00:00:00 Speaker 1: Hey, this is Tyler Jones and you're listening to the Element podcast. What's happening all my woods people. We're chilling in e Town right now and it's past my bedtime. Casey me to dude. Yeah, I got up at four or thirty this morning and worked till eight, worked till eight, hunted from four thirty till I got my vehicle at a leven to leave that place, which is kind of a strange thing. Just I have late, dear movement over there, so I have to stay in the stand late. But and then had about an hour and a half for lunch and then got to work. And here we are, here, we are. Have you eaten there yet? You have not? Yeah, I'm hungry. Yeah, exactly, cop drops Um. So you've had a couple of pretty good hunts recently, I have, compared to our normal I have had some good hunts. I've been really sticking to the permission stuff here lately, close to home on private uh, mostly because I'm trying to get this house finished and I don't have time to run, you know, to three or four hours across the state to go to you know, a public parcel where I can drive Tim and us up the road and hunt my permission's place. Not to mention I've had two shooter Bucks show up in daylight in the last week over here. That really helps your motivation to go somewhell. The weather hasn't really been like something that And here's the here's the thing, dude, I've got I've got a theory. All right, this is groundbreaking stuff. Kind of I said, I'm being a touch tongue in cheek, but also really believe this. Um. I don't think people talk about humidity enough with how it affix a dear. I think that everybody is so Midwest oriented or you know, like some media coming from the Middle coming from that area. Well, it's always for humidity there. It always feels good around here. This happened this week, Like sixty degrees one day felt totally different than it did the next day. And it was because the humidity the day before was forty five and the next day it was eighty. And I think that makes a huge difference to the deer too. It's got to I can, I mean, I can will in this stand. Like the other day, I saw three bucks. Who knows, maybe more would have come in if one hadn't spotted me in the tree. That's another story. But um, you know, and today it was much more humid and it only had one deer come in. Um, I don't know. I don't believe they can. That's what I was thinking. Yeah, there's very few animals that actually do sweat, So I wonder how the humidity affects him. Then, you know what I mean? Like for us, it feels warmer in my opinion, But is is that I don't know. Like you're saying that perspiration is the key to humidity not working and because you your perspiration is not evaporating than the humidity, like that's why you feel warmer. No, I'm just saying, like, I guess I don't like humidity because it makes me sweat like freaking crazy, you know what I'm saying. Like I walk out and I'm just sweating, like every time I move. Are you always sweating that much? But you evaporate when it's low humidity? Maybe I don't know. I think that's how it works. I don't know, but I didn't go much past am P one, so I don't know that much about this stuff. But so I think that's correct. Yeah, maybe right, But it's something to think about. Maybe we can we need to find somebody on the podcast. Do we need to get somebody like like anatomically talk about deer. That would be cool, That would be cool. But I feel you on that, man, it feels I mean, I'll just say this, until last night. Last night I sevenfolded into my whole the whole year's deer sightings, and last night it was not really human. And I've hunted a lot of human days and that may have something to do with it, you know, So I think it makes a difference. Man. We're gonna just kind of maybe keep that in our minds and then just see how, you know, dear movements affected by that. Yeah, well I had I had a couple of shooters show up recently too. I check a kid trail camera today in the middle of the day, and when I got out of the stand last night, a about forty five minutes later, a buck that is a for sure shooter showed up, and uh, I don't know, it's starting to come on, but you know, prior five minutes prior to that, I had to jump out of the standing. Spook seven does stay out? Man? Thanks for thanks for starting to happen. I mean, it's that time of year. It's it's it's almost like it's snuck up on us, you know, um that it's almost November. Yeah, right now. We had like those cold fronts early in October and then it's been such mediocre weather ever since then. It's not bad weather as far as like living as a human. It's very nice, mild days, but like we need, we need some cold fronts or some fronts to push through and just at least like a day or two here and there. Our front. We had so much rain, dude, like the humidity in the rain for like three weeks. I couldn't get my windshielded, Like I couldn't get it to clear up. You know, there's an inch of water on the floorboard of my vehicle because I think it all came from like it raining so much on those days and getting it out of the vehicle. Just the water off my shoes. There's that much water in there. It's crazy. I don't know. I gotta get a shot back after or something, but it's hard to get that to right. Well. Uh, if you guys haven't heard already, you've been living under a rock. But we're doing a giveaway it's an excess Trek trail camera and we've been using our access on on these permission properties that we have. We're only using the excess right now. And well, just put out a different brand camera just because it was something I had laying around, But um, that's my primary camera, that's your primary camera. And they've done really cool videos. We've got some really cool videos. Yeah, And honestly, we both have testament right now of how video makes a huge difference as opposed to just taking pictures or even burst because you get a much better concept of how the deer using the area. It's like it's unreal, and then you get to see like I have one buck in particular that I thought was a three year old, but because of the way he is acting around other three year olds, I have suspicion that he might be a four year old. He's a touch bigger, but just because he is a more dominant figure, I think that he is an older buck. I don't think he's gonna be a shooter, just because I would like to see him get a little older. But anyways, it's just like a little sort of details like that you get to see in video. You know, you get to see dear's personality. Like, I've got another buck that I call cautious. Actually, uh, he's the that was in that video that we just released, the two year old. He's a big two year old and calling cautious because he constantly like picks up corn, sticks his head up and looks around seven directions the whole time. It doesn't matter, like if there's other deer around or not. He does it on the way in, on the way out, just his nature, you know, so like and then I've got other deer that are just so carefree. He snuck in there on cautious today, didn't you? Or was that yesterday? Yesterday? Yesterday? Dude, yesterday. It did make me feel good. It was cool man. But anyway back to the track gives um Exodus Trek Trail Camera is what we're giving away. I'm sure many of you have heard this, and I know a lot of you have already given reviews, so thank you for that. We've got some really cool ones and one that we even made us laugh pretty good. All you have to do is give us a review on iTunes five star review and just uh something and put your name on there. Otherwise we don't know who you are. So it was the five star review and that time is running out on that because this is going to release on the right something like that, and we're gonna announce this on thet Yeah, so you'll hear from us. The next time you hear from us will be giving we'll be giving it away, right, you're right, goodness, So this is the last time you get warned about the track trail camera giveaway. Make sure you search the podcast on your app. You have to search it, even if you're subscribed. Just search it, scroll down to where it says reviews, give us a review five stars and say what you want, and you are in the running for it. And honestly, odds are pretty good to win at. Right now, I'm about to make another account, so yeah, and then make sure the only place we're gonna announce the winner this thing is on the Big Buck Breakdown on October thirty, so make sure you listen to that episode. And it is a big buck. It is a big buck. It's a genormous buck. This buck from one of our good buddies, uh who shall not be named, but uh yeah, so check that out. Check out the the uh I don't remember something about a big two year old buck or whatever. HiT's the video of that cautious book you're talking about. That's on our YouTube channel now and uh subscribe so you can see what we're doing this this uh fall and winter, man, because um, we're gonna be posting a lot of content and we're gonna try to keep it good content, um stuff with deer in it. Mostly I've been trying, Like, like I said, I've had several hunts without a deer. So you guys haven't seen it, really, any of that footage yet, and I don't think you will because I don't want to torture YouTube bad. But anyway, is there anything else going on? Man, I'm hunting in the morning. Oh dude, good luck, I know, and we're feeling good, like right now, you and I both are like it could happen tomorrow every time we hunt. I'm telling you, I checked the camera like maybe two or three days ago, and then I checked it today, um, during the middle of the day because I thought I might go this evening if there was something worth you know, showing me or whatever that I needed to um, And there was like so much more buck action this last pool and there's only two days worth, and so anyway, I'm starting to now that I saw some deer there, starting to figure it out. That's one thing we've kind of talked about is like, but both of us are hunting a pretty similar area and it's pretty residential overall, lots of traffic, lots of road county roads and that kind of thing. And um, it's it's so interesting how these deer using soft spots where humans can't really see them during the day to move, you know, and even during the night. But you know, there's like farms and dogs and chickens and stuff all over the place and guy's mowing the yard, and these deers still finding places that are soft spots to move through. And it's interesting because what you look at as being like the main route that this deer should travel from this big wooded property into my property isn't always the case. You know. It's not so much about cover as it is just where they feel the most comfortable staying away from humans. And normally, like what we've learned throughout our public, you know, adventures, is that those two are usually one of the same, and it's not that way on this private stuff. Man, it's different. It's and it's really weird that that's that much of a difference, you know, like it's a strange thing. Yeah, I know, dude, it's it's nuts and we're starting to figure that stuff out. But it's one of those things like, sorry, if your guys are hearing some big monster trucks, we're in East Texas, so we have to have a muffler, you know, modified muffler. But uh, anyway, So but it's really interesting, and I think that as we figure these out, when once we do, like we're gonna be in the money, we're gonna understand it. But