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 sixty four tall In the show, we're diving deep into the deer hunting secrets of renowned big buck hunter and host of White Tail Freaks TV. Don Kiski. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Sick of Gear and has been the case lately. We've got another awesome guest on tap today. That's Don Kisski. And if you've watched any outdoor TV or DVDs over the last ten years or so, you're likely familiar with Don. But if you're not, you know he along with his wife Candy, host the show white Tail Freaks TV, and they've also showed up on a number of other programs and DVDs over the years. But most importantly, Don and his family simply know how to kill big, mature bucks, and on an incredibly consistent basis. It's pretty amazing. Every year I just see Don and his crew putting on putting down big deer, just year after years. So today, our plan is to grill Don on all things white tail, and by the end of this interview, my hope is that we'll have an in depth peak into all of Don's philosophies when it comes to growing and killing giant mature white tails, and hopefully we're all going to learn a thing or two that we can apply to wherever we hunt, whether that's you know, in the Big Buck Mecca of southern Iowa, or in the rolling Appalachian Hills of Virginia, or southern Michigan or Georgia, wherever it is. I think all Bill learned something today. So before we get down on the phone, though, Mr co host Dan Johnson, you and me, we've got a few things to catch up on, right right, But before we catch up on something, I would like to tell you about a dream I had last night. Please do Okay? So when I got home from work today, I went right to the fridge and I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Okay, is this the dreamer? Is this real life? This is real life? But the reason I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich after I got off work today was because of my dream last night. All right, So I'm in the tree stand right, and I'm holding my bow in one hand and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the other hand. Okay, this is one of the craziest dreams I've had in a long time. But for some reason, this seems like normal for you, Like I'm not surprised that you have a dream about getting a PB and j wil hunting right, right, Well, I got more than normal sleep last night. I got about like six and a half hours of sleep last night as opposed to four or five. Good, right, so it gave me time to dream. Anyway, A deer like this big buck comes up this ridge and it's in a place that I recognize in my dream. It's actually a place Where'm gonna be setting a tree stay in this uh this August. And this deer is wearing a gold chain like like like rappers do, and I don't know why. So so like he's coming up this draw and I'm debating on whether to take another bite of the sandwich or draw or draw my bow back. So the good the cool thing about dreams is you know they're not based on reality. At all. So the deer comes right in through one of my shooting lands lanes. I throw the peanut butter and jelly sandwich up in the air, draw back my bow, shoot the buck, catch the sandwich, and take a bite of the sandwich in this like one awesome movement. That's the most amazing thing I might have ever heard. Yeah, the dream was. This is a dream that I will remember, and it's actually probably something I'm gonna practice if you can pull that off the one hand, peanut butter, jelly throwshoot, catch bite. Oh man, what did you eat last night before you went to bed? Chicken breast and uh, green beans? That was what we had for supper's and lsd well. That explains probably, that explains that. Oh juice, that's a heck of a dream. I still don't know where I found you, Like how this all happened. Remember that time you gave a bump money? Oh man, that's funny. So you had a crazy dream. And since we last chatted, you also checked your trail cameras. And I'm particularly interested and excited about every time you check your cameras since you and we've got the big trail camera bet going on this summer. So I saw a little bit online. But can you feel us on how that camera poll went. I'll tell you what. I had some decent bucks on camera. There are three deer ones a six year old, one is a seven year old, and one is Gonna. I think he's a four year old, all right, all three considered shooters, all right, just based on maturity level alone. I got history with two of them. One one is Ryan Iberg. I blog about him all the time. And then another one's uh, just a three year old that I think I passed him last year to be honest, as a like a hundred and that Now he's another really good eight pointer. But he's out wide and he's put on a whole bunch of mass, and he's a four year old. Wasn't he a three year ol last year? And he's a four year old this year? Three old last year, four year old this year? And then another six year old buck who has a gigantic body, and um, he's really tight, he's got really he's he is the one of my last card pool that had all the junk on the basis. Oh is that uh dork? Yep? I call him dork. Yeah, that's a cool buck. Yeah, I like that funky stuff. Yep, just a mainframe eight with all the junk is inside on his basis. So I I've I believe I saw him at a distance one time last year, and other than that, every trail camera pick minus one has been of him nocturnal. So finding out where these deer are living is still I mean, I've been hunting the same property five years now and it's still you know, trying to find the right pinch points and betting areas where these deer betting on certain winds. So it's, uh, it's gonna take some scouting and some effort. I hope this is the year though, now that especially this year, you get to hunt yourself a lot more. I would love to see the story of Ryan Iberg come to a close. Oh man, me and you both. That would just be so awesome. Yeah, but you know, like I said, I was a little disappointed in the card pool because last year I had literally my best trail camera season ever with as far as maturity level and actually you know points or a score of deer, you know, like deer in the you know one eighties and the one seventies and the one sixties. Tons this year, the score is low. I have three mature deer on camera, but of the four trail cameras that I put out, two of them took false pictures because I had a little like one was a moth died on the eye of the camera, and the other one was like a beatle crawled up on it and shed its exce a skeleton. Some bug did. So I had all these pictures of deer feet and then on my other camera was all pictures of the tops of the trees. That's brutal. Yeah, so well, uh, I'm sorry to hear that, but I'm kind of not sorry because it's probably helping my cause I might actually if I have to wear a Michigan State hat, i might lose friends. Just to let you know, my house might get egged. I'm not gonna feel bad about it either, Dan. I know, I'm a man and I make you know, I make my own bed, but just to let you know, I know, but you know, I also there could I could get down to Ohio and my cameras might not have taken any pictures since May. So there's a total chance I could completely blink since I haven't been able to check them at all. Or you're gonna have six pictures and it's three of me walking up, three of me walking away. That could be too we'd have we'd have some issues if that was the case. Right, well, real quick, we gotta get down on the line here, but I want to tell you about one more thing from me before we do get to the important stuff. As you know, you and I are planning a mule deer hunt in the high country of central Idaho this coming September. Right hand. Since I'm living out here, we decided I was gonna try to go out and do some scouting to go check this place out. Well, I finally got to do that this weekend, and it's been kind of a little bit of a debacle. We we originally planned to go out and do this trip a few weeks ago, and then we drove out there and this and stuff happened and I wasn't able to make the trip. And then finally this most recent trip, we were able to finally get out there, but again had some challenges. So really quickly, I'm not gonna bore you with the long story of this whole trip, but as I told you before I went, I found a trail all that heads into this alpine lake that we had gotten some intel on that we wanted to hunt. And this trail was supposed to be eight and a half miles in and was supposed to be a relatively easy hiking. So my plan was I was going to bring my wife and my dog Boom and since we have nowhere else to put him, our little lap dog Cooper, and we're gonna hike in there. That's easy eight and a half miles. I was going to spend the evening scouting all night, and then the next morning I was gonna scout in the morning and then we have an easy hike out in time to get back here to work for some meetings. We had well, long story short, what was supposed to be eight and a half miles was more like twelve. The guide in the map was completely wrong. It was a hell march, like a death march in there. We never made it to the lake because it was so far and the trail was all messed up. Nothing was marked, nothing was maintained. We were crawling up an over logs and dead falls, and we thought we were lost. And man, I've done a lot of mountain stuff and a lot of backpacking and We've been out here all summer and this trail just kicked our butts and my dog got injured. His feet are all tore up. He can he can't walk now, so he's just laying in the ground all bandage up. We, like I said, we never made it to the lake. And I finally got up into the general area of it, and we, like Kylie, we couldn't go any fur this was are. It was like late. We thought we're gonna get in like three or four o'clock in the afternoon, based on our typical miles how fast we go. We didn't even stop until like almost eight o'clock and we still hadn't got two lakes. We we just need to stop, so we pull off. And then I hiked even further on my own with but by nose and camera try to find something. Never could get to the lake. I scouted all the hillsides, all the mountain basins, everything. I didn't see a single deer. And because of the fact that it took so much longer for us to get in, I had to leave at four three, pack up camp and hike out in the dark this morning to get out, like the twelve miles or thirteen miles or whatever was to get back to the car to get in time for a meeting. So in general, the scouting trip is an absolute debacle. And and this is the first I told you. It's for all of everyone listening. I haven't told Dan about this at Also, I'm sorry for the horrible surprise and bad news here Dan, Um, but it was not good and we're gonna have to have some discussions about what options we might have because, to be honest, unless we can find a different approach to get in there, I don't think there's any chance that we should do this. There's no way. And that wasn't even up until like the stuff where that you know, where we would actually want to be hunting. It would be like fourteen miles just to get up into the spots I think where the where the deer would actually be. Um, yeah, it was. And I went on I actually put I weighed my pack yesterday and I had put It was a total of eighty two pounds is what I went on a walk with yesterday. And I almost I mean it kicked my butt and I was just walking the back roads in Iowa, right, So imagine going in with pounds for forty pounds on my back with all my gear, that