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. This is episode number two hundred and twenty two, and today on the podcast we're covering just about everything you need to know to hunt public land white tails. And helping us do that are eight of the best public land deer hunters from across the country. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Onyx. And today on the show, we're doing something a little bit different. So today I want to cover a wide swath of topics related to public land deer hunt. And I'm sure this isn't news to most of you, but as hunting access on private land becomes harder and harder to come by, more hunters returning to public land options, and because of that, the interest and demand for that kind of content keeps rising too. So because of that, over the last four years or so of the podcast, we've had a whole slew of different public land experts on the show to share their perspectives and strategies for these kinds of scenarios. But those conversations, they're scattered across dozens of episodes from way back in the archives, and it kind of makes it hard to find and utilize that stuff, especially if you're new to the podcast or to deer Hunt. So I got to thinking about this a little while back because I'm in the midst of planning a couple of public land whitetail hunts myself for this season. One is in Montana and the other in Minnesota, and I was actually wanting to go back and review some of the ideas that have been shared in past episodes, but I quickly realized that is easier said than done, so I decided to do something about it, and that is what we've got here today. I've gone through all of our podcasts archives to find the best public gland hunting tactics and advice, and then pull out the best segments of those conversations for us to review together here today in this one single episode. So I think that if you're an avid public land deer hunter, this should be a great review, and if you're just getting started, this is going to be the perfect launching point. So here in a minute, we're gonna hear from folks like Tony Peterson, Bernie Barringer, John Eberhart, Tyler right now, Andy may Aaron Warburton, Eddie Claypool, Todd Mead and more. And then along the way, I will also be chiming in with a few thoughts of my own too. So, like I said, this is a new idea. I don't know if this kind of review podcast is going to work or not, So you guys are just gonna let me know. I'll be curious here your feedback. I do think the hearing from all of these different people on all sorts of public land deer hunting topics all in one place, back to back to back, I do think it's going to be something that really helps drive home certain lessons or ideas. So I'm really hopeful this can be helpful to a lot of you. But we will see. So what that said, Before we get to it, let's take a very quick break to thank our partners at White Tailed Properties for their continued support of the Wired to Hunt podcast, and today producer Spencer new Hearth is chatting with land specialist Neil Hagger about the dream that many of us public land hunters have, which is someday maybe actually owning a little piece of dirt on our own. This week with White Tailed Properties, we are joined by Neil Hagger, a land specialist out of Wisconsin, and Neil is going to be talking to us about what buyers should look for when they want to put food plots on a property that doesn't currently have any. Well, I always like to try to add food plots in areas that are kind of a natural line of travel. So let me speak to my own experience of my own place. Um, I'm in big woods and there are no food plots and there are are no agricultural fields for miles. So my limitations were that I only have so many places I can put them. That was the first limitation of where can I put them? Where is it flatten? Whar is it dry enough? Um? But what I tried to do on my own place is I try to design with line of travel for the animals in mind, and also approach so my own line of travel, and from my point of it, my side of it, I try to approach my foot plots in a perpendicular manner, meaning kind of have a ninety degree angle, so that I have I minimized the opportunity to cross paths with the animals as they're moving on their natural travel lines, if that makes sense. So, uh, cover bedding cover to food to maybe more bedding cover, and I put my food in the middle and then I try to approach it at a ninety three angle, so there's one point of contact on that line, if that makes sense. If you'd like to learn more and to see the properties that Neil currently has listed for sale, visit white tail properties dot com. Backslash Hogger. It's h A U G E R Okay. So when it comes to chasing white tails on public land, I think the very first thing we need to talk about is the mental side of things, that being, you know, our expectations and our goals and our mindset, because if you don't have that kind of stuff figured out right out the gate, all the tactics and secret spots in the world, they're not going to do you any good at all. You see the reality of public land deer hunting in most cases, it's very different than the deer hunting you see on TV or in magazines or on websites. And if you're not mentally prepared for this from the get go, you could be setting yourself up for a lot of disappointment public landeer on it. It It is a serious challenge, so you need to go into it with realistic expectations and goals based on that challenge, and you need to be mentally prepared for the obstacles that are certainly going to be appearing in your way. Now, over the years, I've chatted with a lot of great deer hunters about these topics, and two in particular touched on this mental aspect in relation to public land. So first we're gonna hear from Tony Peterson, who's an outdoor writer for magazines such as bow Hunter Magazine and North American White Tail who specializes in public land deer hunts. Here he is talking about the importance of reasonable goals there. And I really think one of the reasons that we shed hunter numbers is I run into a lot of a lot of let's say, kind of eighteen to twenty five year old crowd that comes in and they're they're setting their sights on you know, plus box every year, and they're not they're not able to do it because that's so difficult, and they become frustrated with the process. And we've in in some ways we're kind of skipping that natural progression of the hunter where everybody used to start out, you know, hunting squirrels with the twenty two and maybe moving up to rabbits and maybe pheasants and turkeys and then deer, and you were happy with whatever dear you shot first. And we're a lot of people are starting out with expectations that are just, you know, to me, kind of insane um and I think you know, and I'm I'm part of that problem too. I mean I worked for these magazines and these TV shows where we present this this false reality out there where if you look at you know, what the average what the average person kills with a bow per year. I mean it's like, you know, anybody that's out there killing a hundred and fifteen inch bucks every year, I don't care if you're in Iowa or Michigan or Pennsylvania, South Carolina or wherever. If you're killing a buck like that, you're doing something better than most people out there. And you bump it right up and go, okay, how about which is a great deer. If anybody's out there consistently killing those deer, even in the good States, they're really doing something right, And like you said, most people with their with their goals. I tell people all the time, just hunt for what makes you happy. Nobody else cares what you kill. There's like three people in your life that actually care what size of a buck you kill. The rest of them really don't. So if that deer walks in and you'd be stoked to shoot it, just shoot it. Who cares what everybody else thinks and solve that up. We've got another writer and E I Y specialist, Eddie Claypool, who had some great advice to share on the mental side of these types of hunts. And then also the importance of your attitude, and like Tony just said, the importance of having fun. That's what we're talking about here, is how to get some means together and go do it. Have fun, don't forget fun. You know, even when you go do it on your own, you can get in that binge of trying to be so successful that you put too much pressure on yourself. And that's one of my greatest problems. I I slow. I'm kind of like a you know, an addict there. I have a problem. I don't watch myself. I'll fall off the fence, you know, and on, and I get on that side of wanting to put pressure on myself, you know, and I just have to stop and have a complete change of heart, mind and approach and start over. And that's happened many times in my days, and I you know, I'm I'm done my best to stay on the bandwagon of have fun, because whether you're under pressure, whether your anals, or whether you're just having fun, it's not really going to change what goes on in the fields. A matter of fact, I think people do worse when they're under pressure, you know what I mean. You know, So it's all about bow hunting for white tails in a fall setting, doing it on your own, learning from the good and the bad of the trip, and you know, and trying to get better at it, and just having fun. Yeah. I definitely find myself in a similar camp as you, and that I'm so so passionate about it, so invested in it, that I put so much pressure on myself. And to your point, you know, I'll be out there and I'm getting angry at myself with the situation and frustrated, and then all of a sudden, you have those moments. Hopefully you have a moment where like, what are you doing? Like, yeah, this is supposed to be fun. Why are you doing all this if you're just going to be miserable the whole time? So it's exactly and to your point, I really do think that when you flip that mindset, when you're able to catch yourself and keep that positive attitude, that's when you end up being the most ready for the moment. That's when you're the most you know, prepared and emotionally and physically capable of pulling off a successful hunt or seeing that you're and getting a good shot or whatever it might be. So really, your mindset can have such an influence on how an actual hunt plays out. Well, just take that to sports. I mean, when you're in a good mindset and you get on the field and you feel in control and happy and you know everything's going well, you're gonna perform at a superior level. Versus if you go out there browbeaten one day some guy just knocked the fire out of you and you're like, WHOA, you know, I feel like a little insignificant punk out here. You know you're not going to perform well, or maybe you know that you hate you just had a fight to white that you know you're not gonna play ball was good that day. So it's like that one hunting, it's you know, go out there and forget the TV hype and forget all of the industry hype, and go out there and perform at a personal, private level. You'll be you'll be satisfied whatever the results stand. You know. And here's Tony again with just a little bit more of the same. We talk about a lot of different things with bow hunting, but every one of us has that buddy that's like gets really down really quick. You know, he's not a he's not a then master at all. You know, if you're if your attitude starts to tank