00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode three and today the show I am joined by Whitetail addicts Troy Pottinger to discuss his unique methods for targeting mature bucks in the big woods, big mountain country. He calls home, all right, welcome to the Wired Hunt Podcast, brought to you by on X. Today, I've got Troy Pottinger joining me for what is going to be a great episode. Troy's a particularly interesting deer hunter talk to you, because he's achieving a level of deer hunting success that we're used to seeing from from the TV show Hunters that we all know about in Iowa, in Illinois and Kansas. But he's not doing this on some big managed arm the heartland. He's doing it all d i Y, on public land in the huge forests and hills and mountains of Idaho. And he's also proven that he can take the tactics he's perfect in that location and he can apply to other parts of the country to and have just as much success. So whether you're hunting the big woods of the Northeast, or the hill country of the Appalachians, or the driftless region of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, you know there's there's gonna be something here for you. And hell, I've even picked up ideas from this one that I think I can apply right here in the flat egg country of southern Michigan. So that's all to say. I guess that I was particularly excited with how this one turned out. Troy's got a lot to share. If you're not familiar to Troy, He's filmed for the White Tail Addictions TV show, for the Lone Wolf customer gear guys. He does a lot of stuff with them. He's been active um on social media in various places. When it comes to mountain hunting, mountain buck hunting, you're gonna find variety of other folks talking to him about those things. But we cover we cover a lot of different stuff today and we take it to a level of detail that I don't think he's talked about in the past. We cover a lot on how terrain influence his dearer movement and hunting. We talk a lot about thinking about wind and how to set up and identify stand locations that are essentially bulletproof or windproof. And maybe my favorite part of this conversation was talking about scrapes, both natural and mock scrapes, and how Troy really keys in on them for both trail camera scouting and hunting, and he takes us to a different level than and maybe anybody else I've talked to, and it's it's very interesting. I think you're gonna be intrigued with it. I certainly have taken some things that I'm I'm going to try out when it comes to scrape specifically. So that's the plan. Um, we're gonna get right into it here in just a minute, but before that, a couple of quick housekeeping items. Number One, a new season of The Meat Eater TV show has just dropped over on Netflix. It's part one of season nine. It's five episodes. I think it's great stuff, a lot of fun, So check it out over on Netflix as soon as you can. Number two, if you're heading out on a hunting trip soon and you're like me and you need to have a good book to read, maybe at midday between hunts or forbid at night. I've got a shamelessly plug my book that I wrote called That Wild Country. If you weren't tuned in earlier this year and we were talking a lot about this book, here's the very very quick gist. That Wild Country examines the history of how we came to have six hundred and forty million acres of public land across the country and all the controversy and characters that were involved in us getting this incredible swath of country that we can hunt on and fish and hike and explore. I mean, it's it's it's insane when you think about what we have here. You don't need to be a millionaire to have millions of acres to go play on and explore. That's what we have here in America now. In addition to history, I also wrote about the current events that are affecting these places right now, in the future of these places. And then throughout all of this I shared a series of my own adventures out on these landscapes, hunting and backpacking and rafting and fishing and exploring them to kind of illustrate why this stuff's important and what we can do out there. So all three d seventy four of these Wired Hunt podcasts have been free for your listening pleasure. But if you've ever wanted to find some way to show support for that and and thanks for all that, maybe here's your chance. I can't thank you all enough. For those of you who have already purchased a copy or two of That Wild Country, It's meant the world. The feedback I've gotten has been great, That's meant the world, and I just really really appreciate it. So thanks for hearing my plug. Thank you for supporting Wired Hunt and myself by purchasing a copy of this book. And if you haven't gotten one yet, you can head on over to a local bookstore or Amazon or the Meat Eater website and get your copy now. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And that's it. No more updates, no more plugs, no more of me rambling. And now there might be an ad layer in the podcast. There are a few of those. Thank you for dealing with those. Uh no about other than that. What I'm trying to stay here is, let's get into this conversation. Is a really really interesting chat. Troy Pottinger is a great guest, a great deer hunter, and I can't wait for you to hear this so let's get into it all right with me. Now on the line is Troy Pottinger. Troy, thank you for being on the show. Hey, I really appreciate it. Mark. Listen to a lot of your podcasts and and keep you know, all of us guys in this in this game, kind of keep an eye on people, and I love what you do and I've really enjoyed your podcast. Thanks for having me. Well, hey, thank you for listening. I uh, I have only one regret about this conversation. I'm very glad we're having it now, but I wish I wish we'd had the conversation several weeks ago before I was in Idaho, because maybe I would have gotten some new ideas or been inspired to go to a different part of the state and ended my hunt differently. Because I just got back from your home state a week ago and I came home empty handed. So you know, it's hunting. That's how it goes sometimes. But I'm sure probably could have learned a thing or two you at the time of health. Well, it's funny Mark, you bring that up, because that's one you know, I was kind of watching what you're doing because I saw somewhere on social media that you're in Idaho, And I was like, I wonder whe Marks that I wonder if he's up north by me or down south? And if it's my understandings, right, you were more down south and more of a river bottom type scenario. Weren't you hunting some river bottom stuff? Mostly? I hunted a little bit. I hunted a little bit in some national forest lower mountain stuff, but I'd say was river bottom Okay? Yeah, and the and the stuff I run around in. And I've grown up and for all my entire life is you know you You've probably done a little bit of homework to know I'm more up by the Canadian border. Yeah, I'm up pretty high in the panting Yeah. Yes, So tell me about that area. I've fished up there, I've done a little hiking up there, but I've never hunted. Um, what are these kinds of tracts of land? Like it's pretty different than the average white tail hunter out in egg country? Right, Yeah? I think you know it's Uh, I think it's vastly and drastically different a lot of ways. And in one thing I can say, unlike you, Mark, I've I've hunted a lot of places put my feet on the ground in a lot of states and on purpose because I love white tails and I love I literally just have a passion for hunting white tails all over. But of course grew up being a mountain bow hunter and uh a mountain white tail hunter. So to answer your question, this country is it's it's you know, bottom line, it's freaking huge, it's vast, it's unforgiving, it's it's literally mountain white tail hunting. And you know, I hunts some of these bucks up to almost six thousand feet. Uh, not normally quite that high, but I've had some bucks range that high in the early season and then all the way down to like you know, the river bottoms in this country up north will drop from We've got mountain country that runs up to seven eight thousand feet and then it drops all the way down to fire. So so the elevation is is incredible. The elevation change the topography is is extreme. Uh, hundreds of miles of timber. This is logging country. Some of the best timber producers in the United States come out of the Northwest up here, and and uh so we've got that industry that's that's basically you know, we built a lot of America out of the Northwest. You know, there's a lot of timber that's come out of this country and the and we got the rain, and we got the right kind of climate to grow timber fast and have lush, really lush vegetation. I've had guys telling me that hardcore oil counters tell me that the hardest state to hunt public land elk On is North Idaho because of how thick it is. And you you being uh, I know you've You've done a lot of things and seen a lot of places and hunt a lot of animals, and I know you love white tails. Anytime you give a white tail extreme dance, thick cover for hundreds of miles, food for hundreds of miles in every direction, in the form of all kinds of green vegetation, and you know, just a plethora of just natural foods and brows, it's pretty interesting. It's really cool. And then you throw in the rugged terrain and the steepness, uh, and all the wind currents and the thermals and everything. It's it's a wicked place to hunt white tails. And then you add in the wolves, the mountain lions, the grizzly bears, and the black bears and the Yode's and the Lynx and the bobcats, and it's just it's awesome. It It's got my heart and soul. And I've I've been all over the country and I've been in places that are more of a white tail mecca. But I'll never leave the mountains of north Idaho, eastern Washington, and western Montana for white tails. I'll travel, but I'll never leave this area. Man. From from everything I've seen and heard, I get it. I can see why that would be so appealing. It just seems like that stack of circumstances has got a breed true survivors. Those bucks are going through the ringer between hunting pressure, between all those predators, between the tough weather, tough terrain. I gotta believe you're seeing some some bucks have seen it there too. Yeah there. You know. I respect a mountain white tail more than any animal I've ever hunted hunted. And I say a mountain white tail because I've watched my bucks year to year on camera get torn to pieces by mountain lions, like literally have I've got one buck that survived the mountain lion attack one year that literally had hand fifteen inch gashes on his face, his neck, his shoulders, his back, and somehow he got out of it. And watched him all through the summer in his thin skin and and short hair. He'll survive it and then just freaking live, you know, two or three more years. It was better than me. I couldn't get him killed. Uh, yeah, it's wicked. And then one thing I didn't bring up that you brought up, Mark, is we get six to ten snow in the same exact places that I hunt these deer in in January February March. We'll get up to ten ft of snow in some of these spots that these deer have to migrate out of to go survive ten miles away in the in the late winter, and then they come back to the mountains when the snow is gone in April. What what what's the prizes? Me? I think, And probably a lot of people, if if they haven't kept tabs on what you've been doing over the years, or a few other people that are a little bit in the community that folk know of is the fact that you're hunting deer in this kind of situation, which sounds really tough for a deer but somehow the deer you're finding out there are I mean, they're they're world class deer. I mean, these are big bucks that you're getting on for anywhere you throw that buck in Iowa or Ohio and hunter is going to be drooling. Um. I mean, you're you're getting on legit deer out there, and I am I right, you can, you can, you can admit to that, right, yeah? You know. That's one reason and I'm gonna you know, straight shooters you're gonna get. That's one reason I love it here is I have the opportunity to hunt giants. Now, I don't have the numbers that I don't have the percentage of giants that some states have, and that's because of the war of attrition out here on the box. Uh. But we have really great genetics. The mountains per provide endless, endless and ample food for them, uh all through all through the spring, summer and into the fall, all the way into December until they have to migrate down, which is natural for mountain animals. They migrate down to the rivers and streams and lakes, that's just what they do, and get into the south and still eat well enough to survive but yeah, we you know, I'm you know, Mark, I'm hunting some deer that cross into Canada. So I'm getting I'm getting that if you've you've probably at least done enough paid attention to maybe some of my stuff enough to see that I get really good mass on my older bucks, big heavy, and I feel like a lot of the deer that I hunt kind of resemble some of those big Canadian bucks. And our bodies are our bodies are really big up here, Mark, if they get to the right age because that cold, cold winters and harsh winters have literally bread out all of the week genetics, you know, we our bodies are big. A lot of my bucks dress over two hundred pounds after I you know, after they're dressed and on the hoof, they're walking around at two fifty. So yeah, I I love it because I get to hunt this incredible white tail that lives in the mountains that can get world class exactly. You know. Uh, it's just amazing. There's not a lot of them, but when you find one, it's it's freaking awesome to find a deer that makes it to five six, seven years old and just packing around aches on his head. Yeah, that sounds that sounds like fun. Um, Now I wanna I want to dig into the nitty gritty of of everything you're doing to get to that point. But I have a an assumption. I'm assuming that you've hunted, as you said, you've hunted into a bunch of different places, You've traveled around the country, you've hunted the white tail meccas. But you come from this background of hunting these these tough bucks and a tough situation, and you've figured it out in that in that set of circumstances. Am I right that the things that you're figuring out in the mountains and big woods of Idaho, you're able to, I'm thinking, able to apply certain things from that situation, and they can also apply to these other states in certain ways and maybe even more effective when you get into about where there's more dear or where there's more bucks. Um, is there some crossover? Do you go to uh Iowa or Illinois, or in Ohio or in Oklahoma or whatever, and then just say, wow, this is this is kind of easy compared to back home. When I take this trick and apply it here, Is that true at all? You know? It is? Mark? And I'm gonna share real true life stories with you just instead of saying yes it is or I don't even I don't even want to say easier. Here, here's what I found when I go out of state and get a hunt. Incredible white tail areas like Iowa, like Alberta, and these are these are places I've been. Oklahoma, hell of a state. I love