Ep. 960: Mastering Wind to Kill Mature Bucks with Mark Drury

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on the show, I’m joined by Mark Drury, or a masterclass on all things related to wind and its impact on hunting mature bucks. All right, welcome back to the Wired Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light and their Camo for Conservation Initiative. Today we have an absolute gem of an episode. I’m joined by the one and only the mad Scientist himself, Mark Drury. Some of our very best episodes of this podcast ever over the long history of this show have been with Mark Drury. He is a wealth of information. He’s a terrific educator and communicator about deer and deer hunting. If you haven’t listened to our past episodes with him, go ahead and do that. If you want to have a true, deep, mind blowing white tail experience leading up to your next hunt, go and binge listen to some of our past episodes. Episode sixty three, which was our first one with him about predicting deer movement. I’ve listened to it so many times and had so many people reference it that I can just think of it off the top of my head. Episode sixty three is one we have a follow up to that about predicting deer movement. I think that’s called like a master class on predicting deer movement. That one’s maybe even better because it just gets right into the meat and potatoes of that. We did an amazing episode recently about patterning deer. We did another really good one about everything he thinks about in the Moment of truth and right after shots. So just go and google Wired to Hunt Mark Dreury and listen to those past episodes and then, or maybe right after what we’re about to do today, listen to this one, because this is on that same level. Today is a masterclass with Mark Dreury on win and there’s maybe nothing more important to hunting mature deer, hunting deer of any age or type than win because their number one survival tool is their nose. If you can’t beat their nose, you can’t kill them. That’s what it comes down to. Today we discuss exactly how Mark Drury uses his understanding of wind and a deer’s nose to close the distance and fail tags. So we are going to ask him, or or I do ask him, so many ridiculously nitty gritty questions about the impacts of thermals aerometric pressure, how that impacts wind and thermals. How deer use thermals, how we as hunters can use thermals, How terrain features impact thermals, How ditches and rivers and creeks and ponds impact wind and thermals. We talk through how deer use the wind to make decisions about where they bed, how they approach their bed, how they decide where they might go feed during the evening, where they go feed in the evening, how they use wind during the rut, how they use wind toscent check, how Mark thinks about all of this when choosing where to hunt on any given night, or how to account for the risk of being winded when deciding where to hunt. This is fascinating stuff. If you are a white tailed geek like I am, this episode is gonna be right up your alley. I’m just gonna get right into it. I think we should jump into this episode as fast as possible because it is a banger. It’s full of information. It will help you on your very next hunt, I guarantee you so. Thanks for tuning in. Enjoy this chat with Mark Drury. Make sure to go check out those past episodes that we did with them. They are terrific as well, and best of luck on your next hunt. All right with me on the line now is the one and only mad scientist, mister Mark Drury. Welcome back to the show.

00:03:45
Speaker 2: Mark. I’m Mark. How are you doing.

00:03:47
Speaker 1: I’m great. I gotta tell you, I’m very appreciative of the fact that you made time for this amidst the first big cold front of the year, So thank you for that.

00:03:57
Speaker 2: You know, there’s some benefits to not hunting, a lot of more warnings, and this is one of them. So we had a late night, as I indicated via my text last night, so we were not getting to stand this morning no matter what.

00:04:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the first cold front it turned up pretty well for you, it did.

00:04:14
Speaker 2: We went with three different crews last night, one in Iowa, two in Missouri. I was filming Taylor in Missouri, Coon, Dog and Wade were out together in Missouri, and then Carson and Darren were in Iowa. And I really felt like, you know, with running three crews, we would see some mature deer on their feet. Taylor and I did not. We had a good sit in terms of seeing deer, but nothing with any age. Darren and Carson the same deer. Numbers decent, but no age. And then Wade and Coon Dog have a deer that we’ve never seen while hunting. They were targeting him and we needed that win yesterday and he walks out at six and Wade gets a shot at twelve or thirteen yards and smokes this what we estimate to be at least a seven and a half year old deer. Because last year this was a farm that I had purchased after selling a couple other farms, and we put a lot of effort into the setup of this farm and the production there in and we featured it with the Dear Season twenty four quite a bit and Wade ended up taking a really nice year on that farm, but not this number one target. We felt like he was the oldest year on the farm. We never even saw him while we were hunting, and we hunted him a good bit, and based on the trail picture history I had with him, we really narrowed down this is where he daylights the most. He’s got to be bedding out this one finger ridg there’s a bunch of oaks in there, and there’s a lot of acorns there. This year, I’m sure you have a good mask crop as well, and we just needed a north wind to get in there, which anybody listening, if you’ve hunted from you know, mid September through early October, you know that those have been rare. And finally we got when last night and this guy walks out. He’s just a big, what we think is at least a seven and a half year old deer, a main frame nine point with a kicker and a giant body. I mean, the neck on this deer. I have to show you a picture. I don’t know if you can be rule this or not, but looking for sure at the neck on that deer.

00:06:19
Speaker 1: Jeez, we didn’t love and you can see those big skin rolls even when he’s not bent.

00:06:24
Speaker 2: That looks like a November deer, you know. Yeah, And uh so, I’m pretty sure he’s a he’s at least six and a half or seven and a half. Rather we thought he was six and a half last year. But there’s a good shot with perspective of weigh behind him, big big, big Missouri deer as far as Missouri dit deer go body wise and neck, and I mean, that’s that’s what you’re after. They seldom get to that age. But it was cool to go into a new farm and make it happen on the second year on what was the number one target.

00:06:52
Speaker 1: So well, it’s especially sweet. I don’t know if you feel this way, but it does seem especially sweet to me, at least when you have the hunts that you predict being like extra special. I think that this is going to be an extra special time because of X and Y, and I’m gonna have the perfect spot because of you know, A, B and C, and you have everything dialed up just right, and then it actually goes that way, which it sounds like, you know this one did. When that when the whole script goes the way you write it, that doesn’t happen too often, but when it does, it is a very good feeling.

00:07:23
Speaker 2: Case in point, we had three scripts last night, all excellent spots. One script played out and the others didn’t. So there’s still that that numbers game with white tailt hunting. You know that that du factor or not so due factor in a spot or a person or whatever it is, so that it can be a numbers game at times.

00:07:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s the truth. So so many people have been waiting for this cold front, which you know has just hit, you know, earlier this week for a lot of people, a lot of us have been dealing with warm weather. You were dealing with warm we weather leading up to this, and you still were able to find some success last week. Great. Can you tell me about that one we did?

00:08:03
Speaker 2: The highs were in the upper eighties every single day, and it was it was just really hot and lack of wind. You know, it was just every day it was three, four or five mile an hour winds, which oftentimes are quite variable, as you know. And finally we had a day where some clouds rolled in. I was watching deer cast religiously and I saw that cloud back coming. And clouds affect deer differently in the early season versus late season, especially when it’s a really hot period, and all of a sudden, the clouds shield the sun and cool things off, and I mean everything got up and moved. They were as ready for the hot weather to be over as we were. And we ended up seeing three different shooters that night. And we’d been sitting there because we had a good access in and out, and we’d been sitting there five nights. This was the fourth night in a row we had sat there, and all of a sudden, everything moved in a field that we hadn’t hadn’t seen a ton in. I mean we saw a movement, but not the shooters. And it just worked out on a buck that was again ancient, really big old buck that Taylor and I saw him once last year, but that was it, and he was actually I went in there with a buck in mine based on trail pictures that I considered to be the target in Missouri and on that farm, and then he walks out, and this year comes out. They kind of came out a different ends of the field, and then this year immediately walks him off. And when they got together, the deer that I shot, his body was twenty five percent bigger roughly, And I was like, I had this all wrong, Like I think that dear’s younger than I thought he was. And this dear walks him off, and I quickly switched my focus. You know. Kuddog was like that thing’s a tank, and he was. He walked everything off the field and then eventually came by us. And it was an easy choice when I saw his body, his head, his demeanor, you know, but uh, he was clearly a shooter, you know, a nine point main frame with a with a kicker out the front.

