00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan, and this episode number two oh three, and today on the show, we're joined by Hell Blood of Northern Maine to discuss hunting and tracking big mature bucks in big woods settings. All right, folks, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Sitka Gear. And today on the show we are talking big woods deer hunting, and we're joined by one of the most well known experts on this topic on hunting the big woods of the Northeast, Mr Hale Blood. And uh my wife thought that was a pretty apt name. By the way she heard that, She's like, well, of course that guy hunts. Yeah, it's bad ass. Yeah it is, it is. And Hell in addition to having a great name, he is the author of Hunting Big Woods Bucks Volume one and two and Tracking White Tail Bucks. He is the president of the educational company and website Big Woods Bucks. He's a seminar speaker, a registered Master guide in the state of Maine, and based off the many emails I've gotten over the years requesting him as a guest. He is a very well respected and revered hunter who I think is gonna have a lot to offer when it comes to you know, not just helping people that hunt in the same place as he hunts, like up in the Northeast, but you know, after you know, hearing more about him. And actually I have already recorded the interview with him, so I know what he does talk about. And UM, he just has a lot of stuff that he's interesting and applicable to me in what I do here in Michigan. And I think, even like you Dan, hearing this kind of stuff, I think there's stuff we can learn from his attention to detail, his attention to tracks, UM, a lot of stuff like that that I think can be applied anywhere. So I'm excited for people to hear this one. UM. I found it really interesting and UM in last week's podcast, UM, I talked about a trip I'm taking up to the boundary waters of Minnesota, and I think a lot of the stuff the hell talked about in this one I can apply to that kind of hunt too, So just a lot of cool stuff. I think it's it's unique compared to a lot of our conversations. Um, but before we get to that, we do need to have our pregame show, because Dan, you were able to carve out some time in between family emergencies and all sorts of crazy stuff too, to at least let us catch up a little bit. So how the heck are you? Man? I tell you what, this year, as everybody hears on the news, is like the year of the flu. Right, everybody's got the flu. Well it's not necessarily the serious flu that's gone through our house, but with three kids, just it's a numbers game, right, someone's gonna be sick throughout the wintertime and the last two weeks, and part of the reasons why I couldn't be on the podcast and um, which really pisces me off because I like, you know, I like being the co host. But you know, today I had to go into the doctor again and get my youngest breathing treatment because he's he's he's got so much congestion in his lungs and now he's on antibiotics. And the older my oldest one, she's on medicine too because she's, uh, you know, got some kind of sickness going on and it's just been kind of rotating through our house the past couple of weeks with my wife and my kids and myself and and uh, I'm just kind of ready for summer to get here so so we can get rid of all this ship, you know what I mean? Yeah, man, I hear you on. I've had some serious cabin fever too. And I gotta tell you, you worried me a few minutes ago before we started recording when you told me that your son had a broad tosaurus and he has a dinosaur and then you realize that you meant bronchitis. Right, That's right. But like you should see how many simple mistakes I'm making these days because I am not getting the sleep that I need. I think, like full blown dead life dude. Like it sucks because my boss came up to me like three different times in the past two days and he's like, hey, Dan, can you quick change this on the report? And I look, and I got all these numbers and then I have a random word in with all these numbers, which is throwing the entire thing off. And I'm just like, oh, ship, this makes me look bad. But I think is that is the is the random word that's always in there deer or bucks or something like that. I think these days it's probably sleep. Yeah, I can relate. I hear you. I'm I'm I'm learning, so you uh, not all is bad? Right? Then? Had some good stuff happen? Yeah? Yeah, I mean I I got Can you go ahead? Can I say before you tell me? I just gotta tell you that when I saw what happened to you, I was like writhing and jealousy I was. I was like, I hate him so much. You know, we we've talked about this before, but you know how when you flip through Instagram and you see like, oh, this guy shot a giant and there's a there's you know, a majority of it is congratulations of that person for shooting a big bucket, but then there's that little sliver that just kind of the thought sneaks in that's just like that bastard, Like, you know, like I hate him. I hate that guy, and uh happy for exactly. But dude, I had one of those walks where you just you just run into shads man and it was awesome walk us through it because that was pretty unbelieving. Right. So, for the first thing is the stars kind of all aligned, right, and the goal was to just quick go out, take a tree stand down and get back and get home. But um, my daughter had a birthday party with a friend, so my daughter took or my wife took my daughter and the baby to this birthday party, and my son stayed home with grandma because she didn't have to work. So I had time where if I wanted to, I could go do something without having any kids with me. So I went real fast, took down this tree stand. Found a shed while I was taking down my tree stand. Um. Then I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna go walk this field. It's a real easy walk. It's a place you've walked actually before. And um, I think on this field I found a shed and Corey fall found a shed. Uh this is the big crop field with strips on it. Yeah, yeah, the buffer strips in it. And I'm like, you know what, if there's gonna be sheds here or you know, anywhere, that's a real easy walk that I can cruise real fast and not take up an a ton of time. I'm gonna walk this field. So I walk into it and the first shed of the day that I find is laying right on a fence in a in a little tuft of grass that looks like you know, these deer are um going and eating and then they'll have their like their night bed, you know what I mean, where they'll they'll basically just sit and chew all the food that they ate. Right. Um, So that was the biggest shed sixty five and five eights inches what I measured it out at um and that was a four point side was four point side, so give or take. And I gave him. I gave him a seventeen inch inside spread, which I think it's probably being conservative, so it's like a hundred forty seven inch eight pointer, which is I got. I got pictures of him two years in a row, um, and he's definitely on the he's a hitless buck. And uh so you know that walk then turned into me kind of slowing down and really scraping the area really good. And uh in the first buffer strip, I found three sheds, and in the next buffer strip, I found another three sheds. Um and then I'm trying to think I found I found eight sheds in that field. Uh. One one of them was a match set. And then, um, dude, it just just kind of happened, you know, what I mean, And every one of them was in the grass and I was just kind of cruising looking for the cherry pick. But I swear this weekend, Um, if I don't go to the Iowa Deer Classic, I think I'm gonna go shed handing again with my wife and we're gonna walk that cornfield in the rows and just kind of real slow, methodically go through it because I have a feeling I missed a lot in that that are just kind of sitting out in that field. Yeah, there's that many just in the buffer strips right right along there, and then it wasn't almost all right sides. Yeah, And that's the funny thing. So of the nine sheds I found, and by the way, uh, I dropped a shed walking back to the truck that I didn't notice because I had I didn't have a backpack because I was like, this is just gonna be a quick walk. I found all these sheds, so I had to carry them all by hand, and I think I dropped one of the smaller ones. So it's still it's still out there somewhere. Um that do you count that as twice? Is that two sheds? If you found it and then you find it again. Hopefully my wife finds it there you go. So but yeah, man, I mean, um, and that was only half the field too. I didn't get to the timber line because I time, I slowed way down, time expired, the grass was a little taller. I was going back and forth and all these trails just trying to see what else was there. I was, you know, looking for beds and um, but I found the food source that they've they've been hitting the past couple of weeks, and I don't know, it just made me excited to get out and do more shed hunting. That's awesome. When you hit the jackpot like that, that's pretty incredible. I've never had I've never had a day like that. That just sounds nuts. And that's two let's see, that's a tie. I found nine sheds. That's a tie for the most, I think the most sheds I found in a day. And that was only and that's crazy because that was only too. Like if you if you add in the first shed I found when I was walking through the timber and you know, because I took the like a back way in to get my tree stand down. Um, just so I was kind of looking for sheds the entire time. Uh if you if you don't count that, I've only walked for two hours and found nine sheds, so that's pretty good. And I've had days where I've walked ten hours and found zero sheds. Yeah, well you found that all happened to what was that Sunday? Yep, Sunday. Yeah. So during the week prior to that, I think I spent like two evenings or afternoons, maybe I put in like four or five hours, maybe more than that. Maybe we'll say four to six hours during the week. And then Friday afternoon and a good chunk of Saturday and a good chunk of Sunday I put probably put on another fifteen hours, so we'll say maybe twenty hours of shed hunting last week in Michigan. And I found zero. And so then I saw you had your two hour nine shed day, and I said to myself, man, why are you shed hunting in Michigan? So then guess what I did? You went to Ohio. I went to Ohio. Can I tell I? Can I tell you about that? I want you to tell me about it. So I got my buddy further and we went on down to Ohio yesterday and um, long story short. On that walked our property, Josh found a nice shed um in a spot where I've always thought we would find sheds but we never have. But pulled the nice I think it's probably a three year old buck, young youngishu um, but great potential. He had a busted G two but hiss G three is like ten inches long. Um, so he's definitely a deer that will look a little uh little grown to something special probably by next year. So that was cool. Um. And then there's another property we have shed hunting permission on, so we went there and um stopped by the landowner's house to say hi. We always like to chat, and the landowner says, I got something for you, Mark and picks up off of the lawnmower a gigantic shed, hands it to me and I just about flipped out. I think it is I'm holding it right now. I haven't measured it yet, but it is the most massive shed that I have now in my collection. Um, and it could be like a seventy inch side, I mean, just super duper mass. And as I was looking at him, like I know this buck. This is a buck that we have referred to as Blades. I saw him as a three year old, further saw the next year as a four year old. We've had we didn't see him at all last year as a five year old, but we've had pictures of him for three years straight now and now I have his shed in my hands. So that was amazing. So he's gonna be a six year old. He's gonna be a six year old this