00:00:00 Speaker 1: I'm Casey, I'm Tyler, and you're listening to the Element podcast. 00:00:14 Speaker 2: What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the. 00:00:16 Speaker 1: Old podcast brought you my first like Gear, I'm your host, Casey Smith and Tyler Jones should we just call him Tyler whisper Jones is in the field. 00:00:26 Speaker 3: I am, I'm in the field. Yeah, I guess you could call that the mountain. 00:00:30 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:00:33 Speaker 1: It's a special podcast today because you were out doing the thing that we love to do. And I'm headed to Actually you don't even know this, but I'm headed to hunt with one Brian Bostic. 00:00:45 Speaker 3: I'm sorry. 00:00:46 Speaker 2: That's all right, man. 00:00:47 Speaker 1: You know, sometimes you just make sacrifices for your friends, you know what I mean. 00:00:51 Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, it's definitely a big sacres He's gonna take your chance. 00:00:54 Speaker 1: After that as well. We're going beforehand. Actually, that's where I'm headed right now. I had to go get a little bit at you know, brunch is the is the mixture of breakfast and lunch. 00:01:03 Speaker 2: What's lunch and dinner mixed together? 00:01:05 Speaker 3: Well, suffer supper. 00:01:08 Speaker 2: That's where we had suffer. You're doing a little hunting right now. 00:01:13 Speaker 1: And once that hunt concludes, we'll probably have a whole separate talk about that. So, uh, we do have a guest today, which we don't have as many guests anymore, But sometimes there's just someone so impactful in the hunting space that you got to have him on. And Jake Hofer is gonna be that guy. I say that a little tongue in cheek, but I really do. I mean it like in the sense that Jake Hofer probably has data about deer diald as good as a guy at as good as anyone I know. I mean he and you'll I've already pre recorded this and you'll see what I'm talking about here in a second. He he knows things, I mean, almost down to the hour on a yearly basis, what's going on in the woods told me this stuff. Yet, well, I guess you just gotta be nicer to him. I don't know, man, No, I don't know what it is. You just get to listen with the people you know, with everybody else, get to figure it out. 00:02:11 Speaker 2: That's it. 00:02:12 Speaker 1: See, Well, me and Jake the King are going to talk about some stuff here in a little bit that revolves around trail cameras. Specifically, he's a part on an of a trail camera company and lives and breathe that, but not in the sense of like excessive trail camera use. He just does it effect Like I think, I didn't even ask him, but I bet you he has maybe twenty cameras out, which is a lot more than some people. But I know people that have tenfold that out, and you know, so, like, I guess my point is, he's not just doing trail cameras for the sake of trail cameras. 00:02:53 Speaker 2: He's trying to kill giant bucks. And I don't mean just killed deer. 00:02:56 Speaker 1: But Jake is a giant buck hunter, which is a little bit different than some people. But we all here's here's the deal. All deer hunters want to be giant buck killers. You know, It's just how it is, right. I Mean, every once in a while you have this guy who really I think just kind of has angendas, like I just like to shoot dozens' pikes, you know. 00:03:13 Speaker 3: But I'm pretty sure that guy on exists on YouTube. 00:03:15 Speaker 1: Yeah, in our comments section. Yeah, But so I wanted to ask you a few questions. You're not going to be on this interview with Jake, but you know him really well, and you also are a big buck killer. So I want to ask you some stuff that kind of is a prelude to what Jake and I are going to talk about Tyler in general. Do you feel like trail cameras are a big part of you killing deer? 00:03:45 Speaker 3: Not every one of them, but I feel like, you know, occasionally yes, I would say, very helpful. 00:03:51 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. 00:03:52 Speaker 1: And what is what's the most helpful thing about a trail camera. 00:03:58 Speaker 3: For me personally? It's finding a target deer. You know, you know, we've probably talked about this for six or seven years, but not every parcel in Texas on public has a shooter deer on it. So you know, locating where you want to spend your time on the weekends. It's a pretty good, pretty good deal. And also just the same thing with like this time of year, especially in October late October, you know, deer start kind of relocating the ranges when they start to get interested in those again, and you can you know, you know what's hot real quick here in the pre rut in early stages. 00:04:37 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:04:39 Speaker 1: So I know you pretty well, and I've been around a lot yo hunting that you've done, and I know some instances. 00:04:47 Speaker 2: I'm going to ask you this question and. 00:04:49 Speaker 1: I guess I should say that I agree with what you say. You know, you and I do hunt a little different, but a lot of the things that we do, like at the Foundation, is the same. We think about things very similarly, and I think in a good hunting partner you kind of have to be at least at some similar baseline. So I'm with you that finding a target deer is a big part of what a trail camera does for you, or even in easts East Texas especially, Like we were looking at a deer I have on camera this morning who's five years old. Like I'm I'm eighty five percent sure this deer is five years old and he's twelve and a half inches wide, not a legal deer in my county. And we were just sitting there talking about him, and honestly, if I was to see that deer just on the hoof without good trail camera data, I might shoot him and then end up shooting an illegal deer because he has the body of a bulldog and he is from his side profile, he's big. 00:05:43 Speaker 2: He's just not wide. 00:05:45 Speaker 1: And that's a whole nother discussion there. But back to my question for you, I'm going to it's a two parter, and I'm gonna get you to explain two things. Can you give me a time when a trail camera helps you kill a deer and then when a trail camera actually got in the way of you killing deer? Hmm. 00:06:06 Speaker 3: The