00:10:06
Speaker 1: Yeah that was cool.

00:10:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, cool deer, beautiful deer, big deer. And again I saw him once last year and this was the first time I’d seen him this year, so it was it was a fun huh.

00:10:15
Speaker 1: So you know you hunted that spot you said four days in a row, is that right?

00:10:18
Speaker 2: Four in a row?

00:10:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, four in a row, and you didn’t have good conditions, right, It was hot, it was other than the clouds awful. So so you know, when it comes to stretches where you have that poor weather, does it come down to just finding a spot that you can hunt repeatedly because of great access and entry, so that eventually you have to count on that numbers game finally giving you a chance. If we sit this five lousy days in a row, but in a spot that we are not going to be detected, we might finally get him coming through. Is that the idea you summed it up.

00:10:52
Speaker 2: Had we been having poor luck with deer blowing and getting out of there on our way in or out or while we were hunting, I would not have continued with that approach. But we weren’t, so Kundog and I just kept it’s a it’s this creek that winds through the woods with a giant, warm seasoned grass field that we come down through, sneak into the creek, and then we go north along the creek up an embankment fifteen feet on a wooden ladder we built, and then into our stand. So in and out is quite easy, and we just weren’t getting caught. Our thermals were dumping into that creek, and you know, we would wait till the field would clear, and we got kind of got lucky because they stayed in this area and then they often will move move on out the north end of the field and up into a bean field that’s quite some distance away. So every night, you know, the movement would occur and the field would empty and we would we would get on out. So we had a little luck on our side. Would just with the way the movement is there. It’s not always that way, but this in this scenario, it worked for us. And then on the fifth, ninth, fourth in a row, I got the shot because clouds moved in what was supposed to be a high of eighty eight dropped like eighty one or eighty two, and they did it that night and the pressure was high. That was the other reason I continue to hunt it. The pressure was bouncing between twenty nine point ninety five and thirty point oh five, all five of those days, specifically those four That’s why I kept going back because I was like, sooner or later they’re going to show here, because I had pictures of some good bucks in this area. So it was a de factor.

00:12:34
Speaker 1: So you talked about something there that I would like to circle back on. It is kind of the main focus of what I was hoping to pick your brain about. I selfishly, over the year’s mark, have always come to you with like a deep burning question. Usually for each one of our chats. We’ve done some really good ones about predicting deer movement. We’ve done some really good ones about patterning deer about kind of moment in the kind of moment of truth situations. We had a really good chante about that a few years ago. But I thought today something you just mentioned would be perfect to kind of peel back some layers of the onion, which is everything related to wind, Like this is like the name of the game. With mature white tails, right, they use their nose, that’s their ultimate survival weapons. So as a hunter, we need to have a master’s understanding of wind to combat that. And I don’t know if we give it enough thought, or maybe I just don’t give it enough thought, because there’s the basics and then there’s these thousands of other little nuanced things. So if you would be so, if you’d be patient enough to hear a few of my questions on this, i’d love you for you to first expand on the thermal question that you just brought out there. You mentioned the fact that you had this spot where you could drop your thermals back behind you, And I think that sometimes people assume that thermals are just something you need to worry about in really big hills. But you’re hunting in you know, moderate terrain. I think, I know there’s some topography, but it’s not like moderate. Yeah, it’s not like Virginia or Western Mountains or something. Right, So, how do you think about thermals with your hunts, both with how deer are using thermals and then how you think about thermals when you plan your sets.

00:14:12
Speaker 2: I think, first of all, understanding thermals as as the Earth’s temperature cools, thermals are going down to the lowest part that’s evening. In the morning, as the surface warms up, sun comes out, those thermals start to go up and rise, and barometric pressure also helps that accentuate them going up higher and getting on out of there. Well, if it’s high pressure, if it’s low pressure, think of it kind of almost not having as much of a thermal effect. It kind of squashes that top layer down and they might move up a little bit and down a little bit, but they don’t have that drastic up and down that they will on a high pressure day.

00:14:55
Speaker 1: No, sorry to interject, but is it on a does it do the opposite though with a low pressure day? So with a low pressure day, would that be pushing.

00:15:04
Speaker 2: That’s high pressure high pressure, I think there is a much greater thermal effect way up way down going low pressure. I think it is much more condensed. Low pressure kind of holds everything in. You’re still going to have some warming and it’ll go up in the morning and down of the evening. However, it’s not nearly the distance that you would experience. You know, it might be it might be one hundred feet that it’s doing it, or two hundred feet that it’s doing it. On a high pressure day, thermals rising on up into the into the sky or pushing all the way down to the bottom of the valley. On a low pressure day, it might only be ten to fifteen feet that it affects it, but it still affects it. And I’m I could be off on those figures, but it’s just in my mind, I know that it doesn’t do what it does on a high pressure day. It’s not nearly as distinct either like low pressure day as you just don’t feel it as much at you yourself.

00:15:59
Speaker 1: So do you think is that part of why you like high pressure days so much for hunting? Is I mean, I understand there’s like a there’s a there’s a factor that impacts deer movement itself, but as part of it also the fact that it’s lifting your scent as well.

00:16:13
Speaker 2: I think it kind of goes hand in hand, you know. I think it’s just the two go go together. And that’s one of the things when we did deer Cast and we worked on all those different weather variables, oftentimes when variables would repeat themselves, it was because a similar system was coming through, you know, like you get a high pressure system northwest wind, you know it starts with the low, the wind gets up, it ushers the low out, the high pressure moves in. You get that one windy day, then the wind calms down, and it’s kind of repetitive. So you often get things that work in concert with one another, if you will. So, whether I like it because of that reason, not necessarily. I like high pressure days. Is the movement’s better? It is probably a bonus that the thermals act in such a way that they are drastically going up in the morning and pouring downward in the evening on a high pressure day, I mean drastic evening cooling.

00:17:16
Speaker 1: So is there ever a time when you will set up in a place with a given wind direction that maybe is not perfect, but you are counting on the pressure to help you accentuate a thermal to be able to get rid of something where you say, like, hey, I know this is going to be a little bit risky, but because of the high barometric pressure, and I think these bucks are coming late morning or something, when the thermals start rising, I’m going to lift my air over top of them. Is that something that you are confident enough to set up on?

00:17:46
Speaker 2: Absolutely? If you’re up in topography high on the ridge and your wind is not anxiety. I really wish I had a north northeast today, but it’s north northwest. I think I can cool these deer because of the fact that after about seven thirty or eight o’clock, my thermals are going to be, you know, chimneying up and out of here. And you get by with murder on high pressure days in terms of your scent. If you’re high in topography and you’ve got a reasonably favorable wind, you get by with murder. I mean, you really do it? Is it just it alleviates a lot of problems for hunters because your stuff’s going up and not necessarily in the direction the wind is blowing. Yeah.

00:18:28
Speaker 1: So another kind of thermal factor that I’m always wondering about is how the predominant, like the regular wind that day and the thermals interact. How much wind or how low of a wind do you need for the thermals to be the main influence for your scent versus how fast of a wind do you need to have for thermals to not really matter anymore because the actual wind is pushing your your scent somewhere else.

00:18:52
Speaker 2: I don’t know that it matters a heck of a lot in theory. In your mind, you think it matters a lot. But those thermals and in many cases will overpower wind speed because regardless of wind speed, you have those ebbs and flows of a windy day. Right, if you’ve got to call it a seventeen mile an hour northwest wind will it’s it’s gonna gust to twenty three and it’s gonna subside down to ten. And so you still get these ebbs and flows peaks and valleys where that thermal is still still going to take over. I think thermals in many many cases are as powerful or more powerful in terms of what can help you get away with fooling a deer or not fooling a deer as the wind speed and direction.

00:19:38
Speaker 1: What do you think about like the thermal effect in flat areas where there’s not you know, really significant topography and you’re in relatively flat you know, ag land or something like that.

