bed to food is probably fairly close there. Usually there’s a mass crop in and around that time of year, which screws everything up because they’re all over in the timber. But let’s say, for example, that you have a terrible mass crop that year and all of a sudden, you know, either the soybeans or a green food source, whether it be clover or you know, biologic radishes, winter bulb of sugar beets, And if she’s on that pretty heavy, I’d go right back to that spot where she’s frequenting, you know, and try and catch her coming back to food.

00:35:28
Speaker 2: Yep, yep. Okay, let’s go advance the calendar ten days or so. Let’s say it’s October twenty eighth, and you’re hunting your main farm, one of your main farms, where you have a just a really dialed setup. You’ve got your food plot architecture, you’ve got either a stand or a B line set up just so on this inside corner maybe, and you’ve got a fake scrape tree out there, and everything’s dialed really nicely for this location. You’re sitting there hunting and you see three different bucks out of range, all doing basically the same thing. So we’ll say they’re ninety five yards from you, but they all go passing through this other you know, this other corner off in the distance. Three bucks all doing the same thing. One of them is a four year old. Let’s say, what do you do based on that intel? Do you stick it out where you’re at because it’s so well built and you believe that you know things are going to go your way eventually and they’re going to come your way, or would you say there’s something going on over there, I need to, you know, make a move, make a change, adjust.

00:36:40
Speaker 4: I would I’d stay where I’m at.

00:36:42
Speaker 3: I’d hold pat because we’ve had such history with ours, particularly if it’s on one of our main farms, We’ve had such history with those spots, and you know at that at that time, if even if it is a four year old, let’s say it’s a five year old that walk through there, I probably wouldn’t adjust. I’d stay where I’m at, and on the fact that we’re going to catch a maturityer going if it’s an inside corner or an outside corner, or a fringe, you know, let’s say it’s corn to beans or corn to green, green to grain, I would probably stay there and just say historically we’ve had too good luck here, We’re not going to change.

00:37:16
Speaker 2: Is your answer different if this is not one of your main farms, and instead this is a new farm, this is a new place you picked up, it’s the lease, first year hunting it. You still have a really good dialed spot you think you’re in, but you don’t have years and years worth of worth of intel. Does that change things or no.

00:37:33
Speaker 3: That does change things because we’ve been in the wrong spot a lot, So then I might mash in or I might wait until I saw enough traffic there, enough history there, and then I would probably make the move. But I probably wouldn’t do it on just one one case or one scenario. I would look at it, maybe an entire season and maybe two seasons before I finally made the move. And that’s you know, there’s a lot of guys that are pretty agressive that would mashed in day one and killed a deer there. I’m a little bit different. I’ll stay back and watch and watch and watch and study and log it all away, and then when I make the move, I know it’s the right move. So I may wait two seasons. And we’ve done that. Hell, we’ve had farms where we’ve moved stuff three years later, four years later and said, you know what, we should have done this two years ago.

00:38:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, I’ve been there too. All Right, I’m gonna throw out a snare that’s close to home because it’s one that happened to me recently, and I’m curious how you would tackle this one. Let’s say your main hunting spot had two legit shooter bucks that you had multiple years of history, three years of history of both of these bucks, but they are the only two bucks you were interested in shooting, and they have been, you know, all through summer, very consistent. You’re seeing them over and over. Like I said, you have three years of past history. Both of these bucks have been homebodies. Okay, season opens and they disappear. You get sign of life pictures of one of them twice, once in late October, once in early November. But that’s it. So you know months of the season. More than a month of the season has gone by. Now mostly they have disappeared, but you have this glimmer of hope that they might be alive because you’ve gotten these couple little random dots. I guess it’s sort of similar to the first question I asked you about summer bucks. But how would you tackle this scenario in which it feels like at times you are hunting an animal that might not even exist anymore, But at other times you’re thinking, well, any day now, because he’s still out there somewhere. What happened? I don’t know what happened? So many question marks? What do you do with that circumstance?

00:39:49
Speaker 4: Did you have history with him the previous year.

00:39:52
Speaker 2: Three years of history with them being homebodies in season, so they are all during the season. Okay, but this year they go disappear.

00:40:00
Speaker 3: Pile in on the one that you the one that showed back up. You know, if you’ve got history with him and you’ve had some camera camera information, particularly that camera data, boy, I would I would try and really really mash in on him. He’s there, he might just be moving, you know, very very small circle. If he’s gotten a little bit older, his you know, his home core might have got just shrunk down a little bit. But I would mash in on him at that point. Yeah, particularly that time of year, because all it takes is just one one moment in time. If you if you kind of had an idea where he was betting, that would help, yeah, so that you’re not putting your wind out over the top of him, you know.