with running into people, you're gonna hunt like you've never done it in your life, and it's gonna get worse. And so you just got to learn to accept that and move on quickly because people are going to screw up your hunts and you know, somewhere along the line, you're gonna bumble into some dude set up to you know, you're gonna be that guy. So it just happens. Yeah, I gotta believe that's probably like you said, that's that's got to be one of the very most important things when you're hunting this type of situation is just going into with the right attitude and knowing that you're gonna have to adjust and make the best of it, because, like you said, if you you know, if your mindset is gone, if you lose confidence and lose your focus, you know you're your your odds success are are really dramatically plumbing. Just based on that becomes a filling prophecy. So once we've got our mindset in order, the next thing we need to do in planning a public land deer hunt is to figure out where to go. And this really is the crux of a lot of public land hunts because you know, finding the right area and the right property, and then eventually even just the right spot on that property, this can make or break your experience. And there's a lot to cover here too. Many of the best public land deer hunts we've talked to, they all have kind of a specific process for how they find these spots. So we're gonna hear from a bunch of different guys on this topic, and you're gonna hear a few of these ideas over and over, but I'm specifically including all of that, because I think the repetition from each of these experts is really going to help drill home the message on this, So be sure to keep your ears open for those consistencies. That said. Tyler right now is a friend of mine from Michigan who's probably best known from his work with Antler Geeks and other outdoor writing and videography, and he here has some helpful high level input on how he gets this process started for himself. Most of what we do, a lot of times, the only scouting we do before we show up, it's it's all on the computer. Um. You know, there's so many assets now, and you know with all this, you know all the state you know, game game divisions, Um, you know they they all have the public lands listed on you know, on their their government website for the most part, um, so you can get an idea right there if kind of where they're located. Um, you know the acreage. Um. I guess the biggest things we look for when you're just looking for a piece of ground initially is you know, we try to stay at least an hour away from any you know, major city center. Um. That's just a lot of times you end up you know, in a little dinky town, in a sleezy hotel somewhere. But um, you get away from the town and uh, you know there's a lot less, a lot less people there. Um. That's the the you know, the big thing I guess initially, um, and then just picking them apart, you know, I mean looking for the same types of things that you would look for on you know, really any piece of ground, um, pinch points that are leading in, you know, in and out of the public stuff. It's on the borders. And looking outside of the public land too, is that you know, a big piece of it. You know, I can't just look at that one chunk you know, maybe a chunk of timber that's two thousand acres and there may not be a single stitch a crop on it. But if you can find where there's crops right on the border in certain places, you know, especially early season, late season, UM, it gives you an idea where you can you know, you can at least get close to those deer that are on feeding patterns. Um. You know. As far as states go and regions of the state and stuff like that. Um, there's always those famed counties. UM, you know, I guess in really every big buck state, and I try to avoid them. Um. You know, if coming from Michigan, all of Kansas is better than it is better than home. All of Iowa, for the most part, is better than home. Um. You know, sure there's certain little pockets and little regions of those states that are you know, the absolute you know best to the best. You know what, they killed the most booners, they kill the most. You know, there's the most come out of that country. Whatever. Um, I'm happy with shooting hundred and forty public ground. Um. You know, in a lot of times that next county over that nobody ever says anything about is just as good. Really, So don't I guess, don't take some of that stuff to heart too much, and don't be afraid to venture out away from those well known areas. A little bit moving on, here's Tony again and giving his thoughts on the process he takes to find public land. It depends if I'm looking for I live just north of the Twin Cities, so if I'm looking for a place around here to hunt, my process will be a little bit different than. Let's just say, last night, for example, I couldn't sleep because I kept thinking about some of these walking areas in South Dakota. I started hunting last year and so you know, I snuck out of the bedroom and started looking on my at aerial photos at midnight last night, looking up just some of the public land there and and for me, the biggest part of the process, especially if I'm looking for an odd of state hunt, um, which I do a lot, is just that time on the aerial photos. UM. I know. I know some people like to go on the internet forums and stuff and you know, hey, any good places in southwestern Oklahoma or something like that, But you know that information is just not vetted. And I'm not saying you can't get good information that way. But for me, I pick a state I want to hunt, and I'll just let's let's just use like Nebraska's example. I love Nebraska. I'll say I want to go to Nebraska and hunt the rut. The first thing I'm gonna do is figure out where the big cities are in Nebraska. Now, there really aren't very many. There's only a couple and they're on the east side of the state. So I'm gonna look for a place in the state that has no people. I want to get away from people because hunting pressure. Anybody that hunts public land knows hunting pressure is just like your number one enemy, no matter what to me, it Trump's everything that Trump's was, or Trump's season timing anything, And so I just want to start looking in an area where they're just probably won't be very many people. And then once I started identifying some public land places there, then I get on the aerial photos and really dig in and look and see whether those specific parcels have something that offers a white tail hunter kind of how I start celabrate on that last piece for us, Um, what are you looking for when you're on the aerial What does quality public land, terrain or property look like for you from an aerial view? Uh? First off, the first thing I'm gonna look at is access. If it's got a whole bunch of you know, walking trails or logging roads, or if it if it looks like it's really easy to access, I'll skip it. But if I find a place that you know, maybe has one access point or two access points, um, that then I'll start digging in. And then I'm looking for with white tails. One of the first things that I always look for a lot of people go and look for food sources. They look for those egg fields or you know, some kind of food source on there. But for me, I look for water. Um. I my my absolute favorite type of of white tail spot to hunt is something with with moving water in it. I just love creek streams, rivers something like that. I know, if I find moving water, I'll find probably pretty decent white tail cover. I'll be able to find a crossing somehow, whether I can actually see the low spots on the river in the aerial photos. I mean this aerial photography, the satellite photography. Now you can actually zoom in and see rocks sticking out of the water and tell which way the river's flowing, tell how shallow it is. Um It's just amazing. But for me, that's what I start with. I want I want some kind of moving water to start with. And so you're looking at that moving water as something that's going to be a tool sort of for you. So you know that you can will be able to know some things right out the gate because of the fact that you know the deer will relate to that moving water in some certain way or what you mentioned cross it and I imagine maybe you use that type of thing. For access in and out of the property too, maybe, oh absolutely, access is huge, covers your noise. You're usually below the banks. Uh. You know, provided it's not too big of a river. Um, you can wade most of them. But there are a couple other things. If I have to cross a river to hunt the other side for some reason, I can leave my competition behind because they won't do it. Um. Just it's the same thing like climbing a great big hill or a block. I'll look for that too. But with the rivers, especially if you get on bigger chunks of federal land, there'll be a lot of public grazing on their cattle grazing, and so there's only going to be so many places with decent cover that white tails like. Now this is this would be different if I were looking for meal deer, antelope or something, obviously, but for white tails, you want the best tickets cover you can find. Most of the time. That's that's right next to the rivers of the creeks. Um. You know, it might be only just you know, patches of the cotton woods or something, but it will be better than the surrounding area. And so you know that you know that probably white tails there. There's usually agriculture pretty close to those rivers, you know, the watersheds. There's usually the right stuff there. And on top of that, because rivers are low, you can use them like use them for access, like you said, but there's also a lot of times a lot of really good pinch points and funnels along rivers because the bends, and it's just it's just a great starting point most of the time. This whole idea that Tony brings up about using water when trying to find a good place on public land or when trying to hunt a good piece of public land, it makes a whole lot of sense, and it is something that I've actually used in my own hunts as well. For example, on my Montana public land hunts have taken in the past the last couple of years, I've used rivers to access hunting locations, and this coming year on my Minnesota hunt will be using rivers and lakes actually get too hard to reach portions of this public land to get after some of those deer that maybe haven't been bothered by other hunters. So makes a lot of sense. It's a great idea. Now moving forward, Bernie Berenger is our next guest. He's another one of those public land specialists, and he's the author of The Freelance bow Hunter, and he actually talks about this process of finding quality public land. He talks about this in his book The Freelance bow Hunter, and he talked about it on one of our very first podcast episodes ever. So here's what he had to say in that early conversation. Yeah, I think that's probably the part that people seem to like the most about the book is the process to explain how to go through the You know, you're starting wide, you haven't even decided what states you're going to go through, and you're getting down and you're you're working it down from that broad approach all the way down to the exact tree you're going to hang your stand into in some states somewhere in a piece of property. Well, how do you get from point eight to point