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 and today in the show, we're covering a wide swath of late season hunting tactics with experts such as Don Higgins, Gavid dare, Neil Doherty, and Will Brandon. All Right, welcome to the Wired Hunt podcast, brought to you by on X. Today we're talking late season, how to master the late season. By the time you're listening to this, November is is just about done and the peak there at least is behind us. So that next phase of the season, next thing on our horizon, it's the late season. That that period from December through January or whenever your season's end, that's what lays ahead of us. And for a lot of people, this can be a tough part of the season because you've been going at it for weeks and weeks or months in your war down. But it also can be a terrific opportunity for filling a tag, whether that be killing a doe to fill a freezer or even and maybe especially killing a big old buck given some unique things going on at this time of year. So that's what I want to cover today, and what I want to do we're doing here is is taken a page out of the same playbook that we used back in October when I released the Mastering October podcast, which was a compilation of excerpts from old podcast we did early in the years of wire Hunt. Because I know a lot of you, tens of thousands of you are listening now that we're not listening seven years ago, so I want to make sure some of those archive really great conversations are getting heard by all of you guys today. So what we're gonna do is, first, I want to lay out some foundational basics to hunting the late season. I want to kind of set the stage with the things that I personally am thinking about. And then we're gonna hear from four different experts with their own unique perspectives on hunting at this time of year, with their own regional differences and and style differences and all that kind of stuff. Um, and then you'll hear some little bits and pieces from those guys, and if you want to hear more from any one of them. You can go back and listen to that full episode where you can you know, here here much much more, get into greater depth on these topics. But at least this is going to give you a preview and kind of give you the punchiest, most important bits all in one place, allowing you to kind of figure out which fits your style and which would be most helpful for you to dive into further. So that's the game plan. Um, you know, it's the late season is an interesting time because because of what I guess I lead with, because more than anything, it might be the mental side of things is the most important because after you've hunted, maybe September, maybe October, maybe November, after you've done all that, it becomes harder than ever before to just stick with it. So I want to end on that topic. But first, here's who we're gonna talk about. We're gonna hear from Neil Doherty. He's an outdoor writer and a habitat and hunting consultant from New York. We're gonna hear from Don Higgens, He's also an outdoor writer, also a hunting and habitat consultant from Illinois. We're gonna hear from Will Brantley. He's down in Kentucky, hunts in Tennessee in other places like that as well. He's written for Outdoor Life, Field and Stream, et cetera. And then Gayba Dair, who is a land specials for white tailed properties. He's over there in Iowa. All four of these guys consistently have success targeting deer across different parts of the country, killing big mature bucks, doing it year and in year out their wealth of knowledge, while also not only you know, having success themselves, but also being uh journalists, writers, consultants. They're able to to speak and work with many others to to get those different perspectives. So let's let's cover a few of my like I guess I call it a second ago foundational ideas to keep in mind at this time of year and and to kind of keep in mind as you hear from these four folks. Number One, the late season food is king, all right, dear, especially bucks, but really the entire herd. After the rut in November, they're worn out. They're tired, they are deprived of of food and sustenance, and with the winter kicking off, they need to kind of rejuvenate they need to refuel, so they're hitting food hard. Food is the name of the game. If you can find the top food source, you're gonna find deer. And if you can control the food sources and put things in place for late season, you're really going to be in the cards. So food is very, very important. It's gonna be different for wherever you hunt. It's different whether you can keep crops up or if you're in public land where you're just trying to find natural food sources. That's all locations specific, but first and foremost, you've gotta find high quality late season food. Each one of these guys is going to talk about that to varying degrees, give you some specifics on the types of food to think about. Number two. Pressure. Over the last couple of months of hunting, deer have been increasingly pressured by that. I mean they're being hunted by a lot of people. They're being bumped around there, being chased, they're being shot at. So deer are really feeling them and by the time late season comes around, they've changed their behavior significantly to account for that. So these deer that might have been hanging out in wide open fields back and against or September. At this point, they might not be because they've im badgered in those places, so they are trying to find pockets where they feel safe, so sanctuaries. Maybe that is a swamp that hunters just never want to walk into, or maybe it's a property that no hunting is allowed on. Maybe it's a a wildlife refuge or something where people can't go into and hunt those different kinds of things. You've got to try to find where are these pockets where deer have been able to avoid humans. That's where they're probably gonna hold up right now. You can create something like that. You can create a sanctuary in your own property that you leave alone so that once the late season rolls around, you still have deer to hang out there, and then you take advantage of it and hunting near there or in there. Or you can go and find something like this that was created by default because other people don't want to get there, or because there's something about it that makes it hard. Maybe there's a little island that's surrounded by water that these bucks can bet on and never get bothered. Whatever it is, think about that. Look for that center your hunting strategy around. Then if you can find high quality late season food right there where one of these unpressured pockets is you have got the ideal late season scenario number three. If you can find those two things, the next step is timing, choosing when you're gonna go and hunt those places. This is an important concept all year round. If you listen to the podcast, you know we've talked about a thousand times, picking your days, when you're gonna hunt, when you're not gonna hunt, not hunting too much when the conditions aren't right, because that pressures these dear further and change of their behavior. So you want to try to time those hunts to the best possible moments to take advantage when they most likely will move while reducing risk of of pressuring and educating those deer. This is even more important during the late season because of what I just described, how pressure these deer have been, how how high wired they are now, how on edge they are. So you've got to be even more careful than usual, because you know you might have just a handful of strikes to go into these best spots before that one mature buck says, with screw this, I'm done. My little stancwary spot is not a sanctuary anymore. I'm not moving anymore until after dark or I'm gonna push back even further. So in a lot of cases that the timing is going to be dictated by severe winter weather, really cool temperatures for your area, or snow. Those two things I'm generalizing here, but those two things can really get deer on their feet and moving. So you get that high quality late season food source, you find some unpressured deer still or a little pocket where they feel safe. You wait for that great weather and then bam and go in there and you've got a special opportunity. Finally, probably the most important thing I alluded to this several times already, but persistence, being able to keep at it, being able to stay positive and thinking that it's still possible. Man. That's that can be a tough thing all year long. But by the time you get to December or late November or January, you've been grinding at it, you've been trying, and if it hasn't come together for you yet, I know this from experience, if it hasn't come together yet, it can be really hard to leave the nice warmhouse, to leave the fire, to to get up early in the morning still and head out there. Uh, to leave your family and friends to go sit in a tree and freeze your butt off. That can be tough. So having the stick tutiveness to keep at it, to stay focused out there, to still believe, to keep working. You know, words can only do so much. So I can say this stuff and doesn't really change anything, but it is probably the crux that all this stands on. This is what's going to make or break success during the late season is do you have the mental toughness to keep at it? Um. So I want to read you a little passage here. I refer back to this book a bunch of this season. So I'm gonna stick with a theme we've talked about this book, The Obstacles the Way. I'm going to read a passage from it about persistence, because I think it kind of nicely sums up what I'm getting at here, and it it nicely sets the stage for the rest of our conversation here today. So here's a little segment from The Obstacles the Way by Ryan Holiday about persistence. For most of what we attempt in life, chops are not the issue. We're usually skilled and knowledgeable and capable enough. But do we have the patients to refine our idea, the energy to beat on enough doors until we find investors or supporters, the persistence to slog through the politics and drama of working for the group. Once you start attacking an obstacle, quitting is not an option. It cannot enter your head abandoning one path for another that might be more promising. Sure, but that's a far cry from giving up. Once you can envision yourself quitting altogether, you might as well ring the bell it's done. Consider this mindset, never in a hurry, never worried, never desperate, never stopping short. Remember and remind yourself of a phrase favored by Epetitus. Persist and resist. Persist in your efforts, resist giving into distraction, discouragement, or disorder. Persist and resist. There's no need to sweat this or feel rushed, no need to get upset or despair. You're not going anywhere, You're not going to be counted out. You're in this for the long haul. Because when you play all the way to the whistle, there's no reason to worry about the clock. You know you won't stop until it's over. That every second available is yours to use, so temporary setbacks aren't discouraging. They're just bumps along the long road that you intend to travel all the way down. Doing new things invariably means obstacles. A new path is, by definition uncleared. Only with persistence and time can we cut away to breed and remove impediments. Only in struggling with the impediments that made others quit. Can we find ourselves on untrodden territory. Only by persisting and resisting can we learn what others were too impatient to be taught. It's okay to be discouraged. It's not okay to quit. To know you want to quit, but to plant your feet and keep inching closer until you take the impenetrable fortress you've decided to lay siege to in your life, that's persistence. Thomas Edison once explained that in inventing, the first step is an intuition and comes with a burst, but then difficulties arise. What set Edison apart from other inventors is tolerance for these difficulties and the steady dedication with which he applied himself towards solving them. In other words, it's supposed to be hard your first attempts aren't going to work. It's going to take a lot out of you. But energy is an asset we can always find more of. It's a renewable resource. So stop looking for an epiphany and start looking for weak points. Stop looking for angels, and start looking for angles. There are options. Settling for the long haul and then try each and every possibility and you'll get