00:00:01 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired2Hunt podcast, your guide to the whitetail woods. Presented by First Light, creating proven, versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle, or blind. First Light, go farther, stay longer. And now your host, Mark Kenyon. 00:00:19 Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on the show, I'm joined by the Dan Infault to talk through how his DIY whitetail strategy evolves week by week through the prime weeks of the whitetail hunting season. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast brought to you by Moultrie.com. We've got a great episode for you today, just in time for this most exciting time of year. The rut is just about here. If you're listening to this in real time, we are ramping up into late October and then into sweet, sweet November. And so I have a special episode planned for you with one of our best guests that we've had on, you know, of all time. This is Dan Infault. He is, of course, a Whitetail fan. bowhunting legend that many of you have heard on this show and others, and I wanted to bring him back today to talk through some of his approaches in more detail than we have in the past on a week-to-week basis. So what does the Dan Infault approach look like, you know, the third week of October, the fourth week of October, one, two, three, four weeks into November? What does that look like? How does that change? How might there be small differences or tweaks that he makes to his style of hunting throughout this whole period of the season? So that's the game plan for today. We discuss how he thinks about bedding areas, wind, thermals, terrain features, cover types, calling, and much, much more. If you are getting ready for your big hunting trip, your ruckcation, whatever it is that you've been looking forward to all season long, this episode should help. And I want to give one quick plug. If you're looking for more, definitely tune into, you know, Tony's foundation episodes or our rut fresh radio episodes to get up to date week by week, you know, advice from deer hunters all over the nation, which is what the rut fresh podcast is all about. So without any further ado, let's get to my chat with Dan infault and good luck out there. 00:02:31 Speaker 3: All right. 00:02:31 Speaker 2: Here with me now on the line is Dan infault for, uh, Another great return. I don't know how many we've done now, but I'm glad we're doing it again. Thanks for making time for this, Dan. 00:02:42 Speaker 3: No problem. 00:02:44 Speaker 2: And I want to be respectful of your time. It's October right now. The good stuff is upon us here pretty soon. So my idea for today, you tell me if this is a good one or not, but my thought was to actually go week by week. over these next six weeks that I think most whitetail hunters consider the prime of the season and talk through if at all and how at all your approach changes over this six-week period. Because I imagine there's a lot of stuff that people have heard about that's like the Dan Infault approach to whitetail hunting. But I'm not sure all of us know how the Dan Infault approach would be different during the third week of October versus maybe the first week of November or the second week. So what do you think about kind of going week by week and talking through some of these details? 00:03:35 Speaker 3: Oh, we can do it. 00:03:37 Speaker 2: Perfect. So tell me this. Let's just jump right into the deep end. The week of October 19th, which is coming up here pretty soon. Some people, and we've talked about this in the past, some people would say, oh, that's the October lull. But I know you've always had a different approach and a different mindset. This third week of October, give me like a cliff notes version of what Dan Infault does the third week of October. What's that game plan? 00:04:08 Speaker 3: Well, you know, first off, I want to say that deer movement varies across the country. You know, and for up here, third week of October is really starting to show some rut activity. For us, the lull is around the beginning of October. If there is even a lull. And it seems to me it's more of like a shift in movement and a lack of sign. And people still using either early season tactics or switching to rut too early. And at early season part, you know, the first couple weeks of October is what I always looked at as a slow period. For me, it starts to ramp up around the 15th of October. And what happens at about that time frame is, is that the bucks start leaving a lot of sign and they start getting easier to find. So that fresh sign, if you're on it, when it's fresh is good. And in that period of pre-rut, you can, um, wander through the woods, check funnels coming out of bedding or, you know, tight areas and see that fresh sign and know, okay, they're here right now and they're on a pattern. Um, So you can set up on fresh signs still. Generally, for me, that goes from about the 15th of October till almost the end of October. That's a pretty good time frame. But I would say that when I get down to, say, mid-Illinois or Kansas or something like that, that seems to be like a two-week shift later. or at least a week later, maybe 10 days later. So like I'm saying, the timing is different wherever you go. But it seems specific to areas, right? So as soon as you start seeing that sign, for me, it's setting up on the sign. But for me, everything kind of revolves around betting. I'm always pushing those betting limits. So I want to see that sign coming out of something I think they're betting in. So I see that daylight movement. And you're going to get those younger bucks moving further. You're going to get even the older bucks moving further. But it just seems to me like you're still not getting those mature bucks, especially on public land where I hunt, which is going to differ from your guests that have large managed ranches or large leases. I'm hunting public. You're just not going to get that movement out of the big animals unless you get close to where they're living in daylight. 00:06:53 Speaker 2: Yeah. So I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, and I mentioned that I was going to be talking to you to do this podcast. And we kind of jokingly said, oh yeah, well, we're going to talk about the Dan Infault approach, but try to kind of peel back some new layers of the onion. And then he said, well, you know, what is the Dan Infault approach? Like, how would you define it? And I said to him, I was like, well, if I were to like oversimplify the Dan Infault approach, it would be, you know, scout like crazy till, you know, a bunch of buck bedrooms and then push in close, you know, looking at sign and different things like you just mentioned, like if I had to like simplify as much as I possibly could. And, and I thought that I could do that relatively accurately because I've been listening to you for 15 years or more. And like, people have been doing the same. You have shared your approach in a lot of places. A lot of people have become you know, almost disciples of this hunting style. How have people gotten it wrong though? Like, do you see anything now after having shared your approach for, you know, almost two decades, are there any common mistakes people are making or, or interpreting wrongly or just completely missing the point on what you are trying to tell people here? 00:08:13 Speaker 3: Oh, I think the biggest, uh, um, error people make in, in my approach is that they're afraid, like they, they know where a good buck is or they, they find a good bedding area and they really don't have the scouting in that I have. I think they look at what I do on video and they think it's simple. They think you just go out and kill a buck every year. And that's why I kind of do a lot of videos where I show a week of hunting without killing something is I want them to see the work involved. Um, because it's not, it's not easy. And, and, they'll find that one spot and they'll think they're going to ruin it if they go in there and push up close and hunt it. So they'll sit back a little too far. And that sounds good and dandy on the outside surface, but they're going to like stage their way in. And by doing that, that deer is going to know that they were there. And it's going to be the preferable slap them on the ass and tell them you're coming. And now when you move in, you're not going to have that opportunity because a mature buck, um, really needs to be taken by complete and utter surprise. If, if you try to take him by letting them know you're hunting them, good luck. So, um, with that said, most of the really big bucks I've taken on public land, it's been the first set. If not the first set in that tree is the first set of that season where you catch him by surprise. Um, and I think a lot of guys, um, can't leave an area alone. So, They do find a buck. They get an opportunity to spook it, and that buck learns where they're at and learns where they set up and stuff. And then they start just– they can't help but go back the next week and the next week after that and the next week after that. 00:09:59 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:10:00 Speaker 3: And for me, I know I'm not going to kill him there no more. Now he's going to check to see if I'm there. I'm going to back out and let them just completely forget about me or come at him from a different way or figure out a