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. In this episode number one hundred, tay in the show. To celebrate this huge milestone, we're bringing on an expert paneled guests to discuss some of the deer hunting world's most debated questions. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Sitka Gear. And today we are celebrating one hundred episodes of the Wired Hunt podcast, and we've got a really terrific show for you. We have what I think is the most exciting lineup of guests we've ever had in a single show. We're going to be discussing some super interesting hunting topics, and we're going to be giving away some great prizes, which I'll announce at the end. So, like I said when Hunters episode, we're gonna do this up big and very quickly. The plan for today's episode is to put some of the most discussed and debated deer hunting questions to a panel of guests, including three of the country's most respected deer hunters and managers. Those are Bill Winky, Dr. Grant Woods, and Lee Lakowski. Now we've had all three of this gentleman on the show before, but just in case you're not familiar. Bill Winky is an outdoor writer and creator of Midwest white Tail dot Com and the Midwest white Tail TV show. Dr. Grant Woods is a wildlife biologist, consultant, writer and creator of Growing Dear TV. And Lee Lakowski is the host of the Outdoor Channels Crushed with Lee and Tiffany. So big names exciting people to talk to here in a minute, but before we kick off our panel discussion, I just want to take a second to thank you, to thank all of you who have been listening back in two thousand fourteen, two thousand and fifteen and now two thousand and sixteen. You've been with us for one hundred episodes, and every one of these episodes has been between I think somewhere between an hour or two. So you've spent hundreds hundreds of hours with me and Dan, and I'm surprised and amaze that you're still here with us, but I am certainly appreciative of it. Uh, I don't know it's hard to put into words what this podcast has kind of meant to me. And I think being able to have this opportunity to talk to you all every week, to share my experiences, my ups and downs, and then get to speak to all these different great guests, learn from them and learn from them with you and from each other. To that Ha's just been pretty special. So I don't know, Dan, how do you feel about this? A hundred episodes down, that's a big number. I don't even know if I've recounted that high before. But I can tell you one thing. Not only do I you know, I love talking with the guests that we have on you know, I really I really love just b essing with you. And then the interaction apfter the shows are over with listeners. I love emails from people, and as I'm sure you do, and that any interaction on social media. It's just I don't know, I think what it what it comes down to is our love, the listeners, mind yours, the love for the outdoors and hunting in general. Absolutely, and I feel like this this podcast, in this community is kind of just a great big party and celebration before that love and for that shared passion we have for doing all these things outdoors and chasing deer and feeding our families with terrific wild organic venison. I mean, it doesn't get any better than that, and we are super blessed to be able to sit here and talk about every week. Um, and I hope I think you know everyone's been enjoying it along the way too, and finding it as interesting and entertaining as I think you and me have. Because if no one is, at least you and we have been having fun, that's for sure, right right. And we're fans, I mean we're not only there's not really any difference between us and the listeners other than we are the ones to ask the questions. I mean, we're just, you know, fans of hunting and want to soak up this knowledge just like everybody else does. Yeah. Yeah, so true. And I think you know, on that note, we have a lot of information to soak up here in today's episode, So I'm going to try to make our little introduction here as quick as possible so we can get right into this panel discussion. Like I mentioned, we've got some great guests. We're going to learn some very interesting things, and hopefully we'll all toss some interesting questions their way as well. So here's the plan. Then we are going to take a very brief break for a word from our partners at SICA, and then we will kick off our one episode panel discussion with Bill Winky Lilakowski and Dr Grant Woods. All right, so as mentioned, we need to pause briefly to thank our partners at Sick of Gear, and today we're going to be starting our new Sick Stories series, and to kick us off, we have a story from Don Wilson on this day. Back in two thousand twelve. Down was headed out for mid October hunt with modest expectations. But little did he know there were much bigger things in store. Okay, So two thousand twelve, I go to a spot that I've been hunting for years. It's actually public ground, it's actually federal ground. So I hike in. The spot that I usually go to is about a mile and a half back into the woods, um and it's a pretty rough country for Ohio up and downhills. So I go in. I hike in the morning and I'm running a little late. I get back in there, it's already cracking daylight. So I climb into my climber get up in the tree. One thing that I always do, I use the climber back in the woods like that, because I always take my rattling horns and kind of make some cover up noise, you know, right when I get settled. So I did that this morning and pull out my phone to text my wife and tell her that I'm in the tree and everything's good, and look up and here it comes, and here comes a buck. In fact, in the moment, he looks like a nice buck. So in just a matter of seconds, Don sees the buck and shoots him. But when he walks up on the deer a little bit later, he has another surprise coming. This is not just a nice dear. This is not the kind of dear you expect to shoot while hunting public land on a random mid October day. So he pulls out his phone to share the news. And I called my dad and I tell my dad, um that I killed another big one. And he says how many points is he? And I said, well, I have accounting, So I started counting and I get to twelve and my dad says, wow, twelve point. That's a great dear, And I said, Dad, that's on one side. You know, Dad says, holy crap, probably something else, you know. So I keep counting. I get to twenty four, and you know, my Dad's like, do you want me to come down there and help you? Being I'm like, Dad, A, by the time you get here, I'll have him out. And so I started dragging tied into my belt, I have my climber, I have my backpack full of gear, I had my bow, and I had a two hund four in buck tied to my belt, hiking out a mile and a half back into state land. Now, that, my friends, is a hell of a story, a sicks story in fact, as Don was wearing a sickst stratus jacket and pant on that unexpectedly fateful day. Now, let's get back to the show and kick off our panel discussion alright with us on the line now is our entire distinguished panel of guests, Bill Winki, Lee Lakowski, and doctor Grant Woods and Dan. I really appreciate it you all join us today. And since we've got so many things to cover, and since I already provide a brief introduction to each of you before you got on the line, We're going to skip any small talk and instead just get right into the meat and potatoes of our panel discussions. So, gentlemen, Dan and I have put together a list of some of the most commonly asked and debated dear any questions that we hear from our audience, and a few of our own that we're curious about. And then what we're gonna do is we're gonna pose each of these questions to you to discuss or debate or answering whatever way you see fit. So, given how many are on the line, we're going to direct the question to one of you at the beginning, and then we can move from there to each additional person. Think of this just like any other in person panel discussion you've seen before. So I'm not going to beat around the bush. Let's get right into the good stuff. And I want to start with you Bill with this one that I'm sure you've heard before, and I'm sure you've all heard before, but we're gonna go through it anyways to see how all three of you might differ or not. Is the October lull fact or fiction? I think that in my experience, at least, the general concept seems like it exists. Uh. Individual deer seems to exhibit so much difference in their personalities. If you want to call it that, that you'll have some box that moved during the daylight in the middle of October. But in general, what I've seen on my trail cameras is a is a definite movement towards nocturnal activity in the middle of October. And like I said, I mean that that's only been based on trail camera studies that we've done, and not not even studies. I mean, we're just trying to kill these things, and you know, when they're not moving during the daylight, that makes it pretty hard, and you run the cameras and you don't find them in daylight. So I'm gonna say there is something going on in the middle of October that seems to shut down daylight activity. Okay, what do you think, Grant, Well, I think Bill pretty spot on. We might dig a little deeper so Dear you have their winter coat on, but October tints can have a lot of warm days, so it's just really a metabolic thing. They don't want to move that much because it's hard for dear to get rid of heat body heat. They don't have sweat lands like some other mammals do so so there and they're also at that point in time switching to a carbon herte hydrate diet. Where I lived there chasing acorns where you know, maybe a couple of guys lived there chasing cut corn or corn fields or something, and carves put a lot of energy or body heat in the body. So it's a double whammy. Take a warmer day with a big fur coat on and a lot of energy, you just feel like moving with cooler outside, which is nighttime. Makes sense to me. Now, Lee, have you seen anything different or do you feel differently about this at all? Now? Actually bought them you hit it in the head now, because I was gonna say, if you heard asked me first, I would say that kind of depends on the weather, because I've had We've had years like in October we had a really Cooltobers and it was phenomenal. I mean, not except running activity, but just deer out on their feet, you know, are our biggest bucks were out in clover fields or winter wheat fields and just eating like they had you in August and September, and you know it's always like on the shady side of the fields that come out early, um, you know to start with, but when it's we have warm weather, just like Grant was talking about point and then just basically shut them down and that in the middle of October. And that's a good point that they're starting to get there. You know, their winter hides on it and you know they're basically sticking to nighttime movement. But we've had octobers that have been phenomenal. I mean that was it wasn't so many years ago, gay like makes five or six years ago. We had just really cool October, and then it got into November and it was warm, and our October was way better than in our November. We were seeing more of our big bucks on their feet. Dre and then says almost weather dependent basically from what I've seen. All right, next question and I'll start We'll go back to Bill again. If you could only hunt one week out of the entire season, what week would you pick? In Why I must get that question on our website. I should. I should have a button that I can push that just plays back my It really is kind of a compositive what we've already talked about in some sense. And if you tell me what the weather is going to be like, I'll tell you which week to hunt, but assuming that we have a consistent weather patterns where you know, it's going to be equal temperatures from October until the November and it's all going to be you know, relatively cool and seasonal type weather. It just seems like November seven through the years has produced the most big buck kills for myself and my pro staffs. And you know, prior to that, you know, Guizz all my buddies, and it obviously seemed like November seven the sort of the key day. So you know, if that's the key day, then pick you know, plus re mind us a couple of days on either side, and and uh, you know, sending the correct weather, that would be your magic week. What about you, Graham? Yeah, somewhere in there. You know, it kind of depends a little bit on latitude and where you are the guys and South Alabama are going. You know, we don't get rolling here in February, and and I think a lot of people don't realize South Florida West South Florida deer start breeding in early July, late August. Actually their season is time for the Rudd hunt to be at that time who wants to hunt in that level of mosquitoes. I don't know, but but that's the factor. So but throughout most of the whitetail's rain, somewhere in that early part of November weather being equal. I think Bill stated that very well. A cold front is if if I had any magic I could ever pull out for deer hunting, it would be to get a cold front to occur when I had time to hunt. Got you that narrows it down? What about you? Uh? You know, I go back to even like what Bill said, the seventh was like one of my favorite days. And I don't remember Bill that one of those first big ones that I shot with Lee Murphy and stut Down and I was on the seventh. It came over year out to look at it, you know, so nervous about the shot and anything, but I killed so many of them on the seventh. But now, with the farms that I that I have here, in the food that I have, if I can't took one week, it would be late. It would be January. Uh, you know, the last week of the season fits through the town. And then when we get during the run here. I mean it's always good. I mean it's always the funnest time to hunt. You know, a box of chasing and grunt and you can rattle and all that stuff. But my biggest box normally the ones that I'm looking for. It's way easier to to find them. I mean, if it gets cold late seasons, they're out almost every night, and you know, just get to a better position to get a shot at one of them and turn to run a lot of our biggest ones, you know, they kind of just going to ground. You might have a couple of shots at them, you're right at the pre rust. Once they get it dough, then they kind of going