there. When people ask where we are, what we're doing, how that situation is coming along, the answer should be clear. We're working on it, We're getting closer, and when setbacks come, we respond by working twice as hard. So there you go. A few words on persistence, that most important quality to success in the late season. If you're asking me, I can tell you from personal experience. I don't know if we're in the late season just this moment yet, but on November twenty two, which is pretty late in the season, my persistence finally paid off and I was able to tag out in Michigan on a very special buck. I'm very excited to share that story with you. You're gonna hear about it next week. That will be my example of persistence, and I just want to let you know that it's not easy. It wasn't easy for me, but if you keep at it, good things can happen. So that's where I will leave you today. We're gonna hear from Neil Doherty first, Don Hagen's second, Will Brandley, and then gave a dare. So let's get into it. I will give you one other quick plug here the Back Forty that show I host on the Meat Eater YouTube channel. New episodes are out now. Episode three just came out a few days ago. It follows along with how we set up the property that we're hunting there in the Back forty, what the trail camera survey showed us in the summer, some of our tree stand prep, some of our tower blind prep we put out there for the new hunters and for my dad's hunt. You get to see the whole thing starting to come together, which I think will illustrate for you. You know, how we were able to have the success that I've talked about on the podcast, how my dad killed his first archery buck, how I was able to kill the draft time buck. You want to watch these episodes that kind of build that whole story up, So head on over to the Meat either YouTube channel check it out. Please give it a watch, give it a thumbs up, leave us a comment. I greatly appreciate your support. I hope you're enjoying that show. Um, and that's and that's about it. Oh one other thing that we should mention. We have a new book from Mediator, The Mediator Guide to Wilderness Survival and Skills or Willderness Skills and Survival, I believe is what's called. I should have this in front of me. Sorry, but checking out over the meat either dot com or wherever books are sold, covers all sorts of different wilderness preparedness outdoor skills. Uh, basically anything you need to know to be handy and capable out in the wild. This book's got you covered, so check that out as well. That's it. Now, let's get into some really interesting conversations about the late season. We'll kick it off with Neil Doherty and uh, we'll talk to you when it's all done. Whenever I think about the late season, I actually think. I don't mean this in a weird way, but I think about you, Neil M I don't know, okay, because because I talked to you a year or two ago about the late season hunting for an article I was working on. I think it was for Quality White Tails magazine. Um, I'm not sure, but I think that was the magazine is for. And I talked to you about some of your different ideas in the late season, and something you had mentioned in that conversation I believe was that And you can correct me if this is wrong, but I believe you had said that you would if you had to choose, you would choose hunting in the late season over hunting in the run. And that stuck with me. Is kind of profound, I guess. For number one, is that accurate? Is that quote accurate? Before I got absolutely if you have the ability to work with a piece of ground or even you know, even if you're not owning the piece, or you have access to do some work on if you have the ability to put some time in you know kind of thinking game, and the strategy starts when we start getting that whole rut mess And I chuckle, is you know the rut? Everybody is equal to the ruck. It's pretty much just grinding out the time in a tree and sooner or later, you know, you might be lucky enough for him to run buy it or you know, the buck you've been thinking about and dreaming about. It could be three miles of the way of the day that you're out there Saturday morning hunting. Uh So, it's just such a lucky period of time. It could work for you or it could just totally blow up in your face. It drives me crazy. On the managed properties that work with that, the help guys try to to figure out how we're going to get him in the rut because you just need to sit in the tree, you know, and and kind of hope. But when we get this late season period of time, you know, kind of this whole strategy session and designing the mouse trap of the property and strategic hunting of the peace and pressuring and non pressuring areas, all this stuff can come together and start to kind of almost put the deer where you want them to be. And you have to have help from other nature, but you can really start to develop a strategy in in work an individuals and you know, if if everything winds up, you can get done in a couple of days. So for my personal hunting property, you know, I forget about the runne I would I would take you know, we go as late in the middle of December here in New York this year a little bit later in December twenty two, we finish up and I would give up November and just hunt that last four or five days a season. That keep in line, it's after we've had sixty five days a hunting. Uh, so the deer will worn down their ground down. But but there's some strategies you can put in place to uh, you know, to get him out there, especially if you can plant and do things like that. You're giving us hope. This is a good neal. Well, Yeah, as I'm saying all the strategy thing, I was still lucky enough to you know, get it done here in November and and uh pleasantly surprised Will the big one to walk by and I was able to tag one. So it's it's still nice to have everything often they come March and by and he didn't have to think too hard. He just had to be in the right tree. So it's still happy to take the take the lucky force of it. But this this is where really I start to groove and get a kick out of the hunt. This late season stuff. Yeah, I've really started to see some of the same things with some of the properties that I've been able to hunt where you know, especially in those areas where you can find either low pressure areas within a property or if you actually control the property, if you can control the pressure. That's one of the things I found make such a profound difference to late season success. But before we dive into into that or um, any one specific aspect, you mentioned a whole bunch of different things there that kind of lead to success during the late season. Um. So I'm kind of curious if we can set the table at the high level, what would you say are the high level ingredients for a perfect or for a great late season hunt. And then if you can lay those couple of categories out, then I'm probably gonna want to dive into each of those in more detail. But I'm curious at the top, what are the categories of things that we need to start thinking about to find that right hunt in the right place. Alright, So, so probably that the greatest limiting factor. I'm always thinking of pre easing limiting factor. What's gonna object up the program and screwing up screwp up for us. So the greatest limiting factor for late season is actually not the inventory of box. And I'm always gonna trust that bucks typically can if you deal with four or five year old state usually are smart enough to get to that point and you can almost kind of not guarantee they're gonna be there come the end of the season, but likely they'll be there. But the greatest limiting factor for late in the year is to have the weather that's going to force them out of their poles that they've been hiding in there in my case sixty days of hiding season or other places. Uh, the poort and will force them out and bring them out whether they're gonna be exposed to the gun or bow or whatever your tool is of late year. So that number one is weather. Uh. In for a lot of us this year we are we are highly weather dependent. This year. We deal with warm temperatures and we'll get into that detail and probably a little bit later on, but we need to have some stuff, some temperatures that are gonna burn some calories and force them to get out there. Uh. The second thing is we have to be able to control pressure and the in and try to get in a situation where we we at least know what everybody's doing and how they're playing the chessboard. Um, you know, even if guys are hunting, know what their play is, so we can kind of play off of that in a predictable manner. You know, Hunt Bob does this in this tour of the property. We've stuct the deer to react this way and we kind of know how to play off of him. So you know, it's not necessarily no hunters in the woods, but understand that they're out there and what the impact is going to be. And then we have to rely on the deer in the physical makeup of the deer as well, so it is that still healthy. The rut is a grueling, mean process in a white tailed box, especially if there's other age in the neighborhood, he's liable to have at this point in time, open abscesses from antler wounds and busted up legs and torn shoulders and broken jaws. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff we're seeing in photos now, and my customers are killing deer that have just been pounded during the run. You know, not to mention some hunting issues that can happen as well, that these there are in some cases will and out and if you know your deal with the worn out here that's going to change the women to react and trying to adjust my hunting strategy to versus a deer that's fat and happy on you know, the last camera you're pulled and looking to be a really good shape. How they're going to behave a little bit differently in the late season as well. So all this stuff kind of marries and comes together, and you know, as well as the food sources in your neighborhood, so you know, knowing which you were able to plant and do the hard work and in May or June and food plot season. With this type of food sources, you're able to put them down and kind of score for late and year will dictate how that late season hunting is going to be. So all that stuff kind of comes together and in the juggle those variables, they determine whether or not you're going to have some success late in the year or not. So one of the first things you mentioned, Neil was weather, and that is I think you know a lot of people would agree one of the very most important variables to late season success. And like you mentioned, it's been pretty warm throughout a lot of parts of the country. Um, So let's dive into that first you know, when it comes to the late season, what kind of weather are we looking for, um and how do we take advantage of that? Yeah, so, so you know, I'm watching this stuff really closely to the point of we finished out the month, and I'll tell you from my region of the country where I'm where I'm currently sitting right now. You know, I'm in a parking lot in a little bit of town getting ready to guide some some of the hunters over the client I work for on their late season hunt, their last couple of days up hunting. And I'm tuned into the point that I know that the temperatures from the last thirty days has been seven point seven degrees about normal. And it may not sound like a big deal, but the white tail have had to burn a significant amount of less calories to stay warm. And what that's going to result and you can see this in the skinny shed, what that's going to result in is we have BiDi fact contents that are higher than they were last year and the year before the year before that. So I have deer that are relatively full, they're fat, and they're not it's worn down, or for that matter, they're not even close to where they are on average. Uh, and now this is a perfect storm of deer and not wanting to come to a food plot. You need to have it here that's kind of worn down a little bit for this late season hunt to come together. And you know, I four or five years ago we started looking at this. I really was of the opinion that, hey, it didn't really matter so much that you had a bumper crop of acorns all September, October and November and your property. If you could get December snows the pile up a little bit there four or five days of below average temperatures, your deer would come to the food plots. And I think that was were I wasn't