00:00:01 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to the white tail woods, presented by first Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host Mark Kenyon. 00:00:19 Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on the show, I'm joined by doctor Grant Woods. We are discussing the greatest deer hunting lessons that Grant wished. 00:00:32 Speaker 3: He had learned when he was younger. 00:00:40 Speaker 2: All right, welcome back to the Wired Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light. 00:00:44 Speaker 3: Today we have a terrific episode. 00:00:46 Speaker 2: With one of the pre eminent leaders within our white tail hunting community, doctor Grant Woods. 00:00:53 Speaker 3: And this is is a I don't. 00:00:55 Speaker 2: Know, like a I'm trying to think of what the right word is to describe this. This is a reflective This is a looking back episode for Grant to help all of us look forward. 00:01:06 Speaker 3: By that, I mean we're going to be. 00:01:08 Speaker 2: Asking Grant about the greatest lessons he has learned over his many decades of deer hunting experience and success. He is one of the leaders in the science of white tails, in the management of white tails, and one of the absolute best educators on all of those things and of hunting white tails. If you're not familiar, Doctor Grant Woods has been a longtime deer management specialist, researcher, consultant, and more recently the last sixteen years or so, he's been producing the Growing Deer TV series on YouTube, tremendous resource for me and many other people over these last you know, fifteen sixteen years to help you become a better deer manager yourself, a better deer hunter yourself. And he recently released a video a couple weeks ago exploring the things the greatest deer hunting tips or lessons that he wished he'd learned sooner, the things that he wished he knew when he was younger that he does know now. And they got me thinking, gosh, there's got to be a lot of things like that for Grant, because he's seen it all. He has seen this whole kind of trend of deer hunting over these last you know, twenty thirty forty fifty years. He's seen how things have changed, He's seen how things have evolved. He's seen every different trend and fad and idea that you know, the deer hunting world has come up with, and he's kind of ground truth that with the science, given his background as. 00:02:35 Speaker 3: A deer researcher. 00:02:37 Speaker 2: So what would those greatest lessons learned be for Grant? What would be those things that maybe the rest of us look at now it's like, oh, you got to do it this way, but maybe it doesn't stand the test of time. What does he wish he knew when he was twenty five that he does know now? That's what I wanted to ask doctor Grant Woods today. That is the discussion we have. And I have to tell you we'roughout the bat. You've probably noticed I've lost my voice. I apologized, but you were going to have to bear with me today, as Grant did on our. 00:03:10 Speaker 3: Chat this past weekend. 00:03:12 Speaker 2: Friday night, we had a new store opening, The Meat Eater store in Wisconsin opened up and we had it must have been well over a thousand people. I don't know how many, but a lot of people. There was a line that strel kind of strung through the store, stopping to talk to me and Spencer and Chester for three hours. 00:03:31 Speaker 3: We talked to folks for three hours. 00:03:33 Speaker 2: Straight in this very loud room, and you know, probably an hour and a half into it, maybe two hours into it, lost my voice. I think I've had a little bit of a tickle to throw out something going on, and then on top of that, trying to talk loudly with all his people, completely lost the voice. Then the next day we had a meat Eater tailgate tour stop in Madison, Wisconsin, where again loud music, lots of loud talking, and I'm trying to talk to people all morning. A little bit voice I had left at that point completely disappeared. 00:04:03 Speaker 3: So I've tried not to. 00:04:04 Speaker 2: Talk to anyone for the last three days, but now for this podcast had to do it. I'm still not fully recovered, so bear with me. Apologies for the lack of clarity with my speaking tone, but hopefully the chat with Grant makes up for it, because there's a lot of substance to it. 00:04:21 Speaker 3: There's a lot to learn from here. 00:04:24 Speaker 2: Grant someone who I've respected and appreciated for many years. Now, I'm so glad that he was willing to have this chat with me and with all of us that I think will be a particularly important one as many of our deer hunting seasons kick off, either just kicked off, or are about to. We discuss everything from you know, the impacts of wind and thermals to you know, the importance that Grant places on access and exit and you know, not educating deer, different ways to do that, different ways to think about that. We talk about how his thoughts on trail cameras and patterning deer have evolved. We talk about how his goals and expectations have changed over the years, and what he wished he had thought about maybe differently when he was younger. So lots to cover. I think a lot's going to help you out. I hope you enjoy this. Thanks for tuning in despite my little bit of thrown issue here. So without any further ado, let's get to my chat with doctor Grant Woods. All right with me on the line now is doctor Grant Woods. Welcome back to the show. 00:05:29 Speaker 4: Grant, Hey, Mark, thanks for having me. 00:05:34 Speaker 2: I really appreciate you taking the time to be here, especially since we have tried to record this show two different times now and have been thwarted by technology issues. So thanks for your patience and flexibility as well. 00:05:47 Speaker 4: Yeah, no issues, no issues. 00:05:50 Speaker 2: So the inspiration for this chat, the reason why I thought of you again as someone who would be perfect to talk to it this time of year. Was because you just released a video a few weeks ago exploring some of the deer hunting ideas and tips that you wish that you had known sooner. And you're someone who has you know, as deep and as wide a breadth of knowledge is just about anybody in our community. So when I saw that I had, I got to thinking like this is, these are some ideas that all of us should be listening to and should be paying attention to, whether we are new to this or whether we've been doing this for twenty or forty or fifty years. So this is a long winded way of saying, Grant that I want us to kind of reflect today on what those greatest lessons learned have been for you, what those biggest aha moments have been, What some of those things are that you wish you knew sooner or that you wish you change sooner. And so jump right into a grant. If we could imagine that you had a time machine and you could go back to visit with your twenty five year old self, what would be the single most important lesson that you would like to impart with the twenty five year old Grant Woods about deer hunting, Where would you start? 00:07:04 Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that single lesson. There would be multiple, but single lesson would be that independent of amount of sign or weather conditions, the most important thing is for the hunter to be able to approach, hunt and exit without alerting deer. Alert deer are very difficult to tag, So my number one priority is to be able to again approach, hunt and exit. So we're thinking about thermos and wind direction and visibility and sound and all these things, and that shoves aside. Guys, there's more sign over here, you know, whatever, it is that goal of being able to get in without being detected and leave. You may not harvest a deer you want, may not see deer on that trip, but you don't want to leave a bunch of signor alert deer coming and going and make that area more difficult to hunt for several days. 00:08:07 Speaker 2: So, so are you saying that you would value a stand site that maybe, let's say is a six out of ten on deer sightings but a ten out of ten on access. Would that be the better place to hunt? 00:08:23 Speaker 4: Absolutely? Absolutely? And we're you know, we can't that around a little bit. When I was young, I tried to scout scout scout and find the most sign, and then you know, develop my stand or blind or my hunting location there, and now I realize where there's the most sign, usually find the most concentrated sign in betting areas and feeding areas. Feeding at that level of tensity is probably not during legal shooting light and betting areas are betting areas because they offer deer protection uh protection primarily from swirling winds, and we just can't get in there and especially get with in bow range of deer while they're there. So rather than hunt the most sign, I'd rather hunt travel or a transition zone between that bedding and feeding, or between two large groups of sign where they're just passing by. They're just going by, So not hanging around and leaving near as much sign will probably increase my odds of successfully filling a tag much more be hunting those areas. 