to ground, you know, as you want to catch them in between those when I get to late season, if I if I had to best, you know, if I got a big deer that I want to I want to hunt. If I don't, if I don't get him in those first few days of October, if I was a bettman, I'd said, my shoot him in January or late September, you know, and we shoot him in the rut every year too. But I think my best chances are if it gets cold here in late season and then I mean seeing more consistently than that world during the ruts finally had one week to hunt. Um, it's probably the last my last seven days of the season here like January to January towmpre to the temp or something like that. This is bill agaan Leah that that's a good point because it sort of brings up the question of hunting one deer versus hunting you know, any deer lass. Yeah, because um, we we do have trouble with them. Uh here during the rut to we might see more bucks of a certain age class on their feet. We might really struggle trying to find that specific one deer. And the late season is a lot more consistent as long as got the food in the weather. Yeah. At a great point though that if you're just hunting at buck, if you're going out of the stage or someplace just and just going hunting, you know you would pick that week of the seven stay in the Midwest at least. But for me personally, you know, or at least it be of your own farm and your your have a deer that you've been watching for several years and things that you know you've got into the age. You want you you know, you our best chance. We're gonna feel most of our big deer late season when they when it gets cold. But if you're just going someplace, you know, I definitely agree with the at least in the Midwest, that's all we really hunted, don't really you know, hunt the South or things like that. That the seventh has been you know, shot more deer on on the seventh and any other day. But if an she shot more deer on December and any other day, so um, you know, just it kind of depends, like it feel sounds a good point if you're just hunting deer, and definitely be the seventh for me. So so continue on this this theme of you know, when to hunt. One of the popular theories out there related to the timing of the rut, which in turn relates to some of the things we've been talking about about when the hunt, is that the moon in some cases some people believe might influence the timing of the rut or some things along that lines, whether it be the timing of the rut or any other kind of movement lead do you think that the moon influences dear behavior? And if so, how well, yeah, you know it's you know, who had asked me. It's a couple of years ago. I probably I said, I not really a bit. You know, great hunts on new moons and a great hunts on full moons. But it has been noticing over the years. You know, use all these trail cameras and most people just take their pictures of their boxs and okay, we're trying to you know, patterns buck or something with a trail camera, and that's hard to do unless you have a million trail cameras. I mean hear hears on the feet during daylight every day at some point for this are kind of more look looking at just pictures, dear pictures. You know, Okay, where are the daylight pictures? When am I getting them? Because it doesn't matter if it's a bunch of os, I mean bucks, you know they're they're obviously the different, but they're still just deer. You know, when when are all the deer moving? Um? And it seems to me I found like you know, coming up to the full moon those ten days before, you know, if you get right at the full moon, that they're just coming out last like ten days before, they're coming out in an hour before. Kind of almost time it that way. But then after the full moon, those ten days after, it seems like it switched over to the mornings. There are a lot better, you know, those ten days going away from it. So that's something I've really seen basically looking at my pictures. It's not so much you know, I don't see any you know, on one or the other between like the ten days going up to it, you know, the evenings, you know, I say ten days out, it might be coming an hour and a half, you know, early before you know, before sunset. And as you get right to the full moon, that coming out just right at last light. And then when you get the days after the full moon, like in the morning, you know, the evening you don't seem to be as good as the mornings all of a sudden, you know, right after it, they're just coming out, you know, there's still they're still moving a little bit um. Right after they get ten days away from it, it seems like they're on their feet, you know, for you know, a good hour after after sunrise. So that's you know, the only thing I've seen mostly looking at trail camera pictures a lot and not paying attention so much just the buck just looking at eight time movements. You know, if all the dos are on their teeth. Likely the bucks are on their feet too, because they're just deer as well as does are. Um. Of course, it's different from like you said, when all the doves come out early. He pretty you know, you pretty much compat Hey, the bucks are going to come out early two. But if your first dough comes out at two minutes before it's before it's dark, you know your bucks are not going to make it out. I really pay attention to, you know, a lot of our pictures. But that's you know, that's as I've been seen over the last couple of years, and it's probably more with it time the moon rises and sets rather than if it's full or not. But you know, I said that that great hunts on on on all kinds of moon phases, and and they asked him to look at it a lot. It seems like whether kind of trumps everything. If it's old there they're gonna be moving. But that's that's what I've seen, and I had never really paid that much attention to it in the past, you know. Um, So i'd be interesting to see what what Bill and Grant have to say about it, because he's just in a patch up a year that's I've been noticing that. And yeah, so right after the full monhammy be hunt in the morning and hit concert mornings more and before him on the evenings. That's that's pretty consistent with, um, with what Mark Dury has shared with us about the same topic to that that's kind of what he's been seeing as well. Some curious bill, you hunt in a similar area to to Lee and Mark relatively, are you seeing similar types of behavior? I mean, I I think, Um, I'm gonna sort of hid this one over to Grant after I say my piece because I haven't paid enough attention to it. I guess, um I haven't. I've never felt like it made a difference, you know, anecdotally just looking back on my hunting experiences, so in a keen time to really start focusing in on my trail cameras, I didn't pay enough attention to it there to see any trends either. So, uh, I don't have a good answer for you on this one, fair enough, So Grant the pressures on you now. It's confusing to me because I want to believe in the moon really bad. But there's guys over ten thousand deer now to have been fitted with GPS collars, and some people have looked specifically researchers at this moon question, and others have just kind of as an afterthought, go back and reanalyze your data. But to a study, at least the ones that's been published, no one has found a correlation of declination. That's degrees north and south, the equator the moon goes, or phase of the moon, or distance the Moon has a liftical orbit, so distance from the surface of the Moon to the surface of the Earth. All those factors have been studied pretty deeply and no one can find a relationship. So some really good hunters that I respect, Mark to rub In one of them, and Jerry Martin at Bass pro Boy, I mean they you know, they pretty much sept their deer hunting calendar by the moon. And and I'm not saying those guys don't have something figured out that scientists don't, but from a scientific point of view, there is no relationship between deer activity and the moon period. I know. I just got a lot of hate mail after that. One even wouldn't Brian me grant because I mean, for so many years it never it never seemed like it made that much difference, Like for me, I was looking at all my camera pictures, daylight pictures, and he starts seeing some of that before the full moon and after more day. But that, you know, you don't know if that's just coincidence or what. Because we're hunting, Like Bill said, I mean, I'm fortunate to be able to hunt most of the days anyways, they don't really care if it's a full moon or not. And it just you know, I've had great hunts on some days and you know, um full moons and terrible ones. But it seems like the deer I not like you go out one day and there'll be deer out everywhere around all I feel daylight on the road place, yet like the very next day saying weather conditions en thing, there's not a deer out at all. But they all know it, it seems like. But yeah, I can't really figure out what that is. Yeah, I mean I've been I've been trying to find that switch for I mean, once in a while we think we can nail it, especially during the late season. But gosh, it just seems like you have one day like like at least said that it'll be wide open and the next day it will be just dead and yeah, I haven't. Yeah, y'all look your way bigger bucks than I do. So I obviously can't explain it, but I M I'm puzzled by it, and I think a lot of researchers are, but unequivocally based on all this GPS and we're talking now millions and millions of locations, Weather is a way any way you slice it. Weather is a way bigger the determinant a factor in in timing of deer activity than the moon. Yeah, and it would be so convenient if it was the moon, because then we could, you know, plan ahead and you know, use a calendar. But weather, like, it's Turkey season here in Missouri, and I didn't hunt this morning, so well it's gonna be raining and I'm gonna work today, and it was a pretty nice morning. The weather man lied to me. Again, we can't get it right twenty four hours out figuring out what's gonna do in November. So but I think weather is absolutely the key in in the moon. If there is any relationship, it's a shallow secondary relationship. I don't want to hijack your panel, Mark, but but Grant, do you think or have you seen anything with barometric pressure with those data points. I mean, everybody wants to talk about that now instead of the moon, it seems like, but uh, that might be a correlation that it fits better. Yeah, I think there is. Bill. The problem is, there's there's so many weather factors. You know, we have wind speed and barometric pressure, and some of them are related obviously with fronts moving through. So the bottom line is we have deer with GPS colors to where we used to And what we found was what I think most hunters know, right before the front and right after the front, or the prime times to be out there, and and just personal observation, the most daylight movement I've ever seen in my life. I mean just to a point I still remembered. It was just unreal. Was I happened to be doing research on the coast of South Carolina foolishly when Hurricane Hugo came in, being a Missouri boy, and you know, I didn't know what a class for hurricane was, so I stayed there. The local guys I it would be like a bad thunderstorm, So I stayed there in the field. It was a horrible mistake, and and uh, the day, the day and a half before that hurricane come ashore, there was just mature bucks in the daylight everywhere. I've never seen a thing like it since. And and the braminter dropped really really low, a record for that county as a matter of fact, and dropped really low. And then clearly the deer and dogs and squirrels everything I was observing since that storm coming in, and it had more sense than I did because they were preparing for it and I was just out major and deer rubs. But um so I think the more extream the front probably the more daytime behavior you will see. Yeah, continuing like they're called cold high pressure days like late seasons is always good. But I think, like grand said, it's on the front because you get that high pressure aptive. But then that if you have like five or six, seven, eight days of high pressure and cold weather, seemed like the deer activity gets less and then then you get that change again, come out, came out to do with low pressure and heavier humidity, and boom they move again. It is seems like just on the on the changes like on the fronts on the beforehand after him is always the best. I think the changes are more important during the late season and they are earlier in the season because yeah, we've been on a warm front. Sometimes it's been really cold. Mm hmmm. So continuing down this path of what maybe gets dear to move and maybe time of year will come into this next question, but we'll start with Bill. When do you on your farms, when do you start to see scrapes open up? And how focused are you on hunting fresh sign My situation is by a little bit different than than some people, but I'm sure they start popping up sometime in September, maybe mid September here we start to see the first fear along the field edges. But I've never been a big sign hunter, right. I tried it for a while and tried to make sense of all of it, and I always got more and more confused because the pieces didn't always add up to make sense to me. So I started trying to figure out how to hunt travel corridors and be really kind of focusing on the path at least resistance for the deer and funnels and train features and stuff like that that seemed like they were a little bit more predictable and and that's more of a rut sort of hunting strategies, I think the early season. In late seasons, you know, I think sign becomes a bigger part of that, and especially fresh signed because of deer, it tend to be a little bit more patternable outside of the run. But I mean that's been kind of my thing. I'm not a huge sign hunter, never really was, but if I was going to focus in on sign, it would be really early and probably late. So Grant, is there any scientific fact or data to show that dear start scraping at a certain time of year? No, I mean, as as velvet comes off and testosterone levels increase, number of scrapes or time spent scraping increases, and it and it stays high until testosterone levels dropped a little a certain threshold, which also triggers handler fall. But deer will use scrapes year round, just to a much lesser extent. As far as