would that would definitely kill a flat lander like me. Yeah, And that's what I was thinking, is like, if we as much stuff as I've been doing in the mountains, if this is kicking our butt. Um, if we added on all of our hunting gear and if we were trying to pack out a deer, it would just be a nightmare. So we we're gonna have to off air ra have to do some kind of conversation, Yeah, for sure, conversation and and re examine our options because this, uh, I don't know, man, it was it was tough. It was a bad situation all around. So I don't know that. The adventure continues and we haven't even got out there yet. One more quick thing before we get down on the line is we can never skip another week again, because I damn near got hate mail from our followers saying, so what's the deal. I haven't seen a post it you know post you I guess we can't take breaks, is what what I'm getting at. No, people weren't happy didn't have a podcast last week. I saw the same thing. I uh, I'll take full responsibility for that. I had family and talent, So I said, take some time off work too to hang with family. But we got a good one this week, so hopefully I'll make up for it. And I tell you what, with all these awesome guests and all this information that we're providing on our listeners, Uh, I have a feeling that the dear harvest will be going up this year. As far as mature dear, it's gonna be going up this year. I think so too. I think I've been really happy with what we've been able to learn from all of our guests, and this year, it's been a good year, and I think we've only got better things on top. We've got some some really cool guys and girls coming on the show later that I've already got scheduled for the next couple of months. So I think it's just going to keep on getting better. So this has been a pretty long intro um, so I'd say we should we should talk to someone who really knows what he's doing when it comes to white tails and get done on the line. Would you agree? I say we do it all right? Here goes all right with us on the line now? Is don Kisski welcome the show down? Hey, thank you very much. Yeah, we are excited to have you on the line. We've been having some really great guests on the podcast here recently. Um, just last week, we had Mark Drury on the show and he had some fascinating things to share, and so we're really excited to follow that up with you because I think, I think very longly with Mark, you are one of the most renowned white tail hunters, at least that I've seen in the public eye when it comes to patterning and hunting and growing big, mature white tails. And what I was, you know, hoping we can do today is is really dive deep into everything you learn over all of your years hunting deer, and you know, hopefully there'll be some things that we can all take away from it. So before we dive into all of that, which I'm really excited about, for the few people that maybe aren't familiar with with who you are what you're doing white Tail Freaks, could you just give us a brief overview of what white Tail Freaks is all about. Sure, no problem with We're gat a team of guys and girls who manage our property. We try to raise the oldest and the biggest bucks we can. I would like to build history to them. Find the chefs, film them, veilvement, take trail pictures to him, to do everything we can to know that buck as what was possible so they get to the mature age and hopefully harvest that buck when he's good mature. That's kind of the way they we all do it. Yeah, And I think that's one of the things I've enjoyed the most about your show. I've been able to watch over the years, and senior DVDs two I think I own. I think DVD three through six, I think I have so far. But um, what I've always enjoyed is that you guys, like you mentioned, you build history with his deer, and there's that story. And I think both Dan and I have been able to enjoy that history building with with some deer of our own. It's pretty pretty fascinating to do that, and it's also really challenging. Um, And I imagine that's something you've probably experienced that challenge over the years too, right, Oh for sure. But you were really lucky that we own and have a lot of round to do it on. I live in a great state of Ioble, which allows me three bucks a year and years ago. I don't know if you knew this or not. I actually started with Mark Ury when you started the very first Monster Buck series and we escalated from there into my own white Tail Freaks, and that's how this all came about. Though. Yeah, we got plenty of playground, and you have to have that to be able to have this big number of mature animals to do it on. Yeah, I think um on one of the Druries Boontown DVD is kind of action another top Boone and Crockett Bucks. I remember seeing a hunt of yours um with those guys that it was. It was early don Kisky days. I believe when I saw that was way way way back. Good stuff though, But something something you mentioned Um just a second ago, the fact that you need good ground to grow some of these, dear, I'm curious if that's related to the first question that I was going to ask you and what I really wanted to do to kick things off. You know, I know that when we talk to anyone about hunting and growing mature white tails, there's a whole litany of different things at all. I'll go into it. It's a huge puzzle and there's a lot of pieces But if you had to choose just one single thing of of your various strategies or your process or whatever you do throughout the year, if you had to pick your one most important aspect of your hunting strategy that leads to your success, what would that single most important piece B it's probably the single most important. Is a little bit general, but it's a just scouting in general and knowing the deer by use of either findment velvet. Because I scout all summer long, I walk the river bottoms, I know these deer. I got all the trail cameras out, I already have all my hitless built before the fall ever gets here. I know exactly which farms hold the biggest box, so I know which farms are target. So if I didn't scout, you know you, you wouldn't have a starting point. There's some farms that I don't have anything I would even want to shoot on it, so I won't even hunt that farm for the year. So it's very important to run all these trail cameras, scout all summer long, and just as like I said, picking the sheds up, whatever it takes. Yeah, that I'm targeting the farm that have the biggest numbers of five and six year old deer. So this is really timely given the fact to this summer. What can you give us details in regards to what your summer scouting regiment looks like. You mentioned your walking river bottoms, and you mentioned trail cameras, But can you tell us you know in detail when June July always show up? What are you doing when it comes to white tails about July twenty Actually right now is when I really started. I just started putting all my cameras out. But as far as scouting for the deer, most of the deer in my area, they gravitate towards the river bottoms. Usually that's obviously where the water is got all the crops up and down the river bottoms, got soybeans corn. When the corn is shooting ears, the deer are very tough to see. Obviously, corn tempot tall. All the deer in the corn. But when the soybeans get up about waist tall, the big bucks starts really feel comfortable so they can walk out in the soybeans. Well, we'll scout some of these soybean fields. I'll dive into the river, I'll walk up and I'll pop up the creek bank and overlook the whole soybean field. I got my spotting scope, my nicon scope and glasses with me and I actually filmed through the spotting scoop when I see these deer. But sometimes you'll see bachelor bucks of groups of fifteen to twenty different bucks in the summertime. So it's an awesome way to to really take your inventory. Yeah. Now, one of the things that you know, I've always noticed when it comes to scouting these summer bucks, and one of the challenges is that, at least from what I've seen, what a lot of people have talked to is have have noticed, is that a lot of these bucks in the summer, they're relocating after the velvet comes off in early September some percentage. So how much how much is your summer scouting actually helping you when it comes to actual hunting season targeting these bucks? It seems to me like at least on my place, the bucks that I find, they will stay there for hunting for the fall. They don't go anywhere. But like you said, you've got that small percentage. For some reason, they summer on me, then they disappear and they'll they'll relocate two to three miles away, but you know, you just have to assume that they're going to be there, and uh, you just go from there. I guess, yeah. Are you are you looking for anything other than just saying, okay, this six year old buck is on this property and okay, so we know he's here. Or are you when you're doing these scouting sessions, are you actually paying attention to he used this food source of the west wind, or this cold front passed through so that pull these Do you look at any of those details? Are you just trying to determine if that given DearS on this far, I'm pretty much at that time of the year, I'm pretty much looking to build his home core area, so to speak. I'll have a cam rattle on in one field, I take his picture a half a mile away. You'll take his picture, and I found a shed, let's say a quarter mile from there. You started to put all the pieces of the puddle together, and you can get a great idea from year to year exactly which area that dear summers in, then in the fall which area he moved to. And uh, you have to be on top of all that, so you'll you know You're not spending your time in the wrong spot. Yeah, so what about trail cameras. You just mentioned that you're running trail cameras in different spots and finding that core area. What is your summer trail camera strategy look like? What are you putting them over? Where are you putting them? How often you checking them? Would love to hear more on that. Yeah, the trail cameras to me is just pretty much allSome wrong, just an inventory tool. I don't pay any attention, you know, for coming up in the fall that I'm gonna hunt that particular fears I've been field that I've been taking this picture, I just put it two or three bluet of corn out where it's legal here, and I well, you can do that or put them over mineral lecks is a great spot too that we septise cameras up. Like I said, you can probably take almost a percent of my bucks. I'll take over a mineral lick or a corn pop in the summertime. So it's just a supertol to to know all your dear, But I don't put any faith in that at all until I start taking pictures of those deer come fall more towards September and then you can start paying attention to where you're taking the pictures at. Yeah, do you have any There's lots of different We've talked to a number of different people that kind of talk about the whole risk reward piece of trail cameras. And there's obvious the reward of learning something, but then there's also the risk of educating deer whenever you go in there to check them. Um, you know, what's your take on that? How often are checking the cameras? Is there any certain things that you do to minimize that risk? You know, in the summertime, I don't even worry about it. My little girl half time is on my bad Boy bug you with me, and she's walking around with bare feet. You can get by with