00:40:39
Speaker 4: But I would, I’d get pretty aggressive with him.

00:40:41
Speaker 2: At what point do you ever pull the plug on a dear and like.

00:40:45
Speaker 3: Just totally find out the find Yeah.

00:40:49
Speaker 2: Some of my question though, is like a situation where you, let’s say you never get that proof of life picture where he’s always been there and now they’re gone, Like how long does it take you to not see a buck to be like, okay, he must be dead because I always find myself battling with this one.

00:41:06
Speaker 4: That happens to us more often than not.

00:41:10
Speaker 3: I can’t tell you how many deer have disappeared and we don’t know. Did coyotes drag him down, did a neighbor kill him? Do they get poached? Do they just travel five miles seven miles away? Did another deer run them out? Push them out? You know those four year olds. If you’ve got a lot of four year olds on your farm, or even three year olds for that matter, they’ll push deer out.

00:41:28
Speaker 4: So that happens very very often.

00:41:31
Speaker 3: And years ago I would give them a little more time. But now, because of all the cameras that we run and the camera information, if you don’t have him one season, or he falls off one season, and then you don’t have him the next, I as much as write them off and say they’re just they’re not coming back.

00:41:51
Speaker 4: They’re just not Now.

00:41:53
Speaker 3: It’s not uncommon for all of a sudden them to pop up somewhere out of the clear blue sky. But that’s a rare that’s a rare event for them to show up at age nine or ten or something. It just rarely happens. Depending on the side of the parcel you’re hunting. You know, let’s say it’s one hundred acres, you know, a pretty good chance a neighbor shot him, or maybe even four or five neighbors over and you don’t get to hear about it. That’s that’s pretty typical. But I anymore, I give up on him a little, a little quicker than I used to. I always had that hope, But we had a giant deer that disappeared on us. And still that one hurt. Still don’t know what happened to him, Never hurt him dead, never found him, walked, walked, walked trying to find him, you know, never found him, and he just disappeared. I still don’t know what happened to him. He was a giant, giant, big, big so but you got it at some point, And and my farm manager and I talk about it all the time we go. You know, we’d sure like to know what happened to him. You just want to know what happened. Did did somebody kill him, did they get hit on the road, did he get poached?

00:42:55
Speaker 4: Even if he got poached, I’d at least.

00:42:57
Speaker 3: Like to know what happened to him.

00:42:58
Speaker 2: Just yeah, yeah, with the with the deer I was mentioning. In my scenario, I kept on holding on hope and like thinking, like, all right, it’s just you know, the cameras aren’t telling me the whole story. So he historically he’s been in here. So I kind of did what you said, I was mashing. I kept on, you know, hunting his historic time frames and pushed into like where he would be at, where the dough should be, and and just never never showed back up. And one of the two I ended up finding out did get killed. So I have confirmation that one got killed first week of the season, so that explains why he disappeared off the map. But the second buck, I still have no idea. No neighbors have told me what happened. Uh so I don’t know. Probably probably dead, but who knows.

00:43:48
Speaker 3: Well, it’s gut ranching because you just don’t know. So there’s always there. You do, always hold out that hope, but at some point you go, well, I got to move on.

00:43:56
Speaker 4: I just gotta I gotta, I gotta re you know.

00:43:58
Speaker 3: Reevaluate and and concentrate on another deer or another area or something.

00:44:02
Speaker 4: How big a parcel was that mark?

00:44:04
Speaker 2: This is eighty five acres Yeah.

00:44:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, there’s no telling how far he roamed or who might have got him.

00:44:11
Speaker 4: Yeah. Hard, hard to hard to manage eighty five.

00:44:15
Speaker 3: You got to be really, really really careful on eighty five so that you don’t we Mark and I talk about it all the time about king of intrusion. There’s a lot of guys that intrude and run the deer out that they’re hunting, and then you know they say, well, deer cast was incorrect or this was wrong. Well, sure, you just got to be those those smaller tracks. You have to be extremely extremely careful. They’re very sensitive and in and out and you better have a really really good access in and access out so you don’t do much damage.

00:44:45
Speaker 4: That’s hard, That’s hard.

00:44:47
Speaker 3: It’s a tough that’s a tough hunt, especially on a big dude, because you know, you want to go in there and you want to pile in on him, and uh, you know, wind may not always be right for you.