it may take a few years to figure out all the places they're coming from. Hopefully we get to hunt these properties for a few years, you know, hopefully. So on the podcast today we have, Man, this is one of my favorites. Dude. You've been looking forward to this one for about two years. Yeah, I know. And we we actually did this podcast a while back. We wanted to save it for a pre RUT podcast so everybody could get all their RUT tactics in inline going into the you know what everybody's gonna take as a rut caation, I guess. And and this is Jeff Sturgis from White Till Habitat Solutions. Jeff, Like, man, he knows something about everything, seems like, you know, I mean the guy talks about, you know, modifying your property to to be a big buck paradise and this and that to hunt well or too to be habitat for deer or whatever it might be. And you're like, oh, he's you know, it's cool stuff and maybe doesn't pertain to me as as a guy who doesn't have land and who's young right now, Um, you know, I logged that in my mind or whatever. But then all of a sudden you start like digging deeper into Jeff and you understand this guy has killed big bucks on public land yeah, and hunts public plan every year all the time. Yeah. It's crazy. And I'll tell you what else. White Tail have Tech Solutions is a good follow because that dude, Like, Okay, there's these people that put out articles and you read it and you're like, hmmm, I didn't really learn anything. It just was a deer hunting story. He puts that stuff that like every time, I'm like, I need to see what this is all about, you know, like it's good quality information, man, So I'm ready to go, like, get that in verbal form because I'm not a great reader. I feel like I've been better at watching a YouTube video and letting Jeff tell me. But that's a good thing. You know he's got he's really got a great YouTube channel. So you'all you'all subscribe to his channel and why they're subscribed to ours, and uh, I'm ready to get Jeff on the podcast. Let's do it, alright. So on the phone now we have Jeff Sturgis of Whitetail Habitat Solutions. Jeff, I was gonna ask you how your vacation went, but apparently it has not ended yet. Well, it's kind of extended. We had uh um for stuff great to be on the podcast. I'm looking forward to discussion. But yeah, the vacation ended with uh. On the way home, the transmission going out. So I put a lot of miles in my truck. I don't know. I think it's a two thousand and fifteen with a hundred and forty thousand miles. But you shouldn't have gone out yet. My last truck lasted almost four hundred thousand, so I'm waiting for that thing to get fixed and we'll be We're supposed to be back Sunday, and I think I'm gonna get back on Thursday. So yeah, well you're somehow I'm I guess I'm lucky. But mine's got probably about a hundred ninety on it right now. And I pulled out the other day onto the highway and early in the morning. Luckily there weren't many people out and and uh, it just like basically said something about my stability track and then it shut off basically, and as I'm going down the Highland, you know, I had to pull into a bank and turn it off for about five minutes. Yeah, it's it's having some electrical issues. I think, um, but I'm hoping to gain but like I'm hoping that if I do end up in the same boat as you, I'm on vacation as well, instead of like I need to be working and I can't get my truck to work. Yeah, and that's a cool thing too. I just just finished writing a blog and published a YouTube video today, so that was at least do some white tail work while I'm on the road hotel wherever I'm at. So you, uh, you know you're speaking about it, but explain for the listener. It may not know much of kind of what you do. It's kind of hard to describe. But what I do is I designed white tail properties around the country, and so since two thousands. I started the business in two thousand five, and since that time, I've been to uh right around seven dred clients in twenty five states. And so what I do is I go to the property, help them with their timber management and give them suggestions and uh and give them a plan and designed to what to do with their timber, how to make betting areas, how to make travel corridors, how to put install water holes if they need them or not, how to put in food plots based on their equipment and their resources, what they should plant based on their location, and really papped that up into a complete design that you know you're really the highest goal is to attract as many white tails to your land as possible without you spooking them when you go out to hunt. And so what I find it doesn't matter for hunting on public land or private land, or on designing private land parcels and and um white tail set ups, but hunting and how you hunt is always the lowest hole in the bucket. If that makes sense. You can't overcome uh sloppy hunting, um efforts of poor hunting practices with the best habitat or the best white tailed personal you know in the country. Man. That sounds like one of the most rewarding jobs that you can you could have, I think, you know that's so Yeah, it's it's fun. And I have a list about two two hundred long of different ideas that I can carry over when I write articles. So I have about seven articles online out of my site, and I think about a hundred and fifty YouTube videos and that'll you know, increased by a hundred on both ends or more and uh, and then I have four books out too, and so what I learned on white tailed persons directly flows into my writings or the videos or certainly you know, my books that are out there too. So it's you know, a lot of fun. It's you know, basically white tails all five days a year. But of course, um, like we're talking earlier, I really like to go fishing too. Yeah, it's been a nice relaxing change of pace. Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's uh, it's kind of cool that you have that dynamic of being able to kind of do white tails for a living, but fish, uh you know kind of get still have that outdoor aspect of vacation time, you know or whatever, and that that rest and relaxation. Um. Yeah, So your YouTube channel has some pretty interesting stuff on it. I am a big YouTube watcher and I think I saw a video where you were talking about road kill and using that to understand whitetail travel patterns. That's pretty interesting. Can you kind of explain and if you know listeners out there, if you think about it, there's always those places in your neighborhood, your city, your county where you see dear hit on the road, and there's a reason they're they're always crossing based on funnels, sens rows, food sources, betting areas, and especially now where we can get a drone and fly over the top where you can easily look at Google area photos and get a lot of detail. Um, there's a reason why they're crossing. And I think you can directly relate that to whether you're hunting on public land or even how you're setting up your properties on private land. As far as how deer move and where they typically moving. A lot of it just boils down to habitat, change habitat lines and you know, wanting to eat and point B and travel from betting in point A and so trying to go back and forth. But yeah, I like that, and so that's what I've always done. And driving up and down in Michigan or over into Wisconsin and down, you know, anywhere I draft for clients. It's always interesting to see. You when you see a road kill, you know, look around a little bit and just kind of pay attention and see why that deer was killed. They're not just that's a deer, dead deer on the side of the road. Sometimes they can paint a little picture, a little better picture. Man. I eat that stuff up, like anything that's that's different than what you have seen or heard over and over again, whether it be reading in an article or in a magazine or on a podcast. I mean, some of some of the things that we hear, it's almost like just a regurgitation of something that's been happening or being told for the last twenty years or whatever. And I love stuff like that that's just out of the box thinking. I feel like that that's a great way to be, like to be in general. But then also that's a great way to be a successful hunters to kind of think out of the box and realize things that your normal hunter may not realize. Yeah, I think sometimes you're yeah, you're you're you're looking at that. Uh, you know, a deer does this certain thing, and we know that. Um. But then you always have to ask why. And so when you ask why is when you start to really learn, not not just accepting that a white tail does travels to food the evening, why does he do that? And um or or beds mature buck beds in a remote location? Why does he? Why does he not bed with the dope family groups? And you know why? And then you can learn a lot of all white tails by just asking that that simple question. UM. So you do own a piece of property, and that's in Michigan, I guess, or I owned at one time two acres in Michigan. Right now at least three parcels in southwest Wisconsin. So I don't own any land right now, but I have privately and that I work on, you know, quite a bit, depending on the which one you know, which landowner UM in southwester Wisconsin. So that allows me to get a lot of and I had at least before that for twelve years in Wisconsin before these three that I have. So I've been hunting there for this seventeenth season, coming up on private land. That's cool, that's cool. It's nice to have that history. Um. So you're gonna hunt public land this year, though, am I correct? Yeah? For the last six years, I've hunted public land in Ohio. I really want to go back to my roots in Michigan. Um. I love some of my northern areas where I've hunted, where you're walking out forty five minutes to an hour out in the swamps. Um. I hunted Pennsylvania public land for seventeen years. I always think about going back there too, and uh, and so I don't know where I'll end up on public land. But that's the beauty of public land is um you can basically, you know, private land is a lot of work. Um. You know, if you're doing it right, putting your land together, You're trying to condense hundreds of acres sometimes salves of acres into a couple hundred acre down to a twenty acre package. You know, trying to really fit a lot and make that person seem a lot larger. But I'm publicly and you just show up and might might require a lot of boot time. But I and that's so, I will hunt public land somewhere this year. And um, I just haven't decided fully where yet. Where's what's the drive to go hunt in Pennsylvania? Like you have? Pennsylvania is about ten eleven hours right around there for me, um to get over to that area. So I hunt in the Northeast area up in the hills, pretty close to New York. In fact, we dropped go through New York and then dropped down just into New York maybe an hour and a half, then to the south. So so what's the I mean, do you have a reason that you hunt there though? Is that? Uh? You know, is it just the challenge, the amount of deer? What is what's the reason you keep going over there? My uh, um, Michelle is my first wife and we um married and I started hunting with her family right off the bat, and so I hunted there for seventeen years and it was an annual you know, we hunted in the same cabin I hunted. I brought friends with me. Sometimes my brother hunted with me, and sometimes