00:00:00 Speaker 1: I'm KC and you're listening to the Element podcast. How to everybody. Welcome to the Element podcast, brought to you by First Like Gear. It is white tail Week over at first Like Gear, so go check it out on FirstLight dot com. And you should go look at the video that is down in the description of this podcast. You can see kind of how we break down our white tail kit for what we wear. Because it's white tail season right now, all right, and it is officially, as far as I know, white tail season everywhere in the country, and most of the Element crew sans Kse, is out hunting right now. If you are a follower of the show, you know that I and my wife have recently had a new addition to the family. So I stuck around for the opener, which I'm happy to do because it's awesome being a parent, but I am missing being out of course, and so it's actually been difficult, but a lot of fun and a lot of fomo, as the kids these days say, a lot of fear of missing out because everybody else is, you know, kind of giving me the report and we're working through things, and that's actually I think sharpening me as a hunter, trying to help the crew just by giving them giving me information about what's going on, and then me trying to help them find and kill Big Bucks. And so I do enjoy that part of it. Not that I like value my decision making over some of the other guys, but it is neat I think at least to at least be able to give my opinion from afar and see if the things that I think actually work out well. And here in a minute, Tyler will join me via telecommunication to give me a little bit of a rundown about not just what he's doing there, but what he thinks are three things that an individual, a hunter, a guy trying to find big Giant Bucks, should be doing right now around the season opener. Okay, and I'm gonna give you my three before we get tired on the phone. His is gonna be better because he's just good at this stuff. But I'm gonna do my best as well to give you some thoughts. And the number one thing right now I would be doing would be giving relief to the folks in the eastern part of the US. You're suffering from the hurricane. Now, I kind of trapped you into that one, but I do that thing has hit me hard. Guys, there's a lot of people suffering, and I know that we kind of live in this bubble a whitetail deer. I know, we kind of live in this bubble of white tail deer, and you know, are focused in on that because it is hunting seasons exciting, But there's bigger things than that. There's a lot of good folks that are suffering, having a hard time out there, and our friends Mitchell Johnson at dead end and some of those guys that are kind of at ground zero on that stuff helping with relief. So they have some avenues set up to be able to help out. And of course from AFAR, one of the greatest, greatest things you can do is donate money to a place that you know it's going to be used well. And there's hardly anybody else that I would put at a higher level of trust than Mitchell to be able to distribute funds to the places they need to go. So that's my plug for that. Please, if you find in your heart to do that help with relief. From that, back to the deer hunting, the number one thing that I would be doing right now is identifying food sourcees Okay, it is an ever changing landscape as we push closer and closer to the first frost, and a lot of places, some places have even already had their first frost, so things are changing fast for that. But as that sun pushes further towards the southern hemisphere, Okay, and that's kind of a whole thing, right, But essentially when you look up, if you follow the sun's track in North America, it doesn't go in a straight line overhead all the time. It moves further and further towards the south and makes an arc. And as that continues to happen, the plants begin to feel that. So right now in the South, you're having your native warm seasoned grasses have kind of reached their peak and they're starting to bloom and put off their seeds, which means that a lot of the other herbaceous material forbes and you know, woody stuff, is they're kind of over their growing season and the annuals are going to die soon. The prem like trees and bushes and shrubs are going to start losing leaves pretty soon. But that can be good, right because we're talking about like maybe a public land situation here and even on private you're not always going to have good stuff to hunt, right, and then you're not always going to have like I shouldn't say it that way, You're not always going to have a food plot, a corn pile, or maybe you do, and it's still not the best thing. It's good to be able to identify this other stuff right now. The beauty beerri is a turn purple or pink or whatever you want to call them. The deer will eat them when they're like that. The deer love to browse on beauty berry as it is. Look for that kind of stuff out there. If you live in maple tree area. Those maple leaves are sweet. They have some level of sugar content. As they fall, the deer eat them. Deer eat all kinds of leaves as they fall toether. I've seen deer eat a cottonwood leaf and then things are about as close to a post toasty as you can find. Right, they're just terrible, but deer eat that stuff. I think that one that we see in the South that absolutely is a pattern is what I call a bord ark tree osage ORMs bow, dark hedge, hedge apple. That's what some of all northern folks might call them, but deer eat those leaves when they fall. Like you'll hardly ever find one of those trees with the pile leaves underneath it, because the deer eat them up when there when they're yellow, When they're dark brown or black, not as much. But back to more main food sources. Acorns are starting to fall, acorns for my northern brethren, and if you can find a hot food source where that stuff's falling, it's a big deal. Identifying food sources throughout the year is important, even if it's the rut, because guess what deer do every day. They still eat, especially the