first ink was the mine is in Illinois and about four years ago. You know book, I've talked about it probably million times, but the book that we killed off I killed off at scrape. I mean having having him show up in mid October in the dark and knowing that there's another cold front about a week out. That helped me to kind of have the patience not hunt the cold front that was in the middle of October, but the one that was later. And then you know, not to mention, just kind of having an idea that the direction they were coming in from helped me to kind of understand where they were betting. That's a big part of my setup as well. Game. Yeah, really nice, just you know, strong handside shot out of a saddle. And then you know, for for some trail camera that has messed to me up, that's a that's a tough one. 00:07:04 Speaker 1: I have a so it's hard to say like in an instance, right, but I have since i've hunting with you, I kind of have a thought. There's a deer you chased on Texas public land that you called Teenager, and trail camers helped us locate this deer, and it helped us hunt him quite a bit. But there were times when we were going off of trail cameron data that might have been having us hunt in one place when that deer was in a completely different place. 00:07:37 Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think I think a lot of that, you know, a lot of the time that we hunted that deer. Obviously we're out there in the rut, and it would have been better to set up in you know, there's a particular pinch there that you and I both know about. Yeah, it'd probably been better to set up in that pinch and just hunt it day in and day out as as often as I could, instead of trying to, you know, jump around and go to the camera locations where he had been two days ago or four days ago or whatever. 00:08:02 Speaker 1: You know, chasing the hot camera I think could get you. You know, I think that that's a thing that could that could get you in trouble. You know, there's there's a thing where just knowing how to hunt just how to interpret sign, read the woods, knowing what days are good, knowing how the weather affects deer, all those things. Cameras are just an input into your data set, and that's what we're gonna talk about with Jake today. You know, of course we're gonna have a lot of emphasis on trail cameras because honestly, right now, people are getting a lot of trail camera pictures. 00:08:32 Speaker 2: I've seen it on Facebook, I know it. 00:08:34 Speaker 1: But just between buddies, you know, this first cold snap of the year, all of a sudden, the deer get on the feet. Maybe there's a little relocation going on. I mean, shoot the deer on my property have dark hawks. You know, they're not like, you know, just inked up, but that you know, you can tell they're doing the thing already. And so everybody's excited, included the deer, including the deer, but getting the pictures one thing. Interpreting that and setting up a plan, putting a plan in motion to actually kill the deer is completely different. And you don't want to be shooting yourself on the foot because you're just super overly excited and ambitious, right. 00:09:08 Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, I mean, especially if you're kind of you got one place to hunt, Yeah, waiting for the right the right time, right weather, right, Uh, probably the first few days November. Honestly, you know that's right. 00:09:21 Speaker 1: I mean, if you have one buck take to feel or you have one target buck h I could present a lot of viable evidence that you should just wait it out and just kill them. 00:09:37 Speaker 3: Especially if you're seeing trail camera data that's from from not you know, if you got it. I mean, obviously, if you got one that's killable right now in daylight, and he's somewhat patternable, you don't want to wait to the rut to mess that up, you know what. 00:09:50 Speaker 2: I mean, that's exactly right. And he's a little forgiving then too, you know. 00:09:54 Speaker 3: Yeah, sure if you but if you're seeing them not time movement, I mean, there's just just a little bit early I think. 00:10:01 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:10:01 Speaker 1: Absolutely, Well, dude, I'm gonna get Jake on the phone. We'll hear that interview is really compelling and I'm actually gonna go back and listen to it myself because he said so much good stuff in a short amount of period of time that it's it's definitely worth even taking some notes. I mean, there will be some things in this episode that people will want to write down, especially if you're a Midwest hunter. If you're not in the Midwest, that the concepts are still valid, but you just might need to do some adjusting of dates depending on when your you know, peak rut dates are or YadA YadA. So keep that in mind, Tyler. I hope it dries out and I hope you find a big giant buck man. 00:10:41 Speaker 3: Thanks man, I'll download that episode when I get ready to go get on a plane and fly back to Texas. 00:10:48 Speaker 2: Sounds good, dude. I appreciate you. 00:10:51 Speaker 1: Think you man on the phone now, I have got my good friend Jacob hoper As. 00:10:56 Speaker 2: He is in my phone for some reason. 00:10:57 Speaker 1: But Jake Hopeer with Exasist Trail Cameras, the busiest man in Whitetail, I think is going to be your new name. 00:11:04 Speaker 2: You've got a lot going on, right man, Yeah, I do. 00:11:07 Speaker 4: That's that's pretty funny. Yeah. So the cohnor of Exodus. 00:11:11 Speaker 5: And handled the podcast and a lot of the content marketing for Exodus. Been a real estate licensed agent for seven years and really infatuated with land agent with land Pros, and then recently I acquired the white. 00:11:23 Speaker 4: Tail Master Academy from Don Higgins. 00:11:25 Speaker 5: Not that I needed one more, one more endeavor, but man, I've designed my life to be around white tails and land and. 00:11:31 Speaker 4: I'm really thankful for that. 00:11:32 Speaker 5: And I just if it hat fits that has the word whitetail on it, I probably want to put it on. 00:11:38 Speaker 4: I really enjoyed this. 00:11:40 Speaker 1: That's very cool, man, and I appreciate you, know, I guess the drive that you have in all aspects of your life to succeed. 