00:00:03 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 number three and eighty six, and today the show, I'm joined by Aaron Warburton's and Greg Clements from the Hunting Public to talk about hunting the white tail rut on public land or heavily pressured properties. All right, welcome to the Wired Hunt podcast, brought to you by on X. Today we're talking to rut. All right, it's that time of year and we've got a great line up for it with Greg Clemens and Aaron Warburton from the Hunting Public. Hopefully you guys are watching their stuff. It's great. Uh. They have been able to kill a lot of great deer public land all across the country, and they're doing it in some really interesting and in aggressive ways. So today we dive into all of those different strategies they're using the things they've learned, um, basically every different thing you could possibly want to know about chasing deer in places where other people are chasing them too. That's what we're gonna learn about so highly recommend this. Now that said, we kind of have a two part episode here because we also have an introduction conversation with myself and the nine Fingered Wonder Dan Johnson. We had to catch up on our hunts. So if you are a longtime listener and you care about what I'm doing in the woods or what Dan's doing in the woods, tune into that one. And that's something like the first forty or forty five minutes, um. And if you want to hear about how my personal run hunts have been going, I've been hunting I think fifteen or as of now, fifteen of the last seventeen days, I believe. So you'll hear about my public land hunt in Ohio, and you're gonna hear about the first seven eight nine days or so of my hunt for Tran my number one buck in Michigan. Um, it's been an up and down roller coaster ride. Uh So, if you want to hear about that, including a little something that I borrowed from the Hunting Public play playbook, you should tune into that part. But if you don't care about that and you just want to get to Aaron and Greg, fast forward about forty five minutes, we'll get into that conversation and then there'll be another, jeez, I don't know, hour and forty five minutes of straight strategy talk. So we got a real banger of an episode. I should stop talking to so you get get into it. But I will tell you here in the beginning. I hope you're having a blast out there in the woods. I hope you are putting everything we've been talking to into action, executing on these ideas and chasing that dream that November is. Make sure you're enjoying it. I know that I sometimes get hung up on the success quote unquote and whether or not I'm achieving my goal, and it takes away the fun on occasion, and I've been guilty of this. I'm falling prey to it a little bit this year. Try not to do that. Try to learn from my mistakes and getting two worked up and stressed about these things, and and just enjoy each day for what it is, because that's why we're hunting, right. If you can't be out there enjoying it, enjoying the the nature around you and the process and the chase itself, then what the heck are you doing? Phil The freezer, yeah, kill some bucks, yeah, but enjoy everything that gets you there in the first place. So that's it for me today. Good luck, and here is my conversation with Dan, and then after that Aaron and Greg enjoy and now I've got the one and only Dan Johnson with us. Uh. I'm glad we're finally going to do this. I've wanted to have you on for a couple of weeks and our schedules are just a mess lately, but we got a lot we have to catch up on because we've been both of us have been pretty busy over the last couple of weeks with hunts, and uh, we gotta cover those projects. Projects projects. Oh yeah, So I think I told you. I know I told you this when I was in Michigan, but I don't think we ever, you know, just discussed it on air. But so we had like this home remodeling project that was supposed to get done this summer. Well it kept getting pushed back and push back and push back, and it's still not finished. But we're at a stopping point so I can disappear for two weeks type of deal, you know what I mean. So on Saturday, I literally finished painting and putting hardware on these cabinets and doing some other stuff to to where I can go hunt now, thank goodness, just in the nick of time. Just in the nick of time, that's a fact. Well, I'm glad to hear that you. You've managed to get out hunting quite a bit this year, though, it seems like between your trips and then what I've seen on Instagram. So uh, I remember the days not that long ago, a few years ago, where we be doing podcasts like this, and you'd be like, I don't think I'll get to go to hunt at all in October. I would I throw a connection. So I'm glad that's not the case anymore, right, Well, I mean when it comes to Iowa, it's almost like I need to plan, you know, how I plan the trip to Michigan, Where I plan the trip to South Dakota. I need to just plan solid blocks of time away like I am doing for this rut. To even just get into the timber close by, just say okay, three days, it's almost easier for me to disappear. And even if I just threw a tent in my backyard to come then it is to come home every night I know exactly what you mean. I was just thinking, like, man, like it's I of course I love getting home to see the family and everything, but it does make it hard in a different kind of way. Sometimes you just kind of if you can, just like you said, just kind of disappear for a while and focus on that thing, and they can focus on their thing and then come back and be there. But when you're like not there thirty percent there, it's almost worse. Sometimes it seems like, yeah, yeah, I don't know. Um, I'm just gonna preface our conversation today by saying that I might say things that don't make any sense. I might have run on sentences, I might completely forget what we're talking about because I'm just drained. Man, I am drained. Um. So I'll explain more about that momentarily. But already I can't even find the worst Alrightish, could you do that for me? Um? I've hunted thirteen in the last fifteen days. I just figured out and uh, in a lot of mornings and all days and all that kind of stuff. So I'm kind of hitting the wall today. Today I hit a wall, um. But but first we gotta rewind, because we haven't got to talk about your Michigan hunt on this podcast yet, and I'll I'll send everyone to your show to the Nine Finger Chronicles for the full scoop. We covered it in detail. We talked a lot about your thoughts and what you thought about Michigan and my thoughts on Michigan versus Iowa and everything like that. And that was a pretty it was a good conversation. But can you give us, like the as as we say here the cliff notes version of how the hunt go and and kind of now two weeks later, what your thoughts are on it? Um for the folks that haven't heard that conversation yet, absolutely, malamer No, I didn't. Did I see a slammer? Nope? Did I see one Spike Buck? Yep? Did he come in after dark after shooting light? Yep? And uh, that's pretty much how Michigan went for me. Yeah, so you saw a few deer. Big takeaways on the experience, Well, I tell you what, man Um, I know now and this is just my my view of it from where I sat. Um. I know now why Michigan holds so many deer and why there's a good population of deer in Michigan because the terrain and the vegetation that I was hunting was extremely thick and nasty, and to be honest with you, fun, Um, I love doing that tiptoe creeping type of running gun hunting into places that I've never been before. And uh, it's it's almost like Michigan is once one or two steps away from just like holding some monsters between the egg in between the thick cover that they have. Man, it it was fun. Yeah, Like like we talked about the other day, we we've definitely got the habitat and there's little pockets where some big boys can can get the age they need to to get to that point. But but you know there's other areas where there's lots and lots of hunters and not a lot of mature box and etcetera, etcetera. You also talked about the dear behavior and how different you felt that was. Um, tell me about that. Tell We got to expand on that a little bit because they are a little different. Yeah. So it's funny you brought this up now because I just had a day where I saw like thirteen does was it? Uh, Friday night? Was it? It was either Friday night? Yeah, it might have been Friday night, and uh I went out hung a tree stand and uh I passed like a one forty ish three year old. I felt he was three good looking deer. And uh he was chased, you know, there was he was chasing does and he was grunting, and he was snortweason and he was and all the other there's all these doughs, and these doughs were just so relaxed, right, like nothing is going to hurt me today. When compared to Michigan, the does weren't even in the field yet. They were in the thick cover and they had anxiety and it was just crazy. I mean, just the the way they carried themselves. It's extreme, extremely different. The deer in Michigan were It was almost like they were on point there the entire time I saw him. And it wasn't like they would really any really just casually walk anywhere. It was almost like they would trot to a spot, stopped, look around, get nervous, put their head down, forced themselves to eat something, trot somewhere else, you know, just like just completely different. Man perpetual paranoia, Yes, exactly. Yeah, It's so funny that I I sometimes just take that for granted as like how dear normally behave. So when you said that, it was like, oh, yeah, it's not suss to be like this all the time. But since you were here, I've noticed it even more so. On my Michigan hunts, I've just had so many times where these deer, these doughs, just just out of no where, they're looking up, looking up all around. I'm never hunting these trees before, and somehow they're looking up. Gosh, why can't I be somewhere else like a hole or they don't do that? So many times I thought that it's a man, I'll tell you, I'll tell you this. The you know. One thing that that I thought was gonna happen a lot more was I was going to get blown at in uh in Michigan, just whether it was entry routes or walking in because I bumped. I bumped some deer heading to some of my tree stands in the mornings, and no, none of them blew. And in Iowa they would sit there and they'd blow at you. And they'll blow at you and blow at you. And I wonder if some of that has to do with if you blow, you're giving away your position and you're gonna die. So they like certain deer don't do that anymore, right, Yeah, I don't know about that. I I know you're saying. At the same time, though, I've certainly had deer in Michigan that will do the thing where they'll sit and blow forever like that happened to me a couple of days ago. And just was that a couple of days ago? Yeah, a couple of days ago, and this morning a little bit too. Um So, yeah, it's it's hard to get away from that for sure. Um So, you had a good time. You didn't get a deer. You got to see, you got to see how the other side of the railroad tracks lives. Um you got a buck actually, oh yeah, you forgot to mention you did get a You did get a buck with your cor panel on the truck. You totaled it too, didn't you. I saw that it wasn't totaled in the fact that, uh, it did a ship ton of damage. It totaled it because the damage was worth more than my actual vehicle, So saying more about the vehicle than the damn right, exactly. So I took the cash payout and I still drive the same truck. It just has some deer damage to the one side of it. There you go. Okay, we'll gave you a little bit of a battle. Scarter. Remember the hunt by absolutely, I'll always remember Michigan. Huh. Okay. So you had your Michigan public land hunt. Uh. Soon after you left, I took off for Ohio kind of impromptu. I had a few days where I didn't want to hunt my Michigan spots yet, so I thought, you know what, I'm just gonna buy an Ohio tag and try some brand new stuff. Zero scouting, zero planning. Literally the night before I'm like, I'm gonna do it, so I will make this quick. I got a tag and I did some eat scouting of some spots up in the northern half of the state that we're closer to where I live in Michigan, and I thought, there's not as much public land appear as the south, and it's much smaller pieces. But maybe because of that, it's overlooked. Maybe everybody wants to go down south, where all the public land is and where all the big giant bucks are, but these northern spots might be okay, and maybe there's are not people hitting them because of that, And that was my idea of my theory. And I had four days to go in there and try to find something, and I was gonna just scout, scout scout until I found a pocket where there was lots of fresh sign and no hunters. And basically it was four days of scouting without finding that until until the very last day. Um. But but the weird thing about the public land down there that I found that I haven't experienced other places that they have mode They've got like their their conservation officers, God bless them, super nice guys, but they love to mow. So they've got brush cut trails to every corner. Every part of every public parcelor I went to, every single one of them had trails everywhere, like roads everywhere. So there was no nowhere that was hard to get to. Everything you could easily walk to. So every time I tried to get to some tough to get to place, there was always some way to get there easily walking, you know, without needing to go through thick, nasty stuff. And because of that, there was hunters signed everywhere. So UM hit a bunch of spots, like five different places, maybe more. UM did a lot of hiking, did a lot of looking. On my last day, I found a good spot that didn't seem to have people going into it and found a bunch of sign um, but then found a gut pile, so someone had been in there and had killed something. So that was basically my Ohio hunt. I'll try to get down to some other parts of the state later this year. But like you said, with your trip, it was good just to be somewhere new and hanging hunting, exploring, no expectations, just you know, just learning and figuring stuff out as you go. So that was cool. Um. But no filled tags um. So that brings us to the rut then. So I but I hunted from like the nineteen through the tard or yea there and then came right back and then had my chunk of time I could hunt here my local spots in Michigan. Um, I had like a two week window that I can hunt in Michigan for those main target bucks I have before and after the Back forty, I gotta go to the the Back forty for like thirteen days, um, so I have to get my other stuff done before that. So that's what I've been doing since the twenty four of October. Um, but you beul these these pieces that you've been bouncing around on uh are they public? Are they private? Are up in Michigan? Are they like places you hunted before? Why aren't you focused on Tran? I am Okay, I've got a number of different small pieces in his neck of the woods that I've access Okay, I got um that that's what I've been focusing on this period of time. Um, I have some new access that I haven't had in the past. Um. But yeah, So that's what I've been doing, and I can give you the real Do you want to cover your hunts you've been doing in Iowa? How many? How many hunts have you had in Iowa this past couple of weeks? Oh? Man, like one too, three, one, two, three, four? I think five and two weeks? Five five sits since I've been back in Iowa from Michigan. Okay, So other than the one where you passed that big one fort, are there any of note anything worth sharing? Well? So that was the first morning hunt that so I got out in evening. I went back to the same stand two or three days later for another evening hunt. Then the following morning I went out again, and that's when I had my I encounter with that first he was I guarantee it was four year old, one forty big body on him. Uh ten pointer, you know. Just it's real early kind of when that happened. So that was like or something like that. And just wasn't interested at that point at that so it weren't interested. Yeah, I wasn't. I wasn't interested at that buck because I haven't even made it down to my main farm yet. I still got a you know, a ton of trail cameras to check. But uh so I passed him at twenty five yards. He came. Uh My stand was right on the edge of a betting area. So let's let's let's just say the betting area was on top of this ridge and this kind of this flat area. I was off to the side where the wind was blowing through it, and he kind of walked not right down the center of it, but the one third of it closer to me. And I had a real good pocket in there. He's broadside twenty five yards let him go. Saw another little like a two by two or a three by three, like a six pointer, real small um, you know, he came in he came in as well. That morning, I tore down hung out the house for a while, and then on Friday, it would have been the thirty UH, I went back out and UH running gun hunt. I was going into this farm and I'm talking scrape city, baby, like scrapes almost under I don't know if you ever walked into a property where there's scrapes under every tree that hangs over a field. And I'm not that's not an exaggeration. Literally there was a scrape under every tree and um so, but I get in there to where I wanted to go. First, I checked some trail camera had on that particular farm. My number one and number two were both on that trail camera, but they were there at the middle of the night, right, So whatever I decided, I wanted to hunt in that area. But my wind was doing something real funky kind of blowing into the timber where I thought these two were gonna go. So I bumped out of that worked my way further down the field, and UH followed basically followed the sign into this little area of the cornfield where this pot it turns into a pocket. It's almost like if you took a uh a rectangle and then added a half circle, a small half circle to some you know, one of the longer sides. That is where I hung up, and my wind was blowing right down into this gully into the main valley, um and kind of out into the bigger part of a different field. And uh, it was kind of a risk that I needed to take or it was not hunt that area that farm at all. And I wanted to hunt, and I'm glad I did because instantly before I was even done setting up, man, I had some does and that that three by three again out in the field, and he started pushing some dose around. Some more dough started flooding into this field. And then I look over, you know, to the east, and there's, uh, there's a bucket I've never seen before. I'd say a one thirty five class eight pointer. He was either he was either an eight or a nine and he had a split G two And to be honest with you, I think I have a shed right over there on my table from the previous year. Yeah. So, um, I passed him at twenty five yards. He was