the cost of kind of understand what was going on there. But the bottom line is it'll bring them to the plot a little bit. But if they're going to consistently get to the plot, especially in states where they have pretty high hunting pressure, you need to have a deer that's kind of worn down. The fat content has worn down some, and it's they don't have the luxury kind of hanging back and not eating for a couple of days. They need to go and consume the food in the good locations and in the head back and you know, get back to the bush, and those circumstances. We see a lot of these. And when I'm not talking about two year old bucks showing up on a food plot preying around a yearling bucks that I'm talking about the four wards and the fives and the seven year olds that are in out there that really know how to play the game. When they're worn down. Then we see them showing up from the plots going a bit and it's not unfortunately, it's not a couple of days of weather. So where I personally am and we're a lot of us us already this year, your seven eight ten degrees about normal for the last dirty days. If you've been paying attention to those kind of things, the fact contents were really probably higher than than what you would hope for on those dear and you're here look at the ten day forecast and going, hey, there's a couple of days of a little bit below average temperatures, maybe we get a little bit of snow. What it was likely to take for you to have that significant feeding event that you you know, calling sick from work and and and charge out to the woods. It's probably gonna take a good bit of snow covering for three or four days to cover up a lot of those easy excess foods and then force him into the high concentration foods. Uh So it's it's we're we're kind of in a tricky position for a lot of people on specially East Coast and kind of the central part of the country this year in terms of whether we're gonna get the deer to come out with the weather's gonna properate force or not, and we'll get that kind of that mass movement where things are a little bit easy on the hunting side. So one of the big things, and this is you know, kind of just re saying what you said there, But one of the major um points that I focus on a lot during late season is my timing and and you know, not pressuring those deer at all until timing is just right. During the late season, a massive amount of that correct timing is related to getting this weather event like you mentioned that will push these deer out early before dark into some type of food source. Um. And so a lot of my hunting this time of year is doing just what you mentioned, watching the forecast, waiting for that event and then you know, taking off work or whatever to make sure I hunt on that day or whatever. Beat Um, I want to talk a little bit more about those specific conditions, but I want to first what happens if you don't get then, like what happens if I have a week of vacation or whatever it might be, or a guy has a gun the guns season is open December one through six or whatever, and it's forty or fifty degrees the whole week and no significant event. I mean, what do you do in that type of situation when you you want to hunt, This is your chance to hunt, but you just don't have those correct weather conditions. Are you of the mind that you say just still don't hunt? Just you have to wait it out and maybe you only get one hunt threst of the year, or which is there some other option when the weather isn't ideal in the late season? All Right, So we've been playing a lot with formulas, and you know, I do work with some outfitters and we're trying to balance pressure versus results. Okay, so we've been playing and tweaking these formulas this time of year, late season the year that are not rut driven. Uh and and keep in mind too, we're not we're saying they're pretty well done with the rut. If your phone's reach six seventy pounds, they're gonna come into astris. A lot of those do fonts can come into astris. Does that weren't read in the first time can cycle in later. So while we're all sitting back here saying at fifty degrees, don't go hunting, it's a small percentage. It might be ten or fifteen percent of your doughs aren't currently read that could fire up and bring the big guy out in any minute, and you can shoot him on a six a day. So there is still a little bit of kind of Las Vegas luck ahead of us as a potential. It's not you know, hey, let's shut the season off and not go. But if we're strictly you know, forget about that lucky variable of a postible esther still go back to the feeding window. If we have fat, happy deer, uh, and we have temperatures that have been running by ten degrees above normal, the frequency of hunt that I'm advising that clients as they can hunt for about two days and they better pull out of the woods and give it about a seven day rest um and and even in the big pieces, these are five acre pieces, thousand acre pieces, put a couple of days on him and I give him a break to try to keep it as fresh as possible and be extremely strategic, like you're talking about in terms of the weather and the wind, and in trying to pick the days when they might be ill, feel a little bit fresher, to show up a little bit earlier. Are things of that nature. So you know, the cooler days and days you're gonna try to go out. We're really this time of year limiting our morning hunting pressure just to try to you know, take one more shift off the fields or one more shift off the properties. Is slipping out in the evening when we's a little bit more of a concentrated and feeding environment. So, uh, no other type of strategy we're doing in uh. In our last book we put out we we've heard to it as kind of a drone drone hunting. We were kind of taking analogy out of the military, and and this time of years where you almost envisioned the drone is circular. I'm gathering camera footage, I'm you know, hopefully we're in a state where wireless cameras are available to us. You're getting that wireless input to your cell phones, so you're not putting pressure on your deer or you're checking your cameras every seven and ten days, you know, middle of the day, total wal pressure, trying not to get in the middle petting areas, and you're watching and watching, and you're looking for to show some kind of vulnerability. At the same time, you're watching the next ten day weather forecast. I'm you know, up at four o'clock in the morning every morning looking at the weather forecast. I might think I'm crazy. You haven't memorized by now a lot, just trying to see hopefully it's gonna get cold. And yeah, I've got a couple of good bucks. I'm trying to wear it down in our place here. So you're you're saying, bam, I'm just looking for that that change at weather for book has change. It's gonna start to set up. We're gonna change the schedule a little bit and try to get to the woods. But you know, long we round the block on that, it's it's you get you really have to measure the pressure and really start to look at things. This time of year, and you have to figure out how much pressure you can put on it on a weather window unlike we're having right now, where the temperatures are five ten degrees below normal. We've got blow and snow, we've got blizzard conditions. It's been snow covered for four or five days straight, seven days straight, and then deer getting beat up with wind, chills and stuff like that. You can almost grind it, you know, you can grind in some cases, grind up a field over and over and over again. Uh even a situation sake, standing corn or something like that, just put a ton of pressure on. They're just going to keep on comment as they have to. Um And you can really get a good opportunity that way. Not and you can't get down out of the tree and spook all the deer off the field every night. But if you're sensible about it, trying to, you know, chip away at the corners a little bit, you can get some really good honey. And but this is not one of those years where you can manhandle a piece of property. Yes, so I gotta I got a quick question. And I'm sorry to interrupt Mark, but okay, so we're talking about this late season type of hunting, and you know they're focusing on the bed too food source pattern, right, So if the weather is not, if the weather may not, scream, get in the tree, stand and sit on this field edge of this food this food source or this food plot. Are you telling any of your clients to take your stand and get back further in the woods to you catch them in a staging area or maybe a travel route at the end of you know, great, great, great input on that. And and here's where we're gona watch our cameras. So if our cameras are showing some good deer the frequency I'm looking for. Let's say we take a seven day window and I have a shooter bugs showing up four out of the seven days in front of the camera. I say, that's that's high frequency. So I'm really pretty pumped about that level of use. You gotta believe he's coming to the field at other locations as well, not just past your camera. If he's showing up at two or three in the morning every time, you know, eleven thirty, twelve o'clock at night, four or five hours after dark, I'd probably say he's just hunkering. So tighten. It's not going to be anywhere even close to that field edge or within two hundred yards of it, when I can still get you know, have legal shooting light. If he's an hour after dark, if he's a half hour after dark, he's just on the edge of twilight, and I'm getting photos like that, then we're gonna take a real hard look at it. Uh, it possibly being at them now. Now here's another variable. So most of my client's own ground, or they're playing on leases that they have long term, and and we have back here and East a relatively competitive hiding environments. So I may be working with a three acre piece of ground and there's you know, a hundred acres or three or four hundred acre pieces that enjoy it. There's a lot of potential tags and lots of potential hunters in the woods. And one of the things I worked with my clients and say, you know, when we're dealing with with quality deer, deer of age, it's a long chest match and it doesn't happen necessarily end at the conclusion of this season. So when we're growing deer year after year, we get to know we might hunt them for two or three years before we finally get a chance to have, you know, the moon, the stars line up and we connect with them. But one thing that can change that absolutely is when my property and my property to pack with guys and rifles around the edges right now that you know they're kind of a perceivers, a lot of good deer in there and there they work are just hard. If I bumped him out of a bedroom, One, he's definitely not showing up the food pluck because I came too close to him. And two, if I move them too far is debt because I'm you know, the deers within three yards of a property line at the skips across that thing, he's just not gonna get back. So you do have to run. You have to know your neighborhood and know what you get away with. In some cases you believe it or not. I've had years or I say, you know what, guys, he's gonna be bigger next year. And that can be a very difficult scenario if you're looking at five days left in the season going, oh man, I'm gonna I'm gonna gonna fold up my tent and and give up on this year. But sometimes if you're really trying to cultivate that one buck and and you want to have him for another year of playing chaff. You sometimes you have to back off them and just say it's just not gonna happen this year. And I've done in a bunch and swallow the tags. And these are on pieces that you manage. Now, if you're in a public way and hunts, your permission to hunt situation, you don't know what your access is totally different. There you go for you know, going and try to make it happen. But but I air on the side of caution. I just don't want to bump these deer or pressure of these deer. And and right now with the weather conditions the way they are, that matter. It's it's not even so much as it's just warmer this year, it's if you bump a five year old back or six year old block now post breeding season, when he's not goofy, if you bump him, he's going to be significantly changing his patterns for you know, the next five to seven days. Not saying he's not going to kill him the next day, but but he's just not going to tolerate that path that pressure too well. And and especially get out of the Midwest and go to areas