00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number two twenty nine and today Marjorie of Dreary Outdoors is back with us again for the follow up to his unbelievably popular Predicting Deer Moon episode that he did with us back in two thousand and fifteen, and this time we're taking things to a whole new level. Before we kick things off that we want to thank our friends at Lacrosse Boots for the support of this podcast episode. The Cross boots are comfortable, their waterproof, they are just about a cent free as you can get, and they're available in all sorts of levels of insulation to suit any time of year or temperature. As I've talked about here over the past couple of weeks, I've got a new pair of This year, I've started wearing that new throwback green and yellow Elpha Burley Procept and not surprisingly they are working great. I've been crossing creeks, climbing trees, hiking through the woods and so hard the boots they fit and they feel well, they are staying dry, They're doing everything I need them to. So if you'd like to learn more about Lacrosse boots yourself, you can visit Lacrosse Footwear dot com. And welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Onyx and ladies and gentlemen. Today, we have got a good one for you. No, I'm actually gonna take that back. We don't have a good one. We have a great one for you today. It is It is a special episodes one that as soon as they got done recording this one, I just knew this was going to be an all time favor At least I think this is going to be an all time favor as we have the Mad Scientists himself Mark Jury back with us again. But I guess before I go into explaining exactly what we've got going on in this episode, do want to make a super quick plug here. Um, this is actually our last preseason episode of the podcast for two eighteen, because starting this weekend, my hunting season is kicking off, and so is Dan season, and my buddy Further and our producer Spencer, the whole crew, we are all starting our hunting seasons here this weekend. So lots of exciting stuff is going to be happening over the coming days and weeks, and if you want to stay up to date on all that stuff, there are a couple of things that highly suggests you do. Number One, make sure you're following Wired Hunt on Instagram. Number two, make sure you subscribe to the Wired Hunt YouTube channel. Number three, hit us up on Facebook. You know, once the season starts, I'm gonna be posting nearly daily Instagram stories. I'm gonna be documenting exactly what's happening each day. On YouTube, We're gonna have our weekly video blogs. And then of course I'll be sharing lots on Facebook too, including including Facebook Live, Q and A sessions, which I was doing last year during the season. I'm gonna be starting those up again for this season here next week. So make sure you're tapped into all these things. You can follow along with what's going on, not just on the podcast here, but really can see it and feel it, and we share across all these different platforms, so it's gonna be a fun year. Make sure you've hit the follow, hit the subscribe buttons. It's just gonna take a couple of seconds and hopefully be worthwhile and a good time for you. So now with that little plug out of the way, as I mentioned, Mark Dury is back with us and our goal for this episode was to produce a sequel to the podcast that we did back in two thousand and fifteen that was episode number sixty three titled Predicting Dear Movement with Mark Dury and and that one Mark walked us through all sorts of different factors and variables that it looks at when trying to determine when into what degree dear will move. You know, this is important because it's gonna help you understand maybe when you should take your vacation days. This will help you determine maybe when you should go hunting it all. This will help you determine maybe when you should be aggressive and push into your best places, or when you should pull back and hunt more conservative stance, or hunt in public land instead of pressuring your really good stuff. So understanding when deer might move the most, or when that one or two days when that mature muck might get up on his feet, that's really really important because because just timing your hunt's making sure you're in the right places at the right time. That's probably the most important thing that I've picked up over the last ten years that's helped make me so much more successful. So this past episode we did with Mark, number sixty three, it was it was all about this idea, and it was wildly popular and it got called out by a lot of our listeners as one of their favorites of all time. So I knew I eventually wanted to get Marked back on the show to take things even further, and now it seemed like the perfect time to do that because there's this new mobile app that Mark and the team at Drey Outdoors that they're launching is called deer Cast. And this deer Cast app is really tied in directly to this whole idea of predicting dear movement. I've tried it out now myself. It is very cool, it's very useful. Um I'll let Mark explain it to you guys here himself in the second when he gets on. But but what I can say is this, if you enjoyed episode number sixty three, this one is going it's gonna knock your socks stuff. I think we just go into so much more detail. We examine all sorts of specific examples and situations. I took a bunch of questions from you, the listeners about the first episode we did with him, and asked them to Mark. Asked him questions about, you know, the things that you were confused about from the last time, that things you want more details about last time. You know, we explore the impacts of cold fronts and bare metric pressure and precipitation and cloud cover and wind speed and direction and thermals and the moon and humidity and time of year and annual patterns and all that in just greater detail than ever before. UM. I really think this is this is a masterclass on predicting deer movement. I will say this though, if you're new to deer hunting, this one might be too in the weeds for you. UM, At a minimum, I'd say that you should listen to episode number sixty three first, and even after that if this stuff seems confusing to you, you know, don't get worried about it. This is this is kind of like graduate level material or PhD level materials, So so you know, go back listen to to sixteen, which is an intro to deer hunting. Focus on those basics don't get too wrapped up in this stuff yet. But if you are a salty old veteran of the woods, and if your dear daddy geek like me, I think you are going to love this one. So rather than beat around the bush any further, I think we should just dive her into this one. So we're gonna take a very quick break here and they will get mark jury on the line for this predicting deer movement masterclass. I really hope you enjoy it. And that said, we do need to have a quick thank you here to our partners at Onyx for the support of this podcast. Onyx is the maker of the onyx Hunt app, which is a mobile mapping application that shows you aerial and top of maps, shows you public and private property, borders, hiking trails, campgrounds. It allows you to mark way points, track where you've walked, measure distances and areas, and a whole lot more. And as I mentioned over the last couple of weeks, I've been using onyx now for a number of years. This year in particular, it's been especially helpful. Um I'm actually leaving, as I've mentioned recently here, I'm leaving this weekend for public land hunts in Montana and hopefully North Dakota to and I'm almost a percent dependent on my onyx hunt app to see where this public land is, to find out how to access it, to map my ways in and out, to mark my tree stand locations, to plan where I think they are gonna be coming in and out of, to measure distances from where I can park my truck to get into spots. Um. It's just very very useful, very helpful. I'll be, you know, pulling up on my phone every single day over next week or two. So if you'd like to try out yourself, you can download it from whatever mobile app store you prefer, but make sure you use promo code wired to get off your order so that promo code is wired. W I R E D. Alright, I'm back now with Mark Drury. Thank you for joining me again. Mark, Hey, Mark, thank you for having me a pretty shit. Yeah. I'm excited to chat because we got to chat a decent bit over the last couple of years with percent Wild, but since I've kind of moved off from that this year, we haven't caught up in I don't know, six seven months, so I needed my Mad Scientists fix. I'm excited about this today. I'm particularly excited too, because the last time that you were actually on the Wired Hunt podcast, I was way back in