00:19:50
Speaker 2: Same of the morning, when it’s warming up, it’s gonna go up, and in an evening it’s gonna cool down and blanket things. If you don’t have much of a wind speed, I mean, it’s gonna blanket probably in three hundred and sixty degrees around your spot. Everybody can relate to sitting there waiting all day for deer. Thirty. You were warm, sitting in your stand. High that day was fifty degrees. All of a sudden, the sun goes down, the earth cools, you get that little chill, and the deer start moving, and then straight up wind of you, you got a deer that catches you. That’s a thermal issue. You know, you might have a six seven eight mile mile in our wind, but that that deer caught that thermal. Those thermals are heavy. That’s the one thing about a thermal wind is light in terms of how much weight it has, But when that cooling effect happens, there’s nothing stopping that downflow. Nothing’s gonna stop it, so it’s a very heavy effect. Same in the morning when you get into you know seven forty five eight eight thirty and the rapid warm up, that stuff’s bellowing up in the air like a chimney and nothing’s gonna catch you, especially on high pressure days.

00:20:57
Speaker 1: So can you walk me through how you think about that when you’re setting up a place to hunt. You know you mentioned something earlier, but i’d love for you just to kind of explicitly explain how that factors into when you’re looking at a good hunting spot where you pick your tree or your blind location. Given those two changes.

00:21:15
Speaker 2: As a general rule of thumb, of a morning, I love to be higher intopography, I just absolutely love it. I will hunt low intopography, but my preference is to be somewhere on a ridge just out of my own instinct and of an evening. I love hunting bottoms or lower into pography. I dislike hunting a ridge of an evening unless I have something for it to fall off too, or if I have a great wind speed that I have a confidence level that it’s going to take it and dump it somewhere else. So that’s just general rule of thumb. You know, there’s no there, you know always it never are not good words for white tol hunters. You know, it’s more about probabilities and trying to put the odds in your favor. Last night was a great example for Wade and Kuondog. That was a ridgetop because that’s where he would come out every evening, and we put it for a north wind with a pretty good slope going down, so that A we had the north wind. B we had the thermal effect pushing it away from this ridgetop where he was. He was walking based on last year’s trail pictures and it worked out quite well, although the deer gave them a curveball and came out. Was walking this long ridgetop that we had a green field on, and then all of a sudden cold front. He’s been walking that ridge in the green warm weather. Cold front, he did a yui and went straight into this beanfield down the bottom. The colder weather green turned the grain and luckily he was within range of the blind when he made when he threw him that curveball, and Wade was able to make a great shot on him. So, and I was sitting there last night. I was in a bottom field on a green field, and I told Taylor. I was like, I just wonder if I didn’t make a mistake given the some verity of this coal front, and I should have sat grain, which is another general rule of thumb of mine. When it’s cold, I sit close to grain. When it’s warm, I sit close to green. And again it’s not always or never, it’s just something I’ve seen tendencies where they’ll do that, and luckily Wade and Kundall got one. But you know, we sat that greenfield and we saw a decent movement of no age.

00:23:26
Speaker 1: What do you think about setting up on small depressions, counting on that thermal drop like a ditch or a creek.

00:23:34
Speaker 2: Love it.

00:23:34
Speaker 1: So that’s something you sometimes will do.

00:23:36
Speaker 2: I do it a lot, But I will say this, sometimes they’ll fool you in what those thermals will do once they get into that depression. They’ll snake around and come back out and whatnot. And it really can only be proven or disproven through time. In other words, I think this is going to work, but boy, until you sit there through a ver i different temperatures, wind speeds, leaves on, leaves off, time of the year, you really don’t know. I talk a lot about wind scouting, where you’re also thermal scouting. When you’re out there, what exactly is happening to my win? And I’m a wind checker maniac man. I’m constantly checking it, constantly checking it, and it freaks me out when I see it doing all these weird different things. And I don’t think you could check your wind enough when you’re in a hunting situation. Whether you’re on your way to the stand, whether you’re sitting in the stand, whether you’re trying to get out of the stand, know where it’s going because oftentimes what you feel isn’t necessarily what it’s doing. So through time you find those little spots you’re like, holy cow, this worked on an east southeast wind at ten mile an hour with a high of fifty degrees and pressure above thirty. You might go there the next time leaves off pressure lower, different wind speed, and all of a sudden, it doesn’t work for you. So you can only learn that through time and taking good notes and remembering the conditions that it that you had when it worked versus didn’t work, and avoid those in the future.

00:25:15
Speaker 1: He speaking of you just mentioned, oh, with such and such barometric pressure, it worked back to what we were talking about just a minute ago, which was the when high bear. When bear metric pressure is high, it will accentuate thermals. Have you found there’s like a threshold, like how high is high for that to be the case? Have you seen anything we can make our well it’s over thirty point two, or if it’s over thirty or anything.

00:25:38
Speaker 2: Barometric pressure is relative to the time of the year. This time of the year, twenty nine point nine five is pretty high, you know, you get to December twenty nine, twenty nine point nine five is not overly high. You know that winter air just brings in much higher pressure, and I think they almost have an internal system that reacts to the time of the year. I mean, clearly their coats change from now till December, you know, and pressure that’s high now is like twenty nine point ninety five to thirty point one, thirty point one five. You get up thirty point two to thirty point three, you’re really high, whereas in December you might consistently get thirty point one to thirty thirty point two five, you know, and then all of a sudden you get this day where it’s thirty point six to thirty point seven and it’s like the deer walking around with their head about to explode. But you do get those wild days. We’re really really high barometric pressure, So it’s not the same throughout the year this time of the year. I love twenty talking about the early season year September and up through mid October twenty nine point nine five, thirty point five thirty point one right there is a real sweet spot for optimization of deer movement. In my opinion, I see a lot of deer on their feet in that pressure range.

00:27:01
Speaker 1: So one last thermal ish related curiosity have I guess I want to confirm some of my thoughts would be the impacts of water, so standing water or moving water. So one thing I’ve always thought is is if I’m in a situation where I have low and variable winds, I’ve always thought about trying to set up if there’s a creek or a river or something that if I were set up close to that water, I could have a thermal that might drop into that water or into that creek or river, and that the movement of that water, whatever the direction the river or creek is moving, would likely suck my wind down along with that. Is there any have you seen that? Have you experienced that? I’ve seen that in some experiences.

00:27:41
Speaker 2: I’ve also seen it play the opposite effect that I thought I wanted it to do, because with that river comes aflow and almost a flow of thermalization and wind. Have you ever noticed that along a river like you can stand next to it without any wind, yet you feel a flow that the water is pushing these thermals one way or the other. So again it would only come through time that you would you would learn whether that works or doesn’t work. The other thing that I notice around water ponds or creeks, or especially if it’s it’s reasonably deep, you have a much more accentuated change in pressure, so that really cool cool water. Will look at a pond in the morning that’s warm on a cool morning, there’s fog coming up off of it, right, and yet you don’t see that fog anywhere else. So the temperature of that water can perhaps help you, but it could also hurt you because it’s different thermal activity in and around that that body of temperature versus the grass or the ground or rocks or trees, if that makes sense. So they can be trickier around water. They may be tricky to the point that it helps you more because it’s doing something very consistently, taking your thermals down into a creek and moving them on to your example. But then again it may have a flow to it that curls it back up on top, and a deer gets you way up when that you didn’t anticipate, you know, Yeah, that’s a tricky thermal pool in and around water, it’s different than land.

00:29:14
Speaker 1: Is there any other terrain feature or habitat feature that has a unique thermal effect I’m wondering, like a very sunny, open hillside versus a dark, cool forest. Do you ever have like a different strategy about how you’re thinking about winding thermals based on those two sets or something else like that?