year. You go, so when you saw him? How far away was he from you when you saw him? Uh? Well, this is when I When I saw him was as a three year old, um, and I I watched him from maybe a hundred yards away. That's crazy. Yeah. But now we say, okay, we're gonna go for our walk. So we go start walking and we're walking this fence row and within three to five minutes of leaving the landowners house, I look on the edge of the field in the fence row and there's a shed and I go running over and grab it and it is the match side to Blades And that's this that's the this year's shed, right, Yeah, this is this year's shed. Um. And that shed again, I mean, they're they're just amazing. This the one side that was given to me is a five point side, just a clean, really heavy five point side. The side I picked up is a five point side plus a really big sticker point coming off the base of the brow time that's maybe four inches long. Um So technically I guess on the eleven pointer I would I would probably put him at maybe a one sixty something inch buck five year old last year. Um so that was incredible. That was the biggest shed I've ever found. That was bigger than the Mark Kenyon shed I found with you. Um So, yeah, I dude found the biggest shed ever and was given the match side two minutes or five minutes before that. So that was pretty That was pretty awesome. So I haven't found many sheds, but the sheds that have found have been like really big, really cool, uh special sheds. So I'm a happy shed hunter so far. I cannot complain anymore. And it's like our friend further Man, that should be like a Netflix series, our friend for friend. You know this time I was joking with him about this yesterday. I'm like, dude, you should. You can't complain about the fact that everyone refers to as further Not because as you know, he works for the QT may. So he gets lots of emails from people, like official work emails, asking, you know, talking about different events or different things like this, and people are emailing him and referring to him as further. Oh, man, I hope he doesn't flip out mentally and kill you. I'm telling he should be thankful because like he is the only man in the hunting industry now, the only person in the hunting industry who goes by one single name. Like he's like the Kobe, He's the Kobe of the hunting world. Now he's just he's not he's not a he's not a public figure. He's an icon. That's he's just further. That's right. So I smell a T shirt coming. Oh that would be good, Yeah, that would be good. So yeah, man, it was a lot of fun. We had a good day. And he found though too, right, Yeah, I mean he found that good one, that three year old that told you about. And then he found another small one that actually I think might be actually the it's it's a busted off piece of a nailer. It's not a shed on, so I think it's the end of a main beam that must have been from a pretty good buck too. So, um yeah, dude, it was a good day. And um, I'm excited to keep walking. I'm back in Michigan now I'm going to do some more walking probably this weekend and off to Iowa next weekend, right right, chance there's a chance I might be able to join you for that too, Yeah, dude, work on that schedule. Yeah, yeah, it's gonna take some work. It's gonna take like a date night, I think, and that kind of you know, like maybe like two or three backrubs. And then these days that ship really doesn't pay off anyway, because then no matter what I do, my wife is still at home with three kids. Yeah, but I I here's here's something funny. So I I texted our other good friend, Ross Hossman today, Oh, Ross, and I said, dude, is your wife gonna come hunting? Because you know, like I love my wife to death, right, but if your wife's like can I come? And it's like last year, if my wife came, I'm pretty sure there would have been a lawsuit that would it came out of that that, you know, those those conversations after she sell what Peter do you? Yeah? Exactly exactly. So um so, so I'm like, hey, dude, is your wife gonna come with us? Because my wife kind of wants to come to And he's like, well, I don't know yet, So I don't know. There may be there may be some females joining us. Maybe al right, well, hey, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea for us to act like upstanding citizens for once, right, right, But I think there is there's something positive about men scraping the bottom of the barrel every once in a while just to get it out of their system, that there's something to be said about that too, right, right, And I feel like you've you've taken that to the extreme for many years. Absolutely so yeah, And I'm just like you, man, I am ready to get out and do some more shut hunting. There's something about at the end of the day, your legs and your back are sore, and it just feels good. Yeah, it's a good feeling. And then it's an especially good feeling if you can sit back in the couch afterwards and holding your hand a piece of a piece of bone hand, spin it around and touch it and look at it, and I don't know, I know, you're just like made. That's just something special to hold that and look at it and think about it, and I was cool first human being to ever touch that angler, which is I find I find it awesome. Yeah, it's wild. I mean when you think about that was a piece of this like living animal, and maybe it's a deer you hunted, a deer you've seen before, encountered, and to now like hold some piece of that, that's I don't know. I I gotta kick out of it. So one question, I know, and I know we're on time, but have you ever killed a deer that you have found sheds too? Yes? Yes, okay, yeah, um six shooter the buck I killed in Michigan two thousand thirteen, I have one of his antlers. Um, that might be the only one though until until holy Field this year. Right, for as many sheds as I found, and as you know, the deer that I've killed, I have yet. I'm looking back and I have yet to kill a deer that I have found a shed too. I think it's pretty hard to do, except in those situations where people have like these really big managed properties, right, but by permission small properties are are kind of situations. In most cases, it's a tough cell. It's it's tough to pull off, right, but maybe maybe the tides attorney, maybe you're gonna kill this mega eight pointer this year. Man who knows I I'd love to He's a he's a good he's a good buck. He's almost a nine. He's got a little crab claw. That's awesome. Well, here's my advice for you to kill this big this big a pointer. Um. Stick around for the rest of this podcast. As I know you you couldn't be here in the interview, but stick around for this one. Here what Hall has to say about tracks and how we can tell how fresh tracks are, and how we can tell how big a buck is by a track and by his stance and his gate um, and then apply that to this year in Iowa when you're looking at like tracks in the mud, and that might help you better identify where this big burley buck is hanging out or walking. And I feel that this tracks are something that I'm getting more and more interested in. It's kind of overlooked a lot of times today. We focus so much on tild cameras and all that kind of stuff. But I think that there's something to be said about paying attention to what's actually on the ground. So, um, we cover some of that stuff today. It's pretty interesting. I'm ready, all right. Well, then let's take a break for our sick gear story of the day and then we'll get right to hell Blood. For this week's sick of story, we're joined by Seth Healy, who tells us about checking trail cameras with his son. Well, it was about the beginning of October and the summertime. I got my little boy out with me checking cameras, you know, velvet bucks, and uh, I started hunting some and what much going on, and the weather was started to cool off, and I thought, well, that would be a good time to get him out with me and kind of get him in the woods a little bit and uh check some more cameras. So we go out. The previous card pools hadn't been too good. It was getting pretty slow, you know, October law was starting to hit, and so we go out and go to my favorite area of our family farm, and uh go to check a couple of cameras and I let him, you know, I opened and opened the cameras up for him and let him pull the cards out and put new cards in. And he was just I mean super excited to be out there, and it was for a moment for me that you know, I had never got to do that with my dad, and for me to be able to share just getting him out there and doing something that I love was super special for me. Um, I don't even I can't even describe how to be whenever I actually get to take him hunt with me, you know, because he's only three. It was just I don't know, it was even though we didn't kill anything or you know, anything like that, it was still a special moment to get my kid out there with me and and uh let him enjoy everything that I enjoy about the outdoors. On seth Son, he was wearing Sickest Fanetic hoodie. If you'd like to create a Sickest story of your own, or to learn more about SITYS technical hunting apparel, visit sitkey gear dot com. Alright with me now on the line is hell Blood. Thanks for joining us. Hell, Hey, you're welcome, glad to be here. Yeah, I'm I'm excited to excited to have this chat. I've been following some of your your articles and different things you've posted over the years. Um, kind of from a distance and kind of always been aware of some of the things you've been doing. And I've heard a lot about you and some other folks up in your neck of the woods as far as how you guys hunt, but I haven't done a good job of getting anyone on the wire Dune podcast to talk about this stuff, to talk about the big woods, to talk about tracking deer um. So you are filling a big gap for us. Hell, so so thank you for doing that. And before we get too far into that stuff, I'd like to hear from you first a little bit about yourself. What's your story? Hell, how how did you get into all this? And how did you get to where you're right now? I think I got a crazy story. So I I started deer hunting when I was ten years old, which is when you can start. And me and you've gotta be ten to hunt. Well now they change it. But and my father was my father dea hunted. He wasn't a big dea hunter as far as you know, like an expert or anything, but he'd like to go and every every once in a while he shoot ada, you know. And I grew up in the southern part of Maine, and and there wasn't there weren't a lot of dia back then in southern Maine. The northern forest w was was where the dea were the most heavily populated because southern Maine was reverted farm country. It was reverting when they let the farms go by, and they just hadn't populated in I guess, but it was a back then. I remember back in the I started hunting in the late sixties and and uh, you know, it was a big deal if you shot a deer and you could shoot either sex back then, you know, as anything goes and you know, it was a big deal, a big saying. It was always, you know, to get your dea because it was a big deal to get one. So anyway, that's where I started. But I actually shot my first one when I was twelve, and I show it when I was thirteen, and I skipped a couple of years because I really didn't get to go that much anyways. But then when I was sixteen, my my relatives invited me to come down to there their hunting lodge, which was an old farmhouse and it was it was more to the northeast of us, still kind of near the coast, but I got to go up there and spend a week. And uh that was a big deal for me because I would go on Saturday of Thanksgiving us something before then. But and there was quite a few more deer up there. You know. It was calming to see some deer every day up up there. So I started shooting some deer up there. And then I went in the Marine Corps. As soon as I turned eighteen, I got out of high school. I went in the Marine Corps