00:09:26 Speaker 2: So this, this come the springs to mind, is something I thought a lot about lately. For a lot of years, I have tried many, many different ways of hunting deer, and you know, I certainly did the thing you described there, which is which is chasing where I think I'll see the most deer or where the most sign is. I've been really aggressive. I've I've punched into the best stuff at times, because you know, especially in heavy hunting pressure areas, sometimes there's there's a belief that that's the only way you're gonna be able to kill these deers, to really get in there with them. But at the same time, I've also seen, of course, what we all know is that that does make a big impact, and you do see deer become educated and deer behavior change, and I've started to wonder if the predictability of deer is much less. 00:10:16 Speaker 3: So than we like to think. 00:10:18 Speaker 2: And so because of that, sometimes I think to myself, well, I want to be in these really good places because I think I can predict when these deer are going to be there, and I just need one hunt or two hunts in this spot and I can kill them. But more times than not, that doesn't pan out, and it seems like maybe the smarter plan most of the time would be to do what you're describing, which might be not hunting the best place instead hunting the six out of ten you know, deer activity location, but knowing that you can hunt it more often because you won't educate deer, and so you can you can negate the fact that deer unpredictable in many ways, and you can say, well, instead of doing one hunt here and you know, because it's probably not going to work out, then I blow it for the rest of the chances. Instead, I'm going to hunt a place where deer won't know him there, but I can hunt it five times and maybe one out of those five times he finally does come through. 00:11:11 Speaker 3: Is that? 00:11:11 Speaker 2: Is that the the idea here with hunting in these places that are lower risk but maybe not as high reward, because you can just hunt them over and over again until finally he does show. 00:11:22 Speaker 4: I mean, there's there's always extremes and the edge just to everything. So you know, if your low risk is on the back of your truck and the stuff mark parking lot, you're probably you know, you're not probably not getting into game a much. Now, with that said, every year hunts some hunter somewhere will harvest a great deer in an area that the rest of us go. My gosh, I would have never hunted there. My brother in law as well as guys. You know, I can put the guy in a garho I don't want him kill a deer, and sure enough, you know on the back forty where it hadn't been a deer in three years, here killed that big old buck. That usually happens during the rut when deer is certainly not predictable. Hunters all want to hunt the rut. That's one of the worst times to hunt if you're trying to pattern a deer, because there is no pattern. The only patterns where Betty Lou has that receptive perfume on, So the pre rut, early pre rut, especially deer, I'm much more of a pattern. With that said, let's be ever cautious using this word pattern. Now, if you're in an extreme agg country, very limited cover, very limited cover, it's easier to pattern deer because they're pretty much going to be better than that small cover block. If you're like the bulk of hunters, and I've done this, if you add up the amount of white tail tag sold, you know from Maine down to Florida over to East Texas, you know, most of Tennessee, Kentucky, certainly where I am in southern Missouri, not in northern Missouri. That's the bulk of whitetail hunters. That's the bulk of licenmselves, not Southern Iowa. That's the minority. More TV shows are made, but it's a small part of hunters and those of us that are hunting. Hill country, timber country, swamps, pine plantations very difficult to pattern deer. So now you try to find or create if you're a manager like I am, bating areas and feeding areas and maybe even manage for pinch points or travel corridors narrow places to travel in between. Now your odds go way up. Feeding areas. Again, a lot of that behavior can be before or after legal shooting. Light Beating areas by definition protect deer. Therefore it's difficult for a predator being there. That's why they choose to bed there either visibility or slope or swirling winds, whatever it is. And folks, I just want to share this is not my only opinion. Only my opinion. I mean great researchers like at Mississippi State and Penn State have put bunches and bunches of GPS dollars on ye for a long long time. Now there's huge data sets. We know a lot about deer. We don't know everything, but we know a lot and I'll tell a funny on me. I'm sixty four. So back in izing grad school, GPS scholars were not widely known. They're really really expensive. That technology was new. Not many of them deployed, and I had huge observation data sets from me and many other people, huge, and I ran all kinds of stats and regressions on there. And I thought I'd figured out deer movement related to the moon and deer and deer. Honting partnered with me based on research i'd published. We called it DAI Deer Activity Index, you know, and there's like a two through ten. And I was making this pretty good jingle at the time for gratitude and I could buy a new gun and bow in the same year, and that's I gotten for graduate student. Yeah, and then GPS scholars got more affordable, some technology change, and all of a sudden, there's a bunch deployed. And I realized I had no idea what I was talking about, and actually pulled that calender off the market, which was the appropriate thing to do. And since then we've learned if you study declination degrees north and south of the moon of the equator, their secutor the moon goes and for some amount of light coming off the phase and all the distance to the Earth. The moon has elliptical orbit, so it's not one full moon's not always the same distance from the Earth as another full moon. All that's been studied in great detail, and there is zero relationship with anything the moon does anything a deer does. Zero. I know you're going to get some hate, noil mark, it's just the facts. So through that process, what I've learned is it's not conditions that make deer move more again, it's the conditions that allow me to be a better predator. The obvious question is one of those conditions, Well, one of them would be high pressure. Right on high pressure, our scent is more likely to rise up instead of spreading out. Low pressure just wants to hover on the ground and almost make a scent around us where deer can't get in bowt range or maybe even firearm range. So high pressure, I like wind. I like you know, ten to fifteen miles an hour wind. I much rather have that than stilled. I want to know where my scent cone is going. I want wind, and so in hill country mountain country, that usually means hunting the ridge top or close to it because the more you get down on that ridge slope, the more to wind's gonna swirl. That's why GPS collars have shown that deer tend to bed on those side hills in ridge country, not on the peak because winds only go in one direction, but right over to side about twenty degrees, that wind's going to go over to the mountain and just swirl, just turn, and they can sit there all day and detect predators from most of the way around them. 00:16:46 Speaker 2: Back to your I want to talk a little bit more about some of these things that help you and give you an advantage as a hunter. But one last question on the conditions that impact deer movement. You mentioned that moon doesn't impact deer movement. You mentioned that something like high barometric pressure doesn't necessarily impact deer movement, but it impacts wind and your ability to hunt without getting winded. Is there any condition, any atmospheric or you know, weather related factor that you believe does make enough of an impact that you pay attention to it as a hunter. I know that the studies show that there's nothing statistically significant enough to be called out, but is there anything that you as a hunter know Like, yeah, but maybe it's a little bit, it's enough that I think about, or is there literally zero that you factor on that front? 