two thousand and fifteen. I believe it was. That was episode number sixty three. We're now on like two twenty nine or two thirty or something like that, so I was a long time ago. But that episode you came on and talked to me and Dan about predicting deer movement, and we answered a lot of questions that a lot of people have all the time about what these different factors are influenced deer movement. How you look at it, um, I've always thought that you and Terry had a really interesting perspective on that. In watching your videos and shows, it was that was always one of my favorite things, was hearing why you thought certain things were gonna happen. So we had that episode. It turned out amazing, and it ended up being one of our most popular episodes of all time. It's been downloaded just short of a hundred thousand times now, a lot of people have been diving into that episode. We've gotten so much feedback on it. I've had people people were commenting today when I told folks that we were going to talk to you again about this topic. That said it's the best audio piece of content that's ever been put out in the hunting industry. That's what one person said. So so we've got high, high bar to get over today to try to top that. But but I'm hoping we can because my idea was to go to the two oh one level. If that was like the predicting Dear Movement one o one, this could be predicting dear movement two oh one or three oh one. And where I'm getting with this is that all this is top of mind for me right now because you guys are launching a really cool new project that kind of is all about this, this deer Cast app you guys have got going on. UM. So I guess the first thing I'm curious on Mark, can you give me, like the deer Cast one oh one at the highest level, what this is? Um? And then we can kind of dig in from there, because I think you're you're putting together a tool that's gonna be really really helpful that's related to everything else I want to talk about today. So I'm excited to hear more about this. I think so if Our initial conversation was one on one, you know, and today we're gonna talk a little bit about two oh one. Deer cast would be you know, a graduate course or a master's course. We have worked on this thing tirelessly, literally from about back then until present day, and maybe even prior to that. Terry and I have studied deer movement for many, many years, especially over the last decade a decade and a half. But specifically, uh, this app that we did is and actually it's an algorithm that we developed with an an app developer who understood WHETHER, just like Terry and I did because he's a pilot, so he had you know, he understood the ins and outs of WHETHER, and he understood what we meant when we talked about weather doing certain things because he he was a student of it as well. But he was not a deer hunter, which was good because he had a clean mind. But he has a brilliant mind in terms of we were able to create an algorithm that on an hour by hour basis in your location in other words, the app user's location or a location that he sets or if he has his location services on wherever he's standing, are there standing, it will on an hour by our basis, interpret eleven different weather conditions. It will interpret time of day, it will interpret um the thirteen different phases. So it's actually interpreting about two twenty five different things on an hour by hour basis and then spitting out um a prediction on how the deer should generally be moving in that area or that set location. And we called it deer cast. Uh. So the things that I used to take hours to study and then decide, Okay, I think here's the day this week the deer are gonna move. Uh. This thing does in a matter of seconds. And it does it over and over and over again all day, all day long, all season long, wherever you're at, or whatever locations you put into it. You can put multiple locations into it. So it is um in my opinion. And I said this the other day that the app almost knows what the deer are gonna do before that deer knows what's gonna do. He'll know it a few days in advance of when the the app will know in advance of when the deer. No, because deer move on instinct. We've patterned that instinct and how they behave in and around certain weather patterns, and we've plugged all that into an algorithm that interprets the weather and then spits out what the deer should be doing. Now, the app can't tell you where to sit. It can't know if coyotes cleared your bed that day. It can't know if three trespassers walked your farm, you know, looking for a stand or a camera. It can't know those things other influencers, but it can know the weather and how it should influence dear movement. Um. We also have a set pessimism in this app for really heavily hunted areas, so we took it to that level. We have a little bit more of an optimism for lighter hunting areas. UM. So it even takes into consideration that and even even outside of that, you could customize it to your own area by just observing dear movement, looking at what the app tell it is telling you it's gonna do, and then having your own set of pessimism or are optimism and go, you know what, the app is consistently always too optimistic or it's consistently too pessimistic form my area, and you can you can adjust on your own. And I would advise people to do that because not every deer hurts created equal. You know, Mark, if I came up to Michigan and huntred your deer, they're gonna probably react differently to the weather than they do down at my Texas lease or so and so forth. So the app is going to generally tell you pick out tendencies of when deer should be moving, but then you can, you know, adjust it to your own hunting experiences. UH. The app is free this first inaugural season for everybody to use and understand. And we've got some tremendous help in there in terms of how to use the app, how to hunt with the app, some really cool visual tools that that should help everybody understand it. UH. In addition to that, the entire Dree Outdoors Library is found within this app. So there's a hundred and fifteen DVDs that are found within this app. There's over twenty tho minutes of d O d t V content in there. There are stories there that are being uploaded on a weekly daily basis. We have twelve staff writers that are writing you know, hunting content for us. UH. It's it's pretty incredible offering and and for the first time ever we have deer cast now and everybody wants to be you know, immediate gratification, be in the now, being the know behind the scenes. Well, every kill as they happen from the dry Outdoors team, and historically we kill about a hundred a year. Uh, they'll they'll be on the app the moment we can get them up there. In other words, if Matt Drewry goes out and kills a one eight, we're gonna try and get that sucker uploaded onto the app, the actual kill shot that day, with how I killed it and what's going on in his area, so that people can not only learn from the app and the weather predictor and the deer movement predictor, but also how our guys are succeeding in the field of tactics they're using, etcetera, etcetera. So it's a it's a very fun filled app, it's a smart app, and it's it's a product we're very proud to put the d D and the Drewy Outdoors brand on. Yeah, it's pretty incredible. When I first heard about the idea of an app, I had, you know, I knew it would be interesting, But when I've heard about what's really going to be in it? Um, My mind's a little bit blown. You guys have really outdone yourself. I think I can't wait to get my hands on it. Um, can you describe though, what like the output looks like if going back to the dear cast portion of it, the actual predictor portion. So I go in there, I've I've slept to my location. Um now I'm looking at like my five day forecast or whatever that might be, trying to figure out, okay, what's the best days or how are these up coming this upcoming weekend? Look, can you describe us a little bit of what we're actually gonna see? Is it just gonna say like Friday good, Saturday great? Or is there more detail? What does that it'll look like compared to like a typical weather app or something. Absolutely it will remind you of a weather app in terms of um, you know, it's stakes certain things that are important to hunters, and these are ones Terry and I picked out. For instance, I'm looking at that my dear cast version right now, and it says today my location is set for the farm, and it tells me that today's average high is eighty four, which is very important. And I don't know that I speak much on the departure from average temperature in two thousand and fifteen and how important it is for dear movement. Uh, you know a little bit when we talked about