hunting sign, I joke all the time by my buddies, you know, like all up and say, man, I just found this place. It's just covered with scats and tracks and straight And I said, unless you're hunting with your Brinkman spotlight, does that really matter? Because we're star typically gonna be under feet more during the nighttime in a in a hunted area, in the pressured area, and where you find the maximum amount of sign is rarely where dey are going to be during daylight hours. Uh So hunting the maximum amount of sign may not be a good plan. You know, late winter you've got to cut cornfield. There's all kind of tracks and scat out there, and it's probably some daylight activity. But I want to hunt, to travel corridors to all that sign. I want to hunt. Uh two places they're seeing the maximum amount of sign? What are you seeing on your farm's lead? I've same as both of them. I mean it's wheny you mentioned that, because it's like you know, grammaker point to make the use grapestyle times the year. But are just checking cameras this morning. I let's sign out with me. He was taking the naps and put him in the ranger with me. We're taking chaking cameras once turkeys right now. But you know, because we have some of them still up on scrape. There's there's one of the scrapes that just hits. It rained last night, was I hit this morning? So you see them scraping us of the stuff that you know, all the times of the year, but I don't really use them too much either, And like Grants, a lot of this stuff is at night, especially like in October. Once teas in November. You know that you never see any of our big ones and paying any attention to the scrapes unless maybe they're in between those and stead were walking by one. But I cheuse him a lot in October, just mostly for cameras. Um And just like Bill and Grant said, I aren't really paid. I don't like hunt over um or home and there's a new scrape over there, rugs, I gotta go hunt over there. I mean, it's just like we have our field that scrapes that are just kind of community scrapes that every book that comes in there hit them. So I got cameras on a lot of them, and mostly just take inventory of deer, you know, all that same deer. Here is any new showing up, and I figured hunt them, Like I said, you know, we've got to travel borders and you know places that over the years you learned, you know, okay, this is to come out to this feel this is the way they're usually coming in, and you kind of know how to cut them a hotport before before they get there. In a lot of cases, they you know, it came out in good camera light and stuff. But I mostly use those scrapes stuff just for camera to take inventory of. Here I was figure, I know, I know how pretty good idea how to kill them and where to hunt him at. I just need an inventory of them. And it looks great for that because, like rants aid, a lot of them, especially Octobers at night. But at least it gives me a good indication of what my inventory is for camera use. I use them a lot as far as cameras, but not so much for hunting. How are they at all for hunting? Yeah, that's consistent with what I do as well and what we've heard from from a lot of people really over the past couple of years on this podcast. There seems to be this movement from you know, I don't know if it was a decade ago or fifteen years ago when scrapes were like all the rage and the hunting media, and then more studies start to come out showing that most of that use was after dark, and now I think you're seeing more people either using them primarily as as trail camera locations or I think there's a lot of people talk about those last couple of days of October. There seems to be an uptick maybe in daylight visits possibly, Um, but it seems like this is this is pretty consistent with most of the things we've been hearing. Now, I want to take uh kind of want to pivot to a totally different aspect of hunting. We've talked about some interesting tactic things here, but I want to ask a slightly different kind of question, kind of reset the tone here, and we'll start again with Bill. Bill, why do you hunt? No boy? Um, I don't know. I mean, I've just always loved it. I guess that when I was a boy growing up. Um, it just got in my blood. And I don't know that there's a if there's a reason for it really other than you know, some people would put on earth to do certain things, and I feel like I was put here to hunt. There's a couple other things. Think that you know that that my nature pretty well. But UM, I don't know. I mean, I never was able to put any kind of uh, you know, words to that to that question when people ask, It's just I was born to do it, and I'm sure there's a lot of people that feel that way. It just fit. When I'm outside hunting something, that's when I feel, you know, the best. So I guess that's funny answer. I think a lot of people can relate. Grant, What do you think why do you hunt? Yeah, I don't know if I have good words either. I I am probably most alive and alert in feeling the whole when I'm hunting, when I'm when I'm acting as a predator. I guess, um, my senses are tuned up and I'm probably running on all eight cylinders there. And if you if I'm on a couch watching golf, I'm I'm snapping half the time or whatever. I'm not running on all eight cylinders. So hunting hunting to me, and I enjoyed a meat. I enjoyed a wild game. My family readily tracing the girls. We consume what we harvest, and I mean it's not like, well, you know, that's the ethical thing to do. So I guess I break up there and skin this dough out, need it. I mean, we look forward to it. That's that's what we primarily consume as wild game. So, and I'm sure a lot of it is my my father was a hunter. It's just a culture that I feel comfortable with. And the men I admired when I was a young boy were hunters and outdoors men, and so again, if we bill it just fits me, I would I would be uncomfortable if you said, Grants, you're you have to go down to the wine and play basketball all November this year, I wouldn't. I wouldn't be very happy. Hamstring and hls do I have in my body that all becore? What about same thing? I think if you ask anyone private the same thing, and I don't hear anything, it was nothing learned or anything like that. I remember as a kid, as far back as I can remember, I had my grandfather was going to go geer hunting. Yeah, I don't know if there's two three or whatever age you can remember remember just sitting by the window for hours every day waiting for him to come back to see if they if they had if they had shot one of which is up in northern Minnesota, so they rarely did. There were very few geer back then, ums not so many now. But you know if somebody a shot one, I mean I was out there has a toy gun and and I was shooting and hunting ever since I can remember. I mean, all my sisters and relative and a manic kid is nuts gets soon as I'd sleep in my uncle Mickey's room up and up in northern Minnesota because it was it chased the east and seeing the until a man I had my baby gun. I was always like my grandpa said, you can shoot any of the birds you want and out the purple Martins because you like those. Then they still stacked purple Martins that cord with the kind of barns and up feasing so he wouldn't see him. But I just just ever as I can remember, just hunting. Something like Bill and Grant said, I mean, it's just where you feel most alive. And you know, it's not something that you learned or anything of that, it's just who you are. Um. And I've always been that way. I always have, you know, like I always tell people, as man, I can't even my sisters have five sisters and some of them hunting out, but then you know they never did when I was growing up. And man, I just can't believe that all you ever think about is hunting. You know, every job that I had, the college I went to work classes that said everything just surrounded around hunting first, and then okay, I'll take these classes. I can go in the morning and the evening, you know, and just worked everything around and in the job that I had when I was a chemical engineer and took it because he would I get on shift and I could have seven days off every month, and I could line up my two weeks of vacation with my week off, and then they could have the whole month in November off and in the first two days about of December. There's always about that. My sisters would always be a man. Yeah, as you ever think about hunting, if you have a lot of those started, you don't have something like that because I could never be us. That can never be you know, unhappy. I'm always thinking ahead, Okay, what this this season that's coming up. You're always always excited about something, you know. Now, you know, just shid hunting just kind of wrapped up with shed hunting. But now you know, okay, now you got turkey hunting. But you know, I'm still looking at all the pictures, you know, the deer just starting to get big tennis balls on their head. You started looking by may you know, I know half the deer already just from their browd times and stuff. So you're always excited about you know, looking forward to it. And it's it's just a way of life. I mean, it's it's it's it's been the most important thing to me ever since I was a kid, and not something we learned or anything. It just it was to just happen that way. Yeah, same here. I I I don't know. It's hard for me to tell my wife why I love hunting so much because she's not a hunter. So I just have to tell her trust me. Got just trust. So changing changing gears back to maybe managing property or a way to keep um deer on the property that you hunt, grant in your opinion, what is the single best way to keep a mature buck on a property that maybe you control? Oh well, I failed at that. If you watch the show, We've had several of our prime hitlist bucks tagged by neighbors lately. So maybe a Bill and League can tell me with this one. I'm not sure, but of course deer, you know, deer want food, cover, water, and and and I think maybe there's some misunderstanding. The biggest motivation for deer is not the rut or food. It's survival. So fear is our biggest motivator. And so I think sanctuaries are probably the easiest tool. You don't really have to do anything, you know, just let a pasture grow up or something get weedy, or you know, whatever it is, or just just stay out of an area. Just stay out of an area, and deer will adapt to that being a safety zone. And even if you're, you know, a guy hunting eighty acres and it seems like, how could I possibly do that? But if if you if you've got it in you, you know, flag off twenty acres millions say we're just not going in there, and hopefully you'd locate that twenty acres strategically. But you'll be shocked at how deer will use that. And and I'll just share, not to borrow in the science, but a brief thing to colleagues of mine do some work down in Georgia and where coyotes are really a problem right now, And they took four areas and put a kyote proof fence around it, buried in the ground of foot and up four ft tall, and it serminated all the coyotes that happened to be in those disclosures when they finished them and had a bunch of GPS collar deer in the area. And it was amazing even to me, how quickly dear since that was an area of safety, that that there were no deer, no coyotes in there, and centered their home range and even lived the majority of time inside those hundred acre fences. And that's just an illustration of how important it is security cover or the need to survive for deer. So I think a lot of people hunt every acre their property, and if they would carve off a couple of sancs wharies, they could probably do a lot better and hunt the edges, sanctuaries or travel corridors coming out of them and see some daylight activity just because deer feel secure. What do you think about that one, Bill Well, I think that Grant hit the a really good point that I'll elaborate on real quick. But if you have a big property, you don't need sanctuaries as much as you do if you have a small property, and the people who are the least likely to want to have one of the ones who need it the most. You know, if you know the situation of somebody would stay a thousand acres and they hunt the whole season. There's probably parts of that property that because the wind swirls or for one reason or another, they just don't hunt there. It might be twos or whatever it is. There's probably going to be places that they rarely get to. Whereas if you've got the guy with the smaller piece of property, he feels like he has to have fans in every part of it or he's going to burn them. Each stand out. But it's by concentrating his energies into a smaller area that that pushes the deer out. So it's just the opposite of what most people think. You're smaller, the property is a more important. They aren't. What about you, Lee, Um, yeah, I mean this this one is a little bit, a little bit different. You know. I noticed that, Like we have a feeder out at Linda's at Tookey's mom's house, right in front of her yard, in front of our fifty yards from our from our front door, and you know, you know it's right away when we put it there. You get some deer out there in two in the morning, or somebody you walk by the window, you know, deal with run and now it's just been five or six years. You know, you can she can drive in, we can drive our cars and they in the bucks lane right or yard by it. They don't pay attention to it. You know, how many of them are out in daylight and we can let our dogs out and they know gou cloth the bathroom. They know not to shape deer deer don't you know, they move away from the feed or other but then they come right back to it. It's amazing the difference that you've see. And it's no different really than deer in suburbs or anything else. It's not that they're they don't get any human intrusion. There's humans all all the time time. I think it's just more that they have, you know, human intrusion all the time, and they never bothered them, so they get to be you know, they get to be used to it. And you know, and we never never set up our farms that way or anything. But I just started thinking about it and I was like, I think that's why we have uh so much success of like shooting a lot of our old deer, you know, in broad daylight, not being right at the end, and a lot of them right on our fields because at the grant's point are it went to the view have a thing for and said, yeah, or timber, but like the only time I