different one of his bedding areas. Cause they don't bed in the same spots every day. And they're certainly not going to bed in a spot right away. Again, after you bump them usually. They'll do one of two things. They'll completely ignore you and come right back the next day. Or they ain't coming back anymore that season. Sometimes not, period. I mean, I can't remember ever bumping a mature buck in a spot and then killing it in that spot. For me, it's always been, I have to readjust. He knows that spot. So I think a lot of people kind of Don't take it to the degree I do, you know, about how they treat that animal. Everybody kind of looks at it like I'm a, like haphazard, just stumble around, busting into these bedding areas and stuff, kicking deer around. And it's not really true. There's a method to the madness. I'm very aggressive on those approaches and I do damage when I do them. But the first day I'm in there, I don't. And then I either kill them or I don't. And then I move on to the next spot he bets and the next spot he bets. 00:11:15 Speaker 2: Yeah. So, Could you almost like paint the picture for me of a hunt? Let's say it's like October 21st or October 22nd, somewhere in that window. You have one of these buck bedrooms that you've identified earlier in the year through scouting or past years through scouting. Can you walk me through like the details of how you would move into a location like that? What you are exactly looking for? Because again, like what you're saying is it comes down to the details. People assume you go in haphazardly. But to your point, not so much. Could you kind of share what that actually looks like, what it would be that would cause you to say like, oh, I got to stop. Now's the time to stop. This is the place. Or no, I'm not quite close enough. I can get away with a little bit further. 00:12:05 Speaker 3: We've had a. 00:12:06 Speaker 2: Little bit of this conversation a few years ago, but I'd like to revisit it and just kind of see what that looks like today in 2026. 00:12:13 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting because there's a couple different variances of that. One is I've pre-scouted the whole area and I know those bedding areas. Then I kind of know which trees to be in based on the wind. Some of them, there's one tree you can be in, you know, and then there's areas you go in because you find out about a new buck and you've never been in there or you have no idea what's going on. And you're guessing bedding based on terrain, based on thickness, stem count, terrain features. And then, what I fall back on is, is the knowledge of all the bedding areas I've looked at and what they've taught me about how bucks bed at those timeframes. So I'm going to slip into the point where I think I need to be. And when I'm doing that, I'm trying to, um, if possible, keep the wind directly in my nose. Um, because by doing that, I only have one scent trail, you know, and then if a deer does come out a little screwy comes around, there's only one place he can spell you because you're, your scent, your ground scent and your airborne scent is the same. So I'm trying to do that if I can, sometimes you can't, but then I'm, as I'm getting in there, I stop a little bit back, you know, looking at this scenario where I think the buck is, you know, I look at exactly where I would think he would be and could he see me if I move forward or whatever. And then I'm looking at the trees and I'm picking a tree from a distance. And that sounds great in theory, but but seldom works, but it gets you in the right direction. You get about halfway to that tree and you stop again and you reevaluate and you see something different because of the, um, the angles of the trees and stuff will look different. It sounds funny. I know, but really when you do it, as soon as you change angles and stuff in those trees, you start to see something like, oh, I'd have a hard time getting a stand in that. I'd have a hard time doing that. And, and I'm picking trees. 00:14:08 Speaker 2: I can relate way too much. 00:14:10 Speaker 3: I'm doing that all the way up to six feet from it. And I'm really going in slow. And I'm thinking about, I want to stay downhill from the deer when he, when he comes out of exit because your thermals in the evenings and the early mornings almost always drop downhill. So I want to be below him because the thermals will usually beat the wind because it's, you get that calm period in the mornings and in the evenings, and then the thermals kick up, you know, and when you feel the wind, that's going to be a certain direction, but when it gets calm, That's what you've got to worry about. That's going to be thermals, and that's going to usually drop downhill or move to stagnant water that's warm from the day or something like that. But if you understand how thermals work, I'm going to try and stay below. So I'm looking at the terrain, I'm looking for that tree, and I'm really putting some thought process into exactly what tree I want to get into. And it might seem a little extreme to some people, but. 00:15:06 Speaker 3: You only get so many opportunities at mature bucks. You pick the wrong tree, you pick the wrong spot, and you're screwed for that day. And that day might have been your day. So when I get to the tree, I'm usually hunting as close as possible because being back 75 yards in a swamp or 150 yards in hill or open woods kind of terrain, generally when I do kill a mature buck, probably eight out of 10 of them, that buck is right at closing time, even though I'm that close to the bedding area. So I want to push that limit as close as possible to get into that daylight window of movement. And when I do that, I'm going to be looking at the, from the behind the tree towards the bedding area. And I'm going to climb the backside of that tree. My sticks are going to go on the backside. So I'm looking around that tree. We use the tree as cover. looking around at that bed in there and determining how high I can get as I go based on, is that deer going to spot me based on cover? And then I'm, I'm also gonna, um, as I'm going up, I'm looking at my windows of shooting. Can I get higher? Do I have to stay lower? Because you only got certain windows you can shoot through. You can't sit there with a saw hacking through a branch. 00:16:25 Speaker 2: Right. 00:16:25 Speaker 3: Um, which, uh, an apprentice friend of mine learned the other day, you can't saw for a branch, uh, Well, there's a deer that's 70 yards away, right? So when I get to the spot where I want to be, I reach around the tree and I set the stand on on the deer side and I'm watching as I do it. And I put the stand on and I get the sticks up so that I can just roll around the tree, get into the stand with as much, as little movement on the side of the tree as possible. And I use the back of the tree as my cover. And that's basically how I pick a tree. 00:17:02 Speaker 2: So you've done this, Dan, hundreds of times over decades. You've done some version of that over and over and over again. Sometimes it works. Probably most of the time it doesn't. Have you, you know, from all of those attempts, have you found that you have now gotten more aggressive as you've done this. 00:17:25 Speaker 1: More and more? 00:17:26 Speaker 2: Or have you realized, oh, I need to be a little bit more conservative than I used to be? Which direction have you been going? as you become more and more experienced. 00:17:33 Speaker 3: I think that the, I I've had the, um, distance from the bed thing pinned down for quite a while. However, um, I have gotten a little more, uh, lenient on, on hunting spots a few more times than I have in the past. It used to be one and done and I'd move on. But, um, dropping cameras and testing theories, I found some of those bucks, you can't push them out of an area and you're, You can hunt it over and over and kill the buck. So, and there are cases where I'll stick to it and push to it. And I've really found that, uh, um, this is sound weird to people. Um, what mature bucks seem easier to hunt in certain ways. And when you get to be six or seven in a lot of hunting areas, you don't do it by moving around. And those deer find and hole up in really tight areas, uh, So you can hunt that area over and over again. You can't push that deer out of there. He'll just lock down. He'll hide. He won't move in daylight, but he won't leave the area. So you can hunt them over and over again and keep trying. And that sounds great on theory. And it sounds like, well, you're making it sound easy. It's not easy because usually they pick that spot for a reason. It's an almost impossible spot to kill them. But that's where a lot of my mature bucks have come from. We call it the overlook spot. We call it the spots with no trees. um, the fat girl spots. Um, but it's the spots where you have a hard time getting in there, but that buck just stays there and lives there. Um, it seems to me that when you find a big buck, that's, um, of a younger age, like a, like a very large three-year-old or something you'd like to shoot. Those deer are a little more flighty. They're a little more likely to relocate someplace else. And then you got to go find them again. The mature bucks seem to really lock down in places. 