00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number three seventy one, and we are back for another edition of our rut Fresh radio mini series in which we are hearing from hunters all across the country about the latest deer activity, weather conditions, and behavioral changes that are going to impact your upcoming deer hunts. All right, folks, welcome back to another episode of the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by on X. Today, we're back for our second episode of our rut Fresh radio mini series. This is something we do every fall. If you're not familiar, here's the very quick synopsis. We are going to check in with you every week with updates from four were five deer hunters from across the country giving us the latest on deer activity, dear behavior, how current conditions are impacting things and what tactics are working for them. And we're getting these updates every six seven days, so it's really fresh, very timely, irrelevant to help you with your very next hunts. So that's what we're gonna try to do today with me. To do that is Spencer New Hearth Uh Spencer. I don't know if you knew this, but Tony Peterson and I were together about a month ago on the back forty over here in Michigan, and we actually named a buck after you know that. I didn't know that, but I'm intrigued. Tell me more. Yeah, so, uh, we found a buck that had a really nice main frame eight left side, but then he had this very strange other side of him that you know, if you weren't paying attention, you never know that this other side of the buck, which is just like a funky four work with weird points coming off the tip of his G two, you never know that the other side, behind the scenes side of this buck is that he hangs out in the hot tub all the time, and he's got a weird thing for bobcats and turkeys and and that kind of stuff. So Tony decided we should call that one Spencer. So your ears might have been ringing in August. I like it. I like it a lot. How is this a regular buck? A buck that you would shoot, a buck that you're excited about the future for? Tell me more about him. He's a nice buck, he's he's at least three years old. UM. So I think we would, I think we would take a crack at him. Um. And he seems to be their decent bit. We got a good number of summer pictures of him. Now, of course, I don't know what's going on now that it's September, things shift around, so he might be gone. But he was there a lot in August, so I'm hoping he'll be around and we'll get a crack at you. Um. But that I don't know. That randomly popped in my head. Spencer. What what I really wanted to ask you about though, was, uh, you know, since we're trying to to talk about the thielindness of this information, how this stuff can be useful for upcoming hunts. I know last week you and I had talked and you were just about to head to South Dakota, and we had heard from a bunch of hunters all over the place and heard about what was working for them. Now, just curious if anything you heard from our guests last week helped you on your South Dakota hunt that you just wrapped up. Yes, so on last week's episode and In this week's episode, almost all of our guests talked about soybeans. Um. And there's like this conventional deer hunting wisdom that I think is kind of accurate but also sort of inaccurate, and it's that deer don't like yellow soybeans. I think that's oversimplified, and the reality is that it's not that deer dislike yellow soybeans. Um. It's just that this time of year, when you have yellow soybeans start to show up in fields, you also have the first a coorantinating the ground. You have apples dropping for simmons um, and then you have this other agriculture where there's hay fields and alflfa and all those kinds of things. And so I think it's more so that deer don't dislike yellow soybeans, it's that they like some of the other things that are available now as well. And so on my hunt back in South Dakota, the soybeans had turned yellow um, and the neighboring property had a green hay field, and they were always like three or four times more dear hitting that green hay field than they were the yellow soybeans. I say this to say to our listeners that if you have yellow soybeans and that's the only thing around, um, then you shouldn't be too disappointed. The deer probably gonna keep using it. But if you have yellow soybeans and there's a bunch of other really good food sources available, and it's just a buffet of green things and fruit and nuts in the woods, then you might not see a lot of action. And so you're gonna hear a lot about soybeans on this episode, probably the next episode, and the last episode. Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that. I've been watching some bean fields myself here in Michigan and seeing the same thing that the deer not focusing on the beans as much. Right there, mostly yellow. But this is another thing we talked about last year or one of these years, was the fact that even when you've got those bean fields turning and they're turning yellow and they're drying down, there's still little pockets in there where there are green beans still, right. There's just not the beans, it's the leaves that they're feeding on right now. So even if most of the field looks less than desirable, you'll still still get some deer in there hitting little pockets of it. And so what I've seen in my observations the last few days is that there are deers still coming out to these bean fields, but they're just moving through them very quickly. So they're transitioning through it, hitting a few little green leaves that are left, and then transitioning out of that pretty fast into the neighboring corn fields where that corn is starting to dry down as well, and so as the beans get less attractive, the corn is getting more attractive. And uh, that's what I've seen out here. If you want a deer activity report from Michigan, just based off of the handful of days I've been able to get out and watched in these fields, I'm gonna say it's been a five or six out here. I've I've maybe even a little higher. There's been a decent number of deer. Movie has been relatively cool in Michigan. Now the season is not open for regular folks, but the youth season was open this past weekend, and I know a number of people had success, and I think this cold spell has at least helped with that. Um And I actually saw a really nice shooter buck last night. Spencer show up on one of the properties that can hunt. He's a deer I had seen last year a little bit and gotten pictures of I thought he was a three year old and he kind of blew up this year. He's a really good looking six by five with some stickers on his brow times. So I'm excited to hopefully see more of him come October. Yeah, and I'd agree with you there that what I saw in South Dakota, I'd put it like a six or seven. It was just about finding the right food source for this time of year. You're gonna hear similar things from the people we talked to this week. That includes Tony Peterson who was just hunting in Wisconsin, Patrick Cutter in New Jersey, Keith Thompson in Montana, and then Drew Carroll in Georgia. UM And Drew was great to talk to because I don't know if he saw this mark, but he just killed the biggest White Tale of his life. Uh. And Duroys brings a super unique perspective because the guys from Seek One hunt like the most urban white tales in the country. Um and sort of how their tactics are the same and different. Um. So Drew is an exciting one to end on this week. Yeah, that's awesome. Those guys. I don't know how they do it. They just it's nuts. Uh what's his name, I'm blanking on his name? Uh? Lee Lee? Yeah? Lee just killed the slammer yesterday too, so they're on a tear. Any other big takeaway from your conversations with these guys that is worth mentioning at the top here that we should be focusing on as we listen. Man, it's sort of the end of the summer patterns. Deer out of velvet bachelor groups are pretty much gone, so we're starting to see that transition. Um. And this is like sort of that in between time of the summer pattern and what we'll talk about in a few weeks as the October law. So it's sort of a tweener time and it's all about like picking your spots, as we talked about last week, when to be aggressive, um, and when to maybe sit back and give an observation. Hunt Very good? All right? Well, I think my Michigan season opens in fifteen fourteen days, I think, so we've got two more episodes till I'm hunting. Do you have any white tail hunts? Uh? Coming up? In about two weeks, I'm gonna be go into Wyoming, Um and I have a tag there where the country is split between white tail Country mule deer Country, So that will be my next white Tail Country on tap on For the next few weeks, I'll just be trying to kill and elk with my bowl and really looking like a fool. Well you got that part, Peg Spencer, so I trust you'll do well a kid. Um All right, man, Well, I'm excited to hear from our guests today, so maybe we should just roll the tape. All right, We'll talk to you next week, Mark alright In. Joining us on the line first is Tony Peterson from Wisconsin from the Hunt for Real podcast. Now, Tony in Wisconsin, what would you say the buck activities been lately? On a scale of one to ten, I would say a solid seven or eight. Just a lot of a lot of deer moving around. You know, Wisconsin's opener this year was a little bit early. It was September twelve, so you're catching that summer bachelor group just getting into velop just getting from Velvet to hard Antler. And it was what I saw an opening weekend was incredible. It was it was awesome. Dear activity hunting this last weekend. Were you seeing a lot of bachelor groups still together in Wisconsin? Yeah, out I saw. I had my daughters out, so I was taking eight year old hunting, so it was a different kind of hunt for me. But we saw one bachelor group that had seven bucks in it, including legit you know, hundred fifty inch er and you know, several really nice bucks and they were all hanging together. You aren't as a conservative of a hunter as most bow hunters in mid September. What are some aggressive tactics that you're using to try to kill a buck if you if you want to talk about aggressive tactics to me, it's just observe