with a little bit more hunting pressure. You know, those deer are gonna affect and change quite a bit, and I'm really luctant to found some are a bit too close to him. So I like your idea, but I just would like to try to make sure we're in one gear that betting area a little bit of room, and then just to know if we're we're really willing to pressure and maybe maybe run the risk of run them off the property and not seeing him again. It's the fine line you have to walk, isn't it. It's it's kind of a tight rope. Yeah, and I probably air on the side of caution too much. But he know, uh, I'm working. We're let's you know, we're killing deer. There are five six seven years of age uh in in properties that one they're too small to typically do that. And too we're in areas in the country where there's really high hunting pressure. So um, we have to be real cautious in those areas to get that kind of uh was kind of results, so so, Neil. One of the important distinctions I think you made was the difference between hunting on a scenario where you have control of the property at the lease or you own the ground versus being on public or private, and how different those two scenarios are and how different your mindset needs to be. UM. And I'm in one of the situations similar to the latter, where I have permission on a piece of private ground, but other people can hunt it. And I've got the shotgun season here, opening an aisle in four days. I know a lot of people are gonna be hunting it, so it does require a little bit more the aggressive tactics, maybe like Dan mentioned, or something totally different, UM, But it's just a really important point that I want to emphas last everyone out there, is that you know, keep in mind what your specific scenario might mean and why you might want to be a little bit more aggressive versus a little more passive and careful if you have that control. Like you mentioned, Neil, I think airing on the side of caution is definitely the way to go. UM. But back to something we mentioned a couple of minutes ago, when it comes to this weather, these conditions that help you know when to go in and strike, like you mentioned, I love that drone strike analogy. By the way, I borrowed that. I really like that one, um, how much how much of a temperature drop or how much snow on the ground do you believe you need to trigger a significant feeding event? All right, So here here's what I've kind of every year. This time year, we're getting our first snow in this part of the world. So we have the first snow covering, and I'll get a million texts from my clients that are out to oh, yeah, it's gonna be a great morning this morning. They all get back at eleven o'clock, and so we didn't see you hear the first snows of the year. Generally outside of the right, I'm finding deer to be incredibly paranoid and not moving at all. Uh. And you know, we've got to take it from their perspective. They've been probably being ground down a little bit with hunting season. Now they're incredibly exposed. So I'm not seeing a lot of good movement the first snow. Give it about thirty six hours worth of snow covering, and you know, it's all systems normal, and they're right back doing what they do. So I'm not a big fan of the first day of the snow. But a day and a half after that first snow. I'm really starting to look at it temperature wise, we're just looking at the normal temperatures. I think you have boiled down to if it's normal temperatures or below. And I like to get ten fifteen decreased below normal with some wind, I mean some raw stuff where it's gonna beat you up in the tree. Those are the kind of temperatures we're getting good deer to show up, and and it's not oftentimes it's not just a quick little front blows through. And you can certainly play the game of hunting front to deer feeding during the front, post front, after the front, that kind of thing. But what we're talking about here is the weather conditions that kind of force them to feed during daylight hours and they're in a scenario where it's cold and the deer burning too much energy defeat at night when the nighttime temperatures are plumbing and yet lots of wind and still keep the line. You know, when a deer is laying down and it closes events and its body events being it's it's kind of it's growing area and its armpits, and those are the areas where it loses the vast majority of the heat it can lay down for two or three days or you know, a couple of days and burn less calories, and it can walking up to the courtfield to try to consume food. So uh, they will go for that day or two laid down if they have to, but at some point they really start to get gend up to go to food if that weather is again five ten degrees the low normal and whatever your normal might be. I've got clients and say, you know, forty five degrees is normal for them, So when its thirty five degrees, you know, we're in that perfect storm. My part of the world this time of year, I'm typically looking at temperatures you know, below twenty degrees, prefer lee and the load of mid teens at ninth and and just kind of following nasty in that type of scenario is going to trigger deer and bring him in. They give you a quick little story from last year. So last year we had that pumper crop of eight corns that everybody talks about there like marbles on the forest floor, and in I couldn't buy a deer to come to the corn fields or any of the brassica plots and eat. Guys getting some camera photos but camera photos are about what they usually are. We're having, you know, deer census meetings at camp, going, hey, geess, do we even you want to shoot those? This year we're not seeing anything where of all the deer gone, so you know, the neighbors are all on panic. We're kind of trying not to be seasoned and say, you know, it's it's just a blip with acorns. But in the back of our mind going where of all the deer gone? And it's a terrible both season eat tag. You know, there's no chance to shoot painting, defer peace and even the luck of the ride it doesn't happen. Roll around to this late season window. We're into December of last year, the muzzleloader season kicks in. That's that's mid December, and finally the temperatures dropped and we picked up twelve inches of snow. I waited a day and a half, actually canceled a couple of road trips, got back home, and within three days of that snow being on the ground, the property went from having five or six years showing up on the standing corn field that granted pressure had been low, to now there's eight or nine bucks showing up with fifteen to twenty does in the field was full and there's age there, you know. I was able to tag a great buck that that late season window, and the next night went back and tagged the bear. And then then the temperatures changed and the snow melted, and I went right back to four or five six year in the boot watches, you know, primarily fonds, and it was just a social thing. They went to the field to kind of hang out, dancer out a little bit, but they weren't going for the work of feeding. And it was in that case it took that eight ten inches of snow that little weather event, and it was literally a three or four day weather event, and then assume as it melted, it was over. And I watched, of course the cameras postseason and for that batter that entire year. Because they were so full of fat from the acorn crop that we had. It took significant snows in February to put them in the corn uh And you know, at mild weathers that we had even January February, no one's been in the woods for a month and a half. The deer still weren't hitting those feels in the way that I would have expected them too. They were just you know, obviously in really good body condition. And that goes back. You know, we were talking about body condition before. Uh, my clients on a whole. When we see a deer that's got a significant limp or you know, it's got some kind of issue going on right now from fighting or other things, we're batting, probably about to carvest that deer on an energy packed food source like the carbohydrate like corn or dry soybeans, things like that. We're back and probably to harvest that deer in the next couple of weeks in and they're when they're kind of getting beat up and they're trying to repair their body. We do extremely well harvesting those d or you know when when they get to that point, Uh, it's it's uh. I've had two or three of them that showed up just in the last couple of days with customers that you know, Buck, they've been chasing for two or three years and had finally we got him and oh, by the way, you know, somebody poking Aunt Warner's rerent and uh and he was a little bit beat up and finally he showed up during daylight hours, all right, next we've got, Don Higgins, I would love to hear from you done to kick things off here, what do you believe is the single most important thing that someone needs to keep in mind during the late season. What's the first and foremost thing that everybody needs to keep first firsthand thinking about as they start hunting these final weeks. Well, you know it's ironic. When I wrote my first book ten years ago after I shot that buck, Buck, we was just talking about A short time later I wrote my first book, and when I talked about the late season in that first book, I kind of downplayed it as one of the worst times of the season too to shoot them mature buck. But in the years of the past, I've totally changed my mind a hundred eighty degrees. Now I believe that the late season is the very best time of the year to kill a mature buck on purpose. But the key is you you've got to you've got to have a good food source, and you've got to have an undisturbed betting location. If you've got those two together, and then you've got made because there's they're very likely to be a mature buck there, and then you just gotta wait for the it's about time. And if you need the worst weather possible, the worst of weather gets the better your odds. So you know, I've got a couple of different farms that I manage and uh where I'm allowed to plant food plots and things like that. And on both those farms that you know, I've got my stands in place, I've got the food plots in place. I've stayed out of the I didn't cover all fall, and I'm just waiting. I'm just biding my time, waiting on the perfect opportunity. And whenever the temperature you know, gets down around zero at night, y's single digits during the day as a high. When it does that for a few days, you can just you can count on the bucks on every day in the woods. Really, it doesn't matter if he's a mature buck or yearling buck or dough. Under those conditions, they're going to be on their feet in the afternoon headed to that food and they're more than likely going to get their way before dark. And you know, I kind of set the table throughout the entire year by pinting those food plots, by staying out of those betting areas. But then when the time's right, I get into those stands, and you can you can kill you know, the biggest buck in the woods on purpose, year after year after year that way. Yeah, So I want to I want to dive into kind of each of those different things you've listed out there, But before that, I want to touch on the topic that I think is it's on the minds of a lot of people right now because we talked about these exact same things you listed out here, in the importance of timing and waiting for those weather conditions that can get those big deer on their feet. But for like me here in Michigan, we're dealing with, you know, high forty forty degree temperatures, and none of that really great cold, nasty weather that we want is in the forecast for the rest of the year really um from what we're seeing, and so there's a lot of people worried, you know, are we going to get that late season weather we need to get a big buck on his feet. So my question for you, don is, let's say you like you have all these things set, you have the food plots, you've got the stands, you've stayed out, you've done everything right. You're waiting for the right moment for that right weather. What do you do if that correct weather never comes? Are you just gonna just not hunt or do you have a backup plan? Well, I don't hunt very often, that's for sure, because I'm hunting the biggest bucks I can find, and a lot of times that means that I'm not looking at things from just one season perspective. I'm looking to kill that deer, and if it happens this season, great, but I don't want to go in and