b um? Is pretty important process. And uh, I really think that the key to it is being able to do the research. And when I first started doing this, there was absolutely nothing compared to what there is today as far as research tools. You know, um, your website, my website, bow Hunting Road dot com has a lot of resources. This book has sixty pages of information about which states are the good states and what parts of the states produced the biggest books and and so forth. Yeah, and um, there's so much information out so you can get on Google Earth. You know, I've killed gear in places that I found on Google Earth. And um, so you know, if you start wide and you decide, okay, you know how much of the tag costs, how how do I get a tag? Um over the counter states? And then I go through this process and pretty good detail in the book. And you know, if if you want to hunt in Iowa, it's gonna take you at least three years to draw a tag. You have to have at least two preference points and possibly three in some of his own So, um, you're not just gonna go to Iowa this fall. Um you could go to uh, Missouri or North Dakota or Kentucky or some of these good quality states that have over the counter tags. So you got to decide which states you're gonna go to first, and then um, you're gonna look at what public land is available in the state, how much pressure it gets, and and then you know, once you've decided whish piece of property you're going to go to. Then then you're actually looking for the spots. And you can do a lot of that online too, you know. You know, like I said, with Google Earth, you can see potential deer travel corridors. Um. Today's the forums today. You know, you can go on there and it's amazing. I I've put stuff on a forum and said, hey, I'm I'm going to this part of the state. As anybody hunt there can I can I get a piece of advice, And I mean I had a guy actually, um that offered to drive me around and show me some spots and uh so, you know, the forums are a great place to mind information. So a lot of that can be done before you ever leave home. And here's Eddie Claypool again with his take. I can't pay you now if I would suggest anywhere other than just pick a state close to you. If not, if you're not gonna if you're looking to travel, if you're at home, you already know what you're dealing with. But if you're wanting to go out of state, as I have so much over my life, just pick any of the common sense states and have white tails. And then if you do your homework ferret out. You know the hidden public places, and all states have numerous low profile hidden public lands. Um I have hunted some little patches of public and Kansas and different states that were acres, little spots that don't even show up on the radar and taking good bucks off them with very little people around. Um So you know where if we address the topical where that's just a total personal preference because you can hunt them in any type of habitat, from the northwest of the United States to the east, to the south to the north work just um I just leave that deep individual will make his own decisions on where he wants to go because other than going to Iowa or some of these premium spots, and you know whether outfitting and everything is so prevalent where they grow the big deer other than those which go without saying and going on a guided hunt. If you've averaged, Joe, just whatever tickles your fancy is my description of where to go. And then once Eddie picks the state, here's what it is next. Well, I'll tell you there's almost an endless amount of having theres a guy can pursue on that game, and fish is a starting place, you know, to see what they have shown on their hunting ratlasses and on their walk in programs. And you know, ever state has numerous countless names for the different types of land they have accessible. Some of it will be public, some of it will be private. You know, they have you know, access yes, programs and whatever you want to call them for pub private land hunting. So you've got to dig through the game and fish and dig deep. I mean, you've got to go through each link and to the next link and look and you'll find what you can find. Then. You know, a lot of times, a lot of the ones I've found that are off some map are little low pockets that are you know, uh, county park type things or around impoundments. There will be little public areas that don't show up on game and fish radar. There are more of a local level thing. Uh, You've got to dig deep. You know. Sometimes I haven't found my gems until I actually got into an area and I actually started physically hunting it. I didn't even know they were their pre pre trip um. You know, it's a lot to be said for being local. We know how the locals all over the grounds like the back of their hand. But you know, if you pick a good area and go there and become semi vocal to it over a period of time, you're you're gonna find some hidden gems that will be there. So there's all is that unforeseen blessing that you'll get from picking in an area and going there for a year. Um, and I'm the world's worst about you know, spending maybe three trips in a year ago to the spot. I'll use it going the debt of winner. Uh, take a long weekend and take two or three to four days and travel to a spot and camp in it in the winter and learn it and scout it. Do my reconnaissance. Uh. It's invaluable if you've already got a piece of dirt to hunt on, to go and look at it in the debt of winter. For the scouting, you know, is so great that time of year. All the rutt sign is there, the people who are gone, and you can really do some power scouting in the winter. But you also just get familiar with the people of the country and you'll start picking up these little hidden gems. It will be there. You know, people talk and all this stuff is you know, the localist guard. It pretty carefully usually, and unless you're there and giving yourself a chance to you know, to be in the frying pan, you may not build of research at ahead of time. There are plenty of places to research, and you know, you might need to pick a larger, more higher profile area from you know, off the Internet or game and Fish or local websites and go and start it, and then you can get into finding these other little spots of your own. To follow that up. We're gonna hear from Todd Meat, a public land hunter from New York who's also the author of several books, and he shared his process as well. I do a lot of research, um. And another thing is I have a pretty big network of people across the country. Um. You know, I shot competitive archery for thirty years and I've met a lot of people across the country. So that usually gives me a relatively safe area to start. Like if I know somebody that lives say, I know somebody lives in Michigan or whatever, and I say, well, how's the hunting near you? And then we talked a little bit and I'm like, well, if I was coming out there hunting, where do you think a good area of the state would be to go and you know, they give me their opinion. Then I'll go online, I'll look at it, and uh I'll start looking around a little bit, and then I'll I'll search different hunting forums to see if anybody talks about those places in uh. I guess you'd call me a stalker. I don't. I don't say anything. I just read all this stuff, okay. And then if I say, I go like online on a forum and I find somebody I'm looking at it and I'm like, oh, like, actually, I've hunted Colorado the same same place for years in elk hunting, and uh so then this year I was looking at a different area. I just wanted to explore a little bit, and I'm like, holy kyl, there was a guy that's signed on right there in his hometown is the same exact place I'm going. So I just sent the guy, you know, I said, hey, you know i've hunted out there since and I'm coming out. Do you know anything about this area? I mean, it's just a generic random, you know, question or whatever. And you'd be amazed at how people help you. And as long as I'm not infringing on him, like he's gonna give me information, and uh like, I get a lot of information that way, and Okay, for every ten times you do it, you're probably gonna strike out eight times, but then you might just hit that one person that could really help you. And then I'll also go through like every almost every state has on their website they have conservation areas. Um I click on almost every single conservation area and I study everyone and I write down what it has that I like, and then if I find enough the stuff that I like in it that I I set it aside. I'm like, okay, this one has to get looked at further. So then I'll go down and then I'll come up with say thirty or forty of them, and then I'll just keep on narrowing it down until I find the place I want. So then when I decide where I'm gonna go, I have my place I'm going, but I have no idea how many people are gonna be there, So I'm like crossing my finger, it's not gonna be overwhelmed with people. So when I get there, I have a plan. I'm gonna I'm gonna look at this place, that place, in that place. And I'm usually with my father and neither one or two of my friends. So there's like four of us that travel together. So each of us bites a chunk off and we all go in our own directions, and then we come back and we decide it's worth hunting or it's not worth hunting, And if it's a maybe, then we'll we'll give it another you know, a couple more days or whatever. But if it's a no, then I go to my next place on there, even if it's a three hour drive away. Okay, we're going to the next place, and I won't waste time in some place once I get there that it it doesn't show what I wanted to show. And so I don't get sucked into some place that I shouldn't be. And uh, I think that's a secret. You just you have to be willing to move, and you have to be willing to blow a week or two of your vacation. If I come home with nothing, I don't care because I come home with nothing before. And if I come home with nothing, then it's it's a bad trip if I didn't learn anything. But if I learned something that I'm probably going to capitalize on that. And then in the next trip, so I want to I want to take a jump back to something, and then I want to talk a little bit more about those first couple of days of your hunt. But first you said that you're looking at all these pieces of public lan like you know, you find it on the state website and sounds like you're looking at maps and stuff. And you mentioned that you're looking for certain good things in these properties, and if the property has enough of the good things, then you're gonna focus on that. What are the things you're looking for? What are those good things that you're trying to key in on to tell you that this property could have potential. One thing that I look for is I'm from the Adirondex, So I'm looking for pieces of land to have a lot of timber on it, which you know, of course sometimes that's hard to find in the Midwest. Uh. Number one, I know if I find timber, it's going to keep a lot of people out of it, because people are afraid of the woods, uh, no matter how big they are. So if I can find acreage that's you know, anything above like a thousand acres of wooded area, then I'll definitely circle that, Like this is a place I need to go because a thousand acres it might not seem much. But if you're in a thousand acres of woods and you've never really