dogging does all all in front of me, putting on the show, you know, snort weason and and all that stuff. So um, he did that, and then I got out of there, couldn't hunt that next morning, couldn't hunt that next evening. And so I'm actually going back to that stand tomorrow, which will be the third November three. But last night I got in my car, which would have been November one, and I couldn't hunt, and I had my boy with me, and we'd go around and drive around the section, and I saw my number one crossing the road into the neighboring property. Uh, that butts up against the field that I saw the action in the night before. So you know, it's I know, it's a couple of days, you know, away from when I'll actually get in there. But there's a good sign that tomorrow morning, I don't know, I might be able to you know, if if nothing's in the field, I might be able to crack the antlers and pull something out of the timber. Nice. So it's tomorrow the beginning of full blown YEP. So tomorrow morning I'm hunting around the house just just basically to tear down the tree stand and see if I can't make a miracle happen on on this other farm, then it's time to head down south get to the main farm. First thing I'm doing, it's checking trail cameras. I'm pulling all my cards, checking all the data. Uh, and then making and then really starting to get crazy. I mean it's it's a full bore at that point. And do you have the full two weeks this year? I have the hunt hard until like there's there's been no date or time frame set. So it's until you get that call. It's until I get the call. Yeah, it's until my mother in law decides she wants to go home. But I just really hope I get it done early this year. I hope I connect with you know, some of the deer that are around. I don't even know what's around, to be honest with you, because I haven't checked cards since September. Man, So is the game plan this year? Uh? Any different than what we talked about this summer, or any different from the big things you've done on this property in past years. I mean usually you're checking cameras pretty often, using those to kind of inform you where to focus. And then I know you had the whole Gnarlie Charlie plan from last year. Uh, where do you stand on all that now? Yeah? So Narlie. Charlie has never showed this entire year thus far. I think the last time I had a picture of him was in January. He's a no show in basically this summer. Nothing. Um I had a decent buck just a one time deal show up. Um, I shouldn't say decent he was. He's definitely a shooter show up on cell cam. Was it two nights ago last night or two nights ago or something like that? And uh, but he's in that cell cam's in a weird awkward spot that I would only hunt when the when the corn was in that field. But but I'm getting nothing except that one straight but probably cutting through the property to get to a different piece anyway, No Narlie Charlie. So that just straight up means that it is. It's really anything that makes my heart jump at this point. Um, I do have a couple of deer that uh. When I checked my cards in September, I got a couple deer that are that there. I passed a beautiful three year old last year. He's back as a probably close to one seventy four year old. Uh. I would love to have an encounter with him at some point. Who knows, and uh, other than that, let the cards tell me when I check them or any deer. That kind of gets me excited to be honest with you. Ah, man, you've got some bucks. Dude, you've got some bucks. But I will say this, I am going to fill the freezer. I bought an extra dough tag this year. So if I know a lot of people don't like to shoot does during November. But I think, Man, with my my freezer and the way I like to eat venison being empty, I'm gonna I'm gonna lay down some meat too. Yeah, if you got the empty freezer problem, you gotta do that. So what's the game plan as far as that though? Like, are you going to shoot? Like? What dough are you going to shoot? Are you honestly going to shoot a random dough in the middle of a hunt while you're hunting? Are you gonna wait until you You know how this works? Right? This is how it works. I say I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna fill my freezer. But then, oh, I can't shoot that because it knows if she's hot, what's behind her? Why is she looking behind her? What's going on? Yeah? So I might just shoot a couple of button bucks. To be honest with you, Well, you do whatever you gotta do. I know, so shoot or maybe your real young dough who probably isn't gonna breed this year. Who knows, who knows it's all gonna be? You know, I say all these things, but every year I shoot from the hip. And that's the only thing that I can say. I know I'm going to do is shoot from the hip. You know what that sounds about, right, Dan? If there's anything consistent about you, it's that you're going to shoot from the hip. No playing. I love it. I love it. Um, I'm jackman, I'm freaking jack The warm weather though it's gonna kind of throw throw me for a loop. But yeah, that is a bummer coming up here. Huh Yeah. But they're still gonna breed, man, So you still got a hunt? Well, I'll tell you what. Ever, since two thousand fifteen, I think it was I last time I drew my Iowa teg. I hunted in Iowa and a warm spell came through. I was hunting for a few days, was on some deer, and then I saw like two days of like hot weather, like seventies or something. I thought it's gonna be lousy. I'm just gonna go back to Michigan for a couple of days and get some browning points and do some stuff. Then I'll come back when the weather cools down again. Well, those two days when I was gone, three of my friends all killed big bucks in Iowa on the hot days, And that was just like the reminder that it's the rut. Anything's possible. Who cares about the weather, don't miss it. Yeah. So yeah, biggest buck, I've the biggest eight point deer I've ever had an encounter with. Came through on the hottest day on November four, like a handful of years ago. There's a giant, mature, big, gorgeous eight pointer. Uh and uh. That was one of those encounters where it's like, hey man, it's you're not you're not supposed to be moving right now, right, it's seventy five degrees outside. Why are you moving? You're not supposed to because I read that somewhere right. So don't let anybody who doesn't hunt your property tell you how to hunt. Just go hunt. Yeah, man, there's there's nothing more important than those uh, those hormones, the cestosterone, estrogen, those deer. They don't care if it's hot, cold, whatever. They want to breed. So and there's one more big thing that's going down on was it? Let's see Thursday? What's up? I turned forty? Whoa forty fucking forty mark whoa? Yeah, I don't know if I need to bring oxygen into the stage with me. Got a life shurance policy? You take a walker in there with you. Holy smokes, we're nectually have wheelchair accessible tree stands for your next year. I'm gonna be that guy. You know. I shouldn't even make it a joke, but you know those tree stands that have the automatic lift up into the air. Yeah, that's that's you pretty soon. Man. Well happy birthday. Yeah, that's that's crazy. Time's flown. You don't look a day over. I don't know. Don't say it. Don't say it because I'll come back at you with the Rookie of the Year. I know I named a Buck rookie of the year. By the way, yeah this year kind of there's a buck that's just a stud. I think it's a two year old. Um. And when I say stud, a stud for Michigan is a two year old. And I'm like, man, he's like, he's the he's the best New Year I've seen around here. And I was like, I'll call Rookie of the year. Is a dashing baby face. Um he's he's ten point I don't know, I mean maybe one twenty or somewhere like that something Maybe I was, I don't know. Um from sugar, that's a day and good two year old. Um. So if he can make it through the Orange the Orange Army, he'll be a stud in a couple of years. So well, you're in a place that consistently gets deer, you know, a handful of deer to an older age classman. Yep, every year one or two of them make it through. So hopefully that stays. Hopefully it stays that way. I do have a question for you. Yeah, okay, So you were bouncing around on some property recently and I was following you on an Instagram you're one of your Instagram stories, And did you honestly set up ten yards or fifteen or twenty yards away from another hunter without knowing it? Okay, so I gotta hear this. I totally forgot about that one. Um. Okay, so you're just about to start your rutcation and I'm almost done with mine, um, because like I mentioned, I've got to start hunting on the back forty on November seven, So all of my hunts for Tran in the rut had to precede that. UM. So from the and on I've been hunting and uh basically and this is this will lead me to the story just asked about. Basically, my game plan was for the early part of that period, I was going to circle around the outside edges of his core areas and betting areas they spend the most time in historically, and um, based on what the wind would let me do, get in between food and his betting, and then just kind of rotate around these core spots. And with some new access I got recently, I'm able to hunt a little more of these areas than I used to. So I was pretty excited about that. UM. But you know, basically, the first handful days saw a lot of activities, saw young bucks, but didn't see Tran. I caught a little brief glimpse at him one night, made a move in there after him the next day, didn't see him. Um. But eventually I got this wind to hunt um right in between a just cut cornfield and his like best betting air, the spot that I just knew he was in there, but I hadn't been able to hunt there because of wind. So finally got the wind I needed, UM like four days in or five days into this period of time where I've been rotating around and seeing plenty but not seeing him yet, And so I was really excited to get to this spot because I knew like that was the number one food source right now. Because what what I should bring up is that my the main farm that I hunt the most in this area UM got discd under. All the crowd fields got disked under this year. So for the first time like a decade, there's there's zero food on the main farm. So what's usually you know, I don't know, sixty acres of beans or corn is now dirt. So that really changes how dear use this entire area. So it's it's really thrown me for a loop. As far as deer patterns, everything is different. So everything from all my previous years is different now. So because of this, this one cut corn field that I could hunt close to was the was the major drawing now since there was nothing else in this zone, I could finally hunt it, and it was cold and rainy, so I slipped in, sneaking my way in. It's raining, and there's just sign everywhere, the most fresh scrapes I've seen anywhere around this property, the biggest rubs I've seen anywhere in the property this year. I'm like, this is it. This is where he's been coming into. No one's been hunting up here, this is I was excited. I thought I'm gonna kill him. So I slipped in there. It really took my time thinking about finding the right tree where I could hunt and you know, have my wind just safe enough, but also be in a position where i'd be like get a shot still being close to the edge of the cover. Uh. Fast forward at an hour into the sit and the wind starts shifting a little bit, and the wind dies down and then starts kind of you know that feeling where it's you throw your milk weed or something and like don't don't go any more of that direction. Then five minutes later you're throw the milk wid again, like oh no, please, no, please know And then a little bit later it's it's like right, it's it's gonna go right to the edge of that bedding. And I'm sitting there bouncing back and forth my mind. I'm thinking, man, this is the spot of spots. But if I'm blowing my wind into the bedding year, what's the point of being the spot of spots. So I sat there for a couple of minutes, like going back and forth, back and forth, and finally decided, you know what, I had to pull a plug. I'm not gonna blow this thing out so early when I know it's a great set up and there's no one else in here messing things up. I didn't think. And then just as I'm thinking I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna pull down and get out of here before I do too much damage, I hear cople and about jump onto my socks. And I knew that sound right away. It was a crossbow. And I'm thinking that was like right next to me. Someone just shot a crossbow right next to me. And I spin around and I look and and I'm hunting about forty fifty yards off of that cut corn field inside the timber towards that betting yards talking about. But that cornfield is another neighbor's property, and there was a guy hunting that property right on the edge, and he basically shot a deer that was right on the edge there, forty yards from me. And I had no idea he was in there, because it had been pouring rain, and so he must have slipped in from the other side in the rain, and I had been set up looking the opposite way the whole time. I never heard him. He climbed up in his ladder stand he never knew I was there, and uh, and that was that. So the wind had shifted, he shot a deer. Deer go running all over the place. And then I'm sitting there and realizing with this guy, and and just I know the guy. He he doesn't worry about wind or send control or anything like that. Um, so I'm thinking, Okay, he's certainly not going anywhere. He's gonna sit here blow into here the whole night. So rather than me walk out of here and create more damage and blow my wind in somewhere else, I guess this is a sunk cost. So I waited it out. And it was a bad night, dear blowing a few other deer. I almost filmed him shoot another deer, but I see this still walking out to the field, like, oh no, you're in trouble. Be careful, be careful, and uh, you know, she got smart and turned around. But but that was it was a it was kind of That's kind of just been the story of this year. I'm having a year. I'm having a year Dan where it just seems like if it can go wrong, it is going wrong. I mean that whole Idaho public land trip people have her heard me lament about that had a lot of stuff go wrong on that hunt. My Ohio public land hunt was just like people people, tree stands, tree stands, walking around trying to find somewhere and now here. You that happened when I thought I was in the spot of spots, and then um I pulled out of there, and so all right, we're just gonna keep grinding at it. And then we had three other notable things that have happened since that. Damn uh. So I kept circling around these core areas, hitting what I can with a wind and kind of progressively tightening and tightening, getting a little bit further in, a little bit further in. So if you can envision a couple of these core betting areas and like a target around them, and each time I'm rotating around the target based on wind, but then also getting a little bit deeper into the core, a little bit deeper into the core. And every day I've been doing that, except adjusting off of sightings or different things like that. So the three most exciting things that have happened started on the October. I got set up, moved in really tight to one of the betting areas that I think he uses, and got set up in the place I've never hunted before, right on the edge. And I'm not set up for I don't know an hour. When I catch something way off across the way, I can kind of see through this open timber to another brushy spot. And in this other brushy spot, I see Tran and I see him with a dough and he's like on like locked on the dough, you know that look when they're not chasing, they're not like he's with that dough. She kind of takes a few steps, he steps up behind her like he's locked on a dough, and they're walking away towards the crop field, the opposite direction from Matt. So in this moment, I rose, Okay, there's there's an hour and a half a daylight left. They're going the other direction, and I know where that dough goes going. There's no food behind me. The only place she's gonna go is out in that direction. So I think to myself, there's a decent bit of wind right now, I'm gonna go get that buck. I'm not gonna sit here and dick around. I'm gonna get that damn dear. I'm sick of dicking around. I'm sick of hunting this deer for three years. Now. I want to kill this thing. I'm gonna make something happen. So I've never done this before, but I got out of my tree stand and stalk these deer down on foot, and I followed them out to this area, and then I kind of I knew where they're going, and so I was able to try to cut them off. But just before I was able to kind of get to the point where I thought I could cut them off, the wind died down and I couldn't see them anymore. But I knew there were somewhere up near the edge of this crop field, and I was, if you, if we're imagined direct there north of me somewhere, and I figured about two d yards hundred fifty yards north of me, somewhere, and then we've got crop fields. To my west. There's a crop field, then there's one of these dirt fields, and then there's one of my little food plots that I have on one of these properties. And I think to myself, Okay, there's no way I can get any closer now, because the wind completely died down. We're down to the last half hour or something of daylight, and it's it's still I'm in really crunchy grass and I can't move much. So at this point I realized, probably my best bet is I'm not going to beat into the crop field. But I have seen on some of these other hunts I've done earlier in the week, many of the deer. This surprised me. Many of the doughs that I saw go out to one of this corn field. They would feed in the corn field for a while and then they would drop south walk across the dirt field all the way to my little green food plot. And every night this is happening, a good number of doughs will leave the corn, go across the dirt and come down to my food plot. So I thought, maybe she'll do the same thing. Maybe she'll come out to the corn. He'll follower to the corn, and then after fiddling around for fifteen minutes, she'll walk down the edge and come to the food plot. If she does that, I could intercept that. I could slip down towards the edge of the dirt field and the food plot, and there's a spot there's a creek that runs through there, and almost every time anything comes by, they crossed in this one section. So I was able to creep a little bit further that direction so that I could be within shooting range of that creek crossing, which would I don't know it was. I was like fifty yards inside off of the food plot into the cover where this crossing is, and and I got set up, and lo and behold, not soon after getting set up, here pops out a doe over the hill into the dirt field and tran right behind her, and they start coming my way. And