anything in the summertime. You know, I've taken pictures of booners right after she's been walking around or right after I've been there. It's a little different come hunting season, but in the summer you don't have to worry about that as much. I will check these cameras probably, I'm just guessing every three days. I probably have seven or eight hundred photos on every camera, and probably running thirty cameras as a full time job doing it. But there's no really science to it. Just I probably have at least probably a camera out per hundred acres taking him in toward him, your deer. You've gotta be careful not having enough cameras out. For sure, I get pretty stuck in their summertime patterns and sometimes just a quarter mile away, they won't ever walk into that field, So you gotta make sure you have plenty of them out. So then how does that shift then once you get closer to hunting season, are actually during the hunting season, how does what do you what changes when it comes to cameras for you? Yeah, to come hunting season, I totally switched all my cameras onto scrapes and pinch points and filled edges and things like that, places where I you know, I can check that camera. It's gonna actually help me in the hunting situation. Now I'm not just taking inventory now now I'm trying to see what he's doing, what time they hopefully what time he's coming through, which seldom works for you. But uh, like I said, the scrapes, you can take the inventory of all your gear bucks on scrapes, it's a great way to to get a good look at him. So another really cool thing we're doing in the second movies of these deer over scrapes so you can get some really cool footage. Yeah, I think, Um, that's been one of the things that you know, we again, I keep on thinking back to some these more recent interviews we've talked about. The scrapes are awesome for pictures. Um, do you have any issue or have you noticed any issues when once you mentioned the fact with the video? Have you seen any reactions to your cameras from deer any negative reactions? Are you spooking any deer with those when when the film's taking or are your dear relatively habituated you know, when you start taking the movies of the deer, it's not like you just have an inferences come on for a second and then takes a picture. Now you're inferreds on that camera coming on, staying on, and they can get a little goofy on them. You're not gonna run out of the country. But I've seen them take off and come back you know ten minutes later. Eventually they'll get used to it. They'll see the red light come on and no kind of settle down. But I wouldn't be too concerned about blowing a deer clear out of the country by using cameras. I've never seen that happen. So okay, So, so Dan, You're you're pretty quiet over there. Um being a being a Southern Iowa hunter yourself, what are your thoughts on these scouting scouting techniques that downs mentions of our I have a I have a question regarding pressure on your properties. Um, Now you're a farmer. Do any of your farms have of livestock on them? And if so, how does that livestock affect dear dear movement. Yeah, some of my farmers doing have live Stockholm because there's a ground that I leased and they have the farmers run cattle. Most of the farmers they got the cattle out September one. But I'm not a big fan of of having the cattle in there. Yeah, they all co exist together, but it's not the best thing to have. Um. With that being said, I mean some of my best spots were places in cattle pastures, you know, So I wouldn't It's not a big detriment. But if I could, if I have my perfect world, I would definitely not have the cattle in there. But come unting season, do you have do you ever actually, I was gonna say, do you ever actually see them actually dear or mature bucks using parts of the property where the cattle are actually present? From from my personal experience, I've seen, you know, like you mentioned, they will still use those areas if the cattle are in the general area. But like if there's a bunch of cattle within a hundred yards of me and I'm seeing the cattle, I personally haven't seen deer moving through there. But have you actually seen them when the cows are there? I have. I've actually shot deer and I've had cows in sight within fifth yard in my stand. But it's not the best situation. It doesn't happen very often. Um, you know, I have seen him a lot of time. During the rut. These bucks will blow these doughs out in the middle of these weird spots like cattle pastures, and that's a lot of times those areas can really heat up because they're blowing the dos out. Now the good spots out of the places like my farm has got all these food pots, well, they'll end up on the neighbor over there that's got cattle everywhere, and one little skinny dish up through it. One last where you'll see a big buck with the dough, but he blew a route there because there's no other deer there. Yeah. So one last thing on taking a step back on scouting. Um during the season, other than trail cameras, are you doing any of the observation type scouting during the season. Are you, you know, sitting on a road you are? Can you tell us about that? Well, during bow season we don't do much because the morning and night we're hunting all, you know, all through the season until late season comes and that's when we start doing a lot of scouting in the mornings and evenings. Uh, you know at the distance, was watching which pop the deer coming out on and uh sometimes in the mornings late season is not as good, so it's a good time to go scouting. We just get on a high spot and overlook the whole country and and try to get an idea of what the deer doing. A perfect example of that was a buddy of mine, Jacob Landry, and I was hunting and we saw this buck come in. There's a big old one eighty buck come in in bed and I couldn't get a shot aim in the morning. But if we wouldn't have been out there. It wasn't a perfect tree stand to be setting in, but it was a good one for obbositevation. So we saw this buck. He betted end up, got lucky that night and come back around and it actually killed that deer later. So you need to be out there no matter what. Even if the deer aren't moving, you need to be scouting for him. I have a quick question about about your scouting tactic and are you are you staying out Are there any areas that you're staying out of We've had We've had some guests in the past say they go about business as usual, they don't worry about going into and spooking deer because in a way the deer conditioned. And then we've had guests in the past say, no, we're not even stepping foot in there except to hunt right. What's your tactic on that. Well, I'm not as I'm not as bad as some people are, and I agree there's a lot of guys who won't step foot on certain pieces of property. I do hunt it right, and I try to wait for the right time to step into some of these, and I try to be as low impact as absolutely possible. And by that I mean my entries and my access to my tree stands or through a ditch or a creek where nothing can see and nothing smells if you don't lay cent trails. So I'm super careful in that regard. But there's not really any property I can see this all flamits No. What about something you mentioned there when you said you're hunting hunting right and timing I think is part of that. And when he came, when it come the late season, you had mentioned that maybe you're just gonna scout in the mornings rather than hunt them. Can you tell us, you know, are there any other parts of the year where you hunt certain times or don't hunt certain times, or focus your efforts in a certain type of place based on the heap of year? Well more so, yeah, I mean early season. Is it's all about food all October on, I'm concentrating solely on the food sources in the evenings, only the betting areas in the mornings, and then as you tightened down and get close to when the does are starting to come in, I'm really focusing on the morning betting areas because that's where they're bumping all the dos. And I'll try to pick stands where I can see further and do call in and rattle and stuff like that so you can get there to respond to you. And then later in the season you kind of move into a different strategy where you're tucking back into the tightest, heaviest betting areas you can find. And again late season you move back into the food so it all changes. Yes, oh you're long, you know. Are you hunting mornings like starting the first of October? Well, usually I'm combined, but if it's wet, yes we will hunt mornings. However, it's not it's very, very tough. That's not my favorite time, the first two weeks of October hunting in the mornings. My personal opinion of this is not good. But I have not got tons of experience hunting because I'm always combined. So when let's let's say you do hunt there, there there's a situation. Can you can you explain in detail a situation where you might be hunting mornings in only season in October? Yes, in October, Well, I just uh, again, I'm seeing these deer come out. I know where they're coming out and where they're coming to you on the trail cameras and stuff, or from scouting, so I know the general direction are betting. And then from having this farm for so many years, I just got a good idea where all the great betting areas are. So it's just pretty simple. I'm just backing up trying to catch him before you know, it gets uh, it gets light, before it gets dark. They catch him in the daylight. That ways they're coming through. The hard thing about the early season is sometimes they're already back to the bedding area, you know, before the sun even comes up, so it's extremely hard to beat him in there. That's what I found. Yeah, and the reason why Dan brings this up. This is a long and ongoing debate between Dan and myself about the risk versus reward of hunting those early October mornings. And it seems to be every person we talked to has got different take on it, and and me and Dan are constantly kind of evolving in our thoughts on October mornings too. But like you said, it's it's a tricky proposition and I've always not always, but more recently have have leaned towards the fact that, especially in some of the places like where I hunt, that are pretty high heavily pressured, you know, the risk seems in some cases much greater than the potential reward because, like you said, don lots of times these bucks are back into their beds before daylight. Even so exactly, something that's kind of un affair is the fact that we do have so much ground, hime, and I can afford to mess up, you know, some ground. But for the guy who has a hundred or two hundred acres and that's all he's got to hunt, you can have to be a lot more careful about, like you say, when you go in and if you're gonna bump them in the mornings, because you've got to continually hunt that same property. Well, I can bump over here to another farm. I don't have to keep hunting that same property. We might bounce from this farm at once. I will be back for four or five days. Yeah, so we really keep on this. I was hoping you would say, yeah, we hunt every morning, so I could rub it in Mark's fain. Well, I want to, but always have to work too. Yeah, if I'm not harvesting. I'm hunting out there no matter what. Yes. Now, before we move on to the next question for done, we need to pause briefly to thank our partners at Sick of Gear who helped make this podcast possible. Now, over the past couple