hunted woods, you've hunted field edges, stuff like that, it can be really intimidating for the average guy. So I look for that, and I look for places I can access only by boat. So if I can only get there with a boat, then I'm almost sure it's going to be good. So you know, I I do that, whether it's a river, a lake, a stream like whatever it is, So those two things out of the way. UM. I also look for areas that either are closed to hunting. UM. It might be a place around there that has there's no hunting allowed. It might be owned by like a government agency. UM might be owned by say like a church group and they own a big piece of land and there's no hunting allowed on it. Because then I know there's no hunting allowed on it, so it works as a sanctuary for deer on the public land, and that's where they're gonna go. Yeah. Um, I look at plat maps to see who owns the land around it, and then I'll research that online. I'll be that silent stalker again in some places. I one place that I found was really good because I knew that this person hunted on their own land and they were a presence in social media, and I'm like, I just found your land and uh, and it bordered public land, and and I had read where they had killed like a hundred ninety engineer on it. I'm like, there's no way that deer wasn't living on that public land. So I mean, you have to It goes to the whole thing about you have to be a little more motivated than everybody else. And that's kind of what has led to me being successful, I think. Alright, so we've heard a lot now about how to find quality public hunting locations, and our next guest, Aaron Warwarden of the Hunting Public, He's going to help us shift from that topic towards the next one, which is not only how do you pick a good property, but then that next step, which is how do you begin the scouting process? How do you do additional research to learn everything you need to know about that area? And Aaron and his hunting partners, they spend a tremendous amount of time on this thing, scouting the properties. They hunt and in particular, they are looking for buck betting areas in many cases. And if you want to hear more about that aspect of Aaron scouting, you should definitely check out the full episode we did with him, which is episode one. But here's a brief intro to his scouting process and how he begins narrowing things down on a piece of ground. So the first thing you do is lay out the public map the area, and then you start becausing out where all the access points are. Um, start looking at where the pressure is. So you're looking for boot tracks, you're walking those access trails, You're you're looking for you know, tape in in the tree, marking, um acts. Anything that's gonna mean mean hunters is what you want to stay away from for the most part. UM. So you you're taking that map and you're crossing off a lot of it, but you can't um kind I put this. You've you've got to keep an open mind when it comes to every inch of that public piece. So if it's a couple of thousand acres in size and you cross off a lot of the access points and the area is most likely to harbord hunters, then you still end up with quite a bit of land that may be untouched in a mature buck. The interesting thing with the them is they will go wherever they don't ever encounter humans. I mean sometimes you'd be surprised. It may only be thirty yards off of gravel Road because nobody goes there, and they have that wind advantage on a specific day or whatever, like, they may well bed there and and spend a lot of time right there. So and that's really that's kind of how the buck nest is that area gets haunted. A lot of people think when they watch the buck nest video that that area doesn't get a ton of hunting pressure, but it's actually the opposite. If you watch the second video in that video Blox series, you'll see hunters walk runderneath stand um that night when they're headed out. But uh, there's tons of hunting pressure on that piece. It's just one little small out of the way area that those bucks bed in, and there's a couple other ones like that on that public area as well. So the I guess the point there is is don't overlook. Don't overlook anything. Really, was there anything that you saw when you're looking at this property? Like before you set foot on it, Like when you looked at on a map and we're looking for these pieces of public land, and when you saw this, did you say, well, okay, it's a couple thousand acres, is definitely worth taking a look at? Or was there something else's that that made you say, yeah, this is a good one. What I'm I guess the larger question I'm getting at is is there anything I can look at digitally beforehand to say yes, this has potential or no, this is not worth spending time on. Yeah, I should get more specificate than that. Like you've mentioned, Um, if you if you take that piece and you and you look for the edges of it, you look for the areas that are hard to access. Then you look for the overlooked spots. You you kind of measure up each area to the next one. So the spots that we avoid are those chunks that are accessible from all sides. We don't and we don't I wouldn't say we necessarily avoid, and we just don't prioritize them as high as some of the other areas. You know, if there's an area where you can only access from one side of it, it's a huge block. You know it's gonna take some serious leg work to get to the back of it. Then then those are the ones that we're spending the most time on. You know, those back corners. A lot of times up the boundary lines are are good. The ones that required you to to you know, cross the creek or whatever. We're always looking for access barriers, you know, are areas that are harder to get into. But with that said, a lot of times those than anymore. It seems like people are are getting braver and they're going back there that far. Well, they may walk right past the spot right next to the parking lot that's pretty dead gum good, and we do we do see that. So I think sometimes people try to think too big whenever they look at those big public areas and they look for they try to find the biggest public area possible and then look for the farthest back corner of that big area. And we do the same. But don't overlook these little thirty and forty acre chunks that have one access point where you can monitor hunting pressure. If you drive by that thing a couple of nights a week and you don't see a truck park there at that access point, there's probably a couple of good buck betting areas on that piece. And and the one advantage those little those little areas like that is that they a lot of times they have private land around it may not get hunted. It's hard, so it doesn't take much. Um. Obviously, it doesn't take much hunting pressure on those little areas to push them off, but it also doesn't take much of an absence in hunting pressure to bring him back on. Does that make sense? Yeah? Absolutely. Throwing it back now to Tony, He's going to go into more specifics on how he scouts a spot. Um, if I'm close to home, it looks like I'm walking every inch I can, because that's what I try to do. And you know, I'm looking for the typical winter scouting stuff, of course, you know, the old scrapes and rubs, rubs most I really like rubs, um, But most of the time I'm halfway looking for hunter sign. If I go into a property and I see, you know, the trees are trimmed up or their stands left there, there's litter all over or something, and I just can't get away from the the obvious sign of hunters, I'm probably gonna write that off and look for somewhere else. Um when I travel out of state. I'm starting to do this more where I'll go on a turkey hunt somewhere and scout out new properties while i'm turkey hunting. In fact, you know, in on April one, I'm heading out to South Dakota to turkey hunt some walk in areas that I hunted last fall, and I just want to check out some more ground. And now a little later, I'm going down to Missouri, northern Missouri to hunt public land for turkeys, and I'm gonna scout that out for deer too, And that's a good way to get familiar with the area without having the pressure of killing a big buck. Um. But if you can't do that, that's one of the most important things about this process. If you if you know, if you're gonna make a go at it and decide you're gonna hunt public and especially if you want to do one of these out of state trips with your bodies, if you have any way to build in a day or two or three to scout, just glass, just walk and figure out if you're your pre hunt research was correct. That is so valuable compared to showing up and having to hunt from day one. And I think one of the reasons that I've had quite a bit of success public land hunting is because before I had kids, I used to just leave for like four days, five days ahead of the hunt and just tell my wife, I'll be home when I'm going to be home, and I would scout NonStop for four days before I started hunting. And you got to I got to glass all those river bottoms and walk them all and figure out if if you're were moving there or not. And that information without having the pressure carrying your boat is just so valuable. When you start hunting, you just you just solidify all your beliefs or you know, if what you thought was gonna be awesome turns out to be bunk, you've got time to move on to the next one, figure it out. And scouting, scouting that way is is just ridiculously valuable. It's more valuable than hunting in a lot of situations. So so here's a key consistency that I think we just heard here from Tony and Adam. It was this importance of scouting for sign of other hunters. It seems that this is just as important if not more important in many cases than actually looking for deer signs. So that's the key thing I think that we should take note of that. A few people have already mentioned. We're probably gonna hear about it here again too, but continually on. Here's another friend of mine and a deer hunting savant, Andy made, and he has some similarly helpful public land scouting tips. I'm definitely a map freak. UM. I have you know, uh binders of each state with the properties that I hunt, the properties that I plan on hunting, and the backup properties you know, public, you know, private, that sort of thing. And I have you know, the aerials and that I have, um, the the topo maps and all that stuff, and I do I really zone in on that. But for me personally, I can find out the obvious stuff, like the stuff that probably everyone in this room can find, which is what your your typical funnels um. You know, you somebody, it's very easy to to see like river crossings, UM. Now with like Google maps and stuff, you can zone and you can actually find deer trails um, you know, and see where there's a lot of intersecting trails um, you know, betting areas you know, and depending on the type of habitat, very easy to see and predict UM. So what I find more for me personally, I get I get more UM detail with boots on the ground. So I always try to and it helps because these states aren't terribly far from me. Montana would be hard to do this UM. But I like to get out there in the spring, early spring, you know, after the snow melt, but before green up, especially if I'm planning like a rut, a pre rut rut trip late October, you know, early November, maybe that second week in November. That's when that