now it's like ten minutes left a daylight, and I'm in position. I'm thinking, Man, if she comes here to the corner just like they do, I'm gonna get a shot. And so I'm I'm all getting into position, and I really can't move anymore, and they're getting closer and closer, and that's five minutes left and they're at like ninety yards. Now there's like three minutes left and there's seventy yards and they came all the way in, but instead of coming to my corner, they they stayed out in the dirt field and crossed into the food plot, maybe sixty seventy yards out away for me and and after shooting light anyways, UM, so really intense, exciting hunt, but didn't come together. But it's awesome to see him and awesome that I kind of kind of worked sort of, um, at least partially. Um, but did you make that move for a reason. That doesn't sound like something that you would normally do. Yeah, I would not normally do that, except right when I when there's a buck locked on a doll like that. From my experience, there's there's nothing that's going to pull him away. I've tried over the years trying to grunt at these deer. I've tried to do things like that, and that's not going to pull away like that buck is on that dough. And it wasn't like he was chasing the dough. They weren't chasing. She was like with him. So it wasn't like they're going to run all over the place. It was like she was walking a few steps, he was right behind her. They stand there for a few minutes. She'd walk a few steps, He'd stand there for a few minutes. So I knew. I've seen this happen so many times. I've seen this happen in past years, Like when I was hunting that buck, Frank, this is what happened. He had a buck, he had a doll lockdown, and I knew they stayed in the same area for three days. They would just he would just follow around like a zombie. And so in this case, I knew that trans the zombie buck was gonna walk to this corn. I knew that's where that dough was gonna go, because that's where all these deer go to right now. Um, And there was no way that I was going to get a shot. And he's the only deer I want to kill. So I could either sit four yards away while the only deer I want to kill is go in the other direction. I could sit there for three hours and twiddle my films, or I could go do something about it. And that's kind of where I'm at. Um, there's No, there were a couple other Bucks on camera earlier in the year that I'd like that I would shoot if they gave me opportunity, But nothing's been showing up at all. So there's there's tran or bust and I only have a handful of days to try to get him killed before I got to take off, And um, I don't know. I'm just getting to the point now where uh, I don't know. I'm not gonna sit around and wait anymore. I'm trying. I gotta try and make something happen. You have to, Yeah, I mean that's it kind of sucks to be honest with you that you got this target buck. It's a it's a a class buck for Michigan, and you have other quote unquote priorities that are gonna pull you away from this in Yeah, And I'm not complaining about the upcoming hunting the back for It's gonna be awesome. It's gonna be fun. I'm excited about it. But as far as trying to kill like my target buck, it definitely h throws a throws a wrench into it. So the whole spotting stock thing happens doesn't quite come together. But I know that he's on that doll, and they're gonna be here again tomorrow, at least from my experience when I've seen a buck lock down a doll in this area, he's just gonna hang close. So the next day I slipped into the same general area, got in there to where I thought the wind would be. Okay, did a big circle around. This is very similar to how I was hunting Frank three years ago. Like he had he was in there, locked around with the dough. I would circle around trying to get in front of him, expecting him to come back into one of these betting areas. And I did that on this hunt, and they basically did what I thought, but instead of coming in where I was, they came in several hundred yards ahead of me, or farther to the north of me. So I saw him with the dough again, and they slip into some bedding cover to my north and then disappear. And then about ten am I catch a glimpse of him again into a little further in the cover. So now they're up in this corn field area. That's where they came in from something. And okay, they're on the northern section. I'm betting she's gonna come back out into that corn. So I pulled out midday, did a big circle up to the northern section of these properties, got up in there, got set up and had a whole plan in place where I thought, Man, they're gonna do one or two things. They're in this betting pocket. I saw him about ten am. Um. I was set up. If they came the north route to get to the fields, which they've done the night before. Uh, but I also had like a raised um like berm that was running a little ways away from me, about fifty sixty yards away from me, And if they came out on the other side of that, which is the other thing I thought was possible. I decided, you know what, if they come out there and if they're just mosey mosey in like they have been, Um, I'm gonna get out of the tree and do the same damn thing. I'm gonna get down there. And it was windy, I'll sneak up to the edge of the burm and get a shot when they come down at the point. I had this whole plan in place, and they didn't show up that night. So that was day two of interest. Now fast forward two days later. I hunt the next day and don't have any encounters with him. Um. I decided that I had a specific wind direction that would allow me to hunt what I call the belly of the beast. This is a spot that I have not been able to hunt in the past, but now I can. It's kind of the primo, one of the primo betting spots. And there's a tree in the middle of this sect shin that I've always looked at, and I've seen more deer passed by this tree, more bucks passed by this tree than any other. But it just seems impossible to hunt. I just don't know how you hunt it without deer winding you. But I thought, okay, I'm down only four days left before I have to go, and it's our last cold day before this warm spill hits. And with this wind I have today, this is today as we speak. This happened today. Um. With this wind direction I have, it will blow right along a creek. If I sit in this tree, right on the edge of the creek, I could blow my wind if it. If it goes the way it's supposed to be forecasting, it'll blow almost right down the creek and that's probably my best option. That deer could still win me, but it's it's the least of all the dangers. So today I woke up at three thirty. I got in there two and a half hours before daylight. I hung a set up in this tree, got all set up. I'm in the middle of it. I'm shooting my shop basically was the plant like, I'm this was it. I'm swinging for the fence. This is my home run. Sit going into the middle of it, and it's it's either gonna kill him or I'm gonna blow everything out of it. And daylight starting to crack, and I hear and Tran is walking right to the bottom of my tree to dam and he comes in at ten yards ten minutes before shooting light and he walks ten yards, perfect shot and then comes all the way down to the down wind side and bust me and blows. Yeah, if you had come ten minutes later, I would have smoked him at ten yards and it's just too early to shoot. Yeah, I can't shoot, so yeah, I mean it was devastating. It worked perfect. I done everything right, my bucks there and I can't shoot him and then he goes was down when blows out, bounds off, blows once and then kind of jobs off to the direction. But here's where it gets crazy. I'm bummed out, but I'm thinking, well, there it is. He's not coming back through here again. And then it now it's daylight, daylight, and I look up and I see him again. He's now a couple hundred yards away with a dough. Over the next hour and a half, all chaos broke loose around me. There was a hot dough and he was chasing that dough all around, fighting off other bucks, and multiple times looked like he was gonna come back within range. A dough came squirting towards me, and he was coming on a bee line right to me with that dough was coming right to me with tran right behind her. I was clipped on, ready to draw back. He was at seventy coming in towards sixty. And then she squirted away and went the other way. And they happened several times, and then finally they disappeared. So you had two encounters with him in the same day. But that that dough led him away. That did a doe come through the first time, or was it him by himself? He was by himself the first thing, first thing in the morning, he was by himself, cruising, and then then he was chasing Does after that, and and so that was the second time I saw him. So he's chasing Does, chasing Does. I thought it was gonna happen again, But then doesn't They disappear on the timber. Now like two hours later, I catched sight of him again on the complete opposite side of me, cruising through this other section timber. It's like, Okay, I'm back in the game. Maybe this could happen again. He's cruising, then disappeared, and then nothing. And then around eleven o'clock, I see another deer crossing the creek, and the creek is where my winds blowing, and I see antlers, and I spin looked down there and at a hundred ninety yards, he's right in the creek staring at me, right in my wind for the second time that day. And he stood there for at least a minute, just staring a hole in me. And I can't tell you how big his neck is, Dan, his neck is like an oak trunk. I mean, it was monstrous. I just I just looked at him and we just stared at each other for a minute, and I'm thinking two things like he's monstrous and he has me pegged so bad, and and he just stared, stared and stared and stared and then finally jogged off. That was it. That was my day. Dang. Yeah, like close, man, that's that's but that's bow hunting in a nutshell. Yeah, yeah it is. Sometimes you get him, sometimes you don't. Man, that's the truth, is the truth. I'm yeah, today was yeah, I don't know. Um, I've hit a wall a little bit as far as exhaustion, and then just kind of disheartened with this whole thing. Like I I swung for the fences and I did my thing and and just did not come together. And now I kind of feel I don't know what to do now. Um, I kind of blew that spot, and so I guess I'm just gonna keep on keep it on for these last couple of days. But I'm a little bit, uh, a little bit at a loss. I don't know. Yeah, well you know just as well as I do. It takes one hot dough. Yeah, yes, that's true, dude, one hot dough. It's all all you need. And dude, I've been there before. I've killed a deer with ship my dear last year, hot dough right in front of me but came in shot. Yeah, I feel like that's kind of what I have to do now, is just trying to be in the zone, be in the area of interest and and hope for the right dough to come through because I've I've kind of tried my tricks, and I've tried to circle around in different spots and try to predict where he's going to be. And he's always over here and I'm there, and I'm there, and he's here. Don't take them here and I go over there. So I'm just gonna keep on trying and uh try to stay positive and try to stay focused and give her hell. Dan, I'm just gonna give her hell, So go get him. That's that's I don't. Don't give up, Mark, I won't. I won't. I'm telling you though. Uh, the three third day and wake up call tomorrow is gonna come a way too soon. Yeah. How long are you getting in the how early are you getting in the stand? Uh? Well, I gotta trying to very quietly slip in there, which takes a long time, and then hang a set in the dark. Oh, hanging the set in the dark. Yeah, that's probably the worst. Yeah, you'd be proud of me that I've been a running gun machine this year. I've been I've sat a regular tree stand like two three times the last thirteen days or something like that. So yeah, man, I've been up and down, up and down, up and down. So good luck, brother, Thanks man. That's uh, that's my RUT story so far. Um. I can't wait to hear your stories coming up. I'm sure we'll have some good hunts coming here soon. And man, I wish you good luck and and your one. Yeah, I'm a I'm opposite of you, man, I am energized, I'm ready to go. I'm I'm like, I'm fired up. There's no not one ounce of exhaustion in me at this point. And uh, like I tell you every year, man, I get more sleep when I go to my RUT vacation than I do at home anyway. So well, enjoy your sleep, enjoy your rest and relaxation. I know you're working though, I know the grind is gonna happen for you too, So yeah, man, Uh, what we have the rest of the show is is some good info. Greg Clements and Aaron Warburton from the Hunting Public. So that's the end of our recap. Let's get into uh some great no how from these guys. Hopefully between these stories and the information they're gonna share, all of you listening can have so exciting rout hunts coming soon. All right, I'm excited to have on the line with us here, Aaron Warburton and Greg Clements from the Hunting Public. Guys, thank you for taking the time to do this right now. Absolutely thanks for having us. Yeah, Mark, pleasure to be here. I gotta believe and I know from following stuff on YouTube and everywhere that you're crazy busy right now. Where are you guys right now? I know you're in different places, but where are you and where are you heading in the coming days? Greg? Currently, I'm sitting here in Iowa and uh, just working on editing. Yesterday morning she shout a nice buck. So we're all tagged out here in Iowa, our crew, everybody that had a resident arch tree tag is tagged out. So it's kind of a strange situation to be in. Normally this time of the uber grinding it out in the stand, you know, going hunting all day long. But yeah, we're we're just an editing mode now. That's pretty nice. Yeah, it's a it's a good problem to have, I guess it just kind of feel lost, not feeling like you need to get out to the woods and and go hunt. But I get some editing done and then we'll be off to a different state, so soon enough. What about you here. I'm in Missouri at the moment, and I've been filming ted off and on all week, but it's just been crappy weather. It's been just NonStop rain, uh for like three and a half four days now, so uh, and I've just been going back and forth kind of filming him and then going home for you know, an evening or so to dry everything off. And then I was on my way back down there this morning to film him. But yeah, you just quit raining where he's hunting that so he's had to do the woods this afternoon. It ain't raining where I'm at though. It's still raining here, so we're trying to we're trying to kill one in Missouri right now before we head to Tennessee next week. But it's definitely been pretty wet. Yeah, that's throwing a wrenching things. Greg are you are you? Are you able to share the story? Do he has it to hold onto it for the video to hear what happened yesterday? No, I don't think so. Um the video should come out next week sometime, so UM, I would say it's fairly timely. Actually, it's one of you know, this last week of October has been really cool here in the Midwest. Um, there's been you know, scraping activities ramped up, there's all kinds of sign in the woods. And as soon as I got back from Pennsylvania and we did the public Land Challenge there kind of my goal coming into this last week of of the season before we moved on to a different state was trying to try to kill a buck over a decoy here in Iowa. And that's one of my probably my favorite deer hunting tactic, honestly, because that's what I did mostly growing up in uh in eastern Nebraska. Hunted a lot of open country, you know, properties just with small patches of cover and are largely cropper pasture or something like that. So decoys were a huge advantage in that kind of open country. And uh, you know, between my dad and my brother and I, my cousin. All the all our crew that hunted around there, you know one of us are more of us probably killed, you know, a buck over a decoy every year. They're you know, bow hunting, growing up bow hunting back in Nebraska. So that's you know, since I moved to Iowa, I really hadn't hunted a whole lot with the decoy, and that's something that I just that was kind of my goal for this this season was to get that done and had a perfect opportunity yesterday morning. What's the what's the set up? What? Specifically? I guess number one, how were you set up as far as where your stand was? And then number two, I'm really curious on the decoy placement and wind and all that. Yeah, so the the setup was it actually planned. B The first spot that we went to, uh, it was in a spot that Aaron and I hunted last year, had to encountered with a big nine pointer, and you know, I wanted to go back in there and and try to try to make that work. But the cover the vegetation had growing up last year was short grown grass and this year was you know, indian grass and blue stem. It was just tall, so that that visual advantage wasn't there. It was just too thick. So I Ethan and I got back to the truck and I started pondering, you know, thinking about other spots that would work. And the spot came to mind that was, it's kind of a a long ridge that's old cattle pasture. It's overgrown, there's uh, it's you know a lot of cedars and and thick betting, thick draws on both sides of the ridge and uh. And my thought was would be a good spot with high visibility because there's you know, this ridge kind of bends around where there's visibility and a couple of different directions. So I got the visual advantage. And then also with it being a relatively calm morning, I figured I had the rattling antlers. I figured we could call down into this uh, into these thick draws and into that thick seat or bedding and hopefully pull something up out of there. So we got set up. It was probably right at sunrise. It was you know, we got in there a little bit late because the first spot didn't pan out, but got in there and as we were walking in we had about a three three hundred yard walk in from the road it was you know, actually easy access. And I guess another thought I had is because it was dead calm that morning, I wanted to get in somewhere that that I could get in quietly and just not blow everything out, So that that worked out well. And as we were walking in, we started seeing a bunch of fresh rubs, you know that were you know, the peelings were on top of the leaves, the bark was still green or the you know, the the excuse me, the rub itself was still green. Her I think Dan dan in Fault called it bleeding. You know, they were just that fresh. So anyways, a bunch of fresh rubs, a bunch of fresh scrapes, and uh so we were encouraged, you know, going back in there that you know, there was a buck that was actively in that area. So I got set up and took a few minutes to get set up, and I was thinking about the best way to position the