fronts. I definitely want to dive into that more though. Okay, So the first thing it states is today's high and low, what today's average highest, which is very important. It tells you sunrise and sunset, very important every deer hunter. It tells you moon rise and moonset. It tells you the precipitate precipitate chance, It tells you the bara metric pressure, and it tells you the wind direction and speed. So they're in one quick snapshot basically tells you everything a deer hunter wants to know on a day in and day out basis, and that those are some of the weather conditions, you know, like I'd have to go to three different apps to find all of those out and write them down. I don't know about you, I've never seen one stated like that. This one has it all right there in one screen shot for today. If I touch today, it then takes me into the deer cast. All right, today, the morning is good evening is good. There are four categories of movements, which, if you think about it, they either move really good, really at or somewhere in the middle. So our different categories are you know, poor, are bad, poor, good, great. That's the way that we broke them down. You can click on tomorrow it will give you tomorrow's sports deer cast, Thursdays, Friday's, Saturday's, or you can click hourly detail, so it'll it'll give five days worth of deer cast, and we could have given fifteen if we wanted to. However, because of the variability of weather forecast, we felt like it would be an injustice to the hunter for him to plan a hunt ten days out when in reality that weather data is about accurate ten days out, if you know what I mean. If you look at every weather forecaster out there, they're most accurate within about twenty four to seventy two hours. So thusly the deer cast is going to be much more accurate in the short term and it will be long term. We've extended it to five, but we didn't want to go beyond that because we felt like six, seven, eight, nine, and ten. As we watched it last fall, we had a deer cast beta test on a ten day forecast, but hell, by the time you got today, six, seven, and eight, it was no longer accurate because the weather forecast to change fifteen times, So we give it to five. But we will absolutely admit the days that are most accurate are the ones where the weather forecast is most accurate. So it's days two and three, okay, But you can click into the hourly details, and then in the hourly details, the top line is deer movement, and you can scan your hand across that middle or your finger and it will take you across five different days and show you the trends as they're trending to better movement, stable movement, worst movement, you know, as it's tailing off, and then stable, poor movement, whatever it is. You then go into uh it also on that same line. All of this is at once. It's as you dear movement shows you barometer, it shows you precipitation, it shows you cloud cover, it shows you temperature, it shows you average high it shows you wind direction and wind speed. So all of that, and that's that's not all the predictors that you're you're looking at, but all of that is what the app interpreting and that's what you can see on a daily basis. So then go right below that and there's about a ten to twelve minute video that says Phase one because that's the first phase, and you'll see every single tactic we use during this space. So it goes beyond understanding the weather. Now we're getting into hunting tactics, similar to the tactics you see on thirteen. If you took all of those tactical breakdowns we've been across the first fourth season and glue them all together, that is what you would have there. So it goes through all the tactics, goes through all our breakdown to all that information that's on thirteen, and there after that it then goes sorry. Then it goes into a variety of different interviews that Tear and I did in terms of the influencers for that day. The first one will be time of day, so that you understand clearly in Phase one when we see the most daylight activity, so always watch time of day. That's very important for each phase. Then it goes into cloud cover barometer, time of day, cloud cover overview barometer, overview average, temperature, moon overview average temperare average temperature overview and so and so forth. So it goes through all these different weather influencers and then we tell you why the deer are moving poorly that day, are great that day, based on whatever weather conditions the app is recognizing. So we sat and we did interviews at nauseum based on every condition that could possibly happen during every phase. And when it comes up, you will see a video of Terry and I breaking it down what that weather conditions doing or should do to your dear that particular time of the year. It's pretty pretty thorough. I say, it's not only the cheat sheet, it's the whole test and all the answers. Man, I mean you've got the cheat sheet. Okay, dear moving great today. Well, if you'll take the time, and some people will want to and some people won't, you're gonna be one of those guys that watch them all. I know how you are. You can go down. You can go down and watch all those those interviews and it's it is four oh one in terms of weather um, in terms of deer movement as it pertains to the weather. Yeah, the way I'm imagining this just from what I've heard you say, and from hearing a little bit more, it seems like it's gonna be really not just not just a cheat sheet, but like an incredible tool to help you just learn more about this stuff too, because you can you can take all these different influencers that maybe already you're starting to pay attention to just as an individual, and then you can compare and contrast that to what's being told, what's being shown on the deer cast, compare that against the different factors and and things that you're explaining those videos. It seems like a kind of three sixty degree way to to learn about this stuff too, not just the endver's all, but I'll actually also learn how to better predict some of these things yourself, um, which will only help help you alongside the app, I would imagine absolutely. We like to say, every single thought that's in mine and Terry's head is in this app. If you will take the time to watch it, you will know exactly what's in our head. And and that's all that's a little scary. But if it's every single thought, but that's in there man, as it pertains the dear movement in the weather, every thought we have is in this app and I'm not joking. So so here's then the question that some people are gonna have. I feel like when we get into this topic of predicting deer movement, there's gonna be some naysayers who are like people that focus so much on this stuff are just looking for excuses not to hunt. They're just looking for you know, just go hunt when you can, is what they're gonna say. If you can hunt, just get out there. None of this stuff matters. People get all caught up into it too much. So to that person, could you tell me? What would you tell them? Why? Why is this important? Why is it important to be able predict dear movement? Well, I'm that person. I mean I hunted every single day of the Iowa both season last year, from start to finish, every day of the Missouri season. You know, if I went to Missouri, I was in Iowa vice versa, or I was in Texas, I hunted every day of the season last year. So whether it's said good, bad or otherwise, because it's in my soul, I want to go hunting. However, where I hunted very drastically based on the deer cast that I was looking at and what I thought was going to happen, and I've always been that way. I will not go into those premier great spots on a bad day. I will, however, still go hunt. Maybe it's an observatory stand. Maybe it's somewhere where I'm trying to look for another buck. Maybe it's a stand where I just want to go take a dough things like that. So it helps you understand the good places to hunt, the bad places to hunt, and when to hunt them. So absolutely I'm that guy. Go hunt every single day, but make a good choice about where you choose to sit. Yeah, So what would it be fair to say that you have you know all these different locations across your your hunting properties, that there are certain times of the year that you know certain spots can be hunted or cannot be hunted. There are certain types of days like good days, bad days, poor days, great days, that certain stands will be ranked according to all these things. So you're you're every day looking at this and say, okay, based on my prediction of deer movement, I then it filters the list of possible places to hunt, right absolutely absolutely does you know? And you learn all that sort of previous years hunting and making mistakes. It's really