that place, um North Dakota, Montana River bottoms. What I run into is a lot less obstacles to kill the same caliber buck that I try to kill out here and that I've killed out here. And the reason I bring that up is I think we already kind of stated all the different, uh different just items that white tails have to make it through to survive out here. You know, I didn't even throw in the two months long gun season that I deal with. You know as a bow hunter. You know that's a long gun season. Two months during the all the way through the run and I and we get Idaho is called any weapons state during that gun season. So I did bow hunt it. But anyway back to answer your question, yes, I uh two stories I'll share with you real quick that that will just kind of detail it. I think the way I understand wind and how white tail bucks use wind to survive daily in this country has been unbelli avable for me. When I get to other states, I'm a I get on I hunt every big deer I've ever killed on his wind, and I and I dissected to where I can kill him and set up on him and he never knows I'm there, but he still has everything he wants. So that happened to me in Oklahoma. And I got to pick where I wanted to hang my tree stand instead of happened to sit where somebody, you know, where most guys were gonna sit. I And it's because I'll get to a spot and say that ain't gonna work on this big deer. And and I'll just tell people that I gotta be able to sit where I want to sit, and that's cool, and you know, And I got to do that in Oklahoma and I killed a d eighty six inch deer in two hours. Um. I went to Iowa, UH several years back, and I got a chance to hunt five hundred acres and Iowa with a really good friend and love the guy, A great guy out there, let me come out and hunt his farm. And I was sitting field edges and doing their thing, and I told my buddy, I said, hey, let me just hunt my way for two days, the last two days, and let me go dive in like I would in the mountains of Idaho on a big buck. Because when I look at a five acre piece, to me, that's minute scule. It's so easy for me to break down five acres because I usually break down five to ten thousand acre pieces at a time, and we can get into that detail later on. How that's how I've done that over the years and for decades. But anyway I'm in Iowa, I get to dive in. I get to do my own thing for two days. Uh, instead of just waiting on that those stands that usually tend to produce later in Iowa when it's cold and they're hungry for corn, if you follow me there. So I dove in the first day, picked it all out on the map of my buddy's place. Knew what I wanted to do. Uh. He had been hunting a hundred and nine two deer. Uh, and I know it's one. I'll finish the story in a second. And I literally in three hours had that deer underneath me. At eight yards and I snort, wesdy right to me. And the only reason I didn't shoot that deer is I believe my you know, my buddy. It was the best dare on his farm, and I know how badly he wanted to kill that deer, and he I literally had the conversation with him. I said, hey, I said, Jay, uh, if I see double wide and get in on him, what do you want me to do? And he said killing. But the way he said it, I just felt like he's being so good to me and he's letting me have his at a shot at his best bucket. He goes, but I haven't seen him in daylight in a month, only nighttime trail cameras. So back to the story. I have this deer, I go in deep, I find these big scrapes. I set up on a hill above it. I have the thermal. I mean, I'm dialed, and I see this big deer in a couple of hours and I snort wes him up to me while I also snort, we's a really nice five point that walked up there with him to me right below me too, And I purposely shot the other deer so that Jay could hunt the big deer, and Jay later killed the big deer and he's one nine two and I had that deer at eight yards for not only did I have that deer at eight yards after I shot my deer and my deer went over and died next to me or laid down by me, that big deer stood in bow range of me for almost fifteen minutes, twenty minutes. I'll tell you what you are both two very good friends. Him for having said that you could shoot it and you for not shooting it. That's a I literally, I've literally told that story for years because I felt like it was the right thing to do. I've been called every name in the world for doing it, like a dumbass and everything else, but that's not who I am. You know. I was so happy for my buddy when he killed himn late muzzle loader and he was guided. And this is a good friend of mine, that's a lot younger in me, just had got his farm bought and taken care of. You know, I had a little different mindset than him, and I think he was shocked that I got in that dear and because I wasn't videoing back then, I still today don't know if he believes I had that dare d eight yards, but I did, and he was broadside and he did there. But anyway, God knows, the Good Lord knows that I did. So the whole point of that, to answer your question, is yes, it has been easier for me to get on the big ones. I'll spend years sometimes out here to get one opportunity on a mountain buck of that caliber and of that age. Sometimes it sometimes Mark, they just they just kick my ass and I never see him again after a couple of years of getting on him. And I do only hunt bucks out here that are five and older. And I understand you only hunt specific target bucks to right. You find one and you get after him right right. And I always have. I have a number one, and every year is different based on what I got, and I really put a ton of time into having a number one to three and maybe a four. So that's a lot of effort to in the top four that are all above one sixty, and they're all over four, and they're all over five, they're all at least five years old. So that's that's just where I'm at now and what I love to do. I've sent you a picture of the Bucking hunt right now, that dear mark that deer and you can vouch for me online. That deer's was a hundred gross one seventy last years and four and a half year old and I left him alone. Wow, And this and this year he put it on and he's a public land mountain deer. And once they turned five, then I'm on him. And that that's just what I enjoy doing. Uh. My son, who's a hell of a white tail hunter for his age and has grown up doing this with me since he was so freaking literally he didn't know any better. I was packing him around in a backpack shed hunt. Um, he'll kill those big four and a half year old still to this day. And that's where he's at. And he and I are total cool with it because you know, he's seventeen and he likes the four and a half year old and older and his old man, I like the five year olds because in the mountains, that's where I really see them make those good jumps five, six and seven. Uh and yeah, so that's what I'm targeting marketing. That's and and I always try to have a plan b buck two. But yes, I I haven't killed a deer that was a surprise since two thousand and two. Okay, well they're even just the last five minutes in what you described, I added like fifteen maybe not fifteen, but ten new questions to my list of notes of different things I want to dive further into. But before I get into all that, I gotta get a little bit more detail on that Iowa hunt, because because I do think a lot of people listening hunt in places like Iowa or Ohio or West Virginia or New York, and they're wondering, Hey, how can Idaho apply to my place? Can you just describe a little bit more detailed specifically, how you like, what did you see on the map that led you to this specific place which led you to look for a scrape. Just give me the nitty gritty on that very specific setup that put you on the very best deer in a day. Okay, So Mark, I'll give you just an overview. It's about a five acre piece um zone for I'll leave it at that, And the the piece has a lot of timber on it. If I had to guess, it's over timber um. I instantly wanted off of the field edges and I wanted into the heavy security cover. And I looked at all the ridges, and it had some nice It had some nice elevation in there for for you know, for for Midwest or Iowa country. It had some really nice ravines, some ridges, some beautiful hardwood covered ridges. And I just basically looked at the map, looked at where all the food was around the biggest block of timber, looked at all the neighbors, saw where the pressure was coming. And I literally picked a ridge, a small finger ridge that dove down into kind of a ravine and had a sweet little bench on it, and it would overlook everything down in the really thick cover under this these hardwoods had a lot of brush. And because I'm not from Io, I can't I don't know what exact kind of brush was in there, but it was real brushy and under the hardwood trees and you I'm sure I was setting in oaks and stuff like that. And anyway, I got down, I went inside the timber edge, probably dropped down in there hundred hundred fifty yards, got on this sweet little bench and could oversee this whole bottom of timber. I could see through the timber. The leaves were off pretty good. It was. It was November, and I but the brush was all over. It was just brush everywhere, and I loved it. It was brushy. I really like that. And then I went up the other side, which I think was facing I think I came in from kind of a northwest angle and got on that ridge and was looking southeast and cold, and the sun was hitting that southeast bridge over there, and that's where those bucks were. Bed was over in that thick southeast kind of uh face. And that made sense to me because in the mountains up here, the bucks when it gets cold, like the bed somewhere towards the south or in the south when it gets cold. And it was cold. It was fairly cold out there when I was out hunting. It was below freezing for sure, but you know, not below zero, but it was cold. So I got in there hunting set real quick. And back then I was running a oh, I have an old lone wolf, one of my oldest lone wolves. I had. One of my buddy had one, just like me. So I was I picked that out of this pile of tree stands, and it was one of the old lone wolves, one of the first ones that you can't adjust the seat on or anything. But anyway, I dove down in there with like four or five sticks, picked the ridge kind of from the map, walked in and loved what I saw. Started seeing rubs. Look down below me on the little bench I got on and saw a huge scrape, probably thirty five yards from me, and I'm like, I'm sitting right here, and the scrape was just trashed. I mean it was. It was freaking as big as a car hood. And there was two or three of them, but on the literally kind of around the same area that were smaller, but I just noticed that giant when I saw those looking branches, and UH climbed up in the tree, got in there real quiet and set This was like a mid day snuck in and UH said, tell about two or three o'clock in the afternoon, it was pretty early, and UH saw saw a buck get up over on the southeast side and started working towards that scrape. And then I saw the big buck get up behind him out of his bed. So I was probably hundred and some yards away maybe at the most, from those deer and they were bedded in there. So I got in there pretty quiet, got set up and was just chilling, and they started working towards that scrape and they came down to the scrape below me at about thirty five yards, but they weren't. They wouldn't. They hadn't walked into the scrape yet, and I was I was like, oh my god, that's freaking double wide. That's him. I'm gonna I thought, she's right below me, and it was like thirty five forty yards and I'll be honest, I like really close shots. And those deer didn't know I was there, So I was like, I want him at ten twenty yards. And I started looking the other buck over and thought, that's a pretty nice five point with him. That's that's a nice buck. And then my whole little voice on my shoulder said you're gonna shoot Jay's buck or not, and I thought, I'm not gonna do it. I'm gonna shoot that other deer. So they were messing around. They walked into the scrape, not a real good shot angle. It was thirty five yards, and they were kind of The big double white buck was kind of posturing the other nice buck, who ended up being right at about one fifty gross um, just a heavy, tight, beautiful buck in Iowa. That was just a good looking dear to me, and and uh, he kind of pushed the buck. I ended up shooting a little more towards me. And then it was funny because he snort weased a little bit at that other buck. And as soon as he starts weeds. I'm so used to doing this up in the mountains up here, I I just thought, what the heck, I'm gonna see what happens here, because I'm gonna kill one of these deer. And I'd made the decision I'll shoot that out of one if I get the opportunity. I don't get the opportunity, and the only one I get to shoot at is the big one. I was gonna have to make that decision. So anyway, I snort weeds and I just and instantly both of those Iowa bucks just boom locked onto me up in that ridge. And there was brush all over on that ridge, so I do they couldn't see the deer that they thought they heard, and it wasn't five seconds from men, and the big buck, the giant that Jay ended up killing, just starts hammering a tree with his antlers, and the younger one and the smaller one which was probably four year old, starts walking towards me, and he starts walking towards me in the bigger buck saw him walking towards me and starts walking with him and tries to pass him and get by him to get to me. So they end up both all the way up under me at eight and ten yards and I'm at full draw and they're literally they're literally marked three or four ft apart from me. Jotrip. They're looking around for you know, they pinpointed my spot and they get up there, they don't see me, and the wind I had it perfect. The wind was kind of angling down towards them, but my wind was literally missing them by ten yards. So I thought, man, I gotta shoot one, because as soon as they get into my wind, this might turn bad. So I smoked that other buck, and he literally ran twenty yards and laid down, and that big buck stood by me, and he jumped and moved a little bit and wondered what the hell just happened, And then he literally stood by me for a little bit, and then he went over to the buck that I shot, and he literally started hitting that buck in the side with his antlers, hammered like hitting him in like digging on him to get up, and that dare's laying there dying, and then the big buck lets out another snort. Weeze walks back towards me and literally just like strutting around, just strutting around out there broadside of me. Easy shots hung out for a I swear to god, it seemed like days that he hung out as my buck's dying. And I just sit there and I and I just took it all in. And I'm sitting next to what I knew was at least a hundred and eighty five buck who ended up grossing one. Uh. I just sit and watched him, and I just chilled, and he never once knew I was there. He never once spooked for me shooting that day, other than a jump kind of jumped when I shot him. And then he ended up walking back down into that ravine and into that brush and down towards that scrape and disappearing before I