of weeks, we've had product category leader Dennis Zuck on the show to talk about different questions related to SICA and the gear we use as white tail hunters. Now this week we're gonna do something a little bit differently as I want to share with you a quick update from something happening over at Sick of Gear right now, and that is their Diverge Photo Contest. It started earlier this month and it ends July one, And with this content best all of us can submit our best hunting related photos to be judged, analyzed, and eventually, if you win, could lead to some pretty neat prizes from Sick of Gear. Now, SIICA is all about, you know, as we've talked about, they're all about changing the hunting world, the hunting industry, how we look at hunting, how we approach hunting, and really that's the same deal with this photo contest. It's all about diverging from the usual you know, the usual hunting photo back in the day was a guy holding a box standlers and grinning, and that was the typical picture we saw for everything. Well, SICA really has been promoting and many of the people who like to use Sick Of Gear believe in taking things to the next level and looking at you know, photography from a more artistic almost spiritual standpoint, really looking at the deeper aspect of things. So with the diverged contest, you know, the folks ASICA are really looking for photos that take things to the next level. Now, there'll be a panel of renowned outdoor photographers and Sick of athletes looking at these photos and they're gonna be basing their judgments on authenticity, originality, artistic quality, emotional impact, lighting, composition, and technical mastery. They'll be selecting some finalists and then we'll be open to votes for all of us to then choose who are the final winners in the white tail category, the waterfowl category, and the big game category. Now, once those folks are chosen, the winners the winners needs category will be printed, actually have their photos printed in the Sick Insight mailing, and they'll also beginning winning an entire full sick of Gear system, which will be pretty incredible. So if you're interested in joining and participating in the Diverge contest, go to sick gear dot com slash diverge. That's sick gear dot com slash d I V E r g E Diverge. You can submit your photos right there or post them on Instagram and use hashtag diverge for make sure to join the contest. It's pretty cool. I just submit a photo, probably won't win, but I'm gonna send out there anyways, but hopefully you guys can all send it in a photo to the Diverge Photo Contest. It's a pretty neat thing and if nothing else go on there check out the entries. There's some incredible photography. Are you up there? And I'm sure there's more to come. So now back to Don in the show, so interesting thing you mentioned the fact that you do have a lot of options. Does that change? Are you much more aggressive because of the fact that you know you can blow things out and still have other options? Absolutely? Yeah, I'll go for it. You know I'm not. I don't get stupid sometimes, but I will probably do more than most guys would just for the fact, if I mess up, I've got another one I can go chase. Yeah, you can. You share this. How much land you you do have access to? O curiosity, Well, right now we own about thousand and at least another three thousand, so about four thousand nakers, So you do have options, have a few options. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. That's on property. Then in regards to hanging your tree stands, are all your tree stands hung before the season even starts or are you micro manage your manager tree stand placement based on that year? We do based on that year. I mean they are all hung. But that's all I'm doing. Midday. It seems like it's moving and changing. And you'd think I've been here for fifteen twenty years. I have that figured out. I'm still every year the crop rotation changes, neighbors plant something different, everything, you know, it's different, so the deer do a little bit different things. That's that's a good that's a good question because I want to know this year, I have kind of noticed a trend on some of my farms, and I have a gut feeling it has to do with the rotation of the crops. Can you explain kind of your your feelings on crop rotation and how that might affect dear movement. Yeah, well, it's just a huge thing crop rotation. You know, if the neighbor has five acres of standing corn one year, then the next year he doesn't get in, it's all tall weeds and the habitat changes. That way, you get everything, not only just crop rotation, but you get to the mass crop, the acorns, whether it hit in the white oaks or not. It's a it's a continual thing. So just because one area's hot one year, it doesn't mean it's going to be the next. I gotta keep a close eye on the food sources for sure. So in those cases where you do know so something is different, it's during the season. Now, you mentioned that you're doing your stand you know, relocations during the midday. I think you mentioned, but can you elaborate, you know, what is your stand adjustment strategy look like during the season. You know, I'd love to hear about when, what conditions you wait for, you know, if you're trimming lanes or not, or how careful you're not or are being. What's that look like for you? Yeah, I'm super careful as far as that goes. I'm not a big guy on trimman. You know, it's cost me a lot of times on big bucks. I don't go in there and just hack away things that that never seems to pay off. When I do go in there, I'll I usually want to do it by myself. I won't even let Candy go with me. I'll take the set down if it's in there, or take a new set in. When I get to the base of the tree, I'm putting the first few steps up and I'm not laying anything on the ground. I'm keeping as careful as I can, as cent free as I can, and getting up that tree. You know, you can't educate these deer. If they smell that cent trail on that first time in that maybe all it takes. And and again, one of the things I'd like to say is a lot of these places I access through the creeks and through ditches, so it's a you know, I'm burger and anything. So when I go in there, I know where I want to hang a stand. I'm going right up the middle of the ditch. I pop up the tree, and I get out there there's no entry trail, And I think that's really a big thing if you're gonna be moving stands during the season. Yeah, I've I've done sometimes, you know, I've tried to. It's not always You're not always able to do this, but sometimes wait for like a slightly rainy day or a windy day to mask my sound. Do you wait for certain days like that or do you just go for it when you have to? Know that really deaf my health? Do anything you can if you can afford to wait for a rainy day, for sure. I've even done it at night before. I actually had Dale earned hard up on his last time, and he wanted me to move a stands, so I did at ten o'clock at night. And it works, So you did. You gotta do whatever you have to do. Yeah, So continue with stands now. I'm curious. Everyone kind of has their own unique quirks when it comes to how they like to set their stands. Uh, do you have like a a set you know, I always liked my stands at this height, and I always want to have a ton of cover, and I set my tree stand behind the way I went to deer. Do you have a certain way that you like your stands hung or is it always changing? No, it's kind of always changed. But nobody hates my Everybody hates my stands. As I said, I love to be on the back side of the tree. I want to be able to hide. I just can't stand being bald sticking out on the front side of the tree. I gotta be able to be behind it. Just one of my deals. And like I said, I'm not a big trimmer. I don't trim a bunch of stuff, but I'm not as huge on hype as I used to be. I used to think, if the right situation is you know there and shoot fifteen foot's great. The higher you get, the worst your shot angle is. And I kind of learned that more as you alone, you know, hip isn't always the answer. But but anyway, Yeah, they're definitely always changing. I like your take on being on the back side of the tree. That's how I set every one of my tree stands. I'm not alone ranger there. Yeah, I just started trying that recently here too, and that actually, um, I probably wouldn't have killed my Ohio buck last year if I hadn't set the stand on the backside, because it was a situation where I had, you know, very very limited tree options, and there's one I had to be able to shoot to this location, and I had to decide, you know, do I go in a in a tree that has not great cover but it's in the right location, or do I go in a tree with good cover but I don't think I'll be able to get the shot I can take. And in this situation, I you know, kind of like you mentioned you went in the net hanging that stand. I went at like three thirty in the morning to hang this stand and I had to be in a you know, subpar tree. So I put the stand facing backwards and this buck still spotted me just before I took a shot at him, but I had enough cover to at least you know, he was confused by it, and he didn't book it out of the country right away. So it definitely not the perfect tree. Yeah, so that was wasn't ask you would you would you rather take a perfect spot with a subpar tree or the perfect tree in the subpar spot. Yeah, there's no I want the perfect spot with the subpar tree. Yeah. I'll get up in anything. I've been in some stupidest tree you've ever seen. I mean, bush y oak trees that are six inches in diameter and it looks just terrible up there. But if you got the right background cover, it's just amazing what you can get by with the small trees. Yeah. Do you ever try creating cover in a tree? I hear some people I've tried this, you know, cutting limbs and sticking them in your tree, standard doing things different things like that to add cover. Have you ever done that? No? I probably should. I have not done that, but yeah, I've seen a lot of other guys do that. It's not a bad idea. If you've got access to that, by all means you go forward. Yeah, it's one of the things I kind of like you. I want, I should know, I should do it more. I don't do it often enough. So what about wind? You we've kind of touched on this with stand sites. Can you talk to us about how you're thinking about when when setting a stand because one of the things we talked about a lot is there's thinking about wind in regards to your scent, you know, making sure deer are gonna wind you. And then we also talk about how you can use the wind by thinking about how a deer is going to use the wind moving into a spot, do you consider both those things when you're setting stands and can you can you elaborate on how you consider wind in that case? Yeah, it means everything absolutely without a doubt. I've got us in a betting area. I'll have stands in that exact betting area for a north wind and for a south wind. I access the south wind stand from a different area. I mean, you come from different ways to get to it, so I can hunt that betting area with any wind now here. Lately, one of the best strategies we've been using is brushing these blinds into standing corn, which is absolutely lethal. Then you can get totally covered up. You're walking through the corn rows, you get your blind you've got the wind right in your face, there's no scent trail. This is just a deadly way to hunt. We killed a lot