tip him off when the conditions aren't right. Next year he could be twenty inches bigger, and uh, if you've educated him, you've just made him, you know, three times it's hard to kill. So a lot of times, you know, if the weather isn't perfect, all hunt secondary locations. I will stay out of my prime locations, and uh, you know, I might watch a feeding area from a distance just to see if if there happens to be a buck coming out before dark and one that i'd want to target, which is very very rare for that to happen. But I'm not one just to sit home either. I've got to be out there dom something, so I just as soon sit back and watch from a distance. And and see if maybe there's a buck coming out that that I wouldn't expect, you know, under those conditions. But you know, mature bucks are unpredictable. Yeah, So it is a lot of your time then, Um, obviously based around food sources. But are you on top of the food source on a field edge or are you do you hunt back in the timber at off? Well? I like to be as close to the betting area as possible without spooking the deer. I guess kind of tough in the late season, you know, when the foliage is gone and you've got snow on the ground with them there can see you getting into your stand from a long ways off. Um, But a lot of times the betting cover that I'm hunting is it comes right up to the edge of the food plot. So I'll but then fifty yards or so with the edge of the food but I'm still you know, right on the edge of the bedding cover as well. So can you can you elaborate on those two pieces right there? Um? First, I guess let's start with the food source. Can you tell us you know, what are your ideal food sources during the late season? Um? Could you maybe tell us about the types you could plant and then maybe any types of food sources that are found you know naturally other ways. Well, by far, my favorite food plot is soybeans, and the worst the weather gets, the better those soybeans are. And they just they'll draw a deer like a magnet um. And you're if you're using the grain, actually the soybean grain to attract those deer other than than the forage or anything like that. I also like to mix it up, but just to have some things, you know, for diversity, uh, turn ups sugar beets, those kind of mixes, uh, you know, just to give the deer something beside soybeans. Corn something I haven't put much effort into you simply because it's it's an expensive crop to grow and get a good crop. It just takes a lot more cash outlay and equipment that other food plots don't. So uh and soybeans I feel, attract deer better than corn anyway, especially during that brutal cold conditions. As far as natural type browse, you know, just anything like for simmons or or apples, late hanging apples and you know might still be around. Just you want you want as much diversity as as possible. But but a big old pot of soybeans in the middle of that it will do the trick. Yeah, so so question about soybeans. One of the knocks against planting soybeans for food plots is that they can be browsed under, browsed over very quickly in the summer. If you've got a small plot of beans, it's easily to be to just get slammed by deer right away and knock the whole thing out. Um, So, how do you go about attacking that issue? Do you just plant very large soybean fields or do you use anything like a food plot fence or anything to keep the deer out of it until late season. Well, the deer population where I'm at has never been to the point where I had an issue with them wiping out a food plot. So I just make my pots as big as as I possibly can, uh, and they're gonna where they come out into the plot, you know, the corners or whatever, They're going to browse it down some there. But I've never really had to had an issue like some guys have where they've really browsed it down to nothing. So I've never had to use electric fences or anything like that, although I've heard good reports from guys that have Okay, is there a minimum size do you think that most people should think about? That would be kind of the smallest you want to go? Or? Am I okay with trying to put together a half acre, quarter acre, little honey hoole saving plot? In most parts of the country, if there's a decent deer population at all, you're gonna need at least an acre, and the three acres be even better. Okay. I know a lot of guys when they think about food plots are thinking about something the size of a garden or a small yard or something like that, and I'm usually thinking in terms of a minimum of an acre. Okay, And then I guess my final question I've got about your food plot tactics here. Um, when you're designing these food plots, are you just going with whatever openings you have or are you keeping in mind a specific type of shape to the food plots to make it more conducive to hunting in any way? Um? What's your thought process there? Well, I'm usually going with what what the land affords me as far as the rains. Um, I think you can overthink things and try to make it a lot harder, harder, and more difficult than it really is. I would rather have, you know, if you had say three or four acres that could be put in a food plot, rather than try to make it some weird shape that's going to force the deer to do this and do that. I'd rather have the whole thing in food and attract more dear to the spot. Okay, interesting kind of my opinion. I mean, I understand some of these philosophies, but I think a lot of that stuff is made to sell articles more than it is to kill bucks. So I just I don't buy into a lot of of things that that that some people promote. I think just get as much food out there as possible, and the deer are going to be there fair enough. So then the second piece of the equation that we talked about the cover. Um, you know, what should somebody looking to be looking for when it comes to quality late season cover. What does that look like? Well, that's extremely thick if it's also got some thermal cover. Cedars pines, A lot of the oaks species will not. A lot of some oaks species will hold their leaves in the winter. Pan oaks salt tooth oak, shingle oaks. Those species will hold their leaves all winter long and provide you know, some wind and thermal cover for the deer. But the main thing is you want it thick, but you know you want it free of human intrusion. And that goes for the entire year. You don't want to be stomping in your late season betting area in October and in ruin it months before you're you're planning to hunt. That freedom of human intrusion is probably the most important thing, even more so than the type of plants and and the the way of the terrain and everything. See your big believer in the sanctuary theory, right, absolutely absolutely. Can you tell us a little more in general why you think that having a sanctuary is important for the whole year? Really, well, if you just think of like a say, a state park or something that is near your home you may be familiar with where you know you can drive through there any time of the day and and see deer browsing and walking about freely with what They're not alarmed or anything. And most of the cases, the only thing that sets that particular cover apart from anything surrounding there is just human intrusion or like thereof. And you know, nothing has been done in particular to make the betting cover inside that state park any better than the cover outside. But it's the freedom of human intrusion is why the deer there and why they are so comfortable there. And if you can recreate that, even on a smaller scale, and on top of that add better cover, well then then you really got it made. Are you avoiding morning sits during the late season completely? Yep? Definitely, just like October. The only time I have morning is in November. Okay, now again, I'm I'm trying to try to help my buddy Dan out here, right, I just want to keep going back to this example. Okay, so Dan doesn't know where the sanctuary is. What kind of scouting techniques can he employ or anyone in a similar situation employ at this time of the year to try to figure out, you know, where this buck might be because inherently, right, there's the risk of spooking that deer. And now, after all this pressure, if you do push this deer a couple more times, you might never get that one or two chances that you might get. So is there anything you can do to to learn or figure this out um safely without risking too much, you know, spooking that deer. Yeah, it's a matter of learning the property a year on and it's going to take a few years. But once you've got your property figured out, you're gonna know where that buck is gonna be even before he's even born. You're gonna know today five years from now where a mature buck is gonna be on your probably five years from now where he's gonna be, just based on you know, hunting pressure in the train and things like that. So rather than I think a lot of hunters are always a step behind the deer. They're always trying to figure out what the deer doing. And I learned a long time ago, instead of being a step behind the deer, you need to be a step ahead of them. In other words, in October, I know where the deer is gonna be, the bucks are going to be in November, and where I need to be sitting in November. In November, I know where I'm gonna need to be in December, in January. So thinking instead of playing, you know, a step behind the deer trying to figure out what they're doing today, you need to figure out what they're gonna do tomorrow and be ready for him when they do. So it's really it's learning those typical patterns that deer are gonna are going to follow based on the terrain and based on the habitat, and then making um you know, educated assumptions based on what you know historically these deer do. Yeah, because unless something major changes on the property, they're going to be doing the same thing year after year after year. Another piece of this pie that we haven't touched on yet, but I imagine factors to some degree into what you're doing this time of the year is trail cameras. Um Are you using trail cameras during the late season to help you, you know, fine tune any of these assumptions and ideas you have, or are you avoiding them this time of year. No. I start running trail cameras about the first of July every year and run them until the bucks shed their antlers in February or March. This time of the year, what I'm doing is I've got the trail cameras on food sources, and you know, about every ten days or so, I'll check them just to see if a new buck might have showed up that that wasn't there earlier, and just kind of keep tabs on what individual are using particular food plots. Yeah, how are you checking those cameras? And um what time of day? I'm doing it in the middle of the day, and I'm doing it on an a t V. I just ride right up to the edge of the food plot. I leave the thing running and I don't even try to be quiet, but I avoid the betting cover, you know, as much as possible. I come in from a different direction than from the betting cover. Um, but being on that a TV, there's deer here. You're coming and they're not busting out. Like if you would sneak in there and happen to bust something, it would be a whole lot more stressful on them than that a TV is. Yeah, yeah, okay, that makes sense. You could use a tractor or anything really truck yep, just as long as they don't associate with a hunter, right right exactly? Yeah, okay, So kind of moving on to a couple of these other slight tactical offshoots. Is there anything else when it comes to calling or send there? Any of these things are relatively aggressive that people you typically used during the rut. Is there ever use case for calls, decoys, sense, anything like that during the late season? You know, years ago, I had a situation where we had a blizzard blow in and on all the local deer during that blizzard hold up in one thicket And I snuck into that thicket three different days with rattling antlers, and each time I rattled in at least one, if not too mature bucks, and I never did get one killed for various reasons. Um my fault, really, But so I I know those tactics can work during the late season. But the longer I've hunted, the more I've realized that a mature buck is is an animal. It's on edge all the time anyway, And the last thing I want to do is putting more on edge by making a sound or as sent to try to attract him, because I think he's so alert anyway that you just make him hyper alert when you do that. And the odds in