00:29:34
Speaker 2: Absolutely, again, based on the temperature of the earth. If it’s cooler, as you start to have evening thermals dropping down, it’s not going to be as accentuated as if it was a hot, open area and those thermals go down dustly. You’ll also see a touch of a delay in the thermals cooling that area off. Do you ever notice if you’re hunting a bottom and you’re walking out of it and it’s really cool down in that bottom and about halfway up that hill, boom, it’s like a ten degree difference in temperature, Like it just takes much longer for that stuff that was that was warmed by the sun all day to cool off as opposed to the shaded bottom where the tree tops were. That’s just an example, So again I keep going back to you only learn those things through experience. As to whether something’s going to work or not. And I’ve had spots that I stopped hunting because my thermals would get me on the way out, like I would hunt a bottom and I’m trying to get out of a steep hill. Yet this thermal’s pouring in and alerting the deer that I just escaped the field from, because it’s pushing my thermal down the hill from the top that’s still warm, whereas in the bottom and it all equalized and my set was on the ground. Then I started my ascent out of there, and boom, a new set of thermals is pushing me down into where they just came from. So I’ve had a few stands like that that I just quit hunting, especially in the early season.

00:31:01
Speaker 1: With all this in mind, like all these effects that the that the thermals are having on where our scent goes, there’s a lot of theories that hunters have about how deer might be using this. What do you think about how deer are using thermals to their advantage? Have you seen like, hey, they’re oftentimes going to travel to this area or in this way because of thermals. Are there any kind of rules that.

00:31:22
Speaker 2: You’ve seen absolutely. I think when you see a deer circling down wind to check out a calling position, or perhaps they caught movement in the tree and like, what is it, I’m going to go check that they may have you ever had a deer catch you bicircling you know what she’s doing or he’s doing. He’s trying to get my position. Yet they don’t reach your downwind side, but they still catch you.

00:31:43
Speaker 1: They went down Sure it’s happened.

00:31:44
Speaker 2: They went down thermal as opposed to downwind. So yes, they use it as a very powerful force for them. If you catch them of an evening is when most of this happens. Of a morning. If it’s a decent, you know, warm up day, that stuff’s going up, and they have a much tougher time catching you. When you’ve got a nice day that’s warming. Of a morning, they can circle you and circle you because they saw a movement in the tree, and yet they can’t detect you because everything’s going straight up. But evening’s a little trickier. But they will down thermal you as quick as they will downwind you, So yes, they use them to their advantage.

00:32:19
Speaker 1: What about this is kind of getting to some of the other ways that deer are relating to wind in general. But there’s some you know, anecdotes around deer going to low spots like what some people refer to the thermal hubs these days. Imagine like a low bottom with a bunch of points dropping down into it. The idea being during the rut a buck and cruise down in some place like this where all the scent pools from all the ridges and points around it, and that’s a place to very quickly scent check larger areas or something like that. Have you seen deer using that, you know, thermals in that kind of way before.

00:32:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, certainly. I mean I don’t get into the weeds on it quite to that degree, you know, to where sometimes I think, and I think the advent of all the different mapping programs out there on X or deer Cast or hunt Stand, whichever the once. Sometimes I think that off season is a long period of time, and we spend so much time creating theories in our mind off of the three D topography and everything, but in reality it might not necessarily be that way once you get out there and watch the deer’s activity. So I don’t know that I’ve ever witnessed that per se in terms of where I processed it and thought, well, that buck just went to the bottom where all these points came together, because that was a thermal pool. You know, perhaps he did right. But one thing’s for sure. As the earth cools down and he’s low and topography, he’s gonna he’s gonna get more scenting done than if he’s up on a ridge.

00:33:52
Speaker 1: All right, let’s talk about some more wind theories. Then there’s some more theories, and there’s a lot about wind. You have some that I’ve heard you share over the years. I’d like to review a few of those. Sure changes in wind direction. We just had one that happened where there was a bunch of south winds and we just got a big north, a big shift. How have you seen changes in wind direction impacted deer population in their movement?

00:34:13
Speaker 2: Well, again, it goes back to what I was talking about. A lot of these things accompany other weather factors. So it’s cold front and we went from south to a north. So was it the wind direction switch? Or was it the ushering in of high pressure? Was it the wind speed switch? A lot of these things work collectively. What I do notice with regularity is where deer bed based on wind direction, and especially with wind speed. I always think back to a field I used to have on this giant ridge in Iowa, and it was about the size of I’m gonna say, three or four football fields together. It was a big field, five acres. It ran north to south as true as it could possibly run, and I had a blind on one end and a blind on the other with access in both ways. That worked quite well. But when the wind was out of the north and I was on the south end of the field, all the deer were always on the north end of the field. And then when the wind was opposite and I was on the other end of the field, they were where I was on the north wind. So I never forgot that, and I was like, how do they know where I’m at? It I was younger, right, It wasn’t that they knew where I was at. It was that the wind direction switched where they were betting for that day. Wind speed will also do that to them. I always think in terms of how high is the wind speed? How low do you think they’ll bet in topography to get out of that wind? How low is the wind speed? The bed all of a sudden expands in terms of the options for a buck, So it’s more about where they’ll bed when it comes to a wind switch, in my opinion, and that also differs early season of late season, and it’s food predominant activity versus the rut, when the activity is throughout the day, so bedrooms could pop up literally anywhere during the rut. This time of the year, they’re much more defined. Early season. Late season, they’re much more defined. They’re much more much more opportunities for a deer to bed with security this time of the year than late season, when all the leaves are off the trees. They’re seeking thermal units. So it changes as the leaves come off the trees, it changes with temperature, it changes with what phased the deer in at the time of the year. So some of the scouting that you do, it’s always great, I think for anyone to take lots of notes and any little thing they learned that day, keep track of it because I can, as I’m sitting here today, bet you one hundred dollars that same occurrence is going to happen to you in future years. And that’s how you end up eliminating a lot of mistakes and things that you did that did not succeed, and start doing more of the things where you had success based on those notes and learning. It’s it’s so nuanced it’s impossible to remember it all, but it is possible to note it all and then read through those notes in the off season.

00:37:16
Speaker 1: I want to unpack a little bit a few things you said there in a little bit more detail. One was wind speed impacts on betting, and I want to repeat what you said and make sure I got this right. Higher wind speeds you typically see bucks betting or deer in general betting lower intopography to get out of that high wind speed.

00:37:36
Speaker 2: Is that correct or at least in a fold within topography to relieve themselves of that wind speed? I see. I see that a lot when it’s heavy, heavy winds, I’m going to go bottom somewhere that that afternoon and oftentimes that morning.

00:37:50
Speaker 1: Okay, but a low wind speed they’ll bed wherever.

00:37:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s a little more expanded if you will, And again it’s not always. These are tendencies I’ve seen with deer.

00:38:04
Speaker 1: Now to direction. You mentioned that on that one big north south field you described there, you saw them bet on one side of it with a certain wind direction and the other side of it with the other direction. What do you what do you attribute that to? I know you mentioned it’s like where they’re betting, but why are they betting on one side or the other? Do you think it was because or did you Is it your assumption that’s because of the way they wanted to approach the feeding, Like did they say, well, I’m going to bet on this side because for me to use this wind to go out and feed, I need to come wet this way or is it no? Because when I want to go into my betting aar, I want to smell my betting ear as I move into it, so I bet here.

00:38:44
Speaker 2: It’s about when they bet it, you know, it’s about the morning. What was the wind doing this morning and where might they have betted? You know, So it’s more about using the wind of a morning when they’re going and approaching their secure area than it is where the wind’s at when you go win. You know, yes, you know if you thick back, well, why is he in that bed? When did he get there? Wait a minute, what were the conditions? Win he went there? And then that’ll help you pan through that.

00:39:11
Speaker 1: So how do you think a buck moves into his betting eear? What have you seen? I know you’ve watched bucks go into their bedrooms before, and maybe even seen them bed down. How have you seen them use win? Because there’s a lot of theories, there’s a lot of beliefs that all they always do this, they always do that. What have you seen?