really go in there is shed season, and then of course you've got nine months of you know, not really being in there um for him to settle back down from that. But on the on the flip side of that, I mean our fields almost every day, you know, checking camera, the checking the field, their plant numbers, seeing how they're doing our springs whatever. And then a lot of people can't do that right for us, and we live right here in the twelve months of the year and then and then east one of our fields, you know, at least twice a week, you know, whenever we're home them checking cameras or checking the fields or doing whatever. And then when we get their hunting season. For fortunate, you know that we have you know, quite a few farms that we hunt, so it's not like I have to pound any one of them, so you kind of hunt them in the same way, you know, like twice a week you're in there, and so over a twelve months period, our deer just it never changes for them. And I think that's why a lot of our success we have in our fields. Um is that because even us going in and going out, even though we can't get in there and get out all the time, like with without what I'm seeing you, they're used to us being in there, and they've run to the edge of the woods and then they come right back out. And so to Grant's point, our our woods are basically are sanctuary. Not that we don't have some We have, you know, quite a few stands that are up step for rut and all that stuff, but a lot of when we get a new farm, they'll take me two or three years to figure out where to get a stand in the timber, because it just takes those years of shed hunting. Okay, where are the doughs bedding? Where can I get I don't want the dose to bed around on top of me. Then I can't get out. But every time you go in there, even if you don't see anything, it's like you're putting your sent down there. Even if you didn't see a deer, I think, Okay, I got in and I got out clean. But the next year that walks by that six hours later knows you've been there. So you really can never get in and out clean. So I said, not that we don't go, you know, in there and during the ruts and stuff, because we do, but ent of our deer with shootings on the steel that people will be like, man, you shoot all you do on the edge of the field. Yep. Because and part of that is dus is I have a time to you can all catch them in those and not necessarily big fields, but we have so many little food clots that we dozed in and stuff that are in the middle of a timber that are secluded something. The deer feel comfortable in those. But I just said I would wait him out, you know, I'll get one of our big ones in those fields. And we always do. But I think a lot of it is, you know, we used to write articles and he's talk about, hey, no pressure, keep that pressure off. But to me, it seems like not necessarily less pressure, but more consistent pressure throughout the entire year. The deer know me. I mean, they know my truck, they know my rangers, and I go in there. It's the cameras chuck stuff. A lot of times the deer runder the edge of the field and they'll stand there and feed. They don't even run out of the field while I'm there and then come back. And then a lot of times I'm putting out you know, minerals or from in the summertime. Here we can run feeders and and I do, and not necessary not to feed deer. I mean, all of my feeders are on food plot, so there's plenty of food in them. But a lot of times again just for cameras to get an inventory of deer, like on a feedter, have some corn up with some sugar, be crush or something in there that you know that they really like. So they'll come over seems like every night and they take a few bites of it before they go back on to the field. That that make me take good inventory of it. But even when I'm there, you know, I'm checking out, check this time, or make sure it works, and it's it's a corner and stuff. So they you look at your cameras and five minutes after you're gone, dere around if you check, if you hit the button on it and spun the feeder or whatever, and you know, so we're just around them all and they get used to us being there in the fields. But now in the timbers at least if they can run into the edge of the timber. There'll just stay right there and come back out because they're going into the timber, and then they can start running out onto our neighbors. And they've been very surprised. And over the years, I mean, we lose very few deer to neighbors, and we've been losing a lot of them the h D lately, but not to neighbors. Sometimes you'll lose your two or three year olds of this young once. Once we get them past like the fourth they've become so much more homebodies here, you know, four and five, we hardly ever lose them. And but we try to keep you know, lots of food and lots of cover, and we just started working on we've been working on that really a lot over the past few years of gains cutting and making sure I guess you know, stick stick timber and there, you know, lots of downfalls and tree tops and you get the sunlight in there and grow up the bottom where they've got security covering there. But we just try to stay out of it. All of our timber for the for the most part, and just the fields they're used to us being there when we're going into hunt out hunt. You know, yeah, they see you and they run off, but then they just come back out and it's not like I like we used to, you know, going in the timber ok bag act have a perfect you know, get in and get out scenario and was spooking anything and walk the creek bottoms and all that kind of stuff. When I've spent all year in those fields, I don't need to do that. So it's really become you know, you see like on Linda's feeder, how you how you notice that you know, at first deer would never come in there, And now we we love going over. We don't hunt anywhere around her house because we just love seeing deer, say as much as we do hunting them. You just see a hundred and seventy and deer laying in her yard. You can drive in with your car and they'll stay there, and you know, you can walk in the house. They might get up and move a little bit, but they're just just like you know, deer in the suburbs that live in people's yards, and they're bettered in their driveways and the things that you're used to people being there. And I think that's really why we've had a lot of success on our food bots up that were in there a lot, and they're used to us being in there, so even going in and out, it's not moving them onto your neighbors. But it's consistent pressure over twelve months of the year. It's not like you're totally out of there and you order Wisconsin. You know, when the gun season opens, day two is definitely different than day one. That you bet you know, ten months of nobody in a lot of those places and all of a sudden you've got a thousand people and that they know something is different for our deer. I thank you go in there in July. We're going there in November. The deer don't all the difference. It's always the same. So that's what what I've been seeing on our places is that just our timber is basically are sanctuary and more not necessarily pressure, but more present during over the whole twelve month period where it never changes and it's worth great for us. And that's I'm not sure if that's exactly why, but that's my theory on why we're getting these you know, five and six year old deer out at three in the afternoon. You know, with you're not someone just that last light like they used to, but they're used to us being there twelve months of the year, so it's not freaking them out when we're going in out and hunting those fields. So yeah, that's that's pretty It's very interesting and so unique compared to what we hear in a lot of different instances. And I want to give you a fault question on that, but first I believe Bill, you did need to drop off now right, I'm gonna drop in about five minutes, so I guess you've got one one more for me. I'll hit that and when i'm gonna, I'm gonna have to get going perfect. Well, then I'm gonna I'm gonna bring this to you because you know, Lee, the circumstances you line you laid out there were really interesting, and you mentioned that before when we talk to you a year or so ago, and a lot of people like questions about this, and they're wondering, you know, does this work in other places? Could this work on my kind of place? And I'm curious to to you, Bill, now hearing you know what Lee described that works in his type of situation. Have you seen anything like that happened where you hunt? Could you see this working in other situations too well. I think that, uh, I mean, we do take advantage of the same type of behaviors slightly differently. There's a lot of houses around my hunting area, and I think that I pulled it up on the map one time and there's twelve houses that make contact with the property that I hunt from different corners and sides and across the road, and you know, whatever the case may be, there's a lot of human activity and that's very typical, non threatening human activity that the deer used to So I do take advantage of that, especially to and from my tree stands and trying to find places to park. The the situation that we have is is, you know, on a still morning, let's say, and then run a gravel road and you pull down that gravel road and you park. I mean, every deer within a quarter of a mile or maybe even further heard the rocks trunching under your tires. They know you stopped. Um, they're just waiting for the next you know, foot to drop. Basically, they know something's up. But if you pull into somebody's driveway, even if the dog starts barking and you slam a couple of doors. They don't even lift their heads up and look because they're used to normal human activity there. So I do a lot of park in a lot of my neighbor's driveways. Um if they're out cutting firewood or something like that, you know, I'll drive, you know, right back in there and make some noise and you know, do my scouting or whatever. I mean. I take full advantage of the normal human activity because the deer are used to that as being non threatening. Um. So that's really identical to what least been seeing. Our deer aren't probably quite as um um used to that throughout the year, is maybe what leads are because I'm not sure what I'm out on the farm, probably quite as much as what he is. But the the other thing that I will agree with him on is I'm a fringe hunter. And I get criticized by the people that come to our website and watch our videos all the time about you know how call me out back in the timber in the mornings and you know, and and I'll be hunting a certain deer and they'll all have, you know, a lot of different reasons why I'm not killing him, but usually it centers around the fact that I'm not being aggressive enough, and we could go on and on about that, and I don't want to tie up your whole your whole program with that topic. But um, when it seems like I've learned the hard way is if you stick to the fringes and you're consistent with that style of hunting, you may not have those really awesome days, but you're not in there educating a bunch of deer either. And and uh, you know you're gonna have those rout days back in the middle of the timber someplace where it seems like every buck is on his feet running past to you. And yeah, that's great, But for every one of those, it seems like you have, you know, two or three days where you try to pull it off and all you do is you you bust a few deer, or like Li says, they pick up your scent on the ground, and now there's two of us, you know, with the camera going in as well, so now you've got twice as much spent on the ground. Um, it's just really hard to get away with that type of hunting. But if you can hunt the fringes, you know, brush defence lines between two patches of timber and stuff like that where it's kind of surgical you can get in and out fairly clean. Um. I just feel like you just put your time in, like Li said, and over the courses of you know, a period of week, you know you end up being successful. But again, you know, we don't really hunt in the real world either. Um, the guy that's got a weekend, you know, a couple of weekends to hunt and maybe you know, four or five days a vacation during the ruts, you know, it might make more sense for him to dive right in because you know the fact that he's right deer may not be as big of a deal as what it is for us, because you know, we can still hunt that deer a week later where that guy is going to be back at work or whatever. So anyway, that's that's my thought. I don't have the deer condition quite quite as well as as what Lee does, but I do believe in what he's saying. Awesome, well, Bill, thank you for joining us and for for making this work with her schedule. Yeah, my my pleasure and good luck guys with the rest of the session here. And I'd love to be able to listen to what you have to say, so when when, when this thing airs, I'll pull up the rest of it and listen to it. Yeah, and these these are the softballs, Grant at least, so now you guys get the tough stuff about so So, continuing on that question, though, I just want to get your thoughts, Grant. You know you hunt, Bill and Lee are both primarily hunting in Iowa. You're down in Missouri. Do you think this idea of of consistently conditioning you're dear to a certain level of pressure. Can that work in other states other than kind of this this Iowa slightly different microcosm than the rest of maybe the rest of the country in the northeast or the south. Can that happen there too? Or is that unique? I think it can. I'm not sure it does. I mean, you know, I'm in the southern os Arcs and we kind of take it a step further. At least a lot of my neighbors here, if it's brown, it's down, and they add that year round part to it. So I think my dear kind of condition to year round threats. It's kind of like a war zone here literally. Uh so, uh, we're on the property, you know, I'm I love food plots, love joke cameras up dry fire. We're on the property every single week, and and it's still after owning the property for fourteen years. It's a pretty sizable property. So you think we get some dear condition to it. And if me or an employer or a wife or kids see a deer on the property, I mean literally see a deer, it's still conversation at supper. So our deer are living fear and it's a good thing. I'm known for management and food plots versus being a big buck