does, and the bucks are going to be where the does are. Another thing that you can identify right now that I think could be super advantageous. This is really a public land scenario, but maybe even on private if you share access, is understanding the hunting pressure on property. We have some hot temperatures right now in Texas. Right now, it's eighty seven in the shade where I'm at, and I'd consider that a pretty cool day. It actually feels pretty nice outside. We might see some even warmer temps before it gets cold. But where the guys are right now, it's that much. That's the temperature as well, and they're twelve fifteen hours north of us or whatever that is, so you're gonna have some warm temps. You can do a couple of things that you can go out and grind it out, hunt, find you dear kill it and that'd be awesome. Or you can you know, sit back, play conservative and say, you know, it's it's a real low opportunity evening. Maybe I can stay at home with the family, or I can go out and make an evening cruise. Check out the parking lots, see where there's people. I would highly advise figuring out if there's other folks on they that you're hunting, and figuring out what they're doing, how they're accessing, and use that to your advantage because you can just belly ache about hunting pressure, or you can understand the deer have to exist, they don't just vaporize and go away, and you can use hunting pressure to your advantage. You can find a place that people aren't going. You can find a place that people don't think about going and uh and hunt it, or you can just you know, bide your time maybe uh or this place gets pressure on the weekends, but round about Wednesday, they're that manybody in there for a few days. Maybe you need to kind of figure that out, figure out that you need to be hunting this thing midweek and just make some strategic drops. I don't know, just some things to think about there. And quite honestly, hunting pressure changes throughout the deer season too. I see this all the time on Texas Public. Where you'll go in, there'll be like two pushes. Okay, there'll be a big push for opening Day, which I completely understand, and there'll be a big push around the rut period November essentially, and well maybe there's three because there's also a holiday push, but those guys kind of act a little different. We'll talk all about that in a second. But Opening day people are gonna be bombing in, finding oak trees, hanging on them and all that. Well, you know, that's a lot of pressure in the woods and deer get all scrambled up. But around about October twelfth October fifteenth, people are kind of tired of it and they probably won't be doing a whole lot of hunting. You know, if somebody has give drug cammidator or whatever, they're likely or maybe they're uh, you know, maybe they're on edge and they're doing the thing and they know what they're doing. But in general, what I see in the woods is that mid October things calm down quite a bit with hunting pressure. So you might just kind of think about that as a time to get in the woods, even though it can be tough, but if you get in there and figure it out, scout it out, you can kill dur anytime in the season. Another time would be in November. Now this is gonna be a little sporadic because everybody in Texas has a little bit of different opinion on when rut dates are. But the whole month, your libel see running activity, and your libel'll see some busyness. Now I'll caveat aught that with Sometimes on Texas public you'll see less people hunting on in November because gun season opens up the first weekend in November in Texas at least. So when you have those gun seasons open up some Texas public land, you're not allowed to use rifles or shotguns or muzzletters or whatever. So people then go back to their private places that they can use firearm and they'll be hunting there instead of on public so you can actually see pressure a levy at a little bit in November. Now, the third thing that I would try to figure out this time of year is where are the bucks shifting to? And this is going to be maybe a map scout thing. Okay, so right now in Texas, I just confirmed it with my own eyes. Bucks are in bachelor group. So I was driving around in a neighborhood the other day and it's funny what you can learn from neighborhood deer too. You can see so much more of what is going on in your neck of the woods if you got a suburban area that has a big deer population, because those deer are like doing normal deer stuff while people are mowing their yards. Because they're just used to people, they don't really get hunted. It makes you sometimes really want to figure out a way to buy a quarter acred a lot and shoot a deer in there. But anyways, you can learn a lot from those deer because the deer that are wild out in the woods are probably doing real similar stuff at the real similar time. It was I guess September twenty ninth. I know that's a little dated right now, but you know, four or five days ago, I saw a bachelor group that had two legal bucks in it and a group of four bucks and what it might have been a spike too, so that might be legal. But anyways, what I'm saying is like a good bachelor group with multiple bucks still in it. However, over the next few weeks, those deer are going to split. Maybe not the youngest deer, they might kind of hang out together a little bit longer, but as we push close to the rut, as testosterone levels start to ramp up in these bucks, they're going to split up, spread out, and sometimes they go very very far. In fact, we have trail camera data from I think twenty eighteen. A hung a camera in a pre Simon thicket got a picture of a buck with a real identifiable characteristic hit a drop time. But he's like a two year old, so he's a real unique deer. And I would say late November, so that was like early to mid October. We got that picture of him. Late November. I was hunting a different area and straight line distance was like three point seven miles I think saw that