for a stint. An idea hunted down in North Carolina where I was stationed, and uh, I drought a bunch of deer down there. The limit was four years, I think down there. But I was always crazy about it, and and I was crazy about tracking, even though I didn't know it that much then because in southern Maine we didn't have much for snow during da season, but I used in the wintertime. Me and a couple of buddies, we tracked rabbits around of snowshoe hares there and we tracked them to ourselves. But and then when I got out of the Marine Corps, I had to get a job. I wanted to be a game wouldn't but they weren't taking applications. So I just got a job in a grocery warehouse, and not to bore you with all us, that only lasted a couple of years. But the only vacation pick I could get was up north in the season opened a week early, So I got that pick, and I talked my father into going. That was me and my father. We had this little pop up camp and we borrowed and we headed to the North main Woods to an area it's where I live now, and settled into because we used to go fishing their Memorial weekend and I always saw a da So I said, well, that'll be a place to try anyways, And and it was kind of ironic the first trip I made north after that week up north, I felt it was hard to go back and hunt in southern Maine. I don't know why it was, but it was just like something in my mind. It was It's like I got a love for it in one week. It was big. You know, it's a bigger area than I've ever been in. And you know, you see that big buck sign and I've seen We had some little bit of snow that week off and on, and I followed a few big buck tracks and I just got intrigued by it. So I did still have to hunt down in southern Maine for a little bit more off and off and on. But I did take my time every year when I could get it. By then I had started UH only I only uh after that first two trips up north, I UH. I ended up going with my father in law. He was a lobsterman, and I helped him for a couple of years as a stern man. And then I bought my own boat and went lobster and on my own. And then I periodically got some time to go north every year. But that's the only place I wanted to go when I hunted. I'd drive up all three hours the hunt for two days, you know, and then go back and go back lobster. And so anyway, I told my wife back then, I said, I want to I wanted. I always wanted to think of something I could do to make a living in the you know, being part in the woods. So I said, let's let's start a sporting camp and guide people and stuff, you know. So just ran on that dream, that's all. And I lost it for nine years. And then we sold that business and built our built up business up here, you know, and outfitting business, and ran that for twenty two years. I think we sold that four years ago, now be five years actually in December. So meanwhile I started guiding the hunters, the deer hunters, and and uh, you know, got to learn a lot from that about people and and deer as well, because it got me in the woods, you know, every day of the season for years and years and years, and and then uh, that led into I decided to write a book about it, because my hunters kept saying, once you write a book about this stuff, I'd be telling stories at the table every night, you know, when the hunters would come in, you know. And so I did. So I wrote my first book and I titled it, uh Hunting Big Woods Bucks. And that was a that was a term that I coined back then, back I think that was in two thousand and five, I think when I wrote my first book. And now you see it, you see it everywhere, you know, you see big woods bucks everywhere. It used to be northern the north Woods and Northern Woods and northern deer and all that, but everybody uses big woods bucks now. So but anyways, and that's that's how my I started my business with a partner after that. It was a buddy of mine, a client, Chris Dalty, and he said, hey, what do you think about getting the camera and filming some of this stuff you do when I go, yeah, sure. So we just kind of started that way and and uh kind of moved it along to where it is now. You know, it was a slow stock because I had my other business going on, guiding and stuff. So but anyways, that's kind of what happened. Just kept kept in the woods and studying. I was always a a student of the woods anyway. So the time I remember when I was six, seven, eight years old running around the woods all day. Back in those days, my mother would kick your out of the house, you know, and be back for supper and that was it. So I ran around in the woods and stuff most every day. Not that we had huge woods, but big enough to roam around in and see things. You know, they always feel pretty big when you're that young too, right, Oh yeah, yeah, for sure. It was a relative. So, UM, I guess that's go ahead. I was gonna say. I heard you say once speaking of this big woods hunting. Um, I heard you say once that you either love it or you hate it when people try this kind of hunting or hunting in this kind of place. Um, why is that? And why is it that you ended up loving it so much? Well, I loved it so much just because I always loved the woods, and the bigger the better. And I was never I was never afraid in the woods. And I think back now on that. Uh when I used to first start at hunting, I never thought about being lost. I never thought that I needed to be right with somebody else. Even at ten years old, I started rabbit hunting with my grandfather. He had beagles when I was ten years old, and I'd roll them around by myself. My snowshoes were taller than I was, and I'd catch up with him during the day, you know, and we get a rabbit running. If I didn't know where he was, go find his make a circle, find my grandfather's track, and follow it until I caught up to him. And but never, never ever thought about being lost. And uh so when I got to the Big Woods, I was the same way. The first couple of years I went up north, I never even carried a compass. And then I got a little turned around in the snowstorm one day, and I said, you know, compass probably would be a handy tool to have up here. And back then there was not as many logging roads as there is now. Ei there were some some really huge pieces of woods with no logging roads. But so when I started to I just figured everybody would like it. You know, I just was like, I liked it. So you know how you are, you typically tend to think everybody kind of maybe thinks a little bit of like all hunters maybe anyway. But um, when I started to realize that not everybody liked it is when I started guiding clients and I could see even the ones that I took, some of them that I took, they wouldn't they were they were there for that year, and then they it wasn't their cup of tea and they'd never come back. And then I saw it a lot more with guides that clients that weren't guided, they come up to they just rented a cabin and went and did their own thing. Ah, some of them would leave halfway through the week, even some of the guided ones, you know, by Wednesday or Thursday, they'd pack up and go home. And you know, they would never tell you the real reason why. But but it boiled down to a couple of things, and one of them it shouldn't have been, was the low deer densities. Because we always told them, if you're gonna come up north, I always would was honest with people, you're not gonna see a lot of deer, because they used to be all the deer up north. But when they started back in the seventies and eighties and even through the nineties, when the log and really accelerated with mec and I his equipment, they cut a lot of the deer winnering areas are actually most of them, and the deer herds plummeted up north. Meanwhile they were recovering in the south, they were building up. So now it's opposite all the deer in southern Maine now and the the deer if you were in further between the northern Maine. And but I would always tell people that, you know, if you I told I used to tell people, if you see five or six deer in the week, you've had a good week up here. Because if you might see the one buck you want to see and get, you know, it's this is an area where you can shoot a buck of a lifetime you know, a big, heavy body buck with heavy antles and stuff, and that was kind of like the mystique of most people loving it. They didn't care if they didn't see him any deer, but they knew they were there. They saw the buck sign that you on huge trees and the huge tracks, and they'd see him at the tagging station. Other guys getting them are on the game poll at camp, and they knew they were there, and they were willing to put the time into for their chance of getting one of those once in a lifetime bucks. So that's how I got to learn that they either loved her they hated it. But the bottom line with most of it was fear. And I've written that in my new book fear is the biggest obstacle people have the hunting in the big woods, and the biggest fear is being lost, which I never related to it. Like I told you, I never thought about it. But you know, I realized that even with people I guided, that they were nervous being right with me. You know, would be on a one on one hunt track and a buck of something, and when they started asking you, you know, how far out are we and which weighs back. You know, they're nervous, right, So that's how I got to figure out that people were basically scared of the woods. Spit scared of being lost, a scared of spending the night in the woods. And that was a limiting factor. So it still is to this day. Most people don't get even up here a quarter of a mile from the roads, any of the logging roads, or anything a quarter of a mile about it for most people. What do you what do you consider big woods? Like? What are the kinds of places that you hunt? Um? And I guess also, I know, I think you've mentioned you've hunted a number of other states too. I'd be curious to hear kind of where all you've experienced that's kind of hunting to Okay, what my definition of the big woods is anywhere that deer don't have access to agricultural crops or suburban areas with his neighborhoods where they can eat shrubs and stuff. In other words, not really contact with people on a on a regular basis. You know, so because agricultural cross crops is what determines what dea do, right, that's where you most people all you hear about people talk about when the white tailed deer hunting is patterning dea between you've got to know where the feeding areas are in the bedding areas well. That's only because they're limited to feed where the crops are because the woods is all browsed out where there is no feed basically in the woods, so they have to go to crops, which makes them patternable in the big woods. The same food is about everywhere in the woods. Now it's different different times of the year, but there's all kinds of green plants in the woods and mushrooms and nuts, and and they don't go to any one place. These da just roam even the does you know, they'll be on maybe one ridge one day or maybe a week. They feed up and down a ridge and then they might cross the ravine go on to another ridge of half a mile or a mile away and spend a week or a few days over there. They just roam around, even the even the dos. You're not gonna pattern them. You know, you can find deer trails in the woods and stuff where you might be a better chance to you know, to get one if you were sitting something you're gonna get on a stand. Yes, there's places you can do that, but it's not because they're going from a feeding area to a betting area. They just traveling from one place to the next basically. And as far as the states go, I've hunted in uh, well, on the east side, you know, I've hunted around New England, you know, Maine and New Hampshire and mass actually shot my first Massachusetts buck last fall, and the Muzzloda hunted the Adirondacks in New York, and uh. I hunted like North Carolina and stuff, you know, years