00:00:01 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to the whitetail woods, presented by First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon, Welcome to the. 00:00:20 Speaker 2: Wired to Hunt podcast. 00:00:22 Speaker 3: This week on the show, John Eberhart and Greg Godfrey are detailing for us their recipe for success for hunting pressured white tails during the peak of the run. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light and their Camo for Conservation Initiative, and we will still be providing you our hunting songs of sorts, big white tails and the most Wonderful Time to Kill Deer, but we're to put them at the end of the episode because my buddy further aka Josh doesn't know how to fast forward through parts of the podcast he doesn't want to listen to, so to make it easier for him, we're going to put at the very end of the show. So if you enjoy those songs, you can still catch it after our show here today. But we do have a great podcast for you. We're talking the rut, the peak of the rut the super Bowl of our season. It is here, it's going on right now, and our guests today are going to help us explore a number of different ways to have success this time of year, especially if you hunt in places where there's a lot of hunting pressure. My guests have been on the show before. John Eberhardt is a legend. It's likely that you know him. He's the author of many books. He's been on this podcast five or six times over the years. A absolute og when it comes to killing mature bucks in places like Michigan or other heavily pressured states. He's also proven these techniques they'll work in other states too. He goes to Indiana, Ohio, Kansas, Illinois, etc. And then our second guest today is Greg Godford. He's one of the co founders of Tethered and another guy who's proven to be successful in many different parts of the country, especially with this mobile hunting strategy that he's really perfected with his saddle system there at Tethered. So that's what we have in store for you today. And we have had John on the show a number of times and we've touched a little bit on some of his rut techniques. But today we are getting into a level of detail that we've never before. The entire show today is just getting into the nitty gritty of how he and Greg think about hunting the rut. So we cover everything from the various types of locations you'll want to focus on during this time period of the year. 00:02:51 Speaker 4: We get into a lot of. 00:02:52 Speaker 3: The philosophy around deciding how long you should stay put in a location versus moving and you know, being mobile, get into a number of other techniques, decoys, calling, all sorts of good stuff. This one will be very actionable, very useful for you in the upcoming days, whether you hunt in Michigan or Pennsylvania or Georgia or Wio. Whatever it is, we got you covered here. It's gonna be a good one. John and Greg co authored a book that just came out recently. It's called The Ultimate Guide to DIY Books. Here it is right here for those of you watching. There's actually three books. It's a three volume set, so we cover a lot that's mentioned in that book as well, So check out those after the podcast if you want more from Greg and John. And I think that is it. I think we can get right into our show today. I will mention that there's a new film from myself over on the media or YouTube channel, so you can check out my Nebraska whitetail hunt from last year. It was a really exciting hunt. Things got turned upside down from what I thought they were going to be. I had to kind of create a brand new plan on the spot found to get on some deer on the ground without trees. It's an interesting one. You can find it. You can watch it at the Meat Eater YouTube channel. I appreciate that, and that is it. I think we should get into our show. If you are out there hunting right now in mid November or that second week, whatever it is, I'm wishing you the best of luck. Stuff should be great out there. This is what we have waited all year for, so enjoy it. Putting the time, stay optimistic. Just remember anything is possible this time of year, so I'll be pulling for you. That said, let's get to my chat with John and Greg. All right here with me back on the line. Both of these gentlemen are returning guests. I've got Greg Godfrey and John Eberhart. Gentlemen, thank you for making time to do this right in the heat of the rut and all the excite and that's about to hit. 00:05:01 Speaker 5: Thanks for the opportunity. Always appreciate being on your show. 00:05:05 Speaker 6: Yeah, it's always fun to talk to Mark, one of the uh what I call the ogs of white Tail podcasting content. I think Mark, you kind of started it way back in the day, back in the in the early Wired to Hunt days, So it's uh, I'm always well've been on the show once, but it's really cool to be invited back. It means a lot to me personally. Well right back at you guys, I appreciate it. And and Greg, your product and ideas around that product have changed my hunting in a big way. And John, you know I've said this to you a thousand times, but your your early books and everything were instrumental in my journey too. So all the way around this is this is good stuff. It's exciting stuff. 00:05:52 Speaker 3: And as we just said, you both have been on the podcast before, but we have never done a podcast that was strict all things. Let's dive deep into the rut and that's what I want to do here today because when this podcast drops, it will be November seventh, so for a lot of people that's going to be like peak rut. This is their rut cation, this is when they're taking their time off. There's a lot of people over the next couple weeks that are looking at this as their super Bowl. And I know you guys put some extensive time and effort into discussing this timeframe in your latest book series, and so I wanted to take this opportunity to kind of dig into the nitty gritty of that, and maybe the place to start would be in breaking down how you guys look at the rut and how dear behavior changes through that, because within your book or books, I should say, rather you kind of separate it out into three different phases. Everyone's got different ways they like to define the rut and how they break it down. But you guys kind of broke it down by pre rut, peak rut, post rut. Before we get into the actually how you set up and hunt each one of those different things, maybe John, would you kick us off by just walking me through how you think about dear behavior changing through those three periods of the rut and what the timeframe is that you are kind of breaking those three chunks into. 00:07:21 Speaker 5: Yes, pre rut is probably my favorite time of the season and the rut in general is like the playoffs. You know, it's like, you know, making the playoffs in a sport activity, because that's where you want to focus your most attention. If you're gonna get any vacation time, that's when you want to spend it in the woods. 00:07:40 Speaker 2: But during pre. 00:07:42 Speaker 5: Rut, the mature bucks, which if primarily if you're in a pressure area of any semblance, it primarily been pretty nocturnal outside the security cover of their betting areas. So as testosterone rises throughout the early season and through the October lull, it kind of reaches its peak during pre rod and those mature bucks actually start searching for early estras doves. If you're in an area that's got quite a few deer, there's always going to be a dough or two here and there to come into estras early, and those the testosterone has risen to the point and they haven't bred since last year and they want to get out there and breed. 00:08:23 Speaker 7: So the cool thing about the pre. 00:08:25 Speaker 5: Rod is not all the not a majority of the dos are coming into heat at the same time, where during pre rod or i mean peak rut, mature bucks typically going to be doughed up most of the time he's going. 00:08:36 Speaker 7: To typically be with breeding estras does. 00:08:43 Speaker 5: Because there's so many dogs in the area, usually in a pressured area, that probably the three and a half year old and older. 00:08:50 Speaker 7: Bucks two other deer. 00:08:53 Speaker 5: You know, be doze bawns, a year and a half and two and a half year old bucks. The ratio is probably forty or fifty to one. So once an extra cycle of the dough he's breeding is over, it doesn't take him long to pick up the next estra's dough. If he crosses her sentence she's with another buck, he just follows her and takes her dakes her away. So peak rut to me because the mature bucks are doped up so much it's hard to get on one. And then also the routines are totally out the window because they're with doughs, so they're following dough roads or they're in where doors are betting, so pre rut they're following set routines. All those scrapes that you find in the woods, you know, that's what they're visiting. Because the scrapes that they make are always near some sort of area where there's a lot of heavy dough activity. An influx of DO activity. Usually it's by oaks, apple trees, whatever the mast or fruit trees you might have on your property are going to be or if you have property and you have food plots, there's going to be. 00:09:58 Speaker 7: DO activity at the food plots. 00:10:00 Speaker 5: So that's typically where you're gonna find scrapes along field edges, crop field edges, So they follow a routine during pre run because they're not breeding. 00:10:11 Speaker 7: They're not breeding those all the time, and so it's. 00:10:14 Speaker 5: Much easier to kill a buck during pre rug, which I termed the pre rock running about October twenty five to November five up here in the Midwest, and it's just easier to get on a pattern if you hunt those active scrapes and they have the adequate security cover for mature buck activity during daylight hours, you know they got, you know, from a betting area to transition out of a betting area to these scrape areas. As long as there's adequate security cover, they're going to visit those during daylight hours. A lot of times it's during midday, so pre run's my favorite time. I think a lot of hunters mess up their rut phase locations by by hunting their rut phase locations too early and they alter the dot traffic. 00:11:01 Speaker 7: And therefore, once you alter the dough traffic that you're hunting. 00:11:04 Speaker 5: Location during the October low by hunting it too much, that altered dot traffic is also going to alter the mature buck activity at that location when they start pursuing ester shows. As far as the post rut, post ruts really kind of interesting because there's only a few states in the country where you can go and hunt bow hunt, and. 00:11:27 Speaker 7: We're ball hunters primarily. 00:11:29 Speaker 5: There's only a few states in the country where you can go and physically bow hunt bucks before the gun season because if you're in a heavily pressured state and gun season opens up like Michigan's October fifteenth, I think Missouri is the second Saturday in November, so it's Nebraska, so you know, their gun seasons are during the peak ruts. So by post rut, those mature bucks are pretty nocturnal. 00:11:55 Speaker 7: Not moving much during daylight hours. 00:11:56 Speaker 5: So the only states really that you can do some good post ruck bull hunting would be Iowa, Kansas with your draw states, what other draw states or what other states. 00:12:09 Speaker 8: Ohio also has a late dune season, so those those are the three primary big buck states where you can hunt hunt mature bucks during polst rut and still have a good gence. 00:12:21 Speaker 3: So that's that's helpful, John. I guess what I what I'm curious about, and maybe maybe this is the best place to start. Actually, let me take a time out and step one step back, because I forgot one thing I did want to ask you, Greg related to what John just said, which was, I know you have experienced down in the South where rut timing and rut stuff is just a little bit different. 00:12:45 Speaker 4: Have you seen anything in your time in. 00:12:47 Speaker 3: Georgia or anywhere else down there where that dear behavior is different from pre to peak to post from what John's described, or is it basically the same but just different calendar dates because of the weird stuff across different states down there. 00:13:02 Speaker 6: I think it's option B. I think the deer still respond in the South pretty similarly to what John described, but the calendar dates are all wonky. For instance, in Georgia where I live. In South Georgia and Savannah where I live, our rut starts in middle of October and it goes through the end of October. It's much more aligned with more of a southern deer who, like the deer in Florida, can rut as early as August, July and August, and in the southeast corner of Georgia they rut in October. Well, if you move more towards the middle of the state, where a lot of the deer were imported in the seventies, sixties and seventies from the northern states like Wisconsin, those deer have more of a traditional November rut. And then the further west you go in the state closer to Alabama, you get a later rut where they rut in January. So in Georgia you can hunt running deer from October all the way through the new year. 00:14:07 Speaker 3: That's crazy. I can't imagine that. So okay, So that's that's good to know. So everyone wherever you're listening, you should, you know, take this and adjust date specific based. 00:14:21 Speaker 4: On your region. 