00:11:47 Speaker 2: And it shows because you're one of the. 00:11:51 Speaker 1: Guys who I used to refer to as an unsuspecting killer of whitetails, and now I think the secret's kind of out. 00:11:58 Speaker 2: Like you're pretty good at it. 00:11:59 Speaker 1: And one of the things that I've noticed about you is that you're somewhat of a tactician and you're also like very organized, and you have to be like just the way you live your life. I would say, if you have three different full time jobs, which add that the hours of the day up in your head on that, right, you have to somewhat compartmentalize and organize for that to succeed. Right, And so in that, uh, I you and I actually had a discussion earlier this week about well, just Illinois whitetail, because I interviewed you for the ret first radio podcast that's over on the wire to Hunt Feed, and then we were talking afterwards, of course and just really just hyping about big deer, and I was I just kind of got to thinking, because I'm getting a ton of trail cameras right now, are a ton of truck camera pictures right now, like. 00:12:56 Speaker 2: A lot of people are. 00:12:58 Speaker 1: With this cooler weather that just pushed through, and it's a little hard to discern what to do with some of the things because just we might have been texting this morning about this or last night, I don't know what it was, but like you were just you told me we had a property that or let me phrase this differently, so it makes sense. Tyler and I are hunting a property in Illinois that has some decent bucks on it, but we don't have any like five and a half year old plus type deer on this place yet. And you kind of assured me that, you know, you even gave some like real specific dates as to when you thought, hey, I bet you a deer shows up during this time on camera. And I just thought that was interesting, and in fact, another thing that kind of brought this up. I had a mature, dear show up with my home property. It's just a twenty acre piece here in East Texas. For the first time all season long, this morning he daylighted and I didn't even I knew this deer from last year, but I didn't have a single picture of him yet this year until just now. And So where we're getting at is I think a lot of people who pay attention to cameras and. 00:14:07 Speaker 2: I'm gonna kind of segregate the. 00:14:09 Speaker 1: Hunting world a little bit here, and it's not separate therefore unequal. 00:14:14 Speaker 2: Okay, all these people are important. 00:14:17 Speaker 1: All there are opportunity hunters who I have been that in my life many times, where hey, I've got two and a half days this weekend and I'm gonna hunt every one of those hunts. It doesn't really matter what's going on in the woods. I just need to be out there. This is the only time I get to be out there this month, and it's very important to pursue that. 00:14:38 Speaker 2: If that's If that's you, And. 00:14:40 Speaker 1: Then there's a spot where a lot of guys fall in where they're trying to be a little particular. Maybe they are big buck hunters or on the fringe of being a big buck hunter, or have a target deer, and so they're considering the trail camera photos that they're getting in all the other data port pins that you consider as a deer hunter, and they're trying to make the best moves. So Jake to bring all that into maybe a couple questions here, You're a guy who runs at a lot of show cameras, and you have in the past, and I wouldn't say you run the most of anyone I know. I know some people that run like hundreds a year, and I think it's kind of a little bit of an obsession for them. But well, maybe first of all, maybe the best question is, like what is a good number of show cameras for a normal guy? 00:15:30 Speaker 2: And then. 00:15:33 Speaker 1: How do you avoid like just being so convoluted by all these inputs, you know, from different properties, and what should I do here and where? And how where should I go? Because I got deer everywhere? 00:15:45 Speaker 5: Yeah, So I was actually talking to a friend this morning. He has two farms to hunt, and I hunt a lot of different farms by permission. I own two pieces, and anyhow exactly we're talking about like having too many places to go versus maybe not enough places to go. So I mean, depending on where you follow in that spectrum, I think most people maybe have a couple spots, right And I think that the perfect balance of cell cameras for standard cameras, I think you need to run both. And so even last night we were texting, I passed the biggest deer I've passed before, and which you know, maybe he won't get that passed two times in a row. But this relating that back to I did not have a cell camp picture of that deer. I don't have one cell camera up at my house right now. And the first year I've been here for three falls now, and I remember the very first year. It was about the sixteenth or seventeenth in conjunction of a back end of a cold front. 00:16:42 Speaker 4: And I couldn't hunt, and I wanted to hunt so bad. 00:16:44 Speaker 5: I just bought the place, and I had a real estate endeavor I had to go to and so that was in the back of my mind. And there was a catapa tree on a creek where I had a stand, and there was a scrape on the back side of a food plot adjacent to where I anticipate a lot of deer to bed, and sure enough that buck did the same exact thing that a different mature buck did three years ago. I can't see that same area came up to the food plot and I ultimately passed them. So what I'm getting at is I didn't have mri of oh my gosh, she's on camera. 00:17:12 Speaker 4: I need to go hunt my farm right now. 00:17:14 Speaker 5: It was a mix of past data, pass information, key food source, weather front. 00:17:20 Speaker 4: And following your gut and getting a good encounter. 00:17:23 Speaker 5: And so the long and short of it is, I think soaking standard cameras is really really effective, and then tying that in with cell cameras is also very effective. I think right now in this time of the year of October, the second half of October. 