and move. Observe and move. And so you know, if you're catching them on that you know, still hanging around the bachelor group type of thing, if you see him do something today, it's time to get in there tomorrow because that pattern is going to die. And so I don't hang back and try to call them in or declaim or something like that. I try to move right on top of where they want to be and try to kill him the next night. I know for most of your Western public land haunts, that you're focused on water the time of year. Is that the same case in a state like Wisconsin or Minnesota? Nope, especially this year. You know, the temperatures have been pretty cool and really nice to hunt, and so it's been a food source thing for me. And those bucks that I got on with my daughter this past weekend, they were they were on a soybean program and you know, making their way to a distant alfalfa field. But this is you know, that area. If you want to hunt water, you could spin in degrees and find water everywhere. And so it's a it's a matter of an early seasoned food source for me in a state like Wisconsin. What does a morning set up look like for you this time of year? Uh, staging areas, trying to trying to find a good route to get in and catch them coming back from the food before they go to bed. Were you seeing any signmaking in Wisconsin over the weekend. Yeah, I've watched between North Dakota and Wisconsin. I've watched quite a few bucks make rubs. I haven't seen any make scrapes yet. I saw a lot of sparring and bucks just trying out their their antlers. It looked like they were just excited to not be in velvet anymore and they wanted to use them. We have Minnesota's opener coming up here this weekend. What are your setups going to look like for that first weekend of hunting? Sponge and stuff set up on field edges. It'll primari primarily be all falful where I'm hunting, but I'm going to check some acorns just in case to see if there's any white oaks dropping, and if if the temperature creeps up a little bit more then it's forecasted, there'll be some water playing into my plans, but mostly it'll be just a field edge, try to get a try to get a gimme slipping up on his summer pattern. You know, this weekend and after that that will be dead. Tony. You kill a lot of deer in early to mid September. What is it about this time of year that you like so much? The deer haven't been hunted super harsh yet, you know, it's been nine months since they've been pressured, and they're pretty predictable, and so if you kind of learn to ignore the weather and what deer supposed to do and get out there and hunt them, you see that they're they're to move. If it's hot, cold, windy, rainy, whatever, they're going to be doing their saying. And so if you can kind of ignore what you know, like the typical white tail of advice and just go hunt, you can run into a lot of deer and have some great hunts when really theoretically you probably shouldn't, but they're out there doing this thing and it can be so productive to get out there. Going forward. Then in the sext week or so, what do you think that buck activty is going to be on the scale of one to ten in Wisconsin? I would peg it right, maybe out of six, and maybe back it off just a hair and say, you know, the pressure is gonna get to him a little bit, but I think it's gonna stay pretty good with at least what the ten day forecast looks like. All right, Tony would look with the rest of your season. Uh Listeners. You can read a lot of Tony's work over at the Meat Eater dot com and listen to his podcast, The Hunt for Real Podcast. Thanks for joining me, Tony, Thank you alright and joining us on the line. Next is Patrick Cutter from Red Hand Outdoors in New Jersey. Now Patrick in New Jersey, what would you say the buck activity is bent lateley on a ski of one to ten a spencer, Um, I would say right now, you'll probably call a six six out of ten. Um. The season has just opened up on Saturday, so so you're still getting um, definitely still getting some deer that are on their on their summer patterns. Other than that, attempts have been pretty warm. Um, you know hot high in the seventies, um, you know, low eighties. Um, but we do, we do have a cold front coming up this weekend. I think, uh, I think it's gonna really get the deer, the deer on their feet. So you mentioned some deer still in their summer patterns. Does that mean you're still seeing bucks and bachelor groups. Yeah, yeah, there's definitely bucks that are still running together. Um. I went out, it's earn a buck here in New Jersey, so you have to shoot a doe first. Um. I was out Sunday, uh in one of those early zones and I saw I saw three bucks round together. Nothing big but um, but they're definitely still still still running together for the MOBI far I guess some of your bigger one are starting to break up a little bit. But what are the relevant food sources that hunters in New Jersey should focus on this time of year? UM. I mean in New Jersey, you're you're allowed to bait, so uh, I'd imagine a lot of guys are baiting. UM. I don't have any spots right now that I'm baiting. UM, but there's a lot