00:19:29 Speaker 2: So how do you know when you have a buck that you can keep hunting it over and over again in one spot versus the one and done is it simply like i know it's a really old buck i'm going to assume he's here for a reason wants to stay so i'm going to try it a few more times or do you always try to have a camera now to verify if he's sticking around and then you'll keep coming back? 00:19:51 Speaker 3: How do you make that decision? I don't do a lot with cameras as you, as you are probably aware. I do a little bit. Usually my camera work is, is done as a, um, testing theories. I like to use it to educate me. Like you run a camera in a season, a spot I don't even intend to hunt, but sometimes I have them in areas and there's bucks in here and the I want to kill and I will hunt around them. Um, but as far as knowing whether or not that buck is going to be a flighty or if he's going to stay there, he's a little home body in that section. Your guess is as good as mine. I guess I figured it out because if I hunt a buck and I see a big buck, I'm going to, I'm going to keep him honest by keep hunting it until he tells me I ain't coming back. You know what I mean? I'm going to go after him a few times. I'm not just going to give up when I find a big buck. So, um, some of them do leave, some of them don't. And, uh, the only way to know it is to hunt them or maybe you could run cameras or something. 00:20:48 Speaker 2: So, so back to another thing you said there, you talked about how, you know, those really old bucks can, can act differently than those younger deer. You also said to me a number of years ago, and you've said this in other places too. You said that, you know, hunting mature bucks and hunting deer are two totally different things, right? It's like a different species. But you said that to me like 13 years ago. Has your opinion on that changed at all since then? Or is it strengthened in some kind of way? 00:21:19 Speaker 3: I would say it's strengthened. 00:21:22 Speaker 2: What's changed when it comes to mature buck behavior? 00:21:24 Speaker 3: I think those bucks are still two different animals. I mean, there's such a change in whitetails every year of their life. And when they get into that you know, old age period, I mean, they are not the same animals as those younger animals. They're more, um, they're going to hole up in certain areas. They're going to pick treeless areas. They learn a lot of life lessons. And I might, I might add that that's probably not across the board, but it's across the board. Most of the areas I hunt that are public. Now, when I have hunted or visited like managed lands, I've seen a whole different aspect where like, four or five, six year old deer kind of act like a two or three year old on the public. If you might say by not exposing that thing to the dangers and stuff that the public land deer are exposed to. You got to remember most of the time when I do get one, that's of a older age class, I find projectiles and it has broken legs, you know, that have healed over. They've got scars in them, broadheads in them. Um, it's seldom that you get a mature buck on public land. It isn't wounded in some port, some timeframe in its life. Um, so they learn life lessons a little harder than the private lands. So I'm not going to say it's across the board, but I will say that, you know, the older bucks on public land are a little harder to hunt and more like a whole different animal than the younger ones. They just, they just act different. Um, It really is like hunting a different species. Now you can go, like on the public land, you can go sit over, like some of the properties I hunt have cornfields on the public. Some of them have beans. There's always acorn flats. There's openings that have like a jewel weed that's just so grazed anybody could see it. And you can go just sit over the top of that and you'll probably see way more deer than I'll see. So if somebody just out there hunting deer would kill deer in those situations. They can sit to the downwind side, deer come in, you just shoot them, but they're not going to see the mature animals very often. They might get there once or twice in a lifetime on most of the public lands that I hunt, get an opportunity at something like that where I'm going to get opportunities on a regular basis and maybe get one of those bucks every two or three years. That's, you know, um, and they're not because the way I, I hunt them, knowing how they react and how they move differently, how they don't move in daylight. You know, most guys, uh, hunt deer, or at least they did in the past. I think there's some change going on, but they would, they would take those rut phases you're talking about and they would be hunting in the, in the chase phase. They'd be in a funnel, you know, they'd be on a scrape line and they'd be in a rub line or whatever. And they would consistently, you know, if they want to get video, they want to be a YouTuber or something, they would consistently get two and three-year-old deer. You know, the three-year-olds being a little bit iffy, but they'd get a lot of two-year-old deers that could good racks and they could do it year after year after year. They could go state to state and do that. And they could out hunt a guy like me doing that. But I'm getting opportunities at really big older bucks more often by locking into those And I still get opportunities at the good bucks. 00:25:06 Speaker 2: Have you had an aha moment in recent years where something new came to you about mature buck behavior? Has there been a new discovery recently at all that you can point to and be like, you know, that is a thing that now I think about differently. Um, it's so easy. I know for us to kind of fall into, this is what we think deer do. And then you kind of always think that, but then every once in a while you have these moments where you have like an, like an epiphany. Have you had one of those in recent years that now all of a sudden you see something different? 00:25:39 Speaker 3: There's a couple of them. One of them has nothing to do with, with, um, with your act. Um, one of them was that, uh, um, a few years back, I went on a trip to Iowa hunting and, uh, I came back and I was going to spend, uh, the birthday with, with my wife. And, uh, we went out to eat. And when we left, we went by one of the public lands that I, my hunt frequently. And it's a small area and it has like two parking spots. And we go by and there's like two trucks in those spots. And there's like, six or eight trucks parked on the grass, pulled to the side. I'm like, holy crap, what's going on there? And my wife says, Dan, it's been like that since you left. There's been all those trucks there. And it dawned on me that everybody's using cell cameras and they must have, they must be seeing something. And I know where they'd be hunting and I know where they wouldn't be hunting. And I cut that dinner short and I went out hunting that night to that spot specifically because of all that pressure. And I shot 170 inch buck. And I knew where it would be if those guys are getting it on picture. And sure enough, my email had just filled up with all the pictures that people had. You shot the buck I was hunting. You shot the buck I was hunting. I got video of it and all kinds of stuff. But it really was a game changer for me to realize that literally everywhere I go on public land, there's cell cameras. I can't walk a hundred yards without somebody getting my picture. And if that's the case, any place there's a giant buck, people are getting those pictures and they're not, not hunting if they're seeing something like that. So if you see like a rise, I'm not saying go hunt their trees or hunt their spots. I'm saying figure out what that deer is doing around them, why they're not killing them and hunt that buck where they're not going. You know, most of them I'm finding the mature bucks are not in the tree areas. They're not in the ridges where these guys hunt. They're not in the typical deer spots. The mature bucks are down in the treeless little grassy area next to the parking lot. They're in the little overlooked spots. You know, if you kind of look at it like if you were an army soldier and you looked at it like all these guys are here to hunt me and put yourself in a deer's shoes. 00:28:05 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:28:06 Speaker 3: Where on that property would you hide where those guys wouldn't go? And if you can find any deer terrain in there, that's where those bucks are going to be, the mature bucks. They're going to go where they never smell people or rarely smell people. During rut, last year, I decided to run my cameras in doe bedding areas that were heavy with does. And I ran eight different doe bedding areas with cameras and was not going to hunt them at all. And didn't. I tagged out right off the bat last year. And I let the cameras sit there all year and watch what happened. And every one of these... doe bedding areas, you know, you'd occasionally anywhere you get a buck or two to float through. 00:28:54 Speaker 2: Right. 00:28:55 Speaker 3: But when pre-rut started happening and when one of these does would go in estrus, which you'd see would be a flock, a young bucks would come in and be all over following her around, chasing her and stuff. And the next day and the day after that, the big buck would be there. And as soon as you saw those, those young bucks, uh, Just about every time, 12 hours later, a big buck would show. It was like the younger bucks kept showing up a day early. And it was really like, okay, you see that young buck activity move in. It was pretty consistent and pretty surprising to me. um, more consistent than I would have thought. 