sign is really visible. You know. You can see the rubes, you can see the scrapes, you can see the trails. Everything is you know, was just made a few months ago. You can really dial in and see where kind of everything comes together and really pick out those high percentage spots. So for me, boots on the ground is as as a kind of a necessity, and to be honest with you, for me, that's like just part of the enjoyment of it. I like that as much. I like trying to scout and figure out dear and going on these adventures in brand new areas where I don't even know what's their success or not. I actually enjoy that maybe more than actually getting getting a buck on the ground, you know what I mean. I just I've really come I've just become addicted to that constant stimulation of new you know. Put me in an unfamiliar area with the bow in my hand and the wind in my face, and it's like, following that up, we're gonna do kind of a rapid fire jump with three guys here sharing their scouting techniques, so Bernie Barringer. Then we're here from TI right now, and then ton of meat and then of course once you're on the property, then that's that's the real key to find in the right spot. And you're gonna hunt differently than you would if you own a piece of property, you had permission on a piece of property. UM. I call it hunting aggressively. And that's a really important key to what makes this this all work. Because you know, if you had, say a couple hundred acres of ground that you hunt, um, you'd probably have a couple of betting areas there that you would never go into. You might have a sanctuary that you really avoid at all costs. And and if you would know where the deer tend to feed and where they tend to travel, and where the food sources are. But if you go to a new piece of property, you gotta start from scratch, and you're gonna walk right through those betting areas and bust the deer out. And you hate doing it, but it's part of You have to do it because you need to know where they are. And um, you know you you can learn the travel corridors by looking at trails and following tracks and looking at scrapes and rubs, and you know you really have to. You have to get out on the ground and and learn the property to The temptation is when you first get there is to just here's a good looking spot, put up a tree stand, get in it. But that's not necessarily the best way to hunt because you don't have the confidence that it takes. If you're in a run. Huh, you might want to sit in the stand all day. Um, you want to have confidence that you're in the right spot before you ever get in there, because you're gonna be second guesting yourself all the time if you don't. And you so you've got you've got to know what's over the next hill and that way you have confidence when you do get in the stand that you're in the right spot. So those are all pretty important keys to it. It's it all depends, you know, I guess sometimes if we're close enough and we can you know, it's reasonable the drive there in the preseason, we can, Um, you know, where are we going? Kansas is you know, eighteen hours away, so it's it's tough to you know to make that kind of a drive, you know, in the in the summer. Just the amount of time that it takes you to get out there and get back. Um, there's usually just too much going on, you know, with life to to be able to carve out that kind of a time time frame to get out there and scout. Um. You know, we went to North Dakota a few years ago and never set foot on anything until we got there. It was just all you know on the computer beforehand, because that was a you know, twenty some hour drive closer play you know, Indiana. Um, like I said, I went down there last winter ship hunting just for a day at least to get a you know a little bit of an idea of what it was like because it's close enough drive and you know, Ohio, you know, we've we've spent a fair you know, a fair number of days back and forth from there, you know, scouting different places. So and it just all depends, I guess on location. So can you can you elaborate Tyler for us on exactly in these instances where you do actually go in person to scout, whether that be you know, in the spring or summer, or maybe you show up at the property in the fall and you you want to do some scouting before actually hunting. Can you walk us through what that scouting looks like? You know, what are the things you were looking for? What do you try to identify? What are you trying to learn? Well, aside from you know, what you look for really on on any piece of ground, UM, the big things we look for is you know where the parking areas are. UM. A lot of these public land areas have maybe your mountain biking trails or equestrian trails or some other you know, type of trail system where hunters can use those to access you know, and get farther back in a lot easier. UM. And you can do it from home a lot of times, you know, even if you can get ahold of you know, the little office is a lot of times at the piece of public ground or the spate forest or whatever it is. Um, they'll have little brochures and stuff a lot of times at the facility that have those trails on them, and they're hard to find online, but if you call them up, they'll send you one those brochures you can study in the off season. And I'll actually go through make a map on Google Earth one side, you know, committed to a property, and I'll put all those trails in, and I'll put all those partning areas in, and then you kind of you know, make a radius of where other people are gonna go. And then you find those little pockets there, you know, that are too far away, um you know, or maybe there's some type of terrain feature, you know, a river or you know some really really steep stuff that most guys aren't going to go you know past um and find those little pockets that are a lot of times and not haunted at all. Uh. You know, there's if you find a big enough piece of public ground or even though just the right one that's got those kind of land barriers, um, you know, you can you can essentially have private ground stuff that's hardly ever hunted because nobody wants to go that far. We we probably piss off a lot of people because we're kind of like wild Banshee Indians. Uh. We will walk through every single bit of the property, like I'll cover every single bit of it. I mean, I'll want, I'll zigzag, I'll do everything. And I'm sure people get piste because it's in November. You're on public land, people are on their vacation, and I'm walking all through the woods and we all do the same thing. And what we do is we walk in the first day, We'll try to determine where do we want to go, like where do we want to start on the next day, and then like I'll either market with my gps um like okay, I'll mark the way point and then I'll have it right there and like this will be number one, number two or whatever. And then the next day I'll go back there. We'll all go back to wherever we found and we'll hunt there in the morning and then we'll see what happens in the morning. We'll meet in the afternoon and then we'll come up with another game plan and like say you're hunting on like a you know, public area that's four thousand acres or something, and it's it's on a bunch of different roads. We'll all go to a different road and we'll all do our thing, and then we'll come back and we'll discuss it, and then we'll make a plan from there. So, after listening to all these guys talking about scouting, you know, these are some of the very best public land deer hunters out there, There's one thing that stands out to me above all else, and it is just the absolute, above all importance of scouting. This just can't be emphasized enough. And I think in a public land scenarire like this is probably even more important than on private ground. I mean, as you can tell a number of these guys prioritized scouting even over hunting on short trips. They're even willing to sacrifice a precious day or two of hunting just to walk around and get to know a place. And another thing that seemed consistently mentioned was this need to dive into every area you possibly can and being much more aggressive with your scouting than you might be on private land, because you know, for one thing, you can't control anyone else's hunting pressure. And secondly, because you just need to find those heavy cover, hard to reach places and understand them if gonna find big bucks consistently on public land. So once we've found our area to hunt and we've scouted it, maybe digitally or on the ground, now we can finally hunt. And I want to throw it over to Bernie again as he explains how he typically begins his public land hunts, how he uses traild cameras on them, and a bit more. And uh, you know, the first day I arrived at a new property, I rarely hunt. The first day, I'm usually maybe glassing the property from the roads with the spotting scope, trying to figure out where the deer activity is. And the first stand that I put up is likely to be what I call an observation stand, where I'm actually putting a stand up in a place where I can have a good view of a large field or open timber or something like that, and try to get a better feel for what the movement looks like. And and then throughout the week then I'll narrow it down and narrow it down, and by the time I, um, you know, after have three or four days under my belt. I'm usually pushing all my chips into one spot. You know, I'm cashing in. I'm going all in on one tree where this is the place I think it's gonna happen, you know where. The trail cameras are a really important component to the process. I I there's two reasons I like to use a lot of trail cameras. Number one because I want to know what the potential of the area is as soon as possible. Um, I want to inventory the box. I guess is the best way to put it where. You know, if I've I've been on haunts where I had a hundred buck walked by the first time, I sat in the stand and I passed them up, and then I was there for a week and I turned out to be the biggest buck I saw. You know. So the sooner you can get a handle on what the potential of the area is, the better off you are. And there's no better way to do that than with trail cameras. And in particular I hang them both on trails and on scrapes and scrapes um anytime after about the last week in October, third or last week in October, if you start putting trail cameras on scrapes and then use some good fresh year and or some deer lure in those scrapes. You'll inventory the majority of the box. Within three days, you'll have the majority of the box on camera, So you have a lot better chance, you have a lot better idea of what the potential is and what you should hold out for. And uh So that's the first aspect of second aspect is it will tell you what stage of the rut these d are in based on how they're reacting. And you know, you can look at them and see how um, you know, how heavily they're working the scrapes and are their tarso glands stained up like they've been running pretty hard? Are that those in the scrapes are just the bucks. Bills will give you clues as to what the status of the rut is, and that will help you make decisions on stand placement. You know, are these bucks on the cruise or are they starting to uh to get in a lockdown stage where they're actually coupled up with those and aren't traveling as much. Then you need to be focusing more on