00:14:22 Speaker 3: But in your in your guys's books, the way you broke it down was kind of the standard Midwest and upper two thirds of the country timing, which is kind of that pre rut being late October through maybe the first week of November. And then I think you guys defined peak rut is somewhere in that middle of November week or two period, and then post route was kind of like maybe Thanksgiving ish on for a little ways. So with that in mind, the next thing I wanted to kind of steer us towards was some of the specific focus areas you guys detailed as far as rut hunting locations, and something I'd be curious each as we go through each one of the would be you guys to share with me how you would hunt these kinds of spots, but then also how that might shift through those three phases of the rut. So for example, something I know, John, you've talked about a ton in the past, and you guys wrote about in the books where you're focusing on scrape areas, So maybe let's start there. 00:15:19 Speaker 4: Could you talk about. 00:15:20 Speaker 3: Hunting around primary scrapes scrape areas and detail for us, you know, how that shifts throughout the various phases of the rut, and specifically like how you find these and identify these but then also actually set up on them. Because I think people generally understand, you know, hey, if I find some great scrapes back and cover, I should hunt that, but fewer people know the right way to do that. So I'd love to start with this and then we'll have a similar conversation around several other rut hotspots. You guys detail, But John, can you kick us off with your thoughts here on scrapes since that's so key for you. 00:15:56 Speaker 7: I'm old and that's hard to remember all that stuff. 00:16:01 Speaker 4: Give me the loadout on primary scrapes. 00:16:03 Speaker 5: Well, yeah, scouting is a huge issue to me. To me, scouting is eighty ninety percent of the game, you know, And I do the majority of the vast majority of my scouting during postseason because after deer season's over, you can scout places the foliages down the scrapes are still very obvious looking branches, rubs or everything is really obvious, you know, before greenup. So I'm looking for scrape areas of scrapes and mass trees, cruit trees, whatever the case may be. And when I find scrapes in there in you know, if you're walking through a woods like on public land, and you're out in relatively open timber and you might find a couple of white oaks or something with some scrapes there, you know that that is meaningless to me because for scrape activity that I find to be worth hunting, it has to have adequate security cover around that kill zone where those scrapes are, and it has to have adequate security cover to a known betting area. So a lot of times those scrapes I find will be around perimeters of betting areas. It's very common to find active scrapes around a crop field during post season pick cornfield, and those scrapes were made during you know, if you were going to hunt that those scrapes, you'd have to hunt them prior to the corn being picked. Okay, so once the corn's picked, with those scrapes being on the edge of an open field with pitcorn, the buffer mature butck's going to feel too vulnerable to visit during day late hours. You're and a half and two and a half's yes, if that's what you're after, you know you could hunt those, But when you're hunting mature bucks, scrapes have to have some semblance of security cover around them, an adequate security cover to a known betting area, or be around the perimeter of the betting area or in a betting area for me personally to hunt them, whether it be fre rut, peak rut, or puls drive. 00:18:06 Speaker 7: So the security cover aspect of scrapes is a big deal. 00:18:12 Speaker 5: And at least a very minimum of fifty percent of the bucks I've killed over the last i'd say forty years have been scrape oriented, so it you know, typically it's it may be at a mass tree that has some scrapes and apple tree that when it was dropping apples, you know, the doors were feeding there, so that's why the bucks made the scrapes there, or a chestnut tree or some white oaks along the edge, you know, and as long as it has the adequate security cover for daytime mature bucket activity and movement, you know, that's what I'm going to hunt. 00:18:45 Speaker 3: Does that change at all once we get into that peak rut time when it's November seven or ten or thirteen and we're right in the heat of it, Are you still king in on primary scrape areas or does that shift as November plots along. 00:19:01 Speaker 5: As the rot phase plots along. I don't hunt the peripheral scrapes that I would have hunted during pre rud When the root phase comes, I'm in betting areas a lot, you know, because bucks, the mature bucks are going to push those estra stows into security cover. That's where they want to breed them where they feel safe, you know, every twenty minutes or half hour, forty minutes getting up and breeding, you go and you know, pushing her around. They want to feel safe and secure. So I love hunting betting areas during the physical rut phases or just inside the perimeter edge of the betting area. But during pre rod you know, I'll hunt scrape areas along edges of cornfield as long as there's security cover butting up to the cornfield in the timber or swamp bordering the cornfield. Or I'll hunt an apple tree or white oak tree that's got adequate security cover around the area and adqut security cover to a known betting area. But your question was during peak ruts. During peak rut, those peripheral scrapes outside the betting areas, they lose the majority of their activity because the mature bucks are with doughs most of the time because the buck to dope mature buck to dough ratios are so skewed it doesn't take them long to pick up another dough and they're with them a lot time. So obviously there's no requirement for them to make strapes or visits rates. So that's why I like to be within the betting run. 00:20:36 Speaker 4: Am I right though? 00:20:37 Speaker 3: In thinking that things shift again once you get to the post rut because the post rut's kind of similar to the pre rup. There's fewer doughs ready to breed, so bucks kind of return to that same seeking type behavior. 00:20:49 Speaker 5: You're one correct, but again, if you're in a pressured state, that post rut activity is almost totally not ternal. So you know in those states I mentioned before, Ohio, Kansas, and Iowa, Yeah, post ruts exactly like hunting pre rod. In fact, when I we did drawn for Kansas this year, we got drawn for Kansas, and we like it going during post ruck. We prefer post rut because the mature bucks, they've been breeding for two weeks solid, you know, at least two weeks solid, they're worn down, their eyes are glassy, they've somewhat lost a lot of their security cover or I don't know what the word is of their cautiousness, I guess, and now the majority of the dose are bread. So now they have to do exactly what they did during pre rod and go out and physically leave those betting area haunts, and now they'll start working their strapes again wherever there's no activity, and they'll have a routine just like they did during free right. 00:22:01 Speaker 6: Yeah, it's it's kind of like they get they're so preoccupied, uh, for the past two weeks of breeding doz that they they they lose a little bit of that safety concern that they've had for the rest of the year, and so oftentimes you see those big mature bucks making a mistake at exactly the time period when you've talked about John, when they're they've been screwing around with does for two weeks, they're tired, they've been in a whole bunch of fights. They've been kicking their buddies' butts, fighting back and forth up and down every ridge, and they kind of lose a little bit of their safety concern and it's a great time to find those big mature bucks that don't make mistakes, uh throughout the rest of the year. 00:22:48 Speaker 5: Yeah. Great. Can I throw a stat in there real quick, Mark? 00:22:52 Speaker 9: Yeah? 00:22:52 Speaker 7: Please do them. 00:22:54 Speaker 5: Get to give people an idea of runt face hunting. Midday is a big part of my broad face hunting because when you're hunting in security cover areas, whether it be pre rock or during the peak rut, I just lost my train of thought. 00:23:10 Speaker 7: That's what sucks about getting old. 00:23:14 Speaker 5: Mid midday, midday big part of my kill strategy. I'm getting to the point where I can't hunt all day like I used to as many all day sits. But to give you a stat of my twenty Michigan bucks that I've taken the made book that I took between November one and November fourteen with a bowl, seven of them were shot between eleven and three o'clock in the afternoon, while statistically less than eight percent of my time spent on stand was between eleven and three. 00:23:48 Speaker 7: O'clock in the afternoon. 00:23:49 Speaker 5: So that's thirty five percent kill rate with less than eight percent of on time stand. But it's got it has to be. People will just go out there and hunter in midday and they're just hunting, you know, in open timber or whatever. 00:24:00 Speaker 7: That's a total waste of time. 00:24:02 Speaker 5: It has to be in security, government, a betting area, or transitions one between a. 00:24:06 Speaker 7: Betting area and another betting area. 00:24:08 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's pretty eye opening. I was gonna I want to continue down that line, John, when it comes to your midday hunting strategy. But before we leave scrapes really quick, I got to ask you, Greg, John has been like the profit of scrapes for thirty years now, been preaching the benefits of primary scrape areas and everything like that. 00:24:33 Speaker 4: Are you as. 00:24:33 Speaker 3: Bought into hunting primary scrape areas and deepen the cover scrapes during the rut as he is, or do you have a different take? 00:24:42 Speaker 6: I would say the answer to both of those are yes. When John says it about deer hunting, you can pretty much believe it that he knows what he's talking about and that he's killed seven book bucks in the most popular or most heavily pressured states and he's figured out a way to get done. So that's the first part. Yes, listen to John before you listen to me. Listen to John. John knows what he's talking about. But I do have a little different take on it. I agree with everything that John said, and he's right. I like to focus more on those transition areas me personally, John likes to get deep into a bedding area and the most the hardest place for a hunter to get one of the One of the analogies that John uses in his books, as he says that I've read in the past bow Hunting Pressured white tails is he says, I like to pretend like I'm a deer and all the hunters are trying to kill me, and where would I go? 00:25:41 Speaker 2: And that's a useful exercise. 00:25:43 Speaker 6: And that's how John he A lot of his a lot of his tactics and strategies revolve around that, which makes perfect sense. I tend to like to hunt those little transition spots that are oftentimes terrain related, a saddle in a hilltop, a pinch point because of a river. I tend to like to focus on areas like that that give me a very decided advantage that also contained the things that John talks about. So my ideal rut spot would be a big betting area here, a big betting area here with a big ridge that separated them in a low spot for a buck to cross easily. And in that low spot there's security cover and. 00:26:31 Speaker 7: Scrapes. 00:26:33 Speaker 6: That's like my number one spot to find. I like spots that I can get into with bulletproof entry and exit. 00:26:41 Speaker 2: Bill Wink wrote an article many, many. 00:26:44 Speaker 6: Many years ago in Bowhunter magazine, probably twenty five years ago and the whole article was about access, and he talked about how there are tons and tons of good spots out there that hunters screw up because they aren't concerned learn with their access. So I love a spot that I can get into and out of without being detected, and it is going to be more of a transition spot than a destination spot. That's the only thing that I would say I rank higher on my on my hunt now factor is that it's which is basically the same as John, but it's just a little nuanced. 00:27:23 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's interesting. I I wanna I want to touch on transitions that you just described there. But another scrape relay question came to mind that if I don't ask now, I will forget to do it. John, you had you had talked about and maybe this is in the book that you guys were talking about this, but when hunting scrape areas or primary scrape areas, really this this actually could apply to many different types of locations. But but there had been discussion around the volume of hunts that you should give a given scrape or a given betting area, and oftentimes we want to hunt new spots all the time. That's one of the benefits of the mobile style of hunting that all three of us use. But it seems like sometimes you have to give a location time to actually produce. Can you discuss that a little bit, John, as far as how many hunts you would throw at a good looking primary scrape area or a good looking betting area before you'd say, Okay, I need to move on because I've educated too much here, or I need to seek out greener pastures. 00:28:30 Speaker 5: Well, first off, when I'm hunting betting areas during the pre or rut or the rut phase, I'm I'm in the past. 00:28:38 Speaker 7: Anyway, I don't do it as much now. 00:28:39 Speaker 5: I always like to do all days sits where I'm in the tree an hour and a half before daylight, so to make sure I'm not spooking anything with my entries. 