the late season, especially, we're just one little creek from your bow or anything I'm sending, you know, running to the next county. I don't want to put him on alert anymore than he already is so I avoid those tactics even though I have no doubt they can work. Okay, all right, Dan, what do you what do you think about this? Do you have any other questions for done to help make sure you kill a deer here in a couple of weeks and I really want kill him? What is something I may be overlooking or anybody could be overlooking for late season and he likes to tactics or strategies. Well, I think the main thing is they is most people try to do the same thing during the late season that they've done, you know, basically all seasons. They get all hung up on sign for one thing. And you know, I've hunted more than one mature buck that the deer were hurted up up, except the mature buck wasn't with the herd. He might have fed in this very same field with the herd, but the herd came from one direction and he would come from a totally different because he wasn't bedding with him. So I think you got to keep that in mind at these mature bucks. Even though the late season that bad weather can can tip the odd your way just a little more than what they were, they're still survival experts and they're not going to take chances, but they don't have to take So you just got to kind of always go into it with an open mind and not expect the mature buck to be doing what the rest of the herd's doing because he's he doesn't do that at the beginning of the season, he doesn't do that during the rut, and he's not gonna do it during the late season a lot of times. Okay, so we've heard from Neil out in New York. Then it was Don Higgins in Illinois. Now we're gonna shift south to Will Brantley, who's over in Kentucky, doesn't hunting in Tennessee and other southern states as well. Here's a Southern perspective on the late season. What's the Will Brantley late season recipe? How do you approach it? Well, you know, it's it's not um you know. For for one, I I personally, um haven't hunted the late season just a ton because we're in a one buck state in Kentucky. And uh, most years, fortunately I've I've killed my buck by the late season. Um, but the last few years, uh, you know, I mentioned my buddy Miles, who's who's come in and and uh hunted late season with us here. Well, gosh, she's been coming in six or seven years in a row now, um and uh, and he's killed three good bucks here in the past. He killed two this year. He killed one in Tennessee and and one in Kentucky and uh and killed a good one uh in Kentucky last year. And that was you know, both of those were mid December hunts and kind of after the after you know, definitely after our peak of the rut. But still when some things we're going on, I still think there were a few, uh you know, a few those maybe coming into heat and definitely some bucks interested. But I think that the big takeaway from from the good deer that that he's killed just in the past couple of years during the late season has has definitely been uh, you know, probably even more of a hyper focus on some of the things that we were talking about earlier about your stand access and um, you know, and choosing the conditions and things like that. And um. The deer that Miles kill with us last year, UM was in a stand I knew, um, you know, about where this deer was bedding. He was coming out of a pretty big woods area with a lot of cutover stuff. I knew the deer was bidding in that area somewhere. And we'd hunted this deer pretty much all season, from the early season through the rut around this one particular food plot, and it had gotten a lot of pictures of him. But I had a stand set in this bedding area, and um, we avoided it all season, mainly because there was no way to drive before wheeler into it to get somebody out of it, and um, there's really no way to sneak into it of a morning without you know, you may get in there without bumping the deer, but you may not. But um, you know, I knew after our gun season this deer was still alive, and uh, you know, and so we Miles and I kind of went for broke. I said, you know, hey, we're gonna put you, Uh, we're gonna put you in the stand. We may spook the deer before you get a shot at him, but you know, we've only got a few days of the season lest so this is where we're gonna go. Um and uh, you know, there was a little masked uh left in this in this area. But more importantly, I think it was just right on the uh bread on the edge of where this buck was bedding and kind of between where he was, you know, where he was bedding and see even all year long. And I mean it wasn't wasn't rocket science on picking the spot, but it was, you know, it was kind of that last minute go for broke the approach and he killed that deer his his first evening in that stand. So um, this year was it was a little different. Um, you know, he he he killed his buck, you know, chasing does in a food plot right before dark out of a out of a box line. And the and the buck that he killed this year was it was a deer that gosh, we had a ton of pictures of him two years ago and then he just sort of disappeared and we got killed. Um who's a real tall tight rack eight point A couple of years ago we named him up tight. Actually I hate naming dear, but this one just begged for a name. So um and uh. And then I was just out of town on a hunt and Michelle was pulling trio camera cards and got a picture this dear, and man, he's gotten pretty pretty cool, growing a bunch of kickers and things around his bases and just sort of showed back up around like say, around Thanksgiving and sort of hanging around our food plots. And I assume, um, I'll look as we had a couple of family groups of those around there, and you know, he showed up in daylight. My house killed him. So um, you know, good good food sources and and good stand set ups. I don't think my strategy would change a whole lot in the late season versus any other time of year, other than I might get a little more aggressive on some of the places that you know that I'm gonna sit or you know, try to access. Yeah, that's an interesting point because I feel, at least for me, there's there's two times of year when I feel like it makes sense to go for the home run, to take that risky aggressive move. It's it's either the run because you've got this disproportionate chance that dey are going to be a little bit off their game. There'll be a little bit um, I don't want to say stupider or something like that, but you've got a little bit more of a chance of them making a mistake, and so it makes sense to kind of go for the home run during the rut and then and then to your point this time of year, the late season, because what do you have to lose, right the season is gonna end anyways, UM, might as well give it a shot. And UM, it's interesting that that worked out for you guys, And that kind of worked out my hunt. This this bucket killed in Michigan. I he showed up in daylight that morning. I saw him from a long distance away. I was, Okay, I have to get in there and hunt right there tonight. But the wind was pretty darn lousy for it. It was I would never I would never hunt this area with that wind. But I said, well, it's it's December. He's here this this one day. He's not consistent at all. Um, he's been like once every couple of weeks, kind of dropping in. Um, I have to I have to strike. It's kind of an now or never. And so I tried to find a way to to take a risky situation, minimize the risk as much as I possibly could, but just went in knowing like, hey, there's a fifty chance it's either low everything out here or I'm gonna kill him. But sometimes you have to. You have to do that. Yeah. Yeah, you gotta have the confidence to you know, hey, all the all the pieces are here to tell me that there's a pretty good chance he's gonna come by this afternoon. Now you know he may spooking, but you know, like say, you've uh, you don't have many many chances left by this point in the season, so you've got to try. Yeah, yeah, you mentioned, Um, you mentioned those two things. Sometimes you're more aggressive and you're smart at your stand sites, and then you've gotta be hunting the right food. Um. What what kind of late season food sources are worth king in on in the places that you hunt Tennessee, Kentucky. Um, whether it be you know, planted crops or native for its. What do you guys really focus on this time of year? Well, so far as native stuff, um, you know, uh, mass is still important at this time of the season. Now, we had kind of a spotty mass crop here. Was really only one of the best mass crops I think you can get the hunt. And that's some trees were just dropping like crazy and others had nothing. So you know, if you could find a really good white oak that was dropping, uh, you were gonna see some deer under it. That's usually by this point in the season. You know, most of the white oaks have been pretty well cleaned up. But we, uh, we have a lot of different red oaks species, and um, although they're not as preferable to deer, they still eat them, and they definitely eat them late in the season. And what what I find around here anyway, is that on a lot of the oak ridges, the red oaks will tend to grow right on the very tops of them. You know, I guess where the soil or whatever it is isn't quite as good as what I've been told anyway, and uh, you'll get a lot of deer action, um cleaning those things up, some of the big post oaka acreents and things like that. So they definitely hit those, um if you can, if you can find them. And and I mean again, uh hunting mass it's um. Sometimes you you walk past a bunch of trees and there seemed to be acron's land everywhere on the ground, and then you get to one particular tree that they're hitting, and that doesn't look any different than any of the others. I can tell any difference in the nuts. But for whatever reason, there's that one that they like and we you know, we we were hunting in in Tennessee the other day and there was a there was a red oak tree like that that for whatever reason, that deer were hammering it and walking past fifteen other red oaks. It looked just like it to get to it. So um, so that's a that's a big one. Um. You know, we still have some green stuff um growing pretty much year around around here. You know, they'll be um different little pieces of uh you know, forbes and and native vegetation and things like that, and and deer always gonna gonna nibble on that stuff. And from a food plot perspective, I mean, I plant most of my food plots are a blend of uh la dinald, clover, chickory, and oats. Um. I do plant some brassicas and a lot of times they won't even eat them around here until after the season goes out. We usually just don't get weather cold enough to to really uh to to make Braska is that attractive. I mean, I have had some brasket plots that were hit pretty hard. But um, I've got one that that I planted and I walked through the other day and they're turn ups the side of the softballs just laying there on the ground and doesn't look like they've been touched. They hit the they hit the greens early, you know, when they're first coming up, and you actually can get some pretty good early season hunting over him. But then through the course of deer season, they just they just don't mess with them. My whole lots. It makes a really pretty food plot, but they just don't eat it a whole lot. So um, the clover, the chickory, and the oats, I mean they in this at this latitude, they are green just almost year around. I mean, if we get a really deep freeze, you know, late which which we usually will, I mean, they'll go dormant for a while. Um, but for most of deer season, they're gonna be pretty green. And uh, and the deer are gonna eat that stuff. I mean, if you can get any really anything that's that's green like that, um, they're gonna be on And then of course you're you know, your harvested grain fields, your your cut corn fields, and your and your bean fields and things are going to nibble around in those and we get a lot of our um, a lot of our farmers will do a cover crop of some sort um, usually wheat sometimes uh you know, sometimes rye. Every now and then some of the organic farmers will will drow oats into a field. Uh dicon rad issues will get some of those. But um, you know, any of those any of those pick crop fields that have had a cover crop, especially with a cereal grain, are gonna have a lot of deer on them this time of year. So