00:44:55
Speaker 2: Just walking on eggshells. Yeah. So here’s here’s kind of the flip side, which is, rather than having a deer that you have not seen and are wondering where he is, let’s imagine a scenario where you have a buck that you’ve been seeing all over the place. You’ve been playing cat and mouse with them all October. I’m going to put you back at home in Missouri. Now take it back. Let’s imagine you’re on Do you still have a lease in Illinois?

00:45:22
Speaker 3: Yes, you just painted a scenario that we had a deer exactly like that.

00:45:26
Speaker 2: Okay, So imagine we’re on the farm and he’s been shown up on camera. You’ve had some sightings. You’ve been bouncing back and forth cat and mouse, like he’s there, you’re almost there, you’re here, he’s just back where you were, back and forth, back and forth. But you’ve been using recent intel, you’ve been using past history with him to try to kill him on a bed to feed pattern early in the season. And then it gets into late October and you’re still tightening into like those zones near his bedding areas, let’s say, hypothetically and food of course. But now November arrives, and there’s some part of November, whether it’s November one or the fourth, or everybody says something different, but that you pick the date when in your mind things switch and all of a sudden, like the rut is on. Do you how do you change your strategy even though you’re still after this one buck. At what point do you switch from like hunting that buck to hunting the doze, or to hunting a standard rut feeding or sorry, a rut, you know, funnel location or something like that. What do you do in that? I guess what I’m trying to say is what do you do when the cat and mouse game switches from the standard October cat and mouse to the rut?

00:46:38
Speaker 4: Which is a great scenario.

00:46:39
Speaker 3: You just painted a really really good scenario for a a lot of hunters, and concentrating or putting your efforts on where the does are going to be is pretty important at that time of the year. Illinois usually pops and I’m going to say like a light switch event the week prior to their firearm season when they’re fire season kicks in that week or ten days prior to that, and you may sit there for two or three days and not see squat and then all of a sudden, it’s a light switch event and there’s bucks just going all over the place. So you first and foremost, you gotta hunt it daily just to make sure that you catch it. And we had a buck exactly like what you described had picture after picture after picture hunting him three or four years Forrest ended up killing.

00:47:27
Speaker 4: It was during muzzle order season.

00:47:28
Speaker 3: It wasn’t during this period that you’re talking about, but my god, he drove.

00:47:31
Speaker 4: Us absolutely insane.

00:47:33
Speaker 3: We had conversation after conversation after conversation with one buck in mine. We put all of our eggs in that basket, and we just could not catch up with him.

00:47:43
Speaker 4: He was he was big.

00:47:45
Speaker 3: He ended up scoring I think one eighty seven or something. But we literally he would We would track our cameras the next day or that night early morning at four thirty four o’clock, we’d be up looking. He’d go two and a half miles and hit seven or eight cameras in one night, Helen, in four or five hours. He was just he was on his horse and constantly moving, and no matter where we sat, we were always in the wrong spot.

00:48:09
Speaker 4: Always we we.

00:48:10
Speaker 3: Would be here, he’d be there. We’d be there, he’d be here. It was just the scenario you painted, and we could not catch up with him. And then finally one morning we had a really really cold, frosty morning with a moon that was hanging in the sky. It wasn’t setting yet, and I went on a gut and we had some we had purchased some soybeans from the farmer, and I said, let’s let’s go to those. Let’s go to those beans. We had just gotten his picture the night before. I said, let’s go back. Let’s slip in there early and maybe we’ll get an eyeball on him. And lo and behold, we did. We finally got to catch up with him. He nibbled around on some beans, but the does were there, to your point, there were seven eight nine does that were on this field, the eating and you know, nibbling on these beans. But we had that moon still in the sky, it hadn’t set yet, had a cold, frosty morning, and they were nibbling just a little bit before they went back to bed. And that’s what the moon will do for you when it’s the right moon. It holds them up there just a little bit longer before they go back to bed, because oftentimes you look at your cameras five am, five point fifteen, five twenty five point thirty, they’re head into bed. Well, when a moon’s right and we’ve got cold temperatures, the scenario was just perfect, and we just happen to make the right gut call that morning.

00:49:22
Speaker 4: But that scenario you just describe is one of the toughest. It really is.

00:49:27
Speaker 3: But concentrating on dose is really a good way to play that game because you’re going to go where they go, and there’s still gonna be some bucks nudging around that period in November. So I would not be afraid to set a food source of a morning with the moon hanging in the sky.

00:49:43
Speaker 2: Okay, imagine this same situation, the same buck here after you keep on chasing them around, but you’re being smart about it. We get to the night before gun season, the day before gun season, when you might think, or at least when I look at when gun season opens here in Michigan, at least I I look at that as like a light switch event where everything’s going to change. I’ve always thought that last day before the gun season is like different kind of day. What do you do on that day before gun season when you’re still trying to kill that one buck you’ve been after all year and hasn’t happened yet. What do you do on that day? And what’s different if anything?