they were up to eighteen guys in camp and so they had a rich history there where they actually shot their two hundredth white tail or two hundredth buck. I think it was back in two thousand seven, right around there. They had a long history of hunting there for over forty years. They're really like touneing in the in the hills, Pennsylvania in the public land and and so that's what got me started there and I and I really love it out there. And so it's kind of like I missed some of those interior benches and points and uh, kind of that middle level elevation that you'd go all the way back for walking seven hundred feet in elevation, drop back down the back side, and those are some of my favorite areas to hunt. Kind of a rule remote area. Yeah, And that's interesting. We don't have a ton of elevation here, and most of the places that I've hunted, we haven't had a ton of elevation change unless it's elk in Colorado or New Mexico. And so it's a that's a it's an interesting thing to me because, um, I feel like that wind is so unpredictable there in some of those places, and or at least it would be for me that would be intimidating it is, and and so I started kind of cutting my teeth on teeth on that in And then of course right hunt in in Wisconsin there's about five d foot changes in elevation, so pretty big changes. In fact, some of the stands I go to right now are a half hour plus um, you know, and you walk up hill the entire time to get get there. So I really get in shape during the hunting season and a little lot of out of shape right now. But it really what's great about hills is a to me, what I've seen anywhere is that hills, given the same number of hunters and similar percentages of cover versus agg land um or woods, that hills help push up the buck age structure. They help HiPE bucks, they help separate hunters, you're not hunging all in one local san um. They help produce more habitat because a lot of times you can't plant on the steep faces, insides and into your benches points, draws, and so you get some increases in cover. But really um, and then those winds. What I like about hills you can cheat the wind. You can't cheat the wind on flat ground. If it's coming out of the northwest. Weapon through a woodlot, it's going to be northwest. And then the only exception might be a heavy line of conifer or something that might steer it like a berm. But um. But other than that, in the hill country, you can actually cheat the wind, you know you can. You can play a lot of games with the wind, and I really enjoy doing that. So are you looking for, like say, specific saddles or I guess hills that jut out into a bottom or whatever that allow you to cheat the wind like that? Yeah, there's there are several things that happen is um in the morning, and and probably right around seventy of my my, you know, top twenty five bucks. Let's say I've been shot in the morning. Then the thing about in the morning is it allows you to um hunt high and as long as those white tails are below you, generally you're safe because the thermals are alreadys going up in the morning and you're getting a strong lift in the morning to all the way. As long as those temperatures are changing, the thermals are going up. And so that's why I hike a lot of times up high. And you know, I wait till pre rot rot to do that, And you're basically getting on top of white tails that are down in egg land or food plots hundreds of yards below, sometimes a half mile, and you're waiting for those deer to come back up to you in those betting areas and and and if you're down low, it makes it pretty tough because that winds swirls. So then I hunt on the outside of points with good wind flow from either side, where I can predict when my wind is gonna fall in the evening and blow until it falls. Um. And so a lot of times I'm hunting on the outside of points low and and then I'm hunting high on benches points, you know, wherever the deer movement dictates up high does in the morning, does the barometer effect how strong those thermals are? Um. I haven't followen that it does other than the barometer. UM. You know, using when the barometer is low, for example, there's a lot of other things going on that will affect it, you know. For example, east winds are a lot light lighter, So sometimes you find that east wind or no wind, whether with an approaching front or one that's just coming too And it's really calm, keeps those thermals down and there's not a real big change in the morning hours that you would expect. And so I'm hunting a lot of high pressure days and the barometric pressure would be high, and then you're getting a lot of good lift, but you're getting a lot of good white tail movement. Then it seems like in that cleaner colder there on the back side of the front. So a lot of you know, I'm not sure if it's exactly the factor of the barometric pressure or a combination of the rain, the dew point, everything else it's that's going on at the same time. Yeah, yeah, you do see some correlations with that. And it's cool because you know, we all hear about hyperometer means good deer movement anyway, so it's good whenever. You know, it also plays in your favor. As far as wind goes, we have a stand you know, we don't have a lot of train change here, but every little bit counts, and uh, there's a place where the you know, if you've got a solid north wind, it can kind of come across an opening and then it hits about I don't know, what do you say twelve foot elevation change right there. Yeah, maybe not even that, but it's just enough to kind of kick it up. And then on a hyperometer day we can sit in our stand, release a milk weed pod and it goes straight up in there and then just straight up and yeah, it's so cool because deer that are down weend just walk right by, not even you know, think that we're there. And it's it's neat how uh you can find those kind of places, But it takes a ton of uh work or in our case, just some luck because that was the only tree to put a stand in at that point, and it like that. Well, but earlier you talked about, you know, um, how it might take a lot of boot time or whatever to figure out some places like this. Um, and I was gonna ask, you know, what's your strategy when you do pull up to a place. It sounds like, you know, you put a lot of weight on what you can see and find out from the ground there. Well, it's boot time, meaning like, uh, you know where in the north and the up where I used to hunt, there was a huge percentage of taggled or swamp marsh where there was not a lot of deer movement, not a lot of daytime holding cover. And then you had a high percentage of spruce swamp which has zero food in it. And then you had a high percentage in the upland areas of mature timber that was federal land and so and and that didn't contain a lot of deer either. So you really, what I would do is I'd take a large area like that, especially when I first started hunting it, and I X out all the big common areas. So you take out the tagle or take out the the hardwoods, take out the spruce stands, and then you check all those lines in between, so where all those habitat features met or meat. So you have change in elevation um, change in habitat type, and a lot of those areas where you have multiple habitat features rivers. If you add in there are creeks, beaver ponds, then that's where food sources would take shape, because it was the most diverse area of habitat with a lot of habitat features coming together. So basically you could X out all the acres and then it might be that you're checking that spot a half mile over there that one three cores a mile over there, that one a mile back. But you're really just exting out a lot of the habitat um that really didn't look attractive, and you're trying to find as many features coming together in one spot and then just purely scouting those areas and you and you'd see a relationship, you see old and I was looking for old signs. You know, old signs almost better than new sign. If it's one rob just from this year, even though it looks like a nice rob, it's not as valuable as going into an area where you think there's a nice funnel and then you go in there and you find thirty old robs that extend back for a decade or more. That's a valuable area. So that's you're really trying to eliminate a lot of acres at one time. So do you do you ever hunt small tracks for public um? I used to growing up, and that was down in the uh Pontiac Clarkston area of Lower Michigan, and they were all I mean, sometimes you're hunting behind someone's house. It was just a small public land tract um that a lot of people were hunting and and I enjoyed hunting those one most Pontiac Lake Recreation Area. And it's not like I'm gonna draw a magnet of people there, because anybody that's down in that area, there's millions of people and there. You know, if your hunters, you probably hunted out that way at some point, or if you're hunted public land. But I really enjoyed hunting those places. And one of my favorite actics was I hunted behind the house was a lot, and so I'd find areas where you could get in. There's lots of subdivisions around or dead end streets, and you find someone that you know on one of those dead end streets that you could access behind their land and get into areas that other people had to walk through quarters a mile or a half mile to get into. And then at the same time, you found that a lot of those um backyards were full of ornamental shrubs or gardens or flowering trees, bushes, whatever it might have been that attracted deer every single night, apple trees, um crab, apple trees. And so I hunted a lot of movements on and out of private lands on the public land. So I mean, you know, I was doing some map scouting last night actually, and when I was looking when you when you look, U say you're gonna go out of state or even in state, and you start looking. And I have casey and I used non X mapping system quite a bit, and so you've got like you can see a lot of public when you look in a wide view at a state. Um, whether it's big or small, how are you narrowing down the actual pieces that you want to really go in and and boot scout. That's uh, yeah, that's a good question. Because you do look at ten thousand acres, you can narrow down the habitat now. But I'm also doing is I'm looking for block September that are away from roads. And so when I hunted down in Ohio where I chose to hunt down there was basically I chose those areas and I can tell you, um, mistake I made down there like that too, But um, I chose areas. The one was four by six miles, and I can honestly say that in six years, I actually hunted there in that location for four So those four years, I saw another hunter one time back and I'd walked in forty five minutes to an hour, and it's just pure walk. And so you had the place to yourself. But the mistake I made was that down in that area and I capitalized on it two years ago, and it kind of hurt me last year. The same thing was that, Um, when we first hunted that area six seven years ago, there there were somewhat young clear cuts. They were two or three or four years old, and that was like the optimum time to see deer numbers we saw and one day I said, I personally saw one day. And as the years went by, UM, you saw a fewer and fewer deer to the point there was hard landing and it was just because those dear migrate to the fresh clear cuts. Two years ago I