ever got out of the tree. So there was a ton of daylight left in that day, a ton of daylight left, and yeah, it was just you know, So there's two hunts to the biggest deer I've ever seen in my life a couple of hours each and out west that might happen once a decade for me for a two hour hunt. Well, there you go. If that helps explain it, that's the best way I could share with you what my life experience has been of hunting these big deer out west. First is going to the mid No that that is helpful, And and again I think it's I think it's really interesting because now I do want to pivot to exactly what you do in Idaho, and and I'm guessing as you go through this, I'm going to be thinking, Oh, that could work in northern Michigan in the big woods, or this might work in this hill country and Ile, or that might work him. I'm wanting to see where all these things are going to translate. And so I guess, rather than expect or talking about what I think you're gonna say, let's just hear what you have to say. Um, first thing I want to kind of dive into. You alluded to this a second ago. But when you're hunting big tracts of public land like you are, where there's this massive stretches of public land all timber, it can be intimidating. It's hard to pick something out of all this what seems to the average person, maybe at first glance, to just be all the same kind of thing. How do you break down these huge tracts into smaller areas that you're gonna focus or maybe that's not what you do, but how do you pick the places you're gonna focus on within this massive millions of acres of ground that you could hypothetically hunt right. A lot of it has to do with thirty plus years of doing it. Um. I am a detailed map steady guy. I toppo maps since I was young. Elevation and learning what elevation old mature bucks love to live at in the mountains because of how the wind works, how it works for them to stay alive is huge. So we can get into all these key things. So habitat rolls in right behind that. UM and then I'm always picking elevations that work kind of at the top of a Doe family groups elevation to you know, kind of where they liked it about as high as Doe family groups like to live in conjunction with where these big old hermit type mountain bucks and they become hermits. They don't hang out with many other deer, they hardly ever socialize other than at a scrape or maybe real early summer a little bit. But those elevations that are just like bulletproof for those big deer. Elevation combin mind with habitat combined with contour of the ridges, so that they literally can use the thermal and a prevailing wind all day, all night to stay alive. And it's because they markets they lived there, because they're getting hunted by lions, DRIs, bear wolves every week. You know, it's humans that think we're putting all the pressure and making them smart, not even close out here. It's those alpha predators that we have that literally I lose a lot of bucks. Bucks bucks come and go out here, and I learned not to get extremely attached because I've just seen too many cougar kills walked up on him and found too many deadhead sugar kills and wolf kills, and you know, and our bears love to eat all our fawns, and it's just kind of the nature of the beast out here. So I really zone in on topography elevation, and it's all based on how the wind allows that buck to survive every day of his life and how the terrain protecting if that makes sense. It does, But I want to get one step back from what you're talking about there, because that seems to be how you're picking, like the the smaller focus there is, like where just specifically to hunt? But what about when you're like if you were brand new to Idaho or or maybe we're in New Hampshire. Let's say where there's a bunch of hills and it's kind of similar, but you don't know, you know, you don't know that this twenty mile square area is good? How do you? How do you? What am I trying to stay here? Like let's say like there's a whole bunch of places that would have that same elevation you're talking about, and there's probably a whole bunch of places within five million acres that would have the right contours and the right types of topography. So is there do you look for a starting point something like hey, here's a bunch of clear cuts and then I'm gonna try to find everything around it. Is there any kind of central thing that starts as the pin on the map and then you try to look for those specific things? Um, I guess I'm just warning the one step before what you describe got you and I and I did, I did say one word about and it's huge is so we just talked topography there and a topo map basically, then you've got to overlay it with the right habitat. It's all about food and water of their life, food water cover. So those three food water security is what it is for these dre So the right elevation, the wind that that literally gives them that perfect livable survivalbal everyday wind that keeps them alive from predators. And then all the habitat is there. It's it's got to have the food, which is the native habitat where there's zero agriculture, there's zero acorns, there's zero apple trees. I mean, it's what you get is you get into the mountain habitat and you jump from things like that to huckleberries and wild all kinds of wild berries that grow the mountains, um all kinds of different plants that they forage on red stamp c and osis. Uh. They literally eat that old man's beard off all the trees. And then our country is just amazing. We have green grass that grows in the mountains and anywhere there's a logging clear cut or someplace where the logging industry has comed in and opened up the canopy. It turns into a food plot for the wild animals after they burn it and all the fresh green vegetation grows up in it, and there's literally too many of the list, but it's incredible. It's just like a food plot on the side of a mountain. So yes, to answer your question, all of those things combined, and then you gotta have the groceries, and you gotta have the hideout and the safety, and we do in this country in these mountains have a lot of water. Water is pretty darn easy to find for a wild animal in this country, so water is really never a huge issue. Food literally is spread out across hundreds of miles in the timber, and if you got logging, you got even better food or old logging clear cuts, and then they turned into unbelievable betting areas when the cuts get to like forty fifty years old and they still have food in them. So yeah, I'm playing that whole game and putting all those pieces of the puzzles together before I even go step foot on it. Nowadays, in the old days, everything was boots on the ground first, because all I had was the topple map. I didn't have Google Earth. I didn't I didn't have all the amenities that we have nowadays that are awesome that we can just literally get on our computer and look at it from the sky. So it's a lot easier for me nowadays. And just pinpoint if that helps answer that habitat is huge mark. That food has to be there, that hideout has to be there, that water has to be there, everything has to be there for them to want to stay there and live there. So you mentioned the elevation. What's this magic elevation that you seem to key in on. Is it a specific actual like this many feet in between this many feet and this many feet or is it simply like the top third or the middle whatever. How do you look at that. That's a great question because you're there's some mountains I hunt that are only four thousand feet tall, and if there's any type of logging road across the top of it, I hunt the sandwich part of it. I hunt where the deer notice stay away from that top road. If I get out on big ridges that have no roads on the top. Uh, and these ridges can run from four to five to six seven thousand feet high. I'm hunting that top. I'm hunting that lower end of the top third for those big deer. And it's because those big deer stage on that lower end of the top third. If there's no road edge at all across the tops those big, long, awesome, huge ridges that we have about here that run for miles, I'm dropping down or getting up into that lower end of the top third, and that's where I do really well on finding the big bucks, the biggest box hideouts. And what happens is is they've got that great wind advantage up in that top third. They live by those thermals all day when they're when they want to lay down during the day, so they've got the majority of the days an uphill thermal, and when they're ascending to get to their beds early in the morning or even before daylight, they've got that downhill thermal to get all the way up there with. And then what they're doing at night and in the evening in the afternoons is they're rolling down into the Doe family groups that are in kind of that middle third and kind of living an easier life because deer pretty much live vertical until the rut in the mountains. During the rut, the big box, if you look at topography, run parallel. They run parallel lines at certain elevations to intersect with all of the vertical traveling doughs, doe family groups and the dogs like to kind of go up and down the mountains each day to feed and bad feed and bad because of the wind and the thermals. So if that all makes sense, those bucks like to camp out a little bit above them, and I get in and I really hit those areas where do family group core living areas. Their circles kind of overlap with those big bucks that are camped out, usually higher an elevation above them. And it's not always the case, but it's often the case. Okay, so let me let me throw an assumption at you and tell me if this is right or not. But if I'm looking at okay, I'm looking at the top third the lower end of that top third, and if I'm looking across a ridge line, and I'm trying to then pick, okay, where do I think the best places along this elevation line would be? That these bucks might pick outs their hangouts, I might guess that it's going to be either where there's some particularly gnarly cover at that elevation line, or where there's little spurs or knobs coming off of that ridge. Um, is that right? Or or how do you how do you narrow it down to that next stretch? Or is it simply just you go out there and you walk these ridges at that in that certain elevation until you just see it. Yeah, you've kind of nailed all of it. I kind of do a little bit of all of it. But the first part of your of your assumption to me was pretty pretty right on. I I look for those I get out and walk the heck out of it. But I look on a map too, for those those little finger ridges that are hard to see or you can't even hardly see on a map. I look for those benches that are out there at that lower end of that top third. Um, a place where it gives a buck a little bit of ease, kind of a kind of a little bit of relief. Because the country is steep, and a lot of places like really steep, and it also, like you alluded to, and your assumption, lots of cover, a lot of blowdowns. You literally can't hardly walk in on these big deer in their beds. The almost in marked and it all relates to months too of the year. So right now it's hotter and hell in the west. All these big deer, almost all of my big deer that I'm monitoring right now on the one that I'm hunting, they're all betting up in north north faces right now, or at least bending into the north where they get really good shade, they have water and food extremely close. That buck I'm hunting right now, that's what he's doing. He's bedding in the north. He's sliding out into a northeast bench, and he's got miles literally a couple of miles of food to pick from, all native, all natural, so he doesn't have to go far to get water, he doesn't have to go far to eat, and he can stay cool in his air conditioned north face compared to it's literally twenty degrees hotter out in the south right now that it is in the north, and he's in that heavy timber blowdowns. A predator cannot walk in on him without him hearing him. And then he's got the uphill thermal blowing up all day long up wind to him for most of the day the day and he just lays up in there and then when he gets that down wind thermal, he uses it to move and the same way he comes up in the morning. So yeah, that's that's you kind of assumed. It pretty close to right as far as what I'm looking for. And then yeah, I go pound the ground with boots too to see it. Then I want to see the sign. I want to find those big tracks. I want to find those rugs. Yeah, go ahead, I was just gonna kind of ask you exactly what you started doing there. I'm just curious kind of walk me through what those scouting sessions look like for you, because I heard you say somewhere that you look at spring and summer as the most crucial part of the entire year, maybe more important than even hunting season. Um, walk me through what those days look like. And when I say that, it's because from about middle of January all the way to almost April, there might be between three and ten ft of snow where my DearS spend their whole hunting season. So as soon as the snow comes off, it's almost like the ground has been mummified, meaning everything that they did right before the big snow's hit, and where they were hiding out, it's still there. That sign almost gets like frozen and covered up and not messed with. So when all the big snows come off in the mountains, I can literally walk into a place in March late April or early April, late March, and if the snows off, I can see. I mean, the stuff I see is pretty awesome because it's kind of been preserved because it's had so much snow just sitting on top of it. And I'll look for those trails. I will look for those big beds, rubs that literally big rubs that where a buck goes in and kind of rubs his way in towards maybe a bedding area. And the biggest thing I look for in the mountains are the the scrapes that all the deer use kind of a community type hub scrape where they all come back to after they migrate. They use it all through the whole entire spring, summer, fall, and then when they exit, they always come back to those big community scrapes as a social hub, and I look for those. So I'm looking for all that, and I'm a shed hunter man. I've literally really found thousands of sheds in my lifetime, and I've killed several bucks because a lot of my big deer will shed before the snows push them out. They'll tell me right whether they're hiding out. A lot of my old deer dropped their antlers before they get pushed out by the heavy snow, so that's a great indicator too. And it's not all the deer, but it's the older bucks that drop early, and they'll be war out and they'll drop their antlers. Like I've had big bucks drop December. I've had a lot of my old bucks dropped by January, one to the tent. So those are great indicators too. Just so many different things I'm looking for in the spring to make it put all the pieces of the puzzle together. And then I'm literally cameras on my community scrapes when the snow's gone year round, and I even leave them in the winter when the snows are because I like to see what predators are in the area, Like you know, just leave them out all year, watch the snow get all the way up to the camera and then drop all the way down, and then the deer