00:17:39 Speaker 4: The amount of people that are texting like, hey, you had a new buck to showed up, Hey, I got a new buck to show up. I didn't. It happens every single year, and. 00:17:46 Speaker 5: These bucks that show up like between the seventeenth or nineteenth or the twenty first, like the twenty fifth, twenty sixth typically on a scrape is and I run a lot of cameras on scrape, so that's somewhat biased to where I have the cameras, but a lot of the deer that show up, even if they're in the middle of the night, it's two o'clock in the morning, and you're thinking, all this year, isn't going to show up in daylight. I'm telling you he's likely going to show up. And those key dates are typically between like November third, November fourth is off. Even even going to like let's say November two, November third, November fourth, a lot of times they will. 00:18:22 Speaker 4: Show back up. And also if you push that back. 00:18:26 Speaker 5: Even a little further, another segment of dates I really like is like November ten, eleven, twelve here in Illinois, where it's not. 00:18:33 Speaker 4: The deer that for sure lives on you. 00:18:35 Speaker 5: You have one hundred eleven pictures of them and you're you've been counting down the days to kill them. 00:18:39 Speaker 4: I'm talking about the deer that randomly shows up. 00:18:41 Speaker 5: And I've just seen that on so many different properties, so many different years in a row. And I alluded to this with the Rough Fresh podcast. But the deer I shot in Iowa last year, we had cameras out all summer. 00:18:53 Speaker 4: We did not have a velop a picture of this deer. 00:18:55 Speaker 5: We got our first picture of them on October seventeenth. 00:18:58 Speaker 4: Then we got a picture of him in great light. 00:19:00 Speaker 5: October twenty fifth, and then I ended up connecting with him during that time frame in November, and so it's not like he was there all the time, but for whatever reason, they just cover a lot of ground that seems like in that key period of time, and you got to be out there, gotcha, I guess, And it's kind of it's kind of hard to describe, but hopefully people understand, and I know when you're checking your cameras or even for you guys in Illinois, that sequence of events is going to happen. 00:19:28 Speaker 4: I feel very confident. 00:19:30 Speaker 1: It's one of the things I love about the Midwest is that the dates and stuff are very set, and you know, if I'm hunting further east or south or even west of that, that's just just doesn't seem quite to be the case. So that consistency in like order of things is handy when you start like trying to plan hunts, especially out of staters, you know, trying to travel somewhere. You said a few things in that that I want to kind of dissect a little further. There's like three points that I listened in and I was like, man, that's really interesting. So I think the first one is that you mentioned that cell cameras and regular trail cameras are both very beneficial. I'll be honest with you. I'm running zero standard cameras right now. I'm running all cell cameras. And I felt like a little attacked because I just love my cell cameras so much. But there's this thing that you can do when you talk to people who you value their opinion of it. And so when you said that, I started actually questioning my motive and what I'm doing with my cameras. So instead of me going on a big spill, can you explain why each of those is valuable. 00:20:43 Speaker 2: I think. 00:20:46 Speaker 1: I have a good grasp at least of cell camera value and maybe how to use them. But you kind of opened my eyes a little bit about some things, and I think I know where you're going with it. But you know, especially for the standard trail camera, like, why that valuable even in you know, the technological age that we are in. 00:21:04 Speaker 5: Yeah, I think cell cameras you can make pretty just brash decisions too easily because of the real time data. And I think that a lot of times people are just chasing their cameras and oftentimes like you have to throw in the element of the hunt and like follow your intuition. 00:21:19 Speaker 4: Because I'm ironically I'm not I don't have. 00:21:21 Speaker 5: Full deployment of all my cell cameras right now, and I'm relating back to like how did I hunt in twenty eighteen. 00:21:27 Speaker 4: Or nineteen self camera, It's like I'll just go to blind, you know. 00:21:31 Speaker 5: But the purpose of the standard cameras, in my opinion, is especially you know, it's different for you guys because you guys bounce around so much, but for the guy that you know maybe hunts a key area and they he'll be hunting in that area for the next couple of years, right having some soaking cameras out there where you're not getting real time information to go and the cloud that area and change things. And put it into an additional example on Monday Night where I hunted. 00:21:57 Speaker 4: I had a. 00:21:57 Speaker 5: Standard camera all last year, and I pulled it at the end of season and I saw just the activity like Peak and Valley throughout the year and where it was like red hot, red hot, And I have a cell camera there now, but I'm going to set up and I feel pretty comfide I should get an opportunity in that area. So it's kind of like putting bank deposits everywhere and you want to you want to cash in those dividends the following year, which you know that works pretty well for where I'm at in the structure of my access, but getting and keeping that information long term and then going through and looking at it, like I'm often going through my hard drive and looking at farms and seeing what was going on last year at this time, and it's refreshing my memory because dude, I'm telling you, with cell cameras, people go, oh, sweet, big picture, you know, deer, picture of a big deer, send it. 00:22:47 Speaker 4: To their buddy, and that's the end of it. 00:22:49 Speaker 5: They don't save it, they don't stay organized, and so there's like this missing gap with cell cameras for standard cameras. And I'm telling you how you how you have identified that things are pretty silical in the Midwest. If you do not keep track of that, you're missing a huge, huge piece of information for the future. One particular deer, I don't feel super confident I'll catch up with them, but we I had a cell camera up on like a cell camera up that I had no intent of actually going to hunt, and there was a really big deer, a really good dear that was on there just a couple of times, and then so this year actually added more cameras. Had that in the back of my mind in this upcoming season. I know the key dates that he was in there, and I'm going to try to kill him of that, but he's super random, so it's like I don't have a high conviction of that, and a lot of these deer, like even if if I just go back and think of like all the past year, like a lot of the deer I end up killing, I do not have elbow pictures of and they showed up the shoe like they appeared right about now, like in the next ten days. 00:23:55 Speaker 2: Like that's like the deer. 00:23:56 Speaker 4: You're about to get pictures of, or the deer you're likely hunting in November or the very end of October. 