00:17:36 Speaker 4: I mean, I still probably just from almost sentimental reasons. I still like a high pressure moving in. I like a front personally. I've seen one event in my entire life or hunting career that just made deer move like crazy. And I was in grad school. I was seventeen miles off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina, when Hurricane Hugo came in. I'm a Midwest boy, you know, so hurricanes didn't mean thing to me. And where I was working, the old plantation manager said, ah, feel like a bad thunderstorm. That's the worst thunderstorm I ever spent the night here, and I promise you that I will never spend a night when a major hurricane comes in again. But the day or two before that, I was going around doing my research, and deer were just everywhere, just everywhere. And of course before a hurricane, the brometer drops way abnormally love and the manager said, Grant, you probably shouldn't harvest any deer because we could lose power for a day or two. By the way, we lost it for six weeks, but probably lose power for a day or two. You see, what have your way to you know, keep the meat cool. So we didn't harvesting deer. But as I was running my transacts, I was measuring rubs and scrapes and doing some work like that for my dissertation, and they were just deer everywhere. That's the only time I've ever seen anything like that. And you don't want to go through a level four class for a hurricane to see that, right, You don't want to wish that one anyone. But I'm not. And again, the research is clear, and you use to write word statistically significant. Is there some hundred that's figured out how to get a one or two minute advantage the deer get to your stand, you know, two minutes before dark or something. I don't know, maybe maybe not. I have personal friends with people to have some of the deer apps out there, but most of us are an ad country. And again that country is very stark cover food, cover food. That that's not where the vast majority of white tail hunters hunt. That's the vast minority. And in timer country, you know, acorns on the ground they can feed bed in the same area. No I've not found anything that makes the significant difference, and my research and many others that have certainly deployed way way more GPS callers. Deer move every day, and they moved on in dust. They're prepuscular. They moved sunrise and sunset. And I have a hypothesis of why that is. If I can share that, please don't. So sun's rising, of course, airs warming up in some places, open field, logging deck, whatever. That Sun's getting down the ground and warming up, and that air is rising under the shade of trees or tall grass or on the west slope, that air is still cool. It's gonna stay cool up to an hour longer whatever. And on the aspect of the sun. So you have hot air and coat air right beside each other, and that starts turning. That's on a much larger scale. When you see that big front coming through that spawns tornadoes, that's the same thing. You've got hot air on one side, cooler on the other. On a micro scale, that happens in the timber and that churning their again allows dear to detect predators most of the way around them very efficiently. So I believe that's why it's not light. You know a lot of hunters think it's light. We've all spooked here during the dead and night or you know it's dark going our And I've yet to hear one run into a tree. I mean, I've just never, oh man, broke my right hand or off hitting that tree. I've never. You know, it just doesn't happen. And we know why. Of course, you have a covering on the back of the eyes called take the lucidium. Light goes in and triggers Rod and Cones hits that almost like aluminum foil, bounces back out and they get another use of that light. Not one hundred percent, but a high percent. So the big pupils and they're getting like coming and going to trigger Roger and Cones. They can see in that extremely low light, no problem. So yeah, thermals I've I've learned and wind direction thermals since is number one for me, and that first fifteen minutes, last fifteen minutes, those are the money times to be out there. And I'll take this one step further. I have a friend, it's not a scientist, he's probably the best hunter I know. I won't mention any names, I will share it. Their multiple multiple world record typicals on his wall. Literally, look me right here, folks. 00:22:06 Speaker 3: Wow. 00:22:06 Speaker 4: Man's a predator and he hunts as what I've learned to call like a bobcat hunts. He wants to arrive no more than three to four minutes at the spot that he thinks he's going to see this year. He's not sitting there for five hours, three hours, two hours. He didn't want his scent to build up at all. I call that hunting like a bobcat. If you've ever hunted, you ever watched bobcats or looked at their GPS collar studies. They move differently when they get in their hunting zone. They slow down, then they're barely moving. They know when they're close to gain. And that's what my friend does. He will take hours getting to the location to spend three minutes there, last three minutes, first three minutes whatever. He's just super super eccentric about not alerting any deer, those fonds or bucks. He doesn't want to alert any deer. And hunting on his farms is like no other place you're going to hunt. 00:23:14 Speaker 2: What other ways does that manifest when it comes to how he sets up his farm or how he you know, accesses or exits these places. Other than the timing you just mentioned, is there anything else you could point out? 00:23:25 Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean he's all about that access. So he's going to have mode really short trails to go to, you know, the food plots or betting airs or whatever. So he's not leaving a lot of sin if you think about it, if you're walking on a spongy layer of dead grass or leaves, that's just a scent sponge. You want to get in clean. And as I've said several times, there's a lot of people want I don't think care about. You want to get out clean. So when you hunt tomorrow or the next week, those deer are alerted. My great friend, doctor Carl Miller, just somewhere years ago, and I'm not going to quote all Carl's work, I don't remember all the detailed did some work to kind of learn about deer memory and how long they could remember certain events or maybe certain colors associated with treats and the captive deer pen And yeah, deer have memory. But I had a local friend here, a hunter that the wind is right, everything's right, good buck for deer. It comes in under white oak tree, he shoots shoots sort of back misses the deer. Next day, the deer comes back. Well, remember, deer don't know death. They've never been to grandpa's funeral. They don't know death literally. And the most important thing I want to if I could share with anyone, is start thinking like a deer. Put yourself in their world. Stop thinking like a human. Deer do not know death. They don't know gunshots. It's what they learned to associate with danger. Both my daughters shot high school trap at a very high level. One of them was national champion. That's not boasting because I'm like a three box dove hunter. Shooting a shotgut is not genetic, I could promise you. But and at nationals, which is always in Sparta, Illinois, it's a big old strip pick coal mine that's been reclaimed. There's nady grass and forbes everywhere. Every afternoon there'll be deer feeding. If you shoot trap, you know the biggest shot, you can shoot the seven. Most people shoot eighth or nine, so only travels so far and hits the dirt. And deer have learned that pattern and they're be feeding about five yards password to average shot can go at that trap range and It buggers up kids on the line because you're shooting towards deer. You're shooting towards deer. At the Nationals High School Nationals there will be over one million shotgun shells fired in four days, over one million, and deer feeding out there right down line or the shooting range because they know there's no danger. You see deer on golf courses all time. You see them below, you know, right beside the inner state or whatever. Deer learn what's a threat to them and what's not on any given area, and that may change. Like we've done some work on Dodal Department offense properties from a conservation point of view, and we're seeing one hundred and fifty of America's best shooting aw to make weapons downrange. Of course, they will never see the deer. I'm sure they'd get in great trouble for doing that. And there's a real lesson here, folks. And on the predominant down wind side, on the predominant down wind side, there will be deer feeding while they're shooting. You know, automake weapons downrange. Why predominant down wind side because a big part of gunpowder is nitrogen, and where the wind blows. That residue is going to be highly fertilized. So think like a deer. And when we keep some records here in about twenty five percent of the mature bucks we harvest, I had it happened last year. Happens almost every year for one of our hunters here. Well, will happened when we've harvested a dough with a firearm. So hope you made a double shoulder shot and it drops right there, and the bucks are coming in to smell that dough, try to hook up, the horns, get to stand up. They don't know death, they have no idea about death, and for the first few hours that dough just smells normal. It's the best big bucket tracks that you can have when you're gun hunting. The first thing I want to do you talk about when I jump boy. If you harvest a dough, you get down, you leave your scent all over, you drag it out a way. Now, I want to shoot a dough through both shoulders, want to meet a course and drop it right there in my shooting light. And if I do that, I'm going to hunt a long time there, because I know a buck's coming to that dough. Last year, we filmed five different bucks coming to that dough before the bucks showed up that I wanted. 