00:39:26
Speaker 2: I’ve I’ve noticed a couple of different things. One thing’s for sure. As a buck ages, he moves much more, much more slowly through the topography, and much more careful, and he doesn’t move as far. From a linear standpoint, you take a buck that’s five, six, seven, eight years old, chances are he’s not moving very far. His bedrooms are very distinct. And if you can get lucky enough to get a pattern on a deer in previous seasons, that’s putting some age on Chances are you can make plans the following year to take advantage of that buck’s weaknesses. And by that, I mean he’s not going to move very far. His home core to me, just shrinks right up when they get to six, seven, eight years old. They know where they’ve been safe in the past, and they eliminate problems just like we try to eliminate problems while we’re hunting them. They’re eliminating problems of coyotes and tractors and cars, and they know where security is. So that’s one thing I’ve noticed. Younger deer seem to be a little bit more random a two year old or three year old buck. You watch them, watch their actions when they come out into a field or when they’re walking through the topography. They’re a little bit more careless than an older buck, and they move at a much faster speed because it’s kind of like a I think a pet lab or a pet dog. If you watch them through their life. By the time they’re old, they’re not moving a whole heck of a lot. They’re spending a lot more time in their bed laying down than they are run and after ball that you’re throwing off the porch, you know. So it I think whitetails do the same thing as they age. They just don’t move as far or as fast. But if you can find where they’re at and have an access point in and out with the right weather conditions, you can kill there. It’s exactly what we did last night. We’ve killed that dear for that exact reason.

00:41:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, have you seen them, you know, mature bucks in particular. Have you seen them use the wind when going into their bedroom in a particular way, like some folks will say they’ll always win check their bed before heading in, or that they will j hook into their bedroom. Have you seen anything like that? That’s that’s somewhat consistent.

00:41:38
Speaker 2: Certainly, And I see them do it more frequently later in the year. When you take this time in the year, they’re not quite as spooped up, but all of a sudden you put you know, coyote pressure, hunter, pressure gun seasons, all these things occur. They get much more skiddage skiddish, and they’re much more alert throughout the day than they are right now. Summer patterns leading into early fall are a little bit more laxadaisical. They haven’t been pressured very heavily yet in terms of the hunting pressure. But by the time you get to the end of the year, they’re wary and all alert and checking every wind and their noses up in the air, and they’ll go way out of their way to check a bedroom or check another buck, check other does. So they don’t have to do that quite as much right now because their interest is different now, it’s just more about food. Of course, they’re always interested in staying safe. But once they get through the rut, and they’ve been using that sniffer each and every day, you see them use it more often than you do right now.

00:42:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, what about when things switch up midday? So they choose where they’re going to bed for the day based on what the wind and thermals are doing at that time, as they go in there and make sure they’re safe. But then if there’s like a midday significant wind switch, like this cold front coming through, like for me it’s hitting late morning, it’s actually hitting today as we’re talking. It was southerly winds this morning, and then around like nine ten o’clock, all of a sudden the storm pushed through, the temperature start following, and it switched to a north. So is that gonna do something funky to the deer today where they bedded with the south, but for this evening, all of a sudden they have a north. How have you seen that impact things?

00:43:19
Speaker 2: I don’t think so. I think in certain situations like that the weather ticks over, their urge to go feed is still going to be there. And they used the wind as they navigate through the terrain more so than they follow, you know, go you know, into the wind all day long. You know. So I think they might circle a little bit to catch a wind favor, or they might enter slightly different than they would have if the wind had stayed the same. But it’s not it’s not a huge, huge difference. I think they’re still going to enter in their entry trails and exit those you know, exit trails.

00:43:53
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen bucks shift midday where they bed with a wind change. I’ve heard some anecdotes of peace people seeing bucks that bet it on one side of a ridge with X wind and then the wind switched, and then you know, soon after that wind switch, the bucks stood up and moved fifty yards over and revetted in a better wind positions.

00:44:12
Speaker 2: That certainly, when wind can do that, some sort of interference like a kyot can do that, or a dog. And I more often than not, when you see that buck on your trail cameras that’s up and walking at twelve thirty and nothing else is walking, I think it’s oftentimes something scurried around got him up, or the sun aspect changed and therefore he’s like, I’m going to rebt so of course they’ll rebt based on wind speedwind direction, sun, other things that get them up and cause them to rebt. Are they going to bet a lot further away? Might be fifty yards, might be two hundred yards, It might not be that far, but yeah, they certainly. They certainly switched beds throughout the day. I think sun does it as much as anything.

00:44:54
Speaker 1: Movement. You just start talking about how they kind of use the wind partially throughout their day as there moving. And I know this is different from it’s they use wind in one way during the rut and then maybe it’s a little bit differently pre and post. But let’s first talk about this time, either early season or late season, when it is basically a bed to food existence for these deer. How do you see them using the wind as they move in the evening to go feed? Because again, there’s like all of these Oftentimes people try to put a rule on a deer like, hey, they’re always going to travel with the wind in the to their nose or quartering to their face. But then I’ve seen bucks head out into a food source with the wind at their tail on occasion. But I’m curious, are there any trends that you’ve seen enough that impact how you hunt them in the evenings. Given like, hey, x wind, that means they’re probably going to come from this direction or something like that.

00:45:51
Speaker 2: In the fact that I’m very disciplined with where I’ll go on what wind speed and wind direction. When I’m at a spot that i’ve I’ve had for a long time, I often see them doing the same things, if that makes sense, because I’m in there on the same conditions. Otherwise I wouldn’t be going to that spot. So I don’t frequent spots very often in conditions that don’t favor my access in and out. And then while I’m sitting there, so I’ve already honed through that Otherwise I wouldn’t be going there. So I think as you sit and watch a spot, if you can hunt it on a variety of different wind directions, you might start to see, oh, that’s the direction I need to be here in because they’re betting one hundred yards off the field, not fifty off the field, because that betting area is a little bit more secure in this wind speed. I also think the weather that morning plays a huge part in how far off the food they bed, So it’s more about weather conditions in general? How well did they move the morning? I think through that all the time. So are they up because it’s great weather, beautiful, high pressure, They’re meandering, going all over the place, and suddenly they’ve betted three hundred yards off the field as opposed to just a scenario where you’re hunting a feet field of an evening, as opposed to it’s hot, they’re not moving very far and they PLoP down fifty yards off the field. So I think through what what did he experience this morning? You know, is he betted quite a ways off? Or do I feel like he betted just off this field? Based on the weather conditions for us here this morning we had a high pressure brning deer on their feet all morning. There’s no telling where they ended up betting. It’s not going to be nearly as defined as what we’ve seen the previous two weeks when it was hot, movement was at a minimum and they weren’t moving very far between bed and feed. I think that as weather improves and we see more deer movement, you also see a scattering approach of the of the betting because they’re they’re just lingering longer, they’re acorning they’re you know, hitting masks, they’re checking dose, they’re starting to check scrapes, and suddenly they’re starting to move a little bit more. So I see that as much as I do. You know, wind speed of affecting it.

00:48:19
Speaker 1: You hear a lot about people, you know, I was I was just reading a book for another podcast I’m working on by Roger Rothar, and he described it was Whitetail Magic, and it was either that or in pursuit of trophy whitetails one of the two. But he described in that book, and I’ve heard many people echo this that the best setup to kill mature book is one where the wind is almost wrong for you and almost right the deer right. So how do you try to do do you try to do that? And what does that look like? Because I’m what I’m what I’m trying to get at here is how you go about determining how the wind is right for that buck?

00:49:05
Speaker 2: You know. I read that book in nineteen eighty six or eighty seven, and Roger Rar, Roger roth Are and Gene Winsel really had a huge influence on myself and Terry when we first started we first started Dree Outdoors in nineteen eighty nine, and I was. I read through those books and I had yellow markers right where I was going through and making you know, comments in there and highlighting certain things that I wanted to remember, and they were huge influences to Terry and I. But the one thing that I read in Roger’s book, and I don’t know if you’ve gotten to that point about how he would only go into a stand after like eight a m. Have you gotten that?