00:24:01 Speaker 5: I mean, that's just the reality of most scenarios for most people, because the deer they move around, and like farms are just historically really good at different times of year, where it's just like this song is really good this time of year, and then it's not very good lad season or vice versa, and you just have to identify that, am I gonna put all the chips in the middle of the table. It's when the odds are the highest and you're likely to win, and the only way you know if you're going to win or likely to win is based off of data and information. 00:24:50 Speaker 2: Yeah, so we'll lego. You actually. 00:24:53 Speaker 1: Had like this very interesting omission, and I don't know if there was anything to it or not, but you said the seventeenth through the nineteenth, or the twenty first through the twenty fifth? 00:25:06 Speaker 2: Why do you hate the twentieth and. 00:25:10 Speaker 4: What's Yeah, it's a really good point. 00:25:15 Speaker 1: I was like, no, no, yeah, but there's something too. You're saying there actually is a thing to it. You don't like the twentieth as much. 00:25:21 Speaker 5: I've just never had like personally, that date never has sticked out of a deer showing up. 00:25:27 Speaker 4: That's like new ever, how about that? 00:25:29 Speaker 5: And if I don't know, I don't know why that is. And obviously this is you know, it's a one off, but like this isn't just one farm. Like I hunt all over a lot of different small pieces, larger pieces, but for whatever reason, those are the dates that stick out to me. And if I had to pick my let's say, like three out of all those numbers, like the twenty three, twenty five, and twenty sixth are my like with the most highest odds of getting that really big deer that probably pauses your season of every other deer and your likelihood of killing them is like either the beginning of November or seven, eight nine tens. 00:26:05 Speaker 2: Iois you're saying. 00:26:08 Speaker 1: Those dates, that those three dates as more of picking up a big deer for the first time as opposed to actually get dates to be in. 00:26:17 Speaker 2: The tree for him. 00:26:18 Speaker 1: And often, Yeah, and I know you you're just as excited to get a big a picture of a big deer as you are to potentially go in there and hunt one, right, because you know that the one leads to the other. And so you're you're saying that because you can get pictures of a deer on those dates, you can almost guarantee an encounter on that first letter in the first week in November. 00:26:40 Speaker 5: Yes, absolutely, historically, yeah, absolutely, And that's It's taken me a long time to figure that out too. 00:26:46 Speaker 4: I mean, I've identified that for. 00:26:48 Speaker 5: A while, but really in the last two years, that's really come to fruition. Another example of that is the deer actually in Illinois last year. I went back and I did actually have a hard one picture of him and just one, and then I got pictures of them right about I'd have to go back and look the exact day, but it was late October and I shot that deer November thirty. 00:27:08 Speaker 4: You me, so, how about that? It was not a deer that lived on the farm, and I spent a bunch of time there. 00:27:14 Speaker 5: But it's just like that pattern recognition, like the eye with here, all of that very similar as well, and it's just like the really the other added benefit to it too is obviously it's weird when this infatuated with deer all your all your friends are also that crazy, and so you get all that. You get all their information too, and a lot of times it matches up to what to what we're seeing or often. 00:27:39 Speaker 4: You know, I'm the word of encouragement, like, dude, probably going to be around here pretty soon, you better get in there. And sometimes it works out. 00:27:46 Speaker 1: It pays to have optimistic friends, I guarantee you that's I'm a I'm a proclaimed optimist as well, So like you know, maybe it's not always the perfect advice. But I'll take an example just from yesterday. Have a good friend here in East Texas. It wasn't gonna hunt h and he has some nice deer on camera, and I'm like, dude, tomorrow is the day. And sure enough, you know, he goes out and he sees twelve deer and three of them are are bucks and one of them is potentially a shooter. Now he wasn't in range, but you know, hey it was it was worth. 00:28:17 Speaker 2: Going, you know. 00:28:17 Speaker 1: And and really I didn't know if he's gonna see any deer or not, but it's just like, hey, it's a good day, you might should go try, you know, And just being optimistic about that is super valuable. Well, ago you mentioned you're just talking about that deer that you had one September hard one picture and then like one October picture, and then the deer you killed that was the your illinoisa from last year. Right, So I have a theory or hypothesis, but don't have a ton of data to back it up. 00:28:44 Speaker 2: That deer were. 00:28:47 Speaker 1: So they definitely shift oftentimes at least uh you know, right around velvet shed and they'll go to a different core area. And it seems like to me that deer that you have have velvet pictures of are actually very hard to hunt unless you have a large property. 