hunted by a couple of semi fresh clear cuts. They are probably in that three or four year old range, and uh, and shot a nice buck. We had probably about eight to ten shooters on camera over four cameras in a given area. And then last year hunting there, UM, I had a friend telling me that he was seeing the same buck three miles away that we had on camera off all the year before, and it was ready adjacent to fresh clear cuts that were only a year old. And so you know, I know that now it's kind of you know, they they hunt, they moved to the fresh food. So if you have big public land tracks have rotational cuttings in the timber, say a state personal then um, you know, I really like looking for one remote areas that I can get in and have a place kind of to myself. But then also getting in near those clear cuts or food sources if those are president in the area is really important. Or in the case of where I hunted up north and the wilderness swamps of Michigan, I was looking for those habitat changes because there were zero cuttings out there, so it really narrowed it down whether we're deer, we're actually at How long would you figure that the process of narrowing down properties takes and then maybe the process of understanding if that property is something you want to hunt after putting some boots on it. I think that the biggest thing. It doesn't take a lot of time by air. If you're looking at aerial fowlards are aerial maps, and you're looking at roads and road access, um you're looking for remote areas. Is you know that in itself narrows down the parcels. But in the case of a highway where you're hunting with the clear cuts, you have to throw into those one to three year old clear cuts and kind of X out everything else too. And so by the time you do that, you could take you know, a state public land area sixty acres and narrow it down to five thousand acres of land that you want to go take a look at. So then it's a matter of getting into that area and seeing if there's actually gear sign and um seeing especially if you know, if it's two or three year old clear cut, seeing what kind of signs around, how you can get in and out. Some of the topal map areas don't relate directly to the new clear cuts, so you're not sure you might get into an area and it's this the flat area that you want to hunt or bench is just a big clear cut and you can hardly get in there. It just gets so thick by your five or six that you can't walk through it. And so but yeah, you're um, you really, you know, you really need to put that formula um and play X out as many acres and that you can that are common habitat. That's that's all the same, it's all mature. There's not a potential food, big pine tickets, and then it actually takes that time to get there. And I would say, honestly, it really isn't something that takes weeks and weeks. Um, Like if you're if you're going to do that in a northern setting in the Upper Midwest, or you're going down to state like Ohio or Indiana on public land. UM, I think that you could spend a couple of weekends, you know, all day Saturday, maybe part of Sunday or part of Friday, and and after a couple of weekends, have a really good game plan of what's going on. If you stick to the script, you don't get misled by you know, a bunch of signed just a quarter mile from a road that um, you know a lot of people are gonna be hitting once it gets the Deer city, because you could be really really disappointed. Sure, so on those clear cuts that you were talking about, Um, you know we live or or not really live, but we we have opportunity to hunt areas like timber harvest areas and stuff like that. Uh, you know much of the South has that as well as you know up and then you know far northern reaches. But uh, a lot of clear cuts are just big squares taken out of mature timber. So there's not a lot of variation in the edgy edges or you know, define habitat features involved with them. So you know, I understand that they're huge, you know, food sources for a white tail, But how do you go about actually hunting a clear cut minus just setting up on the edge and hoping one walks by? And I guess it really depends on what's going on the outside of that too. You know, if it's all the same for miles, that's one thing, um, but there's got to be some change within there, whether it's just even a ten foot change in topography, UM, a small creek a half mile away, UM, something that you're looking for not just in the two to three yards that surround that clear cut, but what's a half mile away and what's three cars of mile away? Because you find in big areas like that, and I see this in the up of Michigan where you have big timbered areas, the deer typically um. You know. So let's say it's fifty fifty and you're in southern Wisconsin, southern Michigan, UM, Central Indiana of the central Illinois, Iowa, you might find that a day daylight movement of deer might boil down to two to four hundred yards where you have those that are sandwiched up against food source if they're food sources, if there's cover, and then behind that somewhere are medium major boxing, the ad mature box that are further in remote areas. It's just what they choose, and that whole movement from buck bedding to a food source might be two to four hundred yards. I find you get in those remote areas and it could be even a big wooded area in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, but when you get up north and it could be in uh the state of Texas too, that those movements could be more narrowed down to three quarters of a mile to a mile, where it's not just that you can't sandwich the deer used to space, they take the space. In northern Ohio and a client property where there's client has twenty six acres and neighbor has twenty acres. Between that the two of them, they have the most acreage within two miles in any direction. It's just all open flat agg So in those cases you have forty years sometimes they're sandwiched into a twenty acre personal and where you couldn't do that, even if you had great habitat betting area work food plots, you couldn't do that in northern Michigan for example. Um, those deer just are used to moving a lot more and not being uh you know, really pounding on top of each other in a in a cramp space. Yeah. You know, Jeff, for many years in my life, I've been wondering what advantage we have over the agg laden Midwest, and I finally found it now that it is because the deer moved further in daylight. There actually is something. Yeah, I think so, I think so. It said. The problem is that's more of a needle in a haystack sometimes, but I think it helps protect deer and uh advance them too the next age class, and it can spread out your hunting opportunity to you're not just honing on this little sure. Yeah, And Tyler and I talk about that all the time, like since we're publican public land hunters for the most part, like, yeah, it's kind of tough and we can't put up feeders or we can't plant food plots or what have you do a lot of habitat improvements. But with the thing that we do have going on, our advantage is the fact that we can cover a deer's whole home range if we want to and really try to figure that out that bug. There's a lot of people who don't have that advantage on their small private parcel or their you know, their egg fielder whatever it is. You know, that's pretty Yeah, that's a great observation because boy, it's a lot of fun when you go into big public land tract and kind of think that you know, they're feeding over here, they're betting over here and moving in between, or they have multiple beds, and you can try to figure out the whole scenario. And if it's remote enough, you don't have a lot of um hunter influence. And I've I've seen though there's boys some really good box down in the Arkansas area and down the Arkansas offer clients and seeing it down there, So there's I can't tell you how many clients of mine have land adjacent to, right next to, or in close proximity to public land. It's amazing the deer they're out and some I would never go back and hunt those areas by those clients and dishonor that relationship. But at the same time, there's some really good deer on public land that I could bring people right to that are right next to private land parcels. So when people say they don't have hunting areas, they always kind of shake my head because if you want to drive a couple of hours, there's a good piece of public land somewhere in some directions. So we'll talk later off there about that part there. Yeah, yeah, sure, yeah, yeah, Well, I just just get your pen and paper and numbered, I'll list them out for you. Yeah, so um, you know. And that's one of the cool things about it though, is that it's just a big track of land, you know, and you have the opportunity to roam and and quite honestly, like you said, it's just enjoyable to note that I have the opportunity to target this book at every aspect of his life, you know. But you have to figure out how to how to actually accomplish that, and sometimes it's really tough because, for instance, a guy with a private parcel might have you know, uh and a clearing you know, whether it's clear cut agg whatever, CRP field and have you know, a finger of timber that just runs right through it, just the the standard funnel pinch that everybody hopes to have be able to hunt during the run, right, and they can do that. You find that on a public public public peace. Most of the time, there's gonna be three old deer stands, a couple of trail cameras and some flagon tape there, you know, So it doesn't work. Yes, I mean, yes, people killed near there every in a place like that every year. But you have to be good if you want to be successful, you have to be good at finding the funnels that you can't see from an aerial or that are very hard to see from an aerial. So yes, yeah, that's true too, you know, and that that would you say, uh, four by six earlier. I'm sure that that scenario could be played out there. But what strategies do you have or what type of funnels um are not so apparent or really hard to see from an area that maybe you might even have to get you know, your boots dirty to find well and see that that boils down too, because I've hunted tracks that are all the same. So it's basically there's no definition of habitat, just rolling topography and maybe big hardwoods and um. And then it boils down to your kind of trying to slot yourself in in between the hunting access points. So I like to go find the remote areas in between and and it almost you're almost looking for other hunting locations. So I really like looking for like, for example, and I get out of my car in the up, I would be very very careful, um at what direction I went for crushing ferns, Like, I'd really try to slip through the ferns. I didn't like breaking any ferns because anybody that went to that spot could tell where I went. I didn't leave any flagging ribbon. It's I'm looking at that stuff for everyone else. And so that's one of the things that scout in the offseason was where am I finding old blinds? Um? Where am I finding old hunter access routes, crushed ferns, bootprints, there's I've made sand traps. So let's say you across a beaver dam in the up of Michigan and then you're getting into a big patch of spruce that makes some sand traps just to tell me which white people want. And then by by that you can tell kind of like, is this you know, is this the