ago. But far as for track, I have hunted in Montana, the up of Michigan, Minnesota, and Ontario Northwest Ontario which is right above Minnesota there. But all these places I go to, it's for the bigger woods, you know. I don't go there to hunt around family, and I go to hunt in the big woods, like Montana. The the eastern parts all prairie and agriculture. In the west is all those big mountains. Well that's where I hunt, you know. So uh space, and there's differences in the deer a little bit from one area to the next, but it's not enough to be hard to figure out. Mostly it's because the deer populations are different in those different areas, you know, Like what I saw up in the Up of Michigan was probably similar amount of deer is back here. When we first started hunting Ontario, there was quite a few more deer than here. In Montana there is they're in pockets, but there's places with his more deer in places that's the same. So you just gotta get used to the amount of deer, and that controls kind of how far the big box will travel, you know. But people have asked me what's my favorite place to hunt? And it's still right here in Maine, believe it or not. I just something about, you've got a chance to kill these big bucks, you know that dressed well over two hundred and uh the tracks are bigger, you know, everywhere else you go the tracks are as big as here. Actually, up up in the Up, I found some tracks that were big like here. But for the most part then on because it's a different The bucks we have in northern Maine, northern New Hampshire, right up in New Runswick can que back. It's a Northern Borealis white tail, which is the largest subspecies, and so they have the they have the largest tracks. I know we shot some. My heaviest deer I shot was actually in Ontario, but he had no ways near the foot is some of the big ones here that one dressed to eighty. But it's a different subsidies. I think it's the probably the northern like probably the the Coda white tails probably spread north or whatever up into Ontario because up there where we hunted, it's the deer weren't always there, you know, they kind of spread north over the years. So so anyways, that's yeah. The it sounds like you've been able to kind of put your big big woods strategy into action, surprising a lot of different places, which is pretty interesting to me. Um, So I want to dive into the details of how exactly you do that. But one of the things that I have kind of wondered about right at the gate is when you talk about the you know, deer hunter like myself here in southern Michigan, and I hunt a lot of the Midwest where I am hunting that kind of agg land wood lots and agg fields type landscape. Just like you said, there's a lot of that, um figuring out where they bed, figuring out where they feed, trying to intercept them, patterning deer, doing a lot of offseason scouting, hanging tree stands, all that kind of stuff. So our off season is full of all sorts of preparation. But as a big woods tracker, what do you do in the off season? Are you scouting and doing a whole lot of preparation or is the hunt for you really just getting out there and finding a track and going Yeah, that's really what it is. Because Uh, I'm not a sitter, never have been. Even when I was a kid, I couldn't. I couldn't sit very long. I don't have any patience for it. So I'm either still hunting. If it's be a ground, I still hunt around. Call it scouting now because I don't really want to shoot one on bay ground. I'd rather track one down, you know. But I go out and go through the motions, and I go and like around here, I'm so familiar with my area that I just go check some areas I might know how to hunted for ten of even twenty years. I go back, you know that they might have gone downhill from logging or something else. But a lot of times those areas they like come full circle and it's good again, you know. So I go out in all I look for when I'm scouting, even in the spring, is basically what I'm looking for is where them big bucks travel. I'll incidentally find out where the does are hanging out. You know, they always hanging around with the best feed is in the woods, which is typically the newer logging, you know, the newer cuttings, because that's where the best feed grows. And the doors take their their fawns there to raise them up, so those will attract the bucks later in the season, you know, once the rut kicks in. But these big box in the big woods, they're real secretive creature. You can't believe how secretive they are. There's places they go that without snow, you would never find them. You would never you'd never go there to find some of the places they go to lay down or even and hang out. You know, it could be right to the tops of the highest mountains down in these swamps. But they're reclusive. They're really reclusive animal. And but I'll tell you the key here for me of locating the big box is a signpost rub. And that's another that's another term that I coined back when I wrote my first book, because I kept finding these rubs in the woods up here that they look different than other ones. And I started studying them a little bit because I was always curious any anyways about things in the woods. And I could see that the same tree had been rubbed year after year. You could see the you could see the growth rings where it kept healing over and healing over, and it actually someone would be brought it right to the middle. They've been rubbed so many years. And I call them signposts because what I figured that what it is is it's a place where they put sent and communicate. And now with trail cameras you can I mean I had the theory, I said it's got to be that, but now with trail cameras you can prove it because you can watch how they rub those. They're not rubbing them as much out of aggression all the time as they are just to put sent. And sometimes they quite frankly, they go buy them and they don't rub them. They'll just smell them and keep going. They want to see who's there. It's like a communication point. Well, a lot of those places there will be several bucks overlap right there. That's like the spoke of a wheel. Of the hub of a wheel, you know, where those different bucks cross paths. And that is a real key, I call it. That's the key to unlock in the secret of the big woods when you when you locate a bunch of those in the woods, you know, and uh, they're not necessarily that easy to find until you know what to look for. But I mean, I've had guys that I've taught and stuff and read my books that still never found one. And if I've taken them in the woods and showed them or explained it a little bit better, they go and find them and they start sending me pictures back of the ones they found. And excuse me, sorry, I was just gonna say, so, are there specific types of places that you usually find a signpost rublic? Is it at a junction of some kind of different type of terrain? Or where where do you find these? There can there be anywhere? Well up here, nine five even more per cent of the rubs are on a specific tree and it's a brown ash, or you'd call if you looked it up in a tree book, could be a black ash. And I think it's because that black on that tree. It's like balsa wood. I think it holds a scent. And I also think it's because it's it's a rare tree. It's not like a maple tree or a birch tree. It's they don't grow everywhere. They grow around wet ground, so they grow around uh seed of swamps, spring seeps down through the woods, up in the even up in the mountains. They'll grow if there's a seep where they've gotta have a lot of water. So that's how you find though, so I don't I don't go looking in the woods. There's too many trees in the woods to look for a signpost rub. So I walk the wet areas until I find the trees at the rubs most likely on. That's how a scout. And if I find these brown ash and I get through an area with brown ash, and I don't see any rubs on them, there ain't too many bucks around because they don't they got to rub them, you know. And then when you get down south of here, towards the middle of Maine, things change a little bit and they start there's different ones you'll find signpost rubs on, and it transitions into things like white oak, hemlock, red cedar. When you get down beyond Maine and you get into southern New England as a red cedar, and red cedar goes all the way into the south. I found signpost rubs in Tennessee turkey hunting in the spring on red cedar trees. You know, when those grow probably about anywhere, but you'll see them a lot around abandoned fields and stuff. They'll grow up around the edges. So in your area, if you know what tree to look for, you go look for those trees and you'll find signposts if if it's if it's a a big enough woods where bucks can grow old, because if they can't grow old, you're never gonna find a signpost because it has to be rubbed enough he is to make one, right, it makes sense to you. So if a if a buck gets shot when he's two or three years old, he's not really he might have started a rubb. If you rubbed two years or three years and then you you kill that buck, then it's probably the end of that signpost, unless there was already several big bucks making one. Which if you you know most places aren't like that. You know, you gotta get remote to places that grow enough big bucks. Now I know those those places in Iowa and Kansas where they shoot all those big bucks. But the reality is most of those big bucks aren't really that old, you know, So you need old age to create signposts, and signposts would be the key in the big woods to find in where the bucks travel. So so back to the original question, then, which is about the preparation scouting. Is there anything else you do on the off season other than looking for those signposts, anything else before we move on to the actual in season stuff. Nope. If I'm gonna scout new areas, I go in the I'll go in the spring. As soon as the snow leaves the ground late April early May, before it greens up, I'll go check some new places because you'll still see the rubs and scrapes on the fall, excuse me. And then if I'm going to scout in the fall, I'll scout the last week before the season, because before that they ain't there. They roamed around somewhere else in their territory. And what changes them really here is when the leaves drop in early October, they move wherever this summer range was, where they're feeding in a cot or whatever it was. As soon as them leaves drop off in the woods opens up, they moved to a different area, they get they get back with his green growth. For swamps, they just they feel like they're they're out in the open. In other words, wants the leaves fall. You know, it's the only two times I scout right, If I see, I can go hunt there when the snow flies. Now, what about before the snow flies, when the season opens there's not snow yet? Do you do you try any dry ground tracking? Is there anything you do before the snowfalls? Or do you just follow the snow or wait for it? No? I well, I it's yes to both of them. I stay here at home when it's bare ground, and I scout around. I go check some of the places where I know the signposts, see if they're hit, see what it looks like. The best time to track you can track on bare ground is very difficult. But the best time is right after a rain where it flattens all the leaves out, and then you really only have about a day and then there's more tracks laid down and you can't do it anymore, you know what I mean? And then when you do find it, you've got to find a track you know, one of those big ones that's track is bigger than all the rest of the tracks, so it doesn't blend in with them. You know, if you've come across the other tracks, it'd be easy enough to to sort it out, you know. And typically they'll sink in deeper in the leaves and all that. But I've tracked the number of one bay ground before and uh, it's a lot of fun. It's slower going, you