the only way you can learn it. So you gotta go to make mistakes, you know, and when you make them, successful hunting is all about avoiding those mistakes. As you know, the older you get, the wiser you get, the less mistakes you make, and the more the more success you have. And that's uh, that's part of any process, regardless of what it is, whether it's golf or or archery, or hunting or baseball. Man, you learn from your mistakes, and the good ones smart one don't make many mistakes. Do you're the same? What look at him when they are a year and a half. Don't hunt that guy, and then you don't hunt when he's four or five. He's made every mistake in the book. He's still alive. He didn't make him twice, generally done twice. That's why they're the toughest game antim to consistently kill. In my opinion, mature don't kill six year older every year. It's it's almost impossible, very very tough. Yeah. So so speaking of mature white tail bucks, then you as you as you usually do. You had a great season last year. I think if I saw the journal interests right you killed four white tail bucks last year. Do you have are any of one of those or maybe two of those? An example you can share with us about how the predictions influenced that hunt, how you change your decision, making your actions based off that prediction, how that ended up leading to success, or anything along those lines. Um, everyone, I used deer cast for because we were studying it so so intensely. And you know, I also filmed several people killed deer last year, you know, Taylor and my sisters and Bruce Pettitt, and you know, we had a tremendous season. And we also had a season that since I've been doing this, I've never seen better conditions more consistently than we had last ball. I don't know if you noticed that or if they were that good for you up there mid October on it was great. Oh, tremendous, man. We had below average temperatures, We had incredible bouts of high pressure that wouldn't go away, and the deer moved incredibly. Last ball moon was great. It hit a good times, and uh, it was fun. So I used deer casts on every single hunt that I had. Did it steer me? You know, differently from from the decision I would have made anyway. No, but I was able to make those decisions decisions in a much quicker process because keep in mind that the deer cast is my thoughts and mine and terries, you know, and it's what we've done for the last ten years. We've really homed it. But if it really wouldn't, I would have still hunted the exact same place as I hunted. Yeah, so it probably, you know, so it probably didn't change me because this is the way I've been hunting based around the weather and and those influencers and where I need to be in in uh, where I didn't. That's that's you know why we did the interviews back in fifteen and we started talking about these weather influencers. Yeah, I think I asked my question wrong. What I meant was not not deer cast, but just simply the information, you know. So for let my hypothetical be, okay, on, you killed the buck on the first day of October, So could you tell us what do you remember about the conditions that day that made you think, Okay, yeah, this is gonna be a day I need to go to ex place um or were the conditions some certain way that made you say, oh, because of this, I know that I can you know, I have to lay back an observation stand or I know I can push in and get to this spot because it's gonna be windy, and I can be more aggressive. I'm curious to hear how the specific influencers that day led to your success and led to your decisions. That's I think when I most Yeah, absolutely, yeah. It was October one, and I did kill a deer that day. He was my number one target here on the whole farm. I was extremely fortunate because in all reality that I went to a number two slot that day in my opinion, In other words, I had one that I thought was a little bit better. And it was not the first south after North, if I'm not mistaken, it was the second, but it had some speed to it. We also had crowd cover, which I kind of like earlier in the season more so than I like it late in the season. And uh, I thought, you know what, it's gonna be pretty good today, but I didn't think it was gonna be the optimum day. And and indeed the forecast, the deer cast said good, it didn't say great. So I went to a number two slot. And I didn't think that I would see him where I did, but I did um see him there. He was about three or four hundred yards from where I thought I was going to kill that deer. I had two or three places where I thought I could kill him, and this was lower on the totem pole. But I went there because I didn't have the ultimate forecast in terms of dear movement are in terms of the weather, and I just got very fortunate that he walked onto that field that night. I had history of him in that field and years past, and I have history of a big mature bucks in that particular field, but I didn't have as much history there as I did in a few other places. So I think the stars kind of lined up and I had some good fortune there. But the deer cast pushed me to go to a number two slots instead of number one as far as what in my mind was the best place to kill him. Interesting. So so then my next thing I'm curious about that is, could you describe what was the scenario there that made that a number two? And then what was the scenario in the top spots where you thought you were going to kill him? What was the train or what was. I'm just curiously understand totally frequency of pictures of him totally frequenting that area years passed and already last year. That was that was what made my determination. He was my number one target. So that's the only buck I was gonna hunt. So therefore I was only hunting him based on previous years uh pictures. I had a number another one close to a pond, a staging plot that I got him a lot at the past two or three years. Probably probably forty of the daylight pictures that I had of that deer was over there um at that spot, so I considered it my number one, and then this number two spot I had maybe daylight activity on that field um and then obviously daylight activity in between. But I wasn't going to go into the cover that time of year. Man, it's all about green. It's green revisited. And both of them were green food sources. One of them I planted um in case we got good rains, and it came on and it did well. The other one was a clover field, and that's in case you don't get very good rains. Those clover fields are incredible insurance policies. For years where in a drought and barely get any rain, they'll they'll get green quicker than a you know, an annual flip plot that you put in. So I had options for him, and he was my number one target going in. Yeah, So what about a scenario where you get the bad conditions. Let's say it's early October now, and I guess let me reframe this during that time frame. Could you outline for me what like an awful day would be? So what would be the influencers or conditions that you seem like, oh, this is this is gonna be a bad day. Deer cast is showing me bad but you still want to hunt, So what are you doing that scenario? Dropping pressure? Uh? Third third day of south, second day of fuse is usually tough after you know, say you've had a cold fra a bunch of north with high pressure, and then the first day of south always awesome. And one thing about dear, if you're sitting there having a good sit you're about to have a bad one because they just don't do the same things day and day. So if you've been having good movement, you can just about bet you're about to have some poor movement because they just don't do it day in and day out. So stable pressure that's below thirties, say it's like twenty nine eight five, and it's gonna be that for three straight days with south winds and above average temperatures. I mean, the it's just horrible. It's horrible. I mean, it's just you know, when those temperatures start to creep above that average high and really depart from it, it is such a deterrent it's not even funny. It's almost a linear relationship between departure from average high, whether that be in the positive or negative direction, and overall dear movement. It's a major influencer. It's it's one of the key things that we look at. One of the elevens. Yeah, would you is it fair to say that would be the top of the list, number one, Mm hmmm, it's no, it's one of them. It's one of them. But pressure is also up there. Um, you know, wind speed, wind directions up there, precipts up there. There's a lot of them that are very close in relativity, so it but those vary, that varies from phase to phase. That's the other thing we've we've picked apart here within deer casts like there are certain influencers