00:29:38 Speaker 2: Interesting. So, so what does that mean for you when we get to, let's say that last week of October, continuing kind of through our calendar last week of October, definitely pre-rut for most parts of the country. Um, how does your approach shift F at all? Now that we're getting really close to November, but not quite there. And given some of this new stuff you've learned, what would you do differently now? 00:30:04 Speaker 3: Really for me, it's been about that timeframe pushing right into doe bedding areas. And one of the things I've keyed in on is buck rut beds, which I found about 15 years ago. I started figuring this out. I found these beds where they'd be near a doe bedding area and the, the trees around the bed would be tore up, but the bed would be hard to see because they're only bedding there about five or six times a year. 00:30:34 Speaker 2: Right. 00:30:35 Speaker 3: But the, the, the beds would be situated where they're either watching the does come in and out of the bedding area or it'd be situated downwind smelling them. And there's, these bucks would bed there and monitor these does, but they wouldn't go into the bedding area and harass them until they were ready per se. I would hunt those spots and, um, Hunt buck bedding areas that are actual buck bedding areas that are adjacent to doe bedding areas that you see aggressive sign in. So say when I'm out scouting beds in spring, some bedding areas that are buck bedding areas are tore up with rubs. And they look like they're late October-ish rubs. That's generally what it is, is that right before rut, they're in there. And if that's near a doe bed, which is quite often the case, a lot of times the bucks and does bed adjacent to each other. They don't bed together, but they're close. And if you get right in between them, that's a really good spot for me. But like I've said a million times, and I know you've heard me say it, where I hunt on public land, I can't walk around in any phase of the rut for more than five minutes without walking under a tree stand. So there are no... you know, seven or eight year old bucks that are walking around on these rut funnels in daylight. Like people are perceiving, they're perceiving or chasing those running through all these funnels. Sure. Your odds are higher. And I mean, if you look at radio studies and stuff, you see these bucks get up and take off after those and out all day, run through some of these funnels, but it's a day or two of the season. And you just got to get lucky where every day they're moving in on these does and stuff. And you just, and, you can put yourself in between them and you can hunt them every day and not get the luckiness of, you know, they ran through your funnel one day. I think the thing about the early, late October, early November, like that Halloween has been really good for me. Is there kind of still on that pattern, still in your area, still right at home, just very, very active in daylight. So it makes them very vulnerable. But it's the tail end of it. They're just about to start taking off and be real random. 00:32:56 Speaker 2: Yeah. So at that time of year, there's a lot of, oh, I don't know, a lot of hubbub every single year when we ever get a cold front right around there. Like the Halloween cold front, the last week of October cold front. People get really jazzed up about that, very excited. And oftentimes they're saying, you know, because of what you just mentioned, right? You've got these bucks that are still kind of on a pattern, but now that cold front might get them up and moving in daylight, just a little bit more, just a little bit earlier. And so you can take advantage of that vulnerability that's maybe, you know, exaggerated because of the weather. I heard you recently say though, that you don't get too excited about cold fronts anymore, especially at that time of year. 00:33:35 Speaker 1: Yes. Is that right? 00:33:36 Speaker 3: Why is that? Well, I've, you know, I hunt every day and I've never really, and a lot of your listeners are going to raise an eyebrow at this, but I've never seen a rise in activity because of a cold front. Or a time preference, like they're coming that much earlier or anything. And it's kind of funny because I was talking with a few people, like a guy who tracks them with drones and watches them during a rut, and a guy that radio collars them, a researcher. And both those guys told me that they can't find in all the research any data that shows that there's any increase in activity to do with cold fronts. However... The, the, the collar guy said he tried to find it and he said he could find some trends that showed a little bit more activity. He said, but it was so minute, it wouldn't make a difference to Hunter distance wise. And, and, uh, yeah, that was always my belief in the past. And it kind of confirmed to me that it wasn't nuts because everybody out there says cold front, cold front, cold front. And I was talking to the researcher and, um, he's from Mississippi, I think. I think you know who I'm talking about. He said, uh, yeah, probably Bronson. Yes. Yes. He, he, he, he made it funny. He said, I said, why do you think that people think they move so much during the cold front? He says, Dan, drive around during a cold front. Look at all the trucks out. If they're hunting during cold fronts, they're killing deer during cold fronts. And he goes in the hunting pressure. We're seeing it. Everybody's seeing it goes up so much during a cold front that there's so many more people out there. Hell yeah. They're going to kill a lot more deer in a cold front. 00:35:18 Speaker 2: Yeah, we're creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Are there any other factors, though, that you do think influence deer movement these days? I remember our very first episode together back in 2013 or 14. I think we spent a decent bit of time talking about the moon. Where do you stand on the moon or any other weather or conditional factors? Is there anything today in 2026 that's different? 00:35:46 Speaker 3: I kind of really gave up on the whole moon thing. I did a lot of following it back in the time frame you're talking about. And I know we talked about this. I documented, I charted all the time frames when I saw deer, how it related to the moon phase and stuff. And I was out there anyways. And I did see some correlation with moon overhead and movement in hill country. but I could not mimic that at all back home in the marshes. I could, I I'd have to create it. I could not, my data would not show that it worked. And, uh, again, if you fall back on the researchers who don't care one way or another, how the research lands, they just check it out. They're saying that it doesn't make a difference. 00:36:38 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:36:39 Speaker 3: So maybe I was wrong there. 00:36:40 Speaker 2: Well, I feel like you're not alone in that. There's a lot of people who, uh, A lot of people have believed in the moon. That's for sure. What about, okay. So we're, we've, we've talked about those last two weeks of October. You're pretty, you're pretty tight on the buck bedding areas as you would. You, you move in as close as you can. Maybe at the end of October, you're shifting a little bit more towards like rut related bedding, getting in between the doe bedding and the buck bedding. What about now we're into November? And as you just mentioned, right at the end of October, you're right about to having some randomness. Now it's the first week of November. Randomness is upon us across many parts of the country, at least. How are you adjusting now? First week of November. A lot of people love that week, but I know some guys who are targeting specific bucks don't like it as much because things go kind of haywire. What are you doing then? 00:37:35 Speaker 3: It is a little harder for me and it does get a little more random. It gets harder to kill a specific buck. What has worked best for me at that time frame is hunting right in doe bedding areas. Like some of the better doe bedding areas. And also historical data. Like if I'm hunting a certain buck and he showed up in a certain doe bedding area the year prior at that time frame, I'll be there. They seem to repeat themselves. The Rome Legend buck that I know me and you have discussed... That buck, for whatever reason, right around Halloween day, for three years in a row, he showed up at the same doe bedding area that was a long ways from his actual home range. It actually made him huntable for me, and I killed him because of that pattern, because I observed that pattern and moved in on it. I do think they repeat themselves, but it seems random because it might be they move distances to do it. But it does get tough when there's does popping and heat all over the place and you're trying to predict movement. It gets a little more about using rut tactics and less about actually hunting a certain buck. Which for me, I really enjoy the one-on-one thing, at least in your mind, of hunting this particular animal and figuring out what tree is going to walk past and that kind of thing. But it gets more about getting into doe bedding areas. You know, everybody talks about the downwind side. I don't