of big bucks the last few years doing that. So yeah, I've seen that on your on your should recently. Can you you sort of touched on a few of those things there, but can you give us the details on how you're setting is up in and really all the details what you're considering. Yeah, we'll just go out on these farms and I'll find the best pinch points the best spots that I like, and I'll actually go in there and plant standing corn to those areas. They are already great areas, but by they're standing. By planting the standing corn, it allows me. And especially here in southern I when you have no trees to begin with, some of these plots don't have nothing on it. You can go in. You can plant the standing corn. We'll go up the corn rows, you know, and and go to the end where the corn stops. You can, if it partially pick corns or whatever it may be, pop your blind up. You can cut it out and do this in about twenty minutes or thirty minutes maybe. But when you stand back at the distance and look at it from a fifteen yards, you can't even see it. The blink totally disappears. But super important when you do it, you're coming in the back of the corn road. You're walking all the way into the back of the blind. And this is so effective. We've actually left this seventy or eighty deer in the field in front of us at thirty yards and you can crawl out the back of the blind. Let me take thirty minutes, but you can get out of there. So that allows you to repeatedly hunt the same blind over and over again and not spookos deer. So that's really been a good good boy to hunt for us. Is there is there a minimum size plot that you you could plant corning because a lot of guys maybe with smaller properties, they can't plant eighty acres of corn, but maybe they could plant a small crop just in this type of you know, for this type of situation, is there minimum size you think someone needs to pull this off? Well for corn, If you're trying to do this for corn, the biggest thing about it is you've got high deer numbers. Sometimes you've got a plant six or eight acres. Excuse me, because the deer let's go in there, and they'll ruin two to three acres of it, pulling the years off and eating the stalks and leading everything else. So they ruin so much of it. You've got to have at least that many acres to have any corn left. So somebody asked me, you show I plant a twigger corn plot close to the timber's edge. Well, no, you're just not gonna make that's the problem with plants so small. So you do have to have quite a few acres. Okay, that's good to know. So that kind is a nice transition um to some of the habitat questions I had for you. You know, you're obviously managing a lot of property. What are your top things that you are doing to improve that property for you? Are you just focusing on food? We're doing other habitat improvements too. Well. We're trying to put in as many acres as we can, like the buffer strips, into taller swiss grass and taller habitat like that. That's a really big thing. We've taken the buffer strips along the river that's like dred and twenty ft wide, and we'll plant swiss grass. That's really improved to have tat for us. But anytime you can add any of the tall grasses to the mix, I think that's just an excellent thing to be doing. Okay, And what about are they betting there or is it just like a transition buffer strip When they exit the timber and come to the food, they have so much that they're betting in it. It just makes them more comfortable. They come out quicker. They I've seen them standing in the switch grass six eight foot tall, standing half out of it eating soybeans, and they'll never even walk into the field. They'll just set there and eating and walk right back. It just makes them feel really comfortable and it really holds a lot of during your property. So do not do you do anything to your timber? Do you cut or hinge cut or do anything like that, or do you leave that as is? Whatever timber you have? Well, I need to be doing more of that. My neighbors everybody around me started doing it too, And that's definitely the more you can work in your timber, and you're gonna help that, not like you said, by handing it and letting trees fall down in there, you're just creating that much more cover. But in the last two years I have not done any of that now, So you mentioned the fact that some of your neighbors are doing these kinds of things. Do you have at are a lot of the people in your area actively managing for deer or are you surrounded by just farmers who don't really care about deer? Both? Right now, most of the property around me has been boughted by guys that are really serious about it. You know, this land costs a lot of money, and even were so anybody's gonna spend through four thousand all of naked for deer rounding the ground is pretty serious about it. So they're not going to go in there and just shoot the small ones. They're wanting to do what's right, let them get to the proper age. And but then you've got you know, they've got the farmers that are here, and they're old school and that's just the way they were raised as to shoot anything that comes by, and they don't really care about it. Yeah, So I'm curious being in a situation like that, you know, or in this situation where you are surrounded by people managing. You know, there's a lot of people I complain about my situation sometimes being that I'm surrounded in most areas by people that don't manage and the challenges that come with that. But I'm curious, are there are there any challenges that you face because you're in an area with intense management all around it, or at least in the spots that you do have like that, Are there any unique challenges in that situation? Well, years ago, I used to be the only one planting and leaving food, so I could pull so many deer from so many properties. Now, all these guys have gotten smart on these food pots, and they're leaving the grain standing until you know, March or April or whatever. So I'm probably pulling only half the deer I used to pull. So the biggest thing I can see is, yeah, I'm next to guys that are managing. If they're not shooting two year olds and three year olds, that's great. But then again, they're planting the same amount of food that I am, so they're really limiting any deer coming around my property that that live over on there. So it's kind of a double hit sword. Yeah, is there anything you can do? Is there anything you do to combat that? Are? Are you thinking through ways to fill gaps that they don't or anything along those lines. I plan everything there is. I just try to do a better job than they do. A lot of times, these guys aren't really good farmers, and they have crop failures, and so I just got to hope for a crop failure on their side of the fence. Yeah, and hopefully you get all the rain and they don't. Yeah, some of these food plots, you wouldn't believe the money a guy would spend on T and K and fertilizer and lime and doing everything you can to maximize that acres because you know how important he is a boil of darien. Oh yeah, I I only have a couple of acres I can plain, and I know the costs add up on that pretty quick. So I can't imagine what people with with much larger areas. What what does it costs those accrew exactly? I don't think we've had a hundred acres of food plots total. Wow, it's a significant expance. I yeah, probably at least three or four one of all an acre cost to do those on corn anyway. Yeah. Um, So another thing on this topic. I read an article some number some from a number of years ago, I think, and they I think it might have been written by Mike Hanbeck or someone like that, and he had talked about a situation with you, um where you had I think increct me if I'm wrong if you remember this, but I think you had owned a farm or property where you had been hunting and managing it for a long time, and then you had bought or gotten access to another farm far away, and on that property you ended up killing a giant buck on that property that you had seen a long time ago on your old farm, but now he was over on this new one. And the point of this article, I believe was that, um, that maybe there was so much competition on your heavily managed property that some of these bucks were dispersing new places. Is that is that something that you have to think about head is absolutely something to think about. We're raising such a staggering number of three year old deer, there's hundred fifties literally all over the place. Is such an intense competition. The first thing that happens the dough comes in, Well, my biggest buck, my six year old or whatever, he'll bump the first dough out. He'll go over to my neighbor's property that don't have any deer. So actually some of my biggest deer get bumped over into my neighbor and get killed just for that reason. One year I lost five one nineties my neighbors just because of that. And you know, I'm thinking, well, I've got the best food, I got everything over here. That's the problem. I do got the best food, which is holding all the deer, making the you know, the the letting of fighting for the dough so intense. I mean everything is fighting to the hill, so they're wanting to get off of here during the run. That's the bad part about it. So so with your four thousand acres that you have access to hunting, that makes it seem like you're not taking enough deer off the property. How many deer would you say you're taking off that four thousand acres in a year. Well, that's another problem is you've got so many bucks that need to be taken into the coal bucks. I'm talking five year, five and six year old deer. They're only scoring one twent year thirty and we've got plenty of those, and it's very hard to get something to shoot those for you. Uh, nobody wants to waste their valuable would tag on a one thirty? You know, in the past, we can shoot plenty of those, we've shot the last year they allowed us to shoot those, we shot fifty four those, which if we need at least be shooting fifty sixty seventy a year, you know, just to keep up with the numbers. Yeah, that's a huge thing, is keeping your dough numbers down. But the on with Iowa last year is that the e h D breakout so that the d N R took the tags away from this whole state and didn't give any tags. Were you affected by that at all? The HD No, I wasn't. And that's the problem. I wasn't even affected by it by them taking the tags away. Now I've got my dough number skyrocketing again. So it's kind of a bad deal because you know, what's the high deer numbers to do to you. It's not a good deal. Have you have you been in communication with the State of Io of the d n R and saying, hey, look at like show them proof and say, look at my property. I need to take more dear off of it. Right. Well, in the past, like I said, they give you the bonus tags in January, it's almost unlimited, and I think they give like eight or nine indicator county when there was still tagging left. I went in about fifty four tag myself. So in the past you could buy basically unlimited tags. But then that the h D thing happened and they kind of capt that. So they know there's a need for that. But there's so many people in the state they were squawking over low deer numbers this year. Yeah, it makes some unique challenges. I think for people in that type of situation for sure. Well, especially when especially when you are managing your property for deer hunting, you you have the availability to um hold dear, you're