killer because I couldn't do it here. I killed a five year old last year and it was the first time I'd ever seen that dear stepping true camera pictures. I knew him well, but I've never seen him until he made a mistake and stepped out. So I think conditioning. I think everyone's right here. It's just conditioning can go two ways. It can be positive or negative, and you can condition dear to you know, feeders it. Let's take this one step further. Really recently, like three years ago, Georgia, State of Georgia legalized feeding in a big part of the state, it being illegal before and they legalized it. So it was so modern that a lot of guys were able to step some really good research and they looked at harvest success per hour, how many hours it took for the average unit to tag a buck before legalized feeding, during the first year of legalized baiting or feeding, and then year two and three after legalized feeding baiting, and it was pretty predictable. So the first year of legalized feed the deer hasn't been in conditioned to avoid them, and harvest rates went up. Everyone's like, oh, my guys, this is we finally can you know do all other states doing? But year two and three, especially mature deer, they learned to associate those feed sites with danger if you're hunting over them, and they absolutely start avoiding them in daylight hours. So here I am. It's in Missouri. It's illegal to to have any kind of feed out during deer season if you hunt the area. And several of my neighbors quite candily have been busted for hunting over bait and they can whip me. I can spend my kids college at ocation on making food plots, and my neighbor can buy five bags of corn and because there's not enough baiting in the area for dear to really associate that with danger. It's an extremely effective tool. And I have begged the state either start patrolling that more or make it legal for everyone, make it a level playing field, because any anybody can go, you know, right during season, go by a hundred dollars or less of corn and literally slaughter deer because they're not conditioned to avoid that during daylight. Don't don't have me fear with it yet, because it's such a somewhat rare event versus states that have legalized feeding those deer to get pretty educated pretty quick. Boy, if I go there in daylight, I hear thunder really loud, Mama flops over, notne move anymore. Not a good thing. So I think deer very conditional, and it just depends on what the circumstances are whether it's a positive or negative for the hunters. So the next question that I have is kind of in regards to concentrating deer into a specific area. Now, a lot of people there's kind of a trend for those people who hunt on their own property and are able to manage a specific piece of property. Um, you know, the whole goal is to manage a property to hold a healthy herd, and typically that means more numbers on a per acre let's say, dear per acre than an unmanaged property. And I'm gonna pass this to grant To to ask the question, do you feel that sickness or disease is more likely to spread on a managed property solely based off deer numbers. I've really been in some deep conversations with some world leading epidemiologists or guys that stay disease lately. I think we're all kind of hitting around the edge of c w D and what's gonna happen here and have some great discussions, and you know, there's a pros and the cons and I'm a thirty thousand foot view guys. So in so of these discussions, I've pointed out that the largest known cases or places where we have the highest incident rate of CWD are in southern Wyomi with mule deer, specifically mule deer, but mule deer and elk On National Force, where for decades and decades it's been illegal and culturally unacceptable to put out any type of mental bait, and yet CWD is the most rampant there may of fact in one mule deer heard it's decreasing by nineteen percent a year. Then take a rocket scientist to figure out that in our lifetime. Soon there'll be no mule deer in that area. By the way, the number one cause of death isn't actually the CTBD taken down, but as they become slightly showing external signs of CBD, mountain lions wipe them out. Predators are so keen at picking up any sign that that deer is weak or unable to avoid predation, and and these mountain lines are tipping over mule deer out there like crazy, and you know, they find the carcass and do the testing and and they're almost a hundrecent positive CWD. So concentrating deer with food plots or even feed or minerals to date has not been positively shown to increase the spread of CTBD. It seems like it might, because you're just like, you know, the kids with the dirty toy at kindergarten, and and you know, one kid sobbers on the fire truck and Johnny picks up and then he gets sick too. So it seems likely but hasn't been proven. On the other hand, that the biggest body weights and the healthiest deer and the in the biggest antlers and the highest fond production. Any way you want to maas your deer herd health come off managed properties. Whether that's Southern, typically it's the dividing lines kind of a Southern Midwestern things. So if it's Southern, somebody's managing it or playing food pots to prescribe for our weather, or if it's you know where Lee and Bill lived in the whole places of food pot. Basically amainst Aggfield's commercial agg is feeding a deer herd, and those zeros certainly concentrated in those areas. So our biggest body weights, the highest fond recruitment rates, the largest and our development are coming from managed properties. It's pretty hard to argue that that's bad. Is that a double edged sword? Though? I mean, if if diseases, if disease can be spread through higher herd numbers, but also at the same time you can have a healthy herd, is that kind of a double edged sword. Well, let's backed up again if we're talking CTBD, because the only disease that really matters is CWD e h D. Epics of the Kimragi disease is certainly hurt some people. In two thousand and twelve, we lost it. We do real intense survey work here and we lost a third of our deer herd. I got my wife is a huge shed hunter, and got the dog trained for sheds whatnot. And I got so sick of her bringing in school so I would that year I was just so tired of. Normally I love it as she finds the occasional school and certainly applaud all the shed antlers she finds. But that year I got so tired of. You know, there's Bernie, there's Big Rack eight, there's whoever. She she drug in a truckload of skulls that year, which is unfortunate. Uh, But that disease comes and goes. And we've known about it for over five decades or some new strains out there basically brought in from ticks off at xotic pets carrying those carriers. So that's pretty trackable. CTBD is a big unknown. And and in Dakotas and in South Dakota, the deer herd state deer coordinator out there was a meeting with him somewhat recently and he was talking about Wisconsin having a goal of reducing deer down to thirty deer per square mile, trying to slow to spread the CWD, and he just overtly laughed in the meeting and says, guysh guys, in the western part of our state, we dream of getting up to ten deer for square mile. That's our goal to finally build our population up to ten deer square mile. And that's also currently where we have the highest and fastest spread to c w D. So it doesn't look like it's very density dependent. Again, this is this is real world evidence, not you know, textbook stuff. This is where the rubber hits the road. So the bottom line is there's so many unknowns for people to be making big claims about this right now. Is just you know, I'll go on record saying this is unfounded. We just don't know. There's so many unknowns that it's unfounded and spooky. It's I live in the county that borders Arkansas, and two months ago Arkansas was c w D free. Now I believe they've identified over a one positive c WD deer and a relatively small area. They went from not on the radar to potentially a hotter spot than Wisconsin and so states that are going around saying well, we don't have much promise D or we don't know. I would challenge them to look at their testing because if you don't test, you won't know, you won't find an intensity of testing has a huge, huge factor of of what you're gonna find out there. Lead do you on the farms that you hunt, do you have any experience with c w D or any other sickness? Um not c w D. That's you know, I think of just the last a couple of years is like the first cases of c w D even in Iowa that I've heard of, I think was just a couple of years ago. And they haven't, you know, down in any drastic against it like they did in Wisconsin. They know this eradicate in the whole county. Who are at the stuff in that I think, as I've been turned to me, that didn't make a whole lot of stan um. I'm not sure that it's just like granted, doesn't seem like it's high density areas or anything like that that that cause it. So we're wiping out your gear herds that you know because of a coup cases of CWD just didn't make that much sense to me. And I'm glad we haven't done they haven't done that here in Iowa. But you know, we've had h D now in the past, you know, three of the last four years, but you know that's kind of drought dependent, and those were you know, we had this situation. You know, last year. I thought it was gonna be great. We had so much rain all early and into and into the summer, and I thought, Okay, it's gonna be great, you know, you know, d h D again this year, and then Elson stopped raining in July and and and never rained again, almost fifty days all the way through. And there we had it again. I mean, with your grant on the on the I'm just sitting outside now, I'm looking at the pile of skulls I have here and there, and I don't even pick them up anymore. There's so many of them. I just I leave them and I'm just say, well, maybe up the next year, because you know, I don't want to pick up in the green skulls anyway. We have to get a Salvis take and I do on some of them, you know, from our game ward and if they're you know, ones that are specific deer that have been chasing or a little big ones or somebody. Most of them. I don't even bother him up any optics next year into it, but I'm literally hundreds. I mean, we we've lost a lot of deer. D Like, if you were to ask me five or seven years ago, how many five year old plus tear do you think you have on your farms? It's probably fifty to seventy I mean all of our farms. I mean, we're getting too many because you know, you're just you know, that's where I had a lot of my friends stuff coming in hunting, because we had like a five six year old deer that was, you know, not a great genetic deer. So you know, you're hunting other ones, and then just so many of them stack and then they start pushing other good younger deer opposite. It's like, man, how do we even get rid of these things? Pretty soon the farm is filled with you know, crappy genetic you know, old deer moving everything else off. So we had to start bringing everybody's in it, and they else. You shoot some of those. But now this year, I'll bet you I can count on one hand almore. I mean maybe a little more than that, but maybe ten ten deer that I figure over five years old this year. So I mean it's not them, it's not the way down. You know, still a lot of deer. You know. I'll go out and you know that this past winter and I see a hundred deer in the field, you know, big corn field that we had standing stale or whatever. They'd still be thirty bucks out there, but maybe one four year old and some threes and two all young deer and our old ones are just gone. Um, so that h D is really taking this tool. But you know, I'm not an expert on it. Maybe Brant can talk about it more. But my understanding it's from a midge that you know, when they could they get bitten by and especially when it's dry. You know, all of our creek beds and our ponds lower way down and got that explode. We have muddy bottom creeks here, and it's my understanding that they lay in that mud that makes some cool, you know, and the summer like that, and that's where that stagnant waters that when they thread stop flowing, that's where you know the mostitos and midges and everything like that. Hats, so they're just more susceptible to it. But you know, we have had you know, three of the last four years have been drought years, at least into the late season when they get effect good by it. So I'm assuming that's what it is, more weather dependence and deer numbers or anything like that, because our dear numbers still are still still a lot of beer. But just it seems like our older bucks and and you see them, that's not like it's affecting older bucks. I'm assuming that that bucks are just staying bachelor groups of one gets it, you know, like we can wipe out all of them, but they're just such a smaller percentage of all the deer. Like and if you wiped out, okay, you can take fifty mature bucks and fifty dolls. Now you don't even notice it in the dough numbers. So I think, maybe just notice it more. But maybe Grant can expand on that more because I'm still, you know, tending my head against the wall over here. What I can do about it. It doesn't seem there's a lot you can do better than maybe spraying for those midget or something. But then you've got two hundred miles the creek bottoms on your farms, and how do they do it? I think you're rightly. I agree with everything you said. I'll add and I want to very much clarify. I'll do it probably beginning middle new And this is is a theory, warning theory, but several of us scientists kind of agree with it. So this is a minute. It doesn't go dear to deer. It has to go through it actually a biting fly and the fly bites a deer. If you look at the microscope, it's like a horror Movie's got these giant teeth for its body size, and you know, and it bites an affected deer and then it bites another deer and some of that infections on its teeth, so it gives it an injection basically. So it's going dear to deer through these boding flies and a drought deer going through the limited water supplies. So that's where the flies are. They lay their eggs in the mud. As the water level goes down, there's more breeding habitat for these flies. And you could spray, but no one can cover all the ponds and cow tracks everything else that's holding just a little bit of water. So that's people have tried that, and I've never heard of a success story