yeah, yeah, definitely seen similar things up here in Michigan. Um, no, no one thing that is different. I imagine we talked about how you know, there's this careful balancing act we have to make all throughout the season between when do you strike when you get aggressive versus when do you played a little more safe and maybe observe or maybe don't hunt some days and during the late season. So much of what I'm doing up here in Michigan usually or or anywhere in the Upper Great Lakes maybe Wisconsin Minnesota is is keying in on certain weather events that really pushed deer out to feed. So like a big snowstorm coming through, or like arctic temperature, something really extreme like that can really get deer, especially that mature buck that maybe wasn't moving in daylight at all that might finally get them up and moving. So when I see something like that come through, I mark it on the camera. You know, gotta hunt on that day. Um. But somewhere like Kentucky or Tennessee, that's kind of mid country. Uh, you probably don't get big snow events like that. You probably don't get those big arctic temperature events is often at least um, so so correct me if I'm wrong. But if that's the case, what do you key in on as far as weather factors or anything like that to to kind of guide you during the late season. Well, it's still like to look for cold fronts, um. You know, I like to hunt, you know, in the if if I can catch an afternoon when a cold front is is just about to pass through, when it's you know, the temperature has fallen and it's kind of a steady drizzle, um before the wind really kicks up. I mean, I seem to always see deer on their feet during those conditions. Really, regardless of whether it's the early season or the very last day, those conditions seem to put deer on their feet around here. Uh. And then um, in the late season in particular, I think those postfrontal high pressure days when it's you know, the sun's bright and it's cold and still and there's a heavy frost like um, those days, I mean you you almost always can can count on, you know, pretty consistent deer movement and uh, you know, man, besides that, um, late in the season, I mean the temperature and in the stage of a cold front aside, Um, I like sunshine. Um, you know, we are our winners are especially this year, like we get a lot of days rich forty five degrees and drizzling rain, and it just seems like it is like that, you know, for days on end in the in the wintertime in this part of the world, and it gets muddy and sloppy and all of that, and um, you know the sunny days, um, the clear sunny days. I just I don't know, I like to go outside on days like that, and it just seems like wildlife. You know, they just as a rule they take advantage of weather like that when the norm has been kind of cloudy, gloomy, you know, just just kind of bland weather. So sunny afternoons in the late season, you know, I I can't I haven't documented that or anything, but just one of those things that I do seem to see more dear on their feet when I'm out and about, you know, um, doing my thing thing. So those are the conditions that that I kind of like to look forward at least this time of year. Yeah, yeah, I feel like, Um, I feel like I've heard similar things too, and even I think lots of times you'll get those nice sunny days tend to come with that postfront high pressure system, right, Um, so you kind of get those those coinciding factors that all of a sudden make it especially good. So when you get that, those are that's another one of those check it on the calendar, gotta make it happen kind of day. If you have the flexibility. Um, I feel like late season especially is, and it's it's important all year round. I guess early season in late season maybe more so, but it's if you can there's gonna be a handful of special days each year that are gonna be just just a notch or two above all the other days because of some kind of system moving through and if you can find a way to have the flexibility to make sure you're there on those couple few special days. I'm not saying that they it's always gonna work out. It's not not saying that you're not going to kill a deer on a ran um day, that all the factors aren't aligned, But it just seems to be that if you can take advantage of those few special ones, you're gonna just put yourself in a little better position. That's that's worth doing if you can. Oh yeah, absolutely absolutely. Sometimes some days you get in a tree and you just know things be al right, you know. I love I have a totally different physical feeling on those days, Like it's usually when I'm getting things ready at the house, doing my final prep, loading the truck, whatever it might be. On the days where you just have that feeling your gut like it's a kill day, where you just know everything's lined up. That's one of my favorite things all year round as far as like hunting, Like what you just know when those special days are there. I don't know. The sense of anticipation, excitement is just it's turned up to eleven on the dial, and I live for that. So so all this stuff's great, and it's it's the knowledge is so important when it comes to hunting all year round, of course, but late season especially Um, but I think sometimes the toughest thing is just staying motivated. You know, after a long hunting season, you're tired, you're worn out. Maybe things have been going bad. Um, it's cold, you're recovering from eating turkey and ham and hundreds and hundreds of pounds of stuffing and mashed potatoes. It can be kind of tough to pull yourself back out there. Do you have any kind of final parting words of wisdom as far as that side of things, Um, when it comes to the late season and just keeping after it. Well, it's okay to be comfortable when you're deer hunting. Um. You know, there's some really good clothing out there made that that helps keep you warm. But even with the very best stuff on, Uh, sitting in a little bit lock on stam when it's in the teens is tough. Um. You know it's sometimes it's necessary, but um, you know there's nothing wrong with being in the ground blind with a buddy heater, or being in a box blind with a buddy heater and and keeping warm. Um. You know, when I'm hunting during the rut or any time that I need to, you know, to put time in the stand that I that I know I may be sitting there a while. I always bring a thermos of coffee. Um, maybe it's spooked a deer before, but I can't really think of an instance where I'm like, yep, that dear spook because I was drinking coffee. Um, you know, I mean, so I I bring a thermis a coffee. It helps pack past the time. I bring plenties next and I and I read like crazy on the stand. Um, I'm I'm not a fan of playing on my phone a whole lot when I'm in the tree. I mean, I do same as everybody else. I'm checking emails on Facebook all that crap. But um, you know it's a phone. Batteries die quickly, uh this time of year. So so there's that part of it. And uh, you know, you start scrolling through in the video plays or whatever like it can really get distracted. But um, there's something about a paperback book. And I picked my books carefully. You know, I definitely want to get something that I want to read, But I've got to get a book that I need to be sure that I can quickly slide it into a jacket pocket or a kip pocket or something like that, and like Michelle and I are really we both read a ton in the stand, um, but we're really careful about which books we pick. We don't pick hardback books because you know, if you happen to drop one out of the tree, it's gonna make a lot of noise. But like small paperback books that you can slip into a pocket quickly, um, you know, and you can sit there, you can read a little bit, you can cast your eyes up, you know, twice a page and just kind of check around. And it actually keeps you pretty still to have a book on your lap and just turning the pages with your thumb in a way that you know, even messing with a phone, you're moving around a little bit and there's a few more distractions involved. So um, you know, you still need to pay attention obviously, but it's uh, it's okay to have some things to occupy yourself on the stand. You know. It's not like century duty or something. So I've always I've always felt the same way, I'd rather have something like that that, especially for me, like during all day sits in November, that kind of thing, a book or reading something on my phone or whatever might be. I'd rather do that and stay out in the woods all day because of that little bit of help, versus coming in for four hours or two hours or whatever and completely missed that window of time out there. So if you need a little something to help you, go for it. As far as I'm concerned, Yep, absolutely. Okay. Now to wrap it up, we've got Gabe A. Dare. He's over there in Iowa. Let's hear his thoughts on late season hunting. So now we're staring December in the face. From your perspective, is the best behind this? Or do you like the late season? Do we have some good things still ahead for us here? Yeah? I love late season anymore. I don't like November. I mean, I can I know I killed my two biggest year killed you know in November, my my two archery two hundreds of both November or tenth and twelve. Um, but you had when when I peeled them off the wall, boy, it real quickly goes to late October, late late November and later you know. Um, I struggled a lot in November, and so you know I started getting into that tenth and twelfth and I haven't got anyting killed. I almost start you know, looking towards the twenty one and on, because I just we really struggle, you know with these bigger gear once they start locking down with those And so yeah, I love late season. I'm as you know, I don't farm actively right now, but I've grown up farming, you know, and so we've got equipment, We're fortunately got a lot of food, and so I love late season. Um, you know, I would rather give gear a place to live and hunt them on the edges and hunt them on foot. That's you know probably you know, when you know you you put that together with interns and exit, and I think you got a thick at that point, you know, I think you gotta made and so um, you know, with with late season coming up, you've got good food sources, good grain. I'm a big grain guy. When it gets late i'd really have corn beans. Um. You know, when you get to that late season hunt and you've got good food and you can get in out, it's as deadly as any part of the year in my opinion. So so if someone you know, right now, it's it's today's last day of November. So we're just starting to make that transition into December into that late season kind of phase of the year. Um, is there anything that should be done that people should be thinking about or or even actually physically doing right now to prepare for this late season? Um? Or would you say, you know, just get out and start hunting food or I don't know, is there any kind of transitionary things they should be doing right now to get ready for that best late cold weather and hunts? You know? And I would say, you know, if you've got to do something, you're buying the eight ball, and it always got to be done ahead of time. You've got to kind of prepare and have your stuff set up, because at this point I just locked down everything. I keep everything to a minimum. Um. And I really watched my cameras. You know, we'll we'll run a bunch of camp where you know, they start coming back with the scrapes real hard. Once the run lines down, it seems like the signpost kind of you know, so you can run some cameras back on the scrapes and a lot of food source stuff a lot of time laughs. You know, I run a lot of time labs cameras so I can see the whole food plot before the sun goes down. And so that's what I'm doing, you know. And and that's the other thing. You know, a lot of these food plots, I may have them set up to where, you know, they are tight to the bedding, you know, which is when you get those deer in the real early you know, because I've killed a lot of here in lots of years. I've killed a lot of ear at three o'clock in the afternoon, you know, five or six, seven year old and hex U two years ago I killed the night and a half year old and it was like three, you know, So but that yeah, but that's kind of getting back into that. You know, the foods where it needs to be. It's close to the bedding. They don't have to move very far to get to it. But then I've also got that you know, component of if I'm gonna put some food