00:49:50
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I read them all the way through, so yes, I remember that.

00:49:53
Speaker 2: Okay, So that always you know, I got the premise, but I didn’t get the premise like, man, I’m of a different school and not saying Roger’s wrong, because he is. He was killing deer, giant deer in Ohio and Illinois back before anybody else got to making this popular. He and Jean were way ahead of the time and their theories and the things they wrote about and much of it is golden standard, right, But that one I was always like, Man, I want to see the woods wake up, and I want to have a position where I’m safe that first hour or two. And how many giants have you seen walking through the first fifteen to twenty minutes? You know, as opposed to walking in when many of the deer start to get up and be on their feet. So I always I always felt like that didn’t detail the way I wanted to hunt, especially of a morning. So in terms of the winds, you know, just kind of right for me and kind of for the deer and that type of stuff. I’m so disciplined. And it goes back to the answer I gave just a little bit ago. I want the wind perfect for me. I want the winds and the thermals perfect for me as I go in and go out, because there’s such a variance with wind cones, because if you look at it and you go, Okay, I’m gonna hount this on a northwest wind, when in reality you can spread that out to ninety degrees or greater because everything on the south side and everything on the east side is probably out that day. Dependent on the speed. There’s certain speeds that are optimal for us, and there’s certain speeds that are optimal for the deer in terms of when they’ll actually move the most. So I want the wind perfect for me, and I’ll take my chances on what the deer are doing, you know, because they’ll move through the topography and they’ll they’ll switch course over one cent that they catch, you know, So it puts it puts white tails into the always a never category. And I just like to protect myself because I know this. If I’m not getting detected, I have a much greater chance of success that day.

00:52:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, it brings to mind another quote from Roger’s book, which I loved, and I’m gonna paraphrase the quote. The quote was so good, I’m gonna I wish I could perfectly quote it. But he said something along the lines of the mature whitetail buck will always do exactly whatever he damn well pleases. Basically, it was coming down to we always try to put always and never on a white tail buck. He’s always going to do this, I’ll always do that, but there is no there’s no way to actually do that. He’s just gonna do whatever he feels like doing in that moment, and oftentimes it will surprise us. And you have to have a certain amount of respect for that randomness. To a degree you do.

00:52:50
Speaker 2: And it’s it’s why I always talk about having the access in and out and the condition’s perfect for me, like I want it to where I don’t get detected, because if you could go without letting deer detect you, you’re you’re going to be a very successful white to honor. I mean, that’s probably the takeaway from from today’s episode. Do everything you can to never let them know you’re there. If you can do that, you’re going to succeed a lot more than you’re going to fail.

00:53:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, a little uh, and then.

00:53:23
Speaker 2: Let the deer damn. We’ll do what they want right and sooner or later you’re going to get your shot.

00:53:30
Speaker 1: I was gonna say a little teaser. Next week’s episode for Wired to Hunt is going to be basically a book report on Rogers books. I’m going to do a deep dive into the lessons of Roger Roth are that you know, today’s generation of Hunters doesn’t know anything about him except for the fact that people like you or Don Higgins or Bill Winki mentioned his name, and all of us of my generation are like, who’s this guy? Why do they keep bringing him up? So I went and found old copies of his books from used booksellers, got the books, have tried to get everything I can from them, and I’m going to try to share all that with today’s generation. So that’s next week.

00:54:04
Speaker 2: On this point, we should do one on Jeen Winzil’s stuff too. From back in that Setuarajen and Roger were both cranking out incredible, incredible information. I always loved the chapter of Jean’s book. I think it was One Man’s White Tail, and he talked about the power of thinking so positively that he was able to make the deer get up and move because he would think about a buck coming through at eight thirty, and that’s all he would think about the entire morning, and then boom, a buck would walk by at eight thirty. Like that chapter fascinated me. But in reality, I think the moral that story was just the power of a positive attitude and being ready for something to happen in any second.

00:54:47
Speaker 1: Man.

00:54:48
Speaker 2: That’s another thing I think happens to guys so often, whether they’re on their cell phone, whether they got other thoughts in their mind, Like if you get home from a hunt and you’re not fairly mentally fatigue, you probably weren’t quite focused as much as you should be, especially during the rut where the sits are longer. Like that, mental focus and mental preparedness, being ready for the moment at any second, because they are fleeting. When a big bucks on his feet and comes by. I think about the times you’ve seen them. They don’t linger, they don’t You don’t give you many shots. You better be ready for the one chance you’re gonna get, or you’re gonna blow it every single time.

00:55:25
Speaker 1: Man, They’re tough, is the truth.

00:55:26
Speaker 2: You’re gonna blow it every time. So that mental preparation is we talked about that in that podcast you mentioned earlier. So yep, you got to make sure you’re a little fatigued when you get done hunting.

00:55:38
Speaker 1: So so a couple more quick questions on these on these little win questions I have. I think that based on everything you’ve said so far, that you would say mostly no to the question I’m about to ask you, But I want to confirm because I’m always thinking to myself, I’m always trying to predict where this buck’s gonna go on a given day or hunt. We’ll say for an evening, and if I have like a best guess of where I think he’s probably better like, I will tell you exactly my scenario for tonight’s hunt. My target buck has got a little zone that I think is probably the zone he beds in the most handful of acres, a couple of acres, two, three acres. I know he’s not there all the time, but if I had to say, you know, my best guess that he might be on most days, I’d say he’s probably bedded somewhere around here. But then he has food sources to the north, to the south, and to the west, and I’m trying to think, Okay, where do I think he’s going to go tonight? And I’m oftentimes trying to think, you know, in some cases it’s the same food source. He could go north to a cornfield, he goes south to a cornfielder, or he’d go west to a cornfield. There’s acorns in between, and then there’s green food plot in two different directions too, So he’s got a lot of options in any different direction. And I’m trying to sit here and think, well, how do I predict which one of those directions he’s going to go today? And I oftentimes find myself trying to use wind to help me predict that, or I wonder, can wind help me predict that? Have you ever found the wind direction be able to help you predict whether he will go north, southwest, east, etc. And we’ve talked about We’ve kind of talked around this a lot, but I guess I’m wondering explicitly, does the wind direction ever help you predict if a buck will go to food source A or food source B or anything like that.

00:57:22
Speaker 2: I think it does, but not every day or all the time. But I think it can be one of those factors that helps you tilt the odds in your favor. There’s a lot of factors that equal success. If you look back on your successful hunts and you break down everything you did, you go what all went right? Boo boom boom boom boom, and anticipating where a buck might move to a source. I think it’s kind of like blackjack, if you always stay on sixteen or always hit on sixteen right. It depends how you play the game. Uh, Like, I’m pretty consistent in the fact that if I go the theory, I’m going to go with it over and over and over and over again and stack the odds in my favor to where it succeeds. So, in other words, if you think on the north wind, I’m assuming you’re win switched out of the north that he’s going to use that win and come out the you know, one side or the other. And my guess is he’s probably not going to use He’ll squirt out the side. If I had a guess, because I think they often sent check stuff on their way as opposed to set checking the same thing all the time. Yeah, you know so, uh, I would my anticipation would be he’s going to squirt out the side as opposed to squirting going north right into the wind. That would be my guest, because I think he’s gonna set check as he’s combining that with his ears and his eyes. We talk about their nose a lot, but they’re good at seeing and hearing, and they depend on those two senses as much as they do their nose. And I think that’s why when you when you try to bottle all this up and go what’s he doing in certain wins? Well, what can he see in that terrain? And what can’t you see? How high is the wind speed? How low is the wind speed? In other words, how well is he able to hear or how much might he not here based on the wind speed. So those other two senses, it’s really a trifecta in terms of what he’s using to live on a day and a doubt basis, and he has to use all three of those every single second of the of the day, year round. So it’s not just wind. But if I had to guess partially, he’s going to use the wind and go out, go out one side of that block or now that’d be my guess. Just I hope you’re right, just for a cent. That’s that’s the way you’re playing. Good, that’s the.