00:27:57 Speaker 2: Wow, So I want to ask a follow related to you know, what you described happening there in the shooting range or on golf courses. You know, this is something I've seen too, like in suburban areas where deer become very accustomed to humans are being around and so they become you know, conditioned. Right, Have you in any ways used that to your advantage as a hunter, in how you operate on your property in ways you access and in ways you set up a place or hunt in other places, knowing that there's certain things that deer seem to get used to and feel it safe, and other things that they recognize as danger, and then using that. 00:28:36 Speaker 4: Yes and no. So I'm in a CWD zone. No bait, no feed, anything like that, which is great. But we work on our property every day. There's youtvs, there's people checking cameras, doing habitat work. We do habitat work right during deer season. We were running a bunch of chainsaws the other day. So deer used to us being on here. They're not used to people being twenty feet up a tree. So we can get around our property. We don't even think about it. We don't think about it. It's no concern to me to write a UTV on the property because they hear them so frequently. It's that last little bit getting into the tree stand or the blind. When I'm going to a blind, and I'm not lazy. I walk all the time, but I like to drive absolutely as clothes. I would rather the deer see my UTV then smell me walking a quarter mile. You know, parking to bottom of the blind has nothing to do about being lazy or anything like that. It's just extremely efficient from a hundred point of view. If I'm in a blind, you know, maybe gun hunting deer sees a UTV at one hundred yards away, it's a non issue. So we've all heard the story about the old farmer that goes into pasture and sees the giant buck every day and can't understand why the hunter can't see a deer because he sees it every day and he's feeding his cows. Well, the buck's tole the condition that farmers pickup. And you know, we come out there from the city and our e bike or UTV or whatever, our walk and place as a farmer never walks, so of course the buck goes. Man, this is weird. Man, I don't know what they're thinking. They're thinking something like this is weird. I need to be cautious here. So hunting camps all across America, they said, idle all year long and then the day for opening season. Man, it's a flurry of activity. That's the worst thing you can do. 00:30:23 Speaker 2: How long do you think it takes for that conditioning to occur? You know, if I went out to my deer hunting property and start driving my UTV or bike around for a couple of weeks before the season, or does it have to be a couple of months before the season. 00:30:36 Speaker 3: Does it need to be the entire year? 00:30:38 Speaker 2: How long do you think it will take for a deer to become used to a certain activity. 00:30:45 Speaker 4: Back into this with what we call the ice cream truck. I think it started in Texas. People use it all over now. I think maybe we come up term ice cream truck. So, you know in Texas, a drive around a paddock or a pasture and dunk corn out. Then they redrive it deer on the road everywhere. Ye I call that the ice cream truck. Right. The deer is so conditioned to hearing that old ram truck, they associate it with food and they just step right out there. When people first start that ice cream truck, let's call it. Seems to me it takes about a month. That's just a round number private prop owners. You know, they got a UTV. They sing a bag of corn or the left arms do it the right and they just trickle a little bit. They're not painting the road yellow. They're just trickling a little bit. After about a month, the deer, turkey, quail, whatever will literally be standing in the road waiting for that buggy to get there. Now, you can't violate their trush. You can't be shooting a fifty cow off the buggy or something like that. But yeah, we see people all across America using the ice cream truck. It's called various saying. It's been on the geography you live in in South Texas called feeding us and darrows. Again, we don't do that. That's not my thing, not how I like to hunt. But I see a lot of people doing it, and I all say about the same number. Yeah, you do it. For about months, they'll be standing in the road waiting on you. The other side of that coin is you bust a deer man. You go to draw, you get busted by dough off the side whatever. They all blow and tail up and snort and out of Dallas. How long does it take for that to calm down? I think about seven days is what some good researchers have said. That's not my number, that's what other researchers have said. Some really great data again for my friend doctor Duffinball. He heads to Penn State Big Deer Project where for many many years now they've had a bunch of deer GPS. Call great thing about Dwayne. I went to University of Georgia when Dwayne was there. He finished a year or two before I did. Great researcher. Dwayne is more of a burden duck guy. He's not a deer guy, so he's not really biased by deer work. And so he's a great deer scientist because he didn't have a lot of preconceived notions or he's not trying to prove so and so's theory. He's just doing good signs. I really appreciate Dwayne's work, and Dwayne has got some great data where for Pennsylvania opening the weekend and gun season is World War three, a lot of activity in the timber and Dwayne's all Dwayne's works on public land. Penn State has a huge number of hunters. The last data I saw the average to hunter for seventeen acres. That includes all the acres in state, so Philly and you know all those places. That's just a huge hunter data. That may have changed now, but anyway, and right after opening day, if you look at that morning movement, it's a real tall, skinny spike. They barely moved. They shut it down. They're just you know, they're scared to move, stay in the bed all day long. Itty bitty movement right at dark. By Thursday, that movement ban because you know, the most people hunt the weekend. By Thursday, that movement band gets broader, and Penn State has a great graph on that. By Thursday, the deer obviously not as many hunters into which during the week we're going back to work whatever. By thursdays, those deer spending more time on your feet, a little bit more time on the week. So in that case, three four days they start letting up a little bit. 00:34:21 Speaker 2: So Grant, is there any situation in which you think that we overvalue or over index on how much of an impact we can make on deer, because a lot of what you've talked about here is how much we do impact deer behavior, how much they will react to our pressure. How important is to make sure not being detected. Is there any place or is there any time in your history when you could point to the conventional wisdom or your approach as actually being overboard on that front, and actually you should have you should have recognized that they're more we're giving in this way, or that you could have gotten away with more in this other way. 00:35:03 Speaker 3: Is there anything like that that comes to mind? 00:35:05 Speaker 4: Yeah? Oh, one thing is remember, hunting pressure is not how many days you hunt a location, how many times you alerted deer there, so you've got that great setup and the wind man it just stays out of north for twenty days in a row. Whatever you're coming in from the south, whatever it is, you don't alert deer you hunt there every day a season doesn't matter. It's not how many days you hunt a location, it's how many times you alert deer. And then there are a lot of people that jump and dump. I think that's a hunting published statement or you know they use busting deer, man drives all that stuff. That's not my style of hunting, and there was really popular here in the Thozarts. We're mountain hilly, not fields. There's no way to really pinch deer in you try to a man drive to run everywhere. But there's certainly a bunch of hunters around America that push deer to standards or through a gap or something, and the other people harvest deer. And that whole hunting technique is dependent upon a controlled disturbance. And again that's not how the majority hunters hunt, not how I hunt, so I really can't speak to it. My strategy rather is to slide in undisturbed and let the deer come to me. I'm not trying to push the deer somewhere. I want the deer to come to me. And in that case, the more natural the deer on their own behavior not all alert. And we noticed from everything like we've done some I think pretty cool work where we set up a quickly a computer with the microphone and a magnet that dropped the water balloon and a balloon full of water so it dropped it. The speed of gravity and tested. How you know a two or three hundred to four under foot bow could we get there in time if the deer reacted. We use the a lip sprinter as a deer's reaction time. I think deer probably faster and Olympic sprinter and in those situations, deer going to react faster than any bow on the market can respond. At forty yards for sure, And at twenty yards you're shooting a crossboard something, you probably get them. And that goes into telling me how sensitive deer are. We've got to remember, deer make a living. They stay alive by being able to avoid danger because everything out there wants a deer sandwich. Kyotes, bears, bobcats, was everything wants a deer sandwich. And so when they have the capacity to learn something is dangerous, they avoid it. They have not had the capacity yet in most places to learn vehicles are dangerous. However, Tasea and I sold part of our land. We're living in a little rental house town now, which is killing me. While our house on the property ear is being built. And I've never seen a roadkilled deer in that little development. I see deer every day, you know, twenty thirty deer come and go under you know, urban fleas all over the place, and you see those deer their herey car coming, they just stop alone most highways, that doesn't happen obviously. Deer in that area where they see cars all day long, every day, they have learned to avoid cars, and they teach their fonds to learn to avoid cars. And you see it. I assuming that we know what a deer say. You see them coming through a yard or a little undeveloped lot and you're coming and they just stop and look at you, and you go buy everyone else in America most places they run out and every now and then you whack one. So deer can learn with repetitive, non lethal disturbances want to avoid. They don't learn to avoid gunshots because most of them that get shot at die right and they there's no way of communicating. Boy, next time you hear a thunder, real loud, you need to get out of Dallas because you know you don't pass that on. 00:39:07 Speaker 3: Is there is there ever a situation? 