00:28:47 Speaker 7: They're not in there yet, and I. 00:28:49 Speaker 5: Usually like to leave about a half hour after dark so I'm not spooking them with my exit. Usually with an half hour after dark, they've left the betting area. So and also I'm a big, huge sunt lock fan. You know, I have used sunt lock since nineteen ninety six, and I pay zero attention to the wind. 00:29:06 Speaker 7: I don't get winded. 00:29:08 Speaker 5: Deer can cross my trail whatever, So I'm not altering dough traffic by being in a location. And when I get in the tree and get down out of the tree, I'm. 00:29:18 Speaker 7: Still leaving residual odor at the spot. 00:29:20 Speaker 5: So if you come in later or pass by later, they still smell human odor and then they will avoid that spot. So I think the second control for me makes a huge difference in what I can get away with now during the rut phases. 00:29:33 Speaker 7: If I have a scrape area. 00:29:36 Speaker 5: And it's it, you know, it might have been active during pre rut, but it's not active during peak rut, and it's along the edge for betting area or in transitions on between two betting areas, that's something. 00:29:49 Speaker 7: I will hunt multiple times. 00:29:51 Speaker 5: I may hunt that force sits in a row because during peak rud the buck that I'm after may be with the dough. 00:29:59 Speaker 7: He may be with a lockdown in lockdown with a hot dough. 00:30:02 Speaker 5: So you know that's going to run twenty eight to thirty some hours, and so if I hunt it multiple times, there's a good chance once he's finished with that does cycle, there's a chance that he's gonna, you know, go visit those scrapes to find his next dell. He usually doesn't take him very long. But you know that's where the percentages lie is. You know that's that's a spot he's going to go look because that's a spot where there's heavy dot traffic is where that scrapes at. So Pope, during peak rout, I'll hunt a spot easily four times in a row as long as I know I'm not altering any dough traffic at that location. During pre ROD, I move around a lot. I'll go into season with almost fifty trees ready to hunt on public or I've got two private parcels that I hunt, So I move around a lot. I don't like to burn any of my locations out during pre roud, So usually during pre rod five hundred. 00:30:58 Speaker 7: The morning in an evening, that's going to be it. 00:31:02 Speaker 4: Okay, Greg, how do you? Yeah? 00:31:05 Speaker 3: Greg, how do you think about that? Because especially, I mean John, you're the same way because you use the saddle. But but Greg, with you guys having saddle setups and you hang out with a bunch of saddle hunters and all of you guys are mobile first guys that want to get around, want to hunt. A bunch of different places. We are all steeped in the gospel of running gun freelance hunting. Go make a move based on what you see when you get into the rut, the peak rut, when it's really on. How do you think about this? How do you balance that urge or the benefits of hunting new places versus the possible downside of of missing out on the action in a given place because you just didn't give it enough time. 00:31:48 Speaker 4: How do you handle that? 00:31:49 Speaker 6: It's a great question, and I constantly I've heard you talk about this before, Mark in your in your podcast, about how you're an adventure heart and you're always wondering what's over the next ridge. And you know, I have a little bit of that same disease, where there's always a booner around. 00:32:08 Speaker 2: The next bend in the river. 00:32:10 Speaker 6: And while that can be beneficial, it can also it can also hamstring you. And so I make concerted efforts to try not to limit myself into only being a hop around hunter, I guess, for lack of a better term, a mobile hunter. 00:32:31 Speaker 5: Uh. 00:32:32 Speaker 6: For instance, I was just hunting in the suburbs of Atlanta this past week, and I hunted the same tree every single hunt. I didn't bounce around at all because of the spot. So this particular spot, the access was bulletproof. Now I'm not I believe in sintlalk. I used scenttwalk. Matter of fact, one of John's suits that he designed called the wind brace from cent. I don't even think they make it anymore, but John got me turned onto that scentlock suit and I still use it to this day. So I believe in in that, but I don't use it religiously like John does. I still do pay attention to the wind Anyway. The point of this spot was I could get in and out of this tree with zero interactions with deer. It was basically bulletproof because I was able to access through a waterway and a swamp where there were no deer living pop out and I was in a bulletproof setup and it was a transition zone. There wasn't a whole lot to keep deer in this particular area, but there were on either sides and it was a perfect little transition spot. So I hunted it every day since. Since the deer and Georgia right now are starting to get in their pre rup phase, they're getting a little bit cruisy. We had one of the guys I was hunting with shot a deer that came in trailing a dough on full grunt mode, just grunting with every step he took. 00:33:56 Speaker 2: So that tells me that the deer there were starting to get a little fired up up. 00:34:00 Speaker 6: And I thought that if I, if I sat in this one spot is perfect transition zone, that I could catch a big one moving through there. 00:34:08 Speaker 2: I didn't, but that's okay. 00:34:11 Speaker 6: So you I think, I think Mark, you're right, you have to be cautious of moving too much. But you also, you know, if you're not seeing deer, you got to move, so you you you gotta you gotta find that fine line of of being mobile but also being patient. And I'm not always good at it because I tend to want to be more mobile, so I have to self regulate. And I think that's good advice for for hunters to hear both perspectives. And in that John saying you know, hey, it's okay to hunt these spots over and over again, I would add to the caveat of that it's okay to hunt them over and over again as long as you're as long as your access is bulletproof and you're not spooking deer. 00:34:59 Speaker 2: Like John said the on the in and out. 00:35:01 Speaker 6: I'm totally okay with hunting the same spot over and over again as long as those other conditions are true. 00:35:07 Speaker 7: Yeah, but you also have to be you also have to be proactive. 00:35:11 Speaker 5: I mean, the biggest buck I've ever shot in my life, one hundred and eighty inchure. I was on an all days sit and by ten o'clock I was seeing a lot of deer activity a. 00:35:22 Speaker 7: Couple hundred yards away. Because it was during the rut of foliage was. 00:35:25 Speaker 5: Done, I had a long viewing distance, and so I got down at ten o'clock. I pulled my steps. When I came down and I moved, I had a decoy out. I left that there for my exit. When I was leaving, and I went back in and I found a scrape area from hell. There was three monster scrapes, you know, fifteen yards zone. I set up in it. I was in that tree set up by noon. I would say someone around noon, and I had deer funneling by me all the time, And at four o'clock I shot that big buck. And then when I early in my hunting career in nineteen seventy six. I still scouted during postseason back then, and I prepped the tree and it was a red oak, And when I went back to hunt it, I didn't go do a speed tour to see if it was had masked and was dropping masks. I didn't do any of that. So when I went into the hunt it, it wasn't didn't have any acorns, so there wasn't a deer activity, and so I just freelanced back into the woods farther where I'd never been before. I found a white oak that actually was dropping acorns and had a lot of droppings underneath it, and I set up in that tree. I actually climbed the climbed the tree physically. They didn't have steps and stuff they have nowadays. And I shot at ten points. So you know, freelancing when when something's not happening and you know their seed better activity, or you go back to a tree and it doesn't have it doesn't look good. You know, you've got to be proactive as long as you've got the gear there to make that move. So I agree with everything you said, Greg, But yeah, and you always that's the cool thing about postseason scouting and post season scouting. You can cover every inch of everything you want to hunt on public land because spooking deer is irrelevant. But during the season, spooking deer is not irrelevant, so you have to be very cautious on how you do that. 00:37:20 Speaker 6: I think there's another little clarification. I would say to my previous comments, you got macro moves and you got micro moves, So macro move is going to a completely different area, completely different ridge system, go around the next bend, whatever. But I also think I can illustrate what John is talking about with my very my first first time I went to Missouri, out of state hunt for me in the pre run public land in Missouri, and I would say I did a micro set of moves. So day one, hunting the tree, see movement like John just described, in a different different area, but still within you know, I call it my macro area where I was well, I moved fifty yards closer and it wasn't quite there. I wasn't quite in the right spot. So I made another micro move, probably another forty yards into this one little tiny zone and that ended up being the spot where I tagged out. So John's point is is absolutely right. Sometimes you don't have to go a long way, but sometimes you have to refine your positioning with a micro move inside the betting area, the transition area, the if it's a it's a crop field, whatever it is that you're key and n on. Sometimes those micro moves can really pay off in a big way. 00:38:48 Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great point. 00:38:49 Speaker 3: So so if I were to summarize when someone should volume hunt a location, So coming out of this little bit of our conversation, you're someone still thinking to themselves, well, how do I know when I should be bouncing around? Versus how do I know when I should hold tight? I would say to summarize what you guys have all said. Number one, listen to the deer. So if the deer are telling you, hey, it's actually you're a little bit off the X most of the actions fifty yards over that way, then then yes, make the move if you have to make that micro move, because listen what the deer are telling you. 00:39:21 Speaker 4: But vice versa. 00:39:22 Speaker 3: If you're sitting in the place and then you feel the urge to move just because you feel like you're supposed to bounce, but the deer are still telling you, hey, we're here. If you are still seeing steady movement. If you are still seeing young bucks coming through, or you know, if it's happening, don't assume you have to leave if you have that good access and exit, YadA YadA, and the deer On'm figuring it out. 00:39:43 Speaker 4: So there's number one. 00:39:44 Speaker 3: Number two, if you are in the peak of the rut activity time period as you describe, John, if it's that time when bucks might be locked down, you if you leave too soon, you might not have given that buck an opportunity to circle through because he didn't get off his dough yet. So that's number two. And then the third situation where I think it might make sense to volume hunt, and I believe you guys wrote about in your book, would be in low deer density areas right where there's not a lot of deer. If you sit a spot for a day and you don't see anything come through and then leave already, that just simply might be because these bucks travel long distances in low deer density areas, and he might be a mile away right now, but if you gave it two or three days, he would eventually cycle through. 00:40:25 Speaker 4: Am I right on that, John? Did I describe that quickly? 00:40:28 Speaker 5: When you go to hill country or areas with low low deer densities. Yeah, the bucks, the mature bucks have a lot bigger core areas, especially during the run. They may cover a five mile core area. An excellent example, and I'll be briefed. One of the guys that manages Jay's Sporting goods, Chad sterns, he was up in the up gun hunting and when he went up on top of this oak ridge, he bumped a big ten point on the other side of the ridge and it just he just watched his big antlers and body go over the ridge. 00:41:00 Speaker 7: So he hunted it the next day that saying because there was a scrape there. There was a big scrape. 00:41:06 Speaker 5: Where he was at, and he called me and he said, John, I saw this big buck on this in the scrape on this ridge. And I said, Chad, he said, what should I do? I said, Chad, you know what, that's an active scrape. There's no activity because he said he was seeing does. I said that buck will be back eventually, I said, just I know, you hate to sit in one spot for day long. But he was a big sentline guy too, so he wasn't worried about his scent. He sat in that spot and on the seventh day, Sunday morning, the last day of his hunt, that buck came back and he shot it was one hundred and forty two inch ten points. It took him that long to circle back to that spot because he had such a big horror area. 00:41:47 Speaker 4: Yeah, it's hard in those situations. 