00:50:18
Speaker 3: Well, believe it or not, because firearm season is opening and it is a reshuffling of the deck, if you will. Once those once the Orange Army comes out, everything’s off the table. It all goes out the door, or all that studying and chess match and all that changes. But you know, we’re to the point now we’re fearful of running or pushing a deer out, so we may lay back and not hunting. You know, if we got intel on him and he’s as a homeboy, rather than shove him out on the farm, we may lay back and just say hope, like hell, he stays, and we may pull the reins in a little bit on him and say, you know what, let’s just stay out of that area and gamble. Maybe he’ll stay here, you know, if there’s enough you know, extracurricular activity going on on the borders, on the fence lines and all that jazz, maybe he’ll he’ll stay in here. So I’d probably like a dummy, I’d probably not not go hunting.

00:51:12
Speaker 4: I wouldn’t go after him.

00:51:13
Speaker 2: What so is is that?

00:51:16
Speaker 3: Is that?

00:51:16
Speaker 2: Like is that the one day rule? Or is there a certain window before gun season when you’re like, ah, we’re gonna give it three days or two days, or like when do you start trying to preserve the sanctity of a sanctuary like that.

00:51:28
Speaker 3: Well, because they’re moving quite a bit at that period, I would I’d probably limit that to maybe two days maybe you know where, I’d let him alone and hope, like hell, they stay. Yeah, we had a deer a couple of years ago this year, was a four and a half year old, one hundred and seventy nine inch four year old. The only reason I know the neighbor shot him an opening day of firearm season. Wow, And we were trying treating him with kit gloves. We were staying out of an area, hoping that he would stay on the farm. But he didn’t. And the moment I heard the shot, the very moment, I go, well, he just killed him. It was yeah, one hundred and seventy nine inch four year old. We thought he might blow into a two hundred, you know.

00:52:07
Speaker 4: Thought. Yeah, so it happens us just like everybody else.

00:52:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sure does. Okay, here’s another one that happens to everyone that none of us are happy about. It’s November fifth, sixth and seventh, fifth is and seventh. Great days. We’ve been looking forward to them all year, except the forecast says seventy four seventy six seventy one warm days on our typically terrific days, what do you do.

00:52:39
Speaker 3: Drink? Yeah, it’s dreadful, Mark, We’ve been through those period and it’s absolutely dreadful.

00:52:47
Speaker 4: You’re thinking you’re going to see him.

00:52:49
Speaker 3: You wait, you hope, you pray, and you’re sitting there, sitting there, and they just don’t show up. They lay. All of that happens at night, you know, so much of it. When the weather and temperatures are blow average, it is exposed and you see it all. When the temperatures are ten fifteen degrees above average, it happens at night. They’re moving slow or not moving at all, and all of that red activity that you’re referring to is just it’s it goes unnoticed because you’re not able to see it. It happens at night. You see some on the cameras, but it’s we still go out, you know, we may go out a little later or whatever, but we still go out. And it’s usually first hour, at last hour when it’s warm like that, particularly first hour in the mornings, if it’s that warm, you might catch one going back to bed if the moon was right, you know.

00:53:34
Speaker 4: But man, I hate those I hate that scenario.

00:53:38
Speaker 2: Do you still hunt? You know, I feel like at least a lot of folks will look at those dates and say, oh, yes, time for like tier one locations. But do you still hunt tier one locations with those temperatures.

00:53:54
Speaker 4: But during those dates?

00:53:55
Speaker 3: Yes?

00:53:55
Speaker 4: Probably?

00:53:56
Speaker 3: Yeah. The bad part is you know you’re doing damage one in and damage coming out. That’s the part that just kills you. So you may only do it once or twice and then you’re either gonna regret it or you’re gonna be happy you did it. But chances are you’re gonna regret it if temperaures are wrong. But you know, if you catch one first hour, then I would, you know, I go in in the dark and I would sit there, and you may catch one first.

00:54:19
Speaker 4: Hour, then you’re happy you did it. But I’d probably.

00:54:22
Speaker 3: Hunt that Tier one on those days six, seven, eight, Yeah, I would.

00:54:26
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, here’s here’s a tricky one that kind of goes back to the snare we were talking about in Illinois where you’ve got this buck that’s been quite visible, You’ve been hunting them all over, you know him well, but can’t get him killed. You have a neighbor who you’ve got a good relationship with and you guys have open communication. He starts texting you and telling you like, hey, I saw that buck. I got pictures of that buck, saw him again, got pictures of him again. All of a sudden, he’s seeing and getting sightings of that buck a bunch. Does that change how you haunt him at all? What do you do in that scenario?