really, I'd part is that your your eyes are on the ground all the time, so you know, looking around, whereas when there's snow you can look out that track sometimes ads and you don't have to look at the ground anymore, you know, you can look ahead look for a deal. Yeah, well, I think now is a good time to take a quick break for a word from our partners at white Tail Properties. This week. With white Tail Properties, we're drawn by Justin Mason, a land specialist out of Illinois, and Justin is gonna be telling us about what some things are to consider when looking at a property that frequently floods. I think the biggest thing to consider when looking at a property that floods, there's a misconception that flooded ground doesn't hold beer, and I have found that personal on my own farm to be false. UM. I had perfect video of this just a couple of weeks ago. The river got up. Less than forty eight hours later, the deer we're back in there. So I think, what if you have property that plugs you need to try to identify a kind of that high ground and make sure you know that the high ground has as much food and cover on it as you can get. That way, when it pushes those deer out, they have a place to go, and hopefully you can still keep them on your property without losing them to your neighbor. If you'd like to learn more and to see the properties that justin currently has listed for sale, visit whitetail properties dot com. Backslash Mason that's m A S O N SO. I feel like a lot of guys and girls that hunt UM in the Midwest or other of these these kind of generic deer hunting types examples where most of the media and stuff comes out of UM. There's not quite as much of a focus on paying attention to deer tracks. Everyone wants to focus on trail cameras or food plots or whatever might be. But there's been kind of this, uh, this lack of interest in tracks in a lot of both media and simply help most average guys are hunting. So in a bearground scenario, what should the average deer hunter know whether or not they're gonna track a buck or not? What should they know about tracks? Or what can you tell us about tracks that can help us, you know, better determine what is a big buck by its track or how fresh is it or anything else that we should be paying attention to when it comes to that kind of sign, Well, again, a track is relevant to your area. You know, a track what I would call a big track out here, you probably won't find one in southern Michigan that size. So you've gotta go with what's a big track for your area. So, for here, I call it a three by three track or a three by three and a half. Typically they're a little longer than they are wide. But if I find a three by three track, I'm pretty well assured, unless it's late season when they've lost a lot of weight, that that buck is gonna field dress over two hundred pounds. That's the kind of bucks I like to go after. You know you they're going to be a mature buck, you know. But out of your way in southern Michigan, that might be a two bite two and a half track. I don't know, you know, But up in northern Michigan and the up I did see some, you know, some of them three by three and a half tracks. I said, I saw some up there. But you'd have to get used to your own area. What's a normal size, but the biggest, the biggest thing. Anybody in the area is gonna say if they used to see him be a tracks, they're gonna say, wow, that's a a big track. But the mature buck is gonna have the do clause will be no matter what size the print is, his due claws are gonna be set quite a bit back from the back of his hoof, say two inches or more, and it'll be usually a little wider than the hoofs. In other words, where you see those dew claws, those prints will be wider than the than the track itself from the horse, and the dow clause will be turned more perpendicular to the hoof almost ninety degrees, whereas like a dough typically their dew claws are almost in line. They turned a little bit, but not much. The other key thing if you had snow, you'll never know. On bare ground, but even in an inch or two of snow, a mature buck will drag his feet, so you'll see those drag marks. And if you see drag marks in an inch or two of snow, that's an older buck. They just get lazier when they get older, and they don't pick their feet up as much. And that would be anywhere. That would be if if your big bucks in your area dress out a hundred and fifty pounds, like in the Adirondacks, they've got some nice rack bucks, but you know, to shoot a buck over a hundred and eighty pounds is not real calm. And most of those mature bucks, they get way a hundred and fifty pounds, hundreds of sixty pounds, but they'll be dragging their feet all the time. Those older bucks, you know, you get a six nine year old buck, he'd be dragging his feet. So what about the things that tell you how recently a track was made? What are the things you're looking for, whether it be on bareground or snow, what are the things you look for on that Well, that's one of the hardest things for a track, and I have to learn because it's one of the most important things, because how fine you might be behind a buck determines how ask you're gonna go on the track. So I call a fresh track any track made in the night, because I get out at daylight and I'm looking for a track. If I find a track that was made the night before, to me, that's a fresh track. If it's an hour old, eight hours old, that's a buck I'm gonna follow. Now I might. If I'm on an eight hour old one, I might. If I see a fresher one, I'll switch over to it, as long as it's big enough. But I always start somewhere because if you follow one buck, eventually it's probably gonna cross paths with another one. So but it is the hardest thing to determine. But I can tell you one thing about about a track in the snow is is the minute that track is made, it starts to change. It's either freezing and evaporating or it's melting, you know, thawing and melting. Either way it changes. Now it's gonna be a subtle change in the beginning for that first hour, but beyond that you'll you'll you'll notice if you know what to look for, which is basically the edge with a hoof punches through the snow that deteriorates first that sharp edge made in the dust or the wet stuff that's pushed out in front will melt before it melts down inside the print or freezes down in the print. And that's just a guideline. The rest of it depends on temperature. If it's zero, it's gonna deteriorate quicker than if it's five degrees. So you almost gotta have like a an internal calculator, you know. And that's only you're only going to get that from experience. You know. What about what about the bare ground track anything on that front that you look forward to determine the fresh just there is it? Is it similar in that you're just looking for the sharp edges or anything else. Well, you can't see that in the like I said, on the on bare ground, you know, unless you saw one in the dirt, Like if you're some fields, I'm never in there, but in the woods and the leaves, they're just gonna be punch marks and you'll see the since so the rain flattens the the leaves everything's flat. When they punch that in the edge of them, leaves will flip up like straight up. You can actually you can see those for ways down through the woods. No, not fifty yards, but you can certainly see them for and steps ten of twelve steps ahead, you know, and you'll see it's punched up kurt crisp like that. And they'll stay that way even when the leaves dry out. But like I said, the highest problem with the bare ground is every day there's more tracks getting added to the so they start everything starts blending together. That's why you can't really follow them too much after the first day. Now that being said, if you get in an area that there's very few dea, you won't cross as many tracks, so you could possibly maybe go another day. Sometimes I just take a track like that to see if I can get at least get to some new sign. I've done that a lot of times in a new area. Follow a track on bare ground, I might be only able to follow it for a quarter or a half a mile before it gets into some how we call it softwood, you know, you people call it the pines. But in the spruce and fir needles, the tracks will disappear and there, But that track still might take me to a signpost, rob or scrape line, or it might take me to something that shows me where that buck is traveling, you know, m Yeah, going going back a second to um, determining what kind of deer you're tracking? UM. I think I remember. I do remember reading in some different places where people also pay attention to things like the length of the stride or the width of the between the each footstep. Is that something you pay attention to personally? Yeah, I wrote about that my first book. I put some illustrations in that because and and it is a variable in that, because the same dea can walk fast as slow and change his stride like like we could do it so you Sometimes a stride just means he's hurrying, But if you follow one long enough, you will get to figure out what his normal walk is. In the longer stride means it's a longer deal or taller, however you want to put it. He's longer, and a longer deal is gonna weigh more because they're not all built the same. They're not all going to weigh over two d pounds up here. And it's like people or any other animal. You know, you've got long, thin ones, short squat ones, whatever it is, they're all different shapes. And then the I call it the stance, or some people call a stag. How they stagger the width that determines. As a deer gets bigger, that's gonna widen out right his shoulder and his chest. He gets bigger and thicker, So that's normally gonna widen out. But up here I look for I look for a buck that's got eight inches side to side, eight to twelve inches, and uh, that'll be a pretty good buck. Twelve inches will be a real big one. But so yeah, I look for that size of the print, uh, dragging his feet Like I said, it is a real key, because then I know it's it's an old buck. You know, an old buck. When you said the stance you're measuring, you know, twelve inches? Is that from the outside of the print to the opposite outside of the inside inside, Well, I just I just call it from like the center to the center however you want to do it. But it isn't split in his you know, you don't have to split hands with it. But when you look down and it's looks like it's eight inches wide, yet out of the center to the outside, it's that's a good one. And if you get out to twelve it's a big one. Now, when you get into areas where a deer or smaller, they're probably never gonna get twelve inches, you know, eight inches might be the biggest size, and you know five or six might be on the narrow side. You know, yeah, yeah, all relatives. That makes sense. Yeah, that's just I always look at that because out here and in in the lot of the North, people are more interested in the weight than they are in the antlers. Because when you're hunting in the big woods, if you were trying to hunt for a certain box with a certain set of antlers, or only shoot a buck with big antlers, you ain't gonna shoot many bocks, I'll tell you, because you ain't gonna have time usually to even see what it's got when you're tracking. You know, you might he's got a rack. I don't care if it's a basket rack eight point. If he's eight years old and he weighs two and fifty pounds, that's more of a trophy to me than uh, you're in a half year old at scores one fifty we don't appear we don't. I mean, we have an antler club in the state, and yeah it's great. You know, people shoot some big rack box. I look as it is a bonus if you get one with a big body and he's got a rack to go with it, it's just a bonus. I'll hunt for the big deer over the big rack any day, different mindset. Yeah, no, I completely understand that. Um, what does what does a day in the life of this kind of hunting