scientifically or otherwise about that. And but the theory is again warning, here's the theory. Do flies want to bite through a thick hair of coat of hair because they want to go to the blood. They want to blood meal they're getting. They bite the deer to get a blood meal. That's why they bite them, or they want to go to the really richest form of blood that time year, which is a velvet antler, and a larger velvet antler is a lot easier for flies to get to. And and so when the original studies literally four decades ago on E h D, there was no difference in gender of mortality. Males and females died at equal rates. I'm not aware that that study has been repeated in modern times. But when you know, we're now managing for these older age structure of bucks and a lot of areas, and you've got a lot more bucks with big antlers out there. And if I'm a fly and I'm trying to get an easy blood meal, I'm certainly gonna go to a big antler buck. It's a lot easier to bite through, you know, really short velvet than long deer hair, and mature bucks maybe more vuln morble to e h D than other younger bucks or does and last time, this is theory. Warning, this is theory, but on a lot of my clients land in northern Missouri and southern Iowa were e h D is just but I mean, it's just been horrible last few years. We're finding a disproportionate amount of mature deer, mature bucks. That's the first I've heard of that. But it's it makes a lot of sense and some interesting implications from that. Uh if it if it ever is proven, if that test, you know, if a test is redone and looked at, that's that's pretty fascinating. Um, that doesn't mean, let me stay up front, It doesn't mean we don't manage for mature bucks because mature bucks are gonna die. Lee knows. They're really rare anyway, that's why we all love them, crave I'm seeing them. They're really rare. And and we've kind of had a string of odd weather. Doesn't mean it's going to continue. Uh, And and so it's not a reason for anyone not to manage for mature bucks. It just means that every now and then we're gonna lose some. If in fact that there is true, it may not even be true. Yeah, I mean if we find a lot of doughs and and smaller bucks too, but you know, you don't really pay too much attention to them. But it's sure funny, you know when we were just doing this, you know, when I was shed on this year driving and four wheel around people woods and stuff complace that just know that's talentting that man, there's like a bone yard out there, but anywhere you goose white bones everywhere that four years, I mean, it's you know, it's some pretty devastating and a lot of those aren't just ture bucks and a lot of I mean there's a lot that's just there's a lot of doughs out there too, and you know some some smaller bucks too, But it seems like mostly my bigger ones and then a lot of doughs and and that it's just me. I'm just not finding a lot of young group bucks. Um. I mean some here and there, but not not as many as like my bigger ones. I don't know the thy do that could just be they might be just as many of them dead too, that you just don't find all of them. They're not all on your property, you know, so you know one could off your property. A lot of the big ones just disappear and you used assume they're dead, but you know, maybe not. But you know they can get off your property pretty easy too, and they don't have, you know, the option of going wherever I want to, so you know, I just find what's on it's on honors. But you know, I hope that whether straightens out. But just like what has been crazier and crazier every year, some more extremes on droughts and rains and everything else, but hopefully get out of that weather pattern and keep back into the wet, normal weather patterns, because it's has devastated my older deer, that's for sure. And it's not like hunting mature bucks isn't tough enough without disease issues. So so so on that topic, you know, related to the hunting of mature bucks, I think most of us, I'm not sure if things speak for everybody, but most of us. When we started deer hunting, we started just trying to shoot any deer, and then once we were able to shoot eight deer. Then it was once you another few more dear and more dear, and then eventually some of us decided that we wanted to start targeting mature bucks. So my question, and I'm gonna send this to you leave first, is whenever you decide to make that switch to targeting mature bucks, what was your greatest challenge related to that? And then what was the lesson the greate lesson you learned to help you overcome that when you're first starting to target mature bucks. Well, I think it's I don't know that it was necessarily a decision. Hey, I'm just gonna target mature bucks. I think it's just like anything you naturally get to the point, you know, if you're competitive at all, it's just like, Okay, now I got one. That's a I got my first buck. I named you my first buck till I was, you know, eighteen years old. I mean I hunted my whole life up in northern Minnesota, and they just you know, with the wolves and the snow went about that, they just weren't many deers. So I mean for twelve years that I hunted, I didn't see twelve years, you know, So I shot you know, a couple that was up there, you know, and stuff. So by the time you know, I even shot my first hope and young, I was years old almost and I mean, I mean, just that's a fanatic about Europe and kill them. But until I got, you know, with sixteen and my driver's license and was able to go to other places, you know, places like in the city limits around Minneapolis and stuff worth and they were there, actually were some bigger's years and then you know, you're just starting from scratch. My dad and everybody the day had just held ben in the deer hunters. Basically, if you saw a dough and then you had a dough license, you were shooting. And that was the way you end up up there in northern Minnesota. So, I mean, you didn't had to learn everything on my own and made so many mistakes and and everything. You know, you're thinking now from the places that I had acted to do that. Um, you know, I didn't take advantage of start shooting anything good on me. If I knew it back then, what I know now, it was been totally different. You're back when I first started boring hard, anybody both hunted around Minneapolis, you know, are around the city limits you live, What do you want to try to see one with the boat? Go ahead? You know now you would try to find a place there. I mean, they've been hammered so much it's so hard to find. But I think it's just natural progression. Once you shot once. Once I shot my well, I can say once I saw my first pope of young, that was it. I mean I was hooked on here if they used to know chasan On, deepth On, goose Sons, everything, just because we didn't have many deer. But once I shot my first one, by then everything else took second seat to it. Uh you know. And so I've just been that I've been infatuated with him since I was a kid, but until I started actually having the reality that I could kill one. About when you know when I changed? But I don't, you know, it seems more that it was a natural progression. Okay, I shot a little one, a squarking, now I want to see a bigger one. And then they want to shot my first poping young and it said, well, I don't really care to see a smaller one anymore. I just want to shoot something that's hoping young or better. And now it's just age. All knows all about age. I don't I don't care if the deer, which which they have, I've passed. I've passed two hundred inch dere now since uh you know, since then that because they were four years old. I want to you know, I want to see him get to five and six. I think that's a big part of the management is you know, I almost I could see it probably if anywhere hardly even shoot any of them, because I just kind of want to see what they get to know how big they how big they'll get, you know, because some of these there were like one nineties that's a deer last year, I've passed it. Piggoty be close to two hundred probably maybe just under pre there a four year old deer, and I want to see you'll never get to fifty if it's shoot him in a two hundreds, So you'd like to see when they're what they'll get to forward to. After November, I never saw him again, so probably somebody else shot him. So we you know, we lose lose some of them that way too, but you know, some of them disappear and they'll come back. But uh, you know, I think It's just a natural progression more than than anything. If you're really into unless you you know, some people maybe don't. Don't look at hunting the way that I said that a lot of us do something, just find some fun to do, go out on the weekend. Here. They're just the way that I'll go out to play tennis or will play baseball or something. It's like, hey, yeah, I like doing it, but it's not a passion of mine. But want this is a passion of yours. You know. Then you always want to strive to get better and better. You know I say that the people like said, well I'm just a meat hunter. Well we all kind of are. But you know you take like any sports, like Michael Jordan, Okay, you're just getting better and better. You make it to the top is game. He probably doesn't have much desire to go back and play with this high school team. You know what. You could just dominate him, you know so. But it's the same same thing for hunting. Once you get to a point where okay, I've shot the pope young that I want to shoot the bolder deer. I probably care to shoot a younger deer. To me, it's not much of a challenge, you know anymore? I want to I want to challenge consistently now, I want to, I want I want to be as I want to be as hard as possible. What's the you know, what's the hardest animal in the world hunt? I mean, but there isn't very many five or six year old bucks face it, and when you do have one, trying to get him out with daylight, it's another thing. So it's just that much of a challenge. And I think that's why I started she hunting and a lot of the other things that are just such a such, so much more of a challenge. So I don't know that's anything that you really decided. It just kind of happens, you know, where you want something bigger and better than you had before, and just you just you want to challenge all the time. Now. Now that said, though, was there anything that you learned as you made that transition that actually helped you succeed in killing those bigger deer? You did you change a tactic or did you did you see a deer do something one day that all of a sudden made a lightbulb click in your head that said, oh, this is what I've been doing wrong. Was there any kind of moment like that that just helped you have better success killing those bigger, older deer. Um, you know what was the biggest change or realization that increased your success rate? I'm curious, okay from that right at the beginning, and it was it wasn't so much of an a tactic. It was, hey, I got to get out of here and go someplacelf like when I was an high school and people going to party that at my five dollar car and I was driving the Iowa in the Kansas and and looking, you know, at deer because they had them, and it was like, okay, I gotta hunted my whole life. And I said, hey, man, I think I think I do it. And right, you know, you read all the articles that done everything he tried to extend control, all the wind and all this kind of stuff, and it's still not shooting them. But then they started seeing when I went and started going to Iowa and Kansas in a place that just I spent my time looking for a spot that had the big one had figgered deer in it, and then ten percent of the time actually hunting them. And then thought out said hey, I was good enough hunter to kill these. I just wasn't hunting in the right spot, so I did. The biggest thing is just hey, if you don't have them making we go out to you know, the Harrisburg Show and pent thing. Oh, we don't have anything, you're here, you know, we just you know, if it's brown is bown around here and said, well, you gotta go someplace else. Hey, when I was I was sixteen years old and didn't have a penny to my name, I would still grounding up guests wanting to go drive down to Iowa or wherever to's there find something. You may have to do that. But then the second part is just really learning to no age structure of deer, to know to recognize the three year olds when you see it, to recognize the four year old and see it and stop shooting those, and just holding out for bigger ones. And a lot of people say that to me too when you go you go out east as well. You know, if I don't shoot, I have to shoot it. You know, if I if I see it at three yearld, I got to shoot because if I don't, my neighbor will will look. You're that neighbor. You're the neighbor you're talking about, he's saying the same thing about you. You gotta just you put out into some place. We we lose a lot of our three year olds as well, because three year olds they're the dumbest deer in the woods. Basically, they want to be, you know, prime breeder, but they're they're anosis and pushed around by the older ones. You're they're the ones when you're grunting and rattlings, they're the three year olds, the one they come running in that they're to me, they're they're super easy to kill. And there was a time, you know a lot of the deer that my well now are just super genetic three year olds, you know when we first got to the ioland yeah, I was shooting them too, because they were a hundred and sixty inches and two hundred seventy in three year olds. That man, you know, you're really looking at you know, score wise. But then when once they moved down and you started doing that, you could keep start managing the property, food cloths and do that, and pretty soon you look at it. Well, I shout all my three year old, good genetic geer, and I had left all my you know, crappy genetic you know, eight points and stuff that are four and five. By the third year, our farm will just run by old crappy genetic. Ay point, well, that was terrible management. He thought, you know, you're gonna be a deer manager in passing these deer. And by the third year, is like, that was that much terrible deer manager. I gotta go up to eight structure on the things. It's a students here that are five and six, no matter how old they were, I mean, what matter, no matter what kind of racked the head on them, and just being all those good genetic three year olds that