necessarily think it has to be the downwind side. However, I try to hunt the downwind side because then you're not blowing the does out. But a lot of times they will cruise around the backside of these doe bedding areas. And they're just checking. See, they might check the wind and they might check the scent trails of the deer does coming in and out. It could be either one. It doesn't necessarily have to be that they go downwind of them. Uh, they can, you know, they can smell where they walk and tell if they're in estrus or whatever. So, um, and if you've got to be upwind or whatever, you get off the points of the bed and you don't, you don't want your wind blowing right into the doe bedding area because even the buck's likely to go in there after a doe. But you usually tell which side because it erupts, right? I mean, they lay down some sign when they're aggressive and rut. 00:39:56 Speaker 2: Is there any significant difference in how you move in on and set up on a doe bedding area versus a buck bedding area? So if you're going in on October 21st on a buck bedding area, and then you're doing a doe bedding area hunt on November 4th, how do those look different? Oh. 00:40:17 Speaker 3: Doe bedding area, I probably don't have as much of a planned tree or whatever. I'm just going in and maybe they're over here because these does are here or whatever. I'm probably a little more random at that time frame. I'm trying to find an animal to hunt usually because they're moving around, right? If I'm onto a buck in an area, I'm going to hop from doe bedding area to doe bedding area. Sometimes there's ones that I've hunted a few years that I know this is the tree I need to be in or this is the area I need to be in. But I'll generally go in there, creep it, look for signs. And try to hunt it. A lot of times you blow the does out of there getting close inadvertently. And that's never really bothered me too much unless you blow the buck out with them, which happens here and there. But the does don't have to be there. The buck's going to be their cousin of does. I don't think they generally bed right with the does. It doesn't seem like that to me. It seems like they bed off to the side because the does won't tolerate them there right next to them. So they get up and they come into it. And they can do that anytime during the day. especially if they got good cover, you know? So a lot of it just revolves around just hitting each doe bedding area that I'm aware of until I run into the buck, but I'm certainly not hunting funnels and stuff. 00:41:31 Speaker 2: When you're, when you're looking to set up around one of these doe bedding years, how is the sign that you're looking for different than your buck bedroom sign? Like, is there, is there, you mentioned rubs being important still. But are you looking and interpreting rubs differently at this time of year or scrapes? Is there anything that's more important now than it would have been or important in a different kind of way or the opposite? Is there something that's not important now? 00:42:00 Speaker 3: Well, like in the buck bedding areas, when they're aggressive towards does, they're rubbing usually right in their beds. They're marking their bed. And the rubs in a doe bedding area are going to be on the sides of it where they're working around the does, you're going to be in the trails coming in and out. They're not going to be necessarily right in the beds. Right. And, um, so that they'll, when they mark doe bedding areas, you're generally marking the actual does. So if you look at the rubs, they're marking a trail intersection, like where they come across a doe trail, um, or they're, it's usually like the trails. So a lot of guys will get fooled because there'll be a heavy trail. There don't be a rub on it. But if they go down a little ways, the next trail has a rub on it too. That's in line with the buck trail. But you're not really going to see that buck trail like you see the doe trail because the doe trail has been used for a long time. That buck trail is just getting used during rut. So you might not even be able to see the trail. So you really got to, you can't back off too far down those trails because generally that buck trail is crisscrossing the doe trail and he's marking it where he crosses it. You know what I mean? So I think people misinterpret why a rub's there or how it's placed. 00:43:23 Speaker 2: Speaking of that, you mentioned earlier how a lot of guys want to be downwind of doe bedding years because they're assuming the bucks want to be cruising the downwind side to send check. But as you mentioned, sometimes they're actually going to do something different and they're going to instead cross the trails and, and scent check trails. Um, but we've also, you know, you and I have talked a lot in the past about other aspects of how you think about wind, right? Like thermal tunnels and, you know, everybody talks about thermal hubs now and all these different ways that, that deer are using terrain and wind to stay alive or to find does or whatever it might be. Um, has your thinking, yeah. Has your thinking evolved at all on those aspects on the wind side of things, or have you learned anything? recently that's like fine-tuned your approach. 00:44:13 Speaker 3: Yeah one of the things i i really like their rut and hill country is coming up a thermal hub where you got all those draws coming together to one draw that goes down i find you almost have to have the wind blowing straight down that draw though or you're gonna get busted but if you if you you find one on a map that has the wind blowing down it i come in from the bottom wind a nose and come up to the point where you get to the base of everything And usually, if it's a good area, there'll be a big scrape right there, and I'll hunt right over the top of that scrape. Because that buck will come in there, and he'll smell every one of those points as the thermals drop in the evening. And then he's marking that scrape for the does or whatever. And then he can decide which ridge point, which bedding point he wants to go to based on what he smells. Because he's going to get order from all of it coming down them hills and down those draws. When you think about thermals, think about if you poured water up on top of those hills. It would run down all those draws to that point. Well, the thermals are heavy air that's just going to flow right down them tunnels to that spot. It's kind of like when you look at a, if you ever see a buck, a big buck enter a field, nine out of 10 times, it's in the lowest spot in the field. It's because it can smell everything around that whole field. That's why it had the balls to walk into the field. So that thermal hub, that base down at the bottom, It's not the complete bottom. I mean, you're not way down at the bottom of the main draw, but right where everything kind of starts to come together and you got to come in from the bottom. There's usually some cross trails, there's some drop trails and stuff. You get right in there. That has been really good to me too. Speaking of scrapes too, I mean- And is that something- I was going to say when you're by the dough bed and we're talking about rubs, I got distracted. If you have a scrape there, having that scrape in range is a good thing because those blocks- They lay down that scrape and the does will go mark the scrape when they're ready. So the buck will want to check that scrape. So usually a scrape is a good spot to have a position. 00:46:16 Speaker 2: And that's probably because that just is, it's there because that's a high concentration pass-through point for those bucks checking the does, right? Yeah. So another thing that we've talked about, is that you have historically had a disregard for any kind of scent control. And it's always been forget scent control. I'm just going to be smart about my wind, play the wind smart. You can't beat a deer's nose anyways. So just play the wind. Well, my buddy that I was talking to yesterday asked me to ask you if that has changed in any way at all in recent years, or if you are still 100% that way and still believe you just need to master the wind. Don't worry about the scent. Yeah. 00:47:03 Speaker 3: There's this company that offered me some money. No, nothing's changed. Um, I really believe that you cannot fool a deer's nose. You can't fool it with ground scent. You can't fool it with a airborne scent. Um, and, and I've had plenty of deer downwind of me and drop milkweed. It hits them and they ignore you. I've had plenty of deer that smell your scent and take off. Um, I've had it both ways. Um, I don't really think that you can beat a deer's nose. There's been plenty of testing and stuff done. All the testing that proves I'm wrong is done by people paid to have the results for a scent company. Everybody that does it independently finds that you cannot beat a deer's nose. They can't do it with a dog and a dog don't smell as good as a deer. 00:47:52 Speaker 2: Yeah. All right. So scent control, that's a product. And as you just mentioned, people selling products oftentimes like to promote the use of that, uh, something that we have not talked a lot about has been calling. I don't think I've, I've heard you spend a whole lot of time talking about that in the past. What about during this week, you know, this first week of November, or maybe even the second week of November, will you ever pull out that grunt tube in a situation where you see a buck that's just out of range, but he's in your zone? Um, is that something you've, you've considered? 