00:39:10 Speaker 2: I guess one kind of final question on this overarching topic of not alerting deer. I think that's kind of the theme of much of what we talked about. Is there ever a situation or a location that warrants you take a different approach where you're willing to hunt in a place that you know you will alert deer on your way out or at some point or you know, Man, there's a high chance this could blow up for me, but there's also a high chance it will work. 00:39:40 Speaker 3: Will you ever take that risk? 00:39:42 Speaker 2: Will you ever say, Okay, it's worth it this one time, even though I know I'm breaking my usual rules. 00:39:48 Speaker 4: Yeah, of course. I think that goes with the stewardship you have of that location or that property. So you're a guest, You and I are hunting together on public land and it's the last day of hunt, hunt, and man, we just we just can't quite get to deer. Say, man, we're going into the you know, swamp vetting area or whatever, because if we blow it, it doesn't impact our hunting that year, and we have no stewardship over what the next hunter is going to experience on our private land. We're going to get to hunt another day, and we don't want to disturb that vetting area or that scrape or whatever it is. So I think it depends upon your scenario. Again, public land, private land, last day to hunt, first day to hunt. A lot of those factors. During the rut, when deer not on a pattern, I will certainly go in areas I normally don't go in. I'm not a big fan of the rut. Well, I'm a fan of the rut when I'm a travel hunter and I just need deer walking. The most steps of day are gonna walk. That's when I like the rut. At home, the deer aren't on a pattern, and I love, I love trying to figure out whatever level of pattern there is. I want to think that my main work of creating feed here and betting neary's ears paying off, But that doesn't pay off there in the rut. It's wherever those receptive dos are. So yes, it's as most things biologists are. We get a lot of a lot of uh you know, duff though that it's because of this. There's a lot of what ifs in the world in biology, dear biology or other biology, and everyone wants that solid ten point answer. But it's always what I like to say, the context of the situation, and I tend to speak of the context of you've got some stewardship and the property. It's your land, your grandfather's land. You're going to get to hunt there again next week, next month, next year. So you take stuff a little differently. If you're chasing five state circle of public land, you find, dear, you're going to the sign, You're going to whatever, because you have a limited time to make this work. 00:41:55 Speaker 3: Yep. 00:41:55 Speaker 4: And to me again, I think it just circles back to the context of the hunting situation. 00:42:01 Speaker 2: Yeah, So speaking of context and what ifs and butts, and it depends. 00:42:08 Speaker 3: Patterning. 00:42:09 Speaker 2: You've mentioned several times the ability to pattern, or to whatever degree you can pattern. You said something like that, how is your understanding of patterning deer change over the course of your hunting journey? Where does it stand now as far as what you believe you can actually pattern and how valuable that may or may not be, into what degree you can actually execute on that. 00:42:33 Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I mentioned earlier. I'm an old man. I'm sixty four, so I grew up reading Roger Rothhauer and Miles Keller and those guys. There weren't videos really to watch at that time. M hmm. And those guys were an agur is. Mister Rothawer was in Ohio and Miles Course was up in Minnesota, Wisconsin area, and there were big, big ag areas with small blocks of timber and it was and I'm down here in the Ozark Mountains in Markan National Forest public land, thinking I'm going to use those techniques to pattern deer here, and spend a lot of years frustrated. And then I went to school in the South University of Georgia and Plimpson trying to pattern deer on big old blocks of timberland and it just does not work that way. And finally the GPS collars come out, and people have you know, great scientists have said, we're not seeing a pattern. We see general use areas in general use areas, and you find where two or three general use areas this is very general overlap and deer spend more time there. But that's not within thirty yards of any tree they're cutting through there. So that's where management comes in. You make that thirty yards better, You make the betting area here, You make the best betting in a mile square area here, and you assume if you don't disturb it, deer going to use it. Or you make the preferred food source or one of my favorite tricks is we have some food plots that we may not hunt all year long, or we don't hunt till the late season, so we get the late season, we haven't punched our tags, and now we have a place that deer can feed not experiencing it disturbance that year. Man, those are dynamite and it takes some you know, it depends on how much land you have access to and some discipline. Who my troil camera's blowing up a deer there, but I said I wouldn't hunt that till this season late season. So again, what you're willing to put into it. But those people that punch tags repeatedly on mature deer, if you will have some kind of strategy like that. And for the bulk of American hunts, the acorn driven deer heer, that's the bulk of licensees. All bets are off when the acorns hit the ground right right, that's a whole different game. And the techniques you see because people to make you know what I call the big stud hunting shows. I'm an educator. I'm friends with all these people, and I've had a really easy career because I'm not really competing with them. We're of an educator and they make you live in killing great big deer. But those people are not chasing acorns. They're they're inaugurate is where it is easier to pattern, and there's a lot of sun hitting the ground. Deer get bigger, the hokey, the big Antler's this photosynthesis. No one ever talks about that age. First grocery, second groceries means photosynthesis with the zero to five feet of the ground, That's what it means. 00:45:25 Speaker 2: Is there any way to pattern if you are solely hunting an acorn driven deer? 00:45:31 Speaker 3: Heerd? 00:45:32 Speaker 4: You know last week I didn't get tone much. Missouri's post season open September fifteenth, and we've been in a wicked drought. August was the driest August on record. I think we got records here in this part of Missouri about eighty some odd years in this county dryest on the record. Sad, horrible, sad. And there was one pond on a ridge that held water and man choke cammers glipping off, but the wind was just not in the right direction. I was going to alert deer and every day it's a trade off. On my guys, I never see a pattern like that here, but I probably won't see it if I go there because I'm gonna get busted. And then today it rained two inches. There's water in every little hole, rock whatever around the oozren's right now, So that pattern's over now. And I did not, personally, my witness is I did not quote unquote take advantage that pattern because the wind was never right for how I need to access that pond, and I only really, you know, I just can't get to the other side of it without going all the way around and biggering up a lot of other deers. So patterns become This is true anywhere we talked about limited cover and ad country. Patterns are where there's a limited resource. That's what a pattern is. Where there's a limited resource. If it's homogeneous ten acres, food ten acres cover, ten acres, food ten acres cover, ten acres, food ten acres cover, there's no pattern. It's a checkerboard. Well, that's what you get in solid oak forest when the acorns are dropping right, food cover, food cover, food cover everywhere. So a pattern is developed by a limited resource. In West Texas, that's water, man. You got a cow tank with a windmill pumping water in it. There's gonna be deer coming there almost every single day. Listen, Mountain Lion just really starts something at stock tank. So I think the takeaway there, And again this is not the specific answer most hosts want, but a patterns where there's a limited resource in that country that tends to be covered because there's food everywhere except after the crops are harvested. In acorn country, the pattern is where I have great patterns is before the acorn drop, little heidio food plots, and we kill a pile of deer. Doing this, we make a little quarter acor food plot, and seventy five yards away we make a baiting area. We kill a ton of deer in those. This year we did not We're not going to because we can't get the rain. Our crops have noted yet. We did not have green fields or food plots. And then all this rain I'm sure knocks and make corns down. And again in context this year, that pattern building technique we've used of having food right next to cover designed in a way where the predominant wins are in our favor, and we've tagged so many bucks doing that for years. That did not hold true this year. 00:48:28 Speaker 3: On patterning. 