look like? Then? Can you walk us through when you start, how the how the process begins, what your thought processes then throughout the entire Maybe you could like give us a hypothetical scenario you could walk us through. Yeah. I start every morning at daylight. I'm usually driving to where I want to go hunt. I'll pick an area I might pull sometimes I don't know. This is kind of funny, but I drive out my driveway in the morning and sometimes I don't know if which way I'm going. I don't even know where I'm gonna hunt for the day. Now that being said, it might be determined by where the early snow is because a lot of time we got mountains here and sometimes there's only snow in the mountains. You know, you don't have the snow in the bottom. So I gotta go hunt some mountains somewhere up. So I head out, and I'm driving to where I'm gonna go. And if I'm lucky, which I'm not very often, but I might if I see a track crossing the logging road on the way to where I'm going, I get out and I look at it and it's going somewhere where I know there isn't gonna be a bunch of hunters. I'll get right on that one. I've shot quite a few that way. But usually I end up driving to where I want to hunt and then just striking off through the woods, you know, whether it's up over a mountain and down another valley to another, I just strike off trying to find a track I want and stay what's that? Sorry? I was gonna say, are you striking off with like a destination of mind? Or are you heading towards one of those signposts post drubs you found? Or do you just say, all right, I'm heading off into this general region, just gonna see where it takes me. Hey, you're pretty observant. You're keyed in on that signpost, and yes, that's what I do. I'll usually make a route. I'll usually say, I'm gonna hit I'm going up through this side of this mountain, through this notch, the signpost on the back side. I'm gonna check that one. And there's one over in another valley. Then I'll go check that one. And and you're right, if you go to enough of them signposts, if you can check enough for them on any day, you're gonna find a big buck track there. You're lucky you find it at the first one, and if you're not, you might not find a track your noontime. But you know, it's just just the way it goes some days. So when I find my track, I just I start on it, you know, if I know what's made in the night, which and that's another thing to know. Some people say, well, how do you know that was made that night or the night before or three nights ago. Well that's very easy to tell if you get used to, you know, looking at snow the nighttime track. Because once a track goes through one day, it really changes, especially if it was the sun was out the day before, not even if it melted, but um, it changes a lot. It's not that hard once you get used to it to tell what's made in the night. So I just follow that track. And when I get on a track, I'm going with the idea that I gotta catch up to this buck so I can hunt them, because if you don't catch up to him, you're not in the game yet. Too many guys will go out there and get on a track and they find a track and they start hunting that track like Elma Fudd, one step and looking all around. What you chances I you're never gonna see that buck. I mean, just you're not going to because that buck could be he might have You might get lucky and he's laying down a half a mile away, and he might be five miles away, and you don't know that. You get going and see what he's doing, you know, because the story of that buck, whatever buck you track, he's writing his life in the snow. And that's what's so fun about tracking, is he's showing you his life, what he's doing, where he's going, what he's up right now this time of year. It's all written for your in the snow. If you're not how to interpret it right, he starts wandering around he might start chasing does, and even earlier, you know, before the red starts. He might find some doze and they know where all the does are. They can go right from one bunch to the next. They might app here where the populations as heavy. You might get into some areas where there's a little pocket of does. It might be two or three dos, four doz, and the next might bunch might be a mile away. So he just beat feats for that mile till he gets over there. So that's what you gotta do. You gotta keep going. And then when he's done his route for the night, whenever you get done, he's gonna nine times out of ten. Sometimes you get thrown off during the rout. They don't They kind of don't eat as much, but usually they'll they'll eat, feed around, wander around, and then they lay down. They're gonna be if you see that sign where their wandering and feeding around quite a bit in a small area. He's right there. You canna be laying right there, some way close, and it might already be too late, because sometimes he's laid close enough where he he sees you already. Because they always lay watching their backtrack for danger, so that sign will tell you though that I stop immediately and I stopped looking around. He might be right there. He might be up on that ridge up there you're looking at. And then I gotta try to figure out if I can maybe get a chance to shoot him in his bed laying down, or shoot him when he gets out of his bed or something. But sometimes that might not be till afternoon. I've got on bucks before and going rate steady fast as I could walk for five or six hours, never stop, catch up to one fast. Yeah, you're moving as fast as you can go all the way until you see the wandering kind of tracks. Is there anything else that would indicate his time to slow down? Well, if he picks up the dough and gets with a dough, if he starts off staying with the dough, they may not be all that fire again, right, So anything like that is what you've got to look for. But typically, I mean, that's just the life of a buck. You know, he's gonna he's gotta eat, sleep and bread and and watch out for danger, and and it is really as simple as that. That's all they do, right, So you just gotta figure out what he's doing, where he might be and that when I go through my day, I call track and I call it an emotional roller coaster ride, because you're up, you're down, you're up, you're down. You know, you think he's right close, and then oh no, he's struck off again with a fast pace. He's way over the era. You know, it's just you don't know. You gotta turn left here, you gotta turn right there. All kinds of decisions all day. That's why you don't shoot one every day, right? Why it's so fun If you could go out and shoot one in every day, I wouldn't bother going be too easy. Tell me this, Tell me when you when you see that he's slowed down and you think he's close. Now he's been wandering around, maybe you've seen sign of him rebnatory, you're feeding or anything like that. What is your how much time do you spend that at that point, now you think he's slowed down? Do you just do you? Do? You? Now get into that Elmer Fud mode where you glass and then you take a few steps and need glass You take a few steps or what's your process at that point? Well, I don't glass until I spot something I can't recognize because it's I don't take enough time to glass around. Some people do fine, I don't. I look for I look for things out of place, you know, like an ear or an eye. But the first thing I try to do is and again it's because I hunt in the mountains a lot. Usually when they're gonna lay down, if they're up on a ridge somewhere, or they turn up the ridge, they lay down up high so they can look down right easy to escape danger that way, and they usually go up on the edge of the green growth up in the mountain where it's sticker, and lay either on the edge of it or just in it. So if I see a buck feeding around and he he heads up and I can see a green bluff up up there, I'm not going to follow that track up through the open because he's watching that track, or I assume he is. I make a circle down wind around it, go up over the knob around it, and make a complete circle to see if that track comes out, because it won't take me. I won't be losing any time by doing that. So if I've got any doubt to whether I'm not sure if he's laying down, I make a quick loop like that might take me twenty minutes. But now I can confirm if I cut a circle in his track, didn't go out. Guess what. Now I have that buck in a small area in the big woods. He's captive for me. Now I just gotta try to see him. If I cut that loop in his track come out the other side. I just saved myself a lot of time of Elma fuddon, didn't I? Yeah? But some places you can't do that. Some places, the type of woods you're in, you can't make that circle. It's not gonna work either because of the wind the terrain. You can't always do it. But if I can do it and make sense of it where it's not gonna not gonna waste a lot of time, I'll do it. You mentioned wind that you you circled down wind there. Do you think about or factor wind into your strategy at all at any other points of your of your day or is it just at that point where you thinking where is that? Yeah? Just when I think he's if I think, if I think is the buck is around? I started paying attention to the wind. Other than that, then make any difference. The wind blows four directions every minute anyway, he's up in this country. But uh, quite frankly, Sometimes, once you've jumped the buck and he knows you're after him, he'll put the wind right in his back and walk and he knows you're behind him. And you know he knows because he'll be walking along and you'll see he'll make two or three jumps and he'll pick up his pace. He smells you getting closer. There's nothing you can do about it. You just keep going because eventually he's gonna turn, or the wind's gonna change, and you might get a chance again, you know. Yeah, That's what I was gonna ask. Next, is what happens when you do spook a deer? Um? Do you wait a while or do you just get right after it? Or what happens at that point? That's a good question because when I was in my training stages, because I had to teach myself all this stuff, I didn't have it. I didn't have My father didn't hunt up here, you know. I mean he came up when I did, but he wasn't a tracker, and I didn't have anybody to teach me. I just I just rustled to it myself. But your first inclination is to go right after him, because now it's you know, you're close, but it's the worst thing to do in most cases. There's a couple exceptions, but up here where the deer don't get pressured. And again this is why it's different than bigwoods. Deer hunting is different in a lot of respects, and this is one of them. You know, you get in a lot of places where where deer or pressure, they might run along ways when they get spooked. But these deer, typically a buck is gonna he's gonna run off maybe a hundred two hundred three four yards whatever, and he's gonna stop and look back. Nine out of ten times. Once in a while, you get what I call a runner that doesn't do that. His escape mode is the run a mile, and it's only because that's how he Every every buck up here has lived to his age by escaping kyos year round. So once they figure out how to escape a coyo, that's what you are of them, because they ain't used to be in followed by people for the most part. So they're gonna go off and they stop and they wait to see if something's fallen, because probably they might have saw a little motion. They might have heard a twig snap anything like that, and that's what just got them out of their bed, and they just want to make sure it's nothing fall and they want to just put that little distance, you know, So I waited. I started waiting fifteen minutes, and that didn't work very good. So I pushed it to a half an hour. And once I did that, that was the key right there. That's killed more box up here than not just by me, by by me writing about it. I had lots and lots of guys over the ear told me after I wrote