00:48:26 Speaker 3: I've actually killed a lot of bucks with grown calls. Um, But I don't call blindly. I do exactly what you just said. If I see one and he's not going to make it to me, I'll call him. And I'd say probably one out of four during the peak rut will come in. Most of them won't, but I'll give it a try. But you won't see me out there tooting a horn on them. I'm going to believe in my setup. But if I see something, it's coming by, and I know I'm not going to get a shot, I'm going to try and turn it around. And grunt calls have worked the best for me. I have called them in with rattling and stuff like that. 00:49:08 Speaker 2: What's your grunt approach? 00:49:10 Speaker 3: My grunt approach? I see them. I grunt at them. I don't really do dough grunts. I don't do the bleats. I just do a couple low grunts. And generally, I will not grunt at a deer that's looking in my direction. They will pin you in the tree like you wouldn't believe. I will grunt at him. If he looks, I stop. And as soon as he looks away, I hit it again. So they'll do that stare like, what's going on over there? What was that? And then they get kind of bored of it. And they're like, I don't know what that was. And they turn like that. And then you grunt again. And generally, if they're going to come, that's when they're going to come. But if they keep looking and they're looking away, you're probably just going to play that game for a couple minutes and they're going to walk away. 00:49:53 Speaker 2: Yeah. I want to rewind a second to something we were talking about a little bit ago that just a thought triggered in my mind now related to it. And that's, you know, this idea of hunting a new spot versus, you know, giving a location a little bit more time. Right. And, and as you mentioned earlier, you've seen where historically a lot of us thought, you know, first it's the best sit and you got to bounce around a lot. Right. And the mobile hunting thing that has taken off over the last 10, 15 years has led to a lot of us bouncing around all over the place. And for good reason in many cases, but as you mentioned, sometimes these mature bucks actually do want to stay true to a place. Or another thing that I've started to kind of notice more often is deer density can make a big difference. At least in some of the places I've hunted where I've realized in some spots, especially during the rut, if you're hunting a low deer density place, you might not have a buck pass through more than once every three days. And if you only give that spot one evening or one day, you maybe never gave it a shot or never would have had a shot at all. I'm curious if you have had that experience at all. I know, you know, you're in Wisconsin. A lot of the times you're in this more higher deer density ish area, I think, and then like the Northern part of the state, but have you ever found times during the rut where it makes sense to play it longer in one place to, to kind of play that long game, to give enough time for a low deer density type situation to play out? 00:51:34 Speaker 3: I think regardless of density, there's a high likelihood that there's a certain buck that hasn't come through yet. Regardless of density. You might have some that do. What I have noticed is that when I do give a spot a few days because I want to give it a chance. Because see, I know it's a kill spot. So I want to give it a fair and equal chance. So I hunted a few days. Pretty consistently, I notice the first day I see the most deer, second day I see less, the third day I see less, and I see less and less for a while. And then there'll be the certain deer that just come by no matter what every time. But there's also ways of using terrain and using obstacles to be able to hunt a spot over and over again. Like to have a fallen tree, you hunt the area where you can go shoot over this fallen tree. So the deer never walk where you're at. You keep the wind on your side. So then those deer that come through there never know you were there or you're shooting across the creek or something. You know, you get some obstacle where those deer don't go to the other side. If you can shoot over it, that's been good for reusable spots. But to me, like if he doesn't come by in a day or two, you know, are you in the right spot or is he someplace else? Is there someplace where he's hanging more often? You know, and I think that floating around and keeping him off guard has just been better for me. I'm not saying you can't kill them over and over again. I mean, right now I'm tagged out in Wisconsin, as you know. Um, but, um, right after I tagged out, one of my target deer showed up on a camera that I got out and, uh, it's an 18 pointer, um, real nice buck. Um, I figured it'd probably go into high one nineties and I'm sitting here without a tag. Oh boy. So I have a good friend. And I sent him in to hunt it. Buck was coming in. He goes in and hunts it. I'm like, well, you didn't get it. Next day, the thing's on camera. Next day, he's on camera. So he goes back in the next day. Deer disappears for two days. Then he's back again. And then some other guy comes walking by and waiters. Deer disappears for a day. Then he's back again. And this deer just keeps coming back over and over and over again. And now there's been a whole bunch of activity because there's duck hunters there. And it's got them being a little nocturnal, but there's been duck hunters there like the last few days. And he's coming in just after dark. And those duck hunters got to be just down from him. And he's still coming in through past this camera. And the camera ain't even near bedding. It's not even close to the bedding. It was in a spot just to monitor deer activity. But this thing is coming in around daylight stuff. And there's only so many places you can bed. So I'm trying to help my friend, uh, kill this thing. And I'm kind of questioning if I should just wait till next year and kill him myself. Yeah. Or gun season. It's a tough one. Right. 00:54:36 Speaker 2: Right. 00:54:36 Speaker 3: But you don't know if he'll be there next year or whatever, you know, that goes, but, um, but that deer, you cannot push them out of that spot. Um, you can make them nocturnal for a day or two, but you can't push them out of the spot. 00:54:49 Speaker 2: So if you still had your archery tag there, Dan, today, um, what would you do given what you've seen him do over the last couple of weeks on trail camera? What would be the move? We're, we're, we're rewinding the clock a little bit cause we've, we're going back to October, but how would you try to kill that deer right now? Cause I'm very intrigued now. 00:55:07 Speaker 3: You've been watching this from afar, but you can't. 00:55:09 Speaker 2: Do anything about it. 00:55:09 Speaker 3: It's a very small area. And my conflict is I could probably hop around and get an opportunity maybe, but there's very few trees and I could do damage, but he's getting more and more closer to daylight. And I think there's going to be a window here in a week or so when that deer should be moving in daylight pretty often. And it seems like he's really nosing around a doe. There's a doe that comes through and whenever that doe comes through, he's there. So I think that if that place doesn't get impacted by other people, which it could, it's already getting impacted by duck hunters. If it doesn't get impacted by people, which this is a brand new spot, just kind of stumbled into it. But if it doesn't get impacted by people, it's, you know, that deer should be moving in daylight in a week or so, just based on timing. And, uh, like today I got pictures of them, um, or yesterday I got pictures of them at seven o'clock at night. And I think we're, we're dark at six 45 or something like that, or we're closing. So I mean, he's right there, you know, So I think being patient is probably the right answer. Um, but there is a part of me that just like wants to go now, wants to go now. You know what I mean? When, when I have stuff like that happen. 00:56:34 Speaker 1: Oh yeah. 00:56:36 Speaker 2: So, okay. So let's go back to our current timeframe, back to like mid November. We're in that second week of November ish. We'll say we'll combine the second and third week. Cause I feel like a lot of people think about maybe like November 9th to the 18th, 19th, 20th, somewhere around there. Um, a lot of people would refer to that as like maybe like the lockdown. If you want to overgeneralize a time period, they'll call that sort of the lockdown period of mid November. Um, what do you do in that time of the year? If you were hunting a buck like this, like if you had one buck that you were really wanting to get, we've reached mid November. Um, you just told me how you will hunt and bounce from bedding area to bedding area in early November. Uh, but what about in a situation like this where we're now kind of in the middle and there's really one deer you only want, What would you do then? 00:57:25 Speaker 3: I kind of got to look for those does that are in heat and find that doe bedding again. I don't think my method is really going to change in the doe bedding thing at that timeframe. I just think that you're going to see less deer, but they're still with the does. That's why they're locking down. It's just, they're even locking down in the early part that people are thinking is the great rut with the does that are in heat first. It's just there's still more of them running around, right? 