00:48:30 Speaker 2: Another follow up, I think the tool that most hunters now rely on to try to pattern deer is trail cameras sell cameras, especially today. You've been using them as long as anyone I know, you were doing studies with them. 00:48:43 Speaker 3: Very very early. 00:48:45 Speaker 2: What do you wish that you knew about cameras in the effectiveness or lack of effectiveness about them? What do you wish you knew twenty years ago when you started maybe getting when everyone got really serious with them, twenty years ago, fifteen years ago? If you could tell yourself back then what you know now? What would that most important thing be? 00:49:08 Speaker 4: Look a year in advance. So I'm a huge troil camera fan. But what trail cameras tell us? Even the cell cam you're sitting there on your app, Oh my gosh. You know some states worry that that's gonna help hunters too much. I don't know, but the vast majority hunters is certainly including me, are not going to see a picture go off and be able to walk out in that area without learning the deer. That's just not going to happen. And tomorrow's a new day. Coyotes, other hunters, weather changes, food, source changes. So again in Agura is where that food is a constant until the combine rolls through, that's probably more effective. Where I live, we don't see pattern. We don't see the same buck on a troil camera three days in a row. That just almost never happens here. So but you will see it next year. And so I marked on my calendar. Everyone's got a calendar on their phone or computer. And we have a day of great activity, whether I see it when I'm hunting or my Troe cameras going off like popcorn all day. Ion't make a note. September twenty fourth had tremendous morning activity, and I'll be watching for that the next year. That may encourage me to hunt that day the next year. Even on the moon phases different and all that stuff's different, the weather's different, and we've used that to our advantage. And actually November fourth for several years in a row. Now I've killed a good buck, which is bo season here in Missouri on November third, November fourth, and that is about the peak of our pre rut. Okay, so let's define pre rut up until about twenty five percent of the dozer receptive there's tremendous competition for those few dozes that are receptive, and the bucks are moving a lot. They're literally taking a lot of steps per day. It does not mean they're covering a bigger area, but they're actually under feet more per day trying to find out limited resource again, a limited resource, a receptive dough. Once we get past that twenty five, twenty six, thirty forty fifty receptive, Uh, there's so many dos receptive. The bucks don't need to be searching. They're they're they're with they're tending a dough. Mature bucks are tending a dough, and then you're just sitting there hoping. Man, I sure hope I'm a place where receptive dough goes by, because that's what I'm going to see. A mature buck where I hope I'm somewhere that a dough will a buck will ten a dough twenty four to thirty six hours, and I hope I'm where he's going to go looking for the next dough after he finishes ten. 00:51:50 Speaker 2: And that. 00:51:52 Speaker 4: So November fourth where I am, and probably a lot of places. November third, number fourth, you hear a lot of people talk about Halloween and general who a lot of deer killing Halloween. There's been so much talk about Halloween. I think there's more people hunting on Halloween. Are we measuring hunter effort for the effectiveness of that date? And I was just in South Carolina assistant landowner. Actually where the process or the process is meat, that is the processors. Why in bordered de land I was working on. So we went out that gate, stopped in, say hi, you know, shake some mans, meet people, and that processor for twenty plus years in the upstate of South Carolina have like a big desk calendar and every day they would write down, you know, we processed nine here in the morning, fourteen in the afternoon. And they had that for many years. And the guy said, oh man, look at all this data. And I said, this is a great source of data for hunter effort. It means nothing on the wind deer moving. And you could see that clearly because every Saturday morning be a bunch of deer out there. They're cleaning deer. Every Saturday morning, Opening day they clean up pile of deer. Weekdays they didn't clean many deer. 00:53:07 Speaker 2: So speaking of the rut, yeah, I want to continue a little bit more. There is there anything that you have gotten wrong over the years on that front. Is there anything now that you understand differently about how deer react and act during the rut, or anything about how you've hunted during the rut that now you wish you had done differently, or that now you understand differently. 00:53:33 Speaker 4: Yeah, a couple things drought off the bat. Me always thought the rut what everyone wants to hunt the rut? Man schedule a vacation on the rut, whatever on the rut. Again, I'd rather hunt the pre rut than the rut unless I'm travel hunting and I just need a lot of luck on my side. The second thing is I used to set up, you know, on a field or food plot or whatever thing. Boy, I just want to be worders of most dotes, and research strongly indicates, I won't say shown, but strongly indicates that when that dough becomes receptive, she tends to drop her fawnds or not keep her fawnds with her, and go to a different portion of her home range, which makes perfect sense, right. She didn't want to drag in that old ruddy up buck by her fawns. They could get injured, so instead of sitting there where you see twenty dos pouring into a field every afternoon, thinking what that's going to be great buck bait. The only buck bait that time year is a receptive dough. What I've learned to do in the hiels, it's easier. I want to sit on this hill and shoot into this hill where there's brushy covered, really good, high quality betting area. And what I've learned from my observations and what i think the GPS callers are showing, is those dos once they start getting receptive, if they bump off that maternal group they've been hanging with and go getting real thick covered, that just keeps all this. It's brutal being a buck. A lot of bucks get injured during the rut, four or five bucks trying to tend her, they get gored. They want to get to where they can get some cover, some timber, some brush between them and the bucks that are not being dammaged so much so, I've harvested several deer with our Missouri's rudd is during firearm season. You know, I sit on this ridge, it's only two or thirundred yards. Our ridges aren't like the rocky mountains. Shoot into this ridge where I can see. If you're on that ridge, you can't see through the brush, but if you're on this ridge, you can see into the brush. And that is an extremely effective technique for the rut. I'm not hunting a deer, I'm hunting an area where receptive does want to go escape. And that's my number one technique now for hunting during the rut with the gun or bow, I one hunt where receptive dos are going, not where the bulk of the dozes are. 00:55:51 Speaker 3: That makes a lot of sense. 