00:59:38
Speaker 1: Way I’m playing. I’m hoping that you’re right because I can hunt just west of his betting area where my win I’ll be just just a little bit on the southern side of it, and just west of it there’s a big scrape that he’s been already coming out and hitting pretty frequently right off the edge of that betting area is on his way to basically this spot I can hunt, he will pass through an open oak stand with a bunch of acorns in the ground. He could then hit a green food plot just past that or a cornfield right next to it. So I think there’s a strong chance of him wanting to use that crossing wind as you described it, and hopefully either the acorns, the green or the corn will be something he’s interested in and he’ll be pinching by in a little standard timber back there that I can get into uniquely because of the rain and the wind, today is the only day I think I could safely get this close to him, and so I’m going to take a little bit of an aggressive swing to get in there, because every other day coming up is going to be crunchy and loud anyways, So it’s a kind of a one time shot. I think I have here for a while with this cold front. So I think it’s.

01:00:43
Speaker 2: Very wise and something you might do or consider is looking at previous I assume you have a little history with this deer from last year. Ye look at some of those nights he went that way. Go into deer Cast Past, which is a new feature for us on deer Cast, and go I love it. What were the conditions the days he did that? You know, because dear cast pass well, you go in and enter the date that you’re looking for. You can enter any date going back three years and it’ll tell you the conditions that day, and then all of a sudden you match up where he’s going and with a condition and when that repeats, trust me, they’ll they’ll do the same thing. They’re very repetitive and redundant from that standpoint if nothing else affects them.

01:01:22
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I love the fact that you guys added that. That’s been something that I’ve wanted for years for you guys to have since since you know, in particular, you and Terry have been such advocates for looking back in the past and that you know, so I’ve had to always use the Weather Underground website to find the stuff. Now that you guys have it there in the app, I’m I’m a happy camp. So thanks for adding that.

01:01:44
Speaker 2: You put the data and it spits out all the factors for that day. It’s it’s pretty cool.

01:01:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s terrific. Real quick wind use by deer during the rut, either using wind to check dobetting and feeding area and or scrapes. Those are three different things that you oftentimes hear people saying, well, deer will use the wind to check one of those three things, doze on food, doze in the bed, or a scrape. How important has that been for you when setting up and what are the specifics of what you’ve actually seen.

01:02:17
Speaker 2: It’s it’s very important because I think they probably use that sniffer a little bit more then than they do any other time. It’s like a dog trying to find a rabbit, or a blood tracking deer trying to or butt blood tracking dog trying to find a deer. And I learned so much about deer by hunting and tracking with tracker John and his bloodhounds and just watching how they work the terrain and figure out the scent not necessarily in the wind or the thermos, but set that’s on a twig or a branch. And I see deer doing a lot of the same things that I’ve witnessed those dogs doing as they’re trying to track a deer. So when it comes down to them this time of the year, they’re a little bit lazier, a little bit slower. They’re going one of the food source. Then they’re coming back as we get into late October and their mind switches, their attention span switches, they start using that nose owes so much more. It’s a totally different ballgame. It’s like hunting a different species, if you will, than the one you’re hunting now. It’s one of the reasons we did thirteen because there’s so many different light switch events where the deer just changed drastically their demeanor and what they’re doing and how they’re interacting. And I think as you get into the rut, it’s all about that nose and all about set checking and covering ground and trying to jump that rabbit, if you will. A couple of things I’ve watched dear do consistently. Number One, you get into the rut and you see all that movement at seven thirty five to about or seven thirty to about eight forty five or so nine o’clock and the rest of the herd beds down. It gets a little slow, and then boom, the mature bucks are up on their feet, and then there’s zig zag and all those betting areas, they’re checking all those trails. They wait for all the other deer to bed down, and then they go those betting areas and check what just occurred. If they’re without a dough, they’re looking for a dough and they’re gonna go find one, and they’re smart enough to wait until the does are all down and then they go check them. I’ve watched them do that. The other thing, they are creatures of edge, and if you I love hunting edge, whether it’s a thick cover inside of a big block of timber, or it’s the hardwood edge on the on the downside of a betting area. The same place we want to be is often where they want to be. But you got to be a little further down wind than they are. And just watch through time, where do these deer downwind this betting area? How far are they? Are they just inside and the transitional zone or are they out here on this field edge? Can I mow a path that perhaps incentivizes them to use the edge? Could I put a path just inside the woods to incentifie, incentivize movement there? And through time you’ll catch how they’re using the terrain and the wind during certain phases of the rut, and then you it could be just a little further downwind than they are. Same thing with scrape lines, same thing with just about everything. They’ll downwind everything throughout the rut, So you want to be on that same down wind side. So it does work, but you can’t be so far down when you’re out of the game. Like I always felt like during the rut, if I could fool seventy five percent of the noses and get caught by about twenty five percent, I was pretty close to where I need to be within the terrain to take advantage of it and kill a big buck. Sometimes that guy’s going to be in the twenty five percent, but oftentimes he’s in that seventy five percent. Because one thing about being caught by a deer this time of the year, I think it is far more detrimental to your overall hunt right now to get caught by a dough Domino’s everything back. It’s it’s really bad in December, man, there’s so many deer. It doesn’t take much to convince the whole herd to get up and domino back. But during the rut, can spook a deer, and ten minutes later, because they’re covering more ground, a new deer comes along, especially if there’s wind speed where it’s covering a lot of what’s going on. So I always relied on that seventy five twenty five rule when I’m when I’m run hunting, you know, if I have a few deer get down on to me, I’m not that tore up about it because it tells me I’m right on the edge of where I want to be.

01:06:21
Speaker 1: That’s that’s really helpful. I found myself many a time standing in the woods, debating exactly which tree to pick and thinking, oh, geez, this is the right spot to be, but you know, there’s a twenty percent chance that one of them might slip back on that one spot there, And then back and forth between like do I need to be absolutely wind proof but off the ax a little bit, or right on the ax but be a little bit exposed. And it sounds like you’re willing to take a little exposure to make sure you’re on the X.

01:06:47
Speaker 2: During the rut type setups this time of the year, I want I want zero percent because it’s going to ruin the whole hunt. Yeah, during November, call it October twenty fifth or Thanksgiving that month, I’m a little bit it more. I’m getting in their face a little bit more. I’ve had I’ve had pretty good success getting getting in there a little tighter now. I don’t want to be right dead center in the middle of all the activity or there’s deer blowing you all day. But if I have, you know, if you see five deer and one of them catches in the other the other four dome, I think you’re probably in a pretty good, pretty good spot.

01:07:19
Speaker 1: All right, last wind question of the day talk a bunch about deer getting down wind you, and you alluded to this earlier, but one of the risks of calling is that you might cause a deer to downwind you, because, as you mentioned, oftentimes that’s what they do. They hear something they’re interested in and then they want to circle down wind of it. Given that, how do you think about wind and that tendency to downwind you when you’re trying to call out a buck? How do you come for that?

01:07:48
Speaker 2: The older I get, the less I call, but the more success I have when I’m calling. So I’m I’m choosing my darts right. I won’t throw a dart at him until I know that he’s in the right place, mood, the right position, and I’ve got the right area for him to come and approach my stand. Oftentimes it’s on a day where the weather is ideal. They’re in a better mood those days, and they’re more likely to respond to a call, and the lighter I call. I used to get out there and bang those antlers in every thirty minutes I try to get them. You know, is there a buck that’s come within your range? And boom? Then circle way down when because they’re trying to figure out who’s fighting. And then I don’t rattle a terrible amount anymore. I do a lot of soft grunts. Snort weeze is probably my go to. I’ve called more deer in with a snort weez than any of the call. It’s kind of that that little warning shop. You could give a deer and kind of play on his ego a little bit and see if he comes over there and check you out. You know. Decoying is kind of the same theory. But I just don’t. I don’t call a lot. But if I see the right buck in the right position, I will try them, and I generally have pretty good success.