father and son hunting back their husband and wife. You look at bootprints, so I love looking at bootprints, and in that case, and you're basically just trying to tell, you know, without it being during the season where people are scouting where they've been before, and then you're narrowing down the pockets where people aren't. So I'm not one that's ever hunted someone else's blind location. I'm more of the type I see, uh blind that someone might be hunting, or location they had a tree stand on and they cut some limbs down, and I just go the opposite direction, and so I'm constantly looking for a spot that is untouched, kind of going back to that principle of hunting pressure is the lowest hole in the bucket. And if I can find a spot where everything else being equal, um doesn't has at least amount of hunting pressure, that I'm gonna find uh a pocket of really good deer hunting, regardless of if the habitats all the same everywhere you go. So can you explain the sand trap thing a little bit more, because I don't know if I've ever heard that, and it sounds very intriguing. So one of the things I love doing is making mock scrapes for deer, and the deer it's coming through, Um, you can tell sometimes there's a broken hoof, Um, you know, broken toe, and you can tell that particular box size of the track that you see over and over again. Um, you might see even a rotation of them. So I love doing that with white tails. But at the same time with people. UM, I've had areas where you know, again across the beaver dam, and I make a sand trap this way or that way, just so that when they get out out of that constriction. And let's say you're austin the creek somewhere, you're coming down a road and then you're going down a point, and by keeping an open surface of sand or exposed soil for someone to step in, then you can actually see you know, you might go into location like that, it's loaded with footprints, you know, people and and you and you go down to your trail camera and camera that's you know, in your stand location that's still there, and it explains a lot of why there's no deer in the area because someone's been hunting it over and over again. So you're Basically, it's one more tactic to try to keep an eye on who's hunting in the area, No different than UM driving over to your around the block, around the neighborhood to see who's you know, which weekend hunters up and the visiting their cabin on that personal not hunting for the weekend, that you can maybe cheat to that side of the personal knowing that a buck only comes over to your area when the neighbors are on their land hunting for that weekend. You know, you might be Saturday Sunday afternoon. So really you're giving your ability to look at tracks and in a spot where you otherwise wouldn't people see any tracks going out into the woods. Kind of kind of hunting people, you know, just keeping tabs on them. Yeah, exactly, which again goes back to you know, you're you're trying to find the area that has the least amount of hunt hunter impact and hunter pressure. You find those little pockets where everything else is is um even as far as habitat goes, and UM, I think you really tilt the odds in your favor. How long does pressure affect an area in your experience? You know, I go to a lot of client properties, and this could extend to public land. I believe too. But you know, I have clients that tell me they just saw a diminishing deer herd. You know, season opens October first, you have a couple of good hunts, it gets into gun season in the middle of November. By the time they get int the muzzleoader in December, they're not seeing a deer. And then we're out there in the end of February, and not only do we see dozens of beds, but we see fresh robs, we see deer hair, lots of pellets, and we actually push deer off the property. And I feel like there's a three to four week of forgiveness where um, dear will forget your intrusions after three or four weeks, or it doesn't really have much of the impact. But um, the problem is is that, especially on private land, hunters are hitting their land every weekend, every other weekend, and there's just it never gets to a point where the deer can experience those weeks of forgiveness where you haven't been on the property, and then all of a sudden, the month after you you know, the season ends, there's deer out there. And I think that that happens on public land. And so that being said, if I have a great area that I want to hunt for the rot on public land and I know there's someone going in there hunting, I just I go to one of my other spots because I look at it like, we really don't have enough time for that to settle down. And public land is a little different though, because sometimes there's some really hot saddles or points, um can basically funnels that you could sit in almost every day because the deer used to moving over such a large area with a lot of woods. Um, yeah, that that might be spooked out for a buck here, buck there over a three or four day periods someone's hunting there. We always have that next block that might be coming from a mile away. Um, that's none. The wiser doesn't know there's any been any intrusion because he's got such a large home range during the daylight compared to that small forty to eighty acre parcel that can be buggered out, you know, for a month at a time, and they're not going to be on that that parcel during the daylight. It's kind of interested because we have a spot on public that we have hunted in the last couple of years, and uh, it was covered up with bucks, had a lot of bucks, and we didn't have cameras in there until November, UM, and it had a ton of bucks on it, and then UM, we hunted it quite a bit and it kind of had um kind of a low towards the end of the year. We weren't seeing as much deer movement. And then um, that summer, which was last summer, we put trail cameras up and there were bucks back in there, like crazy and good bucks. And then we hunted it this year a few times. And in November we had a couple of different groups of people move in at different times, and they always came in on the wrong wind and they were basically walked in down wind. And um, we really saw the movement suffer on their trail cameras in the end of the year. And so I was assuming that deerwood this summer would move back in there, and we haven't really seen. We've got decent amount of dose and they're moving through, but we don't have the bucks moving in there like they like they were, And so I just was interested. Yeah, well in one of the things too, like I see that they do. Like I have clients all the time. I have clients with dirt bike tracks, horse riding trails, things like that, and they, um, they do really well. My turn key partner Ross, he goes through a lot of properties and CONTs water holes in switchgrass whatever, and they um. You know. I have people like that that are working on their lands from January to August and then they stay off them and then have a great hunt. Um. So I don't really see that a lot of times where you're hunting here and it's pushing. But what I do see is like summer food sources change a lot, and so if you don't have summer food sources adjacent to those same areas you saw them in the past, then the summer food sources a lot of times drive drive the deer in the same with fall. You know, like I'm seeing a public land where you know, it's great hunting this year, and then we see ten different shooter box or eight, and then the next year you're getting a picture of one and it's just it wasn't. I don't feel it was the people. I feel it was the habitat change. Those clear cuts are moved and just brought the deer to a different location. Not to mention the hunting pressure does make a big difference, but in an area like that, you could usually you know, the deer just get bumped around. You can go a half mile over here and they're fine, or this half mile there's a quar area where there's there's really no hunt thing pressure. But you know, I find they're just gone. It's probably food related. That was kind of my next question was you know how far it is a buck timber or typically move in like heavy timber or heavy cover. And what I see is they move a lot more during the daylight. They're willing to move a lot more in the daylight to go to get from high quality betting, and typically on public land because um, a lot of times in public land it's not that well managed as far as that there's clear cuts every everywhere and there's hardwood regeneration everywhere, um that there's a diversity of habitat, or that there's a lot of edge. So white tails are willing to move a lot a great distance. I had a buck I was after I think it was two thousand eleven. It was a real big eight point on the public land. Nice mature buck. Um ended up being close to hunt for an eight points. It was a big, you know, big angler, but he was I had hunters that I know and shared trail camp potos with me. They're getting pictures on their on their bait piles between midnight at two four in the morning, and then I'm I'm seeing him and then shooting him a couple of days later at ten in the morning, Um approximately a mile away, and I was out in his bedroom there and that's there. It's almost like a barbell. He's out there, and then a mile away at night he's going and hitting all those bay piles out on the public land. And I was on public land in that case too, and I went in a completely different direction than those guys did. They came in the front side, that went all the way on the back side, and I had to walk a long ways in trying not to you know, trying to keep keep them knowing there's a trail coming in. But in that case, they were moving. That buck was probably moving, I would guess in that three quarter a mile to a mile and a quarter range every single day going from his interior betting where there's no people hunting, and then going back out to the bed the food sources at night where there's a lot of hunting pressure. UM. And that's and that's really really good info out there. UM. You know, I have for the last eighteen months or so known about out of Buck and he's now you know, you and I talked earlier. And we don't chase monster deer and relativity to some these other people that are hunting in maybe the Midwest and such. But this is a nice year for our area. And UM, last year we hunted for him quite a bit. UM. He lives on a public peace during the fall. In the winter. The last two years we've seen him. UM in the summer. We had some issues finding him last summer, so we don't have any pictures of him last summer, and then up until this point, we don't have any pictures of him this summer. UM, but I have daytime picks of him, like all over the property UM, which is about two square miles and UM, despite like never having any pictures of him during March and October. March through October, UM, I think he still lives on the property during the summer. UM he's all over the place in the winter, moving cruising for doze. I mean, you got any tips on how I find this dear before October or just at least better yet, how do I kill him? You know? This season? Yeah, and I think uh one one thing, first off, for the summertime, it doesn't from what I've experienced, unless they get bumped. Dear really don't move a lot during the summertime. They really kind of shack up next to their their favorite summer food source they find, especially a bak, a big