right back at those scrapes. So it's pretty, it's pretty. It's pretty impressive how powerful those community hubs are for mountain deer. Can you can you describe to me how you can determine when you found one of these community scrapes versus just your ho hum used once in a while kind of scrape, because it seems like this is a really important part of what you're doing in this big woods, big hill country stuff. Yes, a community scrape will have all the evidence on it of decades of use, so real simple. The branches have been beat to hell, tattered, twisted, chewed on, there's zero leaves anywhere on them, and they look like almost a witch's hand hanging down and it's just trashed. And below it you'll always see even in the spring, even if there's pine needles or stuff that fell in it, uh, below it, it'll you will literally just see three, four or five feet sometimes of evidence from the past season, even you know, four or five months before, three or four months before that it was just getting hammered, and you just you know, I see all of those pieces, those multiple like six nine licking branches hanging off of off of whatever species of tree it is or whatever species of like brush it is that they use. And I've got several that I hunt different for different areas, but that it's just you can look at the licking branches, and the licking branches are just beat to heck, tattered, twisted, torn, and the scrape below it will be usually three ft are bigger, and it's because it's had decades of use. When I walk up on any other type of scrape, if the licking branch doesn't show me what I need to see, I literally don't even worry about it. If the licking branches looks like a tree branch hanging there with no wear on it, in zero addressing to it, and I see a little scrape on the ground from a buck that might have had a testosterone high that day, that happens a lot, and I see a lot of those when I'm out shed hunting. And just to be fair to your on earlier audience, mark, my shed hunting is you know a lot of times, daylight till dark, ten to fifteen miles a day, gritty mountains at twenty yards for miles at a time. I'll go mile dropped down twenty yards, come back a mile dropped down twenty yards. So I'm really getting to see everything, you don't. I have my shed dog with me and my son with me, so we're just like not missing hardly anything. But we also run across a lot of cool buck sign in the spring doing that kind of shed hunting, and it's just that effort, that hard work, really getting enough boots on the ground where your ass out all day long too, you can't hardly walk, and we'll pick up eight to ten twelve sheds sometimes and then when we find a great, big one, you can almost bet he probably dropped him, especially if he's high elevation, he probably just gave away his favorite core area hideout where he's hiding now because it's usually a high elevation too. So are you are you finding the majority of those good sheds at that same elevation zone as where most of that buck betting is happening or is it lower because by December or January one they have to go lower. That's different every year based on when we get what I consider, you know, a two and a half three ft of snow, So on the years that the snow comes late, meeting the big snows that really pushed deer and I run cameras year around so I watched when they leave. I literally watched when all my big bucks exit and get out of there, and they moved down. If it's an early snow year and we get dumped on, like say around Christmas or first week of January, I can almost bet any of the sheds that I find down lower or from a buck that probably migrated to three four or five miles maybe if it's a late snow and there's are these are my favorite. And these are the big deer that I've killed because I find their sheds, and I've killed a couple of giants because I had really late snow levels. I didn't even get eighteen inches of snow till like February, and then it just piled on in February and March. And I'll go in there in the spring and find those great big sheds of a buck and it literally tells me right where, right where he's hiding, because he's he he dropped those sheds probably in early January, and our season goes up until Christmas, so he's hiding out in his favorite place to hide out. So every year is different, and it depends on when I get that high accumulation of snow interesting back to the scouting. You talked about delevation on these ridges on these mountains, But are there any other terrain features that you key in on that when you see them on the map, you circle it and say it, I gotta walk that too, because this looks like a pretty good damn thing, you know, like the like saddles or whatever you mentioned, benches, anything like that. Yeah, same stuff I do, even in the Midwest where I'm in Iowa. On the smaller it's honestly just a much smaller scale as long as I got some elevations, some ravines, some benches, some ridges. To me, it's just a grander, much grander scale out here. So yes, um, I have killed a lot of big white tails in and on saddles that allow a big buck to get from one drainage too of the other fast and easy and saving saving say three to five feet of climb. Anywhere else, I circle those big time. Anywhere in that five thousand to thirty to five thousand foot range, I'm looking for those. I absolutely love the big long ridges that have fingers off of them. A lot of times I find the finger ridges that aren't even on the maps, and I'll find those faint finger edges and get out on those fingers and they'll have a little bench out on them, and I run into a lot of what I'm looking for on those in the in that thirty five d to five thousand foot elevation, and I do hunt a little higher in that on some bucks, but you're asking me kind of for the you know, the majority, right, So I really like that kind of ground. Uh. And then I've also set up on hillsides mountain sides that are pretty steep because the deer have created a community scrape on it because it's the only place they get away from pressure. And I'll hunt those steep hillsides if I have to on a big scrape. And my son killed the biggest bucket his life a public land almost won when he was thirteen years old, with a bow and arrow on one of those. So it's a combination of those features where I feel like deer like to spend a little more time or like to travel through more often. In the giant woods, it always has heavy security cover, it is always close, and I'm always in conjunction with some type of social community of okay, so I don't have it there when I find it mark, I build it. If I don't describe. If I don't, yeah, I'll build the scrape and put it. Put the deer where I want them. Let's talk about that a little bit more, um now. So you'll find them naturally in certain places, and you ken on that. But when you decide you want to build one, what has what are the criteria to decide that a specific zone or area is worth building one? Because you can build one of these anywhere, and I've heard you say that you can kind of get these bucks to hunt you a little bit when you create a community scrape like that. But it must be like there's got to be the right the right place to do that, because if you put that in the wrong place, I'm sure it's not as effective. How do you pick the right places for that? Right? So for for decades, I've backtracked deer as soon as I get snow, and we get snow early, um, and I'll snoop around into a lot of in seasoned scout And if something isn't working like I wanted to, or if a big buck gets cold on me or figures me out and quits coming where I need him, I'll move. So I start getting snow in October and into November, and as soon as I get snow, and if I need to go scout um these big woods, it's kind of nice having snow because the deer is so spread out and it's so big that I'll go find literally by looking on a map and also knowing what my deer doing in the area and how they're ascending and descending day and night. In the morning and the evening where they're trying to hide out, I'll literally walk into what looks really good on a map, and usually I'll run into a scrape in there. But the snow lays everything out for me as far as tracks go, and I can really play off of all the other hunters based on how they're staying away from the other guys that are pressuring them, maybe lower an elevation of me, or maybe down the road from me a mile or two miles or something. Then I'll dive into that in October November, and I'll spend the day sometimes just walking. If I've got snow, I'm probably walking if I don't have a buck that's killable. And when I find heavy concentration of travel that really looks like to me would be daylight timing on the travel because it's using pretty high in elevation or higher. And I've got all the dough tracks and fawn tracks I want to see, and a couple of big sets of buck tracks. Boom, I'll lay a community scrape right in their highest travel corridor and hang a stand. And I don't post a lot of stuff on my little YouTube page, but I have one that I put in two years ago on the October and it had actually snowed and I got my scouting in and then it melted. It was just a skiff and that's all I needed to scout for a day. And I doubled back in there. I scouted like a week before when I had a little bit of snow, and I doubled back in there and built the scrape where I wanted to. And uh, I no joke, And I have videos all over my little YouTube page to prove it. I had to one sixties and a one eight on that community scrape and four or five does and probably four or five younger bucks within fifteen days. Wow. And then I again, I killed Then I killed the one sixty two on that scrape a month or not a month? Yeah, A month later, December third, I killed him digging in that scrape when I was hunting the big deer. Yep. I want to I want to get into the details of how you make those scrapes at what you're specifically doing in any particular unique things you're doing. But I gotta I gotta ask just a little bit about how you find these best of the best bucks. Is it? Is it simply that you are everything you've just told me, finding the right elevation, finding where the habitat comes, and finding where you've got great cover and and all these things. Is it simply that if you find that combination of factors that you will find these top tier bucks if you check enough of them. Or is there some other secret sauce that you're finding, Like I'm one of these top tier, these big, big, big ones. I understand that you can zero in on a bunch of on like a decent number of deer. So I guess and wondering, is that the spot Or is that you have so many spots like this, and you run cameras on so many spots like this that eventually on three of those thirty really great looking spots on a given year, the jumbo ones will show up in in one of those. Okay, it's not even close to lots of spots and a war of attrition and just trying to do numbers, not even close. No, And a lot of people I think think that about me. Oh this guy just runs a hundred cameras and finds a big deer. Hell No, I freaking study the hell out of genetics. And I've spent so much time in these mountains and I pay close attention to where the best genetics tend to be for decades, and I study where every big deer has ever been killed. And if I don't know the truth about where he's been killed, I don't believe it. And I'll literally for me, it's about of read me really tuning in on the genetics that I like. So if I get into an area mark that has piss poor genetics and I know it and I can see it based on my camera evidence, I'm out. I go hunt where the big I mean, you know, if you want football players, then you go find football players. If you want basketball players, then you go look for that genetic. If you want soccer players, you go find that genetic. I treat my bucks the same it's all about the d n A that they're spreading in their drainages. So I've got some drainages that are just fricking producers because of the DNA, and that's where I target is d n A. And then the ability for that d NA to survive and reach ages of five or six or seven in the bucks interesting. So then I guess if I wanted to reproduce your strategy, let's say in my part of Idaho, where I don't know that stuff yet, if I wanted to try to do something similar, I'd have to cover the country though to find where these little pockets are eventually right. So I would have to do the war of numbers until I found these zones that had those right. Well, here's what I do, market fise you. If I hunt where you were, I go down into every sporting goods store, every local little cafe in those in that area, every everything you can walk into publicly, and just look for big dear genetics on the wall. I've killed a couple of great, big Bucks because I went into a restaurant and I saw the genetics that were badass, and I thought, I'm gonna get up into this country and I'm just saying this is I mean, I pay attention to everything everywhere you go visits, you know you're out of state. So yeah, when I go, when I go out of state, everywhere I go, my eyes are on the genetics of anything I see. Hanging on somebody's barn, uh, somebody's cafe, and somebody's sporting goods store and somebody's gas station. That's what I do. And and I found a lot of big deer. Just paying close attention to the area's genetics. And I get into every book, every resource that I can find, big game records, county records, study the hell out of it. And then I look at where the deer probably have the least amount of rifle pressure, because I deal with a lot of rifle pressure in a lot of areas out here. Yeah, I gotta get away from that. Okay, that all makes that all makes sense. Um, let's get back to the scrapes. So you're finding these zones of heavy deer activity that are away from human activity, and you're creating this hub. Uh. You know, most everybody listening knows how to make a basic mock scrape, but are you doing something different than the average mock scrape that Joe Schmo is making in Michigan. Um, what does it look like for you? You know, I want to say one thing about that last question. I'm gonna answer this. You are correct though two when I said when you said, is some of it just boots on the ground and finding big sheds and good genetics, Yes, that's part of it too, Okay to your mock scrape question. You know, I have a lot of guys now that have that have heard my stuff, watched seeing kind of the success I've had, and they're doing this. And I've taught a lot of people how to build mock scrapes, like in person, went out in the woods with them, showed them how to build one. I'll turn around and send me a picture when they built a week later. And it's honestly, it's not gonna work. It's not authentic enough, it's not detailed enough. It doesn't have the authenticity of something that catches a five year old bucks eye and knows and says, you've got to get that big deer, and my big deer walk in and look at him for the first time. On video. I run all video on every scrape that I built, I run all video on every buckeye hunt for thirty seconds to a minute, because I want to learn everything about his reaction. So what happens is is when I replicate these, it's detailed. It's the exact favorite species of licking branches that that drainage