01:08:55
Speaker 1: So what’s the right position to make sure that they don’t win? You? Does it have to be.

01:09:02
Speaker 2: Nearby the state up wind with a decent path for him to get to me. If he’s if he’s at my ninety, I’m not even I ain’t even considering it, you know, unless he’s really in a good food you know, if he looks like he’s ready to fight at that second, I’ll hit him a little bit and hope that he comes straight to my tree. Or if it’s a really mature deer, that is the difference, Like if it’s a you know, it depends on the population dynamics in the area. But if you know there’s two or three monsters in the area are really matured deer, uh, and then there’s a three or four year old that you’d still shoot. Chances are the three or four year old, if he hears a call, he’s got that other big bully deer or those other big shooters on his mind. He’s not coming straight to you, you know, Whereas if you see the big bully deer, he might come straight to you because he’s the king in the area. So it depends on the population dynamics in the area as well. You know. I’ve seen herds where there are no big mature deer, best deer in the herds of three year old, and he’ll come straight to you, you know. But if there’s some big ones out there that’s on the back of his mind, because chances are he’s already run into him, and chances are he already knows his his level in the pecking order.

01:10:11
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, Mark, I feel like you’ve armed me, as always with a few new ideas, a lot of new ideas and things to just continue to stew on which I will be doing today after slipping in during this reign and setting up right next to a big Bucks bedroom for an early October strike, taking a taking an early swing given this cold front. So we’ll see, if we’ll see if I’ve got a good story to share with the time.

01:10:35
Speaker 2: It sounds like you’re in the right place. I hope, I hope you’re killing Do you have self cams in that area? Do you know he’s in that bedroom?

01:10:41
Speaker 1: I do, he’s been. I have daylight or like just off the edge of daylight photos of him five days in October already, So five out of the last seven days, I have a daylight of him in this zone, not not like all of them. I think two or three of those were on the edge of that bedroom, and then two of them were in food sources, just you know, off out of it. So he’s definitely in that zone.

01:11:01
Speaker 2: He’s right there somewhere. I mean, if he’s not on the walk about, he should be close this evening. You know, whether you’re daylight or not. You do have a late rising moon. Last night was the last rising moon that I felt like was optimum. The later it rises as we go into the full moon, I find the later that they the later that they move, So it won’t surprise me if he’s a touch late for you this evening. I hope he’s not. But last night was the last really good night. Tonight, it’s not bad. It rises I think close to about seven pm, so it’s not terrible.

01:11:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I would have typically hunted him not as close to his bedroom as I’m going to get tonight. I’ve had hunted him closer to the food source he’s been hitting the most. But I just got to thinking, man, with his cold weather and the fact that I have this one rainy, windy day, this is the only day I could try to get closer to him. Otherwise there’s no way I could do it. I’d be so loud to be impossible. So my thought was, why don’t we try one time to get a little bit closer in there, right where it’s happening, where these pictures have been that I that I wouldn’t have been able to get any other day in October so far, and looking at the forecast, I don’t see any other days I could try that. So maybe take advantage of this unique set of circumstances. And you know, as it does, probably doesn’t work out because they’re dear and they’re gonna do what they damn well please.

01:12:15
Speaker 2: But maybe I hope you kill him. Send me a picture what you do.

01:12:20
Speaker 1: I will try mark before I let you go. There are a number of cool new things with the deer Cast app that you guys have been working on. You touched on deer Cast past, which I was so excited about I had to just text you, like in pure Joy the other day, I’m so happy when it’s not that, But can you tell us about anything else new with the app or anything else with One of the other.

01:12:39
Speaker 2: Cool things I think is it lays out the information. Just from an organizational standpoint. We now have the list view where you can see all fourteen days boom ba boom, and you can like this prediction, uh last night. We’ve been waiting for two weeks for it because we could see it out there at the tail end, and day by day it would get closer and you know, it said slow all the way up to yesterday, and what do you know, you know, Wade kills this giant. So that list view I think helps you play in your schedule a little bit better, like, oh, there’s there’s my green out there in about you know, ten days. I’ve got to make sure I’m available right then as opposed to paging through it. So I do like that. The three D you know, topography that we put into our maps is fantastic. I’m still a huge fan of the rain stations. I want to know how much rain I got. The wind checker, I think is the best one out there in the industry. You know, put it on your spot and it’ll show you what the wind’s doing, and the wind cones, how they change with the wind speed. You know, all the other little bells and whistles. It’s it’s amazing. Deer cast is as accurate as it’s ever been. It’s as useful as it’s ever been. And now with deer cast past, I mean, and and of course the you know, the ability to help you when you need it the most, the tracking, you know, deer cast track, I mean, there’s just nothing else like it. Like Terry and I sat down and we were like, what do we want to solve for hunters, Like we’re deer hunters. How do we solve these problems? And that’s what dear cast is just a bunch of problems solving from our minds to put it all together. So it’s a very rich app right now in terms of white tone knowledge.

01:14:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is not blowing smoke up your tail. I am a real paying user who has benefited from it a lot ever since you guys launched it. So thanks for putting that together because it is a great tool.

01:14:24
Speaker 2: I appreciate that mark. That’s high praise. Thank you.

01:14:27
Speaker 1: Of course, anything else from Drew Outdoors we should know about right now as far as content, YouTube channel, anything else or should we just keep on following the YouTube channel and Socialist absolutely.

01:14:36
Speaker 2: I mean, of course, our television shows are all airing right now, Bow Madness and Critical Mass and thirteen, and we’re cranking out content right now. The semi live stuff on Deer season twenty five is just awesome. Jeff Propes just kill a giant moose up of the Yukon. They’re working on our Catcher dream episode that we had with Will, They’re working on My Missouri Buck. They will start on Wade’s Missouri Buck, and all that stuff will come out here in the next few days. So all of it’s in my live. It hits dear cast first, and I’m very abbreviated version and then it’ll be a full story on on YouTube and dear cast here within generally within a week of when when the animal hits the ground. So our views are very good. I want to thank everybody that takes the time to watch them, or if you’ve downloaded dear cast, thank you so much. And of course you can always follow us on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter as well or x well.

01:15:28
Speaker 1: Yeah it’s always changing. But hey, Mark, thank you so much for taking the time to do this, to have this chat after a late night last night, and I’m sure I’m guessing you’re probably off to another spot tonight with this weather continuing to be pretty good. So thank you, Thank you for everything.

01:15:42
Speaker 2: Mark. Absolutely, I got my mom in camp and I’m taking mom out tonight, so that’s going to be a blast. We will through this whole, this whole podcast.

01:15:52
Speaker 1: She did, ye, there’s Lucille all.

01:15:57
Speaker 2: Thank you for very educational. It was I am interesting. I hope for the best, but.

01:16:05
Speaker 1: Whatever it will be, this is true. That is that’s amazing, that’s the best.

01:16:11
Speaker 2: She’s ninety two and a half. So I mentioned she was ninety two the other day. She said and a half. So she’s ninety two and a half and we’re climbing up into a box lind this evening. You know, ten foot, she’s gonna climb that ladder, get up there. She goes through physical therapy daily where she lives. She’s an independent living there in Saint Louis, and she makes us also proud.

01:16:32
Speaker 1: That’s amazing. Well, I wish you and Lucille amazing luck tonight. I’m so glad you guys are able to do this. I’m glad that the whole family’s in town, so have a lot of fun.

01:16:40
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Thanks Mark, I appreciate your own.

01:16:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, you’re welcome. A great evening, all right, and that’s going to wrap it up. I hope you enjoyed this one. I found it fascinating. As I mentioned at the top, go listen to the rest of those Marjory episodes. The patterning dear one and the predicting movement based on factors like wind, weather, bear, metric pressure, moon all that. Those are a couple of my absolute favorites. Truly fascinating. Check them out. Thanks for being here, Good luck on your next hunts. Until next time, stay Wired to Hunt.