that came, you started to get them through to five years old. So I mean that's you know, the biggest thing that I learned is that that makes us more successful I scoring deer because now is letting them go at three and four and sometimes even five years olds. I mean this year we left several of our five year olds that were you know, in the eighties, which you know you've normally obviously he's super happy with it, but it's just like we lost so many of the e h D and those deer you made it through all those years of e h D, So maybe they're immune to it, um, you know, because they they they've had cracked hoods and stuff in the path that they are like trd to grant about maybe on the side after the show. But you know, I've heard that, you know, someone gettn't lived through it, and I've seen I've seen that. I think that a lot of them lived through it, but then poses they're immune to it after. And I don't know if that's true or not, but I've seen like a big slipper feet on some of our bucks. They get this big long hoods and track hoods and stuff, and and one of our bucks in particular still limps on that hook. But it's been two years and already limps on that and it hasn't effected his rack. Andy, but he was like, you know, d close to you Nady this year, but he was he was five, and I don't leave him another year because maybe he's immune to that. Just got to have some older deer around, you know, to hunt in, you know, in future years. So um, you know that that's probably the biggest thing. It was going going to place that had good deer and then learning how to aide jump, you know, to know what a three year old and if you gotta pass, and that's hard to do if you don't have your own property, because they normally will get shot by somebody else. And I think you make a make a really good point there, and that you know whether you're targeting a deer based on antler size or age structure. You know, if if you're setting your goals based on TV or some other thing, you know you're never going to kill a deer if it doesn't actually live. You know where you hunt and so if your goal is to shoot, you know, a deer like you're talking about, well that might not be possible in New England. So you either need to adjust where you hunt or you need to adjust your expectations. So I think that's you know, it's an important thing, important thing to think about now. Grant you're in a different situation, very different area than than Lee is for you. When you were starting to go for these either bigger or older deer, was there an aha moment for you that helped you become more successful? A little different from me. I was raised here in the Missourio's art, so the same part was like lea guys, I think I was eighteen when I tagged my first dear and it was a button buck, and I was so proud of it and still them to today. And I just thought it was great. And you know, grew up in a family that pretty much we you know, if you could kill a deer, you just you were a hero. I mean, people drove by the farm and looked at it, touched it and talked about it. And so those were great fun days for me, and I wouldn't discourage anyone from from having those days. And as I went off to school and even grad school, and at that time, I'm dating myself at decades ago, we started talking about I wonder why if you know, deer got older blah blah blah, And I was just always fascinated with with that idea. Once once I got explained to me and I could kind of see it, touch at feel it, and actually hundred some ranches and Texas or older aged class bucks and it's got oh my gosh, I've never seen anything like this and rattling deer responding and rattling ground castle. That just to me. I love the dear biology and the dear behavior of older aged class bucks and the challenge so no deer here, you know, a big deer where I lived, there's no agg in the counties where I live and on land or zero AGG. So a giant deer here is one sixty. That's like a two twenty in Iowa. That's the top of the top of the top of the book. And so if we can grow sixty consistently, I'm just as happy as I can be and consider that a good accomplishment and get to interact with them and see him on choke cameras and maybe see him in person. And I think what you just said is set your goals based on where you live. And and I tell people all the time, if you know, if you want to set high goals, then go to Popeion, Buddha, Crockett, whichever group you want to go to, and kind of see the top for your neighborhood. And if you're setting your goals at that level or higher, you better be prepared to eat tag soup quite a bit because those are rare deer and so I kind of use those, you know, scientists, I got a major everything. But if you're in an area that you know, a big deer, for example, and this may shock some people, but in my land is split by two counties, and in Missouri has pretty large counties. In both counties, there's been one hoping young ever recorded. I'm sure there's more harvested, but it's all relative to wherever you are, and never a single Boone and Crockett ever horrible place for deer ball just to live from that point of view, uh never. So you know, and I, you know, meet local guys at church or wherever, and they're talking about I'm gonna come you one and seven and said, no, you're not not in this county. I mean, it's just it's just not likely to happen. And if you hold out for that, you're gonna eat tag soup so long that you are gonna get bored and end up being a golfer him or you know whatever, which is not bad. But you're not going to be a deer hunter because you're just you're just never gonna be satisfied. So setting realistic goals for where you hunt, and my goals changed. I have a really good friend in Western Kansas and I drop tags after every now and then, and my goals in Western Kansas are different one way. I'm looking for totally different animers, but I'm still looking for a four or five year old animal. That's kind of my harvest criteria. And but in some areas, if a guy holds up for a four year old, he's he's never gonna get it. It just doesn't live in that neighborhood. I want to talk about food plots a second for one reason, and that's because I'm getting ready this summer to a plant my very first ever food plot on a pizza property that I have access to. And I'll start with you grant from maybe a health or an attractant type of standpoint, what would what would your opinion be for the all around food plot option. Oh, guys, there's literally hundreds or thousands, I don't know. Uh, So there's several factors. Some of them are talking about a lot. Uh you know. We if it's the first food plot, it's probably been a cow pasture or something. There's probably a huge weed seed base there, and so you need something you can control weeds in and and and round up bray. Soybeans is a great first time plot. Soybeans are pretty easy to grow actually and pretty drought resistant. There's a reason, you know, soybeans feed the world literally, Uh, they're easy to grow and and and productive. And of course deer love them. If you're too small plot, they could wipe them out pretty quick unless you use electric fence or something. And if you're in an area where deer don't know beans, again, Ryan, there's no acts. So the first three years we planted soybeans here, I mean it's literally, it's hard. It's hard for people to believe. For the first two years, I do not believe a deer removed a single leaf off soybeans we planted here. Literally, they've never seen a soybean, never smelled a soybean. Abole to walk through the soybeans and eat the BlackBerry on the edge of the plot where to fertilize your truck a little bit made me so mad. It's just like people planting turn ups Nebraskas and areas where do you haven't seen them for We always talked about learning curved. You're certainly have a learning curve. You can take apples to Texas and put them on top of corn pile and they're scratched, the apple out away and eat the corn. And you can go to New York where Pennsylvania where apples grow naturally, and they're all over the place, and you know, dear love apples and will readily go to them. So soybeans under the right conditions are a really easy first time crop. Clovers an easy crop if if you're in an area that doesn't get too hot and your soul maintains moisture. Clover needs a lot of moisture in it needs an awful lot of phosphorus. Most people starved or clover to death. It's a two big killers of clover or weeds which are not that easy to control, and clover and lack of phosphorus. And if you if you control weeds and fosphors. I have clover stands literally ten and eleven years old. It look fabulous, but you gotta feed them and you gotta keep the weeds out of them. And then your mission. What time of year are are you planning this plot primarily as an attractive to hunt over or is your goal nutrition during the summer? There's you know, you kind of got to find your crop based on what your mission is. I know I didn't give you a direct answer, but that's just kind of where I come from all the time. By people's what's your mission and what's your resources? What do you have to plant with and how wheedy is it going to be? What do you have for a favorite? Lie? Well, I think you know I had all the time mine go over. I mean I rereely grant on beans and elfhi like here because we do have you know, not sandy. So we have good so we got good moisture as we can grow go over. But even on the drought years that plant mixed with alfalf and stuff celtic you forgot, you know, try again. I could had some malf helfon that it'll grow. But I kind of always only do one thing. It would get clovers because you know, people at that seminar and like a you know clover acts only the kids sit everywhere. It doesn't or something dotic bean or something. But it's for me it's clover because I mean I look for some to hunt over and and to even greater sense. But is you know, dear health. So I look at if I had the clover fields out, you've got a good good high protein and it can have small food pluck and you can feed a lot of deer. It puts a lot of ton of jobs on me. If I have one acre field, they can hold you quite a few deer in there eating every day. If we've got good rain stuff and uh, you know for us here's mostly grasses. I can hit it with select mats, pro posts. I had to kill most the grasses out of it too, pore DP if it's got some other stuff in it, you know, some other broad leave stuff, and so I can kind of keep it pretty much weed free. And you know, most of the clover fields they'll have for five seven years and they start getting a rope stan or something, I'll take it out and put something else in there and then go back to go back to the clover, you know, the year after that. But how just look at it for hunting over Uh, you know, it's one of our first things that green up here when the when the snow's down and stuff, and the turkeys are in it and deer it like crazy, and then you know it's got a lot of good protein, a lot of contage through it to the summer and then it's it's why I mean, I wish you so many of our deer off of it too. So I mean something that can last all year if they used you know, like like soy beans and turnips and winter wet and those things you don't have them for you know, the entire season basically, and even our clover it's stay you know, green underneath the snow we had, you know, some snow, and even you go on our field clover fields, man, they'd be digg into the snow to get at it. So I think if I could only plan one thing at least here where I live, I can grow a good clover field, that would be it. If I'm going to do one thing, because it's it's good for the health and nutrition ev plus it's good to hunt. Or I'd say, I'd say that you guys just doomed Dan, because Dan, the pressure, the pressure is now on for you to get a terrific food plot in there, because Lelakowski and Grant Woods just gave you food plot advice. So don't screw this up. I'm going to uh So, I want to touch on a topic we haven't really talked about much yet, which is wind. You know, when it comes to hunting mature bucks. Understanding wind is a huge thing for most of us, and a lot of people at least that I've talked to as I progress as a deer hunter. One of the things that I've shifted to paying more attention to is how a specific buck might use wind. You know, when I first started hunting, it was I want to make sure my wind isn't going to blow towards a deer and spook a deer. But now I'm also thinking about that as well as how is a buck going to be using the wind to move through an area? And then potentially I could use that to determine where I'm going to hunt. So with that kind of example in mind, how do you believe, based on what you've seen, most often a mature buck will use the wind when traveling? Are you? Are you seeing that he's most often going to travel the wind in his face or most often to his back or quartering. What's the most common situation you've seen? Grant? What are you? What would you say on that? I'm gonna say it's what and deal with GPS collars deer much more unique than I used to believe, so you asked earlier on a different related question, you know what's learned? Why you change? A big, big changing point in my life was GPS color is getting inexpensive enough to apply them to to deer for research, really busting my bubble on a lot of things I believed, and one thing that really increased my knowledge on is just how individual deer are. And some deer just have a much larger in the same area, the same resources, the same area, much larger home range, some have much smaller Some tend to be more active in daylight, the same age glass and others. Some are bullies, literally they try to roam around and beat here by up and and and some are are are real loners, uh, And I suspect the same is true watching movement patterns in the same area, so you know, they're all facing the same wind. And some deer tend to have a north south burying, some deer tend to have an east west burying and in the exact same location, So I think it's more of an individual I think it goes back to what Bill and Lee both said is they're not hunting signed or hunting traveled areas or known areas, And it takes two or three years or even longer to learn a property, and and in that time frame they may be chasing the same bug. They're probably you know, maybe I've harvested that buck and moved on to a different book. You're hunting areas that you can uh that you've learned that dear use that you can hunt