deer cruising three point seven miles away. He had to cross multiple drainages to get there, go through multiple pieces of pop private and public. But I saw the same buck. There's no way it wasn't the same deer. I got footage of them and everything, and so all that to say is it's good to establish where you think bucks are gonna distribute from, because a lot of people have ran trail cameras all summer. They're excited about their deer and all of a sudden they disappear and they don't ever see the bucks anymore, and everybodys shot my deer. Well, no, they just move. They just have a different range when it comes to the fall versus the summer a lot of times. And then of course, like I just mentioned, well ago, they're gonna not really want to cohabitate with other bucks. They're gonna they're not gonna put up with that. So you can get on on X go to looking around, find you some thickets, find you a place that you know is secluded, or whatever the case may be. Maybe you've been in there on the ground in the past, and you know this is where deer go. This is where I find scrapes, is where I find rubs. In November is starting to pop up and This is another point here, right. Don't just look at a rub and be like, oh, it's a deer rub. Think about when that rub was made. Learn to identify how old that rub is, and then you will have a better bearing on what the deer are doing. If a rub doesn't pop up in an area until mid November, there's a good chance that you are where that buck wants to be during that time of year. If the rub was there early October and it's mid November, then that deer might be dead for all we know. Right, So a couple of things to keep keep in mind. Figure out where the bucks are going to go, figure out your food sources, and figure out your hunting pressure. Let's get Tyler on the phone and talk to him about his thoughts on the three things you can be doing right now as a deer hunter to help you kill big bucks. Tyler Jones, Man, this is about as removed from you that I ever care to be. 00:14:45 Speaker 2: Did you know that I'm sad. 00:14:48 Speaker 1: I know we've been talking like two or three times a day and you're experiencing something right now that a lot of guys do. And I want to make this point that the element dudes are normal hunters, okay, because there's this neat thing about YouTube that we get to show you the best stuff and the worst stuff doesn't make the cut because y'all don't want to watch it, right So, uh, that's that's kind of where we're at right now. Not that you're doing bad stuff there, Tyler, but you are doing the public land shuffle right now, as we'd like to say. And I knew you had a lot of stuff on your mind alone. Yeah, tell me about that. 00:15:37 Speaker 3: Well, I just left our camp and everybody was sleeping except Gregg. He had just had a shower, and I figured he didn't really want to go get sweaty with me after getting a shower. 00:15:51 Speaker 1: So yeah, he only takes one a week, So like it's a real special time right now. It is. 00:16:00 Speaker 2: But I'm I'm headed out to scout by myself right now. 00:16:03 Speaker 1: Okay. So I think that you and I would agree that in season scouting is one of the like the things that we do the most. In fact, if it's not map scouting, I haven't preseason scouted something without a trail camera, like say, let me give a caveat of like hanging in a trail camera. I'm scouting while I'm doing that or whatever, right, but I have not boots on the ground torn up place preseason in a couple of years, and so that's kind of what you're doing right now. And I wanted to capture this moment of like you doing the thing that a lot of people experience. And since you're so good at articulating your thoughts and going through a thought process, I wanted to ask you, what are the three things that you would be doing right now? If this is this one is meant to be very broad intentionally, so I get good honest answers, but I will give like the idea that you're not hunting a target buck that you already have figured out. So, say, a guys, just hunting deer right, not really a specific deer. What are the three things that you'd be doing right now? 00:17:13 Speaker 2: Yeah? 00:17:14 Speaker 3: So I appreciate that sometimes that don't feel like my thoughts are clear and I struggle to actually articulate what is going on in my brain. Yeah, maybe that's just because I'm weird and my brain thinks about things in an odd way. 00:17:29 Speaker 1: Well, you know, I would venture to say that deer are made to avoid predators, and if you're thinking like all the other predators out there, you're going to end up with similar results. So being able to think what maybe the general populace would call outside the box, it would be pretty beneficial as a deer hunter. 00:17:52 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:17:53 Speaker 3: Well, my mom, one of the best things she ever did for me probably is to tease me to think creatively. She she really try taught me how Like one of her big deals was, you know, there's really not a wrong way to think about things as far as like when you're. 00:18:12 Speaker 2: Coming up with problem solving. 00:18:14 Speaker 3: Uh, you know, when you're when you are doing problem solving, or when you're doing art of some sort, like if you're gonna draw something or if you're gonna so we asked you a question, you know, to to have your own look at it. So I guess that's that's something that's helped me in that aspect. But back to your question, you know, this is this is something that could apply to a target book as well. But it's definitely something that I've been doing the last few days and I think I would continue doing for a while here. Uh, it's hanging drail cameras, So that's I mean, that's been a big part of this public land shuffle. 