00:55:04
Speaker 4: Yes, it does.

00:55:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we would. We’d creep I’ll be honest, we should creep in a little.

00:55:10
Speaker 4: Yeah, we would.

00:55:12
Speaker 3: You know, if I’ve got to set on that particular area of the farm, depending on north, south east west, I would, yeah, we’d.

00:55:19
Speaker 4: We’d mash in a little bit further or closer.

00:55:21
Speaker 3: To wherever I had wherever I was set up, whether it be a tree stand or a blind, I would get just a little bit closer to that area because he more than likely is with a dough or on another dough at that period, and wherever that do is at, I’m going to try and get close to where I think she may show up, you know, either in a green food source or an acorn flat or some type of structure or bed.

00:55:45
Speaker 4: But I’m gonna get a little bit closer.

00:55:47
Speaker 3: You bet, if he’s nice enough to let me know that I’m going to be nice enough to try and accommodate.

00:55:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now do you ever worry like if you know so? A slight variation on that, What if you know that you have a neighbor that’s after the same buck you’re after, so you know that there’s competition for this buck and he’s going to be getting pressured from elsewhere. So in those scenarios, I sometimes find myself wrestling with Okay, I should be more aggressive because this other guy’s going to kill him if I don’t, so I better swing for the fences. Or I should be more conservative because I’m gonna let that guy over pressure things and I will have I will be careful, and my place will be the safe place that buck ends up after he screws it up. What do you do when you know that situation is going on?

00:56:37
Speaker 3: And I’ve heard and seen that situation from Mark and Matt myself over and over and over again, and for the most part, we’re going to probably be a little less intrusive generally speaking, we’re going to try not to push the buck out of our area. But if that guy see anyone in the regular it depends on what kind of hunter he is too, is a good hunter, is he an average hunter? Or is he a poor hunter. If he’s a poor hunter, we’re gonna let him push the deer to us. If he’s an average hunter, we’re gonna still bank on letting him push the deer to us, because if this is a seven or eight year old deer, you know, he’s he might have to be a pretty good hunter. If it’s firearm season, it’s one thing. But if he’s trying to do it with a bow, then we’re gonna go. You know what, We’re gonna bank on the fact where we’re gonna We’re gonna see if the deer come to us.

00:57:24
Speaker 2: What about this one? What if your neighbor is world class, and your neighbor has just as good of habitat, just as good as food plots, just as many trail cameras, and is filming it all too, and you’re both after a two hundred plus inch buck, How does that change things at all?

00:57:46
Speaker 3: Man? You just you just described Lee Lakowski, Stan Potts, Don Kiskey. Yeah, there’s a pile of those guys out there, those really really good hunters. Yeah. Then then out of courtesy and respect, I’d probably I probably stay where we’re at if it, you know, because what happens I see this time and time again. Everybody gets their turn, if you will. You know, one guy may kill one one year, one guy may kill a giant the next year, the following year. It kind of it kind of mother nature has a way of humbling you and equaling the playing field, if you will. And those guys are so good, those those few guys I just name, they’re so good at it that I would probably be happy for those guys because we have all been we’ve all grown up together, We’ve all done it for so long, you know, thirty five forty years of doing this stuff. I’d love to see stan Potts kill a giant because he just he goes off into orbit like a rocket. So and we love Stanley a lot Lee. You know, we’ve been buddies with Lee and Tiff for a long time. You know, I love watching them kill big deer, So out of respect and out of courtesy, I’d say that we would probably, you know, say, you know what, we’re gonna We’re gonna play our game. You’re gonna do your thing. Whoever you know, whoever kills it good for them.

00:59:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, I’ve always wondered, I know of certain I know I know of this scenario in other places, and I’ve always wondered where, you know, is there a cat and mouse gang going on not only between the deer and the hunters, but also between the two other hunters, where you know, one guy’s thinking, all right, well, I know they’ve got a lot of greens planted, so I’m going to plant more grains. Or I know that they’ve got you know, this thing going on, so I’m going to do the opposite, or I’m going to lean in, you know, or I know this person’s tendencies are to do this kind of hunt, so I’m going to gear my property towards taking advantage of that. I’ve always wondered if that ever happens. Without divulging names of people I know like this, I’ve always been curious, Well.