decoy so that it could be seen, um, you know, as far as possible, kind of in both directions where there was visibility down this long ridge and then where the ridge bent around. So we were kind of sent up in the corner there and the wind was blowing our scent back into some thick cover behind us. So my thought was that, you know, a lot of times with calling, a buck is gonna try to circle in down wind and sometimes bust you. But he would have had to have gone into that really thick cover to get down wind of us. So it just seemed like it was making a lot of sense right there. And uh did the first calling sequence at eight o'clock. It was just dead calm at that point in the morning. Nothing came to that, and we really weren't seeing a lot of deer movement, and the morning was relatively slow, and then the wind started to pick up a little bit. About eight thirty nine o'clock had a two year old buck come in in the morning, just had a better feel to it with that, with that breeze blowing, and about nine fifteen did a second calling sequence and set the antlers down and had to had to go pro rolling behind us. I was able to see exactly how long it it took from the time we stopped calling to the time the buck responded. It was a minute and fifteen seconds later. All of a sudden, a big ten pointer popped his head up over the ridge and his forty yards away looking at the decoy. Wow. So I told you yeah, I told Ethan, big buck right here, you know, don't move, and he was, you know, he was looking at the decoy, but his line was also you know, looking in our direction. So we tried to slowly get in position and get ready. Ethan was kind of behind me. He had to get out around me to be able to film the deer, and he bristled up and started working left to the point where I thought maybe he was going to try to circle down wind and it was gonna be tougher for me to shoot to the left. My best shooting opportunity was to the right. So the buck is about thirty five yards um kind of been some thick cover, and you know, I was afraid it was just gonna fall apart, that he was gonna hook around to the left and just wasn't going to get a shot opportunity. And then all of a sudden, he broke back to the right and started looping around the backside of the decoy and came into it, bristled up, and then again I guess one of the one of the downfalls using a decoy sometimes if they don't come in just right, and if they you know, if they go in and bulldoze that knock it over a lot of times, you know your opportunity will will fall apart there. But but yeah, he did right, kind of bristled up next to it and gave me a broadside shot at toe three yards and h sent one through him and he bounded thirty yards and fell over. That's awesome. Yeah, so it was. It was an exciting hunt. It was. It was nice when you know a plan comes together, you kind of draw it up in your mind and it it works out that way. And he came out of one of those thick draws that I was referring to earlier, and that would you know, I always assume, and you talk to some people, Um, I guess what I'm trying to stay here, is that being someone who hunts, you know, somewhere like Michigan heavily pressure deer, YadA, YadA, YadA. I'm so paranoid about ever trying something like a decoy because I feel like, oh, there's no way that could work where there's so many hunters and so much stuff going on. But I know you guys are doing it on public land with with quite a bit of success over the years. Is that something that you've seen. I know it has worked for you in Iowa. Has that worked for you in other states where there's um more pressure? Have you tried it on any these other different states you've been to and found it to be able to work to? Uh? Yeah, I'm trying to think of where else that we've used it other than my home state. Writers, I did use it on public land. They're successfully um, you know, private land that was you know, the shared you know, shared permission with other people. I wouldn't call anything how the public land was fairly heavily pressured, I guess, I would say. And him in Missouri too, um, and had success down there on heavily on on what I would call more heavily pressured lands. And I don't know, it's just a spec it's just speculation because I don't think we have much experience with decoys past those areas. But I think, uh, I think worrying too much about hunting pressure can be uh sort of overthinking it sometimes because we used to do the same thing. But all these areas that we go when a deer gets in that, I guess what what I'm trying to say, is they get in that mindset when they are when they're rutting, when they're acting aggressive, testosterone is up, you can get away with a heck of a lot more. I mean, Zach last year in New York killed a very very mature buck in the middle of the rut with a dough um on extremely heavily pressured lands, and he pretty much just walked up to the thing and shot it. Literally just walked into the field and eventually the deer ran and walked right by him, you know. And I think in that situation a decoy would have worked, and I would I would assume he would agree, would have worked, you know, just as well in that situation as it would in Iowa or anywhere else for that matter. Um, whenever you start talking about the rut and and bucks, especially mature bucks, because like that's their purpose this time of year, you know, is they get super territorial and it's it's time to start thinking about breeding. Does regardless of where you're at, Um, that can work extremely well. Yeah, you know, in certain situations obviously, all right, because that's all it trying. It's down to deer hunting, so situational everywhere you go. But you know, something I feel like you guys have done a really good job of is testing assumptions improving them wrong. If you were to look at what you guys have have done over the last few years and trying so many things that other folks might assume would be taboo on public land, or not possible on public land, or or crazy or too aggressive, and by just trying these things and and finding out that, oh, yeah, it actually can work, it's really changing the game for a lot of people. Is there anything else like that during the rut that you guys have found where you know, ten years ago you would have thought, oh, there's no way you could get away with that, but now today you're you're realizing, well, that's not the case, and it's changed things for it. Does anything else come to mind like that? I would say being super aggressive in the rut um and that's not just sit. I guess we could get We could get pretty far down the rabbit hole here, So stop me, Mark and if I if I get going too long for it. But I think there's kind of two different tactics that work extremely well in the rut One is sitting long hours in a specific spot you know, a funnel or transition whatever, and basically waiting for a buck to walk by. Uh. That has proven over time to be extremely effective. If you have the time and you can spend it as many full days in the woods as possible, you can kill bucks doing that. Um. But what we've done more of in the last probably six seven years is we've actually started to move to find the action in the run, literally walking or driving until we either see or spook run into whatever. Uh. The action. What I mean by the action is a hot dough, a group of bucks in a in a certain location, because that's what I believe is going on a lot of the time. Most of the bucks are in one specific location for most of the run. Or well, sorry, I should back up, most of the bucks on a given day are in a spot on a on a property wherever that dough is at that is coming into heat. Most of the bucks in that area are going to be right there. And obviously we we know that all that can get flipped upside down and can change in a matter of seconds if they push you out of there or whatever. But I feel like that's something that has worked tremendously well for us. Is just is being especially on limited time UM. And I should preface by saying that if you don't have a lot of time in the run, if you don't have the luxury of sitting in a funnel area all day long, for day after day after day after day, I would recommend trying to literally walk around until you run into the deer um, even if that means spook in the deer, because if if a doze in heat and there's multiple bucks in that area, more times than not we don't see them react the same way at a pressure as we would other times the year because their main focus is you know, obviously breeding during that time. And I feel like if if you just have a weekend for example, or maybe you just have a couple of days vacation and you're not in that action, maybe you're sitting in a pile of sign, you're sitting in an excellent funnel area, but if the hot dough is on the other side of the property for that two or three days, you're probably gonna you know, watch a lot of squirrels and leaves blown. But if you get down and you actually go and find the deer, you can have success a lot faster in the run. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. How do you know when you found it? Though? I mean it realized. There's a few obvious things, but I gotta believe there's a little bit of it too. It probably has taking some experience to figure out the nuance of oh, this is it, I need to stop right now, versus Okay, I just bumped a deer, but you know, maybe I should keep going. How do you know when you're in the spot right, Okay, we're here, it's time. Um, a variety of different things. It's all situational. But I'll give you a couple of examples. UM. One is scrapes. And I know you've heard it over and over again. Don't pay attention to scrapes during the rut. But a lot of times scrapes are position in locations where numerous trails intersect, or even on the edges of betting areas, or in transitions in between betting areas. So if and I'll just bring up a specific example, because that's the best way I can explain this. We were headed in on November nine, a couple of years ago, into a big block of woods, and we covered probably three quarters of a mile down this ridge, there's lots of rubs in their decent amount of sign but nothing like super super fresh. We dove off of the point of the ridge, got on a long secondary rage that fall fall off into a creek bottom this pretty thick and as we got down there, we started noticing like, here's a really really fresh grape that was just worked. And then boom, here's another really really fresh grape that was just where I mean I'm talking in the last twenty four hours. So we popped up in a tree set up over it, and as we were hanging the stand, a mature buck pushed the dough by us at ten yards and we weren't ever able to kill it because we had the camera in the boat at the bottom of the tree and whatever. But what ensued after that was about I think there was four or five different bucks in that on that ridge and in that immediate area, all vying for that dough, and a lot of those satellite bucks, you know, the younger bucks that didn't have the dough. They were rubbing, scraping, sparring, doing all sorts of aggressive behavior in and around where that buck had the dough. And I think that's where a lot of that was that fresh scraping activity had come from. But that's the sign that we set up on in that particular instance to get on that that scenario, we've also just went been gone in through the woods and literally just ran into a dough in a buck and jumped up and literally had the buck that was with the dough at like separate them. The buck that was with the dough come back through there within fifteen minutes looking for her blowing. I mean, he was alert, he knew we were in there, but he lost her when we bumped into him, and he was bound and determined to find her again. And the next day in that same spot, just a little bit deeper, it was just total chaos because you know, we bumped them and she went probably to three yards, stopped, settled down and didn't leave the area completely. And that's not always the case. I mean, it can it can change, like I said, very very quickly. But if you're if you're just moving around with your eyes up and you're looking or that out in front of you, um and then reacting to it as you as you run into deer like that, like heading in deeper after him, I think you're gonna get onto more action especially in a short time frame. Yeah, Greg, would you would you add anything to that or bramping anything different? I'd say Aaron hit it pretty well, I would. It seems like there's certain areas where we tend to find bucks with the hot dough, and it seems to revolve around some kind of physical barrier water. A lot of times, if you have water in near area, whether it be a lake or a river, um, you know, sometimes you see him pushed up against a county road or something like that. It just seems like like Aaron's referring to driving around or walking around until you find the action. A lot of times it's just simply driving around and checking out this public land and then you just see the action from the road. You know. Last year, I think in one particular day, Aaron and I drove around in the morning. It was a dead calm morning, found a buck that had a multiple box that had a hot dough pushed up against the county road and we try to sneak in on them and UH. And then later that afternoon we set up in a spot and UH had a big nine point or that had a dope pushed up against you know, a small pond or a small lake, so it just seems to be there. There was some commonality. And in those areas where uh, you know, buck bull try to push a hot dough to to get away from all the other bucks. And you know, if you can find that kind of scenario, find that situation and and like Aaron said, a lot of times the buck just they have their guard down, They're more focused on the dough and it's a great time to you know, to sneak in and and get a shot or call to him, decoy to them. You know, Zack had an incredible serious months along the river bottom last year where there was bucks that had dough is pushed up against the river. So yeah, I guess that's what I would add to it, to look for those kinds of spots. How do you hold on star? One second? I got dog issue going on in the other room, the joys of coard in this at home. Um, okay, hopefully I'll get dealt with here on a second. Okay, that's good. Okay, So what I'm trying to say here, it's so you mentioned Aaron that sometimes you're gonna do what we just talked about. We're gonna search out these hot spots search out this activity. But then there is this other type of run hunting that you described that a lot of people know, which is find that really good area and and hunker down and waited out. Um, do you ever still do that now? Or is it is it always now? Just seek out the hot stuff, move, move, move, or is there a time when you know that, Hey, you know what, this is such a good funnel. Uh, we need to put two days here straight and just see what happens. Is that something that it still happens for you? Yes, It all depends on the scenario. Say, for example, we only have a weekend to hunt a property and we don't have a lot of sort of backup plans in the area. Maybe it's a fairly small property public or private, and we only have a weekend to hunt it. Um, and there's there's one really good spot in the middle of that thing that can cover any crossing action, you might just be best off to sit there. But if if the scenario is opposite, where you have lots of other options, and say a big piece five thousand acres or something, the public land where you've got multiple betting areas, probably multiple mature bucks living in and around that area. Um, it may serve you best to get out and move and just keep up with the deer. So it kind of it all. It all just depends on your your situations. I mean, if I was hunting my my family farm in Missouri, for example, it's a hundred acres and that's the only place I was hunting for the whole weekend, I would probably be more conservative and try to get in there and sit the best funnels that I knew about all day and expect to to see a buck at some point in that time frame because you just don't have a lot of room to work with. But if if it's the opposite of that, then where you can really get out and cover some ground, like Greg said, either from the truck or our boots on the ground, then then being aggressive and moving around to find them maybe a good option. I'm not saying one or the other is is necessarily better, but I do I do think that there are certain situations where one or the other may may be more effective. Um, I guess it. When you're talking about specifics, one or the other could be more effective. When you're talking about general advice, either one can work. That makes sense. That makes sense, So let's let's break down some of the general types of places you guys will look at as a potential rut spot, because I know a lot is going to depend on what we discussed, the sign and actually seeing deer when you're out there scouting and stuff. But there are some general types of areas that people like to think about during the rut and maybe those are starting points for you. Of course, people talk about funnels pinch points all the time, UM on public land and the kind of stuff you guys are doing. If you are gonna go check out one of these spots or set up on one of these spots, what are the types of funnels or pinch points that you've found you know are the most effective or or worth given that extra time. Is there anything are that you've come to really like? UM? I know you guys have talked about different thermal hubs and things like that, where ridges come down. UM, anything stand out there that's worth covering on regardless of the rain, I would say any any sort of thick transitional area between betting areas would grab our attention. UM. In the in the case of the thermal hub, if you're hunting in hill country and a bunch of ridges dumped down like uh, you know, spokes on a bicycle wheel into a hub that's going where that hub is is going to connect a bunch of those ridges where does are likely betting. So therefore you're gonna get a lot of that crossing travel from one bedding ridge to the next bedding ridge in the hub. That's why we like setting up in the hub. Um, if you're but there's lots of other scenarios, terrain types and whatnot. You know, if you're in if you're in a swamp or something, for example, and you have to two marshes with deer bedding in it, and then maybe a thin strip of timber that's connecting the two of those that's back there. It's remote, it's away from people. I would concentrate on that. I don't. I would say that as a as general advice would go. We we're looking more for either an overlooked funnel between betting areas or remote funnel between betting areas more so than a funnel between like betting and feeding. So so the remote aspect is pretty easy to figure out. You know, you can you can find something that's the hardest to get to or the furthest