playing the food plots, you're probably leaving some of your crops up, and you know other people in your county aren't doing that. Thus they're seeing low deer numbers and you're you're probably at the you know, at the far end of the range because of what you're doing. Right. Absolutely, I don't know if there's no perfect answer to it, I guess, but I mean I would do a lot of great things, So I'm not gonna say anything bad about that. Probably one of the best states as far as a deer manager goes. But like I said, you've got so many of these bucks that need to be shot. There four or five six year old deer, and that's what we're running into. We're getting too many of those and causing the genetics to in my opinion, you go downhill a little bit. All we've got one more break in the action. Here for a word now from our partners at hunter A Maps and earlier this year were first discussed hun Terra Maps. But if you missed that segment. Huntera is the producer of super high quality, custom physical maps for serious deer hunters, and these maps come in sizes ranging from fold up waterproof field maps two huge wall size maps to put up a deer camp, and they're all really awesome. What they all have in common is high end aerial imagery of your hunting property with an added terrain layer which allows you to see very clearly the actual topographic features that are present. Now, with that said, I recently got to chat with Ben Harshein, the founder of Huntera, and the story of how he started this company was so interesting and honestly gutsy that I had to share with you. So here's Ben explaining how Huntera came to be. So ter actually started in I made a map for my dad, for the father of the Gifts, at the ground that I grew up hunting back in western Pennsylvania. Um, there's no agg anywhere, and looking at the property just from an aerial photograph didn't really tell us much of just the sea of green. So um, I figured out a way to put terrain into the into the imagery, and that all of a sudden showed us all of the terrain features that matter to us, like the riches. We had a lot of saddles in Pennsylvania, benches, old logging roads, um, those sort of things. And that was really that was truly a game changer, not only for us as hunters, but um also for my future. So uh it fast forward three years later, um I was eighty hour work weeks. We were becoming the norm. Um I was the senior cartographer at the National counter Terrorism Center, and you know, standing and down the barrel of a full time career path in Washington, Washington, d C. Area, And at that time, on Tera was really rocking, and h you know, it was one of those deals where my wife she came on board, uh to to help me out and and we just got exponentially more efficient, more productive. It was the fall, and over the wintertime we really thought about it long and hard and decided, you know what we've gotten, uh once in a lifetime opportunity here to to try to pursue and grow something that really matters to us. So in June we packed up and and and uprooted and soldier house and in point of our headlights west to to move to the Midwest and really pursue on terry and give it everything that literally everything we had. So that's how it started. So how about that Ben gave up a big time jab in Washington, d C. To move cross country and make the best dang physical maps for serious deer hunters. That is pretty cool in my book. So if you're interested in learning more, go to hunter a dot com. And now back to the show. Yeah, and on that topic a little bit. Um. You know, I'm not I haven't necessarily been lucky enough to enjoy this problem myself. But in these places where you do have a large number of mature deer um, but like you said, some that maybe genetically aren't going to amount to maybe a larger deer, do you have issues with like these bully bucks where you get a six or seven or eight year old buck that's it's a small buck that maybe you're not interested in tarting, but he's such a nasty, dominant buck that he's bumping away all your three and four year olds with great potential. It happens all the time. It seems like those are the ones that set up camp and everything else. You're big at solid, massiveeer and that's all he's ever gonna be. But here in the last few years, it seems like I'm the one that always has to shoot all though, so it's kind of not fair to me. But that's a burden I can't take it. If it's a six year old big bully deer, I'll fill my tag living and go on. You know, I can get three. So if two of them happen to be a coal buck, out of mind, and that's fine. It's making your property better that way at least. Yeah, you only got so much room in the house, right, that's right exactly, you know, that's that's really funny you mentioned that, Dan, because literally today when I was driving home from where we were out camping this weekend with my wife, she asked me who we had the podcast, and I mentioned that you were on the show to Day Done, and yeah, she's seen a few of your shows and stuff when I watched it, and so she told me to ask this, and I don't think she actually thought I was gonna ask, but now I am. She said, she want to know what do you do after, you know, decades of hunting for big bucks, when you have so many big deer mounted, have you got to the point done where you just don't mount anymore, dear, or are you building new barns to put up your mounds or how do you handle that problem? Well, it's it's a problem. We've gotta stacked all against the walls. There's nowhere up to put them. But either we have to build a building and actually, ken I, we don't mount him anymore in at least or at least one seventy Wow, we've said if we're not one seven were talking about it's like, where do you put them after a while? You know, Yeah, I'm trying to good points. They're stacked everywhere. Trust me, I don't know if my wife would be happy to hear that. She probably wanted to hear that you just stopped totally. Now I'll be able to tell her that, well, we gotta we gotta vault the ceilings and we gotta build a new addition to the house. Exactly. That's funny. So what about you know, diving continuing down the line here, different tactics that we're using. You mentioned access and entry routes, and you already talked about using ditches or creeks. Do you do do you do anything else to create you know, ideal access or exit routes you know, any other tricks to you do you either doing with habitat or with you know, using buddies to help you getting out, anything else you're doing on that front. Were just like I said, not only hunting the corn, but actually we'll plant corn as a blocker just to get into my tree stands. Sometimes too, some of these farms you're on top of the ball knob. You cannot even get into this farm out blowing it out. So I found that I'll take my planner down the ridge top, plant whatever corn, and I'll kill the two rows in the middle, turn them off, so I can actually take my buggy. You can drive right down the middle of the standing corn and nothing even knows you're there. You can drive within fifty yards of your tree if you want to. Not to be lazy, but it just it helps everything I'm getting in and getting out of your tree stand. So that's just one way we do it. That's awesome. Now, speaking of standing corn, this is I don't I don't know if you have this challenge or not. Since you get to control I think from what it sounds that you get to control what's standing on what's not. But a lot of guys when they've got, you know, a hundred acre to farm or whatever it is, they're one or two places they can hunt. When there's years where all the corn is standing around them. You often hear about, well, all the bucks are on the corn, so they couldn't see anything, you know, during the rud or whatever. Do you have? You know? Do you do you think that's the real issue? Is there an issue with when they're standing corn? Those deer are all going to be there and you can't see them and hunt them. And if so, are there any tricks to pulling off a successful hunt when you're surrounded by standing corn? That's a good question, because it's unfair because I have a combine and I go in there and I'll cut out the indrois if nothing else, so I can see the dang things. But but to somebody else who has nothing but big blocks of standing corn, yeah it's gonna be a big deal. Uh. Like I said, for the last fift twenty years, I've I'm a farmer, so I don't let that happen to me because I like to said, I go into harvest half of it or whatever I need to. Well, it's really never been an issue. I'll I can tell somebody is get as tired as you can, and they're not going to stay out there all all day long, especially if it gets real wet and muddy in the fall, and you know they're not gonna be laid after in the mud. So right, I don't probably feel that every year in the country are gonna be out in the standing cornfield. So yes, So calling then comes to mind for me because i've you know, I've heard last times. Maybe you can call or rattle them out of the standing corn if you can hear him run around in there. What what's your take on on rattling. I'm curious, you know, is that something you a lot? If so, what's your strategy? Everything's changed with that. You know, when we first started years ago rattling, we rattling all kinds of big bucks. I first started with my sit Marcury and Jay Greggy and all um rattling deer in. And just so many people are hunting now, and they are so much more educated. It's ten times harder than it used to be. I'm not gonna say I don't rattle bucks anymore. I do. I don't do it blind rattling like I used to. I have to have a visual on the deer. I have to know I've got a good win before I'll hitting with us, so I can see his reaction to see if he turns inside out or you know, kind of read the body language and see what's going on. But more than anything other than the rattling, and will will use your grunting more than I can anything that I can think of. I have more success with that now. So what types of what just a soft contact grunt? Are you snort wheezing or what's your what are your typical grunts you're using. I mean, I've done it all. I have snort wheezing in and but anymore, I'll just go to the tending grunt, you know, and try to get his attention. Once you whit to his head at me, give you more more. If he doesn't commit, then don't keep grunting at him, and just don't keep hammley with it. That would become suspicious real quick. But I always carry the rattle and horns with me. You've always got situations like two years ago, I remember a big booner. He had just lost his dough and he's running around everywhere trying to find her. That's a perfect situation. Man, we hit the horns together. Here he come walk run under the tree. So without the rattling horns, we wouldn't killed that deer. So even though it's tougher than it used to be, it's still a must to have monia. Yeah, you mentioned wind, the right wind to call her to rattle. I think I know you meant what you're meaning by that, But could you explain that a little further. What's the right wind to collor rattle with? Well, it's pretty simple. If you've got to wind us cooring towards the deer. You're just a fool if you grunt or rattle at him, because all he's gonna do is obviously come to the down wind side. Because you're making it easy for him. He has to find out who that is before he walks in. So he's gonna walk down and smell again and he's out of there. So make sure the wind is at least, you