that are much more important in phase one than they are in phase twelve and thirteen, and the algorithm looks at that and then interprets the importance level and ranks them accordingly. So therefore they are waited differently by phase based on the way we've seen them affect the deer by phase. Um, So what kind of what kind of factors are different in that kind of way. To give an example of one that is really important, plod covers major differentiator. Yeah, early season clouds almost always always a company cooler weather, rainy days, and the deer move like crazy. Um. Later in the year, you you you've eliminated what they're most what they're most looking for, which is thermal cover in the In the early part of the season, you eliminate thermal cover at cools the earth, they move better. In the latter part of the season, when it's cold and you eliminate the sun, they get cooled off and therefore they don't move as well. So it is an influencer early in the season, it is something that influences them in a negative way in the late season. It's a great example of how a weather factor differentiates an importance from phase to phase. Um, So back to my question I asked before that though, So back to the bad day. You've got the horrible conditions you just mentioned there, what do you then do from a hunting standpoint? What are you what's your go to move for those lousy days. I'm gonna hunt something on the extreme um outskirts of a farm. I'm probably gonna go try and fill the freezer with a dough or I'm gonna sit somewhere where I might be able to kill a buck, but I'm also observing something that helps me learn a part of the farm. I do a lot of hunt slash scout days. In other words, I don't think I'm gonna go in for the kill. I'm not going for the home run. So I'm gonna sit somewhere where I can learn something and become better at a certain part of the farm in future days. I do a lot of observation. You know, the cameras only tell you so much. They only show you a few feet, right, you know you really the way you learn a farm is with your eyeballs. Yeah, so so let's let's step back them. Because we talked about why this stuff is important. You know when you when you do have the right conditions, that's going to influence you to to go into your best spots, to be more aggressive, to go for the kill. When you've got the poor conditions, you're gonna state out a little bit. You're gonna be more conservative, You're gonna observe, you're gonna try to learn, but you're not gonna go for the home run. UM. So deer cast is going to be a tool to to figure all this stuff out. But I want to dive into a little more on each of these influencers. Can you share what the eleven influencers are, um that you're including in there. I think we've kind of mentioned most of them, but if we haven't, UM, I know things that temperature, very much of pressure, wind speed, wind direction, precipitation, moon, Um, what are the other ones that I'm missing there? I don't have the list right in front of me. Um. Time of day is a big one, but that's not really a weather influencers but but it is a weather influencer. The barometer. I don't know if you mentioned that change in barometric pressure, wind speed, wind directions, and then wind as it relates both backwards and forward. That's the other thing that the app does. It not only looks at the time of that you're in today, it's looking backwards and it's looking forwards because it interprets how the deer should have just acted. It also interprets how the deer are about to act and then gives you a prediction based on that. If that makes sense, it's very very cool. Uh breach temperature, um temperature, change in temperature, precipitation rate, change in precipitation, right moon, Uh do is that? I think that's probably eleven of them. I don't know if I missed any. Those are just off memory. I don't have my list right in front of me, but I think I've hit them all. Yeah, covered, pod cover, changing cloud cover. Yeah. So, I just like you, I geek out over this stuff. This stuff fascinates me so much and obviously a lot of other people, because I know you've been inundated with questions over the years, and I've been inundated with questions over the years on this stuff. So for a few of these, if you're up for it, I kind of want to touch on, Okay, influencer A and then if you can give me like the twenty second like overview of like that this is this is cold front one oh one, simply because if people haven't heard the past podcast what we did with you, or if someone's brand new to hunting, I want to make sure we at least get the Bay six out there. But then I've got some really detailed questions about specific situations and things like that, um that maybe we can dive into from there. So so let's at the highest level really quick temperature cold fronts. Can you give me the one on one on on why that's important what you look at there? And then I've got a few specifics. Well, there's so many things that go into a coal front, right. You know, you're gonna have probably a change in wind direction, You're gonna have a change in temperature, and if it's the right type coal front, the kind that really gets a moving, you're gonna have some type of falling precipitation. That precip will change throughout the season, from rain early in the season to potentially sleep during the rut or or snow in late season, most likely snow. Um. So if you if you look at every coal front, I always say you want to kill white tailed deer. Don't miss any coal fronts. And I'm talking about just ahead of it, during it, and after it. That, in a nutshell, is when the best of the best dear movement happens is just before it, during it, and after it. Not every coal front is created the same. In other words, there are some that barely move the needle, and there are some that move it a bunch. What how the weather changes in and around that coal front. The greater the change with the coal front, generally the more drastic, and the better the dear moment, The less the amount of change, the less extreme influence it will have on the dear moment. Okay, that makes sense. So on that topic of front, it's one of the most common questions that I get them, is okay, what about the timing of the front. So you talked about it's good before the front, it's good during, it's good after. I think people are always trying to figure out more detail about that. So how far ahead of time and then how long afterwards is it one day after the front passes it? Two days, that three days? Can you give us some detail as far as as that? And then also how would you rank that? So if I had to choose between before, during, or after. What's one, two, three? All are a one, that's for sure. All are a one. Um, meaning tops never miss just ahead during or after a cold front, because you never know when the best is gonna be or where you're gonna be sitting. The back to your question of how far ahead of the front, it's generally it's very close to it. In other words, Um, if the front is gonna pass during the night, it's that evening sit before, okay, if and that's just depends on the phase. If it's a phase, that are the time of the year when afternoon movement is generally a little better than morning movement. In other words, it's a feeding time of the year. Take phase one. Then then the front that's going to pass during the night is going to influence the previous feeding time, if that makes sense. So if you're if opening days theft September and there's a front supposed to pass at about ten eleven o'clock that night, the cold fronts coming, but it's not there yet, that evening is gonna be pretty good because they're gonna be feeding in anticipation of that front. If, however, it is opening morning when feeding is not nearly as important. And say, the same time gap is in front of you, in other words, dark as at seven o'clock PM or seven thirty or eight, and the fronts supposed to pass at ten, so say three hours ahead of the front. Well, if the morning movement at that time of the year is about seven am and the front's gonna pass at about ten am, that's not going to be nearly as as big of an influencer of the morning as it would have been in the evening because evening times are better at that time of the year. Does that make sense? It does, Okay, So it's it's all very very detailed. And I said that apps for one, like the app interpret every single one of those factors on a minute by minute basis or second by second like it will spit that algorithm out NonStop for you right exactly where you are. It's interpreting everything I just said. But it does it in real time, as opposed to, like I said, it takes me hours to sit and look at a forecast and look at various apps and come up with the actual prediction. The app