from a parking, a lot er from a road. But what about the overlooked stuff? What's like, how do you pinpoint or how are you when you're looking at a map or you're scouting out there on the ground and you're trying to figure this stuff out and you're thinking, ma'am, would this spot be worth hitting up even though it seems kind of stupid? How do you think through that? What are some examples of spots like that that that you would deem overlooked but still worthwhile? Uh? Yeah, it's it comes down to looking at the whole picture a lot of times, not just the public area that you have to hunt, or the or the particular private area that you have to hunt. Like take on x or Google Earth or whatever mapping software that you have, and just turn off all the layers as far as like the boundaries go and just look at the overall scope of the area, like where are you you're going to bed within a square mile? Let's say, just use that as an example, and then you'll start to be able to connect the dots between these properties, and all of a sudden you're gonna end up with a lot of these overlooked funnels that are right next to the stupid road. Um where dear crossing you know, I mean, I'll give you an example in Michigan. We were there hunting early October last year, but we found a heck of a good crossing between betting areas. One betting area was across the road on private land where we could not hunt. One betting area was a thick, nasty tangle in an old overgrown apple orchard on the public land. But it was right next to the road, I mean sixty yards from it, and people were literally driving by that apple orchard to park about a half mile in in that public area and then go on back, and nobody was hunting that little apple orchard. Well, you could see rubs coming out of the thing right on the road, and we cut big tracks coming out of it on the of on the gravel that we're heading from the private land betting area to the old overgrown apple orchard betting area on the public land. So in that situation, in the rut, we'd set up right and I mean real close to the road as close as legally possible that to intercept that line and travel between those two. Obviously we can't hunt privately inside. But because there's two betting areas right there, there's some sort of a funnel in between the two and it's really easy to see if you're if you don't have your blinders on, if you're looking at the whole picture within the area. And that's just one example of overlook spot right next to the road anyway. Yeah. I love the idea though, of of zooming out and turning off the layers and just looking at the big picture. I have to remind myself to do that every once in a while, and it it does make a huge difference. That is a really really good idea. Um, Greg, would you add anything on the the overlooked aspects of things how to find those spots. I was just going to refer to. Uh. Aaron mentioned the thermal hub and he he'd actually killed a buck just a hundred yards off the road a couple of years ago, and I think that's another good example of looking at the big picture. Um, Aaron, maybe you can elaborate on that. I mean, it's just it was basically a big wood scenario with that road running right through the center of it. But you killed that buck literally after he crossed the road. Yeah, it was. It was in a thermal hub about a hundred yards off the road, um, and there was four ridges on the public land side that all dumped into that hub. There was two ridges across the road on the private land side that dumped in right there. So that's what that's where the movement was coming from. It could come from any one of those six ridges, two of them on private, four of them on public, but the hub just happened to be on the public side, and it was right there, right on top of on of the road where you could easily scout it. I mean we we literally just jumped out of the truck and walked like forty yards and you can check and see if the scrapes are opened up in that hub to know if box you're using it or not in late October, and then you know that that's probably going to be a travel corridor in in the rut, you know, as it progresses on. Yeah, I just think that's a good example of how people made you just feel like us too close to the road. But if you look at a big picture and say eliminate that road, you know from your mind and thinking that you know, just do you aren't gonna be right there. You know, it's it's a perfect topographical situation, like you described that hub and all that, all those ridges coming together. Yeah, and there's some traffic on the road. I mean there's people driving up and down it occasionally. But you know, we sat in that stand and stared at that road for three hours that morning. We had one truck drive in and drive out, and within a minute we killed a buck. We literally sat there for three hours, genc anything, and then I looked up and here comes a buck walking across the road from the private it is, to the hub on the public side and walked rounderneath us, and there was another buck right behind him. You know, thirty seconds later that if we would have been paying attention to tape, could have shot. But we were stoked after we killed this thing. So um yeah, I mean those things are crossing it so quick, Like we saw that one truck in there in three hours time. Those deer are not concerned with that at all. They're not They're not thinking about that. You know, if it was different and there was constant traffic in there, it might it might change it a little bit, but I don't think so. They don't perceive that road is a threat. Um. You know, unless people were parking right there and going in and hunting them right there actively, then that would be different. But the parking lot is three hundred yards on past that, you know, and they avoid that area for sure, But that's because that's where people are parked and where they're that human sin is concentrated. You know, there's no human scent on that gravel road, just where people are driving over it. So of those thermal hubs, um, So just to recap for people that aren't familiar that this is the spot where multiple ridges dumped down into a little bit of a bottom where they all converge and then you have all these different trails coming and meeting in this crossing point in the middle. Um. Those are places that notoriously have a lot of sign a lot of activity, but also notoriously hard to hunt because when you're a bottom like that, you can have swirling winds, wonky stuff going on with that. How do you handle the wind in that kind of situation and how do you handle and shoes like a set up in there that minimizes the risk. Well, once again, it's all situational, and what I found in in that particular hub this was This would have been the second time I'd ever hunted it. The first time I hunted it, I hunted it with a ten twelve mile p hour wind and it was out of the northwest. I mean, it really didn't matter because you're at the bottom of a bowl. But with that wind speed up a little bit, we were getting bad swirling uh um, you know, and deer we're picking us off until right at last light on that day that we hunted, when the wind laid down and our scent was just kind of hanging in the air because you're down low at that point, you know. I mean, once a day winds drop off and you're in a low spot, you're really gonna get, you know, extremely low wind speeds down next to no wind, and it at dusk. We had a buck come by that night that didn't smell us. So the next year, going into it, we went in there of a morning with dead calm, high pressure conditions, so you know, one of those frosty mornings like we're gonna have in the Midwest tomorrow morning where it's gonna drop down in the high twenties. There's gonna be two wind frost for sure. Those types of mornings don't get picked off and almost you know, the majority of the scenarios until the day winds pick up. Like you can just you can get away with so much because your scent is not traveling very far. It's just hanging right there, either at stand height or it's just opting to the base of the tree. And that that was the case in the thermal hub in this particular instance. Now come come nine ten o'clock in the morning, when the day winds pick up, completely different scenario. You know, it depends on where you're set up in the hub. If you catch some sun on one of those ridges, you could get some thermal pool going up the side, which which could help, you know, have a more predicted wind flow. But more often than not, in those low spots like that, when the day winds pick up, it's over with because it's it just starts swirling too much. So, all things being equal, I know that, I know it's everything situation specific, especially with this kind of thing. But if if you had to average it out and you're looking at all the different places like this that you've hunted in the past, would you say more often you would air on hunting right in the bottom where the most where the most activities all convergently right in the bottom there, and hoping for a situation like you just described where it's calm and high pressure and you can get away with it. Or do you air on something it's a little bit higher up that maybe is a little bit safer from more wind directions, but you're not able to get as many shots. Is one of the other more common for you. I would say, potentially do both in the same day, on down low early until you're compromised with the wind speed, and then move up to a more conservative location, but you get more predictable wind. It's interesting to you. Um, what about you, Greg? Any thoughts on hubs like this? M M, not necessarily. I think Aaron hammered at home, Um, going back to that spot that that he'd killed his buck out of it. It's kind of funny. I I went back in that spot and in twenty nineteen, uh, to give it a try, similar kind of conditions, and uh, apparently some people had caught onto it because there was boot tracks in there and people have been hanging sent wicks and the scrapes right there, so's t see. Yeah, I mean that happens sometimes but yeah, when you see that, just time to move on and find somewhere else. Let's talk about that, which is dealing with hunting pressure during the rut, because there's there's obviously an impact from pressure at all times of the year. But how do you guys see it different during the rut? Do you worry about it less or do you worry about it just the same as if it was October one? October? Um, what are your thoughts there, Greg? Uh, we just we don't tend to worry about it. In fact, sometimes it works to our advantage. Sometimes it keeps us moving onto other spots and finding new and better locations or areas where there's dear Um, I'd say that we're pretty fortunate in Iowa. The hunting pressure is very low throughout the majority of the season other than you know, about November one through the twelve something like that first couple of weeks and then of course during the gun seasons. But during the first couple of weeks and umber, a lot of times we're gonna go hunt to different state. You know, well, I think like we're going to Tennessee or most of the guys are going to Tennessee here soon, So Um, yeah. I just in Iowa, where we spend most of our time hunting, there's just not a ton of hunting pressure. And again, if there is, you know, we're just we're moving on and finding a different spot. In fact, that's how I have some found some of the you know, the better spots that and had some really good encounters that way. Is the areas that I was going to go hunt, there was people in them, and I just kept on moving and and scouted areas where they're you know, look for access points where there just wasn't vehicles, and and that that happened back in and ended up having one of the best ruts that I've ever had as far as encountering bucks, just because I was forced to move on and find a new spot because the hunting pressure. What about you and what do you think about that? I would say in some instances, hunting pressure in an increase volume of it can actually help you get into more dear um because it forces deer in the pockets at that point. And we noticed this especially in the rut, because that's when the highest volume of hunter hunter show up. I mean, everybody takes their vacation the first week in November, UM, I shouldn't say everybody. A lot of people do. And if you are dry, if you sacrifice a couple of hunts during that time, say it's a Saturday or a Sunday and you got four or five days a hunt, I might just sacrifice a whole day of honey just to drive around and count the cars at different lots and walk around and look where different guys that you know where they're hunting at, and just start crossing off these big vast areas that are getting pressured. And there may be a couple of back corners of thick spots on that area of betting areas that were aware of that aren't touched. And usually if you go to those and there's nobody hunting them, they're just a complete circus in there with deer. We've had some just insane rut hunts. I'm talking you know, seeing fifteen to twenty bucks in one day in one betting area. This is in Iowa, UM, where some of this is happening, but we've seen the exact same scenario play out in other states as well. It's it just as it gets to be there, you have to spend more time scouting hunting pressure in some of those other states where you have higher volumes of hunting pressure. But by scouting for the pressure and then kind of finding that diamond, then the rough out there that's not getting hit, you're gonna you're really gonna find the deer then, because you may. Yet, you may find yourself in a situation, say it's November six or seventh or something. You may find yourself in a situation where there's multiple estrus does that have been pushed into one betting area. There will be bucks crawling over top of each other in that thing. If if you can find it, but you have to be moving around to find it. Talk to me about I was just gonna say, it seems like they keep coming back to being mobo and being uh, you know, being flexible, and it seems like just I don't know how many times like just moving on and uh and being more mobile, whether it be on foot or being a vehicle, has has paid off force. So and yeah, and that's again comes back to, yeah, hunting pressure, whether it be hunting pressure or um. Yeah, like Aaron said, it's just a lot of times if you know, you know, burn a day or two just scouting hunters essentially and then eventually finding those pockets a deer. Can you can you elaborate on Let's let's lay like a hypothetical scenario. Let's say maybe I traveled out of state. I'm gonna hunt somewhere. I've got a seven day rut vacation UM down in southern Ohio or Iowa or somewhere where there's a good amount of public land that I can get after. But there's gonna be other guys out there because it is earli ish November UM. And I've picked out a couple of spots on the map ahead of time that looked good, you know, these thermal hubspots you can easily pick out on a map, or some great pinch point or something that looks terrific. But you get in there and there's other tree stands or you saw boot tracks walking in and you realize, oh, I have to do this, I have to move on. As you just describe, Greg, can you like walk me through in detail what you're doing over the next four hours or eight hours after you've realized, okay, we need to find stuff because what we thought was the stuff is not, or there's other guys in there. I know, I know, you're gonna scout. But what I'm curious is, like, specifically, how are you doing this? Are you are you walking ten yards and stopping on glassing, and then walking ten yards and stopping and glassing, or are you covering ground until the next good looking spot in your map quickly? Um? You know which specific things matter more? Scrapes versus rubs, versus tracks versus tree stands, um, Like, give me the stupid level of detail on what you're November seven, rut scouting would look like after having a pressure impact making you move. And I don't know if either one of you wants to start, whoever's got up a strong idea. I'm curious, Greg, you want me to go or you want to go? Go ahead? All right? I would say it's pretty quick. We're moving fast. If we go into an area and the and it's just not there, it's not right. Too much pressure. We are either looking at playing B and playing bir play and C in the immediate area where we can walk to and check real quick. And when we're going, we're hauling the mail like we're not jogging through the woods, but we're walking fast and loud and whatever we're trying to get to the next betting area to see if there's pressure. But what it comes down to for me is efficiency more than anything. And that's going to come back to the situational deal. If if we go into a spot and there's pressure in the next betting area on that pieces a mile back further in, we might completely abandon that because it's gonna take us all day to go back in there and check that thing and then come back out. Um. I'm not saying that we're gonna do one or the other. This is just a hypothetical. If we can get in the truck and we can go and cover four or five spots in the amount of time that we can cover one on foot, we're gonna get in the truck and we're gonna we're gonna drive down the road to the next public area, hop out, run out there and check it as quickly as possible. And what we're doing when we go in there to check is is we're looking for everything that you just mentioned, Mark, We're going in there. We're looking for tree stands, looking for fresh limbs being cut, boot tracks, trucks parked on the road, um, any sort of hunter sign. On top of that, we're also looking for fresh deer sign We're looking for fresh rubs, We're looking for fresh scrapes, even in the middle of the rut, fresh tracks in any kind of wet soil that we can notice. Um even even doing some glassing in the early morning or the evening at from high points. But I would say through the course of the day. It it all comes down to efficiency, Like how many of these potential betting areas where there are deer especially does living can we get to in a given day. And there's there's there's really no messing around when when we're going and scouting those we're not we're not still hunting really in that scenario. We are just beat feeting to those spots, and you know, we might approach those with caution in the last couple of hundred yards, but before that we're just we're hauling and and a lot of times along the way we'll run into you know, mature buck lockdown with the dough or something right next to the road, and that may change the plans completely, but efficiency really matters during that time. I feel like, what would you add, Greg, I think, you know, if you can key in on a spot where there's high visibility. If you're really struggling, uh to find somewhere to get away from hunters, If you can find somewhere that you can just glass into, um, you can cover a lot