00:59:44
Speaker 3: My my moral high bar might be higher than someone else’s, let’s say, but I have such utmost respect for those names that I mentioned that I would be happy for them if they killed a one eighty or one ninety. I really would. I love all to death, and I would hope they would be the same way with us, but not everybody’s like that. You know, there are other people out there that may not feel the same way I do about that. But I have got a lot of respect for all of those people, all of everybody that’s in the outdoor industry that tries to get it on camera, and you know, you’re successful sometimes and unsuccessful more often than not.

01:00:22
Speaker 4: So I just have a really really high regard for everybody that does it.

01:00:26
Speaker 3: And I would bow out or not bow out, but I would hope that I could get the opportunity and be able to close the deal. The difference between a good season and a great season is killing what you shoot at. So that’s about ninety nine percent of the battle too. But if someone else killed it, I’d be happy for him.

01:00:43
Speaker 2: Okay, Moving on November tenth, you’re hunting out there on a favorite spot of yours and you see a shooter buck come in following a doll and they lock up at one hundred yards from your stand. There’s two hours of daylight left, and this buck is locked on a dough at uh yeah, one hundred yards away. What do you what do you do in that scenario? And they’re not moving like they’re locked down not moving.

01:01:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, sit tight, and I would not change my set. I wouldn’t change my strategy. I wouldn’t change my plan because it’s just as easy for him to bump her and nudge her, and all of a sudden she comes darting at you at twenty yards, So I would I’d hold pat right there.

01:01:25
Speaker 4: I wouldn’t move.

01:01:25
Speaker 3: I’d i’d let the I’d let it play out. And if I didn’t kill him one night, I’d be back there the next night. If he’s locked onto her, I’d be back there. As a matter of fact, I might be back there. I’d be back somewhere else the next morning, close to the bedroom. If he’s locked onto her, and if I didn’t see him, then I’d go back to the same spot that evening. If she’s coming to a clover field or biologic green food source or something, I’d be back there the same the next night, because she is just as apt to go right past your stand at twenty five yards.

01:01:53
Speaker 2: Will you let’s let’s uhl slight variation. Imagine that that buck is locked on the dome, but there’s slowly moving towards the food but out of range. Okay, and will you throw a call out. Ever, will you try to do anything to influence that movement or are you gonna lay off and just hope that she brings him.

01:02:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, November the tenth, I’d probably tipic the antlers a little bit, maybe grun at him pretty aggressively, snortweeze or something, just to try and turn him. If he’s if he’s got an eyesight of her, if he’s got a line of sight and he can see her, then he might try you. But if she’s out of range or something, he’s not gonna leave her. If he’s locked on, you can throw all everything with the kitchen sink at him, chances are he won’t leave her.

01:02:38
Speaker 4: There’s something about them.

01:02:40
Speaker 3: Keeping keeping an eyeball on turkey, same way they got to have an eyeball on him. But if he’s real, real mature, and he’s real aggressive, then I would I would try him. I would see what kind of body posture he had. I’d tickle him first, and if he snaps around and he acts like he’s gonna play the game, yeah, then I’d get a little more aggressive with him.

01:02:57
Speaker 2: Okay, another rutal. You’re in a zone where it’s it’s obviously on fire and as you’ve seen, like the rut can be on in one place and dead in another. Right, it could be three hundred yards apart, and it could be a totally different experience. But let’s say today you picked the spot and happen to be where it’s at. There’s a hot dough, there’s some bucks running all over. But it’s about ten am on November fourth. We’ll say, in this rut, you know, just mania and your target buck comes down wind smells you, spooks out of there, but there’s deer everywhere, it’s on fire. Still, what do you do?

01:03:43
Speaker 3: I would sit tight on November fourth. I’d sit tight even though he he caught us and boogered on us there too, it’s still that’s a little early. But he could easily pick up a dough or a dough it’s still dragging dragging by. If they’re nudge and doze around, and there’s bucks just going haywire in there, there’s a really good chance that she could easily dog right past your spot, or any other dough could dog past your spot, and a buck being right behind her. So and November fourth is just a touch on the early side where they may not be an estress yet, which is the reason they’re dogging the hell out of them. So then I definitely would stay where I’m at. I would stay pat.

01:04:26
Speaker 2: Okay, let’s let’s i’m thinking through here, how far I want to go into the future. Let’s let’s zoom to the end of the year. Let’s say it’s late season and you have had a dreadful spell of weather where you have been waiting for that cold front, that snow something to really get a crack at the buck that you’ve been after. But you can see the end of the season now in the fourteen day forecasts, and you can see that you will not get that weather pattern you’ve been hoping for before the end of the year. But you’ve been waiting to try to get your last chance at this big buck here after. Now that you know you will not get that wonderful set of weather conditions at least, how would you approach that last week or two of the late season knowing that you’re not going to get that special set of circumstances.