00:29:05 Speaker 2: But there's like. 00:29:07 Speaker 1: These times they're they're like a little short date ranges where those deer will oftentimes venture back into their summer range. I think maybe they know there's dose there from this summer or whatever the case may be. But have you have you seen that? Have you seen where velvet pictures of kind of ghost deer do in fact payoff with those deer showing back up at some point in time. 00:29:30 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:29:30 Speaker 5: Absolutely, if you get pictures of the velvet deer, I often think he'll be back on your aparm at some point, and usually it's during the key the key periods of the like when they're just traveling a bunch, And so I definitely would agree with that. 00:29:44 Speaker 4: And it's often if I have a. 00:29:47 Speaker 5: Bunch of giant deer on camera in the summer, I'm actually a little nervous. 00:29:50 Speaker 4: I want pictures. I want pictures of them. 00:29:52 Speaker 5: In October, like them right now is what I want them, because I just feel like your opportunity of killing those deer are higher than maybe the one you had in velvet on an alfalfa field at midnight, two time out of the summer, like he'll probably be back at some point, But I don't know if that's something you're able to really figure out in. 00:30:10 Speaker 4: One year, especially on smaller properties. 00:30:11 Speaker 5: To your point, we're just looking into a tiny little snippet that deer's life range and behavior, and you're trying to put together this puzzle with three pieces, and it's a five hundred piece puzzle. Yeah, it's really challenging, but sometimes you're still able to put the picture together with just a few pieces, and that often happens. One thing that I think is really interesting is the other side of it too, with cameras and historical data and everything else. I think a lot of times, like where I'm at, it's definitely not Michigan hunting pressure, but you know, like there's pockets that are pretty heavily pressured in my opinion and compares to other parts of the country. 00:30:48 Speaker 4: And I really think the really high. 00:30:51 Speaker 5: End deer are the most random by far, and that based off of some really big dear that I've known of in the past and personally hunted. 00:31:01 Speaker 4: And then you slowly put the pieces. 00:31:02 Speaker 5: Together or here where the deer was actually shot down the road, and it's it's also like another wave of optimism. Don't be super nervous if you don't have one that show up at the end of October, because it's very possible that one shows up later in November or even let's say like November twelfth or November like seventeenth. I've seen that happen a handful of times, And what do you hope for is they lived another year. Then you have that information to go to the next because usually it's too late to be hot. 00:31:32 Speaker 4: Yeah, it's too late. 00:31:33 Speaker 2: So honestly, last year I had that happen. We on a place in Kansas. 00:31:38 Speaker 1: We ran cameras and just had inventory of what every buck we thought was in the area, because those deer are so transient, they moved so much, and so you know, we had cameras spread out on a large property and we're like, oh, this is these are the four bucks that are potential shooters, and just assumed there were no more. And then sure enough, November fifteenth, a giant deer is on the property in one of the other deer that we know, and I you know, long stor of short d you end up shooting that deer that day and we'd never seen him ever before, and after I shooting posted him online and actually end up getting some messages about guys you know a few miles away who have pictures of this year and know him for seasons on end, and they were, you know, by the way, very nice about it. 00:32:24 Speaker 2: You know, hey, guys, awesome, that's so cool that you shot this deer. 00:32:28 Speaker 1: Here he is from you know, twenty twenty to their twenty twenty three or whatever, you know, and it was just so once a loftime deer for me. You know, he's not like a super high score but like a weird, non typical thing. That video will be out later this year, but I guess what I'm saying is that, like I've seen that happen that you're talking about. It just random, you know, very old Buck just does a thing because he decided that day that he's like, I'm gonna go find some new ladies. 00:32:56 Speaker 5: You know. 00:32:56 Speaker 1: It's just like it's it's almost like they have to get to a cer in age to build the confidence to be able to make a move like that or something, or maybe we just don't notice them when they're two and three and they're doing that because you know, you probably do. But to me, I'm like, you know, that's just a two year old. I don't pay a ton of attention to him. But yeah, maybe I don't know. 00:33:16 Speaker 4: Yeah, somewhat guilty of that. 00:33:17 Speaker 5: And the other thing too, is like things change so much throughout the season, right, maybe maybe the neighbor down the road wounds a deer and they. 00:33:24 Speaker 4: Go through their property. 00:33:25 Speaker 5: Yeah, four days in a row and is grid searching, right, pretty pretty pretty good chance that whatever there might relocate, And you know, I think that's that's part of the unknown and excitement obviously of the season. But like right now, I'm like I'm in terms of cameras and scouting, like I'm over the next ten days, like I'm ten out of ten excited to check cameras, move cameras, go look for sign put up cell cameras, because I just it's it's it's the time to buy a deer and hopefully connect with them in the early part of November, first half of November, Like it's it's it. That's my plan, like that, that's what I'm personally doing, and I have full conviction in doing that and tying in last year's data or even two years data and just putting together a game plan and being somewhat flexible and to your point, being positive. I remember, I think it was two seasons ago, a pretty pessimistic outlook on everything, and my season sucked like it was bad. 00:34:21 Speaker 4: It was not fun. 00:34:23 Speaker 5: Every every little mistake fell catastrophic. And so last year specifically, I was like, Okay, every every day I get to go out. 00:34:29 Speaker 4: It is a big deal. 00:34:30 Speaker 5: I'm lucky to do so, like all these different things, I had an awesome season last year, and so I'm carrying that over into this year. 00:34:36 Speaker 4: And I just, you know, I think that it's so cheesy and cliche. 