of guys that bait, So that's a that's a good a good food source for them. UM. Any obviously, any agg um is definitely hot early earlier in the year. UM. I used to have a farm that you had had a bunch of alfalfa on it, and that that was always good early. Um. The acorns I think are pretty pretty limited this year. UM. I haven't seen a white oak tree with with acorns on it at all. Um. And the red oaks are pretty sparse as well. I haven't haven't seen many of them. I mean, the deer aren't gonna hit them till later in the season. But I think as far as acorns this year, it's gonna be it's gonna be pretty pretty limited. So anything you know baiting or or you know, any any egg you can get get to, it's gonna be good. I know in New Jersey you hunt some big Woods and you hunt some egg country. How did those two different venues vary for mid September. I would definitely say that the bucks, the bucks on in the agg country, they're definitely more more patentable the bucks in the big Woods. I mean, they're they're tough to to to pin, you know, um, you know under under a certain oak tree or something like that. They they they have a lot of more free range to move around and and um, it's definitely tougher tougher there. So if you got if you've got a phone that you can hunt, that's that's gonna be your best bet come mid September, mid to late September. Are you seeing any signmaking yet? Yeah? I was out today actually, Um, I was actually scouting a peace a piece of public in the Big Woods that's in one of these early zones, because I did you know, I shot a doll the other day, so I had my buck tag. Now, um, you know, most of my other properties are in a zone that doesn't open its October three. So I figured out I'd go check out a piece and uh, you know, give me something to do until until my other zone opens, and I was surprised that the amount of rubs that I saw today, the amount of fresh rubs, I probably saw ten or fifteen within about a half mile span along this ridge. And then I found a couple of good ones in there too, So I might be putting a couple of sits up there over over the next week or two and and and see what happens. It's not uncommon to have a hurricane roll through that part of the country in the next month. How does that affect deer hunting when you have that sort of weather come through the area. Um, it could be good and bad. It depends on. Usually by the time it hits us, it's it's not terrible. I mean, we we have gotten some bad ones over the years. But usually if you could if you could plan for, you know, being in the woods at the end of that that front coming through or that hurricane coming through, I mean, you can catch some pretty good movement. Um. You know, if if it comes through and it's really it's really harsh, I mean, that's obviously gonna gonna gonna slow to your down for the duration of of the storm. Um, but I think it could be you know, I mean as long as you're not right on the coast like where I'm out. I'm not right on the coast. I'm kind of north western New Jersey, kind of in the mountains, so it doesn't really get pounded too bad. So it all depends on the severity of it. Um, it could it could go either way going forward. Then in the next week or so, what do you think that bucket activity is going to be on a scale of one to tend in New Jersey, I'm gonna bump it up to a seven or eight. I would say this upcoming weekend, you know, we got our first temperatures that are that are gonna be hitting the mid to low forties uh over overnight highs of like I think it's sixty sixty three. Um, so that's I think that's our first real cold front of the year. Um. I think if you know, guys are having played it smart and they jump in the woods this weekend, they could get a crack at you know, the book that they've been watching all summers. So, um, I think it's I think it's gonna drop up so probably like an eight. Like your optimism, Patrick, good luck with the rest of your season and thanks for joining me, thank you all right, and joining us on the line next is Keith Thompson and Montana from Montana White Tails. Now Keith in Montana, what would you say the buck activity has been lately on a scale of one to ten, no better than a four. It's it's been pretty hot here, kind of wacky weather. We had snowstorm about a week ago and then it was been in the nineties the last few days. So the deer have not been moving too much. Everything is still really green too, so we're struggling to get them to come out of the river bottoms into the alfausa fields that seed. They're seeing some deer, but most of the older maturity deer haven't been showing up much. Do you put any stock in what the moon is doing this time of year? Um, I mean, I can definitely have its effect. I know there's a lot of different theories and opinions on that. Um. I mean, we basically are doing the same thing no matter what I mean. We weren't hunting transition in the morning and food and even most times, so we kind of get the wind right and and hunt and see what happened. Now you mentioned that everything is still green. What does that mean for the food sources that you're focused on this time of year