here, you know, how can I monitor? How can I check it? You know, that's kind of like the blind deal. I tried to set it up to where, you know, as long as I got the right wind, I can get in there, pull some cards, get out midday or or late morning, you know, and not hav any issues. Um, you know, we're big on vehicles too, you know, Well, I'd much rather pulling somewhere like a farmer would, you know, just in case something is on the food, you know, the middle of the day. I really pulling there. And you know, sometimes I'll even take the tractor and you know, just because they're used to it and it doesn't bother them as much, you know, But I'd much rather, you know, take a risk with a vehicle or attractive and you know, walking up the hill and blowing out of fields, you know, on foot. So a lot of things with the with the trail cameras you were talking about, you know, monitoring these and you talked about using vehicles access it and things like that. Um, how often do you go in to check these cameras, because that's always something I struggle with, is to your point earlier, you want to keep everything, all your impact as minimal as possible. But at the same time you need to monitor these somehow so that you can make sure you're hunting at the right time. So how do you balance that? Um, you know, if the wind's right and I'm cautious, I'm not going into their bedroom to get these and so I I don't worry about that as much. Not what that said I'm not check them every day, but I don't worry about it too much. I'm really careful with my feet. Um, you know, I'll really take care of my boots. But the wind's right, you know, I'm not leaving a munch of boot tracks, which I'm there again. That's kind of one of my my deals. I really watched my floot tracks. Um, it doesn't bother me too much. You know, I'll slip in, slip out. You know. I think I think deer expect a certain amount of pressure. I think that they can they live with the next amount of pressure, and I think that's a pressure that doesn't bother them. You know, you're not going into their bedroom. You're not bumping them out of bed. You're not you know, as long as you're not flowing wind right down into a drawer or ditch or block the woods they're in, you know, and you're careful, that's your feet. I'm big on feet. Um, you know, I don't think it really hurts me too much, you know. So you know, if I know there's a good one in there, and I'm really monitoring, I mean I I may check camera, you know, like that big one this year. We were checking the camera every couple of days, you know. But we we got in, got out. You know, we didn't do on the wind at all, But if we had the right wind, we'd go. We events flip out, check it, you know, and make a decision from there. Yeah. Do you do any other scouting of any kind this time of year? Maybe glassing or are literally walking around at all? Anything else other than the cameras? Yeah. Glass, I'm a big I'm a big glass. I've got all kinds of places. Most of my farms, you know, they're tough, but you know we've got advantage points. Um. You know that we can go park and just glass and sit and watch and you know, and I like doing that because I can cover a lot more ground. Growing up, my father was big. You know, that was one of the things we did. You know, we cover a lot of ground. We had a lot of ground to hunt grown up, um, you know, and so rather than being stuck or can find in one spot, you know, we could bounce around and cover multiple farms and look at stuff and you know a lot of deer I kill. I mean that's kind of where it will start. You know, a lot of times it's all I'll pick them up from glasso or scouting you know, their picture. But when you can lay eyeballs on and watch them for ten minutes, you know, making natural movement, and then you can really start to you know, connect the dots at that point. And so a while of the deer I shoot. You know, that's a big part of it, is his glassing, scouting from the road, pulling into high points, you know, anywhere you can get away with it. So so would it be fair to say that you are doing that more often than maybe you're even hunting during the late season. Yeah. Absolutely. My cameraman's love me. They love you know, because I'm not the guy that's gonna just pound it out for seven straight days. I mean I may hunt one day in seven, you know if that's you know, because I'm not I'm not big on blind hunt. I don't like to just goes, Oh it's going here the winds right, you know. I like scenarios. I like no big here and there. I like to have a game plan. That's what gets me fired up anymore, you know. And so when I can really start, you know, I like going into a set because I've got a whole bunch of data getting me there. I don't like going and just setting all day and a set somewhere to say I'm hunting. You know, I would rather go go pick them points apart and start putting them together and be really fired up going in somewhere because I know he's either they are closed before he's been there, you know. And so yeah, I do have ton discounting. I would. You know, this year, we we weren't hunting mornings much at all because I didn't want to go take the chance. I knew I had his I had his kitchen. You know, I can hunt him in the bedroom, but I knew I had the food. I knew that we could get in and out super super easy. It was like a dream set up for in and our and so I just you know, mornings, we we took a couple of shots seen him once, you know, about killed him that first move I made on him. But you know, in the mornings, i'd go run around the sections and part and watch and just see if I put eyeballs on him, and and we did. You know, we've seen him quite a bit. Yeah. So so in the late season then what what has to be present as far as conditions or data for you to take that shot. Um. Like right now, I'm struggling with after that year. Um, I've got a handful of five year olds that didn't grow much um. And so I'm really struggling with him. And I'm rolling the dice, maybe all of them, but one for letting them go another year and see what happens. Um. But you know, it's like that one deer. I'm gonna want to I'm gonna I want to get a beat on where he's did, right. You know, I know where he likes to bed. I know kind of where his home is. Um. But I wanna I want to get him in on that food plot. I want to see him on camera. I'd like to see him in daylight, you know, whether it's scouting that food plot from a distance or slipping in and pulling a card. Um. But yeah, I won't. You know. I talked to Adam, my cameraman, just earlier today and and he asked me what's going on? I said, absolutely nothing. And it won't be the weather's warm, I said, once it cools off, I said, I'm gonna keep watching cameras. I'm gonna keep scouting, and once I really get one, you know, once you know one's in there, and then then I'll get after it. But if I don't know there's one in there, I'll leave it alone, you know. And so between cameras or or glassing you know, a field, I'll sit back, um, rather than take a shot and go up in there and you know, just on a whim and and you know, maybe something happens and and figure it up and you know, and set yourself back. M hm. So so would you not even go in if we got a great set of conditions? So let's say you haven't gotten eyes on them, you know, recently in daylight or something like that. But we just get this mega cold front and snow. Will something like that dream scenario be enough to get you to go in there even though you don't have the sighting or the picture to tell you to go or is it no, I gotta have that yeah? Yeah, And that's if you get a you know that that big cold push coming down, big front, cold temperature, snow, you know, the perfect storm everybody wants and looks like you got all roll the dice on those average conditions. Now I'll just sit back all way, you know. No, I killed a lot of deer in average conditions because there again I went full the car or glass the field and wow, he's in there, you know, fortyfore dark and and then you know, the next night getting there on very fair you know, conditions that are fair at best, you know, warm or wind whatever, and get killed. But yeah, if I get that perfect storm of big front moving in cold camps some snow combined, yeah, then then what I do is if I don't have one, really you know, a beat on one, then I just use my gut of Okay, I'm pretty sure this is where he's gonna be, this is where he's always been, this is where he likes to be at this time of the year. And then I'll take my shot, you know at that point. So weather we'll get me, will get me on a food source, even without you know, getting some sort of data, No one, they're in there. So so what about this scenario. Then let's say you've got a handful of different types of food sources on your property in the late season. Maybe you maybe you've got a grain field somewhere, maybe that's corner beans. And then maybe you've got a green food source, maybe it's brassicas or something like that. Uh, and who knows what else. Maybe then there's a natural forage area. Maybe there's still some acorns or something along those lines in another section near firm. I find myself in this dilemma. I'm gonna go into a late season hunt. Conditions seem good, and I'm like, Okay, which food source should I folk of something? Because so much late season hunting is focused on food? How do you choose the right food? Is there any set of conditions that you said, Okay, now i'm gonna focus on green. Now I'm gonna focus on grain. Now I'm gonna do something different. How do you think about that? Um, that's the corn is king. That is easy. I mean, I just I've always lived like and here's late season. You know, you get your guys to a diehard being guys, and I always laugh and say, you better hope my corn plotting across the sense or across the road from me, because I'm gonna own them. And and I truly believe that. I just don't. I think beans are great. I think they've got this place. I think they're they're awesome food source for a longer time frame. You know, It's like alfalfa. I think alfalfa is probably the one I've taken off my farm and I've putting it back on my farm. And I think alfalfa is, you know, if you want to hold gars, one of the most important, you know, components. I think beans have an awesome place, But when you get right down to late season hunting and what they really need, it's it's car it's corn. You know, they're gonna come to you. You know, you've got a food plot that's half corn, half beans. I'm not saying they're gonna go all, you know, but that corn is gonna own the majority of them. And I think with consistency, it's gonna there's gonna be some nifer. Yeah, they're gonna they're gonna hit. You're gonna see bearing the beans a little more in the corn. But I think consistently, day in day out, when you're hunting, you know, in our region where you're snow and cold, and their survival mode corns game. Do you give any do you have any um? What am I trying to say? Green food sources like turnips, Brassica's rape kill, all that kind of stuff. Does that do much for you? Yeah? We use them, Yeah, we use them. And I think there's some you know, like post right like right now, you know, first gun season for US early December. I think it's phenomenal, um, you know, because it's the last green eyng else has done turned and you know if you've got some green and everything else has already turned. Yeah, you're you know, you're you're in the chips and so and so. That's where you know a lot of these different you know, food sources have their spots, you know, and out on them and I love them. But when you start talking consistently, day in, day out, corners king. All right, And that's a wrap. Thank you all for tuning in. I hope you find this one helpful. Um. I will just leave you with the same reminders I gave you at the top, which is number one. Check out the new book from Meat Eater, The Meat Eater Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival by Stephen Ronnella, with contributions from other folks on the team too, So check that out at Amazon or the metior dot com wherever you want to find it. Also check out the back forty which is on the Meat Eater YouTube channel, new episodes coming out every Sunday. And finally, have faith keep at it, have fun. The late season can be a great season, but you've got to have that mental toughness and stick tuitiveness to enjoy that. So I'm wishing you well and hoping for the best and until next time, thank you for listening, and stay wired and Dart