00:55:52 Speaker 2: And you know, there's so many different there's so many different kind of side trails we could take here. There's so many different fascinations and fads and favorite you know, pet theories when it comes to deer and how to kill more of them. And there's been I've done nine hundred and so many podcasts about this, most of them all focused on how do I kill more deer, or how do I kill a bigger deer, or how do I kill the biggest deer or the oldest deer. But you and I were talking the other day and you brought up the fact that maybe there's a discussion to be had here and maybe you've learned some things over the years about not just how to kill you know, the biggest deer, the most deer, but maybe about other aspects of this whole hunting thing. So when it comes to setting goals or setting expectations for your hunts, grant, what what do you wish you knew on that front? What would you tell your twenty five year old self about that? 00:56:56 Speaker 4: Well? Uh so my journey backwards goes through two transplants. I had my first kidney transplant thirty three years ago and my second seven years ago. Super blessed. I'm still healthy, super super blessed. But through those journeys, and I think a lot of hunters, we all start, and this is well published, we just want to see a deer. Stage two, we want to harvest a deer. Stage three, we don't want to harvest a lot of deer. Stage four, we want to harvest a big deer. If you mature enough to get to stage five, you want to enjoy the whole experience of deer hunting. I wish I could have got to stage five. I'm not sure I'm there yet, but I wish I could have got to stage five. A whole lot quicker. Big antlers are awesome, right, And I reflect on this sure maybe different than a lot of people do. I worked out in Nevada for the BLM drive land management wise in college. I've seen out there found a lot of highro griphics, so I'm sure someone had seen them before, but they're not on any mapped There weren't any like billim signs. Hey go look at the K paintings over here. They were you know, if you're not familiar, state of Nevada is eighty seven percent government land, eighty seven percent public land, thirteen percent private. There's a lot of acres that people don't walk very often in Nevada. And I've yet to see a hieroglyphic or a you know, a cliff painting, a cliff etching, a K painting of a deer that did not have big antlers. I've never seen one of a spike. That big answer point. I think prehistoric man before history was recorded during the big antlers too. I think that's very natural. We all want the best, right, I mean, go getters, doers, hunters, getting out of bed, going out there in the code. We're thinking big, we're thinking the best. I wonder if we've lost our pattern a little bit, because those prehistoric hunters were definitely thinking about meat and tools and hide and surviving, and I think we've lost our way. There's a good zillion things that X y Z S door that will help you quote unquote tag a big buck right. And there's a few things about meat prep and saving the meat and what makes it taste better. And then to take that further, just again a blessing. I was able to be introduced to doctor Stefan van Bleet. He's one of the world's leading human nutritions from a point of view of what we put in our body, what does that do to our nutrition? And I won't dive into this in great detail. We have an episode on it if you want to alays check it out. But uh, doctor van Bleed had figured out that wildcott salmon some of the healthiest meat we put in our body. We can live on wildcott salmon. There's there's you know, tribes and nadies that own almost only eat wildcott salmon and are very healthy, have no cavities. No body fad all that kind stuff. And he was in Ha Whi giving a you know, a presentation of a scientific conference, and someone said, have you ever test asks us deer there. Of course they were brought in by you know, European settlers or no mammals on Hawaii except the species of bat. That's like God made Awaii and New Zealand someone's Polynesian islands of bird paradis. All those elk and mammals down there, rodents or whatever, they were all brought in. They were not there, And so Hawaii of course extremely diverse plant community. And someone gave them some wine and liver of an access deer and it takes it back to the lab. But lo and behold, oh my guy, it's just like better than the best pat you know, virginity vag raised beef. It's super super high quality. And I'm thinking about that. And scientists know that we have this chart views and feeding strategies like a buffalo or an ox or down at the bottom right and big old square rectangle mouth. Just give me grass, I'll turn it into protein. Just give me grass. That's all I want. Well up at the very opposite corner to chart is a white tailed deer and they're considered to be the most concentrate selector. If you think about the amount of a moose or an elk, and you see that they got a pretty square muzzle. White tail, little long, skinny muzzle, really really low tongue. They're very selective in what they feed. They will literally starve to death. And this research has been done in Texas where access deer and other species of exotic thrive. Whitetails really starved to death. Were the deer in same size captivity I think it was thirty six acres I remember right, not only stayed alive, but reproduced and thrived on plants that white tails starved on. So I said, if they're that picky about what they eat, is their meat better? And it turned out it was. Bottom line is we sent samples from seventeen deer loing that'd hurt to give up loin loing and liver samples to doctor van Biet's lab. And they don't just look at protein and fat. They're looking at omega three versus omega six acci omegas, and they're looking at flavonoids and phido nutrients, which are nutrients that the sun's interaction with plants developed that's not developed any other way. But a deer can eat that plant and actually preserve those fatal nutrients. So if you have really good habitat turned out that venison some of the best meat he's ever tested period. Now you think about us a role as a hunter. We can provide some of the best meat known on the planet by providing high quality white tail venison to our family. And I think there's a real, you know, badge of honor that hunters can wear by being that provider. First, we want to be a good conservation so we want to perpetuate the species and the resource. But I think the second badge even more than antlers. And I mean I like antlers. I got antlers around here. I think the second badge is being a provider and providing that super high quality meat maybe certainly better than you're going to buy at the grocery store to come out of a feedlock unequivocally better and are better than most better. And those cows are walking around and poop, you know, knee deep all day long. Who wants to do that? But yeah, this research with doctor van Bleet, we're not finished. We're taking a step further to expenseve research. We're kind of moving through it. But I think being a provider is a badge that we need to place more respect by if you wear that badge of being a provider, I think that deserves a huge amount of respect. 01:03:34 Speaker 2: Has that has that idea changed how you view or or judge your own success? Has that changed things at all? When you go into a year and you're thinking about what would warrant is you know you grading yourself as having a successful season, this this idea of being a provider, of feeling the freezer. Has that become a larger priority now or is there still like, man, I got to kill that one buck where I need to kill a six year old buck or that side of things is that's still a big part for you. 01:04:09 Speaker 4: I really enjoy interacting the bucks, hunting bucks. I enjoy harvesting bucks. I haven't had a buck mounted years. I'd rather take that money and go on the next adventure if you will. And you have to know for me, so I've been a manager for Sloan and most deer herds need some dough harvests, not all. You know, a huge eh EHD outbreak right now September in parts of Ohio, those deer harvests need to be reduced for that to recover for a year two it will bounce back quickly oys does. We've been studying EHD for others people have for many, many decades, so we know EHD will, but they need to back off the dough harvest a little bit. EHD hit my place here in Missouri in twenty twelve we lost somewhere around seventy five percent of deer herd and just a short amount of time. We backed off the dough harvest for two years and had phenomenal honeying after that. And that always happens here. Mark Jury and others talk about that because what happens is you get the harvest you should have been having, and now there's plenty of groceries for all the deer and the ones that survive it express way more to potential. 01:05:17 Speaker 3: Right. 01:05:17 Speaker 4: This has happened over and over and over and over, no doubt about it. So I've always been harvesting dose. We tend to harvest five dose for every buck and been doing that for almost three decades, now decades. But the reason I do that is changing from a manager to a provider. And again there's a transplant patient. Every year I go to the Mayo Clinic Rochester, Minnesota, have very detailed physical about my kidney health and all my health, and I'll meet with the nutrition us, the dietitian if you will, and there's hey, Grant, you know you're doing good. Let us go away eating and say, well, you know I'm a while if i'll just I eat primarily venison. There's very little poultry in our house, no store bocked beef, primarily venison, elk every now and then when I'm lucky. I'm not a very skilled elk hunter. And they said, man, Grant, whatever you're doing, keep doing it, because you know, I've been blessed. When you're a thirty three year transplant patient, you've been blessed to beat the odds. And I love of us survive thirty three years. And the Mayo puts pretty big stock in my diet on doing that. So venison has been very good to me. Started as a poor gradual student, where venison was just a source of protein. You know, we're harvesting deer for various projects. And just kept going through that and I like it. My wife prepares it well and I prepare it well, and so we just kept doing it. And now we know why and we have this data from doctor van Vleet, and it's natural there's no feed on our operators, nor hormones or anything going into the deer. I can't think of a better way to really benefit your family from a provider point of view. 01:07:10 