know, cording to you, hitting, you know, rolling back the other direction. But the thing we do to combat at a lot of my stands actually backed up to a fence. They'll be to a creek, a big drop off, so they can't certainly they'll have to come in and have to come underneath your tree to check you out. Yeah, that was that was exactly what I was thinking of when you said that, And actually I was just going to ask you. Do you ever set up stands specifically to prevent that? So it's interesting that that is something that you're practically doing. Oh, absolutely, have We've done that for years. I used to have. My favorite stand was called the railroad track stand. There's a big wolven water fence and big weedy field and every day you rattle labit, come up to the fence, turn walk right now. The fences rounderneath the tree. So that's a great tactic. Well, what about doan estrus bleets? Do you ever use those? I talk through a little bit of everything, Adam. I just watched the deer and see what happens. Uh, I'm not gonna see I do it all the time, but if if there's a call mate, I'll try it. Okay, it's in the repertoire, so that doesn't work. I'll try that fair enough. So what about decoys? If we're going on down the different list of potential tricks, are you a decoy? I've done it, you know, That's another one of those things. We've got so much camera gear, so much equipment to carry in camera arms and all this stuff. It's it's a lot when you start taking a decoy to many. Problem I always had with decoys is I'd have a deer come in and see the decoy, and immediately they see it, they draw a circle around your tree and they go down to wind and smell you in snort. So I'm never a bit of a big fan of decoin that obviously it works, So yeah, it's not something that a lot of Are you taking any scent control um tactics? Are you know, are you using any sprays or clothing or stuff like that, or are you strictly wind? No, I'm strictly wind. But I do everything I can. I mean, it's not saying everything works perfectly, but you're crazy if you don't try it. Where the scent law close. I have the Wildlife Research spray. We try to stay as clean as we can, and on top of all that, then I make sure the winds perfect anyway, but if he gets swirly winds, by worrying all this and using the sprays, you can get by with a lot more times than if he wasn't using it, I can guarantee you that, Yeah, it definitely pays to minimize the risk as much as possible at least. Yeah, And then my wife's wearing makeup, so that doesn't help. So yeah, that that is the one thing that you can't and you can't say no to that, right every time, like, yeah, exactly, every time I get winded, I'll play it on her because well, what's your makeup? Man? Do you have any interesting question here? Do you have any other challenges given the fact that you hunt or film with your wife a lot um? No, you know, we we do pretty good together. We've been hunt together for so long. We know each other. I would say, it's not anything more difficult. She knows how I react and I know how she does. I helped calm her down, she helps call me down or whatever, So that's actually a benefit, I would say. Nice. I know, Um, I've been testing the water is trying to get my wife out there. She's gone turkey hunting. She's in the fly fishing now, but deer hunting we're still working on. But the makeup thing, I think would be a tough deal to Yeah, exactly, Well, starting on turkeys. That's always something good starting with that's where candy started. So yeah, so that's tough to get to get a woman out there and below zero, and man, didn't it fun? See that That was my mistake. The first time I ever tried to get my wife out there with me, we were hunting in Illinois and I asked her if she would come with me on the trip because I was I had to go by myself, and I asked if she would film me. And so we went out there and it was during the rut or late rut. I think it was like November twenty or something like that, pretty late, and I had to hunt and I had to have someone filming. It just so happened that the first day, the first time she went out, it was like a cold friend just hit. So it was in the thirties or maybe high thirties, because it was like a mix of rain and sleet and really windy and about as miserable conditions that you could ever ask for, and that was her first experience. So I've had a hard time getting her back out well, I can imagine, that's right. So another thing that's been on my mind that we've kind of talked a little bit about when it comes to timing. It's something that we talked a lot about last week with Mark, and it's predicting deer movement, you know, looking at different types of conditions and then anticipating how the deer might or might not move based on those conditions. Um So, I'm curiously we had this big conversation last week, and I'm curious to see you know what your take is on some of these things we discussed. Um So, how about we start start with baro metric pressure. Do you see any impact on deer movement from barre metric pressure and how much attention do you pay to that if any? Yeah, I mean definitely they they act different, all bear metric pressures and all this stuff. There's but there's so many factors, some fronts moving in and moon phases. There's so many different things. It's almost confusing. It doesn't matter. I'm out there every day anyway, so I really don't care. So do I look at the pressures and I hunt different? No, I really don't look at that any different. I'm gonna be out there anyway, so doesn't really affect me. The only thing I do like, I would like the love of hunting in any kind of precipitation. If it's a light, misty, rain or snow, whatever, and the deer just move awesome in that soul. Anytime you can get any kind of precipitation, I love that. Yeah, I mean too, is there ever too much? I mean when it comes to from what I've seen, Like you said, light rain, light, snow's great, but maybe excuse me, heavy downpour not so much. Have you seen that too? Yes, for sure, we got the mess sub blinds. We hunt out up, so we hunted in heavy downpours and we don't see anything but the light missed and just drizzle. All of that's fantastic. Yeah, they really left their guard down that type of weather. I think, Yes, it seems like they might just and I think it might have been um our guest a few weeks ago John Eberhardt, who had mentioned that his belief was that some of these deer might actually and maybe maybe or maybe not they make this connection. But because when there's lots of rain or different precipitation like this, there's not as much human activity that maybe then the deer begin to, you know, feel more safe in those conditions. So I agree, with that. Yeah, so, moonface, I know you said you don't pay attention to this a lot, but do you have any take on moon impact on deer at all? I'm totally obvious to everybody else. I've killed so many deer on a full moon. And then you hear everybody else say, oh food, full moon, They'll be feeding all night. You won't see nothing. But I love a full moon. So I don't know if I'm if I'm hunting different than the other people, are you know during that time? But give me a full moon. And like I said, I've killed so many deer and I can't say nothing bad about it. Are you focusing I guess Let's let's talk about time of year for a second and where you're focusing your attack. Let's say we're getting now into like the later October, right before the rout kicks in. Where where are you focusing your you know, your attack throughout that the rest of the season. Then whatever? Right right when you're saying in late October your very first doze, you're gonna start psycle, so you've out to target your main dough groups. They may not have been a mature buck there in the last two weeks but during that time the rule be so if you got the does, you're gonna have the deer. So that's what we target those big dough group areas and the big dough betting areas because in the mornings, you know, the first and then bucks are gonna be cruising through there like crazy. And then how about the lockdown phase? Do you believe anything in regards to that period of November? Typically have you seen that happen by you? Yes? I hate it? So how do you handle that? Uh? Go through something else? Is really kids? Really tough to a lot lockdown phase. Now, it can be at perfect time to stalk one, which we've done several times. If you can spot one lockdown the hot dough, it's you know, you're hearing for a good hunt. But other than that, you can pull your hair out. There's a ten day period, like on this phone here, when they locked down. You might as well just stay home because I don't think I've hardly ever killed a deer between that five day period, the tenth of the fifteenth, that's about during November, the tenth something like that, when I usually just locked down very hard. But then about the twenty they all start coming back. And they all stopped coming back and checking the last two days, you know, and they actually another hot time. Yeah, I gotta, I gotta a question of piggyback off that you just mentioned the second and third week basically of of November, maybe the first week in November. In the third week sounds to me like it's where you do a lot of your focusing on, and then that that second week is kind of a dead spot. Do you think a lot of hunters are getting into the timber too easy? Let's say a guy has a week or two weeks of vacation to spend deer hunting. Do you think guys are getting in the timber too early in November instead of maybe saving it for the second and third or third and fourth week in November. Well for some of your bigger box especially, Yeah, that Thanksgiving time can be fantas plastic. But I've told people, you know, years ago, the best time in Iowa was always November one through November eight, you can't miss. But you know that can be tough because the one he's been sure bucks and locked not locked down the dough. But they can find the first alpha dough, follow her around for a week and still becomes very hard to get up mature buck here. Lately, my favorite time is late October, and I've swung it back to believe it or not, October twenty through November one is some of our best times to get on somebody. Mature bucks done because they're not following the dough yet, they're still in that feeding pattern and they're just now starting to check those dough groups out. And and lately we've been targeting the food plots when person these blinds into the corn, and that's just when we've been killing our ear in late October. Now, Candy did kill her booner this year. It was during that Thanksgiving time and that was what happened. He was with a hot dough she wun't in yet because she was close, and he follows her in right in front of the blind. So if I had to pick, it's my pick now is late October and then, like you said, the third week in November. Yeah, what about the timing of the rut If we're talking about November and the great times of hunt during November. The ongoing debate is, you know, is the timing of the rut in the Midwest the same every year, or is it very you know, what's your take on that? It's pretty much the same for me. I don't think I've ever seen it not on fire November five, the four, fifth, six, and seventh, or if I had to knelt down to four days, you can't miss there. By the tenth, they're starting to already lock down, so you better have your big buck on the ground. But then because then he gets darn tougher