01:05:22
Speaker 3: It’s amazing because it sounds like you’ve been hunting with us scenario you just described. I can’t tell you how many times that’s happened. Where we’re sitting over standing corn, standing beans, and then we got crappy weather and they’re not coming to a food source. They just simply aren’t eating it. So I still hunt it. I still go there. We hope that, you know, the food will suck them in there, and it’s an attracting obviously that you know. But when it’s a scenario like you just painted, where the weather’s warm, there is no need to feed, and they’ll wait until the weather does change to where they do. You know, they do finally get it in February or March, and then all of a sudden they’re all on food. But I’ll still hunt it. We’re still gonna go. We’re gonna sit there, we’re gonna have our head in our hands, we’re gonna be pissed off, you know, and we’ll be bitching about the weather.

01:06:12
Speaker 2: Uh huh.

01:06:12
Speaker 3: And but we’re and then we go home and we’re and we’re gonna go.

01:06:15
Speaker 4: We never saw a thing.

01:06:16
Speaker 3: We didn’t see it, dear, or we saw two doughs, or we saw a spike in a dough, and so I’m still gonna hunt it. But uh, that scenario is a bad one.

01:06:26
Speaker 2: And so you would still hunt the same kind of spots. You would not change the kinds of spots, correct.

01:06:33
Speaker 4: I would.

01:06:33
Speaker 3: Yeah. By then, you know, we’re we’re strictly concentrated on food pretty much. And I would stay concentrated on food because at that time they’re still bedded close. You know, even though the weather’s warm, they’re still bedded nearby. It’s food bed bed to feed. You know that that range shrinks that time of year. So I’d still hunt that food source. And you never know, I mean, they can always just stand up out of their bed. They come, nibble for a little while, and then go lay back down, So I would still sit that spot.

01:07:02
Speaker 2: Last set of questions rapid fire. So it’s gonna be a either or answer. I’ll give you two options and you pick. We’re gonna go through this really quick, and then I’ve got one last tough scenario for you, and this will Yeah, We’ll just we’ll go with this. What matters more to deer movement? The moon or barometric pressure?

01:07:23
Speaker 4: Parametric pressure?

01:07:24
Speaker 2: Would you take a fifty yard shot at a white tail wave your bow? Yes?

01:07:28
Speaker 3: Or no? Not anymore? No?

01:07:31
Speaker 2: If you could only have one of these tools for the rest of your hunts, which would it be a set of rattling antlers or a grunt.

01:07:38
Speaker 4: Tube rattling antlers.

01:07:43
Speaker 2: If you had well, this one might be too easy for expandable or fixed play broadhead.

01:07:51
Speaker 4: Expandable.

01:07:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, should you stop? Yeah? That was gonna say very specific options. What you would choose Should you stop a buck with some kind of sound before shooting it? This is with a bow? Yes or no?

01:08:03
Speaker 4: Absolutely? Yes?

01:08:06
Speaker 2: Okay, I am in control of hunting privileges across the nation. Let’s say hypothetically, and I’m going to take away your hunting license for any state in the country for the rest of your life unless you can kill a five year old buck this year. Okay, If you kill a five year a buck this year, you get to keep on hunting as always. If you don’t, that’s your last season. The hitch is that you only get one day to do it and one stand or blind location to do it from. I would like I’d like you to pick the date on the calendar that you choose for this hunt, and then I would like you to paint me a picture of the spot you would choose exactly. This could be a real life location that you think would give you the best chance, or you can just paint a hypothetical, but give me the best date to kill this five year old buck in a very high stake situation, and then exactly what a setup you would have.

01:09:03
Speaker 3: Well, that’s that’s a toughie. That’s a tough question because we’ve got so many spots. But I’d go on camera information and our history from last year, and as we talked about earlier, we sat in tree stands over and over and over and over last year, and I had a five year old buck that was walking under us every morning, and we passed him every morning. I’d go back to that same spot. We call it it’s logging road too. It’s in the middle of my farm, smack dab in the center. It’s a lot of white oaks in and around there. It’d be November the tenth. It would be twenty five degrees, you know, thirty point three four barometer thirty point three five and rising. I’d have a southwesterly wind eight to ten mile an hour.

01:09:53
Speaker 4: We’d get in there.

01:09:55
Speaker 3: Plenty early, and I would just lock in and sit there, and he’s going to walk under and I’m gonna drill him in about seventeen yards.

01:10:02
Speaker 4: He’s gonna die on camera.