my first book. He they said, you know what, I don't know why. I never could figure that out, but it's perfect sense, you said, they tell me. And since they started doing it, they kill more box. You know, because really the best time, your best, hardest time to kill a buck is really if he's laying in his bed watching his backtrack. You think about that, right, He's got all the advantage. He's just laying there watching where he came from, and all he's gotta do is catch a little movement, a flash of something, and he's out of there. You most of the time you won't even see him, So you know, you gotta the next time is your best chance. So if if if you go right after him, what happens is they just confirmed what they thought. Something's after him. Now the chase is on. You're gonna be chasing him all day. Not to say you can't kill him that way, because I have, but but it's a lot hotter and you're gonna put on a lot more miles. But by waiting, that buck's gonna do a couple of things. He's only got two choices. He's gonna lay back down, which means he was not rested or not from he hadn't been laying there long enough, or he's been laying long enough to be rested up. And he's gonna go about his business and start checking scrapes, rubs or whatever he wants to do, and check does And that's the time. The best time to kill a buck is when he's on his feet moving because now he doesn't have the advantage. Yeah, he's gonna always look behind him, but he's moving and you're moving, and but you still your odds are way up. You see how that works. It does, and what really gives you the advantage. I tell people this all the time, just because the snow on the ground doesn't make it a good chance to shoot a buck tracking, because you've gotta have some other things in your favor. Because if you're on a day when it's uh you know them days in the woods where it's definitely still like you feel like you can hear a pinder up like a mile away, that's a hard day to kill a buck tracking because they just even if they're on their feet, they got that advantage. And no matter how quiet you can be, it's very difficult. The best the best weather for killing the buck is wind. I don't care if it's blowing fifty, I don't care if it's snowing. I call those buck killing days because all of all his advantage is gone. He's not gonna smell you, probably not gonna see it because in the wind, you know, everything's the trees are moving, the leaves of rustling things are swaying. They don't pick out your movement as well. Not to mean you're gonna walk up on them. What I'm saying is if you're sneaky in those kind of days, that's the time to get a look at one you know at this point in your I guess we'll call it your hunting career. What what are the what's your show of like actually seeing the buck that you pick up a track on. Like if you if you pick up ten tracks over the course of the season, do you end up seeing eight of those bucks? Do you see one of those bucks? How does that usually end up? Oh? See just to see him? Oh, I don't know. I never figured that out. More than you know, I see more than half the ones I get on and about. It might be just oh you know, that's that varies with the weather, And I'll give you a good example of that. This pass fall. We had a year of crusty snow. Whenever we had snow in rain and it would freeze and make a crust. Even when I went to Montana this year, we had a crust out there. They got a bunch of wet snow and then it got cold and froze. We hunted on crust. I got back here, I hunted on crusted every day, crunched around, and miraculously I still didn't see a few of the bucks that I was on. But nowhere is near what I could have. I know that I had two weeks I hunted like that. The last week of rifle and the week of muzzlo to here, made around here and I saw I saw more big bucks and I've seen in quite a few years. And I think a lot of that was because usually I shoot one and then I ain't hunting around here, you know, more is to see anymore. But I was crunching around, but I still gotta look at four or five. I ended up kind of a crazy thing. I I won't I didn't. I hit one with my muzzload. I just nicked it. But I missed one with my rifle, didn't that much of a chance, just fired when he's going to disappear. And the last day of the season, and then I missed one with my muzzlo to here and and nicked one. And then I saw a couple more that I couldn't get a shot at. And then I I missed one with my muzzleloader and masks and then I shot one down there. But that was actually quiet going. It wasn't crunchy. But so to bring that back around, I don't really know. I don't really keep track of it, but I know back the older I got in my career, the more picky I got about what buck I wanted to shoot, and the older the buck. Those are the hardest ones to kill, so the odds that you know, your odds are tipping the other way. To go out and shoot any buck is not a problem for me on probably any day. But but to try to kill those biggest ones, that's why I like it so much. It's such a challenge. But I know, back when I was guiding full time, I only got the hunt days. Like when I was guiding one on one hunters, if I got him a buck that week, I get to hunt maybe a day or two or whatever. And that's basically what I used to do. I take a day here and a day there, a couple of days. But I remember in my first book, I still remember writing that because I actually did. I think back to how many days I hunted because it was easier because I didn't have many days, and it averaged I shot him. I shot my buck every three days. In other words, it averaged. It took me three days to kill a buck. And they were good bucks, you know. It took me three days. Some of them might have been five. Several of them was the first day I went. But it averaged out to three mm is. And I don't know if this is something maybe you know just from talking to a lot of other hunters in the area, but in the big woods type of situation year and up in northern Maine or maybe in the ed Aroundecks or the upper Great Lakes. Um, do you think that this kind of strategy track and bucks is that the highest odds way to kill buck? Do you think in this kind of area versus sitting around and waiting on one? You know, I say it is, and I know it is for me because I can't sit around. But uh, there is some guys that if you're willing to put the time in sitting on a good place, Yeah, the same thing, you might kill one. The first I've had clients I put on a stand and they kill them the first day out that other you know, obviously most of the hunters will sit all week and they don't see one. But for me, by fire, it is and and and because I know there's a buck at the end of that track no matter what, all I gotta do is get to them. Be That's different than sitting, and it's different than still hunting because you can be sitting and you don't know in that woods where that buck is. You've got no idea. You don't have any idea if there's a buck within five miles of you and you're just being in waiting that one comes along when you're sitting there. But by tracking the buck is there. You just gotta do what it takes to catch up to him and then do what it takes to get your chance at him. Definitely, Yes, odds are better anywhere there's snow. If you learn how to track and you put it into practice, I can guarantee anybody if you stick with it and get good at it, your success will be a lot higher than just sitting around. And again I'm talking about bigwood situations where the deer population tends to be less. You're not sitting in a bean field where you can pass up five bucks a day. You get the one. You weren't talking about that, but in the wood hunting track. And for sure, what is more successful. What if you're tracking all day and you never catch out tune it gets dark. Can you get back on that track the next morning the same at the same place, or do you try to cut it off or is it just a lost cause and you start brand new the next day? What do you do the next day? I started out new I might not even go back to the same place, because after I've left that buck, if I got to start again and he's got all night to travel, I'm starting way behind. I'd rather find one that I might only be a few hours behind. You know, I have. I've shot a few bucks that the track was a couple of days old, and I've taken one only out of necessity because I couldn't find anything else. But the biggest buck I shot here in Maine. When I got on that track, it was two days old, and it was the first week of the season, and that's usually when they don't travel as fact, because it's the ruts not even close. You know, the rut up north. It's probably the same in the Up, but here it's basically the you can market on your calendar. That's when the breeding starts, and I'm sure up is about the same. But it was the first week of the season and and my client had shot It's actually a gallant. She shot her first buck the second day out Tuesday. So she asked me if she could go along with me, and I said yeah, but I said, you gotta you gotta hold back if I tell you that when I'm getting close. I don't want you clumping around behind right behind me. So I finally picked up this track at about eleven o'clock. I'd actually tracked a couple other ones, and one went into the crossed into Canada, and the other one I caught up to when it wasn't big enough. So I got on this big track and had a little We had a dust in the snow the night before and it was in it. I followed it down off this ridge and he rubbed on a brown ash and there was shavings there and they had that dusting, and the way it was headed, I'm like, it wasn't like headed like into any big real back in any bad place. I said, I'm gonna follow this thing. I might be able to catch him, even though it was eleven, you know, And I didn't go. Probably from where I picked that track up, I don't know, as I went much more than a half a mile. And he went in in this little knoll on this ridge and he laid down and he come back out and started down the ridge and he caught up to and I was three or four doors of the smaller buck following around, and he followed those tracks down over the ridge, and I could see where he caught up to him was written right in the snow. They all started running, and he started chasing them back up the ridge, and then they all started walking and they went along. He followed him for a few hundred yards, and then he turned right off and went right down along the top of the ridge and it got into a little bowl up in the ridge with some open hardwoods, and he started feeding there, and then he went across that and it went into an old cutting that was pretty slashy and thick, and he went in there, and I'm like, he's gonna be laying in there somewhere. So I told her to hang back a little bit, keep me out of sight, and I pushed my way in there. It was some little maple whips and stuff. But it was a windy day, like I was telling you about, you've got the wind to help you're out. And there was a few little leaves stuck on a little maples that were rattling in the wind. And I got my gun kind of ready, and I just one step at a time in there, and I don't know how far I went in not fire fifty yards maybe into that thicket, and I come to us a skit of trail where I could you know, there's an would be an opening. And I stuck my head out, looked down that skin of trail that's where his track turned, and he was laying in his bed, looking back over his shoulder at me. You know, he didn't recognize me. I don't know if he heard something and he turned his head, but he was laying facing the other way, which was odd. But anyways, I shot him right there, laying in his bed, tipped him right over right there. It was nineteen paces wow. So that was a two day old track. So you never know. Like I said, there's always a bucket the end of a track somewhere. If you if you get to the end of it right, what do you think there are any consistent traits or anything along those