00:57:51 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:57:51 Speaker 3: I don't think that rut is really changing that much except for there's less does or more does in heat, so more bucks are locked down. So it's kind of, you know, at any time that buck could be done with that doe and going to the next. So it gets kind of hard. But if you had an area and those does keep showing up, I mean, waiting for him to come to that group of does might not be the bad idea either. 00:58:17 Speaker 2: Especially if it's a large type of like an area would you focus on? 00:58:21 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:58:22 Speaker 2: So, so imagine, right. If there's like a thousand acre chunk of public land, I don't know, there might be in the kind of places that I, you know, hunt in Southern Michigan, there might be a doe bedding area every, you know, in every 30 acre chunk or 40 acre chunk or 20, maybe even less than that. There might be like a little family group here and a doe family group there and a doe family group there. So if you were trying to kill one particular buck, by hunting dill bedding areas in mid-November, like, are you going to, how wide of a net would you be casting? Would you just bounce from bedding area to bedding area within like his core hundred acres? Or would you stretch out more than that? Like what's your radius? 00:59:00 Speaker 3: I'm kind of used to less does because I'm hunting public. So there's less groups. So my hunting might be a little different than that. But if there was a lot of does around, I'd probably be concentrating on the areas that got the best big buck sign historically. Because I know they repeat the same doe bedding areas year after year. So if I know of a doe bedding area that's got a lot of historical big rubs, that's where I'm expecting that animal to show up. By big, I mean high. They're high off the ground. Not diameter. 00:59:30 Speaker 2: Okay. I follow you. 00:59:33 Speaker 3: Yep. 00:59:34 Speaker 2: What if you see him? What if you are on one of these hunts in mid-November and you see the buck you're after and he is on a doe? He is locked down himself at this moment. What's your next 48 hours look like in that situation? 00:59:51 Speaker 3: I'm going to try and figure out where that doe is going to go. If she's going to make little movements, where is she going to go? And how can I get in front of her? That's going to be my biggest thing, and it's going to be keeping track, keeping watch as much as I can, having very little with me, being a minimalist, so that if that buck gets up and moves and doesn't go in my direction, and he's with her or leaves her or whatever he does, as long as he's not aware of me, I want to have an idea of the direction that he's going and get in front of him. So I want to be able to drop and move quick. So I don't want to have a whole bunch of crap with me. I know rut people tend to start bringing giant backpacks full of crap and they can't really be mobile. Um, I'm trying to be as mobile as possible where I can just jump down and run, you know, um, maybe just grab my stand and sticks and, and, and be able to run around, maybe even just abandon them and get in front of the thing with on foot. 01:00:53 Speaker 2: If I had to. 01:00:55 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. 01:00:58 Speaker 2: Have you done that kind of thing more often in general? I guess I'll share that for a long time, I felt that if I wasn't in a tree, I was out of the game. And then over the last 10 years, I've steadily just experimented more and more with different setups, like sometimes doing stuff like I've seen you do, like pretty low in a tree, but I've got great cover. I'm just above the cattails or I'm in a cedar. And so even though I'm only seven feet up, it's the right place to be Or other times, abandoning the tree and stand altogether because actually the right place to be, you just have to hide in the cattails themselves or hide in the grass and lay down and then be ready to get up on your knees and get the shot when they come. I found personally that those kinds of things actually can work sometimes if you're willing to try it. What about you? 01:01:50 Speaker 3: Have you experimented more and more with that? Yeah, you've seen me hunt out of bushes and Trees as big around as my leg. I've pulled three trees together to make a tree big enough to not shake when I put a stand in it. Bushes, basically. 01:02:05 Speaker 2: That's amazing. 01:02:05 Speaker 3: But getting up above their eye level is so important. I mean, you get busted so easy at ground level. And it's more than just getting busted. It's the seeing and hearing them come. People don't realize how much more vision and sound you get from a tree. Like I've been on the ground in cattails and all of a sudden that guy comes busting out pheasant hunting next to me. And you're like, how did this guy and his dog come up on me without me hearing them? But you get up in a tree, you'll hear that guy for a mile. Those, those cattails will block that sound. You know, so those deer will get right up on you on the ground really quick and kind of bust you. But if you get up above their eyesight where they're looking, you do so much better if you can, um, But I'm having a, you know, we're going to do confessions here because you just did yours. So I'll do mine. I always had a belief you had to be in a tree. And I thought it's nuts to hunt on the ground because every time I try, you know, you get busted and stuff. Maybe you get away with it, you know, one out of five times or you got to have the perfect setup or whatever. And then along came Zach Firnboe and started doing this thing he does on video. And I'm like, oh my God, it's real. They can actually kill these things on the ground on foot. This guy's amazing. So, I mean, there's ways to do it, but it's probably not me. I probably don't have the patience he has for that. I'm just so used to my whole lifetime being in a tree that I really prefer and kind of maybe the tree's a pacifier for me, you know? That little tree hug. 01:03:37 Speaker 2: It's working for you. I don't think if it's not broke, don't fix it. What about the final week of November? This is a period where a lot of guys just aren't hunting anymore, but you hear from a lot of people that target really old deer that this is like a sneaky good time of year. Have you seen that yourself? Have you found that very late part of November is surprisingly good or not? 01:04:09 Speaker 3: It depends on where you're at. I hunted in the south last year in a late period of rut. Nobody else was out, and I had an incredible hunt. Um, but up here, um, we just had our gun season, but at last week of November, that's, it's actually muzzleloader season right after gun the last week and guns the third week. So we have rut right up until about gun season and then gun just shuts it down. But even the third week of, of November for us, isn't very ruddish. It's like, it's really tapering down. Um, and then we have that little splurge like the first week of December because our rut is like 30 days after that, you have that little where the fawns come into heat and stuff, you know? But that last end, when it's tapering down, which is what you're talking about, regardless of what the date is, I'm out there hunting, but it's hard. I actually probably start concentrating a little more back onto the normal bedding food patterns. And they're still acting, you know, they still have rut tendencies. Um, and if they're showing it, I'm going after that, you know, you know, but if, if let the deer decide what you're going to do, you know, if they're, if they're going back to feeding, go back to, to, to the bed hunting near the food sources. If they're sticking to the does and there's some, still some does going to eat, use that, but you gotta be able to read that and determine for yourself at that timeframe. Yeah. 01:05:41 Speaker 2: So much of this stuff comes down to that, right? It's, it's reading the situation. It's being able to have that kind of database of experience to pull back on and to be able to say, oh, yeah, I saw this three years ago. Now I know this is something similar to that. I'm going to do this. Or I did this 15 years ago and it didn't work. Or I interpreted it wrong. Now I'm going to do the right thing now, right? 