00:00:01
Speaker 1: All right, folks, welcome back to another episode of Rotfresh. This is Jake Hooefer. We have a late season update across the country. We have Ohio, Illinois, and Michigan, and we have cold temperatures. We have some more cold temperatures coming in here. So as you can imagine here in the Midwest, food is going to be a very large priority. But what happens when things aren’t perfect? The buck isn’t quite showing up on time, or maybe your access isn’t perfect. We’re going to talk about some of the more intricate details of what you can do if you have a potential opportunity at a great fleet season food source. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode with Mark Kenyon, Justin Hollinsworth, and Grant Putnam from Illinois. As you know, Roughfresh is brought to you by land dot com, the leading online real estate marketplace to find your perfect rural, recreational, agricultural, or hunting properties here in the US. We’re going to kick things off here with Mark Kenyon to get a quick season update from Michigan.
00:00:51
Speaker 2: Here we go.
00:00:57
Speaker 1: All right, We’re kicking things off with none other than Mark. It’s been a minute since you’ve been out here on Rough Fresh. We’re in December, we’re inching deeper and deeper into the year. How’s it going.
00:01:08
Speaker 3: It’s great, it’s been a fun season. It’s been, uh, you know, as they always do. They always seem to go so fast. You dream of it all year long, and it seems like it’s forever away, and then you blink, and then the seasons like almost here, and then you’re panicking about I’m not ready for this or what do I need to do, and then you blink again, and then the season’s almost done. It seems like every year that’s the story, and it was true once again this year.
00:01:30
Speaker 4: But it’s been it’s been really good. And December so far off to good start, you know, for a lot of different reasons.
00:01:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, well we’ve and I feel like this and I’ve talked about it here on Rough Fresh, but this is one of the colder first parts of December we’ve had in a really long time where the food sources and everything else comes into a major play way sooner than what it has in the past.
00:01:53
Speaker 2: So has that.
00:01:56
Speaker 1: Equals more sightings and potentially more opportunity here so far in December for you?
00:02:00
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean, this is the late season that you dream of, I think for a lot of us, and for the last decade, we have not had a whole lot of Decembers that started this well, at least that I can remember. I’m sure there’s some pockets in there that I’m forgetting of, But if I were to just overgeneralize, like you said, it has seemed like for quite a while now we’ve had relatively warm Decembers, or at least long periods of relative warmth on a lot of these late seasons. I just kept on finding myself many years being like, oh, geez, are we ever going to get the cold front we need? Are we ever going to get that snow you always dream of? We ever had those single digits at least that’s you know, the story in Southern Michigan for a whole lot of years. But this year, you know, we’ve largely had it. We’ve had below average temperatures, We’ve had a bunch of snow that came. You know, I guess it was around Thanksgiving maybe that we got our snow and we haven’t lost it yet. And that’s not common for at least southern Michigan. The last fifteen, sixteen years, whatever it’s been that I’ve been here. This is probably the most consistent snow we’ve had in the first part of the winter. So yeah, that has all led to you. As soon as we got that consistent snow in the temps dropped, and also actually on a couple of the properties I’ve permission on had standing corn get picked just before that. So kind of that best situation where we’ve got a lot of food on the ground, the cold temperatures, the snow, everything you dream of, which has led to a lot of sightings. The only downside for me personally is that the only mature bucks that I was interested in taking a crack at all these properties were all killed prior to all that, because for all.
00:03:39
Speaker 5: Sorts of reasons.
00:03:40
Speaker 4: So all that said, about a week ago ish a new buck showed up that I think is mature, and that got me really excited to go out there.
00:03:53
Speaker 2: Not a huge, you.
00:03:54
Speaker 4: Know buck antler wise, but an old buck I think, and a cool deer. It’s a big six ports to tight tall I say, bodied six pointer. He’s got a broken end of his main beam, so again, you know, not a deer that anyone’s going to be too excited about but I’m excited about him, and because of that, I’ve also made kind of a point to try to take my son out while hunting for him, because he’s, you know, really excited, would love to get our first buck together. So I decided, as much as I possibly can, I’m going to take him out while we try to get one of these deer and really make it more about that than anything else. So that’s a long winded answer to your question, which is so far, so good. I can give you more details on like the specific you know, conditions that led to some of the sightings and what we’ve seen so far, but good stuff in general.
00:04:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, with most of your signings in the freshly picked cornfield here, I assume that’s been where most of the activity has kind of consolidated to. I feel just in my general sidings too, like the deer are somewhat yarding up already, where if you’re in the prime food source, you’re going to see the bulk of the deer herd. Is that similar to what you’ve seen?
00:05:02
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think there’s two things really congregating deer in my neck of the woods, at least what I’m seeing is One is that you know, key food source, which one hundred percent in our case was that just recently pitcorn. But the second thing is the pressure impact. Our gun season opened about three weeks ago. These deer have been pounded all around us. There’s a few little pockets where they’ve been left relatively safe, and that includes a couple of these properties that I have permission on. I’ve I’ve hunted very lightly, very sparingly for that specific reason, just hoping I knew I didn’t have a mature buck around. There was a live that I knew of. So my plan was, I’m going to leave this stuff pretty much untouched until something shows up or until you know, later into the late season. Hopefully if there was anything alive in the square mile or two square miles, hopefully it’s going to kind of suck into this safe spot, this little sanctuary that I was trying to create.