lines that make for a good big woods hunter. If you were to look at all the best big woods hunters that you know, do they have anything in common or anything's? Yeah, of course they do. It's the number one thing is persistence. You don't give up, you don't quit, you just keep going. You've gotta have the stamina, but you've got to be persistent. Too many people and that's just generally, that's a that's a that's a general human trait. You know, people, especially nowadays, they give up on everything too easy when things start getting a little difficult. You know, it's easy to quit, right, It's easy to give up on something. And I just think it's a human trait. But that's a that's the trait. It that that will kill a guy that wants to be a tracker. If you're gonna give up because of buck crossed the stream, he went up a steep hill, or he crossed the road, or I don't know, whatever it is. There's a lot of reasons you could give up. Oh you got into some other DIA tracks and you got tangled up and you couldn't figure it out. That's why people quit, you know, they just say it ain't it ain't worth it to him. So to me, it tells me the the prize at the end isn't worth it to them, so they won't be a tracker. If you're gonna be a tracker, it's all about that that prize, getting to the prize at the end and end killing them is just the end result, you know, it's not you know, that's not why we track. Really, you know if I had to go kill a buck. I've been invited a hundred times to all those places in the Midwest. Clients invited me to, you know, Kansas and all those places, and I just wouldn't go because I knew I didn't. I wouldn't enjoy myself trying to sit in a stand to something and I think, out the buck I wanted. That's to me, that's not a it's not a hunt for me. If I'm not saying it's not a hunt, but for me it's not. I'm more into like trying to outsmart one beat him on his own turf, you know. And I think you would find that that's really what keeps any track of going, is that prize at the end. It's it's going to be worth it for him, you know, it's a it's a big accomplishment. I I tell the new people that start tracking, don't start out tracking the biggest track in the woods you can find, because if that's where you start, you're gonna have a lot of lessons to learn. You're gonna have a lot of failure because those are the hard ones to kill. I just tell him to to track something. Find a track in the woods, and follow it and see what it is. If it's a doe, great, you just saw her dough. Now you know how that doe walked around and how she acted. If it's a spike horn buck, shoot it your first buck tracking. Next year you can look for a bigger one, you know. That's all part of getting the experience of it, if you just try to go after those biggest ones, which I was guilty of when I first started up north. That's all I wanted was one of them big bucks. You know. So when when I was fortunate enough to have snow, which like I said, I didn't back in those US, and I had my lobster and business, I couldn't go as much. I didn't have a lot of days every year with snow, but I always would find the biggest track I could find. Consequently, between that and not heaving a lot of time, it was I was seven years to tell people. Listen now, people who find it hard to believe, it took me seven years to kill my first buck track and once I started, Wow, but I never gave up. I never thought anything of that. I never thought it was I never thought I was failing at it or anything. I was learning all the time I learned what they do, I chase them around. That's when I that's when I figured out, you know how to you know that I needed to wait a half an hour. But once I shot that first one tracking, it was like clockwork. Every year, year after year after year after year from then on something I had to put this seven years. And I try to help people now not have to go through the seven years by teaching them some things. But I hope it's not easy for everybody. Yet they go and I've heard stories of guys tell me the first time they went out to track something, They're walking along and the bucks and stand there looking at and all that stuff. Never it happens to me. I don't know why it happens to Some people are just lucky, you know, But but that luck doesn't stay. You've gotta have the fundamentals and keep at it. And part of that, I guess what came of that, all of that stuff through guiding and all of the stuff over the ears, several people came to me and said, you know, you really have a system of what you do. And I thought about that, and it came from several different people that didn't even know each other. And I got thinking about it, and they were actually right. What I do is a system. Not that I do everything exactly the same every day, but I have a system. From what I wear, what I do, to how I dress. Everything is a system because it's easy. If you have a system, you don't have to think about, well, what am I gonna weigh today? What am I gonna you know, there's there's nothing else to think about. You just follow the system. So that's what in this new book I wrote this past year, which is a story book of twenty five of my bucks I shot tracking up here. We're not just here but wherever. I just started some way. I started with my first tracking buck and I wrote twenty five stories. But the first chapter in it is all about that system I developed from learning how to navigate the map and compass, learning those skills, clothing, everything, everything is a system. And if you follow that, it'll be easier for you, you know, like you don't have to reinvent the wheel. And I tell people put your own personality in the system. Don't don't try to be a clone of me, because that will be painful. But it's a it's a it's kind of a guideline is what I'd say, because everybody gonna address a little different Those bodies regulate heat differently and stuff. You know. Mm hm. Is there anything uh important that we haven't touched on when it comes to your system? Any important? Other strategies or things to think about. Are things that you do during the day or through the course of the season that we haven't covered, uh, not too much. I would just tell people, don't think you gotta um, don't get over analytical people people get uh. I call it analysis paralysis because a lot of people read this stuff, you know, they read either my articles or somebody else's whoever else's right side, I don't know, but they read all this stuff and maybe they've watched some DVDs on it, daught films, and they get so much information in their head that they cannot make the right decision because they've gotta they gotta there's so many things to sort through. I just tell people, don't don't be like that, don't worry about it. Just pick something because there'll be a hundred decisions to make every day. And if you if you have to try to over analyze, which one you're gonna pick? And then if it's the wrong one. You think you failed at it. Don't do that. Pick something and go because you're gonna learn every day on the track. You're gonna learn what worked and what didn't work, and what works one day might not work the next. It doesn't work all the time. But you've got to go enough. If you I'm telling anybody, if you follow a deer track, a buck track long enough, day after day, year after year, I don't care how long it takes, the law of averages is going to catch up to you. It has to, because it's all about catching up to a buck in the right place at the right time in the woods. That's all. That's all killing a buck is. I've gone days and days that I was five minutes late or two minutes earlier my time, and was off in another time. You go out in the next day and your time is perfect. You step up over us and old and you look down the other side the bucks right there. It's all timing. You've got to catch up to him at the right place to be able to to to be able to kill him. I'll tell you what I um. I'm really interested in trying to do this kind of hunting. You know, the more I've read about it and listen to people tell stories like you, it's definitely it definitely seems like a good time and a nice change of pace from sitting in a tree all the time. So um, I'm thinking that my Northern Michigan rifle hunting this year might be more tracking and less sitting. So very helpful stuff. Hell, I really appreciate sharing this with us. And if people want to learn more, if people want you out your books or your website or all the different stuff you've got going on, where can they find that. They can find everything at bigwoods bucks dot com. It's pretty simple. If they want to contact me my emails there, uh Bigwoods Bucks. I've assembled a team of guys that I did that because I knew everybody wouldn't relate to me, you know, the way I on exactly. You know, because I know a lot of guys that I'm doing seminars. They look at me and I'm I'm tall and lanky, you know, and and they go, I don't think I could keep up with him, and I don't think I could go that fast. Well you don't have to. So I got a bunch of guys that a good deal track is too, and good deal Hunters and they're on the team and they write articles and they do a lot of the same stuff, and so there's something there for everybody. So you can find some articles on the website. We're actually we're about the launch within the next week or so here a club side of the website, which is gonna give the hunters a forum to communicate with each other and ask questions and and ask questions of us and stuff, and there'll be a blog on the home page. We're revamping the whole thing. And then all of films, all the short films we produce, are gonna go into that club side and we're gonna chage like three bucks a month of thirty bucks a year for all that to pay for the editing. And then we'll start a podcast here coming right out, and that's probably gonna start within the next week or so too, and that you can find at the website. Actually that will be on iTunes whatever that is, because I don't do it, but I'm told you can get us on iTunes coming up. I'm sure you're on iTunes too, right, yep, that's the place to be. So it's good. You'll have your podcast there too. Yeah, we also got if they get to the website, you know, besides books and DVDs and that stuff, we've got some other products that relate to the system. We We've got our own clothing line designed for tracking the track and jacket and pants and it's actually we had Silent Predator make it with wool rids wool good stuff, so something they have for everybody, not just trackers, but any of the hunters that like to hunt in the big woods or anywhere and whatever. We're just trying to help people learn. Awesome. Well, I certainly think you achieved that goal at least today. Hell, I've learned a lot. I think I think everyone listening has to. So thank you, Hal for taking the time to do this. And I'm gonna I'm gonna hopefully send you a picture in about ten and a half months, maybe have my first big woods track and buck in in northern Michigan. So fingers crossed for that. You better send me a picture. I hope it happens alright, Hal, Thank you, And that's a wrap, folks, so hopefully enjoyed that one. Before we shut this completely down, though, I will just send out my usual ask, which is if you haven't yet, if you could go over to iTunes and leave us a rating or review. It is a very helpful thing for the podcast. It means a lot. We appreciate it, so if you can do that, it takes us thirty seconds. And otherwise, just want to thank our partners who helped make all of this possible. So big thanks to Gear Yetie Cooler's, Matthews Archery, Maven Optics, the White Tail Institute of North America, Trophy Ridge and hunt Terra Maps. And finally, thank you so much for taking the time to be with me today for tuning in hearing us b us about shed hunting, hearing us talk about big woes hunting. Thanks for being a part of it all, and until next time, stay Wired to Hunt.