01:06:04 Speaker 3: It is. That's the luxury. Not to pick on you, but so many people do what you're doing and get specific about dates. And those dates where you're at might be real accurate, but a state over or half a state over, they can be drastically different, like a week or two different. Um, so you really got to kind of fall back into what's it doing exactly where you're hunting and, and remember those dates. Yeah. 01:06:33 Speaker 2: That's a great point. And in the historical, you know, that past context, being able to look back and say, Hey, what did I see here last year? What did I see here five years ago? So, so important. And I think, you know, I think that's a perfect place for us to wrap this up, Dan, in that in many ways, you know, leading up to this conversation, I've just been trying to think back on, okay, these past conversations that we've had and what were these key things that Dan talked about during that 2014 episode and then in that 2016 episode and then in that 2022 episode, right? And there's some things that have stayed true throughout the whole period. There's some things that have evolved a little bit. But what about, like, nobody's interested in what I think has changed for you. What about you yourself? If you were to look back over this period of time, we'll say 15 years, and you look at how you yourself have changed your hunting approach or your beliefs or the style that you take in the woods, what stands out to you is that biggest evolution that has made a big difference for you? I. 01:07:41 Speaker 3: I have to say it's probably really just that so many people have started hunting B-style that all the islands, points, things like that I've always talked about all have cameras and people on them and stuff where in the past, those spots were kind of vacant and you could go in there and easily pick. And I've had to kind of fine tune to what are the deer doing now versus what they were doing. And I'm finding them more like in treeless spots, you know, or buckthorn thickets, places you can't get a tree stand in, especially if you can't get a tree stand in it and you can't ground hunt it because the brush is too high to shoot off the ground and you can't get in a tree. People just avoid those areas and it just seems like as they avoid them, the mature bucks move into them. What I do for our approach is instead of avoiding an area or not hunting something or saying it's unhuntable, is to figure out where that deer is and it doesn't matter where he's at, find a way to kill him. He lives here and he moves in this window. I don't have a choice. If I want to kill him in that window, I have to be in that window. So I find a way to prop myself up in a bush or on a stepladder or whatever I have to do to kill that animal. I think that's changed a little bit. It's always been that way a little bit, as you know from talking to me. But it's really gone that way pretty heavily lately because of the pressure everywhere else. Public land hunting has become cool again. And there's a lot of people out there. There's a lot of pressure everywhere. And what you got to do is look at where everybody is and the deer are going to be where they're not, you know, and you just have to move to it. And that's what's been working for me. 01:09:27 Speaker 2: Yeah. I remember in one of our chats, you had told the story of, I think I'm 99% sure that this is the story you share. You talked about some like young kid, or I think you just more generally said like, why is it that every year some young kid who's never hunted before goes out there and kills a giant buck, like the biggest buck in the state. 01:09:47 Speaker 3: Right. 01:09:47 Speaker 2: And it's because, and you explain it's probably because this guy doesn't know what everybody else is doing. And so he just goes out there and sat randomly in some place that no serious deer hunter would go hunt. 01:09:58 Speaker 3: Right. 01:09:58 Speaker 2: Because they know better. And then of course that's where the big deer is. 01:10:01 Speaker 3: Right. 01:10:02 Speaker 2: Um, and I think that that is now an approach that might actually work better than ever, because there's so many people that know the right thing to do. 01:10:11 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:10:12 Speaker 2: Um, That everybody's doing it and it's making the right thing to do the wrong thing now. And so we're having to adjust to that, which is a really interesting new phase of the deer hunting, uh, I don't know, journey that we're all on is, uh, how do we now adjust to, yeah. 01:10:32 Speaker 3: It used to be like, that's where people went when they didn't know what they're doing. And when they got better, then they'd go get a lease or something, you know, now, now it, Um, you run into some pretty smart dudes out there. 01:10:45 Speaker 2: And then for some reason though, Dan, you, you just keep teaching people how to get better. Why is that? 01:10:51 Speaker 3: To make your life worse. But, uh, really, um, for me, um, I guess when I was younger, I was a little more greedy. I wanted to be the man maybe, you know, I think we all do a little bit when we start out, if we want to be honest, we want to be the guy that kills all the big bucks and everybody looks up to us. 01:11:09 Speaker 1: Right. 01:11:10 Speaker 3: That kind of lost its shine long time ago. And I, I kind of reflected, you know, I think it happens to a lot of people when they have kids, you get your kids into it and stuff and you start seeing things from, you want to see other people succeed, whether it's the kids or what. Right. And I always felt like, you know, hunting kind of saved me. Like when I grew up in, um, eighties, you know, as a teenager, um, I graduated high school in 85 and, Um, everybody in high school smoke pot, everybody did drugs and everybody drank and there really wasn't anything to do. There was no organized anything. And it was like, you know, after school, there's some party someplace. Right. And it was like, I watched the destruction of a lot of my friends and I didn't want to go down that route. And I really didn't have anybody to turn on. It was like, everybody did that. And I kind of went on and became a loner and just haunted. you know, and that was my thing. And I kind of always felt like that saved me. It was like the, the kid that didn't get along with anybody, like, like I was the, always the outcast, a weird kid, you know, the kid with birds in his hair and, and, you know, hair to his ass. And, you know, people would be like, you know, he's weird. And what saved me was the, the, the hunting and stuff. And I always feel like there's other kids like that out there. And I just like to bring more people into hunting. And I think if everybody hunted, this world would be a hell of a lot better place. And for me, I see a lot of these young guys get into hunting and I would see them struggle. They wouldn't know where to go or what to do. They didn't have a good mentor. They had somebody who would just say, go sit over there. You know, they go sit on the edge of a cornfield. They'd watch some TV show and think they can go sit on the edge of a hayfield and shoot 150 inch buck. And they would struggle and they couldn't even kill a fawn. And they're wondering what they're doing wrong. And they're on the verge of giving up. What I did was I gave him the plan. Here it is. You follow my plan. You're at least going to kill deer. You know, you might not put the degree that I put into it where I scout all the time and hunt all the time, but if you do it to any degree, you can have what much more success you're going to be able to read the woods more. And up until the time, like in the nineties, when I released those DVDs, everybody, you know, kept it as a secret to people that knew it was a secret. The only thing they would do is share the hunt, they'd share the kill, but they wouldn't talk about how they got there. And I always wanted to give that plan out. And I got a lot of hate for that when I did that, but that's always been it for me. And I actually made a goal for myself and I stick to that goal to this day. Even when I'm taking a sponsor or anything, I read that goal to myself and I say, is this fit within this? And the goal is I am here to make people better hunters and hunters better people. And if it doesn't fit that goal, I'm not doing it. So what I'm doing now is really giving back to all these people that I look up to and just society. I want to see all of our kids grow up in hunting. I want to see them be better. I don't like what I see when I watch the news. And I just think if we brought more people into the outdoors, they'd be more like me and you and more common, good folk. then that's why I do that. 01:14:36 Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, Dan, I will speak for many tens of thousands of deer hunters out there who you have influenced and who appreciate all you have taught us and the plan you have shared. Uh, it's, it's helped. It has benefited is improved the lives of many. So you are, you are achieving that goal, um, in spades. So thanks for that. And, For people that want to follow what you're doing right now, this is a good place to wrap it up, I think. What's the latest, greatest place that people should be subscribing to or checking back on to keep tabs and to continue learning from you? 01:15:16 Speaker 3: My YouTube channel is probably the best. It's The Hunting Beast. I do have a website, The Hunting Beast, where I regularly get on there and we have conversations with people. Facebook. You can find me, Dan Infault, on Facebook. You can find the Hunting Beasts Forum on Facebook. The one I have on the website I think is better because we get rid of all the weirdos. It's just common folks like me and you. But the YouTube channel is probably the best. 01:15:49 Speaker 2: Awesome. Well, Dan, appreciate you making time to do this. We had a couple technical difficulties along the way, but we made it happen, and I'm glad we did. 01:15:58 Speaker 3: Yeah, I am too. It was fun. 01:15:59 Speaker 2: All right, and that's going to do it for us today. Appreciate you joining me. Best of luck on your upcoming hunts. Enjoy this most wonderful time of year. And until next time, stay wired to hunt.

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