about ten days, yeah, they can. They start getting a little a little bit tougher to fine, that's for sure. Yes. Um, So I've got a couple of final questions for you, But Dan, do you have a final question for Downe before we, uh we wrap this up? You know, of all the years that you've been hunting, is there any strategy? I'd like to ask this question to every guest we have, but can you is there is there one thing you you would recommend for a hunter to try to do, and then one thing you've learned over the years that a hunter should never do? Like what have you learned? M Well, that's a tough one. Uh what a hunter should do? There's so many things. How do I narrow that down? What's what's something that you that maybe you you live a guy by every year. Well, believe it or not. I know some of the biggest bow hunters there is, and some of these guys don't take binoculars. And I've always thought, how can somebody hunt without glasses? Believe it, Our auctors hunters at that do not take binoculars with them. So that's the first and foremost thing when you're trying to aid you here and everything, you know, make sure you've got your binoculars with you. I know that sounds a little crazy that there's people out there that don't take them. Do you identify dear? You don't know how old he is or nothing about him? You know. That's kind of one thing that and and now and now one thing that that maybe an example of a mistake that maybe you kept making and you finally learned from or or something over the years where it was maybe like an aha moment where you're just like, oh, that's what I've been doing wrong all this time. Guy. So I've done every mistake in the book. Which one you want the most embarrassing? Please? Yeah, I've done everything, um lord. Just to narrow that down to one thing, it'd be impossible for me, seriously, I've done everything from but to help somebody out. Uh, maybe just the way people blatantly get into their stand in the timber, they walked through the they have no access, no way in or out to not be seen, smelled and everything. Some people think you just stroll through the woods and climb your tree and climb out. I don't ever set a tree stand up that I can't get in and out of with hopefully I dear it's smelling me and seeing me. Yeah, that's and that's such a it's so easy to say that. I mean, I I've had the challenge of I I know this, like I know you need to have great entry and exit, but then the actual execution of it sometimes it's a lot harder because there's those you know, times when you you're late, you just gotta get home and you're rushing and you want to just blast the tim or get back or whatever it might be. It's really hard to have the self discipline to always do that. But I think I'm glad you mentioned it because it's one of those things that we always need to keep in mind, and we always need to remember how important it really is. For sure, you know, some people's heart is over for whatever started just because of that, because I gave no thought to entry or exit. Yeah, you have to. I like your idea about playing the standing corn to aid and that, and like you said earlier, ditches, creeks all those things, and and really factoring in your entry and exit even when you're thinking about setting stands. So I guess then that leads me to another question. Done. If you have a situation where you've got a great stand location, like you say, I want to stand here, but you just can't find a good way to get in and out, will you just ignore that tree and not hunt that spot, or will you risk it every once in a while even though you know your entrance or exit isn't good. Well, there's ways around that. If you know you can I get out there, especially late season. Well, actually have somebody come down on the tractor and blow the deer off and pick me up and get me out there. So it's farm vehicles or whatever it is that they're used to. You cannot be climbing out that tree and blowing that field or climbing out that blind. You gotta do something. You gotta make some kind of plans to get out of there. Yeah, Yeah, that's ye. I like that tag team approach, getting someone to come help you out. That's the purpose of the standing corn for all of our blinds, even tower blinds. I plant standing corn in front of the terra blind and leave it standing just so I can get down the ladder and get out of there in the evenings. Yeah, I think if I've taken anything from this, well, I've taken many things. But one thing is I really need to get a farmer friend who can help me plant some corn. I think it would help me out a lot. It's a great mix being a farm ran too in the white tail. Thank you trust me, You've got a good situation, um, and that that kind of leads me to what I want to be our our final question. And I've got a ton out of this, so thank you down in advance. And my question is this you, like you said, you have access to a pretty large amount of land and you're hunting heavily managed property, and so your situation is probably different than what some of our listeners have. That said, I would venture to guess that a lot of what you've learned in all of your years of hunting and what you take from where you hunt now could be applied pieces and parts to different situations. So my question is this, if I were to pick you up off of your Iowa property and put you on a piece of public land, let's say somewhere in Iowa, and you had a seven day vacation to hunt that piece of new public land, could you walk us through you know what your mindset would be in your process would be for for figuring out and hunting that property over the course of seven days. Absolutely, I, like everybody else, I started on in public land before I got this farm, so I killed plenty of big deer on there, especially in iole of public land was awesome. About twenty years ago. The first thing I did on all this public ground, I'd go in and grab the map. I would find the farthest corner from any of the access points that anybody else had, because generally nine your hunters are lazy. They're not gonna walk any further than they have to. You gotta get in the extreme back corners of this thing and get away from the people. In that situation, you're not so much hunting the deer as you're hunting the people. So you just got to find that spot that the people aren't getting to and you can get into some action that life. Yeah, now are you gonna go? We've heard different theories on this. Some people will, you know, dive right into their best spots if they had, you know this this minimal piece of time seven days? Or would you do you like to take a couple of days to observed from a distance until you figure things out? Do you what's your take on that? Would you just dive right in? I'm still a big avoca is staying backed off at least one night, one morning, or two from a big observation point, see what's going on first before you dive in there, because you're you may have one chance and by that one time you saw this buck, do that one thing, you can kill the deer. I would scout three days and hunt one if I had a choice. Yeah. I hear that a lot, and it sounds painful for me, But I imagine it's probably good advice to to sacrifice a little hunting time to make sure your your hunts are quality hunts over quantity exactly. We don't like I said, you're talking about your deer or after if you mess that deer at one time, it's over in that spot anyway, Yeah, definitely final question. And I said that was my final question. But now I want to add one more. Do you have a single hunt that you look on, is like your favorite hunt or the most meaningful buck or most Is there any kill that sticks with you the most? Probably one of the kill that sticks me what It was a big not typical I killed two thirteen years ago. I don't know if you saw the footage ever. It was because my wife filmed it. Man. She had actually rattled the buck in he comes into three five yards. I ended up shooting a little bit low on him and just took the hair off the elbow. But I thought I double lunged it. Well, the deer comes in further and I looked over my candy she was filming it, and she was white, and I said, well, what's wrong? You know, she ended up hit the record, but she didn't get the record button on. Oh no, he's a record button off on the first job. But luckily the buck came in and I got actually two more shots on that deer and she got it on. It was a terrible footage, but it was just a cool hunt. It was one of my biggest bucks ever. So that one kind of sticks my head. Yeah, I think I did see the footage of that one, and that's uh, I can see why that would be memorable. That's a pretty pretty incredible deer and hunt. So well, this has been great down Um, if anyone out there is listening and wants to learn more about White Tail Freaks or what you guys are doing, you know, where can they go on line to get that information? Just ye, tel freaks dot com get you. You know, we're on Twitter and Facebook and all that. So awesome. And then what about on TV? Right now? I think your new season is airing? Now? When when? And where is that? Gef It's on Outdoor Channel obviously. It is at six thirty Friday evening I'm sorry, six thirty money evening thirty Friday evening and then four thirty in the morning on Thursday. Okay. And is that Eastern or Central time? That's Central Central? Okay? Perfect. Well, we'll make sure to include all that in the blog post for this podcast, So if you're listening you didn't get that, make sure check it out online and you'll have all the information there. So done, Thank you for your time. This has been really interesting. Um. I know that both me and Dan will have some interesting things to pass through and we all I'm sure we'll be able to learn some things from this, so we appreciate the time. Thanks for joining us, Downe bad Thank you guys. If you ever need someone to come kill some dose off your property, you just holler at us. Hey, you're the man. You're invited already. Alright, careful what you say. Al right, down well, good luck this season. All right, thanks, I appreciate it, all right, have a good one, all right, and with that we are going to wrap up today's show. Now, a couple of quick updates from us here. We talked about the Sica photo contest going on right now, and we also just launched a little weekly giveaway related to photos for Wired to Hunt. If you're on Instagram every Wednesday, we are now doing the Wired to Hunt Wednesday giveaway, where if you post a hunting related photo and Instagram on Wednesday using hashtag wired to Hunt Wednesday, you'll be eligible to win a weird Hunt detail and some other cool Wired Hunt swag. So make sure you post your pictures on Wednesdays with hashtag wired to Hunt Wednesday and otherwise if you're not subscribed, yet to the podcast on iTunes or through Stitcher on Android. Make sure you do that. It makes things a lot easier as you'll get each week's new episode straight on your phone or mobile device. So with all that said, we do want to thank our partners who helped make the Wired to Hunt podcast possible. So big thank you too, sick A Gear, Trophy, Ridge Bear Archery, Redneck Blinds, Hunt, ra Maps, Ozonics, Carbon Express, Lacrosse Boots, and the White Tail Institute of North America. And finally, thank you all for joining us today. Hopefully you learn something from this, Hopefully you enjoy listening to Don on us chat here, and of course we hope you'll stay Wired to Hunt

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