00:18:50 Speaker 2: You're talking about earlier out here. 00:19:07 Speaker 1: So it's funny because I'm watching through the app in kind of a third person format of what you're doing with the trail cameras, and I'm asking you questions about them as as I knew. Things pop up. But there's there's within the public land shuffle, there's some trail camera shuffle going on, right, So you kind of did like an initial deployment, and I would I would guess that because you're only in an area for a limited amount of time and it's potentially the only week that you're there. Those trail cameras have about as much time as an evening set. And then you're like, I didn't see any deer, Let's move them. And that's kind of the strategy. 00:19:49 Speaker 3: Huh, Yeah, it's it's it's either that or I learned when I needed to learn. 00:19:55 Speaker 2: Now let's learn more, you know. 00:19:57 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:19:58 Speaker 3: So a lot of times when I do sit, I don't learn a whole lot because I saw two dose or something like that, or like this morning, I saw zero deer, so I didn't learn a whole lot. 00:20:09 Speaker 2: But when I camera sets, a lot of times it we'll see deer. 00:20:14 Speaker 3: It just might see them at two am, you know, so uh you know with that, Like one of the particular cases that I'm working through right now and you're kind of privy to somewhat, is we've got cameras on a scrape and the the scrape is there's not really like a great scrape there. 00:20:36 Speaker 2: It's more like a linking branch right now. 00:20:37 Speaker 3: But it was a scrape last year, and I think it's just a perennial uh that area that deer come through and there's a gon solid branch that stays low because of the dictory. It comes off the tree. So it's not like growing as the years go on up too much. 00:20:55 Speaker 1: It's the spot uh. 00:20:57 Speaker 2: Huh m hm. 00:20:59 Speaker 3: So you know one thing that the Eric and Michael got out here before I did, and I was, I was even earlier than I have been in a while, but they hung a camera on that scrape. It was one place that bike On knew that he could hang a camera, I think because he was up here with you last year doing some hunting when you killed that big, big bug and anyway, he so he puts that camera out and over the last couple of days we've learned something that you stated in the on the phone conversation I had with you this morning. You know, if there's one thing we know, these bucks seem to be coming through from about four point thirty to five every morning and going back to bed. 00:21:44 Speaker 2: And so I started thinking about that, and probably I'll end up. 00:21:50 Speaker 3: Putting that camera back on that scrape at some point before we leave. But for now, I'm like, Okay, we're getting pictures in the middle of the night. 00:22:00 Speaker 2: It's great. 00:22:00 Speaker 3: We know there are bucks around, but we don't need to know that there's bucks around because we know that we knew that probably before. 00:22:08 Speaker 2: We hung the camera, we had a pretty good idea of it, but we for sure solidified that there are shooter bucks around. Now. 00:22:14 Speaker 1: I think that's a big deal. Is it was worth even though we knew we'd pick up Like I knew that was a home run spot, right, But the fact that there are two bucks on there, I would say that are worthy of an arrow. That that makes a big difference as to how serious we are about the general area right there. 00:22:34 Speaker 2: For sure. 00:22:35 Speaker 3: Yeah, and so and again, like what you just said, just to emphasize that it's not even that we just want to hunt there, but it's pretty serious about it because there's two really nice bucks, including one that looks like a very mature dear, you know, so you start to take it a little more serious, and the whole goal of my trip I started, you know, I started my video off talking about this, but the goal of my trip is to shoot a beiger buck than I did in the last few years. But I don't I'm not saying I won't leave here with something that smaller shot last year, but as of right now, I'm still on that path to try to shoot any bigger buck, and he's too qualify. So with that in mind, I now know that there's bucks there. You and I have kind of hypothesized as through like how far these deer going? We don't really know how slow are they getting back to bed? Are they betting nearby? Are they betting pretty far away? They can't bear like terribly far away here and just for for you know, because of basically because the cover runs out right, So we're trying to figure out like, are they been I guess essentially, are they betten six seven hundred yards? 00:23:48 Speaker 2: Are they betting two hundred yards and or what in between? 00:23:51 Speaker 3: That, so understanding how how slow these deer are moving once they hit cover and and and how far they're going in that cover to get to a betting position for the day is what we're trying to learn. So what I've done is I've taking the camera off that scrape and another added another camera. And I wouldn't call it a web, but I took one of the main trails coming towards this scrape that's on the way to add food source. 00:24:21 Speaker 2: And put a camera. 00:24:22 Speaker 3: On one trail, and then there's another main trail that I think we have a better chance of picking up some of these deer on that I have moved, probably moved one about one hundred yards from the scrape and another about one hundred and fifty. 00:24:34 Speaker 2: Maybe from the scrape. 00:24:36 Speaker 3: So started to backtrack, and this is this is where throw cameras are nice to let you know what area to be in, but you can also take What you can do is hanging these cameras in easy spots so close to the road, right and just understand you're going to have dark movement probably, so you get that night time movement, and then you start to backtrack based off of the direction of the you know, dear the direction of travel. 00:25:02 Speaker 2: You go, Okay, I think he's coming from that that trail looks like. 00:25:05 Speaker 3: So I'm going to go back down that trail in fifty yards and see if he's on it. 00:25:08 Speaker 2: Yep, he's on it. Okay, We're gonna go a little bit further the trail. 