00:41:50 Speaker 6: Well, and I think trail camera, my experience with trail camera trail camera data would it supports that right in my experience. Maybe it's different for other people, but in my experience, it's pretty common to see a buck for a couple three days and you get a picture of them, you know, morning, evening wherever, and then he seems like he disappears for three to five days, ever week or whatever it is, and then a lot of times they come back. It feels like these deer they work on little circuits. And I think all of the deer studies that I've read, either from MSU or for the deer studies that have happened that I've seen in Pennsylvania, seems to kind of correlate with that. That is specifically in the rut that these these bucks they kind of like they have the little circuit and they're here for a few days, and then they kind of move to the next place, and they're here for two days, and then they move and they kind of just make a little circuit around their core area. And I think that's a real thing, and patience, you know, can sometimes be the better part of valor. 00:42:59 Speaker 5: Yeah, that's especially the case during peak rut. During pre rut they tend to stay in tighter core areas. They're not branching out as far. But during pre rout they're much more routine. You're much more apt to catch them on camera more routinely, maybe every three days. 00:43:18 Speaker 7: You'll get a picture for four four days coming. 00:43:20 Speaker 5: Through with regularity, there's some consistency to it, whereas during peak rut it's a crap shoot. 00:43:35 Speaker 3: So, Greg, a second ago, you had mentioned that one way you vary from John a little bit is that you might prefer those transition zones a little bit more. And if I might kind of broaden this idea of transition zones, I think the way you were kind of referring to it would be not just like a transition area, but more like transitions from place to place, that being like travel corridors or pinch points, funnels. You said the description of like a saddle between two betting areas, So funnels, pinch points, travel corridors, that is like bread and butter rut hunting location. Anyone who's studied deer or been deer hunting, or listened to a few podcasts know that hunting a pinch point or a funnel during the rut is a solid game plan. But the details of how to do that well, or the specifics of setting up on one in a smart way, there's a little bit more nuance there. Could you share with me a little bit more of how you approach those types of setups? What makes a really really good travel corridor or rout funnel set up for you? Any examples would be really helpful. Basically looking for that next level of depth on something that generically everybody gets, but maybe we don't understand the details as well. 00:44:47 Speaker 6: That's a great question. I would say a lot of it revolves around pressure, a lot of these transition. Maybe we're using the wrong terms, but these pinch points, these funnels, these corridors that link different travel patterns. A lot of times, they're really easy to spot on a map if you understand satellite imagery. Not every hunter does, but if you don't, you should learn. You should learn how to read a topo map. If you're a hunter and you don't know how to read a topo map, you are wrong. You need to learn how to read a topo map. Watch a YouTube video. You'll get it and it will open up your eyes to how deer use an area. See, deer are creatures of habit. They want to use the path of least resistance, and it's oftentimes not that difficult to pinpoint those on a map. A saddle, a bench that follows a ridgeline. Those are the places that deer are going to use with regularity. The trick is finding ones that other hunters aren't king in on, okay, because they're oftentimes very easy to find. 00:45:58 Speaker 2: So what I have. 00:46:00 Speaker 6: Found to be useful for me is finding ones that make sense, yet they're hard to access, either because you got to go over water, or it's a long walk, or it's really close to a parking lot somewhere that hunters are overlooking for whatever reason could be hard to find. It could be so simple that nobody thinks that it could actually work. 00:46:26 Speaker 8: Uh. 00:46:27 Speaker 2: That happened to me in Missouri as well. 00:46:33 Speaker 6: I used a bridge to access a really obvious funnel. It was super obvious. Any hunter with any experience could have picked this out. It was really really simple. But most hunters were they were parking in a different spot, and they were coming in from a direction, which was really obvious that a mature buck would he would situate himself in a bedding scenario to where he could watch that, right, because I sure deer knows where the hunting pressure come from. That's that's the reason they're four or five years old. They've been through these hunting seasons. They know where hunters come from, so they will oftentimes bed in a location that will allow them to see that pressure coming and then they'll pop smoke and they'll take their exit route. Well, I think the reason that I was successful in this particular hunt was I came in from a weird way and I climbed out from underneath the bridge and crossed the road where not anybody else was doing that. So a lot of times it's about creatively accessing those spots and or finding ones that they're just not They're just not as no brainers on a map, you know, It's it's really obvious to identify a lot of these places and if it's a really obvious pinch point and it's seventy five yards off a trail, like it's gonna get pounded, mark it off, don't hunt it. It's not gonna work for the most part. But look for those little pinch points that maybe are harder to find on a map or oftentimes what I what I find to be true is if I'm going to a pinch point, a funnel, whatever, I'll oftentimes find little micro pinch points and funnels in that area. And a great example of that is you might get into a into a pitch point called a saddle on a ridge system that's an easy spot to cross, but maybe there's a down tree that would funnel a deer into a really specific spot. Little stuff like that, little micro terrain features can often make a big difference. It's really about putting boots on the ground and going in and and really understanding the terrain. Uh, That's that's kind of what I focus on. 00:48:53 Speaker 3: Okay, John, would you add anything when it comes to funnels, pinch points, and kind of the next level of depth than just the generic. 00:49:02 Speaker 7: Yeah, definitely. 00:49:03 Speaker 5: You know, a lot of hunters follow what they watch on TV, and in my personal opinion, most TV guys that they had to puntulic land wouldn't have a clue what to do. You know, I think fifty percent of the bowl owners in the country could probably killed deer the same deer that TV guys are hunting, if they were hunting the same property, because it's all ultra managed. So when you follow what TV guys do, you know, TV guys can they can look at aerial maps and topo maps, and they can pick out spots on their properties, and you know, they can go to them and they know nobody else has ever been there. So it's very likely that they can go to a pinch point between two areas of timber where there's some adequate cover from point A to point B, and set up there and kill something. A normal hunter hunting public land or heavily pressured areas where there's twenty homesteads in a six hundred and forty acre section and every homestead's got hunters on it, that's a pressured areas. 00:50:00 Speaker 7: Well, you can't do that. 00:50:02 Speaker 5: That's why scouting is such a big part of being a successful mature buck hunter. Scouting when you're out there postseason scouting or even preseason scouting. I hate scouting during pre season, but I do once in a blue move. You can see what kind of hunter activities there. You can see marks on trees from stands or climbers or whatever the case may be. Or if it's super easy to access, you can be guaranteed. 00:50:29 Speaker 7: Other hunters are going to mess it up. 00:50:31 Speaker 5: So when I'm looking at pinch points, I'm looking at a lot of times river funnels. I've mentioned this on your podcast before. River funnels don't People don't pay attention to that kind of stuff. But when you walk a river way, a lot of times the river will make bends, and every time it makes a bend, there's going to be a cliff, you know, where the water washes the way the dirt under the bend. And then you may go a quarter of a mile or half a mile, whatever the case may be, and there'll be a one hundred yard or a fifty yard flat area. Well, when you get to those flat areas, the river's usually wider and it's shallower, and that's where the deer are going to cross, and they don't have to worry about the cliffs on all the bends. 00:51:12 Speaker 7: So you know, it's just like a trout fisherman. 00:51:15 Speaker 5: If you're a trout fisherman, you know exactly if you fish it spot a while where you can cross the river the easiest, and deer know the exact same thing where they live, where they reside, So I look for that, and then any any funnel or transition zone has to have I can't say this enough security cover. 00:51:35 Speaker 7: Security covered, security cover. 00:51:36 Speaker 5: If you're after mature bucks and there's any semblance of pressure in the area you're hunting, a mature buck is very rarely going to make himself vulnerable in an open area, even if it's in a transition zone like the river funnel and they have to cross through fifty yards of open timbered across the river there and then go into some security cover. 00:51:55 Speaker 7: They're not going to make that fifty. 00:51:56 Speaker 5: Yard vulnerable movement during daylight hours, so it'll be that'll be an after dark spot. So no matter the transition zone you're in, if you're after mature bucks in it's somewhat pressured area, it has they have adequate security cover from mature buck to transition, either through the security govern or along the edge of the security govern They always like they have a quick two or three second exit where they're out of a kill range. 00:52:23 Speaker 6: Which is why it's so great to focus on the ret phase because that is when they start letting their guard down right, and and that's when they will That's when these bucks. Because John is one thousand percent right, I could not agree more. They just don't make many mistakes. That's how they get to be five four or five six years old and last through several seasons. But once they get in breed mode, they will sometimes make those stupid mistakes, and that's how you can capitalize on it. 00:52:55 Speaker 7: Yeah, if they're with a hot dough, they might follow her into Walmart. 00:52:58 Speaker 2: They would. 00:53:00 Speaker 3: So with these funnels, with these pinch points, I can imagine someone being out there in the woods, maybe public land, maybe a permission farm, whatever it might be, and he's out maybe he's going out to hunt that day in a new area, and he's kind of scouting his way into a hunting location. Maybe, let's hypothetically say, and he comes across some spots they thinks maybe could be good pinch points or funnels. They look like they could be one of these micro funnels you mentioned, Greg, and they're trying to confirm, like, man, is this the kind of spot that a mature buck would move through, and maybe he's looking for security cover like you mentioned, John, But I gotta believe some people will be thinking, hey, I need to see sign that will confirm that, yes, this is a good place, Like the terrain looks right or the cover looks right, but what is the ruts? What's the sign that matters to you during this time of the year November seven through twenty or somewhere in November. What sign do you need to see. We'll start with you, John, when you're trying to say yes, this sign tells me that mature bucks will use this funnel. 00:54:06 Speaker 5: To security cover if it's a funnel and it has security cover, and it's between two betting areas, which typically during the rod. If a mature buck's moving during daylight hours, he's looking. If he's not with a dough, he's looking for a dough. So he's going to be checking a betting area within his core area, and then he's going to take the best available transition security cover to the next betting area that may possibly within his be within his core area, so you know, and also in a betting area, to me, when you are physically in a betting area during the road phases. That's where bucks, mature bucks push the doughs into to do their breeding. So if you go set up in a betting area, those bucks are going to breed those doughs every twenty minutes to forty minutes, and they're going to get up and you know they're going to bed maybe fifteen or twenty yards downwindo the dough after a breeding, after the breed, and then maybe twenty minutes and whatever the case may be, he'll get up and he'll go and nudge er and they'll play a little thirty to one hundred yard chase game. And it's all within security government. So if you're in a betting area, you know, as long as you're in an area where there's runways going by, there's always the chance at any time of day to get an opportunity in the mature buck. The only downside for most hunters when they're hunting within within a betting area is the wind. You know, if you don't have a set control regiment, typically on average, fifty percent of the deer you see are going to be downwind w because there's no rhyme or reason in a betting area Obviously, if you're in a betting area and you have the option of being in an oak tree that's possibly dropping acorns, or at a scrape area that's within a betting area, you know that's where you'd want to set up as long as there was signed there from the you know, there's deer signed. 