00:05:56
Speaker 5: And that might be what happened here.
00:05:58
Speaker 4: That might be why this new buck showed up, because all of a sudden, there’s good food and there’s a lot of deer here that feel safe because I’ve been in there just a couple of times, very careful situations. I’ve scouted from Afar I’ve been watching and decided to finally take a couple of swings, to take a couple of cracks, and I think that’s what’s concentrated.
00:06:15
Speaker 5: A lot of deer. And there’s a lot of deer.
00:06:17
Speaker 4: I mean, we hunted, My son and I hunted Friday night and Saturday night, and both times, you know, twenty plus deer, probably closer to thirty one of the nights. And you know, it’s so snowy, and it was a big moon out Friday night, very very clear skies.
00:06:36
Speaker 2: Bright moon.
00:06:38
Speaker 4: So when we were coming out in the evening, we got back out towards the road and you could just see some of these fields after dark.
00:06:46
Speaker 5: Just full a deer. I mean, even more deer than that.
00:06:48
Speaker 4: So everything was piling out as that, you know, night came to a close and it feel safe. There’s good food, it was cold, high pressure, a lot of snow, kind of everything that you hoped for to get deer on their feet and moving. So that’s you know, the hope for the next week, right is hopefully we’ll have another front like that with that higher pressure moving through, with snow staying on the ground, and you know, best case scenario would be even colder, more fridgid temperatures, which I’m probably getting ahead of things now, but there’s something that’s getting closer towards that next weekend, which is great.
00:07:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we can jump right into that.
00:07:22
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel we have some really cold, frigid temperatures coming in, and every guest here has brought it up that this is going to be a really fun and exciting time where it just feels like typically it’s taken un till January to get to some of these conditions and having the snow on the ground.
00:07:38
Speaker 2: Are you pretty not excited for next weekend?
00:07:40
Speaker 5: Yeah?
00:07:41
Speaker 4: I mean it’s if I again, if I had like a slam dunk deer, I would be really really excited. I have a deer that’s like, this would be a fun deer to kill my son. It’s a cool deer. If it happens, it’d be awesome. So yes, I’m excited. We have that front kitting like Friday Saturday. It looks like in general.
00:07:59
Speaker 5: The whole week is good.
00:08:00
Speaker 4: I mean, the whole week is pretty darn good compared to many mid Decembers that we’ve had. I just checked for our next seven days, the average high is below average every single day for the next seven days, and then it gets really below average come like Friday and Saturday. So I think I think Saturday morning it’s gonna be single digits. You’re gonna have maybe low teens for us here, Saturday evening very high barometric pressure, so all those things would make you know, Friday, Saturday, Sunday pretty darn good days to hunt. So yeah, we’re gonna hopefully get out there again taking my son or suns maybe both of them will go out and you know, yeah, I don’t have the target buck I was after originally, but if I were to kill, you know, any half decent buck with one of the boys, that would be a really great memory. So looking forward to that, I think that, you know, conditions are just wildly lucky that they line up for weekends for so many people. That just makes it really, you know, just great for people to actually have good hunting on the days that they have off, so very very fortunate for that.
00:09:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then I real quick, I mean the rough fresh I texted this episode of Justin hollins Worth. I had texted him. I said, hey, do you want to hop on? And as I texted him, he disc was recovering his big dear and then we had this scheduled the night and I was like, hey, it’s gonna be a little bit later. I just shot a buck. And so it was very similar to cold snow. It like we’ve had this standing plot for many years and always felt like it just hit the weekend after our archery season closed here in Illinois, and we have the conditions and the last four nights have been everything you expect for a late season hunting, and finally the big mature buck that we wanted to see rolled in and it came together. So late season is a totally different This vibe is probably a lame way to describe it, but a different vibe than what it was just a couple of weeks ago, where you’re just out grinding your face off and hoping for the best. And now it’s like, okay, this is a much more controlled environment. Uh, the opportunity is much longer. You have time to glass confirm its to deer, and Uh. I’ve never I’ve been not a huge fan of late season, but after today I have been a little bit more uh acclimated, Tom enjoying it.
00:10:13
Speaker 5: Well.
00:10:13
Speaker 4: It’s one of those things that the late season is it’s it’s very much a have and have not type of type of year, right, Like, if you have the sanctuary or the food, it can be amazing. But if you don’t have those two things, this can be a really frustrating, difficult time to hunt. So it comes down to, like, there’s there’s folks. If you’re if you’re fortunate enough to have a place where you can create those two circumstances, this is amazing. If you don’t, if you’re not in that camp, then this becomes a you gotta find it.
00:10:42
Speaker 2: You got to search it out.
00:10:43
Speaker 4: You’ve got to, you know, check out all these different public land pieces and find those little holes that nobody for some reason hunted or you know, this is a sneaky time of year to get permission. You know you might be able to find someone super late season who doesn’t have somebody who hunts the lake gun seasons or doesn’t hunt late archery. And if you sneak in there, not sneak in, if you go in there now and knock on a door and get permission. And when I say sneak in, I mean like kind of like people wouldn’t be thinking of this time of year to be asking permission. There might be people are like, oh yeah, the guys are all done hunting here, they just hunt opening.