in Montana, it's been tough because they said, we really rely on the off half the field as a, you know, a drawing factor to get those bigger bucks out, and with the river bottoms being so green or so much brows, they haven't having to show themselves in daylight, so it's been making it a little bit more difficult. Are you seeing bachelor groups still together and you're still seeing any bucks that have velvet um? There's a there's just actually we saw a young buck the other day that was still in velvet. Most of the mature gear seemed to be out. As far as the bachelor groups go. We're seeing some of the younger bucks group up yet. But the we killed two good white tails this week. They were both by themselves. So tell me about the setups when you had your clients kill those deer. The first buck we shot this week was sitting over in alf half the field and ironicle, he was the first deer that came out that night, and it was like five thirty in the afternoon, So not your yeah, not not usually typically what happens, but it worked so and the client that I had just had out the other night. We actually shot that deer while elk hunting. We were working through a creek bottom and just so happened to look up and saw the deer actually feeding down the creek bottom to us, and we set up and he walked right to us to thirty yards. So it was kind of a bonus kill. Really, we weren't even targeting white tails worked out that way with the elk rot about to cut loose, does that change anything for your white tail setups? Does it push deer out of certain areas or kick them off of certain food sources? Yeah? I agree. I mean they're definitely bouncing around. Um, we're lucky to have the river bottom where mostly it's just the white tails. I mean, every once in a while we'll get some of the elk down into there. Um, generally we don't have too big of a problem as far as you know, one her the other one, because we're kind of targeting them in different areas In a place like southern Montana where there's big temperature swings this time of year. How does your strategy change when you get that cold front move in? It really helps them hit the food. I mean some of the natural brows will die off if it gets below freezing. And you know that alfalfa really thrives for us, then I think the deer kind of go more or less into panic mode as oh crap, we need to eat, you know, And our fields will double in deer numbers as soon as we start. Once we get the first frost, our fields will definitely double in deer numbers going forward. Then, in the next week or so, what do you think that buck activity is going to be on a scale of one to tending Montana? Unfortunately, I don't think it's gonna get much better. I mean, I saw the Dematrians are supposed to cool down a little bit, but I don't think it's gonna be enough to really get some of those older, mature deer on their feet yet. So I'm waiting for a frost, that's for sure. Alright. Keith, good luck to you and your clients. Thanks for joining me. Thank you are in joining us on the line. Next is Drew Carroll from seek Jue in Georgia. Now, Drew in Georgia, what would you say the buck activity has been lately on a scale of one to ten. Well, I'd have to say it's up there close to a ten in that eight to ten range. Based on the fact that I just killed one yesterday. UM, we got we got four guys on the team that have been hunting the last three days. Season opened September twelve, and we've all been seeing a lot of buck activity. UM. Obviously very dependent on where you're hunting, but we actually had somewhat of a cool front hit right before the season started, so that's definitely gotten the bucks up on their feet more than they had been kind of leading up to the season. Now. I saw on Instagram some teasers that you just killed your biggest white tail ever. Tell us a little bit about that hunt and about that deer. Yeah, yeah, So it's a It's actually a spot that I've had for probably six years. UM. Killed a buck there maybe five years ago, uh, in the in the same area, but this particular spot I haven't hunted until my first time was yesterday. So essentially I've just been running uh feeders and trail cams on it this whole time, just kind of waiting for the right opportunity, and sure enough I had a buck there that basically grew out on that lot all summer long. UM, and here in Atlanta, like, we're hunting these really small blocks and it is a total crapshoot whether or not that buck will stick around once he sheds his velvet um. Most of the time they won't. They typically start roaming like crazy, And luckily this spot stuck around. He Uh, there's awesome betting on the property, food and water super close. So he was extremely consistent all summer and like leading up into the season. Um. Crazy thing is the lot. Most of the lot was torn down because they're building a house on it. It was torn down like two weeks before the season started, so I thought it was going to completely screw it up. Uh. It did, caused all the deer to go nocturnal. Um, but construction stopped for a couple of days. Uh, I guess two days ago. And when it when it stopped and all that activity