00:34:39 Speaker 5: To be like mind sets everything, but it really a lot of it is like don't overthink things, like if you listen to the Element, you listened to a bunch of podcasts, you know more than probably what you realize, and it's internalized and you just need to do what feels right. Like, yes, you have to think about how to ride a bike, you've already learned how to do it, and maybe you've got to learn how to lean one way or the other because the terrain a little bit different, but you know how to do it, and I think that's a lot of the deer hunting. 00:35:03 Speaker 4: Comes to that too. 00:35:04 Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, man, dude, you are so full of good information. I'm so thankful. And here's this is. 00:35:10 Speaker 1: I don't mean to puff you up too much, Okay, so remain the humble guy that you are, But it's encouraging to think about how good of a hunter you are at your age and then add twenty years to that kind of what kind of do are you gonna be killing when you're fifty? You know what I mean? Like it's gonna be on. So there's two things I want to talk to you about before I let you go. 00:35:34 Speaker 2: Okay. 00:35:34 Speaker 1: The first one is going to be just your data organization. How are you keeping up with all that? I know you mentioned hard drives and some other things like that earlier. But also I would think that like at some point in time, I don't know, maybe you just have a lock box of a brain, but I don't, And so I would need to like write things down or put things in a calendar for an annual reminder, like hey, Octomber seventeenth, he showed up last year? Or are you just that much of a fiend of it you remember it? Every time you get to this stuff up. 00:36:03 Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a mixture of a handful thing. 00:36:05 Speaker 5: So even with my cell cameras, I keep when they're when I take them down at the end of the season, I have a hard drive. I put all my cell cam pictures into hard drives, per farm, per camera location, and then if I have some really big deer, I make another folder for that farm of. 00:36:19 Speaker 4: You know, it's this titled big Deer, So I put those. 00:36:23 Speaker 2: Not like that, just the big deer hard drive. 00:36:26 Speaker 5: And then so I have that side of things, and the standard cameras, I'm doing the same thing. And then for the cell cameras, you know, like when you download it from the app, it automatically makes the folder. 00:36:35 Speaker 4: But I'll go in and i'll. 00:36:36 Speaker 5: Heart the big deer specifically, and then I have an organized folder of that on my phone, but I'll also have them on my hard drive on my computer. And then I also I make a variety of notes, and I go back and revisit that a lot throughout the season, especially on a warm day I'm stuck in the office working, you know, I may take fifteen twenty minutes, maybe an hour to get and this revisit and refresh and then tie that in with information that is new from this year and looking back to previous years, Like I have really good confidence on one particular farm, like the first good cold. 00:37:08 Speaker 4: Front the end of October early November, on. 00:37:11 Speaker 5: Two specific pinches where there's the last two years, it's been a lot of activity, Like I'm not specifically hunting that particular deer on that farm. 00:37:17 Speaker 4: It's a permission piece. It's a year by year. 00:37:19 Speaker 5: It's always touch and go, like I'm going to go and if there's a maturityer, I'm gonna shoot it. 00:37:24 Speaker 4: And that's my strategy with that and so and then the other thing. I have a really good friend and he is the deer rain man and he remembers deer better than me. 00:37:32 Speaker 5: And I'll text him a deer and he's like, oh, yeah, that's that deer from this time. 00:37:35 Speaker 4: He was there there there. So I have a good rain man friend too. 00:37:38 Speaker 2: Hey, that's a sick tip right there. I'll like that. Just have a different guy that's better at it than you are. Oh that's right. I like that a lot. 00:37:46 Speaker 1: So the last thing, and I think this this is going to be more broad and it's probably a really good thing to wrap up with. But all this data is very important, and being able to translate it is very important, and being able to activate it and put it into action is super important as well. However, if you're missing data points and like big ones, it can be huge. 00:38:10 Speaker 2: Right. 00:38:10 Speaker 1: In fact, I was just talking to a friend who said that, you know, five years ago, he's hunting once in a lifetime type deer and somehow he got his wind directions mixed mixed up, and almost the whole season he was hunting the deer in the exact wrong wind direction when he went in there, and so he just never saw the deer. And I feel so bad for him because he's super nice dude, you know, and he's like, oh, that was so dumb or whatever, you know, you kind of you see what I'm saying here. I think that for someone to apply the things that we're talking about, you have to take a step back and make sure you're being a smart hunter. Right you mentionedable to go even things changed constantly where you know, maybe the the guy next door had to run a dog in there the night before and it just spooked all the deer out, and all of a sudden, you have a new deer on your camera, right, Well, you could do the same thing by having bad access or uh you know, maybe getting in the stand too early or too late or whatever the case may be, or you know whatever the other things that could happen. Right, So, can you just maybe touch on how important it is to hunt smart in these situations. 00:39:17 Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's something that we all have probably been guilty at some point. 00:39:22 Speaker 4: We get a little too antsy, a little too a little too dude. 00:39:25 Speaker 1: I hate to think about the deer that I've spooked, that I had no clue that I did it. 00:39:29 Speaker 2: That if there's anything that gives me but not it's. 00:39:31 Speaker 1: That is that he was he was seventy yards from me, and he saw me, you know, pee or whatever from the tree, and I never saw him. 00:39:41 Speaker 2: You know. 00:39:41 Speaker 5: Oh, that that lifetime counter would be actually very depressing. 