01:10:03
Speaker 2: I love it, and then you can hunt the rest of your day as a happy man. I have faith, Terry. I do believe you would get it done. I do believe it.

01:10:12
Speaker 3: Fortunately, last year he was about one twenty. This year he’s going to be about one to twenty five.

01:10:18
Speaker 2: Well, can’t you can’t eat can’t eat antlers? You can eat age, I guess because you just there’s some more meat on the bone. So there’s always that.

01:10:29
Speaker 4: Well, and we like to try and give him a chance.

01:10:32
Speaker 3: If he’s gonna blow, we think maybe he’ll do it at six, or maybe he’ll do it at seven, So we give him an opportunity. But if but if I’m going to lose a license or keep a lifetime license, I’m gonna go ahead and take him.

01:10:42
Speaker 2: Hey, I’m right there with you, Terry. What what can folks look forward to this coming season when it comes to what you guys have in the works. Is there any new projects, anything new with the deer Cast app anything that people should be keeping an eye o for.

01:10:57
Speaker 4: You know, deer Cast.

01:10:58
Speaker 3: Has been really a uh what would you call the labor of love. We have absolutely poured a heart and souls into it. We’ve got thirteen influencers in the algorithm that we feel like we’ve tweaked it and tweaked it and tweaked it to where it’s pretty dog on accurate barring no outside intrusion. You know, somebody on a four wheel or a coyote running through a guy mending fence, somebody cutting wood that can alter deer movement very very easily. But if they’re undisturbed, the Deer cast app is extremely accurate and on point as far as the predictive models as to when a white tail is going to get up on their feet and move during daylight hours, and we would we’d take it, take it to the bank because it’s worked for us extremely well. We’re continuing to improve that, you know, with the tracking features and with the rain stations and all the way points, and there’s just a wide array of things that are that are within that. Uh, you know, the daily the daily journal that’s in there each and every day. We’ve got a writers that write stories that are always interesting. People can send their information in their pictures in We love seeing what other people are killing throughout the country and when they’re killing it. That’s a great, great way to key in on when of what’s happening when you start seeing those big giants fall and you’re seeing pictures on deer Cast, pretty good chance you could say, oh, I need to be there right now. It also gives you a fifteen day predictive model where you can say, you know what, I need to take two or three days of vacation, So you can look at it ahead of time and say that, man, there’s a good or a great you know, in and around this particular period, so you can kind of plan your vacation out a little bit ahead of time. But deer Cast the predictive model changes as the weather changes. So if it goes from a great to a poor, that’s not our fault. That just meant that god God’s sense of poor weather that you described while ago, you know, a really really poor scenario, bad barometer, bad wind, you know, high temperatures and they’re just not moving. So with that, we’re still working on all the television shows and still doing a lot of stuff on YouTube. Our YouTube channel’s just been going off the charts, big numbers, and we still love doing it. I mean Mark and I both Matt Taylor, we’re just ate up with it. And White Tails have been our thing for a long long time, from early childhood on. Mark and I are just absolutely enamored with him. He always says they’re playing chess, we’re playing checkers, and he’s not wrong. We’re students of the game, and we’ll continue to learn and.

01:13:27
Speaker 4: Hope that we can help somebody else.

01:13:29
Speaker 3: That’s what we’ve all always been about, is sharing information and hoping that somebody else can kill a big deer because of what we’re sharing.

01:13:36
Speaker 2: Well, you guys have certainly lived up to that goal. You’ve helped a lot of folks out, myself included. So thank you. Thank you for that, Terry, and thanks with us Chet as always, I’ve really enjoyed him.

01:13:49
Speaker 3: I loved it too. Thank you for those scenarios. Those sounded like they were coming from an extremely, extremely professional hunter.

01:13:57
Speaker 2: Well, we’re someone who’s screwed up a lot, and it’s still trying to figure out how to learn from those mistakes. So somewhere between, maybe let’s chat again soon, Terry.

01:14:08
Speaker 3: All right, thank you, Mark.

01:14:09
Speaker 2: I enjoyed it, buddy, all right, and that’s going to do it for us today. Thank you all for joining me for today’s episode. Really enjoy my chat with Terry. Please go and subscribe to the Jury Outdoors YouTube channel. They’ve got their one hundred percent While podcast, which actually helped them start maybe like eight nine years ago. We co hosted it for a year or two. Matt and crew continue to do a great job over there, so check that out. Check off the Deercast app, the you know, Mark, Terry, Matt Taylor. They’re all doing great work. I appreciate them, have enjoyed so much of their content over the years, so check it out, give them some love, and until next time, thank you for tuning into this podcast, and stay wired to Hunt