shows me based on my scouting. It's the right species, it's the right look. When I find a community scrape, I mimic I copy that. I sculpt that out with the licking branches. I build the scrape and the same fashion, size everything to a detail, and then I always put mock rubs around it, because the best community scrapes I ever find always have rubs around him. So I build this. I built this scenario, this scene for these big dare to walk into. And the scent, and I use buck Fever synthetics. I've used it for twenty plus years. The scent, they never shy from it. I've never had an issue. The look of the licking branch, which is multiple torn, tattered, beat to hell, totally looks like it's been there for decades. I'll literally harvest the right species of uh limb just to hang it a hundred yards away on a tree, and I'll prop you know, I'll tie it onto a tree and use some parrocord and get it all perfect and at the right literally at the right height, and I build it so that when these deer walk into that for the first time, they smell it, and visually they just lock onto it, and you can see it in their eyes. They just lock onto it and and they literally have that look like, how in the hell did I miss this? And they always walk over to it, and Mark, I've got video after video of them locking on my big deer. They walk over to it and they just start sucking airing through their nose and breathing it out their mouth, checking it and they start bobbing their head and then they get their head up around that licking branch. And I've got that forehead gland sent on it, and I've got urine in the dirt, and I'll put four or five different deer profiles, the synthetic urine in it, because I wanted to be I wanted to come across to them like there's several different urins in there, not just one, because that's what a community scrape, even residual sense smells like in one. Those deer can smell different urines in that dirt. So I'll put every urine profile I have, even in the summer, even in May and June when i'm building one, because i want different profiles of urine sense in there. It's all urine, but they all have a little different, you know, twist to them. So I'll do that forehead gland on that sculpted out, beautiful licking branch, and it just locks them in and then they start coming back to seeing who's there, and they instantly always start overmarking it. For me, the does the box, the fawns, all of them, and they'll overmark and then they start competing if there's good bucks. You know, if there's a couple of studs there, I get more frequency than I do if I just have one big stud, like the one I'm hunting right now. He's the king of the freaking mountain where I'm hunting. He doesn't have anything near him that even poses a threat. He's harder to kill than the ones that have two or three studs in there. Can you I know when you described how you make these these scrapes that you mentioned, you try to mimic what's done in that specific drainage in that specific area. But are there any generalities you can describe? So I'm wondering, like, for example, the scraped out area underneath you know, you might find your average ho home scrape might be you know, two ft by three ft oval, but then these mega scrapes I'm imagining are like a car hood. Is that Do you have any kind of general guidance you can offer there? Yeah? Um, in my country in the mountains, and even when I've hunted all the other states, and what I see on the big ones that usually you know, three three feet actually pretty big. Um. I like to make them about four ft on the bottom, and I v them out on the top underneath the liaking branch, just like the bucks do. I take a big I'll just break off a big limb and I'll dig that dirt out to where there's I really dig the dirt down about two inches inch and a half two inches and then I and then I blade it back in with that stick and make a bed. So I have awesome soft absorbing dirt in that scrape. And it's kind of a V pattern, and it widens out at the bottom to about four ft and up top it's you know, it's speci to the V and widens out pretty quick, so it kind of looks like a tear drop almost, um. And then I placed that so that the top of the V is literally right under the leaking branch, so it looks like it shows years of deer working that working that uh dirt, you know, down down into the wider portion of the scrape, and I make a really nice churned up dirt bed. I make sure there's zero vegetation in it. I wear my latex gloves or my rubber gloves, and I literally dig every piece of vegetation out of it that could be there. There's some rits in the ground sometimes, you know, just I just make sure it's like pristine looking, and it looks like a natural community scrape looks like uh when they're really working them hard, even the dirt part. And I'll do that even in the summer, even in the spring. So the dirt. If that answers your question for the dirt, it's it's pretty damn good side. I'm trying sometimes five ft. Yeah, sometimes I really blow one up. Um. And for me, it's it's kind of like artwork. It's I get a fill for the drainage, and what I've seen in there. And I also kind of have an idea based on all the years of hunting these different areas, and I'll try to mock and mimic the best of the best scrapes I've ever found in that area because there's a lot there's a lot of visual that people don't take into account. With light tails, they're extremely locked in two scrapes. Visually, Go ahead, Mark, I was just gonna go back to a few more of those factors that help you zero in on the right spots for the scrapes. I know we talked about there's the upper third line where you're gonna have these bucks betting, and that's also the line where lots of times during the rut their cruising right, um, and then you've got them no no, no, no, no, no, there there they upper third is where they like to bed the line that they cruised, they drop into that they dropped down and cruise horizontally in that middle third where the yes, yes, okay, sorry. So so then my question was, then, tell me elevation for these community scrapes. Are those typically on the dough elevation line then, because that's where they intersect or what about that? I like to play some kind of the higher top top end of the dough normal hangout. You know, they're they're into their core area where where my doses like to hang out and live day to day. I'll usually set up at the top end of their elevation or in the top third of their elevation, where my big bucks will kind of work down into that elevation and run horizontal through it. And that seems to work really good. Were those cored buck areas and cord dough family group areas intersect? If you could drop you know, that's the easiest way for me to explain it. Where they where the circles intersect with each other at their elevations. I follow you now you mentioned mocrubs. How how are you making these mock rubs? How many per area? Um? Give me some details there, okay. And over the years, the bucks have really showed me just I used to just make the mock scrape, and I'd make a mock scrape in the right spot, and I'd instantly have three, four or five rubs pop up. Instantly, A big bucket come in and just literally overmarked the whole freaking place, and he'd rubbed the ship out of trees or two or three would do it. So what I started doing is doing that ahead of time. I'll go in at least two, sometimes three, and I placed them visually on purpose for every pretty consistent wind that they're gonna walk in on. So that way, if they're like fifty or thirty yards away, it's easier in my opinion for a big buck and heavy cover to see a mock rub over a scrape. You know, licking branches can really blend in until you get up close. They're kind of they're kind of a twenty yard visual, five yard visual, but uh, and you probably feel the same way. I would guess when you're out shed hunting stuff, you can see a rub fifty yards away pretty damny. So I use those mock rubs as visuals to get the bucks to come and inspect it. And then there's a big scrape there. So I'm placing them visually, especially one that faces the downhill thermal, one that faces the uphill thermal, and then one that always faces prevailing winds for the most part, where they're gonna walk in and use that wind in their nose. I usually, you know, it's it's usually two or three or four always depending on the layout of the spot. I want to kill a deer at that makes sense. So then you're just taking a knife and slashing up the side of a tree or what I take. I take my tree saw and I just scrape it down. I scraped the camp I scraped down to the cambium on the smaller trees that you know that whatever the deer show me they like rubbing on, I picked the same species. If it's there, I mimic the big rubs I see in the area. I always put a good one in though. It's visual, so it's it looks like a horse, like a big boy laid it out there, and yeah, I I just copy exactly what the deer showed me in my woods, and I copy what I'm seeing and over, you know, I literally on video, bucks walk up, I spray them without forehead gland, and I have bucks walk up and sniff them and rub on. It's pretty wicked and nothing else. It's a great signed to get them to walk over and find the scrape. It really does my opinion. I've seen it on video. I think they've noticed that from quite a ways off. Yeah, I mean, it makes all the sense in the world. It's it's not something I've ever thought to do. I do a good amount of mock scrapes, but it's sure, it's it seems like a great idea to have that visual cue bringing them in. And like you said it, those rubs stand out like someone's spray painting the side of a tree. You can see it from a long ways away, and I'm sure it's the same for deer. Um. Yeah, we're attacking their senses, you know. I go right after their biology and every aspect I can. I like how everything you've described everything you do, and this applies to all the best dear un as I've talked to in their own unique way. But you're very detail focused, like there's all these little details that you're trying to mimic nature or that you're focused on and and obviously that's one of the things that has led to the success you had. And I guess along those same lines, I want to hear about the details of how you're setting your cameras up because you're you're using these communities scrapes um. I think one part is to hunt them, but the second part is, obviously they're a huge part of your scouting strategy. You get these videos that tell you a lot, um, how are you setting up your cameras so that you're getting this great footage in this great intel, but you're not spooking these deer. Um, Can you tell me, like how high, how far away? On what trees do you do? You come from a certain angle so when they come to the licking branch, they're not looking at your camera. I don't know what it could be, but tell me everything that you're thinking about when you put the camera up. So when I put a camera up, if it's a brand new area, I usually always hang one pretty high because I've had bucks in the past that do not like eye level cameras. Um. I use what's called a spy Eye system, which has got a up to fifteen telescopic poll. It's got a male and female apparatus that I hooked my camera to and I literally can put it up to twelve ft fifteen ft high and take it down without every him in a tree. It's badass. So I used the Spy High Spy High, and those guys, Yeah, those boys aren't giving me anything or pumping me at all. I get nothing from him, but I like their system. It's wicked and on public land, the majority of dudes that walk by my scraper elk hunters that go through and don't even know I'm hunting there, and they don't see any of the whitetail stuff. They never see that camera high. So I really like a high camera, at least one, and I usually start with something up fairly high just to start in on a spot. But the truth of the matter is when it comes down to the bucks, it's all individual to every big buck. I'm trying to kill. That buck I'm hunting right now, could give a shit about where a camera's at. He does not care. He doesn't care if it's low high, doesn't even look at him, he doesn't freak out, He walks by him, doesn't stare at him. As soon as I had a big buck a few years ago that if he saw camera ship, I wouldn't see him for a week, for two weeks. So so Mark, to answer your question, it's always going to be individual to the buck. But to play it safe and on public land, I like that high. I like to have a high camera in almost every setting and every potentially not potential, every spot I have that has a a stud on it or a in a year two superstar that's coming up. I run three cameras at least, and I run per yes, per spot. Even if I'm not going to hunt the deer killing, I get years of detail on him, sometimes two years before I move into killing. So I'm studying my three and four year olds constantly with three cameras that have big upside. You know, I've got a four year old right now that I call Captain America that if I send you a picture of him, you'd say, why aren't you killing that dear? But but I know what he can turn into. And the buck I'm hunting right now that I sent your pictures of I left that deer alone and he was probably gross on seventy last year. You know, he was right there high six seventy last year. So my whole point is individual to every book went in doubt, hang them high. You won't spook them, uh either. Another easy way to do it, and I did it for years, is just take one of my steps from my tree stand and go hang my trail cameras, and when I have to go in and check, i'd have to do a step. So on the high ones. A lot of times I'll let the high one run, especially during hunting season, I'll just let it run. And then I'll hide one or two cameras, and I mean I hide them, I camouflage them, I cover them up, and I'll get him at eye level, and I'll put them quite a ways back, and as long as my target bucks and up and comers aren't spooking from them at all. And I used all the you know, the the the infrared and all the blackout cameras, and I do everything I can not to have a big bright flash. Not that every buck's afraid of that, because they're not, but some of them are. Um. Yeah, I run cameras quite a ways away, like the technology so good nowadays. A lot of my stuff ten fifteen yards of my scrapes or twenty even, you know, fifteen fifteen yards back. And what I do is placed those cameras pretty close to my tree stand where I'm trying to kill something. Out of that way, I can slide into my tree, pull my lower level camera cards without ever crossing or putting any ground scent or scent over near where I think I'm going to have him walked by, which is usually in conjunction with that scrape somehow. That's I was going to ask was how you're able to check these without messing up the area, Because when you're running on video all the time, I gotta believe battery life and SD cards, you know, are much more quickly depleted. So how often are you checking these usually during the season? Okay, so some of my cameras um that I know I'm not going to go target a buck there, but I want to keep track of him. I'll make the intervals much longer in between on video so that I don't get too many videos around the biggest SD card allowed in the camera to the thirty two or