00:55:55 Speaker 7: There and droppings in the area. 00:55:57 Speaker 5: But the set control things is a pretty big b because you're going to have deer down wind of you. But death in betting areas to me people that leaves betting areas as sanctuary areas. 00:56:09 Speaker 7: If you own your own property and you own a lot of property. 00:56:12 Speaker 5: And you've got a ten anchor betting area, yeah you can leave it as a sanctuary area because you don't have to worry about anybody else. 00:56:18 Speaker 7: Killing the deer. You know, on your property, they're staying there. 00:56:22 Speaker 5: So if you're not in that, if you don't have that opportunity to own land and you're on public land, you've got to be back in the junk where the bucks are going to be breeding the dogs during the rut phases and so you know, and they and when they're pushing those doughs in those betting areas, a lot of times as you guys well know it's on uncharted rows. You know those those aren't always following runways, they're just running through the swamp or. 00:56:46 Speaker 7: Whatever the case may be. So jawning about the ruck. 00:56:50 Speaker 5: The run is something that anybody during the long spot could kill something just by accident. 00:56:57 Speaker 6: Yeah, question right, which you define a betting area as as how you're describing it? Would you would you just talk about all that. I'd like to hear your your explanation of what a betting area is. 00:57:13 Speaker 5: I get that question so much, you know, security government betting areas because betting. 00:57:18 Speaker 6: Areas already already answered, but I want to I want to hear you say it for all the listeners because I. 00:57:25 Speaker 2: Think it will be useful. 00:57:27 Speaker 5: Yeah, betting areas can change from area to area, Like if you're in if you're in hill country, they don't have swamps like Michigan does and Lake Ohio does and some of the other Midwestern states, uh, you know, Southern Ohio, Southern Indiana, southern you know that's all hill country or West Virginia. 00:57:44 Speaker 7: You know, and bucks there will bed up on the tops of the hills. 00:57:48 Speaker 5: You know, they'll bed where the if the wind's coming over the hill, they'll bed where they can smell anything coming up the other side, and then they'll have a visual down down the side they're betted on it on the other side of the So that type of a betting or is different than where I live, which is, you know, betting areas are very identifiable. It's the thickest area, the densest area in the area. You know, that's where the bucks are going to be. I mean, I'm not talking about like a blueberry marsh where you have to crawl over the brush. 00:58:19 Speaker 7: I'm talking about just areas where. 00:58:21 Speaker 5: There's autumnolives or red brush or briar bushes, sparse stuff, you know, marsh grasses, some cat tails spotted here and there, hemlocks. 00:58:32 Speaker 7: You know. 00:58:33 Speaker 5: Betting areas are basically, if you were the deer and everybody was trying to kill you, where are the heaviest places of security cover on the property, where you think you could go in and feel safe. 00:58:47 Speaker 7: Moving during daylight hours. That's the betting area. 00:58:50 Speaker 5: So in that with that scenario, betting areas are different from area to area depending on the topography, but you always want to look at it as that's the dnsest area. In the safest place where I would feel comfortable moving during daylight hours, within this mile section or within this public land, and that's where I would I would set up. 00:59:12 Speaker 3: So okay, here's another one we here we already talk We talked about pinch points funnels. That's another one that everyone knows. Betting areas. Everyone knows you should hunt betting areas during the run, especially spots where there's lots of does betting. Right, that's we know, go where the does are betting. There's gonna be bucks checking them. But it's harder to pick the right spot. 00:59:33 Speaker 4: In a betting area. 00:59:34 Speaker 3: Can you discuss how both of you guys like to do that? So how do you find the X within a betting ear or around a betting ear, however. 00:59:43 Speaker 4: You each like to do it. 00:59:45 Speaker 3: Because there might be a two acre zone where there's a whole bunch of deer betted, and when you're bow hunting, that's a large area. It might be ten acres, there might be a court aker. Obviously they're all different. But how do you think about choosing the right spot like this spot within the spot. 00:59:59 Speaker 4: Of a doll betting area during the rut? 01:00:02 Speaker 3: Because this is really really important for people to have success this time of year or one of the best places. John, you want to want to kick it off, continue your thoughts there, I'm started. 01:00:12 Speaker 7: All the only ones you go for it? You don't. 01:00:15 Speaker 6: Great, So what what I would do. Let's let's say there's a big marsh and big cattail marsh and you it's obvious that there are dos. 01:00:24 Speaker 2: And bucks betting in there. Uh. 01:00:27 Speaker 6: You Sometimes you don't have to make it more complicated than it needs to be. I'm bad about that. I'm bad about making things over complicated. But what I would do and what I have done in states, uh, where I would encounter a situation like that, So I would scout the edges and I would look for the heaviest trails runways coming in and out of those spots that are marked with sign. 01:00:51 Speaker 2: You're talking abo. 01:00:53 Speaker 5: You're talking scouting in season, not post in season scouting. 01:00:57 Speaker 2: Which is that's right? 01:00:59 Speaker 6: Which is which is a little different than the way John typically hunts. Typically, not always, but typically John has his spots scouted and prepped in the preseason or what John says postseason January February March, whenever snow goes away and before green up a lot of times when I'm hunting the rut, I'm in a different state that I've never been before, and that's a little different than the way John does it, which is fine. But what I do typically is scout the edges and I'm looking for sign that's telling me when or where a buck is choosing to enter and exit that and then typically I would set up on that not real super complicated, find the betting area, take your best guess at how that deer that buck is entering and leaving, and then set up on it and then adjust fire. Other people would call that like an observation hunt, like Dan Infult, he kind of popular rise that term on the Hunting Beast forum, and so he would say, you know, you would make an observation sit where you might hang back a little bit further than you typically might, see how the deer using that area, and then move in. I've seen my buddies from the hunting public do that all over the country, and they will go to a new state, they will hang back, they'll see how the deer are using this particular area, and then they'll move in on the next hunt for the kill. 01:02:29 Speaker 2: It's very effective. 01:02:30 Speaker 6: You have to be aggressive you have to be willing to blow out the area, and when you're going in for a kill like that. 01:02:37 Speaker 5: For freelancing, you almost have to do that, because for free lancing, you can't go in in the afternoon into physically into the interior of a betting area and scout it for signed because obviously. 01:02:50 Speaker 7: You're going to blow the deer out of it. 01:02:52 Speaker 5: So when you're free lancing, you almost are tied to doing the perimeter stuff or doing it from a distance one day, that's right, readjusting the next. But when when I'm postseason scouting and I'm physically going in betting areas and I'm covering every inch of it, I can blow every deer out of there. I could care less. I'm I'm six months from deer season. Those are all going to be back in there. Everything's going to be cope SETI back to normal by deer season, so I can scrutinize every inch of that betting area and every inch of the property I want to look at without concern about spooking deer like like you'd have to be, you. 01:03:29 Speaker 7: Know, during season. 01:03:30 Speaker 5: So when I'm going into a betting area, I'm looking for master trees, a lot of times when I cross river with waiters or go across a lake, you know, in a boat or a canoe or whatever the case may be, I've lost a lot of hunters right there. By using waitershi boots and boats. You've lost probably at least ninety to ninety. 01:03:48 Speaker 7: Five percent of your competition. 01:03:50 Speaker 5: When we were in Indiana last year, I saw in that complete, huge area, I saw one other hunter. 01:03:55 Speaker 7: In a boat, right, do you remember that where we were last year? 01:04:00 Speaker 5: Just nobody else does that because it's more work. So once you get back into those areas, a lot of times they open up. You know, they'll have brush along the edge of the river when you cross it, but a lot of times you get back into there and they open up into a little bit more open, sparse, sparse brush and stuff. And you know, I look for oaks. I look for the same sign I would look for for hunting early season. I'm looking for mass if it's there, and if there is, I'll look at to see what kind of sign was. 01:04:31 Speaker 7: There from the previous runt. You know, is there rubs around that area. 01:04:35 Speaker 5: Is there possibly a couple of old scrapes by these oaks, or maybe there's a little opening in a betting area and it's got a multiple runways. 01:04:43 Speaker 7: Converging through it. 01:04:44 Speaker 5: I kill the Bucking two thousand and four this way in an automolive patch with a twenty yard opening in the center of it. So I'm just looking for congested sign rubs, you know, I'm looking for taller rubs, possible scrapes. But usually when you're in betting areas, you don't see a lot of scrapes. It's pretty rare actually to see to see scrapes in a swamp. 01:05:06 Speaker 7: So I'm just looking for the most. 01:05:08 Speaker 5: Congested sign because i know if I'm hunting there during the run the bucks are the mature bucks are going to be pushing the dose around, so they're going to be those dos and. 01:05:16 Speaker 7: Bucks are going to be moving around during the course of the day. 01:05:20 Speaker 5: And wherever if I'm in the most congested sign and runways, I can find odds are And I'm a percentage guys. I hunt according to percentages. The percentages are higher that something's going to go through that more congested runway area that I'm at than someplace else. 01:05:37 Speaker 3: Now, John, I know you don't. You don't factor wind direction into your strategy when it comes to avoiding deer winding you because of your sink control. But does the wind Does the wind direction impact where you want to hunt in a betting area at all? Because many times folks talk about bucks preferring to check a betting area on the downwind side so they can more efficiently do travel and check places. Does that is that something you can in. 01:06:02 Speaker 4: It at all? 01:06:03 Speaker 5: I actually will set up places where I assume deer her coming in from the down wind side because I know I'm not going to get winded, and I'll beat that opportunity. So in Michigan, I've killed two one hundred and fifty inch bucks because I was hunting at a scrape area. And I set when i'm when i'm hunting in a scrape at a scrape area, if it's in a bedding area and a transition zone that's relatively wide, that has adequate security government if there's a tree on the south side or southeast side, because winds typically out of the north or northwest in the predominantly in the fall, I will set a tree up about twenty to twenty five yards on the down wind side of the scrapes where I have a twenty five yard shot to the physical scrapes, and I have the twenty five yard because I'm only shooting forty pounds, so I only have twenty five yard distance. And I also make a shooting lane twenty five yards to the south or southeast of the tree. So if a deer circles and comes in from down wind because he doesn't want to be strape areas are always in a little open area, and a lot of times when sure bucks don't want to be in that open zone during daylight hours. 01:07:14 Speaker 7: So I'll set that up. 01:07:15 Speaker 5: And I've on two different occasions I've had monster bucks come in and circle down wind and I've shot them on the down wind side. 01:07:25 Speaker 7: That's the cool thing about sun control. 01:07:27 Speaker 5: Also, if you can set up on the down wind side and you can use bucks coming in from the down wind side to your advantage because you're not worried about getting there. 01:07:35 Speaker 3: Greg, what about with you when it comes to wind direction and that helping your your kind of scout the edge find the sign approach. But I'm assuming wind direction factors into that as well though too. 01:07:49 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:07:50 Speaker 6: John pretty much outlined it very succinctly there. But the bucks, even if you're John and you don't pay attention to wind. The bucks are one hundred percent They live in die by their noses, so to. 01:08:02 Speaker 2: Ignore that is not smart. 