the betting areas and so forth. So yeah, trail cameras. I literally have four to six trail cameras out almost all the time when I'm hunting. Next, We're gonna bring Aaron back and and I want to talk with him about his approach to hunting public land after completing of that scouting he's done, and specifically I asked him if he waits for anything in particular to start heading into his good spots or if he just dives right in there. We usually dive right in. Um we've scouted most of these areas. We've we've scouted the heck out of them, and we know where most of the betting is on. And some of them were more familiar with than others. The spot in the buckness spot in particular, we're very familiar with because we've spent so many years hunt in the immediate area. And what we noticed after we started putting more pressure on those bucks is they didn't leave. They just I mean, they would eventually filter out. The very first day, there was a ton of bucks in there, but the next, the the next few times we went in, there were fewer and fewer bucks. And then I also noticed that I started picking them up on different parts of the area. On my other trail cameras, you know, at different times of the day. I started picking up one of them. I remember in daylight in the middle of October that we saw the very first night at the buck nest and never saw him back there again for the rest of fall. And what I think happens there is they are eventually detecting us from where we're in there hunting them. But all they're doing is moving a few hundred yards and it's not really impacting the way that they're moving or behaving other than they're changing betting areas. Does that make sense, Yeah, it does, And that's what that's what we're seeing a lot of places too, Like we we dive right in to your point because of the added pressure. But you know, on public land, if they're dealing with that much pressure and you still can't push them out of there, I don't. I think a lot of folks on private land that are hunting super careful, are almost too careful, you know what I mean, because they have they have so many betting areas and sanctuaries on their property. If we're seeing bucks move but not pick up and leave the count of the country, I mean that everything situation is different, like we talked about earlier. But um, that is one thing that we have noticed a lot, is they just what they detect that you're there, they'll just go to the next best spot next to. Asked Aaron to describe one of his best spots on public land and why it's so good. And I think by hearing about this example, it might be able to help us all better understand what to look for when trying to find our own little public land high holes. Well, it's all surrounded by timber um trees that you can get a stand in, and uh, lots of other deer insulate them back there, like you have to bump deer to get back to them. So if you're not if you're afraid of spooking deers, and this style definitely is for you. Um. But with that said, this is the one area where there's no trees um, And I think that's simply it. There's no trees right there, so people can't hunt there. They won't hunt on the ground. Everybody that's in there has got a tree stand on their back or is is planning on hunting out of a tree stand that they hung prior to that, And it's surrounded on all sides by these big timbered hills that attract quite a bit of hunting pressure. And those hills hold a lot of sign too, And you can go through there in a good acorn, you're and there's giant rubs ripped up everywhere. But what what makes that spot so good is those bucks are bedded right next to water. I've noticed that a lot. They love bedding next to water or in very very close proximity to it. It can be a big body of water, a lake, a pond, creek, or river or whatever. They love water. They love being close to it. And like I mentioned, there are no trees. Once you start trying to figure out how to hunt those bucks in the buck nest and October, it becomes really hard because you just can't get within a couple of hundred yards of them in a tree stand, and they just don't they I think that's why they're there, because everybody's walking around the edges that that that's the RP field and they're hanging in those trees h or or way up in the big chamber where they're finding a lot of that sign, but nobody's actually going down in there, or they very rarely are when you look at it's just a grass field. You know, there's not really any other terrain change or habitat change other than the grass bucked up to a creek. And right there where that edge forms is where they like to bed and there's no trees along the edge of the creek that you can even get us stand in. So nobody, nobody ever goes in there now. And that's another misconception is is uh, how far away people can be from those beds um without bumping them. And people walk the edge of that field all the time. I'm talking like two yards, and those deer they walk in and out of this public property in that field, but they don't ever go go back into that corner because there's nothing that they can hang a tree stand in. So just keep that in mind and think about that for any property that you're hunting, if you're trying to keep the pressure off, even on private land, when those bucks are betted, they they don't mind you walking two hundred yards away from mob times they don't know that you're there, you know, if you've got the wind right to where they're betted at. But in this situation, they people walking and hunt the heck out of that timberline that's two hundred yards away from those bucks. But it keeps them out of there those the lack of trees does. And finally I asked Aaron to talk about entry and excess strategies. One hunt in public places. Yes, we are very cautious about entering and exiting in those areas, but mainly just really close to the bedding. Um, when we got to go somewhere that's a mile two miles back in, we don't mess around for the first, you know, two thirds of the trip. But when we get in there, really tight to the bedding, we we're going into snail's pay. I mean, you're stepping over twigs, making sure that you don't snap them. You're waiting for the wind to gust so that you can move. Some of these areas in timber, like if you're hunting hardwood timber, for instance, and you're going into a bedding location, you want you want it to be windy and wet as ideal, and uh, if it's not. If you're going in for like an evening hunt and the leaves are crunchy and it's pretty calm mid afternoon, you're you're just not gonna be able to get real close to those those bedding locations because they're just gonna hear you before you get there. Um, but we do. We we go in a lot of times in the middle of the night, almost like uh, two or three o'clock in the morning. I'm a pretty firm believer and going in from morning hunts way ahead of daylight because I think deer can see you better at gray light than they can want it's dark and uh and and getting our stands set up, you know, about thirty minutes before that gray light even hits. And using those headlands that we use, that's a that's another big thing, um, as far as access goes. When it's when every single hunt we use those headlands in and out, and we're always waiting for the cover of darkness before we're going in or going out on an evening hunt. We're always going in in the dark in the morning. We're gonna bring Todd and Meade back on who's going to talk through his plans for hunting a little bit of that scouting and then again how he avoids other hunters when he's beginning these actual hunts. It all depends on the area. I mean, like if I go into an area and there are people hunting in there. Like one of my biggest pet peeves when I get to where I'm going and there's somebody parked there and I'm like, oh man, But then I'm like, wow, there's a lot of woods in there. Most people hunt, you know, certain areas all the time. They don't move around. So I'll go in there and I wander around. If the person isn't in an area that I found that I like, i'll stay in there. If they're an area I found that I like, that, I won't go back because I don't think it's fair to them. Even though it's public land, it's not fair to them. So when I'm in there looking around, I usually look for as many scrapes as I can find in a fairly tight area, um, you know, where they're not far apart, and I look for multiple runways that come together, like maybe two, three, four, or five runways that all come together around those scrapes, And then I need some thick cover around there someplace, and uh, those are the places that I usually look for. If I find all of that in one place, like uh, usually when I find a place like that, I go back to the camp, and I show my buddies and I market on my GPS just so I know where it is. So if they want to go there and I'm not going there, I could just give the way point to them, then they can go find it and I mark on their the killing tree because because usually when I find a spot, I'm almost sure we can kill a good buck. There another trend here. I think that's worth mentioning, and it's kind of related to a couple of other things I called out already, But it's just the simple importance of avoiding other hunters and doing whatever you have to do to get away from them. Again, almost more important than deer sign. Like we talked about earlier, how you're scouting for hunter sign, Well, you're also trying to find those places where they're simply aren't going to be other people for specific reasons. And you're gonna continue that trend here with Tyler right now, who's got more thoughts on that very thing. I mean more than anything. Distance, Um, you know, for the most part, people are lazy. Um, they don't want to walk that far, especially carrying a tree span. Um. So it's just it's that extra you know, half mile that extra three quarters of a mile, um. And I mean some places I've gone as far as printing a map out and measuring out you know how far three coulters of a a mile is and using a compass and you know, actually making a circle around each public or each parking area, every access point so you and see that's okay, that's where people are willing to walk to. And then you have the other areas and that's where you start to focus. And like I said, just you know, just getting away from him. UM. You know all those different things you can use, um that you need to look at, you know, the trail systems, the the parking area is anything like that. Um. You know, it's it's all of super valuable stuff. UM. And you know another tactically we've used but you know a few times in the past is lakes and you know any big rivers actually putting a boat in um to access some of these places. And it's a lot of you know, a lot of extra work, you know, hauling a boat, loading it up, maybe going for an hour boat ride, um, and then hiking in from there. Um. But it's something people don't think about. And there was one day we and Tony were in Ohio two or three years ago, launching a boat at you know, four in the morning, and there were some guys getting ready to go duck hutting there and they, you know, the look on their face was was just priceless. You know, two guys the tree stands and camo and bows getting in a boat and you know, they had no they just couldn't fathom what we could possibly have been doing. Um, you know, and we we went in. It was about a forty five