00:11:16
Speaker 2: Weekend or whatever.
00:11:17
Speaker 4: Goat, take a crack, whatever, and you might be able to get that late you know, last weekend or last week permission and have success in a situation that maybe you never would have thought of having that opportunity.
00:11:29
Speaker 2: So don’t give up.
00:11:30
Speaker 4: If you’re having fun, if there’s some opportunity with this weather out there, anything’s possible.
00:11:35
Speaker 5: Good things can still be had.
00:11:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, with all that being said, scale one to ten, where do you put the next week at ten being the best ever, one being one of the worst.
00:11:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I’m not going to say like ten or nine. I mean I feel like you got to you.
00:11:50
Speaker 5: Got to reserve those for.
00:11:54
Speaker 2: I mean, I don’t know.
00:11:55
Speaker 5: This cold cold was pretty great.
00:11:57
Speaker 4: The only knock on this weekend, if I were to overanalyze, would be like like for me to give a ten in the late season would have to be us having like a significant change, so like mild, warm temperatures and then this huge frigid front hitting. So if it was like in the forties or fifty and then all of a sudden it was gonna drop down to you know, ten degrees and a bunch of snow. That’d be like such a shock to the system. I think that would really knock the socks off a deer. And you see something very different. I think it’s been pretty cold and snowy and great now for a long period of time by the time you get to this weekend. So I still think it’s gonna be really good, but maybe not a ten. And it’s also not the rut. Now, all that said, what is this this will be? You know that the next seven days we’re talking, you know, maybe you’ll catch one of those very late fawns that rolls into heat, but I wouldn’t count on that.
00:12:53
Speaker 2: So it’s gonna be good. It’s gonna be fun. Seven.
00:12:57
Speaker 4: You know, late season seven is pretty darn good. Seven or eight and me and eight I’m in that ballpark. Probably you can’t ask for a whole lot more from a late season sid.
00:13:06
Speaker 1: Now, I would agree with that, And well, good luck to you, good to hear your update. Hopefully that six pointer cooth raise for you and your sons, and we’ll keep on rocking.
00:13:17
Speaker 4: Well, then I got to show you this picture real quick, since we’re doing video. We’re out there hunting and the spot where wanted to hunt, me and my son, there’s no blind, there’s no where to hunt. So we just did spot and stock hunts both nights. Actually just on the ground, hiding behind trees in bushes, so very fun.
00:13:33
Speaker 5: But he brought with him a little notebook, and so we’re.
00:13:35
Speaker 4: Hiding basically underneath the bush in the snow, on the ground, and he brought his a little sketch pad, and so he drew he drew a picture of the big six where after and wrote a note and he said, right now, me and my dad are hunting under a brush, as he said, a bush pile, and we want to kill a big bodied buck and he is a six pointer. And here’s the picture of the six pointer and his big neck. I don’t know if you can see this or if it’s the glare there see it.
00:14:01
Speaker 5: It looks like yes, it does look like Bullwinkle.
00:14:05
Speaker 4: And hopefully we’ll have a picture of me and my son with Bullwinkle by next episode.
00:14:10
Speaker 2: Awesome, Well, good luck to you guys.
00:14:12
Speaker 5: Thanks buddy.
00:14:14
Speaker 1: All right, we got Justin hollins Worth from Ohio, and this is funny. I asked, Hey, do you want to hop on refresh and do a quick season update. And as I like, within the moment of when I sent that you you just were walking up to your deer. So the timing is impeccable. Congratulations, thank you, thank you.
00:14:32
Speaker 2: It was.
00:14:33
Speaker 6: It was super funny because Steve and I were pulling that buck out. You guys had just recently done a podcast, yeah, and he was talking about me chasing a buck, and then right at that moment of time, him and I were together. We were going to recover my buck that I’ve been chasing for the last for the last couple of months.
00:14:55
Speaker 2: It was pretty cool.
00:14:56
Speaker 5: So we sent you over the We sent you over the selfie with the buck on the.
00:15:01
Speaker 1: Ground, hot off the press. Now, I was super Jackuarry Man. That was That was awesome, awesome timing. So December bucks are tough, man and uh and it came together, obviously a two and a half month marathon of hunting a particular buck. We’re not going to get into the whole event, but I guess for that specific con or even just the last couple of unths leading up to that, what what were you keen in on specifically here in December?
00:15:30
Speaker 6: You know that last you know, I kind of start with the tail end of November, you know, because that can be dynamite. I don’t think you’re going to see a lot of deer, but typically the ones that you do see are going to be you’re gonna I’ve seen some of the biggest white ties I think I’ve ever seen the the.
00:15:54
Speaker 5: You know, those last seven days in November. But then as you get into you know, you get into December, things drastically change.
00:16:06
Speaker 6: I still do think I’ve still just even recently seen a little bit of running activity. But I think it, you know, I mean, these bucks are wore out. I mean the buck that I just shot to look at him, the way that he looked in late October versus the way that he looked when I when I I finally walked up on him. Man, he lost a lot of body weight. It was I would say twenty five percent. Like it was drastic. I mean, his spine was showing.