area with open air flow. They don't want to crash your velvet through a bunch of heavy, thick, regenerated timber that they would during the fall. So a lot of times they need their habitat requirements are a lot different than they need during the fall versus summer and so. But on the other hand, they've really love to hit. I don't know if you guys can use mineral looks down there. We can't. Um, okay, yeah we can't in uh Wisconsin huh too, But that really water holes and mineral looks are great places to find them during the summertime. And again kind of thinking that you're looking for areas that really aren't as thick as they would use during the fall. Yeah, it's it's thick bottom land like a lot of public d is. There are definitely open areas. Um. But um, you know, I guess one this is another thing that kind of perplexes me. But um, you know, in in the eastern habitexas, we have lots of creeks and you know, stock tanks and all this kind of stuff that you know, a lot of water sources, um, lakes, rivers, whatever. So how do I target that water during the summer? You know, how do I know that he's going to drink from this little pond or whatever as opposed to that big creek or river system you know. Yeah, And so that's kind of a non factor to one of the things I really like, Um during the actual hunting season with an individual, box is using traill cameras, um, just to figure out his direction that he's coming from. You and I basically know you're getting a lot of daytime pictures, so I consider that he's probably betting fairly clothes. Um. You know, yeah, he might move a half mile or a quarter mile, but once engineered on the direction he's coming from, and you assume that he's if you're seeing him at this point going into this food source in the evening and he's an hour before dark. Um, you can kind of to me narrowed down a pretty close proximity to his betting area. And and so what I'm doing is betting areas are the most critical location that you can discover for a white tail. And I'm looking at just I don't care the actual betties, and I care more about he's in this five acre area, this twenty acre area, because then I can go set up a set up on him in the morning and wait for that buck to come back to me in that exact location and then get a shot at him. And and so you know, there might be a potential of a lot of different betting areas, but um, you know there's box that are just coming in after dark that are nocturnal. And I have a lot of clients, and I hear from a lot of hunters where they're setting up on that buck and late October looking for a pre rout in the Midwest, and that buck is coming in the middle of the night, and he's telling you he's a mile away, and so he's got his dose with him over there. He's not going to be too early until um he breeds a couple over there over about a week period of time or ten day period of time, and then he's gonna come over. He's kind of been telling you, and you don't get a lot of pictures on them that way too, So that's that box that you only hunt tell them, you know, in the middle of the rout after he's bread a couple of dolls in his own area and he's gonna wander a long ways And I know your rut is spread out a lot more UM down there, and and so it's a little bit different there, but UM really working on those betting areas and trying to find a direction he's coming into either by rubs scrapes sign and you think it is his because it's popping up in the same area every year and you've seen him in that area UM, or you're using trail cameras in combination with the sign to UM. You know, it's kind of like, I don't I know hunters that don't use trail cameras on their private land because they wants booked deer. And to me, it's you have such an unfair advantage over someone, you know. I I'd love for all my neighbors to please not use immercy. That would be the perfect scenario because they can give you so much intel as far as if that's a non core bock and he's hanging in a half a mile away, he's a core bock and he's within a couple hundred yards three hundred yards of your food sources every single day. Um, they tell your direction A lot of times you have and you're just using six or eight cameras around the outside of that person, you can you're really learning a lot about the boxing are moving on and off your property, where they're coming from, and helpful they are. So I really explain this very well. But a lot of the daytime pictures we have are during well not necessarily during our rut, but he's definitely following or cruising for those I feel like in these pictures, um, so during the falling winter months and um, they are sometimes like far from each other. So like during the same day, well you know, like it seems like he'll stay in area for two or three days and then um, you know, like when we check uh in just postseason, like I guess February, we checked our cameras in that area, and he would be in this area for like January side and just making stuff up at January eighth and ninth, and then you would see him a day later on a camera, you know, say to the north six d yards or so and maybe maybe even more than that, and he's he's up there, um for two days or three days, and then he would be way over to the east for a couple of days after that, you know, and it was just weird. It was making it really really hard to put a pattern on him or to even that's pretty cool. You do you see that same pattern from south to north east or a direction because a lot of times, um, what I found in in like the big wilderness settings is that during the rot but your box will cruise known dope family group areas. This is from they're going from one to the next to the next. It's kind of like, you know, and it's kind of like you get pictures in one you get all excited, but he's he's already been there. He might be there for three or four days, and then he's moving through cords a mile over there to scan that dope family groups. It's almost like you see him here, you hunt over there waiting for him to come to you, and you and because a lot of times in those big wilderness areiaes, the Dope family groups are scattered, a little pocket here, a little pocket there. He's trying to kind of hit hit the Doe family groups for a couple of days, and he's got You think he particularly he could have a particular like route that he runs throughout the run. I definitely feel that way, And especially when you don't have hunter interference in between where he's hitting this location, you can freely go to that situation or that location over there and then come back and and you know, I think he's still would have when he's calm, when his war out, um when he's in between you know, um the rout periods, like we have a pretty solid early November rot to mid November, and then we have a smaller that would be you know, in early December. Well in between that time, I think he goes back home and the end of October he's at home. But then you see him during those those rut periods where he's cruising from Woodlock to woodlock, and I think he just knows where those are and he goes in check. Yeah. Yeah, man, that's that's a really good advice. I've I've been posing this question to the last few guests, a similar question, you know, kind of like how do I and I know it's so vague because yeah, we're not we're not talking to mostly we're not talking to people that are have familiar with where we hunt and this and that, so it's it's you know, property for specific but uh, that's really good advice. So I literally cannot wait not to be route to get off this phone call and start looking at my pictures. Yeah, because you know what's interesting, and this is something that I've shot about half of my oldest box, most mature box, where they give you just a handful of pictures over two or three year two or three year period of time, and they're they're obviously living on someone else's property, and it's kind of like if you look at those pictures, he's telling you when he's gonna be there next. You know, it's not to the date, but you know, it's kind of like, you know, we get into that mid rot period of time in November and I'm hunting a box that's from a mile away and I know the direction. You can look at the aerial photos he's over that way. You might even see him that way during the summertime, and you might even have friends telling you that they're seeing them often, you know, during close to daylight. And then you come to this rout window, let's say in our area November two to November, and you look at that chunk of time and you look at the weather. Now, there might be several days that are unseasonably warm, thirty winds, and not to say you can't shoot that box during those days, but you're basically playing poker and you're saying, these three days out of these twelve days, that's a really good hand. These other days are medium to poor, and so you're really counting on those three days that he's going to be on your property. And if you actually go back, I've done this with a lot of clients, and you look at your weather data, look at historical weather trends, you can see that you know, in general, there's a lot of deer, a lot of bucks are shot on really good weather days. And you can look at your own backs going back met and plug in numbers for um decades going back and and see when you shoot those so that pattern, and then you combine that pattern, whether you're you think he's going in between dough family groups, or he's connecting to a food source every single day. And you know this is betting areas coming from. But when you put the weather together with and you look at those factors, to me, a narrows it down where there's sometimes I've a shot a box it's a mile away, and I went and sat in that stand one time, and it seems like a needle in the haystack. But it's kind of like he's told you for two or three years that he's going to be there during a good day during this ten days Narra done. It's only got you only have one or two or three days that you can shoot him up that he's going to be there. Also, you know, using the weather and and following those patterns um to me really. You know, of course your weather is different down there as far as you're and and it's all relative. Like we get to we get unseasonably warm temperatures. But let's say we dropped from seventy five would be thirty degrees, you know, above norm. Let's say it dropped to fifty five, which is still ten degrees above norm during that time of year, it's a twenty degree drop and there's cold pressure air that came in. So I'm gonna hunt those days and you know, playing my cards on those days. And if you you know, related to whatever patterns of that buck you're after, then to me, I have a really good chance to shoot them. So I would I wouldn't be hunting out there just saying I gotta go after this buck every single day. You know, less is more, You're you're you. And that's another thing too. It's wrote an article a few years ago where you can shoot more deer from the couch and they just saying that, you know, literally you, to me, you burn out your best days over hunting on land and not being patient to where you have that ten out of ten day and opportunities come up. But now you've made it a one or a zero on a tend because you've overhunted it for the week before. Yeah, man, that that day, that that day just never comes. I don't know if I can hear that enough because I don't think it will ever