00:25:11 Speaker 3: You know, it's whys right here, So let's see which one of these trails he's coming on. 00:25:15 Speaker 2: You know, however, you want to work. 00:25:16 Speaker 3: Down that trail until and this is what we did with that teenager buck we hunted back in twenty. 00:25:22 Speaker 2: Seventeen, eighteen maybe nineteen on Texas public Lands. 00:25:26 Speaker 3: We just you know, I originally picked him up at a food source late at night, and then we moved the camera five hundred yards and there he is in daylight. 00:25:32 Speaker 1: Lie. Yeah, but you've like done a serious ramp on how fast the movie goes. And that's kind of what we've learned over the past seven or eight years about there's no reason like once you get that date, initial data and you can read a map, there's no reason to sit around on it. Right and right. I don't know if it's going to pay off with a buck because knowing you, your lib will kill a year before the before everything comes together. But the information learned from this tactic will be invaluable probably for years to come, not just on that property, but in a lot of places, you know, because the way this place sets up, it's a place that you and I both have seen before. It's a it's a habitat pocket, right, And so if you can overlay that into a lot of other situations you find around the country with public land, because you know, there are definitely some twenty thousand acre places around the country that just set up differently. But I think that you know, having a smaller block of habitat is something that a lot of people are pretty privy to. You know, it happens quite often. The mailman's coming up my driveler right now, so we'll see how this goes. Hopefully they just drop stuff off. But I hope so man got e or something to eat. I'm starving, yeah, but yes, just trying to go ahead. 00:26:59 Speaker 3: Well, I think that you know, one thing that you can you can always, you know, think about, is like just understanding. 00:27:09 Speaker 2: Understanding in certain types of habitat, like how far a deal will move, can be super helpful, you know. And I think that one thing we you know, it looks like it looks like South Dakota has been really good to us last few years. 00:27:24 Speaker 3: But dude, we have worked hard out here, and in fact, you had to come back to really have even a shot at a solid buck last year. Yeah, just it hasn't been as good as it was the first year. We talked about moving different areas and this and that. It's kind of cool to hunt the stuff you're familiar with, you know, even. 00:27:45 Speaker 2: If it's not that good. I mean, just to kind of have some familiarity. 00:27:49 Speaker 3: And you know, we do have a buck on trail camera out here this time around that we have a little bit of history with and I would say he's a target, but he's not the target. I mean, I'm I'm out here trying to shoot just a solid three year old beer, you know. And but just stuff like that's kind of cool. It's a part of the process. It doesn't mean that this is the best place in the state to hunt necessarily, but it does it. It is kind of a fun thing, you know, and everybody kind of you know, it's pretty. 00:28:18 Speaker 2: Excited in camp right now and hunting. 00:28:20 Speaker 3: I mean, actually at this moment, they're not very excited because they have their eyes closed. 00:28:24 Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, r em but I'm excited at least, is what they call him. 00:28:32 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's h That's what happens when your name is Nick Man. 00:28:36 Speaker 1: That's right, that is right. 00:28:38 Speaker 2: He started, he started the trend. 00:28:39 Speaker 1: I think, dude, he loves him and nap for sure, he does him. 00:28:42 Speaker 3: And Cuffey Man Yeah yeah, Cuffy got him in a three hour nap out in the in the wide open bag country. 00:28:48 Speaker 1: Well, sometimes ain't nothing else to do with close your eyes, you know, Yeah that. 00:28:53 Speaker 2: And that's fine, you know, but it just that boy can nap everywhere. 00:28:57 Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so you drop some trail cameras and move them around. What's another thing that you'd be doing or that you are doing? And I should just say you are doing? 00:29:07 Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, I'm glassing quite a bit, you know. 00:29:10 Speaker 2: I mean this morning I bombed in and went into. 00:29:13 Speaker 3: Some thick stuff trying to hunt betting because I think, you know, you've got to do that. But I would just be glassing. I mean, that's one thing that I have been doing, and I think it's been a little bit kind of frustrating at times. It can be frustrating because you end up glassing. You sit up high, you're really not in the game for a boat hunter, and then you got to move down and get in the thick stuff to actually have shot. So I think that that's that's a struggle sometimes because you know, you start out glassing, you find a buck, you go in, and all of a sudden, you don't have a clue what's going on around you, and you didn't show up, you know, and it's just like I don't know, so you know, and it hurts because when you're on our state, it's like every day that you can't sit up high and watch and you have to go bombing down in to try to get shot is a day that you you know, kind of lose or whatever you feel like or eating that you lose. And if you only have a certain amount of these winds or whatever, you know, that can be a little bit frustrating. So I've seen that because the first the first morning Michael and I set up Hie and Glass, we saw one of the bigger bucks that I've seen in South Dakota. 00:30:28 Speaker 2: And he's not like a giant or anything, but these. 00:30:30 Speaker 3: Deer living harsh conditions, and I don't know how old they all get all the time, but you know, just a solid like probably one hundred and thirty tap inch eight point. 