01:08:05 Speaker 6: I have seen way too many times, and buddies in camp that I've been hunting with have seen way too many times these bucks cruising the down wind side of a betting area. They check the whole thing literally just by kind of slowly walking down the edge, sniffing the trails, and they know everything that is in that betting area, so they don't even necessarily have to go in there. So using that to your advantage and setting up on the down wind side in a place that it's a little easier for John since he doesn't worry as much about the wind, so his placement is a little bit easier. But for those of us that do pay attention to our wind direction and getting busted, it's a little harder to set up on that route because you have to really pay attention to where you're at and where your wind's going. Understanding thermals, understanding how wind currents work is important. It's it's a bit of an advanced kind of strategy or tactic that hunters need to learn, kind of like reading a topo map. I would say, if you don't understand thermals how they rise and how they fall, and how it impacts how the deer use the area, then you need you need to spruce up your game there, hunter, because you need to understand that because bucks do and they always use the wind of their advantage, so you got to find a way to use that against them. And if you know that there's a betting area in a bottom like a lot of times the does will bed congregate in bottoms, especially in like hill country, right, they'll they'll that's usually the thickest part of the area down in the bottom. It's where all the briers are, It's where all the brush is, all that stuff is typically in the bottoms, and that's typically where a lot. 01:09:48 Speaker 2: Of does bed. 01:09:49 Speaker 6: The bucks typically don't want to go in there just for fun. They would rather skirt the edge, smell everything that's in there by coming on the down wind side, and then if there's nothing in there that it's excitesome, they just move on to the next spot. So I definitely factor wind in into every hunt, both how I can use it to my advantage and how a buck in the area would use it to his advantage. 01:10:21 Speaker 4: You mentioned the thermals. 01:10:23 Speaker 3: Greg, One of the rut locations you guys discuss in the book are thermal hubs or thermal draft hubs, key thing like you mentioned in hill Country. Can you talk a little bit about why the first? What does that mean? What for folks that aren't familiar, can you describe a thermal hub? How do identify it? And then how to hunt it? Because as you mentioned, the wind can be tricky in these types of locations, and as you describe, you need to understand the thermals. But also even with an understanding of the thermals, it's still kind of tough because there's certain parts of the day when the thermals are going to hurt you in these locations, certain parts of the day when the thermals will help you. Navigetting that timing and where to set up your stand or saddle within that location is not simple. 01:11:06 Speaker 4: Can you can you touch on all that? 01:11:08 Speaker 7: So? 01:11:09 Speaker 6: Yeah, and yes, it's a great question. So first of all, let's define a thermal hub and it's different for everybody. John, why don't you define a thermal hub as as we talk about it in the book, And then I'll talk about my experience hunting around it has that work for you. 01:11:25 Speaker 7: That'll be fine. 01:11:26 Speaker 5: Thermals in the morning are going up, there's the temperatures rising, thermals are rising, your order is rising. In the evening is once the temperatures start cooling, your thermals are going down. So if you're hunting hill country and let's say you're on the you're on a side hell and you've got a runway up above you, and you've got a runway down below you. No matter whether you're hunting morning or evening, one of those runways, there's an excellent possibility of getting winded because either way, something's going to be downwind of you or thermally downwind of you. 01:11:59 Speaker 7: So a hub is let's say, let's say in the evening, when thermals are falling, a buck can actually come down in the lower side of in a saddle on the bottom side of a hill, and because all the thermals are going down, they can actually smell if there has been any dough activity up on the side of that ridge when they're because all that wind is coming down into that saddle, and that's a thermal hub. That's a collection area basically for all the thermals coming down the side of that hill. I did want to say one thing about the cell lock, and I've got a very interesting statistic, and I'm not tied in the world of cell lock home, but it's the only clothing company because they own the pad. I'm using the activated carbon, and in my opinion, activated carbon is the only thing. 01:12:49 Speaker 5: That works it controlling your human odor. From nineteen sixty five through nineteen ninety six, I killed ten record book Bucks when I started using sunt lock correctly, because I used sunt lock in ninety six, but I wasn't using it properly and taking care of it properly when I was in ninety seven. From nineteen ninety seven up until last Sunday, I killed. 01:13:14 Speaker 7: Forty six book Bucks. So I've killed forty six. 01:13:18 Speaker 5: Book Bucks while using sunt lock from ninety seven through twenty twenty four so far, and ten from sixty. 01:13:24 Speaker 7: Five through ninety six. You do the math. That's a pretty healthy difference. 01:13:31 Speaker 4: True. 01:13:33 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:13:36 Speaker 6: What I was going to say about thermal hubs is maybe to define it a little bit more clearly. So if you think about like some you think about where multiple mainly in hill country, where multiple ridge systems kind of dump into one Like if you can imagine satellite image, you typically would have a bottom and it kind of meanders and you got ridges on both sides. And then typically that bottom will terminate at a kind of a bowl where there will be multiple ridge systems that kind of dump into one main bottom. And and that that confluence of multiple ridge systems dumping into one location is what is typically referred to as a thermal hub. And if you think about the math of it, right or the physics of it, when the wind, when the when the wind is the thermals are kind of falling everything, it's gonna follow those low those low points. So it's gonna the wind is gonna is gonna drop into those ridges of the cuts, ravines, whatever you how, whatever you call them in your region, and the wind the thermals are gonna fall into those low points, and it's gonna follow the ridge system all the way down, and it's gonna all congregate right there in that bowl. And what a buck can do is he can he can skirt that thermal hub. A lot of times he'll do it. Uh in the mornings, he'll be low. It's skirting that because in the mornings, before the sun comes out, before it starts heating up the air, your thermals are falling, right, they fall in their cold and they rise when they're hot. That's it's it's it's thermal activity. So in the morning, before the sun comes up, your thermals are falling and they're going down into that into that little thermal hub. As soon as the sun comes up and starts warming up the air, your thermals start to rise. So a rule of thumb that I've kind of learned through the years and watching a lot of people have success, is to. 01:15:34 Speaker 2: Hunt low early. 01:15:37 Speaker 6: And then move as the sun warms up. Move because once the wind switches and those thermals start rising, anything that comes above you, any buck that comes above you, you're busted. 01:15:48 Speaker 2: You're not gonna get away. 01:15:49 Speaker 6: Unless you know you have a full scent locked routine and you are confident in it, then that's a different story. But for for folks that don't have that system, as soon as that wind is, as soon as the thermals start rising, you gotta move. And I can illustrate this perfectly, my good buddy Carl. Last year, John, you were there, you saw this happen we're hunting Indiana on public land. And he did that strategy to eight. So Carl found a thermal hub, uh so, a ridge system that all dumped down into one spot and it was shredded with sign all around the thermal hub. Call it the bottom third of the hillside. So you know you got a two hundred foot hill. The bottom third of that is where all the sign was in this particular thermal hub. 01:16:37 Speaker 2: Carl figured that out. 01:16:39 Speaker 6: He found it by scouting, and he realized that he had this opportunity to hunt low in the morning in case that buck came through there in the morning. He had a plan. He called his shot. He said, look, the wind, the thermals are gonna switch at like eight thirty in the morning. That's when you know the forecast is to change. And he said, I'm gonna move up the hill as soon as my wind shifts, and I found another spot that I think a bench that I think that buck is going to walk once it warms up. That's what he did. He went in the morning in the dark, and he set up low. About two hours later, when the wind started to switch and the thermal started to rise, got down, he moved up and he shot that buck on the exact trail that he called about ten minutes after he got in that tree. So it's a general rule of thumb you can hunt low in the mornings, but then you have to move. You have to get out of there before your thermal switching. Then everything above you screwed. 01:17:36 Speaker 3: So okay, well I want to take that one step further. So if you were going to hunt during the rut, and you're hunting a thermal hub location as you just defined it, where you've got like a bowl and a bunch of ridges dropping down to the bottom. Usually at the bottom there there's oftentimes a big hub scrape too, or a primary scrape. You know, that's also a concentration of sense. So a lot of deer like to hit those scrapes and ends up being created there. So you've got all these things happened there in the early morning, So you're recommending hunt low in the early morning. I imagine where the best convergence of those trails is, or where that big scrape is or whatever it is, and you're hoping that the thermals that are dropping will keep your scent pooled down low with you and you can kill a deer before he gets down there. When you were to move later in the morning for the rest of the day. Now you've got a lot of options. It's simple when you're trying to hunt down at the bottom where that big scrape is or where that convergence of all the trails is. But in the afternoon, now you've got maybe four different points that are all dropping down. You've got ridges on either side all around you. You could pick any one of those and you will out have an entire hillside to pick from and or a ridgetop to pick from. How do you pick the spot for your afternoon with the rising thermals when you have so many more options, what are you thinking about that? 01:18:52 Speaker 6: It's way harder to pin it down. And that's why the phase of. 01:18:57 Speaker 2: The rut is so important for this. 01:18:59 Speaker 6: When you want to when if you're gonna move up and hunt, you're exactly right mark where the deer have way more options to go. What you really want to be is in the say, in the seek phase of the rut, the pre rut, where the deer are really covering ground, because your chances of a deer walking through there are much better as opposed to the peak rut where they are traveling less. 01:19:23 Speaker 2: As we learned about earlier the way John. 01:19:25 Speaker 6: Described the peak rut, the deer start moving less, and then the post rut when they start traveling again. To seek out those that haven't been bred. That is your best opportunity to hunt higher on and I would find uh what, let's just use Carl's example is what he did and it worked. What he did is he found a small little bench that gave the deer. It was at the top third of the hillside. So on the top third he set up on a bench that would give a buck and. 01:19:59 Speaker 2: Advantag for travel. Because they're lazy, just like us. 01:20:02 Speaker 6: They don't want to walk on the steepest terrain as possible if they can avoid it, they're going to find a little bench or something like that that's going to give them an advantage. And if you think about, a buck could walk that ridge system on the top third, and when the wind is blowing towards him, where the thermals are rising, he can smell the entire valley below him, the whole thing just by slowly walking down the ridge. So what it takes is a little bit of experience to understand where bucks like to do that and they typically like to do that on the top third of the ridge. And this isn't my idea. I didn't come up with this. Lots of people preach this. You can read books about this. Hunters have known this for decades. Right that top third of the ridge where the thermals are rising. That is, if you can find a little bench or some sort of little pinch point in that zone, that can be gold for a rut phase. 01:20:59 Speaker 5: Look, yeah, you can mind the does don't have to physically be there. If they pass through within an hour or two earlier, their sen's going to still rise up, you know, in the morning, up the side of those hills. One one really cool way of trying to explain thermals is if you're sitting around a campfire after dark. Okay, the temperatures are dropping, so that means your thermals or thermals are coming down. So you've got your fire which is hot, so it's hot, so the thermals are going up because of the fire, and the thermals environmental thermals are coming down, so they're clashing with each other. 