Speaker 2: Yeah, how lucky are we that the thing we love, the pursuit, the recreation, the lifestyle that we enjoy so much being out there in nature, studying these animals, observing, following, going through all the ups and downs. How lucky are we that that incredible pursuit also leads to incredible nutrition for our families. It's pretty special, no doubt about that. 01:07:38 Speaker 4: You know. And I heard a different person say this, So I'm stealing this actually from Gabe Brown, probably maybe the most famous Virginia vag farmer ever, brilliant man. And Gabe was given a semar somewhere and someone asking, well, you know, if I this salad that had I don't remember number six eight different vegetables on there, isn't that better than your regenerative ag raised beef? And Gabe says, I don't know. We've identified about one hundred and fifty different planted or navy species on our ranch, and our cal have access to that, and those fidal nutrients are getting into the cows. So when I eat a steak, I'm eating seventy the benefits of seventy eighty ninety different plants and you're eating six interest. I think there's a huge amount of truth to that. There's research ongoing about that. Actually, Gabe Brown and that whole group understanding AG also use doctor Van Biet. I mean, he's literally, you know, one of the world's leading guys on this. So we're all kind of pulling the same way. I'm going to wildlife way, they're going to the beef or agricultural way. But I promise you I would rather eat a deer from Gabe's ranch where they don't use herbicide, they don't use synthetic fertilizer fertilizers made out patroleum products, folks, than I would in heavy rope drop iwould that the sprayers passed over the field every twenty days or something like that. Yeah, And so wherever you are, you're you're hunting Granny's back forty or wherever you are, you're on public land and they've done a clear cut or they've done whatever, and there's some young vegetation out there that's going to be really high quality meat for you. And your family. 01:09:23 Speaker 3: Grant. 01:09:23 Speaker 2: We've spent about an hour now looking back at your life and your experiences and your lessons learned, and what you would have told yourself way back then. But now you know all of this, You've lived this life, you've had these experiences, You've taught so many of us so much. I'm curious what you would tell somebody who has that much runway ahead of them. So I've got a seven year old son who has been going out in the woods with me since he you know, since he gets right on my chest, was on his first hunt when he was three, has been going with me every year since. He's expressed a lot of interest in you know, continuing it, you know, wanting to do it himself, and he's really into it. So if you were to sit down with my seven year old son, what would be the single most important thing you would want to leave with him? 01:10:17 Speaker 4: M First off, your son's one life's lottery, right, There's so many lessons through hunting, life, death, preparation, stewardship. Your son is blessed to have a dad pours into him. And I congratulate you, Mark for doing that. You're leading by jail. I think my number one thing would not be some hunting tip or based on GPS, it would be. And I wish I hadn't have been you know, I'm type A. I want to get it done. I'm a doer. I still have callouses to slow down and enjoy it. To take it in. That sounds really wish you was she, But I'm being so sincere. I wish you know, I was pushing through school and grad school and started a business as a wildlife consultant when that was unheard of. We've been incorporated thirty five years. This year, Mark's our thirty fifth year. That was not hurd up thirty five years ago. Actually got made fun of a lot. And that's the old biblical prophecy, right he who laughs first seldom laughs last. I wouldn't trade my career for anything. Yeah, I would slow down and enjoy it. And I wish I hadn't been so stressed about that next buck or is my buck bigger than mars buck? Or you know, I wish I would have focused more on the pure enjoyment of this tremendous gift we have. No other country has this gift. There's while I followed a plan of it, no country has free access in the amount of public land and the quantity of game animals that we have, and I wish I had focused more on the enjoyment of that. And I took my daughter's hunting mark. I have two daughters to follow on that trend. But my daughters grew up hunting with a camera because we were filming growing dear God to make a new episode every week. And I wish I'd have shoved the camera aside more and just say, hey, let's just go, honey, helpe shoot the bigs buck on the property. Let's go, honey. And my girls still come home to hunt. One works for SpaceX now, one works for a major drone company, military drone company, and in all that high tech hustle bus holders there already got plans to be here this gun season in Missourier's still coming home to hunt. They're here this Turkey season. 01:12:38 Speaker 3: Man. 01:12:38 Speaker 4: We had a great time, and folks, I left the camera home and took my hotest daughter, Raleigh hunting, and it was a blast. And I'm sorry I missed some of those days. No, honey, I don't have it on camera, don't take the shot. I'm sorry I missed some of those days. 01:12:54 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great advice for me as a father too. Hearing that, yes, well great. 01:13:03 Speaker 2: I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed this, how much I appreciate it. I want to give you an opportunity, though, to tell folks where they can go for more of this, because I know you have an incredible archive, an incredible library of lessons learned like this that other folks can watch from you. 01:13:18 Speaker 3: Can you tell folks where they can go? And is there. 01:13:21 Speaker 2: Anything that we should be keeping an eye out for in the coming weeks or months from Growing Deer. 01:13:27 Speaker 4: You can just search on Growing Deer on YouTube or whatever your favorite social platform is, either grant Woods or Growing Deer or get you there. And you know, we film I like other people, we've been doing this. We're going our sixteenth year. Every week, whatever we did last week is going to be on the air next week, so you know, we think maybe it's relative. So yeah, whatever we're doing, we're doing. We will be releasing round two as more fundings come in of our research on the quality of venison. I'm going to say three or four months from now. And I myself, I mean, I don't know the results yet. I'm super excited about this. This is more focused on something called flavonoids, which is was not it. I don't even know if that was a term five years ago. This is not only what gives meat or plants flavor, but those are extremely complex chemical compounds that turns out impacts our health in many ways. And I'm so excited to I've been getting to benefit from it as a primary venison diet. But what does that really mean? And one thing I'll share in Mark. I know we need to wrap up here, but we found that deer harvest diod earlier in season before they started acorns. We're higher quality, significantly higher quality meat than deer that we're feeding late season on acorns. And the same is to be true for deer dead are eating vegetation versus corn. Oh kernel corn. Deer not built to be corn. It can cause acidosis, certainly not the quantity to eat now, and and corns pretty closer related to acorns nutritionally speaking. So those you know, don't wait till well. I got to get my buck and I'm going to harvest my dough field that freezer from day one. We tried to start harvesting does day one, and that will be better quality meet and help you meet your management objectives. Awesome. 01:15:19 Speaker 2: That is very interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of those results. So please, please, I know you will keep us all posted and continue the great work You've been doing now for so many years. 01:15:31 Speaker 3: And it's been fun to watch the growing deer journey. 01:15:34 Speaker 2: I've been, you know, doing this wired hunting thing right around that same time length and since you start growing deer, and you've been a model for me to watch and to learn from. So I appreciate all that, Grant and everything you've done to help me over the years. 01:15:48 Speaker 3: Thank you, Mark. 01:15:50 Speaker 4: Thank you for all the information you've shared and the friendship. I remember you came here many many years ago, one of the first DISSL cameras I saw. We did some most stuff in a So thank you for your friendship and staying true to your mission. Mark, I appreciate you. 01:16:06 Speaker 3: Let's uh, let's chat against sotogram. 01:16:09 Speaker 4: Take care mar. 01:16:13 Speaker 3: All right, and. 01:16:14 Speaker 2: That's gonna do it. Thank you for joining me today. I appreciate you being a part of this community. I appreciate you listening to me and Grant here rad along for an hour or so, and I hope you've had a wonderful start to your hunting season. If it has begun, and if you are just about to begin, I'm pulling for you. 01:16:30 Speaker 3: You know, my fingers crossed for you. 01:16:32 Speaker 2: Good luck out there, have a lot of fun, and stay wired to hunt.