00:30:42 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I was. I was stoked. 00:30:43 Speaker 3: And this year, you know, it's the day before open, the day it was blowing thirty miles an hour. Probably I could have easily walked right to This year, he's one hundred and sixty yards away, could have walked right to him. I was facing away eating plums in this thicket or plum plumb leaves of this ticket, and you know, like literally walked to him, you know, because the wind was so so raging, and you know I had to obviously just watch him because it is a near season. 00:31:11 Speaker 2: Yet, well, the next day we go in there, different conditions. 00:31:15 Speaker 3: A lot colder and different, you know, different type of wind, and he doesn't show up in that same saddle that he crested over right there. So you know, stuff like that you got to bury up in there. So you're just like, I don't know he did he come by it one hundred yards and see him or what so stuff like that can be very frustrated. But I do think that glassing is the way to feel like you're you're actually gonna feel able to put moves into uh in the motion that actually matter. 00:31:43 Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, for sure, and and that's even something that you're doing during season right now, is glassing right Like you'll I've noticed just through text exchange and stuff, you'll go and hunt a morning. You're not in a long morning sitter. And I don't blame you this time of year, tell you the truth. You know, like there ain't a lot going on at nine point thirty right now, but you'll get down and still go put glass on stuff. And earlier we were talking and you were seeing deer driving around, you know, and glassing it up and still learning things. So I think it's pretty important to have that truck glass sitting there ready to rock and roll. And you know, there's a thing that you and I have have learned on these out of state trips hunting areas that it's not like the habitat that you grew up with, so you kind of don't always know exactly what the deer doing, you know, on a hour to hour basis. I mean, you can assume that they're going back to bed and they're getting up to go eat in the evenings, you know, like that's just what deer do every day, but like in particular what they're browsing on or why they're walking this way or that way, and you can glass deer that are two miles from public land, but see them doing something and then all of a sudden, In fact, we killed a deer in Oklaho Home a few years back because of this. We were seeing deer doing a thing and we're like, oh, we can find a place on public that looks like that, and sure enough, you were filming. I shot him in the chest and he hits a fence and dies fifty yards away, you know, And so you can, you can, you can learn more than just like I feel like sometimes individuals get a little locked in on I'm gonna try to glass up a buck on public land, and there's so much more to it than that you can glass to your own private that it can help you learn something. You can glass on public land and see things that aren't deer that will key you into stuff. Right if you see a coyote crossing a creek somewhere, you're like, oh, there's a trail there, you know, or maybe you can just notice, oh that they're actually the farmer left, like three rows of corn back are in that back corner because it was too wet, or you know, whatever. It may be just being at ten of like that with your glass can can end up with dead deer. 00:33:55 Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. 00:33:56 Speaker 3: I mean that's something I would definitely learned from you, because you just you're such you just like looking. 00:34:02 Speaker 1: At stuff sometimes, but that you know well, and that's where. 00:34:09 Speaker 3: That's where having a good buddy to hunt with is key, you know, Like, uh, for me, you know, i'd probably be the guy's real locked into the public land and you know, at least a couple of years ago, I'm not really paying a whole lot of attention to deer on private because it can't hunt them, right, And yeah, you're we're driving down the road, you want to stop seeing them? 00:34:29 Speaker 2: You do, And then you're like, hey. 00:34:31 Speaker 3: I wonder if you know you're come up with something, and I'm like, you know what, that's not a bad theory actually, and then we getting up going and killing a deer because of or whatever, you know. 00:34:40 Speaker 2: And so I have learned that. 00:34:41 Speaker 3: From you, and especially just to to really pay attention to what's going on when you're driving and as you're you know, on the edge of private and stuff like that, especially, like that stuff matters, you know, a lot more than than what you think sometimes so ye the glass and I mean you can learn so much weird glassing deer. Yesterday morning, you know, Michael was uh he was filming me from a higher advance, higher advantage. 00:35:11 Speaker 2: Point, so he was able to see more deer than I was. 00:35:13 Speaker 3: And he he watched a bunch of deer going to a certain drainage. It's like, why are they going into that one as opposed to any of these other ones? Start I start looking at him, like, man, there's a ton of plug tickets in there, and you know, essentially betting and food for these deer, but especially you know betting, which is what they're that's what the destination in mind is. 00:35:36 Speaker 1: Man. And that's a good point too. Uh, that's not really one of the main points for making but I think especially for public land deer, Uh, finding betting that is food is is way better than just being like, oh there's cattails or oh there's switch grass. You know, deer betting in that you know they may or may not be, but like finding that stuff that they can stink. Because to learn this a little bit more deer gonna stand up in the middle of the day and eat something. It's kind of that's the thing they do, but they're not gonna go very far at all, and so they probably want to be real close to something that they can browse on pretty good. And that's not like a it's not like a Newton's law type thing, right, but that's likely to happen at some point that's gonna stand up, need to use bathroom whatever, and he's he or she's probably gonna browse on something close. So like you're talking about with those plump tickets, that's a pretty big deal. 00:36:31 Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. 