go completely through my thick skull. But it's hard, it is tough, and honestly a lot of the places that we hunt are one buck counties or only one uh large book over third two, we have a restrictions a lot of places. So it's really tough whenever say you've got like this book that you have your heart set on, and then it's it's it's a very tough decision to say, Okay, I'm gonna go hunt a different spot and be willing to shoot another deer, you know, like that's hard to tell yourself sometimes. Yeah. Yeah, And then that same time you have, you know, and you know, I'm fortunately can hunt just Monday day I want during the season, and you know, of course most hunters aren't like that, and so I'm looking at like you, you have this opportunity to hunt Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and you have that time off. You know, for someone to pull back and wait till Saturday night or Sunday morning and not hunt all day Friday Saturday morning, it's really tough to do. But that's to me. You know, I found value when I had to manage my time a little bit more for time off that I found a lot of value that I could find a Wednesday night or a Thursday morning that was much more valuable than that following weekend because the weather was bad. So I literally would drive seven hours to hunt Wednesday night in a Thursday morning and go home and not hunt on the weekend. Yeah. I'm actually right there with you. I have a semi flexible schedule. I still have to work quite a bit. Yeah, you know. Yeah, I'm not saying it don't work. Yeah. I work around the mounting exactly. You know, I do construction. I think, you know, as a sad note, if if you really want to dedicate you know, a large portion of your wife, A large portion your wife. You're thinking your wife, yeah exactly. Yeah, I hope she didn't listen to that part. But you know, do you want to medicate a large portion of your life? You know, and you're serious about this white tail stuff, like like you really are committed. Finding an occupation that allows you to do that has really blessed me, you know, because I'm right there where you're talking about. I can. I can work a Saturday or a Sunday afternoon doing construction and then be able to hit that cold fun on Thursday when I need to, you know, And that's really that's really important. And when you're doing that, you're leaving more time you traditionally would go hunting for your family. Yes, exactly. You're looking at like, I'm yeah, I'm hunting this Wednesday. But at the same time that frees up to do this on Saturday night with you know, with the spouse and with friends and everything else. I I look at like it's a pretty good good way to manage, not you know, keep you from over hunting and uh and burning out. Not only your tree stands in your land and the deer here after your family. Yeah, for sure. So you know, we've talked a lot about the deer that we're after. But since you've had, you know, a ton of experience on public land stuff, I wanted to ask you more about, um, how many flyers have you shot? How many deer have you never seen, never knew existed? You're hunting other target bucks, but all of a sudden, you know, a deer walks into your life the only time he's been on that property that you know of, and he's a shooter. Health does that happen for you? That happened a lot in Pennsylvania because you know, I might go in there and you're you're hunting by rub and scrape and remote area and your access everything, but you don't know what that buck looks like and and then when one comes through it, I'm mature box. You shoot it is that same bac Wu knows um and I've done that in the up and Michigan to where you're going into an area that he knows an outstanding funnel and you don't find any sign of people going back there. So you're hunting this core area. You sit there for a day or two and you shoot is really nice book and you know you never saw You're just looking for a mature book. And that that happened so much more on public land than private land because publicly and you're just looking for a great funnel in an opportunity to shoot him mature box. Where private land, um, you're looking for more specific box and you get to know all the box. It's rarely that you see a flyer. Um. I had. I saw a flyer last year on private land in Wisconsin and he went buying a misty, rainy morning. It was in the mid thirties and misty, and so it's one of those where when you took your hands out even just use a camera or anything, it was just freezing and a little wind. I'm on top of the knoll. I'm actually four hundred feet in elevation up and I had a five year old go by that I had never seen before, and I just looked at him and I didn't really recognize them, and kinda I got my bowl ready and didn't shoot. And then of course we get lots of video and pictures of and I honestly should have shot him, really really nice bot. But he was a flyer. Now he will definitely not be a flyer lash you know, next year, But um, he was one that I didn't recognize at all, and he had some very unique characteristics. That's cool. So what do you think that that makes those deer come into existence? Pike? A lot of times they're moving their core fall range based on hunting pressure and lack of food or lack of cover. The lack of cover a lot of times has to do with hunting pressure, so they get pushed out. Now they come into a friendly area and they stay there. And when I see it with those box and those type of box, especially on private land, and that could happen on public but they they get pushed into an area for lack of food, lack of unpressured betting area cover, daytime cover, they get push into that area, or they get bumped around because you have four or five six year old bucks in the area and here's a two or three old bucks doesn't quite have a space. Sometimes those bucks are the hardest to pattern because who knows where they're gonna end up. They get bumped around by older bucks. And then all of a sudden, these but comes in as a three year old onto your land and then as he ages. We had one age to eight where we hunt in southwest Wisconsin, another age to seven, and it seemed like the two those older box, the older they got, the more defined they were in their home range, and it was small, you know, like that area during the daytime kept them um safe, and so it's it's almost like, you know, you see this flyer and all of a sudden, that flyer that's two or three years years old becomes, you know, that resident box and he just enjoys the fact that he has fall food, fall cover and it's unpressured. And I think that's how a lot of times you can build a property, a private land property and experience an unfair proportion of harvests of the local mature box just because you're offering the one spot that does have true fall cover, true fall food. And most importantly, you're covering the lowest hole in the bucket, which is that unpressured core area where high percentage of the land that he can call home and get away from your neighbor. Yeah, fleet can see that. And and my hypothesis was that of hunter pressure too, because we see it on public land a lot, you know, and you almost I can't say this for a fact because I haven't looked at the pictures in a while, but you can almost see it on your trail cameras. After a big hunting weekend, like say, you know, a November weekend, you'll have new Bucks pop up because you know, people were in in there that weekend moving stuff around, you know, mucking things up, and it, uh it caused them to move into your spot. And something we've even noticed is that, uh do your you know, Bucks especially will move into like less than desirable areas because it's the spot where no one's going. You know, it's like a marginal crp area or you know, something where it's just a little bit of plum thicket right here in the middle of a pasture or something. You know, but it's just the one place that nobody goes. And it doesn't have to be the greatest habitat of the greatestcover by the is the one hunting spot you know, right yeah, and and and that can even like in private land, it can be a pretty small area. And and like to think about everyone. You know, most people in the country, they have you know, neighborhood parks, um in suburban areas, they have really small areas that hold an incredible amount of deer and big giant box and they're simply there because people can't hunt them. And and there's no water holes, betting areas, food plots, anything. It's just the fact that they're there in this twenty acre a little chunk i habitat in the middle of millions of people, just because you can't hunt them. And that to me underscores. Imagine taking that same scenario and you put it on forty acres. You get a high percentage of that land being efficient and working for you where you're not producing your hunting pressure during the hunting season and you're letting deer have that you know, eight acres that they can call their own, that you don't really get your scent to your site, your sound into and you add food plots in there, and you add betting area, creation, travel corridors, mockscrapes, whatever it might be. And now you take that little twenty acre neighborhood scenario and you magnify and put it on steroids basically, and you you produce in fifty acres out of eighty or even acres out of forty, whatever the percentage is, and you have this hot spot that draws in a lot of the mature bucks in the area. And then of course, if you're not managing the doe herds, and you're not, you know you're not, and you're you're putting the conditions together that create a giant dough herd, then that can take up a lot of space, and those box will stand Dave. That's a little bit different. Yeah, sure they It's crazy to me how smart they are sometimes and how they can figure that stuff out. And what's also crazy is how dumb we can be sometimes. You know, well, yeah we're not. Yeah, we're we can be the world's greatest predator and we can be uh not, I gotta walk around with a stick in the woods. Yeah, you know what you think about it? Uh Like, there's many times you can go to a stand, and if it's a noisy stand, you can climb. So here you you got to that stand without spooking a deer. And then that just the noise from that tree stand, whether it's a climb or a squeaky ladder stand or or portable stand and or hanging, and these deer can hear you a hundred yards away or two hundred yards away getting in there. Not a forty acre personal it's only four hundred and forty yards wide. And so a lot of times you're not only spooking the deer that are on your land, but off your land too. And so you can create a nocturnal herd in a nocturnal parcel really quick just by not being quiet. Let everything else that management and site management, everything else too. Yeah, and so on that note. And you may have already answered it, um, But since you've, you know, been to so many public parcels and been to so many places doing consulting, and and it sounds like you really put an emphasis on scouting people as much as you do. What tail, what's the biggest mistake that you do see people making when they're going into like a heavily pressured public peace I think it's not you know, hunting pressure is I mean, a public land is one thing, because um, you can get into unpressured white tails and have a good hunt, but then not managers managing your scent in and out or while you're on stand. So I like hunting