does it for you. In fact, I found myself getting a little bit floppy last year because I was so dependent on the app. I mean, I still had all this knowledge in my head, but there were times of the year where I actually forced myself before I looked at the app, to go through and come up with a prediction and go, I think it's gonna say this, and then I'd go back and double check it because you'd ever, you know, it's human nature. You get tired to get run down. You go, I'm just gonna look at the app instead of looking at all these different sites and figure all this stuff out. Um, because it's really a thinking game. Man. If you if you're trying to analyze what time of year in, what all influencers are coming, how they were two or three days ago, how they're about to be. Man, the app so lot easier solutions, but you do it, you just get you know, it's the understanding of it that that makes it sweeter. Yeah, yeah, that that's That's a lot of the fun part putting that puzzle together. But this is this is nice to be able to look at, you know, to quickly confirm things or to dive in further. Um. Now, sometimes came to mind and I don't know if this is something you guys already have baked in or not. But is there any possibility of there being like a feedback mechanism to this? So if I have the deer cast app, today's supposed to be a great day, I'm out there and it doesn't end up being that case, doesn't end it being that way for me? Whatever reason is there any way? Right? But what what what influenced that? Right? Yeah, there's so many things, There's so many outside things. So does it skew what what we feel like? We That's why I think everybody should have their ability to to skew their own handing experiences, not everyone else's, if that makes sense, because what other influencers. You don't know how somebody hunts. He might be sitting there hunting on the wrong window, or or someone might hunt the same stand thirty five days in a row, and and exactly you know, and app saying great, Well, every deer in the area knows where he sits on what window. You know, he's sit in the same place. You know, they know where they're going to catch him. They know what side of the blind to go on to catching that day, because the wind switch, you know, I'm I'm saying that would be I think challenging UM at best. I will tell you that we we tested it across uh the entire Dreary Outdoors team, through a variety of geographies and a variety of different hunting conditions, and it it had rave reviews from everyone. UH. So it was beta tested very thoroughly last fall, and I'm I am very very confident that what the app for Dixon turn of deer movement, what they most likely will be doing, is accurate in terms of how will influenced the deer herd. The thing the app cannot interpret is hunting pressure, pregation pressure, overall population, UM, all those other outside influencers, you know, public ground versus private UH, gun season, you know, the gun season Missouri opens November fifteenth, roughly Iowa doesn't open until till December the seventh. You know, So you have to look at it and kind of use common sense and go, you know what, this app always says great, but in reality I'm kind of seeing good. Well, there might be some other influencers that have that movement suppressed outside of the weather, if that makes sense. Yeah, you need to need to overlay your own circumstances over top of this, because as you said, there's all these other outside factors that can't be accounted for and something like this that that do significantly influence things. You gotta you gotta grade it on the curve if you will. Yeah, so you kind of alluded to this next question. I have a little bit, but I want to kind of black and white it here. Um, the timing of the front. Does the timing of the front in any kind of consistent way impact the intensity of the activity. So if you were to say, would you prefer a front to hit during peak evening activity hours versus overnight versus morning activity versus midday like if if we broke up our day into those four buckets or something like that, and you could pick yes, yes, yes, and yes, depending on the time of the year. In other words, a front in September is not It does not affect the deer the same as it does in the middle part of November, as it does in the middle part of the December, as it does in the middle part of January, because their metabolism is at different speeds during each each of those times, their testosterone is at different levels during each of those times, their interest levels, and their focus is that is on different things during each of those times, So therefore they react differently to the front. They're going to be times of the year where the middle part of the day it's gonna be magical to have a front, whereas other times of the year it's not gonna affect them at all. They won't move until after that front passes, you know. Um, that was kind of my example I gave in the early part of the season, when afternoons or the are the order of the day. Well, if you have a front passing within the normal movement time in the morning versus the evening, there it's just not going to be the same response. The evening response is going to be much better to affront because that's when they typically moved. Couple a rising moon with that, and you've got all the stars lighting up. Pardon, pardon the punt um. You move into mid November, when the rut is the major influencer, weather kind of takes a little bit of a back seat, but it's still a major influencer. So it's that's one of the reasons we did the app because it is so hard to articulate all of this in a podcast and tell you all of this to where someone said, you know, there's there's no one solution because it influences them differently, almost on a day by day basis. It's it's crazy. Um. So that's why that's one of the reasons we did the app, just to help people understand it better. It's a very complex set of I don't want to say rules, but set of responses to stimulus that we've seen. They vary drastically throughout the year. So that's why we put it into an algorithm form so that it might interpret it and help someone understand when they might move the best or when they might move the poorest. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it definitely. There's so many different layers, and then all the different layers need to be waited a little bit differently. And then also when you think about how the different layers influence each other. Um, that is that you got it. It's tricky, man, I mean it is. It is really really tricky, you know. I mean, it's just it's just different as by phase by phase. Um. You know, you look at that same front that drops the temperature in the early season by ten degrees, Say you were at average temperature for the day and it drops at ten below major influencer. Okay, major, because you seldom get a departure that far from average during the early part of the season. Okay, go to fast forward three months into December, middle part, same moon. Okay, because month a month, the moon is gonna be roughly doing the same thing. It's only twenty eight days apart from full moon and full moon. All right, so you're you're a little bit earlier in the month. Keen degree drop a temperature from average high in December versus versus September. Monstrous difference. You know what I'm saying. It doesn't have nearly the influence that did in September that it did that are nearly the influence in December that it did in September. Now, if in December it's about to drop thirty now we're talking, let's get going that that maybe it may take that much of a drop to have the same influence on the herd that you had a ten degree drop in September. If that makes sense. Yeah, No, that's a it's a very interesting point one I hadn't really thought about before. Um, But it is all relative to the season, and pressure is the same way, you know, like high pressure in in December, what it takes to make them move would explode their heads in September. It is. It is unbelievable, the difference that the type pressure that I look for in December is actually a suppressor in in September, because it's relative to the season in the temperatures. So there are peaks in pressure where it starts to suppress movement. You know when it gets so high and you've probably seen these days where it's like, oh my gosh, we're we're approaching record pressure for this period. Why did the Deermont not move today? You know that this is high pressure. They're supposed to move, not necessarily there. You can go above the peak in almost every one of these weather influencers, and the APP picks those peaks up. You know, how high wind is too high? How big of a departure from normal is too much? How much we'll put