01:21:42 Speaker 7: And that's why. 01:21:43 Speaker 5: When you're sitting around a fire, even if there's no wind, the smoke from the fire tends to move around the area, and you're always getting up and moving if you want to stay out of the smoke. It's because the thermals are clashing with the environmental temperatures dropping against the thermals from the fire heat going up, and they clash, and then the wind's just going different direction. Even if there's no wind, you know, zero wind on your cell phone when you look. 01:22:13 Speaker 7: At aci weather or whatever it may be. 01:22:15 Speaker 6: Yeah, and I know that that that's a very it's a pretty basic concept. But I talk to hunters all over the country who don't know what thermals are. They they has never heard of it, or you know, whatever the reason might be. But as a general rule, your thermals are they're a slave to the temperature. If the temperature is falling, thermals are falling. If the temperature is rising, thermals are rising. It's just a general rule. It's an easy way to think about it, uh for a hunter. If you're if you're not, if you if you've never understood wind currents and stuff like that. I'm not a meteorologist, but I do know that when temperatures fall, thermals fall, and when temperatures rise thermal it's an easy way to think about it. 01:23:01 Speaker 5: In no country, you better to know how to hunt thermals in flat land. It's not yeah, white as as bad, but still in the it's if there's no wind and you're in flat country. 01:23:14 Speaker 7: You know, in the. 01:23:15 Speaker 5: Evening, you got to be cautious, you know, because your thermals are falling and if something comes close to your tree, uh, they could very well win you because of the thermals coming down. 01:23:27 Speaker 3: Yeah, tricky. Thing isn't like a hill country set up like you just described, Greg. You have two shifts that happened during the day. So you've got like you want to have a want to have a low spot early in the morning, but then part way through the morning warms up, so now you want to move high. And then that works pretty good until primetime in the evening, and then again they're falling again, so then you want to move low again. So it can be tricky if you're trying to chase that. But it could be tricky. Yeah, you're not just chasing the thermals. 01:23:53 Speaker 5: You're chasing how the bucks use the thermalsh You're not right and they're gonna Yeah, they're going to definitely they're going to definitely move according your thermals in the yellow country. 01:24:04 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'm I'm heading to hunt some Kentucky public land next week, hill country, just like we're describing. 01:24:12 Speaker 4: And this is not my bread and butter. 01:24:13 Speaker 3: So I'm asking a lot of questions about this because I'm trying to get spruce stuff and ready for it making. 01:24:21 Speaker 7: Yes. 01:24:21 Speaker 3: Yes, Okay, So we have a bunch of things that we have not gotten to cover yet that I wanted to, but we are using up a lot of your time, So I want to kind of shift into like a rapid fire type mode here, guys, where I'm going to ask you guys for your quick thoughts on a topic and in your mind, try to do like the one minute summary, like the fast here's the most important thing you got to know about this one thing, and we're going to try to rapid fire roll through a few more important rut things just to make sure someone listening on November seventh, twenty twenty four has a little bit of everything they can use over this next week. 01:24:56 Speaker 4: Okay, So. 01:24:59 Speaker 3: Rapid fire greg really quick calling during the rut. What are your few couple quick most important thoughts for calling during peak rut. 01:25:10 Speaker 2: I love it. 01:25:11 Speaker 6: I love rattling. I'm not afraid to rattle. I don't typically get real super aggressive with it. I typically like to do a little bit more of like a sparring type session that I actually learned from John. He describes it in some of his other books, and we talk about rattling in this book. But yeah, I love rattling. I am a fan. 01:25:31 Speaker 2: I do it. 01:25:32 Speaker 3: Frequently, John, same question to you. Quick thoughts on calling during the rut. 01:25:36 Speaker 5: Okay, we have a complete chapter on using fake tactics in the book. But I exactly like Greg described I it's pretty rare if I'm hunting in the interior of the vetting area during the rut that I don't do a couple of sparring sequences early in the morning, maybe forty five minutes after daylight, you know, sometime around eight o'clock, and do two sequences on an evening sin about an hour before dark. So I'm not a big grunt called guy. I've had a lot more success doing spiring sequences. When I'm out of state, I will do more aggressive rattle sequences because there's a lot more mature bucks. They're used to hearing that aggressiveness like you see on TV. But when I'm hunting in Michigan, it's almost always subtle sparring sequences. I think that arouses their attention and. 01:26:26 Speaker 6: One one other, one other thing before we go to that, before we go Uh, don't rattle. If you're in an open area where the deer can see, where a buck can see you from. 01:26:36 Speaker 2: A long way away, it won't work. 01:26:39 Speaker 6: What that buck will do is he will come to the point just close enough to where he can see where the where the rattling came from, and if he does not confirm it with his eyes, he will not come in. So do not rattle in a big open woods. It won't work at least for a mature deer maybe a one year older two year old to come in, But a big deer isn't coming in. You have got to be obscure. Your location has to be obscure. So a thick betting area's thick something. If you're going to rattle for that buck to come in in bowl range, he can't see the source of the noise. 01:27:11 Speaker 2: That is important because you. 01:27:13 Speaker 6: Will screw it up like I have done many times by rattling 're deer. 01:27:17 Speaker 3: Conceiving now maybe though maybe there is an asterisk next to that, which is unless you are using a decoy possibly, And that was okay, fair, That's the next question I had because I grew up by living by the Gospel of Precision Bow Hunting by John and Chris Eberhart, and within that book early on, one of the major themes in that book is to not use a lot of things that draw attention to you in places like Michigan, so decoys being a perfect example of that. So I grew up for a long time being terrified by the idea of using decoys because I thought it would spook every deer in the world in a heavily pressured place like Michigan. But I see in one of the chapters in your new book, John, you're talking about using dough decoys. So I'm curious, real quick, fast summary, what's your evolved view on decoys these days? 01:28:10 Speaker 5: Not really, it's not really evolved. I still very, very rarely use a decoy in Michigan. I use decoys a lot. 01:28:18 Speaker 7: When I go out of state. 01:28:18 Speaker 5: I would never go out of state without taking a decoy with me, a hard body three D decoy. They're they're paying to carry around. But I'll tell you what, if you're doing a rattle sequence and you're in a more open area, and I've done multiple times in i Went Kansas, if you put a decoy out and a deer is coming and it's one hundred yards away and he sees it, he'll come right in. 01:28:43 Speaker 7: If he's not with a dough, he'll come right in. 01:28:45 Speaker 5: I've actually put a decoy out on the corner of a big cornfield in Iowa where you know there's like here's here's a corner, and I had the decoy up here so you can see it from either direction, and I had to come out. 01:28:57 Speaker 7: I bet it was. I'm here half a mile probably three eighths of a mile down the field edge. He saw that decoy and he came right to it. 01:29:05 Speaker 5: But in Michigan, because we've got so many dos and we've got just got so many deer, the odds of a doe coming in and spooking from the decoy, coming in within three to five yards and doing the peekaboo deal and then blowing and then running off is really really high. So I don't do it in Michigan very very often, because unless I'm in an area where I know. 01:29:32 Speaker 7: I'm only gonna see a couple of deer, then I may use it. 01:29:35 Speaker 5: Bit if I'm in an area where the chances of seeing multiple dos and bonds and some ordnan bucks where they might come in and hit it with their antler and then spook and blow. 01:29:46 Speaker 7: I just rarely use them in Michigan anymore. I've killed a couple bucks. 01:29:49 Speaker 5: With him in the you know, in the eighties, but they were two and a half year olds, so on three and a half. 01:29:55 Speaker 7: Older bucks in Michigan, I don't use the bit out of state. I use them a lot. 01:29:58 Speaker 2: Greg, and a decoy I don't have with decoys, So. 01:30:05 Speaker 6: I'm sure John is one hundred percent right in that they can be very effective. But I'm a minimalist at heart with gear, so I don't. I don't carry stuff like that ever, so I can't speak to that. I can say that without a decoy, if you're in an open area and you need a big buck to come in mature into bowl range and he can see your area from one hundred yards away, he ain't coming in. 01:30:31 Speaker 2: Yeah without a decoy. 01:30:33 Speaker 3: Okay, another one for you, then, Greg advice for making all day sits more comfortable or enjoyable, especially especially if you're doing what we do. Let's just hunt in a saddle. Any any advice on saddle hunting, comfort tips for all day or or any other part of the all day piece. 01:30:54 Speaker 6: Quick thoughts here, It's just hard, you know, an all day sit. I I used to love listening to your live the early days of Wired to Hunt, when like the Holy Field days, when you would you would start talking about, okay, it's like time for all days since to start, and there was always this little trepidation with you because you're like, you know, It's like it's like, I know I need to sit all day, but it sucks. It's hard, and it feels like grinding. I've yet to figure out a way around that. Maybe a box line would do that with maybe a fridge in there, find maybe some Wi Fi. Yeah, maybe that would make an all days sit easier. But man, they're just hard. So I find myself almost never sitting all day. I haven't sat in the in a tree from daylight to dark in several years. Now, I will hunt all day, meaning I won't leave the woods. 01:31:56 Speaker 2: I'll come down. 01:31:57 Speaker 6: I'll maybe move to a different air, yeah, maybe move one hundred yards away, or do a little mid day scouting and slowly kind of slip through an area and then find another spot for the last four or five hours of the day. But man hunting all day in the same tree without getting down, it's just hard. It's more discipline in mind and willpower. 01:32:20 Speaker 2: Than it is anything else. 01:32:21 Speaker 6: Because I don't care what saddle you're in, what tree stand you're in, you are gonna get uncomfortable. 01:32:27 Speaker 2: I don't care who it is. 01:32:28 Speaker 6: You are gonna get uncomfortable, and you just have to grit your teeth and go through it. And I'm soft. I don't like to be uncomfortable, so I I find myself not doing much of that anymore. 01:32:40 Speaker 4: All right, John, what would you say on that one? 01:32:43 Speaker 5: Well, as you do, Mark, I've done a ton of all day sets, and I've killed a lot of bucks during the middle of the day. Hunting all day is very grueling, especially if it's sunny out, because it gets so hot in the middle of the day and you don't see a lot of deer in the middle of the day, and so many hunters will give all day sits maybe one or two shots, and because they don't see much, they give up on it. Well, if you went out as a hunter, an avid hunter, and you hunted two evenings in a row and you didn't see much for deer activity, would you quit hunting evenings? 01:33:14 Speaker 7: Of course you wouldn't. 01:33:16 Speaker 5: But you know, I'm a percentage guy, and like I said, I've killed seven out of my twenty book bucks in Michigan that were shot between November one and fourteen. We're during eleven to three o'clock, so I know the advantage of hunting midday an all day sit, you know, if it's in the right type of area, and it's during the rut phases. 01:33:36 Speaker 7: So I don't have any issues with this comfort. 01:33:40 Speaker 5: I can go to the bathroom one or two in my saddle, either way, it doesn't matter without getting out of my tree. 01:33:46 Speaker 7: I always take food. 01:33:47 Speaker 5: I on an all day sit will I will literally change my clothes four times on an all day sit because I will walk in really light clothed. You know, we're very light, slight on overheat. Once I it up in the tree, my body cools off. I'll take off my salte jacket, put on some undergarments, put my sun lot jacket back on, and then when it gets like ten or eleven o'clock that starts heating up, I'll do the same. I'll take off my salat jacket, take off my undergarments, put them in my backpack. 01:34:17 Speaker 7: So I'm lighter, so I'm not overheating. In the middle of the. 01:34:19 Speaker 5: Day, two three o'clock, as it starts to cool, I'll rechange and put my layers back on. 01:34:25 Speaker 7: This is only on my top, now my bottom. It's top the top. 01:34:29 Speaker 5: And then before I get out of the tree, because I'm gonna have a long walk out, I will again take off my jacket and take off my undergarments so I don't overheat and sweat on my ass. 01:34:39 Speaker 6: You're insane that you are insane, Jo man, you are insaney. 01:34:44 Speaker 7: Comfortable. 01:34:47 Speaker 4: I just can't. 01:34:48 Speaker 3: I'm over here having a hard time not breaking down laughing here you're doing it. I just I just want to make sure I heard right. Did you say that you're going number two while staying in your cell? 01:35:02 Speaker 7: Absolutely? Yeah? You want to have them? 01:35:07 Speaker 10: You know. 01:35:09 Speaker 7: You don't want to. I don't know. It's so easy. 01:35:12 Speaker 2: Oh no, don't don't do it. 01:35:15 Speaker 11: Don't do it. 01:35:16 Speaker 4: Just don't do it. 01:35:17 Speaker 7: Yeah, blog bagg and you take the saddle. 