absolutes, meaning that, um, you know I'm looking at if I'm gonna hunt this area, I'm gonna hunt on this side of the bench or on this side of the point, because I don't think that deer are going to come in that area. And so my scent can be contained maybe in the up Michigan and hunted by a lot of beaver ponds, and I blew my scent out over the pond, and so I might have my favorite stand on the north west side of the pond. But if I didn't have northwest winds that was blowing back over the pond, then I'd hunt over with the south winds on the south side. Even though that south side didn't produce a lot of bucks for me, I didn't want to, um, you know, leave my scent owned unmanaged, and and so I think a lot of people have the assumption that if you're using in nosonics or keeping your clothes ultra clean that you can just go hunt anywhere. And and and that's to me what I found, especially as a box age to four or five, and it could be in what I've seen that's all the same. It doesn't matter if it's four or five year old Michigan or four five year old in Wisconsin or four or five year old in Iowa. They all pretty much act the same as far as they're they're pretty looser and um, but but really not managing your impact in and out um. And part of that, you know, we all think of scent, but uh, sound is just as just as important. You know, where we hunt, we don't really have most of the time. We don't have a lot of defined trails in the areas we hunt a lot of times. So, um, they're more like filter areas where the deer like they're going to go through this fifty yor hundred yard stretch aread here. Yeah, but there's not really a great trail. I mean, you can see where do you have walked a group ma me a family group of walking, but not really a trail. So you know, when you're say when you're bow hunting or you're you're you know, having to even if you're a gun hunting and it's thick and you're gonna have to have close rain shot, how are you picking the right trail a tree to hang in. Yeah, I love that question. That's a good question because again I'm so there's a couple of scenarios. You know. Let's say I'm hunting the top of a draw and this draw might drop down five ft in elevation and it's almost like just a big bowl around the top, and so there could be deer trail ten yards later, dear trail ten yeards later, dear trail all the way down for a hundred yards across this flat bench section. What I'm doing is I might pinch off that upper those upper two trails sit right on that second trail, and then I'm watching three trails below me. And the point is I don't want to ever get a deer down window. And so I look at it like, even though that buck might cross fifty yards away and I can't get a shot that, I'm living to hunt that spot another day. You know, I'm not spooking him. So I'm hunting that absolute I'm going to the edge. And it's the same with um A movement on a flat area where you have that seventy five yards a deer could creep through. I'm going in as far as I think I can get away with and blow all my scent out of that movement, and so and knowing full well that there's a good chance and on half that movement, I can't shoot that deer if they go through. But at the same time I can hunt that that movement again another day. I'm not spooking them out. So I think the big temptation is to go in the middle and uh and spook that movement out. And another thing too, if there's a mature buck that's going through that area, I find a high percentage of the time he's going on the downlands side of that movement because he can send check every deer in there for a hundred yards in hundred fifty yards in sometimes and the whole reason you're hunting on that side is the whole reason he's in front of your stand twenty yards and you can get a shot at. So again it's just plain I have understand on either side of that movement, and and maybe on the one end for a different wind as they curve off a different direction, but I'm trying to be able the check back and forth at that movement, maintain the movement, and that what I find it just it just falls into a number of sets that you're going to shoot that bucket's in that movement you want, um, just because you're maintaining the movement, you're not spoken at all. So if you're putting one or two trails behind you, are you assuming that you're high enough that the you're sent blowing down into those trails would go over the top of them. Or Yeah, maybe, like in the case of that upper draw where I'm hunting, um, But most of the time, if they're above you and behind you, they're gonna spook. So what I might do is hinge cut a couple of trees to block out those trails. So those gear either have to go all the way up into the field to go around me or into an opening or to an area they don't want to go during the daylight um, or they're down in front of me, so I'm trying to pinch that area off, or I'm just simply if I can't do that, I'm hunting. Maybe that one trail is just blow me a foot in front of the tree, I can cover another couple of trails, and I'm just hoping at some point that Buck is on the high side of that draw or the outside of that movement into flat woods UM with the thought that he's in that location sent checking the doors on the inside, UM, and he's on that down wind favor just like I am waiting for him in that location. If it's not private land, then I'm making travel quarridor there for deer um so that there's natural deer trail for him, and I'm I'm opening up the canopy there so that they're actually getting more regeneration on that trail that I want them that trailer to UM. I'm putting a bock scrape there to try to define the movement, and you know, if it's legal, I'm putting a water hole in the location like that in hill country. So I'm using as many different sweeteners of that movement that I can to make sure I'm drawing him to the outside of the movement and I'm still not affecting the inside of that movement and destroying the movement itself. Well, Jeff, I understand you're a busy man and a hard worker, and I just can't thank you enough for your expertise in your time and not man, I really appreciate it. Well, you can maybe tell what I get passionate about the stuff I love. I love white tails, you know. That's why I don't really hunt much else. And then the fishing is a nice compliment to it, a little bit of relaxation. But you know, I love the white tails, trying to figure them out and you know, continually asking why they do what they do, and it's um, you know, I love you know. I visit about seventy five clients a year across the country, and I love visiting clients because it's every person you get to learn or real you know, reaffirm something you've learned another person. So it's, uh, it's fun. It's fun journey, and I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you guys and discuss it because it's because it's fun. I like talking to Oh me too, you got me fired up for sure. I'm ready to ready to hunt right now. But uh, you gotta let me know about that big one down there too. It's pretty cool. I love that. I love that type of hunt at one on one. Yeah, for sure, it's not probably the best way to go about things on public land, but I'm gonna try to give it one more try and bring me maybe this year, you know. So, um, what's the best way for the listener to get connected with you or find out what you're doing and learn more from you. Oh, there's uh if they visit whitetail habitat solutions dot com. That's my website. And from there, you know, there's way ways to contact the contact go usually go through my wife and so she kind of weeds weeds some of the you know, the the emails out that, um, we don't need to to respond to that kind of stuff. She's pretty good at that. And then um, from there, I have the books that I sell on my site, my books I sell on Amazon, UM, my YouTube channels, White Till Habitat Solutions UM. So that's another location, and I have links on their back to the site and so all pretty easy to find. And then you know, a lot of times my clients, whether it's switched Grass or nocturnal box truck cam strategies, if you're put in search um words and sentences into Google, you'll end up finding finding my stuff under white to Habitat solutions with all articles I have. So that's that's another thing. A lot a lot of times people just stumble into me, so that's awesome. We will link to all that in the show notes below, so if you're listening, please go visit that. Yeah, and uh, Jeff, good luck this year. We look forward to hearing hearing from you. Yeah, I look forward to hearing you hearing back. I love love those kind of stories. And sure you guys have a big passion for this stuff, so I can fully appreciate what you guys are trying to do. That's thank you. Well, we'll be talking to you soon. Okay, sounds good. All right, Well, I pretty much feel like I know everything there is. Well, I'm glad he was able to impart that knowledge with me. And I'm pumped now because like do you're making scrapes where we're at right now, like a rut action is actually starting. We're starting to see dear like bucks not to alerate each other's presence, and like it's about to be that time, do you I know it's it's like we're on I mean, any day it can happen right now, you know what I mean? As far as just like it's it's a good enough time of the year at this point that it's like, you gotta feel good every time you're in the was you gotta you got a chance? And um, speaking of scrapes, I did a mock scrape right next to my stand the other day, like two days ago, in a hunted and there was tracks in it. The next day. I don't know if they used it. It looked like it was still wet, but then again, you know, it's kind of been cool at night and it could have not evaporated or whatever, but like it looked like something had used it. It's cool, which I don't know, but they weren't. They walked right through it. So anyway, it's a it's a time of year. Man, You're right, I'm I'm pretty excited, and I think, uh, I probably need to get off this this headset pretty quick because I've got to get to bed. I gotta eat still, it's late. You gotta get up early. Sands already hung. How awesome is that we did so many hanging hunts last year and we've already done a few this year, And like, I left my stand up and this is gonna be the second time I've hunted it since it's been left up. Oh my goodness, it's the best, dude, It's man, I know, I don't. I don't like. I want to continue to hanging hunt and try to develop to where I can actually kill a deer on a hanging hunt, because you know, we last year in Kansas, we killed on a hanging hunt, but it was like the same thing, like two hunts later or whatever, so we didn't technically hang it that morning. So you want to, like, there's a lot to being quiet and getting in there and doing this, and that it's hard to do. So I definitely would like to prove to myself that I can make that happen, you know, for sure. Anyway, I need to get to leave. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes for the podcast, and that is your chance to win that Exodus Trek Trail camera. You have been warned one final time, and uh, the next time year from us, you will you will know who won, and hopefully it will be you. Got good chances, you do if you've done it, if you've done the review. So anyway, thanks for those reviews, and uh, remember this is your element living in

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