00:16:47
Speaker 2: That’s crazy.
00:16:48
Speaker 1: That’s the challenge of trying to age a new buck or a deal like you almost don’t recognize some of the deer if they didn’t have antlers, like you wouldn’t guess because they lose so much weight. And they look completely different than maybe what to your point in October. And so with that being said, with him being run down, when you connected with him, was it more of a feed pattern or just where he was hanging out or what kind.
00:17:13
Speaker 2: Of how did it come together?
00:17:15
Speaker 6: Yeah, so a lot of that has to do with so that the areas that I was hunting him in before there was there was some standing beans over in those areas, and there was a fair amount of acorns. But as the season kind of trickled along, the farmer went in there, he had winter weed in there. They drilled beans in there late. The beans didn’t do very well and were super short, and they went through and they picked kind of what they could out of those out of those fields, we were pretty excited because they left a fair amount of beans.
00:17:55
Speaker 5: So we’re like, oh sweet, this is going to be awesome.
00:17:58
Speaker 6: Well, that lasted for about a week and a half and then they started going and then they went in there and started disking.
00:18:05
Speaker 5: Those fields, so that drastically changed.
00:18:09
Speaker 6: I was really I was really concerned about where he was going to end up because I knew that, you know, they were going to transition from the rut into more you know, recovery mode, and he went He actually ended up going north where there was some cut beam fields. But I went in there and I built a I built a water hole like three or four years ago in there with my my tractor bucket, because there’s no.
00:18:45
Speaker 5: There’s no water in that section. Really, there’s no creeks or anything like that.
00:18:50
Speaker 6: And I just noticed that every time that there was runoff from that field back into that little spot in the woods there, that when it pulled up, the deer just would ham. I mean just there’d be just loaded with tracks. So I had that in there and just hadn’t had anything in there to hunt in the last several years. And then but that field, what what else I did is I went in there and over the in the beans and I spread whinter we rye, turnips and radishes over over the beans.
00:19:25
Speaker 5: And it came in good.
00:19:28
Speaker 6: And so when those fields got disks, everything started to shift that way, just kind of naturally. And and I got a picture of him on a camera north of there, which i’ve and I’ve never gotten a picture of him there ever, not once. And it just had to be about the food and you know, just kind of pushing those deer that way, but I think they’re so run down by the end of that November time frame and then going into December.
00:20:04
Speaker 5: I just I think it’s all about food at that point.
00:20:09
Speaker 6: But they’re touchy because I can personally say, like that dear that I that I just shot.
00:20:17
Speaker 5: I mean, I mean, I pressured that deer, like I’m supplied.
00:20:22
Speaker 6: I’m surprised even in the county anymore, because I was, I was all over. I was either gonna blow him up or I was gonna kill him.
00:20:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it worked out. And I feel that’s the touch and go of late season two. Now, like we’re here in the Midwest ward in late season mode where the deer had been pressured, like for your example, we had multiple encounters and you know, the whole gambit, and so it is still boiled down to food and him finding a place where he was comfortable and then moving in.
00:20:53
Speaker 6: Yeah, that’s what I think. I think too. You get you’ll get some you know, if you had if you I don’t know, this is just my thought, my theory on it. I could be completely wrong, but I think that. I mean, there’s some does that come into heat every year in October, and and I’ve heard of I’ve heard of some those coming in all the way, you know, as early as October twentieth before, if they got bred then and they had fawns, and I’m not sure, I mean by the time they get to this point of the year, I mean, could I’m not sure. Maybe they have the first you know cycle where they go into heat, because i know later in the year there’s you know, supposed to be you know, some.
00:21:45
Speaker 5: Of those younger deer that that do that.
00:21:47
Speaker 6: So maybe you know, maybe this you know, this first week of December or whatever, maybe you get some of those those little those little fonts.
00:21:56
Speaker 5: Because the buck that I just shot, he was fallen.
00:22:01
Speaker 6: A he was following a uh a do on m hm buyers and she wasn’t with any other deer.
00:22:09
Speaker 5: It’s just those two.
00:22:11
Speaker 2: Wow.
00:22:13
Speaker 6: So I don’t know, I don’t know if there’s you know, I’m not I’m not a deer biologist or anything.
00:22:20
Speaker 5: I’m just you know, just observation over the years. You know, I’ve seen some stuff like that. But I’ve killed.
00:22:31
Speaker 6: I’ve killed three I’ve killed three bucks in that you know first part of December, you know, with my dough. You know, two of them was with a dough my biggest I ever killed. He was with a dough and then this one was with a doe the other night when he came in, and the other one was just he was by hisself and just run down and just just odd food.
00:23:08
Speaker 1: So looking here in the next seven days, it seems like there’s two options. Hope you find the lucky young do or be on a good food source. I think one thing I want to bring up with hunting food sources, how careful are you. Let’s say let’s say you get a picture of a deer in the middle of the night, a deer you knew from November, he didn’t connect with him, and he shows up on food middle of the night, one o’clock in the morning, two o’clock in the morning somewhere in that timeframe. Is that enough for you to go and to start hunting that food source in the evenings or are you more apprehensive to go in there and hope that as temperatures get colder, as we get more snow, if that happens, they’ll end up getting there in daylight.