six before, but lithium batteries in them, and I stretch out the trigger time on the big deer that I want to kill and get a bunch of info on. Yeah, I'm in there enough hunting name during the season that I can easily swap the batteries out once a month, you know. That's peace cake. And every camera is set up near my kill tree, the tree that I'm gonna kill out of, so that I don't have to infringe hardly at all on where I'm shooting deer at, which is only yards away A lot the time I feel well, I want to I want to take the next step from scouting and pinpointing now with trail cameras and you're on the boots. Everything I want to shift to now how you're actually hunting these deer. But to make sure we've really got your whole preparation part nailed down. Do you think you could use the example of that buck you're hunting this year? Two? Walk me, walk me through everything we've just been talking about, Like, tell me the details of this deer. So, how did you find the general area, how did you scout it, what elevation did you focus on, Where did you run your community scrapes, how did you get the cameras to find him? I think this would be a really interesting way to illustrate all these concepts. And then we'll move on to the killing deer. Yeah. Yeah, so so this deer. I don't mind sharing it all these public land deer um. I mean, obviously we're not going to talk GPS, and that's fine. It all started. It all started with gene pool um remote pretty remote, not extremely remote, but remote enough to where I feel like the human nature is that a lot of people want to just do everything the easiest way possible and get by and make it happen, or and be okay with that. I like to try, or I purposely don't like. I purposely go where I think it's kind of hard for people to put the effort in. And that might mean a long drive, that might mean hard walking, that usually might mean some steep ground or something that just kind of tears the average human being from even wanting to try it. And that's where I tend to find some bucks in the right elevation. So this deer that I'm hunting right now, um, he's pretty interesting. He's actually in a in a really heavily blowdown area, lots of blowdowns, lots of wind damage, ton of feed. It's probably a logged area from forty or fifty years ago. So the timber that's in there now is not real big, but it's you know, it'd be big to most people, but not in the grand scheme of things out west. And what I liked about this spot that I chose early on on a map, and I had driven through the country before, eyeball, and but I got on the map and I saw this ridge that just extended a long ways out and it was the elevation that I like, and it had literally on the north side of it, on the top all one of the steepest ravines, and it probably the ravine on the north side drops down probably at least feet. I mean, it goes way down into a hole, and then that ravine runs to the north on the north face runs probably three or four miles and there's not a road in there. Now there's a roadway out across the top. But a lot of people, in my opinion, don't want to go way down in and hunt on a big mountain side and pack a big white tail buck up hill and get him out of there. That's just my thought process, you know. I I like to bone him out, pack him out on my back, and I'll tell you what, I like to eat white tail as much as I like to kill him. So um, my family lives on Elkott Deer, That's what we But anyway, back to the whole process of finding this guy. I went out um and built some mock scrapes. Initially walked it, saw some little scrapes, found one I really liked, but it was too close to where I parked. I didn't like the proximity, and I found a great scrape that I ended up putting a camera on it two years ago, and all the deer in the area hit it, but at night. So I kind of treat like a mountain logging road, just like somebody would treat a farm field too open, too much activity, too many cars driving up and down it, you know, and too many for a mountain buck might be one or two a day in a drainage, and they're on high alert if they're if they're close to a road. So anyway, I got out there quite a ways mark and uh literally picked a spot where I thought it'd be cool, a nice spot, got far enough away, great feet. It was in the summer, early summer, probably late spring, and I built a community scrape and it has just had all the right details, the habitat, the train features on a big bench. The north face was literally fifty yards away that dropped off into that ravine for literally thousand feet or more. So it was wicked. And I could hear the creeks and the tributaries running down below me down in there, and nobody's hunting down in those super steep faces. Nobody can't hard it. I mean, it's ridiculous. So Anyway, the first deer that hit my camera was that big deer, first dear within a day, first gear. And what I did is I placed that scrape so that the down wind evening thermals would run down into what I think the betting area was in that north So I knew all those thermals would suck that scent down into that north, huge north face, and I figured any big buck that was down in that north below me there would come up and check this scrape and then would also send it the prevailing winds and everything would blow that scent all over. And this was way back in I think it was I think it was May, and this is I'm talking about a couple of years ago. And he was really a great deer even when he was younger, and I could see all the genetics, and I thought, man, he you know, he needs another year, and kind of just left him alone because he was young. And then last year did the same thing, same spot. He was in and out of there through the season, nobody killed him. Boom shows right back up and got big, and then it was like, damn, we better take a look at hunt this year. But he was only four, and I thought he was four and a half. Sometimes you know you're not always right, but I thought he was four and a half last year. So anyway, once we got him in hard Horn, my son and I determined right at the first season he was only four and a half once we really got to look at him on hard Horn pictures. So we only like set there twice and we got out. We left him alone, totally left him alone, let the cameras run, checked the cameras through the whole four months, and kind of watched what he did. And I noticed that I was still probably too close to road access. Oh. In May of this year, I knew what I was gonna do. I looked at my maps, the feeds all there. The ridges are beautiful, everything. It just has everything he wants. I could see where he was coming up out of that north a lot living in that North and coming up out of it even in the winter until he got too much snow. He was still coming out of the North and hiding out in it because nobody goes into it. So then and this year I moved quite a ways on him to where I felt like he would feel safer to move in the daylight, and I found a giant community scrape within fifty yards of where I put my uh dropped my pen on my base map, and I literally walked right in there, found those rubs, found that scrape and thought, I'm in it. This is his. He's the stud in this area. There's a couple other there was a couple other good bucks, but I had a lot of wolves on camera and there too. And this year it ended up being he survived. I haven't seen the other big five point that was in there last year when I say five or five by five, um, but he survived, and it was you know, I had him, got him in June and he's been there ever since. And that big community scrape that I found, I just refreshened it, opened it up a little more and I pretty much got every deer in that area hitting it right now. And he really hit it well and fed all over in there. This area is full of huckleberries and he loves huckleberries. I got foodles the video of this guy eating huckleberries. But anyway, um, I've got good food. He's got his north face that he can hide out in. It's hotter in hell right now. That's where he's living, and that's where he pretty much hung out the last two years in that general area. I just moved closer to his bed. I think I'm within three yards of him right now. One more question on the the community scrape scouting plan. Once you once you locate a buck, you know he hits, he hits your camera, you know that this good one is there? Is it only ever just one community scrape and general area or will you say, all right, I got a big one here now I want to you know, spread a wider net and see where he's roaming and other spots that might get might be able to get a shot. Do you do you do you put more cameras out and more community scrapes out within a along that same ridge or I don't know, when you're hunting eighty acres in Michigan, I've got you know, six cameras all over the place. But when you've got a million acres, do you just put one per large area? Or what's the numbers we're talking about here when you try to figure these dear out? So it all is based on what he's doing for me. If he's showing me good daylight and that he likes that spot and that he'll daylight it and I know I'm close based on his movement patterns, that he's in the daylight a lot. I'm not moving, and the last thing I want to do is move him around and me be at one scrape one day and he's at my other one, you know what I mean. So so for what I do in this big woods, giant country is man, if you're daylight work, I got bucks daylight and working it, doze daylight and working it, and I leave it alone. Uh if I got all nighttime and all I ever have is nighttime of a big buck. I moved right at him, and I really study on video where he's coming from, and I picked you know, I can pick the hell out of the map and pick everything out where he's probably at. And I just moved towards him a couple of hundred yards at a time. And usually when I do that, I pick him up. Um. A good example is a buck I hunted a couple of years ago. I had to move half a mile, and when I moved half a mile and picked the right bench up higher, I got him all the time in the daylight, and then something ended up killing him. Something ended up killing about off as a hunter or a wolf but I was getting the daylight of him a ton and then he just disappeared. So all that to say, no, I usually don't tend to just scatter scrapes all over and cameras all over. One one problem with that in my opinion on these mountain bucks, because if you're out there traps and around a three of four different scrapes in a general kind of area, you're leaving your freaking scent everywhere. I love to flid in get as close to a Buck's bedroom as I can, and his bedroom out in this country isn't one spot. He'll have an area that he likes to bed in, and boy, if I can get him to stay there and use that area and I call it a hideout through September, October, November December, that's incredible in the mountains. When you find that kind of spot, it's the area he loves. He really trusts it. So when I find a buck that shows me that I might move at him a little more if he quits daylighting on me. But he's still around it a lot. But this time of year September right now, when it's the testosteronees just starting to pick up, I'm just watching him every day, change a little bit in his behavior. Like I hunted yesterday and gotta pull my card. And it's the first time I've seen him at my scrap run a little buck out of it. First time he showed some aggression. So I'm liking what I'm seeing. And Monday, my big gy that I'm hunting was daylight. I could have killed him in legal light in the evening, first time he's daylighted in there since August twenty. But he likes that area. I know I wasn't spooking e because he didn't leave. And I know that the reason he stopped August twentieth, and the season doesn't even open until the first September, is because it was ninety plus freaking degrees out. It was hotter in Hell. I know what that old boy was doing. He's laying in that north. You know he doesn't want to be up in the nineties some degree weather when he can go out in this country. You know this mark about the mountain country. You've been in it. It cools way down in the big swing. Our dear absolutely love those big old bucks. Love but when it cools off, just like a grown man likes the cool basement at his house versus up in the upstairs where it's hot. You know, it's the same concept. And I see that with the older I've got several beautiful four and a half year old that are walking daylight right now that I could go hunt and kill. I just don't want to shoot him at that age. Let's let's talk about this next phase then, which is hunting season. So you've you've found these core areas that you like. You've put cameras out over these scrapes across different places, and you zeroed in on your your top bucks or two or three or four bucks. Talk to me about your Yeah, talk to me about now the hunting strategy once the season kicks off, is it really Is it primarily focused on these these scrape cheryl cam combos um or or what? Is it? Not? Just I'm markets it's bad. Proximity to his bad. I gotta get close. I just got real fortunate with this book that he's camped out really close to this scrape too. Um, it's speed. He has to have feed right there that he liked, and I've got him on video a ton just eating the native vegetation all around me, like literally just chomping and he's a he's literally a huckleberry monster. And I still got huckleberries there. So huckleberries to these bucks are just like bucks that eat apples. I'm in one of the thickest huckleberry patches you've ever seen. I could literally walk into my stand and pick a handful of huckleberries and in stop for ten seconds, thirty seconds and have a handful of huckleberries and throw them in the mouth on the way in. And where the scrape was. It was dynamite because it's just a huckleberry patch with a big community scrape that they built, the deer of built over the years. Kind of makes sense to me because it's a great beating area too. There's all kinds of green grasses and green vegetation in there right now too. So what I'm seeing on my cameras is, yeah, I'm to answer your question, betting is crucial, huge and feed and water right now. Now, his water is below me down in the north that I'm that I've seen him coming out of. I'm not going to bail down into that north on a straight mountain face with downhill thermals and ever killed that there. It's not gonna happen, I'll blow him out of there, because it's a downhill thermal in a north face. North face thermals run downhill way longer than south face thermals. There's a ton of downhill thermal in there. Sometimes it's switches all day long on a north face. So north faces are tough to hunt when they're super steep, they're really hard to try to kill an he's so close to me. Anyway, I'm sitting back just a little ways, probably a couple three hundred yards from him, maybe four hundred at the most, and letting him do his thing, letting him be comfortable. I'm actually seeing him start to act different because we've got cold weather coming. Um, the climates, you know, everything's changing. We're getting rid of this hot weather. And I noticed his testosteronees up a little bit the other day. You know, I'm seeing him kind of get freaking aggressive with these other little bucks. So it's bad. It's