of ground just visually. UM. You know, set up, you know, do an observation, sit and and then and move in beyond that or move on if you don't see anything. UM, I guess I'm going back to. Actually would have been about November five, November six, something like that. I had a situation where, you know, the spot that I wanted to go to, there was vehicles there, and then moved on to another area, UM where there was an access point where there's a parking lot that you know, you wouldn't really realize that it was a parking lot. It was kind of you had to go past somebody's house. It wasn't real obvious. So that was the first thing I was thinking, well, maybe maybe people don't realize you can go park back in here. And there was a bunch of uh, there was a good mix of cover. It was bought land, you know, crp patches of cotton wood regeneration and then it rolled up into hardwood timber. So there was a good mix of habitat, So it started to work my way into that. UM found rubs and scrapes right by the parking lot. There wasn't any you know, visible boot tracks, so I didn't have to go very far. I basically went to the first patch of bedding cover and found rubs and scrapes close to that. So I set up there for the evening, and you know, I saw a bunch of deer coming out of that that bedding cover. I think I saw like fifteen or sixteen deer that night something like that. It was a really good sit. Didn't see any mature bucks. But from there I just kept working that area basically just stage hunting my way in and worked in and around that area really throughout the rest of November. The rest throughout the rest of the middle part of November. Never killed a buck. Um I don't, I can't. It was like six or seven close calls that I had. It was just kind of crazy. One of those one of those seasons where you know, you just it was a great season as far as having encounters, but just didn't arrow a deer. But anyways, it was yeah, I guess that was one of the things I was looking at. It was you know, an overlooked parking area, and then an area that had fairly high visibility and uh and just you know, found the deer signed right away and just kept working working through it and never saw another hunter in there over the course of the of the run. I think that's something we ought to cover real quick, Greg in detail, is you didn't go very far in And that's something that we that happens to us. I would say often, not all the time, but we're we're constantly talking about remote areas trying to get away from people. But in many situations it pans out just like what Greg said. You might find a very small area that is overlooked. You pull in there, there's no vehicles, don't walk by fresh sign on your way in there, especially if you if there's a really good betting area, like a hundred yards from that thing, because if nobody has been in there within the last day or two, there's a high likelihood, especially if you're in high pressure area, that they've pushed deer into that bedding area. It doesn't matter if it's a mile back or a hundred yards. And that's a mistake that we used to make a lot was we would we were always stuck because it's publicly and hunting. We were always stuck in that mindset where it's like we've gotta go back, we've got to get as far as possible. But we've noticed that, you know, just trusting the sign more in the last couple of years, Like we said, fresh scrapes. And when we're talking about fresh sign, I mean it's signed that was laid down in the last day, the last day and a half, and we are looking for that stuff every single day of the season, including in the rut. You know, it's it's rained here in Missouri this week, for example, but Ted and I have been scouting throughout the week, not just for random scrapes, but for scrapes that have been worked in the rain or since the latest rain, and we haven't found very many of them. But it's like, you know, if you wake up in the morning it's been a downpour all night, you go out there and you start checking scrapes and you find one that was worked and you can visibly see like drieder that was turned up in the scrape. You know it was worked since that rain. So you're right on top of them at that point. I mean, you're you're just right on them. And that's another thing with tracks too. It's it's like the sharper the track is when you find it kind of depends on the you know, the soil that you're that you're finding in the grass or whatever. But if you really look in detail at the track itself, you can figure out if it was really fresh or if it's old. Same thing with like deer poop a lot of times. And like Greg was mentioning with the rubs earlier, with the bark land on top of freshly fallen leaves, I don't I don't really care during the rut if there's a rub there that was made in late September early October. But if there's a rub there that shining bleeding, like Greg said, like what Dan Impult refers, that's something you're gonna pay really close attention to. I mean literally, we've taken three steps a lot of times past that type of sign and bumped a giant buck because they're they're right on top of that fresh sign. And it's not that's not always the case, but fresh sign doesn't lie like that. I mean, we we've we've got into big bucks in areas where there's very very little fresh sign um or it was extremely difficult to see. But when you do find it, it doesn't lie there. They're right there and they've they are usually not too far. Now, what about a situation where you know, like like you guys are in most situations, at least in Iowa, is that you're you're looking for a mature buck, not just any buck. So when you're you're hitting this first hot sign and it's fresh, but it's not obvious big bucks on you're not seeing an obvious big buck track. You're not seeing a thigh sized rub. But there's a bunch of fresh scrapes, fresh rubs, but but you don't know what it is. Is that still gonna stop you or do you need some kind of confirmation that, yeah, big buck's been here here, because it's sometimes there's a difference between you know, where young buck is gonna cruise versus a big one. Yeah, And that's a great, great point um. The other day, for example, we were scouting. We found a fresh scrape amongst a pile of fresh rubs. But they were little bitty spindley rubs. They weren't worked real aggressively, and the fresh scrape was just pawed like one time, and it would you could tell it hadn't been worked aggressively. And this I would say, this is just general advice. I don't know that this is the case in every situation, so bear with me on it here. But um, for the most part, when a mature buck goes in there and works just scrape, especially this time of year, they are gonna work it pretty aggressively, you know. But with that said, I've seen a lot of them walk up to just the branch and work the laking branch and move on. However, aggressive rubbing, aggressive scraping, big tracks, that tends to lend itself to a bigger animal some kind, you know. I mean, it could be it depends on your area that you're hunting to. You know, it could be a three year old buck in Missouri or in Michigan or something like that where that's you know, one of the older bucks in the area that's that's leaving that sign. But we've certainly seen that in Missouri this week, we're hunting a low density area all timber um basically just acorn fat deer, and we ran into that the other day where there was there were several scrapes but they were not aggressive. It was the same spot you and Ted hunted uh in September greg where there's like six seven scrapes. There's lots of rubs, but there was there was very little aggressive fresh signing within that area and all we saw was was little year and a half old bucks and no does so the type of sign, like you mentioned mark does matter if if that's what you're after is a mature buck. Um, yeah, I would go ahead. Sorry, I was just gonna say, yeah, I mean, going back to that sign I found yesterday morning, going in, it was like pretty aggressive rubbing. There were saplings that were broken over. I mean just the bark was shredded. Uh. There was five or six fresh scrapes, well worked scrapes there. And then yeah, then we called that buck up out of that draw basically where all that sign was laid down. So that that to me was a good indication that there was some kind of older age class buck in that area with an aggressive, you know it seemingly aggressive demeanor. And you know, sure enough that rattling sequence brought him up out of the drawal and he came right to the decoy. So that was that was one of those situations where you know, it all all came together nicely and we assumed there was a good one in that area. But I guess for us, you know, we're not really worried about shooting a you know, five year old buck in Iowa. You know, a nice three or four year old buck. Um good for us. I mean we're not We're just not super picky. But it's nice when you get those get those older bucks, especially the like want. Once you start talking about getting up in in five year old and older bucks, those are anomalies in in whatever environment you hunt in, including Iowa, unless you're on some big, big private manage tracked. I mean, you almost have to hunt those deer specifically you know where you're well I shouldn't say that you have to, but a five year old buck is gonna leave similar signed to a to you know it charged up three year old buck. Yeah. A lot of times you might have a hundred fifty inch wide three year old buck that's just tearing up the woods, you know, but in a lot of areas that's gonna get people pretty fired up, including me, regardless of regardless of where it is. So um, yeah, I think what you just said there makes a lot of sense, Greg, because that buck that we killed a couple of weeks ago that was in a that was in a similar scenario, even though it's in mid October, and this was an area that had very little deer sign in it, but the little bit of deer sign that was there was big sign. Like we found just two rubs and no scrapes leading into this bedding area, but both the rubs were super fresh and they were huge and aggressive rubs. And then we went in there the next day and uh killed the mature buck and that was the only deer that we saw in there. So you know, if that's what you're after, is a mature buck for your area, you might not run into a lot of that type of sign. But I mean several times where we're hunting low density areas, we might just find one or two sets of big fresh tracks coming in and out of a bedding area, especially if you find them going in and coming out and got on a mature in him on a mature buck in that same area. You talked about betting areas a handful of times here when you're talking about the specific kind of scouting you would do. You mentioned you're gonna carry the mail until you get to that next betting area, and then you'll slow down and focus on that, and then you want to hit the next betting area. UM. And I know that focusing on betting is something you guys do religiously in a lot of cases. And you've talked in the past a lot about buck betting areas and zeroing in on those during certain parts of the year. UM. Do you care about quote unquote buck betting at all during the rut or is it shifted to dough betting areas at this point or or if not, what's the mix? I would say any sort of betting area, UM, is important during during the rod because even the spots with just does and little bucks in it all of October, all that could change in in the matter of a few hours in the rud. I mean, uh, hot dog gets in there, Sure buck is going to be in there and honor in you know, fairly quickly. And if you can somehow manage to stay with that hot dough through her breeding cycle, you're going to see all the whole gamut, you know, as far as the hierarchy of bucks in that area. We've seen that over and over again. It's like, man, when when you were when you founder, doesn't matter if it's forty yards from the car, they're all gonna be there sooner or later, or they're gonna push her out of there into the next spot, and they're all gonna be there and that spot until they drop her and then they're gonna go to cruising. But uh, that's one thing I'll say about. You know, big mature bucks, especially dominant bucks in an area, they just in a higher deer ncy area, they don't see a cruise as much like the younger bucks will because they you know, they can't go in there and and push the big guy off the dough. But those big mature bucks, they there's so many deer in some of those areas. If you think about Michigan or Pennsylvania where we just came from, there are so many doughs in those areas, and mature buck doesn't need to cruise until the end of the rut. I mean, for the most part, they don't. They're they're gonna bounce from you know, the first dough that's in heat to the next dough that's in heat, and they're gonna kick whatever small buck off of her that they have to when she comes in, and if she's not quite in yet, they're gonna hang back and stay with her in that general area. I mean, they might not be right on top of her, but they're gonna be in that general area until she does come in, and then they'll come in here and kick those little bucks off. So so let's let's paint a hypothetical scenare like that. Let's say you can see into a betting area. Maybe it's like just tall, thick brushy grass and bushes and stuff like that, and for whatever reason, you were hunting kind of outside of it, and you could see into it, and you see a mature buck bumping a doll round. But he's it's not just one, but he's he's getting these checking does checking a family group, and it's getting there. But maybe it's not quite to the stage where he's locked on dogginger for five yards um, but to your point, you know, he's it's getting close. You're in that situation, do you move in as tight as you can on a downward edge where you can safely, you know, sit and wait around for a while and just say okay, you know, over the next day or two, one of these does has gotta pop He's in here, this is a spot of interest. He's going to pass theeger eventually, or are you gonna zero in on exactly the tree you saw him go running by that's right in the middle, and try to dive in there to kill him the next morning exactly you know which you saw. I mean, how much do you chase specific observations versus zones? Mm hmm. That probably depends on the situation, but I would I would air more on the side of what Greg was talking about while ago when it comes to stage honey, m if I if I was in an area and that kind of goes back, that's kind of like how that hunt played out last year, Gregg with that decoy buck on that little piece of walk in m We observed a bunch of doughs in there and amature buck in that scenario, and we basically just chipped away at that area for about three days until we got a shot. If you're bowl hunting, there's a lot of luck involved. I mean, especially in the rut, Like you gotta get those suckers within twenty five yards somehow or another. In their movements can be somewhat unpredictable. But if you do see that scenario that you're talking about, Mark, I would say move in tighter on the next sit when permitting, maybe not on the exact spot, um, but somewhere in and around that thing, because that buck isn't gonna move off very far, especially if there's a dough that you think is getting ready to come in, or there's a big group of dose in there. In general, like just Dan with those does and being in that area is gonna put you in the game. So I would say stay right in there with him. I mean, I'd be aggressive enough to getting tired enough to that vetting area to shoot into the edge of it where you could kill a buck if he was cruising down on the downland side or whatever. Um. I wouldn't sit back and just continue continuously observed that. Once I saw that movement, I would dive in there, but then I would stay hunt around it, you know, in different in different spots, until you know eventually they moved out of there or shot a buck. We would you say, Greg, yeah, I totally agree. And then also you know with that picture that you just painted, kind of going back to the decoys, you know, if possible you know, just using a decoy in that kind of scenario, you know, if if it makes sense. And Aaron's example of the decoy buck he killed last year, he was basically stage hunting that that property in but was using a decoy the entire time, and that eventually, you know, was how he killed. The buck rattled, you know, we saw the buck rattled and then what several minutes later the buck comes up over the horizon is right in your face. Yeah, And that morning we saw like how many different bucks in there on those doughs. I don't even know it was. There was there was a pile of him. I mean, there was a there was a big group, a family group of dose that was living in this tiny, tiny bedding area and this very very small, overlooked piece of walking hunting land, and for whatever reason, it was just off to the side. I mean, there's several larger pieces of public ground that are nearby. There are several thousand acres in size, and this one pieces like a couple hundred acres and it's mostly just grass with a few little draws in there. But there's a there's a couple of family groups of dos living in those draws and when one or more of those does is in heat or close to going in heat, that's when all the bucks in the area show up right there. And that's what we had in that scenario. We we got to that point by hunting the bigger public pieces and then running in the hunting pressure as we were talking about earlier, and eventually got sick of running in the hunter so we bounced around until we found that UM. But yeah, once we found it, it was just a stage deal. It took three days before we got our shot UM, but it was just bouncing in there, moving in a little bit at a time. I mean, I'm gonna say on that three acres there was three general betting draws in it. We're do you We're spending their time during the day, So we hunted. We hunted observation the first night, gathered data on all those draws from from watching does and bucks coming out of them. Second day we hunted draw number one. Second evening we hunted draw number two. Third morning we hunted draw number three, killed a black. Can you can you illustrate what you were thinking about and looking at when you chose the specific re on let's say you're day two or day three hunt as you so you you hung out in the edge and observed, but then in day two or three you're making a specific move to hit one of these draws. And and I think something that a lot of people struggle with is they know the general kind of spot that should be looking for, but it's it's kind of next level to be able to get to the point where you know how to pick the spot within the spot. Um can you describe if you recall um or make it up hypothetical or whatever, But the kinds of stuff that you would be specifically looking at, thinking about as you're picking the exact spot