01:35:19 Speaker 12: You either pull it up under your shoulders, under your armpits, or you slide the saddle down above your knees and you just under your pants and go in the bag and then wipe and put the bag back in your back back and pull your pants off and pull a saddle back up card. 01:35:36 Speaker 7: It's literally easy. 01:35:37 Speaker 4: So remember it's amazing. 01:35:39 Speaker 6: So the first time I heard this story, Mark John told us at hunting camp that that he likes to take craps in gallon ziploc bags. 01:35:49 Speaker 4: And then I had the part that got us. 01:35:52 Speaker 2: It broke us down. 01:35:53 Speaker 6: While he said, but he squeezes all the air out, you know, to like zip it up, so there's I through them in all that all the ship smell is just. 01:36:04 Speaker 4: And then he puts it in his bag. 01:36:09 Speaker 11: This is this is one of the this is one of the all time, all time best Wired Hunt moments in all the decade plus years who've done these episodes, that right there, that's one of the best. 01:36:20 Speaker 3: Thank you for that, John, welcome, I'm sure multiple times. 01:36:27 Speaker 6: So there's it. Whenever we do an update on the books for version two, we'll make sure that John details that process with illustrations in detail to show you how to get maximum crap air out of your ziploc bag to take up the less room in your past. 01:36:46 Speaker 2: Greg Donald's. 01:36:50 Speaker 7: That's in the book. 01:36:51 Speaker 2: Yeah, I was talking about it. 01:36:54 Speaker 6: The detailed, the detailed process about it with illustrations and everything. 01:37:00 Speaker 7: That's amazing. It's really easy to do, to be honest with. 01:37:04 Speaker 3: Absolutely amazing, And I think maybe that might be the best place to end the whole episode right there. There's there's so much in these books. Because you guys are crazy. You don't just write one book and release it. You launched three at a time, so there's. 01:37:23 Speaker 4: Three of these. 01:37:25 Speaker 3: Can you give me a quick rundown other than what we've talked about. We've covered a lot of the rut side of things, and there's still more that we haven't got to cover, and then so so much more outside of the rut could could one of you or both of you give me a quick take on what folks can expect to see in the book and then where they can. 01:37:42 Speaker 2: Buy it there is, Greg, I would love it if you would go jo. 01:37:50 Speaker 5: Everything to do with deer hunting and whether you're a ball hunter, a gun hunter, crossbow, muzzleoder, everything to do with hunting deer. I don't care what type of property. If you're un managed property, public land, you know, heavily pressured rural areas. 01:38:06 Speaker 7: The information is in this book. 01:38:09 Speaker 5: Uh Now, the book's key on hunting pressured areas because once you become successful at hunting any semblance of pressured areas for mature bucks, you can go any place else in the country and be relatively successful and be a threat to the mature bucks you're hunting because when you go to a less pressured area, it's just easier, and you've got all the foundation for running pressured areas, so it's that much easier. 01:38:34 Speaker 7: There's twenty seven chapters in this book. 01:38:38 Speaker 5: We actually mark you contribute you to a couple of short kill stories to this book. 01:38:43 Speaker 7: So did Andy may So? 01:38:44 Speaker 5: Did Garret crawl from di yt Yeah? 01:38:51 Speaker 2: And then sports Yeah. 01:38:52 Speaker 7: Ernie has a couple of kill out. There's eighty four in Greg and myself. 01:38:56 Speaker 5: There's eighty four short condensed three to five paragraph killed stories within this book. 01:39:01 Speaker 7: There's photos of the kills. 01:39:04 Speaker 5: There are in locations within the book that lend credibility to what you're reading at the time. But again, there's twenty seven chapters in When we wrote this it was like going to be eight hundred and some pages, and we just couldn't put it out in a single book. So you know, each one of these, each one of these books is basically the same length as all three. 01:39:27 Speaker 7: Of the other books I wrote. So we had to do it in three volumes. It's the only way we could do it. And it's it's available on Tethered's websites. So if you. 01:39:36 Speaker 5: Google www dot tether that's t E t h R D dot com, slash. 01:39:45 Speaker 7: Di y bucks, it'll take your right to the right to the page and that there's no stone on turned in these books. This covers everything, would. 01:39:57 Speaker 6: You I'd like to describe it a little bit differently, Mark, Yes. Every single topic that you is even remotely related to bow hunting is in this book. Preseason, postseason, scouting, the rut, scrapes, rubs, everything, how to hunt corn, how not to hunt corn, how to rattle. Everything is in this book. When John came to me a year and a half ago and said he was thinking about writing his final book, of which he's written many and they have influenced me in a great number of hunters a great deal. And John came to me and he said, Greg, I want to distill down my fifty plus years of bow hunting experience into one book. And I was like, holy crap, that's that's got potential to be like the most inclusive book on hunting that's ever been written, and so I was really excited about it. And that's what John did. He distilled fifty years of successful big buck hunting in pressured areas any he distilled it all down into three volumes. So it's a lot of information, but everything you could hope to know about bow hunting is in there. And John put all of his experience in there, and a bunch of us helped him, right like Mark, you helped, I helped, and Andy and all these people helped John do this. But ultimately, what this book is is John's incredible record of success in three volumes. And I promise you every single hunter on the planet will learn something. It might not change your life, it might not revolutionize how you hunt if you're an experienced hunter, but I guarantee you're going to learn things from this book that you didn't know before you read it. 01:41:42 Speaker 5: Ye will make you think about the way you're hunting, and it'll probably make you want to change a lot of the ways that you are hunting it, and it was written and written in such detail that any novice or experienced hunter can easily understand what we're talking about. 01:42:01 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:42:02 Speaker 3: Well, I know there's a lot of folks who listen to our podcast that we did earlier this year, John, who have been waiting for the books because we kind of tease the books of them, but they weren't available yet. So I know, if folks haven't already seen the news online or somewhere, definitely take note. They're available now over there at the Tethered website. 01:42:19 Speaker 4: They're great. I haven't got to read every part of every. 01:42:22 Speaker 3: One of them yet, but I've been looking in various locations for relevant things as I'm thinking through ideas and as I was preparing for this, and as I knew it would be lots of lots of great stuff. And then this wonderful surprise number two tip as well that everyone will have to search for in the book, and and we will will have this moment, this podcast moment will live on forever. I still I still having a hard time processing it. So with that in mind, gentlemen, thank you so much for taking the time to do this for sharing maybe the best story we've ever had in the podcast, and for helping me as a hunter so much over the years. Both of you have been great friends, great teachers, and I appreciate you both. 01:43:06 Speaker 7: Thanks for the opportunity. 01:43:07 Speaker 4: Mark all right, and that's it for us today. 01:43:16 Speaker 3: Again, I'll plug John and Greg's book here, the Ultimate Guide to DIY Books. And without further ado, let's get you out into the woods, into a tree or a blind or whatever you're doing. Get out there, have a great time hunting. Good luck, and until next time, stay wired to hunt. 01:43:43 Speaker 9: It's that time of the year again. I'm back. Marcus Kenyon. How are you, your son of a gadwall. 01:43:48 Speaker 10: You look terrible. I'm just kidding a remma. I'm sorry, I'm late. I crashed my recumbent bicycle into the side of a quiz nose and I know what you're thinking. I am as sober as a newborn blue crab. I swear to you, this is just kombucha. I'm watching the gut health. You gotta do it as you get older. And also I'm wearing this ankle bracelet that makes a beep beep sound if I have a drop of the stuff. Also, alerts the authorities, who in turn alert my parole officer. So there'll be none of that in the studio today, I promise you. 01:44:19 Speaker 9: Let's get go. Oh you're queueing it up already. Okay. I thought we'd learned a lesson this year, but I guess not. Here we go. 01:44:28 Speaker 13: I love those beagy big big white tages, those bee agie bi big wad tails. I love those be achie b doya eight chats eat eat tales. I love those be achie b wat. 01:44:48 Speaker 14: Tails, big white tails, big white tails, big white tails are great. 01:44:57 Speaker 10: Oh, what fun it is to sit in the freezing cold tree all day? 01:45:02 Speaker 14: Big white tails, big white tails, big white tails are great. 01:45:07 Speaker 10: Hold, what fun it is to sit in the freezing cold tree all day? Dashing through the woods for the morning light, turns grave across the fields and draws, creep in all the way, climb into the tree. Big bucks are on the wave? What fun it is to sit and wait for my gosh. 01:45:33 Speaker 9: Dan deer all day? 01:45:34 Speaker 4: Oh? 01:45:35 Speaker 9: Big, I'm sorry? What is this? Pisocado strings? Who do you think? I am ya? Get this out here. I don't want to hear it. Thank you, Big. 01:45:46 Speaker 10: White tails, big white tails, big white tails are great, hold fun it is to sit in the freezing cold tree all day. I hope sand dreams are high. 01:46:00 Speaker 9: He's finally here. 01:46:02 Speaker 10: Mark said, it's the most wonderful time to kill o whitetail deer bingch points and pettings. Where you'll find me hanging twenty feet in a tree, grunt tubes, my bowel inspector camos really campy be. 01:46:19 Speaker 9: He or two ago. 01:46:21 Speaker 10: I thought that this was fun, But now I'm frozen to my seat, and the good times they are gone. 01:46:29 Speaker 9: I've ate up all my. 01:46:31 Speaker 10: Snacks, my hands and toes unnumb and we're gonna climb down from my stand. That son of a but decided to come. 01:46:40 Speaker 13: I love those beeg beeg white takes, those big bee big white takes. 01:46:50 Speaker 10: I love those be ig big dug Yeah, eight shot ge eat tails. I love those big white tails all dam I don't know why this is happening, I swear to God, Oh, officer, what seems to be the problem here? 01:47:12 Speaker 9: Oh? 01:47:12 Speaker 12: This? 01:47:12 Speaker 10: I don't know why this is happening. It must be a malfunction, you know. Sometimes it happens when the batteries running low. You don't know, you don't need to smell that that's just kombucha. I okay, yes, you've got me. It's ever clear and Pacific cooler. Caprice Son. I am so so sorry. I don't know why my life has brought me here. Mark Marcus, I'm so sorry. Enjoy the rut or whatever. 01:47:36 Speaker 9: Good luck boys, Good to see you. Hayden. It's been a while. Hey, sorry, I'm late. 01:47:43 Speaker 10: I crashed my pontiacastec into a light pull and had to walk through rest of the way. 01:47:46 Speaker 9: But I'm here now. That's what matters. 01:47:48 Speaker 10: Give me a glass of scotch, please, Hayden, just two rocks in there. 01:47:50 Speaker 9: I don't like ice. 01:47:52 Speaker 10: We're starting already, this is happening. Okay, just give me the give me the glass, thank you. Okay, here we go. It's the most wonderful time to kill deer. With the run now, just starting and dashing and totting and veins cutting clean. It's the most wonderful time to kill deer. There's far too much isonus glass. It's the half happy seeds of all. There's gotta be at least twelve cues with grunting and bleeding and cold fronts and sleeping. 01:48:29 Speaker 9: The last weeks of fun. 01:48:33 Speaker 10: It's the half happy seedssin of ame. There'll be pictures for posting and bragging and boasting and truck beds with big Bucks in toe. 01:48:47 Speaker 9: There'll be narrow miss. 01:48:48 Speaker 10: Stories and tales of your glories of booner bucks missed with our bulls. It's the most wonderful time to kill dear, not just one baby two. There'll be no dose of blowing and looming knocks glowing and blood trails so clean. It's the most wonderful time to kill deer. 01:49:17 Speaker 9: Excuse me? Can I have a napkin? Please? I just spilled some scotch on my loafers. I can't have dirty loafers in the studio. 01:49:24 Speaker 10: Thank you tailgate beers for drinking, and Big Bucks is slinking and chasing and s jacking does They'll be fighting and scraping and no more escaping and arrowshot true hitting. Oh key change. But no one told me that it's the most wonderful. 01:49:46 Speaker 9: Time to kill deer. I was very unprepared for this. 01:49:51 Speaker 10: There will be much morning sitting in cold fronts of hitting the down Kristen clean. It's the most swonderful time, Oh, the most swonderful time, Yes, the most swonderful time to kilty. 01:50:19 Speaker 9: There's too much ice in the glass. Two rocks,