water, it's feed, and it's social. The social part is the scrape part. I try to attack all four of those. So let's talk a little bit more about stand placement. Because while it seems like you're able to peg deer to a general betting area. It sounds like that's a much wider area than what I might be focused on in Michigan, where there's a little swampy patch and a couple of ice light islands in it. And I can tell you, man, it's a damn good chance he's betted on this island, that island or that island, um, And then I know they're going to the soybean field or whatever. That's pretty easy to connect point A to point B and then say, okay, I gotta get between it. But out there where you're talking, there's there's huckleberries and native stuff everywhere, so foods everywhere you're betting could be this whole north face. How do you honestly mark betting? Betting can be a hundred thousand acres. I'm not shipped yet. Yikes. Markets it's hard to explain to people that have ever tried hunting the mountains for deer. It literally is endless. They do what they want. They don't have to bed in that small little swamp, they don't have to stay in that block of two September. When I when I go out to Oklahoma, Iowa, North Dakota, those places, it's so freaking easy to pinpoint dere and get it in my opinion as far as pinpointing, not saying it's easy to kill a five or six year old buck because he's still a survivor in his area, but this is a this is a giant scenario count as far as country goes. So yes, it's you know, to to really look at it and to get on these deer. I feel like a guy has to be extremely meticulous and careful with stand placement because I have to allow my buck, and I've watched him do it now a ton on video when he comes in, and I always hang old man's beard in all of my videos as a windicator, so I always know exactly what he's doing in conjunction with the wind that he has at that time every time he walks in. So when he walks in right now, he's always coming with at least the wind in his face or quartering to his nose every time. And Mark, I'm getting fifty six yards out on purpose where I put my cameras, and even at night, the windicator is in my view and I can watch him jay hook and using the wind always, so stand placement. My stand is set up to where I can come down the ridge, walk down it, climb up into it, never cross where I have this deer all over on video, and not cross his wind my the winds that I'm using and hunting off of in the evening right now or morning, I have to have the right prevailing mixing with the right thermal to even go hunt it. And when I do, it also has to give him that dear the wind that he'll come in on, because he only comes in on certain wins. And I've got that. I've got that documented. It's simple to see with my windicator. Uh, when there are certain winds in there, they're blown the other way and it's not blown towards his betting area. Guess what, he doesn't come in he's doing something else. But the nice thing is got this buck on an evening thermal, and there's always usually the same evening thermal unless unless there's a heavy prevailing to override it. And right now he's literally like the days at least coming through the area at least at night and just starting the daylight right now. So those evening thermals, once the sun starts setting right just starts dropping down that ridge. And it's it's how do you keep him from smelling you any time you were up there. You are you so confident in how far down or how far it's got to be ahead of you, right if you're because you're what you're I'm trying to think of this scenario. Your wind would be dropping down the ridge too, so he must be ahead of where your winds and drop. That's what he's doing. He's coming in. He's coming up this north face and he's kind of hooking up into this spot. And I'm off too. I'm off to the northeast of him, and I sit and throw my milkweed out all the time. Even when I hung that stand in the evening. I sit in there until dark this summer and just threw it and watched it. And it's doing pretty much the same thing for me every night. When that wind starts to drop, I'm up on some higher ground above even elevation wise, and where that scrape is, he's kind of coming up through a vacuum draw, not a draw, just a depression in the ridge, and he's coming up through there all the time. And my wind, it's it's wicked. Where I'm sitting. I'll throw out my milkweed even until dark, and my wind comes literally right across my face and bends right back behind my tree and drops the milkweed back behind me almost perfectly. Every evening i've hunted, I've had almost every deer in there on camera in the daylight so far, and they haven't even looked at me or acted like they knew I was there. People can say whatever they want, but I hunt twenty seven to thirty ft high. I've got some high ground on him. I've got the thermal bending back behind me. When I throw the milkweed out, it's just incredible to see it bend back behind me, which I need because he's not when I stay behind me, Mark that's higher an elevation. He's not coming from that higher elevation. He's coming from down the ridge up an elevation to me. So I think our wind, uh, I think my wind cone is missing him on his travel route through my scrapes and up by me. It's missing him by about of the yards and it's still a downhill. But mine's bending back behind me and sifted into the ground behind me. If that makes any sense, yeah, yeah. And if I get in there and that wind is blowing right at him and his interests. I will leave. I'll leave even I won't ruin this, dear, because man, he's in there all the time right now, I'll blow his ass out of there. If I'm stupid about it and set there with a wind blowing at him all day where I know he's coming from, I just won't do it. But I've got my tree placement and entrance and exit. I feel like I have a dial perfectly for how the wind and thermals work down there in the evenings and in the mornings. And boy, when I get any type of south wind pushing across me with an uphill thermal, he has no chance. If he comes through the only the only wind, I the only wind I can't hunt with is a straight west wind. I won't go in there if he's he's south or he's northeast of me. I won't hunt with a straight wet because my wing could blow down into it. Yeah, yeah, what or what am I trying to say? How do you see this plan evolving as you push closer to the ruck, Because right now you're you're hunting essentially a betting you know, a movement pattern out of a general betting year zone. It seems like, Um, but are you going to start to shift to some kind of different setups for the rut to try to catch these bucks cruising or something like that, or do you still kind of just hunt the edge of the bedding near these scrapes because it's it's some kind of connective tissue to key in on. How's that, how's the standplace and evolved? Yeah, first of all, not hunting bucks at all. I don't even hunt deer. I hunt a buck. Everything I do will be based on what that deer shows me. Um, if he keeps living right there and if he us I think he's going to do in these next two weeks and show up daylight other than me being a three hundred mile round trip to hunting every time I hunting, if I'm there that day, he's dead. And I believe he's going to show up daylight. I'm gonna say it right now, the rest of September two to three times minimum he's because he's already starting to show like he's really comfortable on video at this spot, and he showed up daylight for the first time Monday, and he's comfortable as hell and my wind would have been perfect for him. So now The reality of it is, it's a three mile round trip to hunting for me. I can't go up there every day. But any chance I get to hunting, even if I got to go three miles to hunt two hours, I'm gonna do it. And I believe I've got all the winds dialed. I looked at all the winds for the next fifteen days, and I looked at all the temperatures. I'm literally dropping twenty degrees in temperatures started Saturday, um mark my nighttime temperatures drop and from the sixties down to the forties up there at that elevation that will be high thirties. I'm telling you, and I mean this wholeheartedly. With this deer, with where my stand sitting and the way the winds working in there, it's it's not me spooking him, or he wouldn't even come in. He wouldn't come by here if he knew I was right on him in there close. He walked in behind me the other night on camera after I left twenty one minutes later, without a without a care in the world, on the video, not even looking nervous, just walked right in up into that scrape and walk through So what I'm getting at is I think I'm really in the game with this mountain buck. It's it's it's a lot different than other hunts and other areas that you hunt. This dude is probably gonna slip up one time in the month of September and I gotta be there or maybe twice. Okay, as we get closer to October, my setup and game plan is even better. I'm gonna get more bucks finding that scrape that are that are traveling are there. If that's his scrape and he wants to own it, like he's acting right now, he will put he will monitor that scrape. And I've already got three does there total. I have a fondo and two adult those and that doesn't sound like much, but in the mountains that's pretty good. I've got I think seven or eight deer their total since May, which probably sounds crazy to people in the Midwest, but this is mountain country. This is mountain country, and there's not a lot of deer. So all that to say, I'm not leaving until he shows me a reason that I got to move on him, because I think I'll kill him there that this is. This leads me to one of the big overarching things I'm curious about because I hunt some big wood stuff and obviously it's not as big a woods as what you're doing, and it's not mountainous in the same way as although a new place I'm hunted Idaho might be. But um, what I'm curious about is the frequency of how many times you hunt these places. And you kind of just answer my question. But you know out here in Michigan or Illinois, Iowa, you talk to guys and it's always the power of the first set. You get that one time in there, and then they're gonna get onto you. And every time after you go in there, these deer figure you out and your chances go down exponentially. So it's the rage right now is being mobile, hunt all these different places and keep these deer on their toes and never sit the same place too many times. But when I think about these big wood situations where there's this lower deer density, uh, sometimes in some of my own situations, I've wondered, man, if I just hunt this deer, if I havent this spot just once, you know that deer maybe only comes through here once every seven days, and you know there won't be any deer coming through here except for every few days, and if you do that, you're just you're never going to hit him on the day he's there. So my question, I guess, once I've finished rambling here, is how often or how long can you hunt a spot without it getting blown up? Um? Or do you just need to kind of camp out in a place like this as long as you do it smart, because as it sounds like it is the case of this buck, there's not a lot of deer, but eventually he'll come through if you're smart. So that was a horrible question. No, I get it. I totally know what you're asking because there's I've got a mobile set up, and I'll tell you what I use that sucker when I need to when something goes sour and a buck. Here's what a lot of guys don't want to admit when I screw it up. So if I screw it up and blow this buck out, I gotta go find it. And that's what I'll do. And I've had to do that in the past sum but I don't do it very often anymore. I watch every deer that's there, they walk under me in the daylight. This guy already showed me who he is August twentieth without anybody being up there in the wood near him at all. And he is a smart old bastard. And as soon as it got to August twentie and got hot, he said, I'm done moving in the daylight. And it's not because the wolves chasing him. It's not because I'm in there hunting, because nobody's up there, and the cameras show it. He is already biologically showing me that he's coming in earlier and earlier and earlier in the evenings. As the conditions, the temperatures, the upcoming scraping uh phase in October is gonna get closer. He's already showed me this week that he wanted to run a little buck out of there. It's just a matter of being extremely intelligent and patient with him because my setups pretty darn rock solid and bulletproof, because I have not even had a dear look up at me yet, and I and I have animals in there every day but one so far on I believe four or five hunts. It's it is a patients game. When everything's working right and he's there on camera at least at night all the time and not acting He's not acting nervous. You're not walking in and funky and really looking around. He's freaking walking right in um and showing earlier and earlier and earlier approaches. I honestly believe he'll probably start showing up. I'll probably show up in a morning here pretty soon. Probably rolled through there in the morning. You know, he just needs some cold weather and he needs to fill he needs to feel like it's kind of go time here pretty soon. And I get that every year at the end of September. Every year at the end of September on these big hot these these big bucks that living in the hot, hot weather. As soon as it starts to cool down, it gets better. So I'm not ruining that stand at all. All of my DearS showing me that they're walking by me, that I got an old dough in there that's probably smarter than him. She just likes to get to that area and feed around in there and hang out in there with her fonds before any other deer shows up. She just does it. And she is his KG. I watched her, man. She's a crackhead. She is careful as hell. She always used the wind she got two ponds and she's like looking for predators all the hime. I can I just watch her. She's she's real savvy anyway, So I'm not that guy. I kill almost all of my big deer four or five, six, seven sits in sometimes ten, sometimes a year later, same spot. Um, if I moved over on that deer right now it's September and bump him. I've had deer move on me. Mark that I've screwed it up on and pushed it too hard. Big bucks. Move a drainage and stay the whole year. Move a whole drainage over, which is five miles through the air, and I'll find another drainage and they'll live over there the whole season. So I'm dealing with a different animal than a animal that doesn't get that heavy predation or get the ship scared out of them pressure. He's real comfortable right now in his body language. And that's why I run video because I can see it and how he's behaved. He's he's not even walking nervous at all. He is rolling right been there and being the big hoss. You know, he's really he's feeling pretty comfortable. So as long as I don't, you know, as long as I don't screw it up someway, and I don't plan on making any mistakes on him, it's just a matter of it's a matter of me being there on the day or two that he shows that he will show. He already showed up once a daylight, and it's for the matter of me getting to be there