00:39:48 Speaker 4: But you're exactly right, Like you have to follow your gut, like you you likely. 00:39:54 Speaker 5: Or probably a solid deer hunter if you're it's infatuated. If you listen to deer hunting podcast around like you're, you probably have the foundations, but you can't get the Well, so and so got lucky and he shot at the ear on a bad wind and you know, this isn't really that good of an idea, but I'm going to go do it anyways. Ninety nine times out of one hundred that ends poorly, So it's like you still have to play your odds like these are these are mature bucks that are really good at staying alive, and you're really hoping that they make a mistake versus you making a bunch of mistakes. Because as Mark Luster he said this and has stuck with me for a very long time, is they have to be right every time. You just have to be right once. Now, granted, you don't want to be wrong every time and tip off your cards to the tier every single time, but really that's it makes things a little. 00:40:41 Speaker 4: Bit more liberating when you think about it that way. But you still definitely you know, I wouldn't like the. 00:40:46 Speaker 5: Pinch that I'm talking about that I'm super excited the hunt. I haven't hunted it yet, and I won't hunt it until the time is right based off of years of data and information and to go into the best spot when it's the best and I'm still scratching that age on some other spot observation sets or kind of one offs, but just be strategic. 00:41:04 Speaker 4: But don't be too passive. 00:41:06 Speaker 5: And I know that is the easiest thing to say, but the hardest thing on earth to actually know what to do. 00:41:11 Speaker 4: And that's something I'm still trying to figure out. 00:41:12 Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, I like it, man. That is great words of encouragement, especially as we're sneaking up on the best time of year. It's not here yet, but the anticipation we can just enjoy, right, And so don't do anything crazy yet. But if you feel like you can make a tackle to move, you go kill one. It's not a bad time in the next few weeks. 00:41:30 Speaker 4: Right, absolutely, Yeah, one hundred percent. 00:41:33 Speaker 1: Yeah, cool, Thanks Jake, really appreciate your friendship, man, and all the great great thoughts. I'm actually going to go back and re listen to this and make sure at least write down the notes of those dates that you mentioned, because that's so precise. 00:41:47 Speaker 2: It has to be right, That's all I have to say. 00:41:49 Speaker 5: Well, it's worked for me, or at least it's been true for me, and I'm pump for your guys as Illinois Hunt. I hope what you know this information is helpful to you guys and everyone else out there. And I'm constantly learning and I'm sure I'm going to learn a few things this year. Hopefully I learn a bunch of things this year, and it's continuing to get more refined, because that's every season's the opportunity. 00:42:08 Speaker 4: To get a little bit better. 00:42:09 Speaker 1: Yep, it sounds awesome. Well, I'm about the head of the stand man. I will talk to you later. 00:42:13 Speaker 4: Good luck to you. 00:42:15 Speaker 1: That may have been one of the most intensive, information rich episodes that we've ever done at the Element. Now I'm gonna have to revisit it a few times, especially since I'm gonna be spending some time in the Midwest because Jake is dialed and I know if you're you know, maybe not as serious, that's okay. 00:42:36 Speaker 2: Let me just say that out the gate. 00:42:39 Speaker 1: Maybe you're not as much of a big buck hunter and you just like to shoot deer and just like to get out there for the experience of being in the woods. That's great, But I would encourage you to say that paying attention to these things can enrich your experience and it's worth doing because we all like to see deer. So you can approach this income mentally, right. The things that we're talking about will help you kill big giant bucks. But it will also just help you with general deer encounters as well. If you go to the woods and don't seem any deer, well, thinking about your access and thinking about your camera data and peak deer movement and things like that will will ultimately lead to more encounters, which is more success in my book. I appreciate y'all listening. It's a crazy time of year. I know it's super busy. So if you are willing to give the element thirty forty five minutes in the car on the way to the stand or whatever, that means a lot to me. So I just wanted to say thank you. Don't get too caught up in it this year, guys. It's a lot of fun. But take the days to take somebody else. Take your kids or a friend or whatever. Spend some time with them, you know, entertain your buddy with his big bucks or his thoughts, because it's all a lot of fun for everyone. So don't get too caught up in the selfish aspect of what deer honey is, because it is kind of a selfish thing to do. You know, we're spending time by ourselves in the woods, and that's time we could be spending with other people or our families or whatever that may be, so make sure it's worth it. And that's kind of one of the reasons we try to make do our best every time we ender the woods. If you haven't, you need to go subscribe to the Element YouTube channel if you would please. It would help us out a lot, of course, and we try to put again a product on the Element YouTube channel that you can know that you can spend your time watching that's actually valuable. We don't want to waste your time. It's not going to be super long and drawn out and uninteresting. We try to put some really good stuff on there that not only is entertaining, but hopefully helps you learn and helps you get closer to Deer and closer to God, because quite honestly, guys, our whole purpose, our mission in this world is to glorify God by what we do. And I can also tell you that what you see on our channel will be family friendly and hopefully you won't have to do any ear muffs are covering of any eyes anywhere. I thank y'all so much for listening. Uh, be careful out there. I know a guy recently fell out of a tree stand so be safe, be with what you're doing. 00:45:15 Speaker 2: UH and remember this is your element, live in it.