00:23:50
Speaker 2: Or what have you been able to pick up over the years.
00:23:53
Speaker 1: I feel like someone out there is in that exact scenario right now.
00:23:58
Speaker 6: This is uh, this is my thought on it. So because we we pay so much attention to cameras a lot of times, which can be a mistake.
00:24:12
Speaker 5: I still think that.
00:24:14
Speaker 6: I think we needed if you have the opportunity to be able to to to glass them from a long distance and just stay back and kind of get it feel for because they might be right there in that field or whatever, feeding and you just never got a picture because they I mean, they got to walk in front of the camera.
00:24:35
Speaker 5: And it’s just not always the case.
00:24:37
Speaker 6: I mean, There’s been numerous times over the years where I’ve went in and just off a gut feel and thought I should just go set that just to see what’s going on. Yeah, he hasn’t been on camera in daylight, but I’m just gonna go set it and then he just and then I see.
00:24:51
Speaker 5: Him in daylight.
00:24:55
Speaker 6: I I mean because at the end of at the end of the day, we’re always we’re all trying to predict something that hasn’t happened yet, and I think.
00:25:07
Speaker 5: That you need to go.
00:25:10
Speaker 6: If you can glass and pick up that information is one thing, but or or maybe you just set an observation stand and set back with that, you know, like that you’re safe getting in and out, but you could get an opportunity as well. I think I think that that can come into play big time. But to me, I gotta take I gotta take a shot at it every once in a while, like I can’t just like I see, I’ve seen a lot of just friends, even my end myself over the years, just like waiting to get a daylight pitcher. I mean, by the time you get a daylight picture, that was your chance and you just weren’t there. And now now you went and hunted it. And if it’s a food source this time of year, man, there you’re gonna deal with.
00:26:07
Speaker 5: A lot of other eyes.
00:26:09
Speaker 6: And noses and and getting out is going to be it’s that’s a nightmare sometimes.
00:26:19
Speaker 1: What what is one or two strategies to get out? What are your thoughts on having someone pick you up? What’s your thoughts on because it’s cold by then, like when that sun goes down and you’re like, dude, it’s cold, Oh is it to ride it out till it’s pitch black? I mean, what how do you get out without without messing it up? Because you’re if you’re on a good food sources, probably going to be ten to twenty twenty deer in there, and it’s like the last thing you want to do is bust them all out.
00:26:47
Speaker 6: If you can get somebody to pick you up, I think that’s huge. That’s not always the case for me. You know, I use you know, I use a and uh you know one of Steve’s hardcore e bikes. I think you got one as well, And that’s been huge for me because sometimes if I can get down the tree and my bike’s close and on it, if I’m riding away from them, they don’t seem to run. They do more of a watch unless I have to like ride through where they’re whatever they’re they’re at or whatever. It’s it’s not ideal, but I mean, I don’t know. I think that you got to move deer around to kill deer, and that’s just that’s just unfortunately part of it.
00:27:46
Speaker 5: But I think you’re you’re really trying to stack.
00:27:51
Speaker 6: Say you’re watching the book, all you’re getting is say nighttime photos. Now now you can you see a weather front coming, you know, and a lot of people like the front end. You know, my buddy Heath Cisco has proven this over and over again. The back half is much better and then that’s actually and that’s how I killed my buck just recently.
00:28:22
Speaker 5: It was on the back half of that.
00:28:25
Speaker 6: You know, the front was past us and the pressure was rising. I think you need to take and you stack some you know, attempts in your favor. Maybe a front in your favor, maybe with the you know, maybe maybe it’s a certain moon phase that favors an evening.
00:28:47
Speaker 5: Movement pattern.
00:28:48
Speaker 6: Just try to stack a couple things in your favor. And because again to go back to like you’re trying to predict something that’s going to happen, not that it’s already happened.
00:29:02
Speaker 5: I that is I’ve.
00:29:05
Speaker 6: Done that so many times over the years, with those stupid cameras where I’m like, oh, I got to go a daylight picture, I’m going in a hunt.
00:29:11
Speaker 5: I never see the deer. Yeah, And it’s just and it’s just ridiculous.
00:29:15
Speaker 6: I just think it’s got to be stats and things in your favor, whether being the number one thing of everything with white tails, and and then that part of the season, I mean, it’s going to be about food, and it’s going to be they’re going to be recovering. I can tell you that just a couple of years ago, I had a buck that kind of similar situation, and I was hunting him this time of year, and the other thing. This is where this is something I This is where I made a mistake on this deer. It was a nice ten why probably one hundred and sixty inch deer didn’t have any.
00:29:57
Speaker 5: History with a deer or whatever. He moved in during November and just was in there.
00:30:04
Speaker 6: And what I he was.
00:30:11
Speaker 5: Back there, and what I did? I set back too far.