00:36:32 Speaker 3: I think I think when you see deer that just bed in a straight up middle of a swamp, cat tail swamp, I. 00:36:39 Speaker 2: Think those deer are just pressured. 00:36:40 Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's like that deer is there because that's a survival mechanism. 00:36:46 Speaker 2: It's not it's not ideal, you know. 00:36:48 Speaker 1: I think that's a good point, man. 00:36:51 Speaker 2: So anyway, I agree with you though, man, I think that. 00:36:55 Speaker 3: Having some some broad leaves or whatever around the browse on at the least is pretty good. 00:37:00 Speaker 2: Good idea. When you go to looking at betting all, give. 00:37:02 Speaker 1: Me your third thing that you're doing right now, Well. 00:37:05 Speaker 3: This is and this kind of translates over from what we're talking about pretty quickly, and it's hanging close to betting. And you know, really the last two trips that I've been on, this one and the Code of trip I went on that that videos out right now, I feel like almost like never before. 00:37:29 Speaker 2: Have I had to be so close to betting to kill bucks man. 00:37:34 Speaker 3: And I haven't killed a buck yet even so, I mean, obviously it's a tough thing to do, or maybe I'm just a bad hunter, but either way, it's not the easiest thing to do. But I think that one thing that I'm seeing is that these deer are just not moving much in daylight. 00:37:51 Speaker 2: I've seen a lot of hot camps. Still. 00:37:53 Speaker 3: We had a good cold morning yesterday, like I think I said earlier, but the afternoon gymps are getting there. It's still hot, and these deer just don't seem to be moving far at all. 00:38:06 Speaker 2: And they didn't in North Dakota either. It's just like. 00:38:10 Speaker 3: I don't know, like I said, I went going back to the trail camera stuff, you know, I mean, those deers. 00:38:16 Speaker 2: Showing are leaving at five or so at the latest. 00:38:21 Speaker 3: You know, probably in the morning it's getting shooting light at I don't know, I think six forty five or a little bit later six fifty, so you know, maybe it's now, maybe it's seven. 00:38:36 Speaker 2: Actually I think it is. It's like seven o'clock. 00:38:39 Speaker 3: So you're looking at two hours and those deer are like not far from cover when we're catching on camera. 00:38:47 Speaker 1: That's like, that makes me almost not want to hunt morning, which is a weird thing to say, right, but yeah, I know you're the chances that you stopping one up in the morning and you're not knowing it is are high. 00:38:59 Speaker 2: Yeah, so to you. 00:39:00 Speaker 3: And that's why this morning I was real conservative. I hunted pretty deep. I didn't really deep actually, back in this pocket of cover, hoping that you know, if I didn't kill one, that I didn't mess one. 00:39:10 Speaker 2: Up either, you know. 00:39:12 Speaker 3: And I think that I'm pretty pretty safe to say that I probably didn't know the why other than the wind being you know, about two hundred and seventy degrees off what it said it was supposed to be had a very strong thermal pull this morning, which is weird. But anyway, so I feel like that, you know, and I'm thinking about it too, that that camera was probably halfway between cover. 00:39:40 Speaker 2: And food as it is. I mean, they're. 00:39:43 Speaker 3: Walking through kind of you know, knee high, warm seasoned grass or whatever. So it's just like if they're there at five, they've left the fields before then, and then how far are they going? 00:39:54 Speaker 2: And I know when they had covered they slow down, but you know, are they are they betting and then get up at daylight? Or are they going in there and. 00:40:04 Speaker 3: Just continuing to eat until nine or whatever time you know they go to their first bad eight o'clock or whatever, you know, And that's that's what's that's the one thing, you know, these are the things that like keep us hunting, as they say, I mean, everybody wants to talk about how like you know, well, you know, not being able to figure them out is what keeps you hunting. But honestly, what keeps you hunting is being able to figure them out every once in a while. 00:40:27 Speaker 1: That's yea, yeah, I want to figure them out four times a year. That's that's my goal. Man. I want to figure one out four times a year. And if I can do that, boy, that gets me going. Yeah. 00:40:37 Speaker 2: I mean, there's the casinos, you know. 00:40:41 Speaker 3: I think the key is that you know, you win thirty percent of the time, right, and then keeps you playing the game. So it's kind of the same thing here. It's like I gotta I gotta win some at least, you know. Yeah, you know, especially as a new hunter. 00:40:53 Speaker 2: You know. That's what I've always said, is like we got to have these people got to have better opportunities, you know, or or they're we're not going to really recruit. 00:41:00 Speaker 3: Too well because it's hard to go out there and figure these things out, even when you've been hunting for over twenty five years. 00:41:09 Speaker 1: My message on that is shoot a doe when you have an opportunity too a doe. 00:41:13 Speaker 2: That's it's funny how hard that is on Texas public Land, though. 00:41:16 Speaker 1: I guarantee you it's also funny how much meat you don't get off of one. So it makes it really not like it's not a lot of fun to skin one when you end up knitting twenty five pounds of meat, you know. But Okay, so question about the buck betting thing. Do you feel like you have successfully identified that or are you still in the process. 