to hunt, the tree, the location that's going to make this work. I think that kind of illustration would help it kind of sink home for people. Well, when scouting or observing, you're watching these deer come out of these things, like that first evening when we observe dear coming out of those draws and sort of moving across that area. We're watching where those trails are, which side of the draw they're coming out of, you know, and or crossing into, and then making a game plan to set up on that trail the next morning. But in the dark when we crept in there that morning. We found a fresh scrape on the tip of the draw as we were moving up there, so we didn't even get to the trail where we saw the deer come out the evening before. We just set up over top of that scrape at the first available tree. In fact, there was actually an old tree stand in the tree um where somebody had hunted in the past, but they hadn't hunted it recently, so uh, in this particular instance, it was just observing movement and then going in and sitting on that depending on the wind, you know, I obviously don't want to set up on that trail with my wind blowing straight into it. I want to set up somewhere across from it where the wind is blown away from that predicted movement that we had that we had saw the night before. And there's I guess there's probably no real there were. There was just a few available trees in that draw to get into, and since that was only our second hunt into the area, I still wanted to be in a tree if I could, so that I could observe while I was hunting that that specific movement. Does that make sense, like I'm hunting the I'm hunting that twenty yard trail coming out of that draw that we watched her come out of the evening before. But I'm also getting in one of the few trees in there where I can observe across that most of that property. So you're you're in position to kill, but you're also gathering data from observing at that time too, At this time of year started start to cut off aaron. But at this time of year, when you're in the rut and you're you're doing something like what you just described, and you're trying to pick the tree, and you've got a tree that's in the perfect spot for the things you just described, you can observe, but you're also within range of the trail you want to be hunting, and the winds really good there. You've got that tree, but it's lousy for cover. It's a bean pole. Would you pick that one? Or would you pick the tree that's subpar location? Maybe you have to sacrifice on one of those three factors that just described site or shooting range or wind. But it's a big, old, gnarly, multi branched oak that you would be invisible and you can get away with murder um which would you choose or what would you be thinking about when trying to make that decision. Uh, it kind of depends on the specific conditions that day, you know, if it's But for the most part, we want to be able to shoot that trail. Um, because if you're sixty yards away in the perfect tree and a buck walks down that trail, your SLLL unless you have a decoy or something like what Greg's talking about, which is what we did burning into play on this particular hunt. Uh. Some as I said, and as you're alluding to, there wasn't a lot of good trees in there, so in order for us to place the deer in front of our stand, we had to use calling in a decoy. But in other types of scenarios, maybe you're not hunting an open scenario and it's thicker, or you're you're in big woods or something like that where deer can't see a decoy from a distance, I would I would err on the side of hunting right over the trail, even if the trees a bean pole. I mean, maybe a ground setup is better there where you can get more covered. Um. The main thing is you don't you either want to be able to place that deer in front of you with the use of a decoy you're calling or whatever, or you gotta set up where the deer is crossing through within bow range, because if you don't do either one of those things and a deer walks down that trail, you're not gonna be able to get a shot at him. And I feel like your your first time in that spot is going to be the time when you when you get your chance. Yeah, and would you agree that you probably can get away with a little bit more are in the rut to as far as it's you know that buck hopefully has other things on his mind other than picking you out of a tree. He might be cruising through fast or nose to the ground, that kind of thing too. I would say it depends on this scenario though. If you're hunting the edge of a betting area with a lot of deer in it and a lot of doughs, specifically like say you're hunting Michigan or p A where you've got lots of doughs and they are used to looking up in trees and hunters, um, you're gonna have to be real careful with that. But if you're in a scenario like where I'm talking about UM, in this particular example, there's not high deer density overall, UM, And in that scenario, you're likely gonna see, you know, a couple of deer on your set, and one of them might be a buck that you want to shoot. So I'm willing to sacrifice that cover in order to get the shot. But if I'm inna If I'm in a scenario, say it's an evening hunt in a bunch of deer leaving a betting area and they're heading to a food source, a bunch of doughs specifically, maybe it's the big getting or the end of the rut, and it's like like that scenario you're talking about earlier where they haven't popped yet. They are, they're close, but they're not quite in heat yet. Well, big boy is gonna lay back behind them and come out after they've all went through the danger zone outside betting area, you know how they do so, and that's it. In that situation, you've got a prioritized cover. Otherwise a mature does is going to walk through there and bust you, and that's gonna be the end of your night. UM. So yeah, it all goes back to the situation, but if possible, I'm trying to get hidden where I can shoot that trail. Yeah, I'm I'm living the second scenario you described right now, and that I'm I'm chasing the buck and there's ten million dolls around here and anytime you want to get into the good stuff where I know this buck is spending time where I've had a couple of observations, it's just nearly impossible to it away with not having a dough go down whin do you eventually because they're just criss crossing. So it's this constant battle between wanting to get to where you need to be to shoot the buck while also figuring out how to do that without other deer figuring you out. And that's a tight that's a tight rope back. That's that's it's very tough and honestly, like, I'm not in your situation, so I couldn't even begin to tell you what to do. But I mean a wet, windy day of any kind where you can slide in the back door there is your is your friend, and those types of scenarios what we've found. Anyway, it's like, man, when when it's wet and windy. Those deer you can just get away with murder, meaning walk right by him in the dark. As long as the wind is in your favor, you can. You can walk by a lot of deer without spooking them. But I mean, if it's gonna be like it is tomorrow morning, where it's frosty and crunchy and dead calm, extremely difficult, not the day. Yeah, I've been I've been dying for a nice, crisp, consistent wind. The last couple of days. I've been hunting a spot where that description I just gave you, where there's all these doughs and this this buckum after I'm having these nights where as it often does, where the winds will die down towards the end of evening. But it's been extreme. It's gone from a nice, good wind to zero at the end. And then I've had I've been in a situation where I'm not getting the high pressure thermal's lifting up or anything. It's just pooling around the bottom and little swirls and stuff. And you know, even when I went in thinking that wind was gonna be great, when you've got ten fifteen does coming from different directions and if one gets squirrel in every single damn one of these deer looks in every tree they walk past, and then you just know the jig is up again. Um It's it's interesting, that's for sure. But but Greg, before we move on, I want to make sure to get your thoughts on um on we were just talking about there with Aaron, as far as some of the detail stuff you would look at when trying to pick the spot within the spot um or picking the right tree, anything else that you do or think about that we didn't cover there yet. Not really I would, I guess I would mention that I think you can get away with more, especially like in small trees, if you're hunting out of a tree saddle, um or even even hunting off the ground like we've just gotten away with was set ups that I think a lot of people just you know, I wouldn't think it's possible. I just wouldn't think to do it. And tree saddles are amazing, especially with one person. With two people gets a little bit tough. But man, if you got a trunk that you know, just you know, barely big enough to hide behind, or even if you can, you know, if it's not if you can rotate your right way around the tree. Is you know, deer coming in to hide your profile. Um, yeah, I think that's a great way to to get in in close to those situations. Or just hunting off the ground. Um, you know, if it's legal where where you're at, the build up, a little bit of a ground blind, get some front cover, get some back cover. You know, we've I don't know how many times we've been in the situations where you know, we've ended up shooting a deer because we had to get to a certain spot and we just had to make it work. And a lot of times it's resorted to hunting off the ground or or you know, I'm just making do with with what you have, and especially with like with the saddles are an advantage if you can hide behind the trunk of a small tree. Yeah, all right, what about this scenario because I hunt out of a saddle to love him, as these guys describe, it gives you a lot of benefits. But one of the things I've wondered, so imagine you're in a situation where you can't use the trunk to hide you, so the deer going to be exposed to you to some degree. Um, And I know this can depend on how many branches and everything and the cover in the tree. But what something I've wondered is when you've got that big, old, mature dell that's gonna walk by you, and you know, all right, this is the moment of truth. You know it's coming up. She's gonna come by close, and you need to do you know where you're trying to become invisible? Um? Do you do you try to stand as tight to the tree trunk as possible and try blending with a trunk or do you lean back and try to have that kind of angle position like a true branch coming up? Um? Do you know what I mean? Oh? Yeah, back what you mean? That's that's a good question. I guess I find myself just trying to hide, hide tight to the trunk of the tree. That's usually what I do. But I wonder if maybe something yeah, just just just be the branch. What do you think? Yeah? Another thing that the ground uh helps with the ground set up in that scenario is you you can move a lot quicker and easier. So say, say you're not hunting over a food plotter directly over a food source, but you're hunting. That transition coming out of bedding from betting to food and you have mature does come by an hour and a half before dark. If you can lay back sixty seventy yards away from that trail, you know, while those doughs are coming by, wait for the doughs to move by, and then make you know, a quiet but quick effort to get up there within twenty yards of that trail to shoot the deer that's gonna come last. After that. Sometimes you can have luck doing that as well. You know what. That's where the ground will give you the advantage over being in a tree, because once you're up there, you know that is that is one good thing I will say about the saddles is I mean, we just did that a couple, you know, last week or whatever. We observed from the tree. Um saw the buck moving fifty yards away and then got down out of the tree and then moved to get in position to kill him within ten minutes or whatever. So it's it's definitely doable, um. And it just depends on the situation that you're in. If you're hunting a food pot or something like that, though, I mean, uh, or an area where deer congregating the last light. Then you obviously can't get away with that. But just thought, I guess, yeah, I think overcoming those mental blocks that you can't get down and go after a deer. I mean, you go back. It's one the eighteen, and that's what Jake and Ted did. Ted shot the buck of a lifetime by seeing bucks cruising on the trail. They were sixty seven yards away. However, far got down in You know when the last half hour of the of the hunt made a quick grown blind and this buck comes by on the same trail and he you shoot him at twenty yards. Same thing the other day. You know a lot of people would think, oh, I can't get down the buck is there's fifty yards just over the ridge. I can't get down. But you know he ends up killing a great buck by being smart and aggressive at the same time. Yeah, man, that was a great buck. Aaron. I gotta ask THEO did you check his ears and eyes? Are you sure you didn't have like some serious damage to some of those senses. I couldn't believe. I believe that could not hear me. I was grinding as loud as I could, And I mean some people were saying that they thought that he heard it and picked up his head a few times. Um, and he just didn't care, which might have been the case. Um, I don't know. I mean, his senses were working fairly well because we spooked the crap out of me the day before that. But he definitely he did have like a cataract or something in his right eye. His right eye looked funky, and his left eye looked fine, um, but his right eye did look funky. And in the footage, it looks like I'm just in the wide open woods where I shoot him. But but we were actually up in this big dead fall with a bunch of back cover, you know, in shadows and stuff. So that's I think that is another reason why he couldn't see us, you know, and just standing there. Obviously you're worse worth sitting in that big deadfall pointing out towards the deer. But we probably should have thrown back to the dead fall where you could see where we were actually hit. Um. It was just a huge, you know, horizontal trunk that was coming over there. It was it was perfect little set up for on the ground. Yeah, and that worked out perfect, that's for sure. That's what I like about hunting out of the tree and the ground. I mean, any it's just hunting, um uh, regardless of how you do it, whether you dig a freaking hole in the ground, or you're hunting out of them out of an elevated box, blind or whatever. I mean, it doesn't matter. The main thing, though, is is being able to get close enough to deer to shoot him with a bow. If you're not close enough, then you're not gonna get a chance. And the tree helps tremendously in that hunt, particularly because once we got to the ground, we couldn't even see in the betting area where he was at, so you know, we were able to observe in there. Like we've been talking about throughout this uh podcast, is like when you can get up high and you can observe a great distance and observe movement of what the deer doing right now, you can gain a ton of information and then get down and go get them. So here's another scenario, and it's probably gonna be pretty pretty similar to some of the things you guys described, but I just want to see if this unique situation a cused any other ideas. UM. We talked a little bit about Uh, if we saw a buck that was kind of bumping some doughs around, but they weren't quite ready yet, And what you guys do. What about the situation that a lot of guys might see on the seventh of November or fifteen November, which is they see a buck locked on a dough and he sees, you know, push that dough into a little pocket of cover and they're in there, and it's ten o'clock in the morning. Um, can you walk me through what you're thinking about in that situation? I know they're right, is it windy, is it rainy? Could you make a move or do you sneak in later? I mean, I know there's a lot of situations specific stuff, but but Aaron, maybe walk me through a few of your thoughts when you see that and and what options might you consider on the table for what to do next. We've been in that scenario before. Haven we dragged for about four one day? Yeah? Um, I would I would say, as long as you don't scoop the dough, you can get away with just about anything. Um that that mature buck, which he's in heat, he is not gonna leave her. I mean you can, like I said, Zach practically walked up to one and shot at New York. I mean literally just on a walking path and the thing, you know, was just half dumb. That's just the way they act when they're with with the dough. But like Greg alluded to earlier, they all push them up in those spots that are just funky and weird. And that's why people struggle, I think with the lockdown, and I've struggled with it for many, many years, is because we're hunting the same old spots, you know, a funnel or whatever, back where we've seen deer through October and early November, expecting to see the big guy when he's got that dough sequestered off somewhere in a tiny little thick pocket of brush or a fence row or a waterway or like up against a river or railroad tracks whatever. Um, he's got her pushed out there away from the other deer because they're trying to breed and he's trying to fend off those other bucks. So in that scenario, I think it's best to just inch in there and get get the win right, and get right in there as close as you possibly can without spooking the dough and if you can use decoys and in calling, that can work extremely well too. But you've got to get within their bubble. It's like you have to You've got to get within you know, a hundred yards of that thing to challenge him enough to come over there and run you off unless you lose this track of the dough, which has happened to us in the past before, and they've come, you know, stiff legged, walking all the way across the field to you. So it kind of depends on the scenario. But the main thing is just to stay with them as long as you can, and you and look for your opportunity to get in there. Say, for instance, you're watching him and watching him and watching them for two hundred yards and they both lay down in the day winds pick up. Well, there's your there's your chance. Now maybe you can start to crawl in there and get tighter. The main thing is, though, don't spook the dough. You spook her, then you're gonna start all over it again. And they may only run three d yards and then go right back to what they were doing. But you can get away with him staring a hole right through you. But once she figures you out, Um, he's gonna go with her. Now. A lot of times these bucks will hook up with the dough and you know, spend a couple of days with her and and be on her side at all times. How