without being busted. I think it really bulls that boils down to the bottom line. Okay, and Lee, have you seen anything differently or do you have a different thought on that? Oh? I agree with Grant because so many dear they're so individual, and I think that's what makes them so much fun to hunt, because you can't say gear do this any different thing. You say people do this. Everyone is different, but like like like, because I'm hunting gears basically they I don't think they paid as close attention to it is they used to think that they did. Um. You know, it's not like caribou where they sit there, notice the wind and just wander. I mean, obviously our deer on our farm every day, if they only walked in the wind in their days like they did, and that's two hundred miles north by the time the end of the season. Because we get mostly north winds, and we used to anyway when we had kind of cool weather patterns. It's been so warm lately that you get at the south and east more than we used to. For me, it's it's mostly I like to say if I have one of my favorite food flots or some deer, I know where they generally bed a lot of times, I mean for the most part, and you know where they're gonna come in, and they normally I always do. I mean not they all awesome boom come into the others. I have a food flots up here there. But in general, you know, you kind of know where they bed most of the time, even though they can bed anywhere. For a lot of deer come in from the same places, so it's like it's more meat change in my you know, my strategy one, you just hunt the places where I can get away with with the wind, because I set them up mostly for northwest, but I always have you know, east stands and west ends and of it in because you're gonna get all kinds of weather stuff each day. But it's like a lot of times the deer come in the same place in the food puts, no matter what the wind is, so they're not just putting the wind in their nose. But once they're in there, you know when the you know, you've got to make sure where you're at it is going to be down one from them, so you just don't hunt them on the days. But I said, I don't. I don't see that they're using the wind so much themselves, because there seemed to be they kind of do the same things, come from the same places no matter what the wind is, just what can you get away with? So we just don't hunt them on the day to that the wind is wrong. And that's nice quite having lots of different setups, lots of difference to ends. I mean, we have some little food puts. I mean you're talking two acres that there's literally like six or eight setups around it for every different wind situation. And then you're finding things pots that you think it is perfect, and you know you can guess at all the time. It's just it's then had to wind s whereising and other places that doesn't see matter what the wind is, you know, if you kind of learned where you know the structure of your land, it just the wind was up and over the top of them. And some things about I don't all that deer specifically use the wind as much as I want to stack. And now that I get to look at dear every single day and watching, you know, you know, we love going at that's about the feeder at Lynda's and movie. It's not just the feet of there. We've got you know, help of fields and flower fields and so it means and stuff all around her house where we can see them from our house. So we like going over there just to wat dear really to night. Even in our house. It's it's the right. They don't have any food, puts any clothes. I don't want an to hear upon our house, so we don't get a chance seeing. But Linda's probos to go back in middle nowhere. But still it doesn't matter from the summer months that the winter months. The deer come from the same places all the time. Not that you can't see one duck coming and play something there the next day or whatever. But for the most parts, the deer always come in the same places. You kind of know where they're beat and stuff. So obviously there's different winds every day, and they're traveling from the same to and from all the time. So I think you know they're you know, there's nose is good enough that you can get enough squirrels and stuff that they can always but you know they're gonna they're gonna spell stuff that's around, you know, in the timberance. If you see a lot different like out west, you know, whereas every time you watch it, you know, but you know, a mule there or something go lay down. Let me know, they're always going to have that wind at their back and overlooking the you know what, you know, something open in front of them, and it's like, man, okay, how we're gonna get in on that thing. But I don't see that white where we're at so much. Um, I think they're I was using the same trail, doing the same thing. Yeah. That's an interesting point too, in relation to you know how you said you saw mule deer doing a little bit differently in different locations. I wonder if this is something that might be you know, uh, location dependent, pressure dependent as well. Maybe a buck in Michigan might be acting differently than a buck there in Iowa on a you know, well managed property. Um. It's definitely one of those things that keeps me up at night thinking about a lot, that's sure. So yeah, yeah, So we have kept you guys a long time here and this has been terrific and we appreciate it so much. I want to ask one quick final question and then let you guys get back to preparing for your turkey hunts or whatever exciting stuff might be up next in food plots. Yeah, So my question is this, and I'm gonna send it to I Guess Grant first. What is your greatest concern for the future of deer hunting? Mm hmm, I gotta tell you. Cd w D would be up there because there's so many unknowns. Uh. Access for a bulk of hunters is way up there. But my biggest concern overall, Number one is behavior of hunters. And I look at this way, get on who's math in the status you want to look at, and there's all what different ways of calculating this. But hunters now are somewhere around six of the population, so we're never we're going to be a majority. We're never gonna be And it's proven in our society that's some small but well organized, vocal minorities can really have huge impacts. And I think hunters have to maintain a clean act. We have to prove that we are doing a service to society by being good conservationists, not just by reducing deer in Minneapolis and Phillies that are not on the airport runways and in the streets but managing and conserving species by making better habitat and and by by that behavior and really cleaning up our ranks or maintaining clean ranks, is how we preserve the right to hunt in America. It's not a god given right. We've got to fight for it and preserve it. And that's my number one fear, that we police our own ranks and take care of ourselves and promote this heritage of hunting. And I think that's that's such a great point. I'm glad you mentioned that. Lee. What about for you, what's what is your greatest concern? Yeah, I mean just what exactly what Grant said. But and again just um e h D here. So I see that a lot. Well I don't see the c w D, but I okay, so I know all about it, all about it, And that one really scares me, that, you know, because there it isn't like like a minature fly by and them like like the h D wing gets dry. But two have concerns. You know, they're talking about global warming and those kinds of things. And I don't know you know that committed any scientific proof cure. There's some scientists say there is, and there isn't what if there is. I just look at it like the weather patterns, because it was to get fire and dryer and just start, you know, taking out beer like that. Um that's my concerning right time, because that's what I see. I'm just what if what if we start if it's dry all the time, but um, you know there'll be any any beer left. But you know, I think we were always going to be able to find solutions the things if they if they really start are going down. I mean I think scientists people would come up with some solutions to that. But like Grant said, I think that the biggest thing is the people. Um uh, like you said, because that's U can always do things to help improve the habitat and stuff the deer, but you always can always do that for hunters. And I said, and just like you said, six percent of the population, You've got to make sure that you know, if we do any right to maintain this para chase, I know how much it's meant to me. Now I havn't a a young son and stuff, and you want to see im there's so many good things that come from it. Look at me all to my high school years and college years, other people maybe getting into drugs or drinking or anything like that. It always just kept between. I didn't really care about all that stuff at all. Was about hunting and and even and even just spending time with my with my family, with my uncle's and my my grandfa and my dad and things. You get such a you know, it seemed like not don't want everybody's so busy and both par working and bake its stuff, they feel them. But to me, the hunting thing at the time that you spend with your with your kids and family members and stuff. And you know, for me, when it wasn't that my dad was gonna beat me if I did wrong, it was more they would be disappointed in me. And you know, and I think the hunting part was it was where that closeness came between. It's like me and my dad and my brother and my grandpas and stuff like that, and it's like those of the times that we spent together the best, you know, the best times the most we spend the most time with them. And that's honestly, what's you know, you just want to be able to share that with your kids and things that they would just be devastating. I think for the whole country if you know that went away, because a lot of it's going away as it is, And that's I think the hunting is people in the hunting family. You see those kids and stuff out of their closeness that they have with their with their dad or their daughters or whatever, and I think it's I think it's a big help. I think we really eat that today. Yeah, so true, so true. I'm so glad that we're able to finish this conversation talking about things as important as getting our families and children out in the woods and you know, being positive representatives of the hunting community, because I think you know, as you guys both said, you know, all the tactics, all the great strategies, all the big deer in the world. That's a lot of fun. But if we can't actually, if we don't actually have the right and the privilege and the ability to get out and hunt and share these experiences with our family and friends, none of that matters. So I think this is a perfect place, perfect place to wrap it up. So Grant Lee, thank you both so much for taking the time to do this. It has been a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity absolutely, and with that I let you guys get back to your important tasks out in the woods. So good luck turkey hunting, food plotting and everything that's come upcoming season. Thank you. All Right, Well, that was a lot to digest, but very very interesting and if you want more of this kind of info, please be sure to check out Lee, Bill and Grant's own respective websites which can point to all the great things are up to right now, and I've linked to each of their websites on the blog post for this episode on wire dunt dot com. Now, before we wrap things up, though, as promised at the top, we are giving out some terrific prizes from our partners as a thank you to all of you for being a part of the wire dunk community and for joining us on this ride through one hundred podcasts. So first, here's what's up for grabs. Our friends is Sick of Gear will be giving away a full early season system that includes their Equinox jacket and pant, their core lightweight longsleeve shirt and bottoms, hangar gloves, and a sick of ball cap that is an awesome setup. Ozonics are partners at Ozons will be giving away one of their new dry washbags, which allows you to turn your Ozons machine into essentially an ozone washer closet for all of your gear. And a Kinetic backpack which is an all purpose hunting pack which also is designed specifically to allow you to use your Ozonics machine while you're traveling to and from your tree stand. Our friends at hunt Terra will be providing one of their are super comfy branded T shirts and a fifty dollar gift card to put towards your very own hunter A map, which is a pretty sweet little prize there that you will become quickly addicted to looking at. And our friends at Carbon Express we're providing a package of their Maxima Red Arrows. So again we've got a full early season system from Sit Up, We've got a dry washbag and a kinetic backpack from Mosonics. We've got a T shirt and fifty dollar gift card from Huntera, and we have a half dozen Carbon Express Maxima Red Arrows. Some pretty sweet prizes there, and you guys are well deserving of them because I appreciate, we appreciate what you guys have done and being a part of this community and tuning into this podcast every week. So We're going to do a random drawing to select who will win each of these prizes, but you'll need to do two easy things to be eligible for that drawing. First, you simply need to head over to the Wired to Hunt Facebook page, which you can find at facebook dot com slash wired Hunt, and find the post for this podcast episode. Leave a comment on that post telling us one thing you've enjoyed about the Wired Hunt podcast over the first one hundred episodes, and then share that post on your own timeline. And that's it. All you gotta do is go to our Facebook page, comment on our post for this podcast, and then share that podcast onto your own timeline, and that's it. You'll be eligible to be drawn as a winner. So with that said, to wrap this up, big thank you to all of our partners who have helped make this podcast possible. So thanks to Sick of Gear, Trophy, Ridge, Bear Archery, Redneck, Blinds, huntera, maps Ozonics, Carbon Express, Maven Optics in the White Tailed Institute of North America. And finally, thank you all for joining us. As I said earlier, it has been an absolute privilege and honor to be with you for these past one hundred episodes. So thank you again. Here's to a hundred more. Until next time, stay wired to hunt and the bird to distant

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