00:41:39 Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think I have, not having to identified all the different types of bug betting, but I have a pretty good idea. 00:41:48 Speaker 2: At least right now what I'm saying. 00:41:50 Speaker 3: I think I think I've got some stuff identified for buck batting. 00:41:54 Speaker 1: Do you wish that this this is kind of a kind of a branch off that, but these bucks still seem to be in bachelor groups according to the trail cameras at least would it be easier to kill if they weren't. 00:42:10 Speaker 2: I think so. I mean, this is what I was. 00:42:12 Speaker 3: Thinking about in North Dakota, and it was kind of the first time I really thought about this for whatever reason, but it just kind of hit me in North Dakota. Is there, and I think it was because there wasn't deer, there wasn't bucks around every corner. And I think that what you see, especially in that part of the country where is that there's a ton of bag fields, so there's so much habitat when you're talking about corn, especially mainly even though I did see some deer bending and beans and stuff too, it was tall enough, but you know, you've got this habitat on the landscape that's massive when you talk about having corn in in the summer and then it goes away during the hard time of their year, so it gets cut and then in the winter there's only tree and you know, brush in the draws or whatever. 00:43:03 Speaker 2: That is their cover, so. 00:43:06 Speaker 3: That only landscape can really whenever things are tough and the winter is hard, you know, only so many deer can reach up and pick you know, a twig or some sort of something in the bud in the lake spring in the late winter early spring, that is within five or six foot of the ground, you know, so that landscape can really only hold what it can hold during February. And I think that when you take that into consideration, and then you put groups of two or three bucks together, you're all of a sudden, you're like taking away the amount of locations of deer on the landscape essentially. So when the rut happens, the reason it's so great is because deer the bucks are by themselves and they're covering a lot of ground. 00:44:00 Speaker 2: In a bachelor group situation, you not only lose two to three. 00:44:06 Speaker 3: Time, you know, like you're dividing two into two or three or whatever, and you're putting those bucks together and they're running together. So if you see one, you're gonna see three. But you got to find that one in a space where in November there's three, and so you know low and then also on top of that, locating where the deer at when they can just pop out of the corn instead of having to pop out of a tree, tree line or some brush or whatever like it just it's exponentially. 00:44:34 Speaker 2: Harder, I think. 00:44:35 Speaker 3: Yeah, so once you find on them, then it's like, oh man, I got I got the spot. 00:44:39 Speaker 2: That's whatever. They're more they're more patternable. 00:44:44 Speaker 3: Not I'm not finding that these deer right now are super patternable. 00:44:48 Speaker 2: Still, like on an individual basis. 00:44:52 Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, here's what makes sense. Here's a counterpoint to it, though. I kind of think that there is a realm at least I'm not gonna say this is this is true, but like just something I'm thinking about. It just might be a a false indicator if the deer are are split up in there from their bachelor groups. Yeah, maybe you're going on a hunt and you're seeing a two year old eight point and you wouldn't have seen that deer if they were all in their bachelor groups. But you still being in range of a shooters. Being in range of a shooter doesn't matter if there's five bucks there or one buck there, you know what I'm saying, So there still has to be a shooter, uh, you know, And so. 00:45:39 Speaker 2: But like in North Dakota. In North Dakota had two shooters. 00:45:42 Speaker 1: In the same gay, Yeah exactly. And that's the thing that you can't have happen, right, So deer weird. And it's also kind of weird to me too. And this is the thing that I've noticed up there. Those deers stay in their little bachelor groups pretty long. Yeah, you know, when you're in North Dakota, those yeah they split up. 00:45:57 Speaker 2: Yeah, they split up. Yeah. 00:45:58 Speaker 3: But then up here, when I saw that big one the day before the seasons started, probably five minutes or less before he came over that saddle, a younger buck came over the saddle, and I told Michael, I. 00:46:10 Speaker 2: Say, hey, they might be a big one behind him, And sure enough. 00:46:13 Speaker 3: It was, you know, yeah, I mean they're not running right beside each other, but for sure. 00:46:16 Speaker 2: In the same group. 00:46:17 Speaker 1: Yeah, they were hanging out in the same area that day. And maybe it's that, maybe it's the the pockety habitat that you're run into up there makes them have to be near one another, you know, because they can't spread out that much. I don't know, just just a thought there, but yeah, man, I think you're onto some really good stuff. There, and I know you're about to go do some more scouting and you got to get a few things done before it's time to get in a tree. So I'm gonna thank you for all the great information that way. You know, there's just like alter your motive from doing this stuff where I get to kind of learn what you're doing. That way, I'm prepared when I get to go hunting, you know what I mean. So I appreciate it. 00:46:58 Speaker 2: I hope you kill them all and you go too. 00:47:00 Speaker 1: Man, we're about to go kill kill some together. You're don't killing before you leave a thinking. If you don't, it's all right because we're gonna go back together. But that's right, man, we're gonna go do some killing. Uh, guys, remember to listen. Oh let me tell you that's gonna be give Remember to listen to what Tyler has to say because he knows how to kill deer and uh hunt hard served the Lord. Remember this is your element live in