00:30:20
Speaker 6: And I didn’t go exactly where I you know, like I didn’t want to press too hard and go exactly where I knew that I really needed to be. And I went in hunted the deer, seeing the deer that night and didn’t even when I left that night, I didn’t blow any deer up leaving or anything. And and then I wanted, then, I want to try to make my move the next time around.
00:30:49
Speaker 5: And he just he just wasn’t showing up in daylight anymore.
00:30:54
Speaker 6: And I mean if I would have, if I would have done what my gut told me to do that first time in there, I would.
00:31:02
Speaker 5: Have killed that buck.
00:31:03
Speaker 6: Yeah, But I tried to play it too safe. And I think I think we all try to play it too safe. Sometimes I think that’s good.
00:31:10
Speaker 1: Well, real quick, imagine you didn’t shoot this buck from the tenth to the seventeenth of December in Ohio. Ten being the best week of the year, one being one of the worst weeks of the year. Where do you rank it?
00:31:26
Speaker 5: Tenth to seven? I would give it it’s tough.
00:31:32
Speaker 6: I would give it a three, Okay, I would give it, yeah, like a three or four because personally me, like the first you know, October is I love October like it’s my favorite favorite white tail month, no questions about it. November frustrating, very frustrating. This year was very frustrating, just because the big dogs are gonna have does and if you are in areas in most of the state of Ohio, there’s just a lot of dose because people don’t shoot dose, and it’s a problem. And to me, you know, October is great, November could be frustrating. December it’s I believe December is the toughest month out of our entire year.
00:32:28
Speaker 5: And then you go into January. January can be it can be just awesome. Yeah, but you gotta have food.
00:32:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, gotta have food.
00:32:39
Speaker 1: If you don’t have food, go find some places where there might be some food if people want to fall along with some past once you’ve done and and everything else is white Tail Addictions one of the best places to do that.
00:32:49
Speaker 5: Yep, yep, white Tail Addictions.
00:32:51
Speaker 6: And that’s where all of our it’s on the Lone Wolf custom gear YouTube page.
00:32:57
Speaker 5: But that’s just where we put all the white tail addictions. So this is all right there.
00:33:01
Speaker 1: Awesome, Well, justin, congratulations once again, appreciate you hopping on here, and uh yeah it was awesome, perfect timing. So if I text someone else for reughresh, that probably means they’re going to kill a buck or they just killed one. So this might be a good trend, a good kind of Murphy’s Law in a positive way.
00:33:20
Speaker 6: Here.
00:33:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was awesome, thanks Justin. Yep, all right.
00:33:25
Speaker 1: Next up online we have grand Putnam who just shot a big old buck in Illinois, Grant and that’s your number two of the year too. So how does it feel to be officially bucked out? It’s December seventh, you’re relishing in the moment you got to chop up the deer here today?
00:33:38
Speaker 2: How’s it feel?
00:33:40
Speaker 7: It feels good. It’s actually I was just busy talking to one of my buddies who just came up here to help me butcher them. Shout out to Jesse. And this deer that I shot last night was actually the first deer match set that I found when we got this farm, and I actually found him on the road driving in there like it. That was first experience on match set. And so he’s obviously significantly bigger than this now, but pretty awesome experience. And so it feels really good. That’s so cool, I told, I told I think it was one of my buddies the other day. I think over the course, because you and I are about the same age, and the way I set up my like roster for the year, I tend to bracket deer basically, uh, you know, what are my top six deer on the properties I’ve had, have access to, what’s so on and so forth. And I had it in my mind locked in this year. I knew that this was going to be the number one dear, and I was like, come hell or high water, I will eat the second tag to kill that dear. So lo and behold, he stepped out last night. And we can get into that a little bit more. With your questions you’re gonna ask me so it feels great. It feels great, So yeah, I’m going to go try to get another one to know.
00:34:52
Speaker 2: I bet that’s awesome. Man. So uh, it’s Illinois.
00:34:57
Speaker 1: We’re wrapping up the second leg or I guess the fire a leg of shotgun rifle season here in Illinois. Just anadotally looking at Facebook, it honestly seems like second season has been better than first season. And that’s just my gut reaction in looking on Facebook. And we have snow, we have cold weather, and it’s been a long time since we’ve had that for this season, and so I have to imagine the cold weather and snow played into some part of your strategy for last night.
00:35:26
Speaker 2: Is that true or accurate? What was your setup? Yeah?