minute boat ride and access to you know, through a reservoir, and you know, we essentially had private land hunt. Um. A lot of those places that are you know that are reservoirs. You know, they may be you know, federally owned, state on whatever they are. Um, there's a lot of it that is physically inaccessible. You can't walk to it. You know, there's places that are totally landlocked by private and the only way to get to them from the public is on the water. Um. You know. So it's another thing people can look at if you have you know, places like that where you live or you know, where you hunt. Um, it's honestly the best way to really guarantee you're gonna be left alone. Um, the only other guy that may hunt it is you know, people that have access to that private ground that borders it. You know, obviously they can come onto the public um, but from a public hunting standpoint, you know that that boat is going to be the only access. So it's a it's a really good tactic and whenever we can, you know, we use it. And those places are a lot of times overlooked too, you know they maybe when you look at those uh you know, the pages from the state that outline what the what the public land area is good for. You know, it may be a four thousand acres you know, peace and three carters of maybe water, and you know they'll put on there. It's it's ideal for bass fishing and for duck hunting. And you know, there's not a doesn't say anything about deer hunting on it um because there's no where you can really walk to the deer hunt. So they often get overlooked and and really don't get deer hunted at all. Um. It's they're they're kind of rare, but when you find one, they're they're definitely worth looking at. Famed Michigan d i Y deer hunter John Eberhart had more to add on the same top that being getting into those tough to reach places to find bucks on public land, it's very simple go to areas where other hunters are not willing to make the work effort to go to. When I hunt public land, if I can walk in an upright walking position, I remember seeing a TV commercial with Michael Waddell with a climber stand on his back walking down a two track going hunting. If you can walk in an upright position in Michigan on public land to any spot, I don't care where it is, it's worthless. I don't care how much sign there is signposting. Um, it was like any sign posting. If it were done by a mature buck, it was probably done at nighttime signposts because basically mature bucks they lived at three and a half years old in Michigan, they just do not make themselves vulnerable during daylight hours. The only time they might is during the rut when they're actually on a hot dough, and that's just not the case in lightly pressure areas. So so basically, if I can walk to a spot and it looks great, there's scrapes and there's rubs. If I can walk there. I setting it up. It isn't gonna happen. Most of the spots I hunt on public land, or even on a lot of private lands where I have permission with other hunters, I have to access my locations with waiters, a canoe, a boat, or crawling through brush to get back to a little clearing near an island someplace, because if you're not that's where the mature deer go. If there is a mature deer on the property, that's where the hunters that are hunting they are going to push in. That's the only place back in those really deep secure zones where a mature buck might feel comfortable moving during daylight hours without actually being on a hot dough. So the last person I want to bring on here to wrap of our hunting section is Eddie Claypool. And you're gonna notice within Eddie's contribution here he does a lot about scouting, and really, if you listen to the last twenty five minutes here, as we've been talking about the actual hunt, a lot of the hunt is still scouting related. So it's scouting hunting, hunting, scouting scouting hunting. That seems to be again something that's emphasized by many of these folks. You constantly need to be learning, You constantly need to be finding the out of the way areas and adjusting based off hunting pressure and what these deer are doing. So Eddie Claypool here is going to talk us through how he actually takes some pre hunt trips to do some of that scouting to prepare for the hunt, to do a little bit more prep work, and then he'll move on to you know, what he's actually focused on once he shows up to actually be in the tree where he's focused on hunting, the types of setups he's looking for, and we'll go from there another little camping trip and put the boat to it. Uh, I will drive. I want to go around the perimeter and learn the access points and figure out, you know, where most of the masses are going to be coming from. Then if I've done my you know, digital scouting properly, I'm going to know where the most remote areas of this public area are the most inaccessible. Those are the priorities to me. That will that's what separates you know, the doers from the hoopers, you know, the ones that hope to kill a good deer Um, I will find access to these remote areas one way or the other, however it might be, and get that set up and get it figured out, gett my some stands, sights prepared, you know, get in there and do the physical scouting and figure out where and how I'm going to hunt and if I access it's difficult, Like there's some spots I hunt that I have to have a boat, you know, I may use a canoe whatever. I just get that figured out and get all of the logistics, you know, lined out, so that when I come back a few weeks later in early November to do the killing, Um, you know I've ever I got it, never key crossed. That's what my October trip will do for me. It'll get me, you know, a lot of I'm saved and a lot of heartache saved by physically being there and getting myself prepared so that when I come in November, I can spend my time in you know, some spots that I've already got prepared, and um, I don't have to, you know, I plan on them. I'm a rut hunter. I'm not a real preseason rut pre rut hunter. I don't pattern there early season well, and hunt them on food sources and different things. I know there's guys that do that, but that's a different line. I'm not there. I'm a I killed ninety nine percent of my deer in the rut, and I may not never have even seen the deer even though it exists. I like to hunt what I call kind of rutting corridors where I feel the bucks are going to walk film at some point during the rut. There may not even be a lot of sign there. I just kind of have learned what these places are and how to you know, you know, through your digital and foot scouting, you can kind of narrow down you don't scientists if you break it down in every square a mile there, there's a lot of factors like access by the people, and if you if you start marking off the areas that are going to not be any good because they're way too easy to get to and way too many people be them, and then take what's left and just figure that the deer will be hiding pretty well in that amount of country, then it shouldn't be you know, rocket science to figure out how they're gonna walk around in that country during the rut and get from one area to the other, And what I try to do is pick some either pinch points or types of funnels that when they're moving from one area to the next, they're going to walk through it. And there isn't often a lot of sign in those spots, and there isn't often a lot of hunting in those spots. It may be a fence row across the pasture, you know, between two creep drainages or something. Everybody hunts to two creep drainages. I'm liable to be setting out there in a tree in the fence row, you know, in that pasture. But you until you get ready to go out on a lamp and kind of do some of that stuff, you really will not know what you're missing, you know, on big running white tails. So when you're actually out there doing that on the ground scouting, if you're not looking for some of the kind of stereotypical type of dear sign that lots of guys think about, what is it specifically that you're looking for when you are scouting for your style? You know, I've said this for years among my friends, and some of them have come to get a grip on it, and I don't even know what it means myself. But I just say that I hunt by what I call set. The bottom line is, it's not really like it's a secret. You know. What it is is the fact that you get a brain, you know, get a warm body out there, do what you do, learn what you learn, make mistakes, have successes, get confident in what you're doing, and and you'll you'll get good at it. Don't go around all your life searching for the hidden formula and you know, getting some expecting some guy like me to be able to tell you just exactly how to do it, because it's more it's a personal experience. Bow Hunting white tails is something that there is no magical potion for. Just do it, as Nike says, you know, uh, you know that's that brings back when you asked the different approaches like that. I just my mind is flashes to so many different episodes of my hunts over my life in different places. You know, I've I've had plenty of times where you know, I went to a place and I just beat it down during the offseason and felt like I had a really strong game plan when I first went into it the first time. And I've had instances where those game plans worked out great. I've had instances where I realized that I was backwards just this, you know, really felt stupid because by the end of the season, I've changed everything, was doing everything different. So once again, there is no perfect rule for it. And other times I've went in and not had a game plan and just you know, started maybe hunting and working my way in as you might say, observed, serving and things. I've killed some good bucks out west by doing that. It depends on the habitat. If you're in a habitat where you can do a lot of observation, uh, especially if I have a hunted the place. I like that approach. Start in the early early stages of the rut and get that observation done, and start working your way in so that by the you know, the really high movement time in November, you'll already be into the you know, the core spots. But you know, once again, there ain't no pad answer for it. It's a matter of everything as individual to its own spot. And uh uh, I like to have a game plan when I go somewhere from my digital and all my other scouting, but like this public that hunt up here in Kansas, um. I went into it the first year I lost a private place. That year, I had everything set up, and it comes November the tenth. I went up through the hunting. No landowner kicked me out. Some guys with money had come along and got it here. It was November the tenth. I had all my stuff set up to hunt, and I'm ground zero. I have to pull all that, you know, drive to a place, walk in their public and start over on November basically eleventh or twelve. Talk about feeling like a lost pup, you know, I mean I I was intimidated. I mean, here it is already time to get the good stuff done. And I'm back at ground zero. And I went in there, and you know, I had to make a decision. Am I going to go in here and really, you know, try to learn this place inside out and beat it down and then make plans, or am I just gonna hunt my way in? And it was about fifty fifty open thick habitat where I felt and I could observe a lot. So I just started going out into the to