them into a state of shock you go into, you go into in the early November when the ruts just getting ready to kick, throw tenants in and snow on them and depart from normal by forty degrees and watch it shut every every year in the herd down. Give me that same front in December and every one of them is coming to a feed field, so it varies how they react to it during the time of the year and what their system is doing inside. Yeah, that's uh, that makes sense. I keep saying that, but it makes sense. Um, And you're you're going right where I was wanting to go, which is pressure. But very quickly before we do that, I have to follow up questions. Um. Number one, you're talking about the late season fronts and something that I've heard people mentioned a lot. I haven't personally seen. It is often here in Michigan or many of the places that I hunt, but I've heard a lot of people talk about that during the late season, not us the big cold front temperature drops, but also actually the opposite, so when the temperature increases to mild conditions, maybe in late December, some people say that's a positive thing. Um, is that something you've seen and what kind of specifics in that kind of way? Then would you need for that to be a positive thing? It absolutely, it absolutely is. And and at that time of the year, and really any time of the year, it comes down to energy conservation. And if you watch a deer, and just the example I gave you, the front part of the rut, major cold front snow, it will shock them and the and nothing in the herd will move. Well, they know what's about to happen, and they're conserving energy by betting and just not doing anything. Whereas if it's more life threatening later in the season, in other words, post rut, where they they've already expended their batteries low and they have to build that energy back up, that same front is gonna put them on the food source and it gets actually accentuated and better once the wind comes back out of the south, the clouds, the clouds clear out, you start having warming trends. Then all of a sudden they start moving better. However, that quickly subdues about the second or third day of the warmth. Okay, and then that's perfect because my next question was going to be about I never did get the specifics on how many days after a front. So you just mentioned after the second or third day after a warm front in late season, But what about the cold front that hits, you know, earlier in the year when we're really looking for those cold fronts, um how many days after that? Last? Find that answer? I find that answer very consistent throughout the season. It's one consistent thing that I've always seen. The first if you could have one day of north, three days of north, ten days of north, and they're all going to be decent movement, and then that first day of south is incredible. It's the first warm day. They almost always move the best that day after front, provided that you've got some high pressure coming in with it, that's generally the day that they move the best. It will gradually decrease days two, three, and four until it stabilizes, and then all of a sudden you're back into your next front. Okay, then let's day two of warmth is generally the worst movement you'll see in and around the front. The first warm day with the first south generally the best. Because I always say the first south. In all reality, that first warm day might be a west, if you know what I'm saying, and then the second warm day might be a south. Well, that second day, even though it's the first south, might not be as good as that first westerly day because it was and truly the first warm up day. So you kind of gotta I always say the first south, but in reality I should miss stand. I should restate that in the first warming day. Sometimes those are westerlies and not necessarily south. But that second day that it's warm, especially if it's two souths in a row, that second day of south is generally very slow and less. It's already into the next front and there's another one approaching. So it depends how are out the fronts are and all that good stuff. That's why the the app looks backwards and forwards as well before it makes a prediction. Yeah. Yeah, So I started tracking, you know all you know Holy Field, the whole story we've been talking about for years of that buck. And I started trying to track, you know, every different daylight sighting ahead of him, and every different daylight trail Cara picture I have of him, and then all these different factors and and trying to correlate something there. So I had, okay, sighting X, date, time of day, date or time of year, um, actual temperature and then I looked at the previous temperature. So was there a temperature difference of ten degrees or more over the last two days? Um? What was the moon? What was the wind direction? Was the change in wind direction? I tried to track all these things like you're talking about, and UM, it does get pretty crazy once you start factoring not just the current but also the changes but to all of these points. It really is in many of these cases, it's it's not what the temperatures today. It's not that the temperature seventy five. It's why it's if it's different, it's the delta. It's the change it seems to flip deer into gear. Right, it's the changes between these different conditions. Absolutely. That's why earlier when you heard me talk about pre sip, I talked about precip rate and then changing presip, I talked about wind speed, changing wind speed. So it is the delta as much as it is the actual condition. That's correct. Yeah, it's okay. Let's move to pressure. Can you give me, like the very top level cliff notes before we get into my specific questions on that. Absolutely sure, you know. I mean, as a general rule, the high the pressure, the better the deer movement. The lower of the pressure, um, the worst the deer movement. Uh. It depends though, how long you've been with high pressure and how long you've been with low pressure, and where it was and where it's going. So. Uh. Pressure is also relative to the season. So high pressure in the early part of the season is not considered high pressure during the latter part of the season, when that cool air really gets ushered in. I like stuff thirty point two to thirty point four in the late season, early season, I'm tickled to death. If it's twenty nine point nine five up to about thirty point one five, I consider that high pressure during the early part of the season. In fact, during the early point of the season, if it gets too high, it'll shut them down. Consequently, last year, we had a couple of days at bordered record pressure at thirty point seven point eight, and they did they didn't move well at all. They almost get a little lethargic on those extremely high pressure days where they move real slow and don't move move well at all. So there are sweet spots to pressure, just like there are sweet spots to temperature or anything else. Well, you just covered several of my specific questions. So you really knocked that one of the park mark, because I've had a lot of people ask, you know, as you just said, how bare metric pressure is relative to time of year, and a lot of people have been curious, Okay, what's what's a high pressure day in September versus a high pressure day November versus December. What you just said, so that's super helpful. Um, now what about this? Someone had asked if you would rather see a low pressure that's rising or a steady high pressure. So his example was which scenario would be better in your mind? Would it be like a twenty five but rising, So is that change what's most important? Or would you just like to have a higher thirty point two but steady for several days? And of course I know this is different depending on the time of year, but it is as I would answer, yes and yes, because at certain times of the year, the bouncing of pressure, especially during an afternoon sit I noticed because it accompanies as the fronts coming in. When the pressure bounces during a normal evening sit, uh, they generally moved quite well. In other words, it bounces from low and all of a sudden starts to rise while you're sitting there. It might be twenty nine point four and it bounces and starts heading back up the grid while you're sitting there, say four thirty five o'clock. Bam. That's generally a trigger that makes them move. When it's during a feeding pattern or feeding time of the year. Overall, though, I would take take the higher pressure versus that low pressure. It's tricky timing the low pressure. That's one thing I've found. They're not nearly as consistent on that low pressure side of things as they are with the high They generally move quite well on high pressures, regardless