00:35:29
Speaker 7: Absolutely so, I pretty fanatically. I’m a big believer in electrical fencing food plots. If you’re hunting a small food plot, I tend to do that in the summertime and spend almost as much effort as I do electrically fencing off. Like if I want a late season grain field, a late season Braska plot that I don’t want touched until really late. Adjacent to one of those grain fields, I spend a lot of time in the summers electrically fencing them off to keep them out of it, to keep the pressure low. So we have a good crop and the deer don’t just you know, mull it down to it to nothing. And so last night, actually the deer that I shot, which I call the six by five, I’ve been watching him for about I’ve known about him for three or four years now. Like I said, I believe this is a two year old match set right here in my hand. And so this year in particular, and kind of my strategy last night was just sitting over food. Last night, I finally had the right wind. If you recall on Thursday and Friday night. Thursday was very cold, but we had a southerly wind because of the warm up on Friday, and it wasn’t right on Thursday. It wasn’t right on Friday, and I was actually waffling back and forth between like, uh, should I take the afternoon off and go after him? And it wasn’t the right wind. And finally one of my friends was like, you know what, I think You’re gonna have another crack at him. So I’m just just lay out of there, and that’s what I ended up doing. And so last night I guess what I saw in a nutshell and what I’ve seen over the last couple of week’s hunting, because we had snow here for about ten days in Illinois, a good snowfall, not just like a dusting like I think. There’s probably eight to ten on the ground right now where I live. And we got another couple last night. And so what this deer did, the behavior that I observed him last night, was he came out. I ended up seeing about forty five ish year in total. He came out, and it was very early. It was three point thirty when he came out yesterday, so probably about an hour and a half of legal time remaining on the timer. And he was actually bumping yearling does so depending on you know, the listener that you have, I tend to call a yearling a year a deer that is a year old, not a fawn, not a dough fond, but a yearling doe. And he was bumping her around the field like last night, pretty substantially, and he actually bumped her right into one of my food plots where he then was getting ready to eat. I didn’t give him a whole lot of time to eat. I’m gonna be honest, he came in and.
00:38:00
Speaker 1: I shot, So you got you gotta you gotta capitalize the opportunity because you never know what could happen. Crazy things always happen. It’s fun to sit there and watch them, but you gotta you gotta make it happen. So, kind of reverting back to waiting for the right wind, was he pretty consistent hitting that food source once the temperatures have dropped in the snow has hit the ground, or is somewhat was it still somewhat random?
00:38:24
Speaker 2: Yeah?
00:38:24
Speaker 7: So I I frankly would have shot this year. Last year at five and I saw him a couple of times on the hoof very nice deer. This year I tried rattling them in and actually end up rattling a subordinate buck in which is a nice one as well, different deer on the same day that.
00:38:39
Speaker 5: I saw him.
00:38:40
Speaker 7: You know, it was just one of those magical rut days where the right hot do came by the stand and I saw the buck parade. And so this year, after the post rut, I would I typically tend to say that the rut is post rut after Thanksgiving, and post rut I would say that I was getting this deer on camera every day or every other day on this particular food source. So I have like a three stage food plot. I’ve got Braska’s clover and the beans all stacked up in here, and they filter out and they just transition back and forth, you know, that greens the grain type of strategy that you’ve probably heard a bunch of different people say. I just want to be able to satiate the appetite of the deer and whatever they are interested in eating and hold them there regardless of the time of the year. So I tend to plan a lot of my food plots kind of following that rhythm. And so he was on camera bright, I mean, very early as well on Wednesday. Wednesday, I just couldn’t get out of work. On Thursday, we had the big temperature drop, so about a twenty degree temperature swing from the mid thirties to like about fifteen tennish degrees here on Thursday. But we had that southernly win on Thursday because we had a warm up on Friday, and on Friday he was out there as well, and that was about thirty five on Friday, he was out there as well. So I figured that over the weekend with the north we win swinging through on Saturday Sunday, I would have an opportunity at him, and that’s pretty much exactly what happened.
00:40:09
Speaker 2: That’s awesome.
00:40:09
Speaker 1: I love it Like Lacy’s and food is an insurance policy, and when you don’t have insurance, you wish you do, and when something goes wrong and you have insurance, right, gosh dang, And I’m glad I have this policy. And you know, with the weather cooperating, obviously, it came out together really nicely. Now kind of looking here over the next seven days, so like the tenth of the seventeenth of December, it looks like we’re gonna have some pretty frigid bit or cold weather again this upcoming weekend. I assume the strategy remains pretty similar to food. I mean food and still hunting, hunting.
00:40:44
Speaker 7: Smart down inside of food, wait for the wind to be right. It looks like we’re going to get a massive cold front on Thursday through Sunday next week that’s going to push temperatures into the single digits come evening time. So I believe that deer is going to be just absolutely clobbering food next weekend. During muzzloder season, if you’re an Illinois resident, I think that would be an awesome opportunity to kill what I call the deer. I think that late season food plot hunting tends to be one of the best and most predictable opportunities in times to kill the air quote number one buck they have that you’re aware of, has made it through the rut, has avated a lot of arrows, and has made it through the first gun season in Ali and which happens at the tail end of the rut. So I think, my opinion, if deer are making it past Thanksgiving in Illinois and you have food, I think you have a very very good crack at them, as long as you’re patient and the wind is right, your approach is pretty good and you’re not walking through bedding areas banging everything out of there on your way to and from. So yep, that’s what I’ll be what.
00:41:48
Speaker 2: Let me run this scenario.
00:41:50
Speaker 1: Let me let me run this scenario past you your next weekend. Pretend Okay, you’re hunting with your wife, she has Muslim attack, and there’s fifteen deer twenty deer in your food plot. The buck that you guys were after did not show up, So you have twenty deer in your food plot, You’re like, oh crap, how do we get the heck out of here? How much does that make you nervous? Knowing each time the plan doesn’t come together, your odds could easily be diminishing with each quote unquote unsuccessful hunt. What is your exit strategy? Do you guys just hang out in the blind until you know it gets really really dark? The moon’s been really bright this weekend, so it’s like it’s like you could sit there all night and it’s still gonna be pretty bright out with the snow and the moon. But what do you do in that scenario? Do you just hope for the best and start to zip out of there as quietly as possible.