long will you sit on a spot like that? So let's say you see this, you major move, but it didn't pan out, and the dough lad the buck a different direction and you weren't able to get on them. Would you be set up right in there the same thing next morning, or set up on the movement you saw them take out of there? How would you think about the next the next two or thirty or six hours. I think Jake and Ted had a good example of that last year. They spooked a buck in a dough that or a buck had a dope pined up against the lake and they were going in by. They spooked the deer and you know, they lost sight of the deer, but they, you know, Jake and Ted got to the point where they had spooked him and basically came up with a plan. They figured, what's the next you know, best block of cover where these deer are going to be? And they looped around and then they may have made a couple of different setups, but they worked their way in towards where they figured the deer would be, and uh, just we're doing calling sequences and kept, you know, getting closer and closer, and like Aaron referred to, getting into that bubble. Now they granted they couldn't see the deer, but they were calling into these pockets where they assumed the deer were, and eventually they just the buck left the doll and came up out of there after they had done a calling sequence and came into ten yards and Ted unfortunately, um got a little buck fever or target panic or whatever it was. He shot in front of the deer. But I mean it was it was just an awesome hunt where maybe a lot of people think I spooked the deer, you know, it's over, Maybe I can just come back in here and setting here tomorrow. But those guys went in the direction of those deer, kept after him, kept calling and just working their way in and eventually Ted was, you know, had a had a hunt of a lifetime with this giant eight point at ten yards. It's just well that's what you and I did a couple of years ago to Greg and in that that seedar thicket I mean we just we saw that buck. He saw us. The buck did from forty yards away, but we crouched down immediately, and we're like, the only reason why he could be standing there and not spooked is he's got to have a dough, you know, because why else would a mature buck be standing there dumb looking at you in in what's almost the wide open, you know, I mean a chess high grass. But we're just walking up the access path, you know, a couple hundred yards in the car, and just look up in this thing is just staring right at us. So we looped around, got to win in our favor, and then crept into that little cedar thicket that he was in. And that's exactly what we did. Greg. We've crept in there, called snort, we'se can branches everything, and then we moved up a hunter yards did it again, I think like the third time we did it. We heard that buck snort. We's back at us, and and then what commenced was a four and a half hour just game a cat and mouse in there with him. As he's pushing this dough around. Greg was at full drawing the thing like four different times and just couldn't get a shot through that thick brush. Um decoy would have been game change or even just like a change, just something visual. Absolutely, so go ahead, go ahead. I was just gonna say, those hunts are so fun, like like Aaron to A lot of people struggle with lockdown, and we did for a long time too, but it just seems like the past few years, you know, as we've adopted a little bit more aggressive hunting strategy, that all of a sudden we're having a lot of fun with these these kinds of scenarios where you're working in on a buck and you know, trying to decoy men call him in and just get in his bubble and and get him mad enough to come out and come to you. It's it's a lot of fun. But back to what you kind of initially we're talking about their mark, Like if you if you were to go at leave from an evening hunt where you saw that, where you saw a mature buck with the dough, I would say, depending on the scenario that the next morning, I tried to get in there where where you could observe at first light, somewhere where you could see down in there to where they were at and if you can't do that, then I'd probably go about it just like the way that we're talking right now. Just creep in there, maybe sit for twenty minutes, watch you know what you can see, call a little bit, keep the wind in your favor until you find them, um and and just continually move with them until you're in there, right there, in there kitchen with them. But your assumption would be that your assumption would be that they'd be back in there the next day. Right you're assuming that that Doe lives somewhere around there and she's coming back, and that Buck's going to be there too, And that's what I want to assume there gonna be that that would be my first guest until proven wrong anyway, like and in which case sometimes you do go in after that set or after that scenario and you move around and you don't find him and she's literally taking him, you know, a half mile or a mile away somewhere that you don't know about, because a lot of things can happen tonight, you know, after you leave the woods. Um. But going with you know, your latest intel is is usually your best idea at that point. Now, all this stuff that you've been talking about the aggressive you know, making a move on the ground, pushing in tight, sneaking in, calling in all that kind of stuff. You're talking about doing this on big chunks of public land where you've got options and you can move around, and if it doesn't work out in spot A, you could always go to spot B and whatever? Would you? And you you sort of caveat of this earlier er and when we were talking about something on these lines, But it's a more general level for someone listening to this, and they don't hunt a bunch of public land, but they hunt like heavily pressured small property kind of stuff like your hundred acre family farm Missouri, something like that. Would you cross all this stuff off the list if you only have that hunted acres a private and there's a bunch of other hunters around you, or or is there a time to still get aggressive like this even though you just have your eighty or your hundred to work with? What how do you balance that? I would say, uh, some sort of a hybrid of both. If if you can go in there, and this all really comes down to time. It depends on how much time you have to hunt the area that you're in and to fulfill the goals that you have for your attack. If you go into two a small property and you've got a hell of a funnel area in the middle of that thing that you know you can sit and wait a buck out and eventually get a shot at one. Moving from betting area to betting area, then, as we said in the beginning, that's a that's a tried and true, proven st rategy that works, um and we're not discounting that by any means. But if you try that and it's not working, then you can flip a switch and start moving around and looking, even if it's on a small property. I mean, I think back to my hunts on that small farm when I was a kid, and we killed a lot of bucks doing that in the rut, just sitting and just you know, just eating lunch in the stand, waiting there all day for days and days and days on and not even seeing a deer and then all of a sudden, here comes to mature buck and you shoot it. But at the same time, I can also remember a hunt I think it's the last year I killed with a rifle down there during Missouri's rifle season. I had sat two days in a row all day, and then I watched a buck um cruised by out of range for my old thirty thirty um, and I had to get down move around. Even though I didn't have much room to work with on our property. I went clear to our you know, on our northeast fence line, and was at the very corner of our property in the direction that that buck went, and I actually heard him fighting with another buck right over the ridge, and I crept over the ridge and shot him while he was fighting with that buck um, in which case, if I would have just sat there in my stand after he moved off, I don't know if I would have got another chance at him. So it kind of just depends on on the specific scenario, even down to the to the day that you're hunting. But I think the main thing is that you're gonna hear us harp on constantly. It's just kind of as a group is the the ability to adapt to those and to not be afraid to try something different should something not be working. If you have a lot of time to hunt and you trust that funnel, though that can be extremely deadly. If you can just sit there, if you have the patients to do that, you can certainly kill him doing that as well. You know, maybe you don't. Maybe in that scenario you don't get down and go after the buck that I killed, and you just sit there, But maybe you're kill him three days later coming right back through the same funnel. It's it's hard to say, um, but it's like I, like I said in the beginning of this particular thought, it all comes down to time. If you don't have the time to really put in the city in those funnels, then you've got to adapt and change something, you know, if it's not been effective for you. Yeah, what do you think, Greg? Uh? You know one thought I had is is again kind of going back to mental hurdles and and really conservative hunting. Is that is this fear of spooking deer. Yeah, And I don't know how many times that you know, in situations where we did spook deer and we're able to get back on them. I get just because you you bump a deer doesn't mean it's all over. I think I've actually spooked dear worse that came by me in I I like blind called to out of a tide through stand location and then the mature bucks circled down when caught my wind and then knew I was there in the area and left, Like I feel, I feel like I've done more damage to that deer right then than walking up on him in the woods most scenario, most of the time, Yeah, because you're catching him by surprise, you know, and even if he does figure out what the heck you are, it's like, what the heck there's a human walking through my woods. I'm not used to seeing that, you know. But if if they smell you and they get a good whiff of you, especially a mature buck, that's when you're in trouble. Otherwise all bets are off. I mean, they may come right back to the same exact spot where they were at if you don't spook them real hard. Yeah. It's just it's been fun to see how many times over these past few years that aggressive aggressiveness has paid off, you know. I you know, I kind of come from the you know, hunting, the small farm growing up, heavily pressured and public land as well, and I was always been a you know, pretty conservative hunter. And part of that is just personality driven as well. You know. I feel like I can sit in a stand for a long time and just wait it out. But you know, now we've got all these all these guys different personalities and hunting styles. It's it's interesting to see how you know, it's it can pay to be aggressive and overcoming some of those mental hurdles of just being so afraid, you know, the spooka deer, or just to get out of your comfort zone. I think when you start to start to do some of these things that we've talked about in this podcast, um, you can first have a lot of fun doing it, learned a lot and also, uh, you know a lot of times it's it pays off in field tags or at least close encounters. Yeah, so let's let's wrap it up because there's a lot more we can talk about. But I know you guys have got to edit. You guys have gotta get going, gotta leave Walmart parking lots and and head back to uh the old hunting grounds. So I don't want to keep it too much longer, but I want to ask one final question because you kind of alluded to mental hurdles Greg and and in this case, you were talking about, you know, just getting over these things we assume you shouldn't do, but actually you guys are doing it, Um. I feel like in addition to that, there's a lot of other mental stuff going on during the rut. Like for a lot of people, this is when we put the most expectations on ourselves. We've put our vacation time towards this, all of our hopes and dreams are here. For a lot of people, it means you're spending day after day grinding it out. There's a lot of things that can be tough in certain ways, even though it's that time of year we enjoy and look forward to the most. What would be for each of you one thing that you think matters the most to having success at this time of year when it comes to the mental side of it, the mental toughness or or stamina or something that you need during the rut? Um, Greg, is there anything that comes to mind that we can leave folks with as far as as far as that, I think mental preparedness. Like you said, you get tired as you grind it out during the rut. I mean, it's just inevitable. You know, day after day you're gonna be tired. But I tried to every time I get into a setup, try to play out the scenario that that I may happen. Can I shoot behind me? Can I shoot to my left? Can I shoot to my right? What are my shooting lanes? What's the distance? And uh, you know, I'm thinking back to last year a buck I shot. Um. I was self filming at the time, so I was having to make sure, you know, where can I film? Can I film kind of behind me if a deer comes behind to the left, And that's what ended up happening. And I had practiced that with the camera withdrawing back, and that's exactly what the buck did. And I was able to pull off that shot with confidence because I had thought about it ahead of time. So you just trying to keep you know, mentally prepared and uh, you know, even though he may be tired and just want to sit back and relax, just trying to think through all the scenarios because during the run, as we all know, it can happen in a flash. And if you're not ready, if you haven't you know, maybe you don't have the range, or maybe you're just unsure if if you can shoot in a certain direction. It's just I found so many times that it helps to be mentally prepared and think about all these scenarios at least as much as possible. What do you think, er, I would just pagyback on what what he just said, um In, I really want to hammer home rest, uh, because that's a that's a huge thing, especially when it comes to being mentally sharp. You know, if you're on a week's vacation rut hunting all day long, and you're on public ground and you're grinding like you're you're burning a lot of calories throughout the day out there freezing your butt off and trying to get on these things, and what typically happens is by the end, towards the end of your week is your best hunting because that's when you have of you know, had time to figure out what the heck is even going on, and that's when you need to be the most sharp mentally. And consequently, the opposite happens because you've been pushing so hard all week that you're mentally drained, you're physically drained, you haven't been you haven't had good sleep, you know, you're eating freaking your tenth meal. It's a Casey's gas aping, you know, And what ends up happening is you do get your opportunity later in that week, and you screw it up because you're not thinking through all those fine details that Greg just mentioned. So I would I would look at it more so it's like, try to go into it with some sort of an efficient plan to scout scout scout, find the deer, and prioritize your rest. You know, figure out where the heck you're camping at ahead of time so that you can camp as close to possible, as close as possible to your hunting locations. UM, set up camp in your truck if you need, to make sure that you have comfortable gear to camp in. If that's the case, make sure that you have food prepared that you know is legit. Not not eating this guard. I mean I've done it. I've I've made so many pieces of cases pizza it's not even funny. But I mean you gotta think, if you think all that stuff through ahead of time, you're gonna have way more energy going into it, UM, because the smallest little mistake, like if you set up on the ground and you don't in for that shooting lane at twenty yards and there's grass or a twig or something in the way you're talking about, you know the difference between success and failure, and in one small little detail that was overlooked. Now and I'm not trying to put pressure on any of your listeners do these things. Just think of it the opposite way. Think of it like, Okay, I'm here for a week. We got a prioritize rest inefficiency, and then when we get in kill mode in those situations, we gotta go through the checklist like what Greg just mentioned, and you'd be better check that way. I feel like I'm sorry gonna cut you off. No, You're good. I was just gonna say, yeah, check your equipment, make sure your bows on, have a targeting camp or shoot it. I've been in a scenario where I hunted a you know, hunted a buck all season when I was younger, and finally got my shot in November seven and didn't realize my rested moved and I shot a footing underneath them. That's that's no fun. Worst case the area right there. Oh yeah yeah, ah man, Well, this is this has been really good stuff, guys. I I really appreciate it. And for people that want to follow what you're doing this year, um and all the content can can one of you give us a lowdown on where people can tap into all your content, how they can file along what they can see and expect. Go ahead, Aaron, oh the Hunting Public, go and check it out on YouTube. We've got all kinds of new episodes there right now, and uh, I don't know how many episodes are we into the deer tour right now, Greg upwards of thirty oh up herds of thirty Okay, I think getting close. And we've got a pile of really cool stuff this next week and uh then this we're heading to Tennessee to uh hunt during the first part of the rut, singers out in Ohio. Um, got all kinds of gun season deer campac and also coming up uh towards the middle and the end of November, and then we're gonna go south in December. We're gonna hunt down in Georgia for the first time, so that should be really excited too. So yeah, just check us out on YouTube, at the Hunting Public Instagram, at the Hunting Public Facebook, and we've also got episodes streaming on Amazon Prime. Awesome. But you guys are killing it. Everything you're putting out there is really really good. So if for some reason, you're listening to this podcast right now, and you live under a rock and you haven't checked out the hunting public. Let this be the thing that changes that for you. Go watch it, go check out their stuff, and uh Aaron, Greg, thank you and good luck these coming days. Thanks, Thanks, Mark, you as well appreciate it all right, and that's a wrap. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed this one. It was long one, so props to all of you that made it through. But hopefully you'll learned some good stuff and you can put that into action on your hunts. So good luck, have a great time, be safe, and until next time, stay Wired to Hunt. M M.