stopped, this deer started showing back up in daylight. And so I got in there already had my stand hung uh and shot him yesterday evening. So um crazy track job on this one. The shot was about as perfect as I could have put it, and we tracked him almost un till midnight last night. Ended up backing out and found him this morning. So I'm literally covered in blood talking to you guys right now. We just finished up getting process and everything. So I like that. I like that hunting in an urban environment. How are the food sources that you're focused on different than people are hunting more traditional venues. Uh So, I don't think it's different for the most part this time of year. I mean, white oak white oaks are the key, and we're kind of seeing him just start to drop right now. It's it's very dependent on what area you're in. So like, I've got areas where they're not dropping yet they're about to, and then other areas where they're just dumping. Um, this particular spot where I just killed this buck, they are not dropping yet, which honestly played to my advantage because we're allowed to bait in Georgia now. Um So I just kept a feeder running that I've been there all summer long, and he was staying consistent on it because that was really the only solid foodspores they have. Um. Now, if the acorns are dropping, that's when these deer get extremely sporadic. You gotta cover a lot of ground. Um that's why we just soak up as much hunting permission as possible, run as many cameras as possible. So yeah, but the White Oaks right now is where you need to be. The bucks will walk over a bait pile to go to White Oaks, and that's really going to continue on into the rut. You mentioned that the property you killed this deer on had water. How much of a factor is water in your mid September haunts in Atlanta? It's really not a huge factor, just because there's so much water here. UM for people that haven't spent much time in the suburbs of Atlanta. UM, it's not flat, like, it's very hilly, a lot of ravines, tons of creek bottoms, so these deer do not have to travel forward to get water. UM. Almost all of our spots have some sort of creek running through it, so we don't really we don't really target that. But the thing is, like in the suburbs, the waters where the woods are, because that's where you can't develop. UM. So these little fingers of woods are always following creek bottoms, floodplains and in river bottoms and things like that, so it's it's pretty much always close by. You guys were hunting Tennessee's opener back in August, how have you seen deer patterns shift over the last three weeks based on what you saw then and what you're seeing now. Yeah, that's totally totally different. I mean those bucks were still under velvet, still bachlard grouped up, full bachelard groups. Um. I was hunting a big bean field in Nashville, and so that's a completely different scenario than what we're doing here in the Atlanta suburbs. Um. The deer that Lee killed in Nashville was more of a suburban deer, your typical suburban stuff. Um. And it's the same deal. I mean they were that year was I think focusing on just like a green food source. Um. I think it was like a clover patch down in this little meadow. And so essentially what these bucks do is they have arrange is maybe a mile that time of year, and they's hopping around like a bunch of different little pockets of woods and you just have to catch them at the right time at the right place. So, um, you know, there's their stage and they're waiting for those acorns to drop up there as well, but they're still still in their groups. So they're they're more patentable at that time of year, but obviously as soon as that velvet comes off, things completely change. Going forward. Then in the sixt week or so, what do you think that bucket TV is going to be on a scale of one to ten in Georgia. I think it's gonna be this next week. I think it's gonna be a ten. I mean, we have this tropical storm coming in, so weather's looking pretty nasty out right now. So it's been last week it was nineties four degrees it's like right now. Um, I think we're gonna see a lot of bucks drop this this week. If people actually get out there and the breaks in this rain, that's when these are going to be moving the most. So I think some big bucks are gonna slip up here soon. All right, j Will congrats again on the awesome deer. Looking forward to seeing photos and videos of the haunt. Thanks for joining me, Yes sir, thank you, And that concludes this week's episode of rout Fresh Radio. Thanks to Tony, Patrick, Keith and Drew for joining me, and thank you guys for listening. As always, make sure you're subscribed to our newsletter at Mediator White Tail weekly. You're gonna get a lot of fresh content there from people like me, Mark, Tony Peterson, Patrick Durkin, and others. Also today drop the new season of Meat Eater on Netflix. I think you guys are gonna love season nine. It's the best one yet and it's I'm going to spend my time and to like talk to you guys again next week. Until then, stay wired to Hunt.

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