on that day that he shows up. If he was right out in my back door, be in trouble because I'd sit on him. And I'm not one bit worried about that set up other than with the west wind. But there's a west wind, I won't hunt it. So in order to hunt it seems like if I'm trying to if I'm trying to pull some generalities out of this that other people could apply to their own unique situations. You're if you find a spot like this that has all these factors combined to make it a sweet spot, and you have this scrape with the cameras that verifies and tells you, hey, there's a buck, I want to kill it in this area. The next thing is having a set that you can hunt enough times without blowing it out to finally catch and making that mistake. So can you give me some best practices for developing a bulletproof set like you have there, So just like give me the playbook. Yeah, yeah, and Mark, i have five or six of these spots, and I've got over thirty five pulping young plus bucks from these kind of spots. And I've hunted some of these spots up to ten times in a season. And then then the big dood will finally make a daylight appearance and I'll kill him. And I'm passing up some beautiful dear that most people would just go, holy sh it, you gotta shoot that dear, and my son is killed. I mean, arguably probably the biggest dear ever killed by a teenager in Washington on public land with a boat doing the same thing with me. So bulletproof is the key, and it's that's that's an extreme that's kind of an extreme word. But you can do it if you know, if you've got that perfect entrance and entry that the majority of all the deer don't want to come from. For a reason, I come in, you know on this ridge that literally the deer parallel across it, but they hardly ever walked down it. And it's because I've picked out a gnarly trail that s is down through there, and I've made my own trail that and I took my buddy in there to help me one day set up ear in this semi becaues. How the hell do you freaking get out of here? How do you even know where to walk? That's just years of me knowing every little tree and every little spot to turn at and move at. So anyway, I purposely worked my way down through horrible blowdowns. The deer won't walk across, so they're not following me through, and I've got a snake pattern to it that I get through quietly literally this summer, on the way in and out all the time, anytime I went in there, every paine cone, every stick, everything has gone out of my path real carefully with my feet that all the way down. Um, this stand is set up for that wind up there. I can hunt every wind in every thermal at that spot, in my opinion, except for a west So on a west wind day, I probably won't be in there, and I'm not crossing him at all. And these bulletproof setups can last few decades decades, which I don't think many people are doing. It's a whole different concept of, in my opinion, how to hunt a white tail. But one reason I'm doing it, Mark is because of the mountains that I'm in, because of the deer density them in, because of the way that deer react to getting blown out. My big deer will move a drainage because I have proof of it. I've watched him do it. I have to play the game a little different when I was hunt in Iowa. When I hunt Oklahoma, I don't care at all if I bump a deer. He's coming right back in there because that's where he needs to bet. That's his best spot, that's his safest place. I totally get that, and I support that, and I hunt totally different. When I'm in a spot where deer have to pick, you know, like your Michigan spot. You pretty have a pretty damn good idea where they got a bed, right, Yeah, My dear have endless miles that they can move and get the and bug out too. It's big country. So for me, it's all about that social aspect, plus the feed, plus the bed, everything that allows me to hunt that four or five, six, seven, eight, maybe ten times in the whole season. Now, that's spread out over four months. That's not necessarily terrible. I'll either killed that dear or I'm gonna blow him out one or the other within if he does what he's doing right now, he's gonna get killed this year, or I'm gonna blow him out and have to move. If I screwed up, that's what's gonna happen because of the way he's behaving and how close I am, that's what it's gonna boil down to. Or out of pure luck, he's gonna coincidentally, in my opinion, not walk through there because they don't walk through anywhere in the mountains every day. I don't ever get that with mountains. Um, he's just gonna get lucky on the days I'm not up there. And yeah, I really believe, because I've killed so many of them this way, that it's just a matter of time before I either kill him or he figures me out and he's gone, and then I gotta move on him. Then I gotta go find him. And that's where I get mobile, and I'll find that stucker as soon as I have snow if I have to. But that community scrape there will keep producing even if I even if I blow it on him, it will keep producing because it's just such a good spot and the does are all hitting it, and the young bucks are all hitting and I got a nice three year old hitting it. It just is what it is. Uh, talk to me about just one more thing on these bulletproof sets. If I'm trying to someone's trying to listen to this and apply it to their place. Are there any things that you always try to do as far as do you always try to set up above the main trailer above the scraper, do you try to set up below it from elevation standpoint, or can you just describe how you're thinking about the wind just in a generic way so that someone could could just think it through. So for bullet proof, for me, I always enter an exit and slide in, and I used the word from the side, and I stay away from the thermals pushing down through and up through the screen. So I'm off to the side, and I'm usually off to the side to where I feel based on what my intelligence from camera shows me that that buck is going to enter in from the other side. Does that make sense? So, first of all, enter exit is huge and stand placement that never crosses their nose. I'm never crossing their nose with sin ever, unless they literally walk down my walk my trail in and come right in behind me and everything right now at that stand, Mark is coming in from all directions except for the direction I walked down because I chose a pretty nasty way to get down in there on purpose. I literally have to s around through there like a snake to pick. And it's perfect because I don't have deer walking down an easy trail right behind me. It's it's wicked. I'm even crawling through some thick stuff up the ways where they can't hear me, just to negate them from crossing my trail. I mean, there's some the blowdowns in there are unreal. There's some spots where the deer have to walk yards around it to not have to try to walk through blowdowns that are chest high, chest high blowdowns. Dear usually don't like walking through all that. You know they'll skirted. Well. Another thing I'm doing, Mark that makes a bulletproof is I'm literally my winds blowing off over into that north face but behind me and above me where I'm walking down through, and it's steeper than hell off of that like, it's just straight down forever, probably a thousand feet or more. So I like those barriers, those wind barriers. I don't expect a buck to climb straight up that north pick up my scent and come in from behind me, if that makes sense. He's coming in down down the ridge from the up at me. So it's perfect for me. We're like kind of intersecting at a point. And then to keep a bullet to keep a bulletproof, I hunt high in this country. I watch my milk weed all the time. I literally throw it out day after day after day and watch what it does. And if that milk weed starts acting funny on the wrong wind and it gets bad, I will bail out of a tree stand if I have to, not to let my scent blow where his approaches. I'll leave, come back hunting a different day, or I'll go if it's an all day said all I've had. You know, we've killed big bucks by all day sits by literally leaving the stand for four or five hours midday if it the wind's bad, and then crawling back in when the thermal's right. I mean, I'm all about those details. And then it's just a matter of him coming in. Uh again, my bulletproof steps are couple. When you make sure that your killtree, you never have to walk out, check your cameras, you never have to cross their favorite pathways by you. That's really important and a lot of guys mess that up. Well let's I I feel like I've only covered the smallest bit of what i want to talk to you about, and already we've been talking two hours. This is crazy. I gotta let you go. Uh, thanks for sticking with me here for so long. Try Um, how about one last question, well, one last regular question. Then we'll do a quick rapid fire thing and wrap this sucker up and and somehow I'll have to wrangle you into another one because there's a lot to talk about here. Um. Okay, worst case scenario, he he figures you out, either you see him somehow, you know booger you maybe the wind swirls or something happens, or you just notice he's not showing up on the camera anymore. Walk me through your game play and to get back on him. I'm very honest with myself about that stuff. As soon as he starts acting awkward and starts acting skittish or quit showing up and he I'll leave him alone. I will literally give him a week at least a week to see what happens. Because keep in mind, he might bug out because a mountain lion chased him out of his bed one night. For a week. He might bug out because the pack of wolf that's in there comes through and harasses him. Um. I have to keep that in mind too. But all that to say, my game plan is on those big deer. I leave him alone if they start acting funky or they quit showing up, and if he doesn't show up within and I've got four months to hunt this year. September is the first quarter of the football game. October is my second quarter, November is my third quarter, December is my fourth quarter. So I look at the big game plan. Um, if I got to give him a couple of weeks and he doesn't show and he's not doing what I need him to do up there, then I really will dive in to where I believe he's hiding out based on the whole layout of that country, and I'll go in and I'll build a scrape, put some scent to him because I know he likes those, and I'll see if I can find him. Meanwhile, while I'm doing while I'm waiting on him, I'm gonna be on my game plan b buck or sea buck, which are usually pretty damn good bucks, and after them. And I'm hunting two states, so I've got two or three bucks in each state that I want to kill or would be happy to kill. So that does help me to keep peace of mind and not get so wrapped up into where I'm not hunting. I'm always hunting. I'm always hunting a buck, trying to find one that's killable. If my stud and my number one, uh you know, basically kicks my ass and figures me out, then I got to move on him and change. As soon as I get snow and can get him on camera, I'll go right at him, backtrack his ass. I won't follow him and push him, but I'll backtrack him and get a good pattern on him. And as soon as snow usually comes, then I'm rolling into the rut. And the great thing about my scrapes, Mark is my big bucks always come back. Usually, unless they're just scared to hell out of the area, they will at least come back in November early November, and they'll check those doughs and check those scrapes, and sometimes I can literally a month later, jump back in the stand and kill a buck that I couldn't kill in September and October, early October and late October and November, and he'll come back in as long as I don't pester him until he wants to come back and feel comfortable in there. Those scrapes are really good. From November five until December tenth, they're awesome. I'll tell you what, I've got some ideas, like I thought I would, I've got some ideas now that I want to put to the test, especially when I head back to uh, head back to Idaho to my mount spots. I've got I've got some ideas I'm excited about now. So, Troy, this has been just as good as I expected it would be, so thank you. Thank you for that. I want to run you through five really quick, rapid fire questions you can just kind of answer like one word answers. We'll just knock these out of the pretty generic. But I thought, I'm gonna start running these very generic questions past everyone and we'll see what everyone says, and then UH and then we'll let you go. So real quick here, Troy. Does the moon matter to dear movement? Yes? Or no? Yes? Would you take a fifty yards shot at a white tail with a bow? Yes or no? Never? Never? If you could only have one of these for the rest of your hunts, would you pick rattling antlers or grunt tube grunt tube expandable or fixed blade broadheads for white tails? Fixed blade? Should you stop a buck with some kind of sound before shooting? Yes or no? Yes you can if you need to. Yes. Perfect. You know you got me on that one, because if if a buck's super close, super close, I'll shoot that sucker walking and he won't even know it. Yeah, yeah, all these Yeah, alright, Troy. If if people want yeah, yeah, sorry, I was just gonna say, if people want to see what you're up to or see your hunts or anything that where should they? Can they see that stuff anywhere? Yeah? You know. I tight with Andre a Quisto in the Lone Wolf Custom Gear family I filmed for them like televictions TV, My Son and Eyes, A couple of mountain buck kills are on there on the recent episodes. One of the ten episodes this year. Uh, and my people want to reach out and talk to me and visit with me. My Instagram is the easiest. It's a m t N Underscore man, So mountain Man and then thirty three perfect. Troy Potton on Troy Pottonder on Facebook. Awesome, Troy, Well, this has been a lot of fun. I appreciate it. I think we covered some really good ground, so thank you for sharing so much. I really appreciate you having me Mark Uh, It's been a pleasure and an honor to be on your podcast, and you know you'd really turn out some great stuff. So thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Good luck getting that getting that big one. I can't wait to see the picture with him on the ground. Thanks. I'm after him hard. I'll be after him tomorrow, all right. I don't want to keep up any later than go get him. All right. And that's a wrap. Thank you all for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did. If you're out there deer hunting right now, which many of you are hunting, seasons are open across a lot of the country. That's an amazing thing. I can't believe it's here, but it is. So Best of luck to all of you. I hope you're having a blast. I hope you are trying to implement some of the new ideas you're taking from the these podcasts and and finding it helpful. I know that every time I go out there and every time I chat with somebody on this show, I'm finding new ways that I can adjust what I do in the field, and and that's a fun thing for me. I gotta believe is, or at least I hope it is for you too. So well, that all said, best of luck, be safe, have fun, Thank you for tuning in and for your support and attention, and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.