the most remote harder to get two spots and climbing some trees where I could see for good ways in any direction around and trying to observe you know, running bucks moving through the habitat and you know, dose or whatever, and I'll be doggone. I called a couple of deer in. You know, from a distance, they were not going to have come by where I was at, but I spawned them and called them in, and you know, got success. They were not huge deer, you know, they were just barely poping, young caliber deer. But for the first year, the first week on a place, you know, I mean, I felt good. They have just gotten in places to where you know, there would be ten cars parked in the parking lot at daylight and if you want in about of that available habitat from there, you weren't to have people problems, but there would be ten or twenty of it that if you really could ferret that out, you could get away from most all them. People will guess where most the deer we're gonna be, I mean, them deer are going to figure that out pretty quick. Wherever the people are coming going from that activity is gonna slowly, you know, migrate away from that. And you know that's just a public land key right there. Figure out where the people are going to be and spend your time where they're not. That sounds like overly simple, but public land deer are sharp and there's always nooks and crannies on public paces. For some reason, they're not getting hit as hard as the rest. Those deer figured that out way before you do, and those will be the places you want to be, So you know, get in there and and if you want to just go all out, go in there and set up and just sit there until you know, you know what freezes over fine, because you know, during the peak of the rut, you know, if you get throwed into something like I did in the peak of the rut, you ain't got time to make a big game plan and start trying to refine it down. If you're throw it into something like that, and you can't leave home until November the tenth, and you're gonna drive to north South Dakota or somewhere and and go into this place, then just you know, if you've done your preceding uh work, you don't know about where you're gonna get get in there and and and either go in and basically get it a bunch and stay all day in the tree. And you know, we don't none of us like to rely on luck. We like figure it out and kill him on our own. But hey, if you don't have any luck, uh, and won't rely on it, which I used to not. I used to say, if I kill one by luck, I'm not even gonna count. You know, I wanted to, you know, kind of know what I was doing and figure I had a good hand in it. But if I kill them by luck or by skill. Nowadays there's still bow hunted white tails and and and I'm still appreciative of them. So don't be bashful to get into an area and stay all day and call ever so often, And don't be bashful to set out on the edges and hunt your way in whatever makes you happy, um and the most Hey, there's certain formulas for it that can't be you know, overlooked. Once you do everything you can do, then nothing more than share time in the field is the greatest odds upper you know what I mean. And from about November the tenth on, I can't tell a person one thing better than more time in the field to have better success. That's the number one odds increasing factor. And very few people got to work with all of a sudd all day you know, uh, you're an all day hunter during the ruck. I try to be once again it's case specific, but I try to have places that I can go to and said all day. Uh, there's places it's not good for it. And if you're, you know, halfway an outdoorsman, you'll know when it's not really common sense. You're not gonna set you right out beside the edge of a fairly accessible farm field probably all day long. You're gonna go back in there, off down in the river bottom, in the briar thicket down there and set. But out west it's a different matter. You know, there's lots of places that are excellent for all day setting because those deer can move freely all day. But yeah, I said all day most of the time, and I've killed I'm gonna say one out of every three probably of my better bucks during a time between ten and the morning and two in the evening. All right, Now, So much of what we've heard today has been all about avoiding other hunters, finding those tough treats. It's finding the places that deer can avoid hunting pressure, looking for a sign of other people. But what if you did all that and still while you're out there hunting on public land, another guy or girl comes walking up on you or comes trump into the area you're hoping to hunt. You know, what do you do in that scenario. It's a tough one and it's something that likely will happen if you hunt public land long enough. So here's Tyler who's going to help us break down how at least he handles that situation. If it's later in the year, you know, if it's been a tough season. Sometimes I've got to remind myself to, you know, try to keep my cool. Um. But it's you know, just trying to just lay out where you know where you you know where he's hunting, or you know where they're looking to hunt, whatever it may be. Um, you know, I'm just trying to give each other some respect. Um. A lot of times I'll give it honestly. Um, I look for those spots where nobody else will go, and a lot of times it'body else shows up. If I have a stand up, I'll go pull it. You know, I just I get out of there and I'll go find another spot. Um. That's the beautiful thing about in publicly, and you've got a lot of options, So you can always drive to another place and you know, and start to start the whole game over again. Um. So it's you know, it's it's tough to deal with sometimes, especially you know, if you've got a spot that you know is you know, is really good and maybe some guy just you know, kind of wanders upon it and you know, I didn't do all the homework. He just happened to to wander that direction that morning with his climber or whatever it may be. Uh, it can be extremely frustrating, but you know, it's it's just part of the game and you learn to deal with it. And one of those things. If it does happen and you end up shooting a buck on that trip, it's it's that much more rewarding because it was another you know, you had another obstacle you had to you know, I had to deal with and overcome. So and finally here's Tony Peterson with his take on the same issue. H I, you know, restart, go somewhere else. It happens all the time. I mean, I don't ever go on a hunt like this without having somebody come in on me at some point. It seems like or you know, just stupid stuff like just as an example, last year in Oklahoma had a spot that was about as far away as you could go on any of these public land chunks, and there was a really cool pond with a kind of a wooded draw leading to it, and it was a good spot. And I went in there and hunger stand the first day I got there, and uh, I went to go back in there like three days later, and there was some idiot driving is cheep around on this closed road, just tearing it up, mudded it up, and you know, I knew it was over because you just what are you gonna do? And stuff like that happens. You know, people will move in on you. Um it just it just is what it is. And so that's another reason why you want to have your options. And I'm always thinking about that. So if I've got my heart set on, you know, this river crossing stand, I may go there and there might be two trucks parked there and fresh track leading right in there. And so then if you don't get too frustrated and you've got to back up, you can get there and and not lose your hunting time. But it's a constant struggle when you're on public land especially if you get around the rud or opening week where just more people are out, You're just going to run into that. Uh, And it's you know, it's it's part of the process. But like you said, I run into that on private land all the time on some of my farms. So it's just it's just hunting. It seems like there's a lot of bow hunters out there now. Yeah, So do you what happens in that case? I mean, do you if if a hunter comes in, let's say, like you said, and we've we've had it happened many times myself and Dan too. If if that happens, do you immediately say, okay, I need to I need to scrap this spot entirely, or are you willing to give it one more day and see, maybe this is a one time thing. They came through, they walked through the area once and maybe the next day though, you know, maybe they won't be there and a big buck comes through. Do you give it a little time or do you say, right, there's been one human invasion, I'm out, I'm moving on to the next place. It depends, It depends how it happens. Um. Just as an example, last year, when I went out to South Dakota. Um I found a spot that was this walk in area had a cutcorn field, it had it just a phenomenal cedar choked draw that looked like a great betting area. And so I went in there hoping for a gimming you know, the field edge buck. And I was sitting there and you know, hour and a half a four dark, two bowl hunters came walking through carrying a full body decoy, just banging it on everything. And I had backup spots that I couldn't get to in time, but I had one area that I didn't. I hung a stand, but I didn't convince myself to go sit yet. And when they came walking through, I said, okay, I got two days left. I'm gonna go sit that pond stand that I've been avoiding because I knew it was probably not gonna be I was probably not gonna see a lot of deer down there, but it was probably the right set up to just ride it out because I didn't think anybody would go in there. So when those guys came through and me, I said, okay, two days left, I'm going you know, sunrise the sunset on that pond stand just because I thought it's good enough and people won't be there, and I went in there and fat and killed the buck. So there you go. This has been my attempt to distill down from a whole bunch of episodes and many many hours of interviews the most important philosophies and strategies for hunting public land white Tales. But but obviously there's a lot more. And if any of this intrigued you, I would definitely encourage you to listen to the full episodes with each one of these guests if you haven't yet, because there is just a ton that I had to cut out, a lot of interesting additional ideas, stories, anecdotes, examples, lots of good stuff in those full episodes, so be sure to check those out, and I hope that some of you found this helpful. I don't know how often I will do these types of review episodes again in the future. Possible, never again, because it took just a crazy amount of time to put this thing together. I mean hours and hours and hours of listening back to all these old episodes, cutting out the little pieces and then try and put them back in an order that made sense altogether, and edit it all in the one piece in retrospect, it was not the most time friendly project, but hopefully it was available to some of you to have this all in one, cohesive program. So with all that said, enough of this, enough of me, I'm going to wrap this one up. I'm gonna thank you all for taking the time today to listen. I want to wish any of you who are going to be future public land owners, I want to wish you all the luck in the world, and for everybody else out there. Until next time, I hope you'll stay wired to hunt