00:42:36
Speaker 7: I think that I think that by far the most underrated aspect of deer hunting outside of like weapon proficiency. To me, I think a lot of deer live because they’re missed or they’re wounded or whatever. So I think weapon proficiency is like a sneaky, sneaky killer of deer hunting and destroyer of mental health of deer hunters. But I think the second one is really and I’ve really tried to clean up my access over the last few years and ensure like it is pitch dark. So I tend to sit in my blind until five forty five six o’clock before I even open the door, because I don’t want dear to even have an inkling of seeing me in regards of like the moonlight shining off the snow and the reflection and how visible you are out there. All of the blinds that I have set up for late season hunting minus one, you’re down the stairs out the back of the blind and you’re into pretty substantial cover quickly. And so I’ve kind of finagled my entry exit routes to make sure I’m minimizing that amount, so I don’t put too much stock into it. And also I’m a big believer of like we we eat a lot of vedison. I would not call my wife and I trophy hunters by anybody’s standard. And so lots of the time, whether whether we’re taking like a friend or maybe my dad or maybe my friend from work, will clear the field with a gun and that’s how we will will exit. If it comes to last light, and you know there’s just that stereotypical big old pot of does out there feeding we’ll pick the biggest one, and that’s how we’ll clear the field in a I don’t know, a more semi natural way. I know that that’s probably a debatable tactic and a debatable strategy, but I like that strategy a lot, just because we eat a lot of medison. We tend to eat like five to ten of them a year, and we also manage the property properties pretty heavily for dose so that they don’t become overrun. So that’s that’s kind of my question. In a nutshell, I brushed brushed shoulders with your question, which was how much is like the diminishing or turn of scaring off the number one buck day after day? And to me, I think at this point, like if if you were a person with a large standing grain field or maybe the only food in like that mile, to me, I and I know that, like you know, people have their opinions on the juries. I really like watching like shows like The Druries the Little Coski’s because I think it showcases what deer do completely unpressured in their natural environment, how they act, how they behave, and so for that reason, I really like the mantra that they kind of do, Like you know, your stereotypical late season box blind in the middle of a field, and they’re getting in and out of there each night. I have had my wife pick me up before and a four wheeler to clear the field. I think that’s a pretty natural way of doing it. But if you’re hunting someplace where you can’t have that option, I like clearing the field with a gun if you’re a big venice and eater, and then just cleaning up your access to make sure that you’re minimizing that damage. And I stay in the blind pretty well after legal time. I’m not hopping out of there. Like today, legal time is five oh one, five oh two. I think I won’t be getting out of there at five. They’ll be waiting till like five forty five six, and hopefully it’ll the cover of darkness will really take care of that for me.
00:45:58
Speaker 1: No, that’s that’s great advice. Now looking here over the next seven days, ten being the best week of the year to kill big old buck, one being one of the worst weeks of the entire year. And I’m gonna I’m gonna add some more contacts for you, just giving the time of year and your personal strategy. You have standing food scale one to ten. Where do you put this upcoming week?
00:46:19
Speaker 7: This upcoming week, I there are a couple of days that I’m looking at, So I’m looking at my ten day right now. Monday’s looks okay high twenty five, Friday looks awesome high of nineteen. Saturday and Sunday are both of high of about ten. So Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, if you have if you have standing food or anything, which I want to circle back around that that year that I shot last night, he was actually pawing up Brassica’s before he came in to beans and so that was that’s what he was doing last night. So the majority of my dear last night on December what was last night the seventh, December sixth, December sixth hit Brassica’s first before they hit it. And so my score would be if you have that late season food over the course of the next week, with those dates that I mentioned, basically Friday through Monday, Friday the twelfth through Monday the fifteenth, I think that my number would be a ten for your or how much I like it for Big Old Buck, I think I think if you have that, I think if you can write it out in your blind stay a little chilly for four days, and your entrance and exit isn’t terrible. You’re getting in nice and earlier, staying kind of late. I think there is a very good chance during Muzzle at a weekend, if you’re an Illinois resident, that you could bag a giant here.
00:47:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love it, question, I love it. Awesome.
00:47:44
Speaker 1: Well, congratulations Grant once again, appreciate you hopping on here, and good luck to your wife here this evening.
00:47:50
Speaker 7: All right, I’ll let you know. I’ll shoot you a text if we whack them.
00:47:53
Speaker 1: All right, folks there, you guys have it. I hope you guys enjoyed this week’s episode of Rough Fresh. Bundle up, make the most of this cold weather, and I hope that you have a good food source or a good opportunity here. As we get deeper and deeper into December, the holiday season is right around the corner.
00:48:09
Speaker 2: The Rough Fresh.
00:48:10
Speaker 1: Season is quickly coming to a close here as well. So hope you guys have the best week here. We had some high scores, we had some lower scores, and I hope everyone gets to experience a ten out of ten week with the great late season cold weather.
00:48:24
Speaker 2: We’ll see you next time, See y
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