of situations. Do you have any theory, I mean, this is I think this is on guesswork here, but do you have any theory as to why that might why pressure influences deer movements so much? Like what the what the physiological impact is that's changing their behavior? You know, I'd say it. I don't know that it's necessarily the high pressure as much as the front that just passed that ushered that high pressure in if that makes sense. So, I don't know that it's the pressure itself as much as the condition that just happened. In other words, sometimes during the heat of the worst affront, they don't move quite as well, and then once the threat of the front passes, they all get out and start moving again, you know. So sometimes I think it's that more so than it is the actual pressure gradient itself, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, I follow you there. It's the very much of pressure is simply a symptom of this thing that's happening. It's an indicator we can look at, but it's just indicating that this front's moving through and all the things that come with that front are what's pushing dear to do what they do exactly. And you know, if you I always like I used to sell on the road, and I don't know if I told this anecdote back in fifteen or not, but I could just about tell you I sold Massio for ten years on the road and from eight nine and I could just about tell you whether I was going to write in order that day or not based on how the weather was, the mood people are in. Um. You know, they say, you know the greatest rainfalls where you sign the highest suicide right Rate's that type of thing. You go, you go to a place where it's sunny and a high pressure all the time. People are happy and they feel good good and and and when you live in the Midwest like we do, you get a lot of different fronts coming through and that low pressure you kind of feel a little groggy, little drag. You don't feel like getting out. And that's high pressure rushers in man smiling everybody's face. They're out there, act active and um, it's just I think you can feel the same thing that they feel inside your own body and your moods and how you feel and how you react to the weather. Yeah. So so what about this, How do you see pressure impacting wind or thermals or anything like that, and how does that then impact your decisions as far as predicting movement or predicting the quality of hunts if if at all well, Well, high high pressure makes everybody a better hunter, because the thermals are generally going up. Um, it makes everyone better, especially in the morning sits high pressure makes your stand choice better and you can get away with murder on those days. Those are the days that I go to that stand. You sit there, and you look and you go, I don't want my wind blowing any of these directions, but I have to sit, But I have to sit here. Those are the ones I reserve for the extreme high pressure mornings. Man. I will sneak in there, getting that stand and and hunt with the security of the fact that while that deer is probably still gonna catch me on the down wind side, he's not going to react in nearly as much of a negative way as he would have if the pressure was low. Man, it makes sense crush or better, it just it just makes you a better hunter when that pressure is rising and and high. Yeah, that's uh, that's a great thing to keep in mind. That again, something I hadn't thought about as much either. But if you have to take a swing for the fences, if you have to take that big risk, you might as well time it at the right not only good conditions for deer movement, but also good conditions for lower risk for you. Um all about risk management. Man, on low pressure, don't go to your best spots unless you've got a safe wind direction. Don't do it. Yeah, is there anything on this front? I feel like, I mean, you've been obviously studying this and following this and talking about this for a long time. But since we last talked in fifteen, has your thoughts on barre ment of pressure and the impacts or theories about any of this stuff. Has that changed at all in the last three and a half years or so. The thing that has changed is that I've seen it work in an adverse effect because we've had so much record pressure over the last few falls. And I've noticed it consistently that on those days where we are nearing record pressure for the the period, it is as much of a suppressors as it is an enhancer. So it has changed in that, and we we wrapped all of that into the into the app. Okay, interesting stuff. Now here's something I also I've also witnessed that bounced in the afternoon when when you're sitting there during a normal during a phase when afternoon movement is generally the best, and you catch about as severe bounds, especially the lord is with the higher it's going to when that bounce occurs when they're supposed to be moving anyway during a normal movement time last two hours if you will, or you know sunset minus thirty minutes or an hour, that is also a major influencer when you catch it, it's a good one that's wrapped into the app as well. I so, so I understand here you're saying, like an early season when evenings they're supposed to be great anyways, if you have that change happening right during the set, that's especially good. Well even in the later seasons too. I'm just saying when it's a thing where afternoon movement is really good, like the party's over feedback, green revisited, greener pastures, all of those where afternoons are optimum. Then when that sucker bounces during those afternoon phases killer interesting And I'm assuming it's only the bounce up right, A bounce A change down is going to be a negative, is that correct? Generally a negative? Generally negative. However, it can be a positives. If it's been so extreme eamly high that they didn't move the day before, then they're probably about to when it when it goes back into a level that's more of a sweet spot for them the next day. I have noticed that as well, and generally the other thing that I think they dislike about that really really high pressure. What's happening on those days? Almost no windspeed on those days, almost none. It'll be like three or four mile an hour or are less the whole day, and they just I don't know why, they get whipped out with low wind speeds. Then all of a sudden next day it drops down a little bit, windspeed kicks up. Boom every day in the herds on their feet again. It's it's it's crazy to watch them on it. They're fascinating creatures when you watch them on a day in and day out basis literally fascinating. Okay, let's take one last quick break to thank our partners at White Tail Properties for the support of this podcast and continuing our land Beat video recommendations series. As I mentioned the past, White Tailed Properties got this great YouTube series going on right now called land Beat. I want to give you zip on their latest version of that. They've got another one focused on fall food plots and Tom James really interesting and great resource when it comes to habitat management. And this one, Tom James talks about fall food plots and what his favorite seed combinations are for that kind of annual fall hunting food plot, and he talks about layering different types of forge in there. So you've got attraction from the early season all the way through the late So check this one out. It's quick video. It's called Fall Food Plots Slash Seed Combinations for Incredible Attractiveness. Came out not too long ago, so check that out on the White Tailed Properties YouTube channel. Yeah, so let's just go right there then, since you brought it up, can you give us the cliff notes on on wind speed and direction. I guess how you think that influences things. And then I do have a couple of follow ups on that already. Well, I mean again it's the same answer to keep giving it various per phase. But as a general rule, when the winds out of the north, they they've general are gonna move quite well. And then that first day out of the south, I like, I think there are definite wind speed sweet spots. Though when that wind is below about seven or eight mile an hour, regardless of direction, they move less than if it is between about eight and fifteen. Eight to fifteen or eight to eighteen. Somewhere in that range to me is the wind sweet spot. As you get to twenty and then above that a little bit it starts to suppress it just a little bit, or it may not suppress it, but it certainly makes them more nervous. There is a sweet spot for wind in terms of overall movement and in terms of overall relaxation of the animal. There is something about a twelve to fourteen mile in our wind where every deer is relaxed. They got their head down feeding and they're not sitting there wigged out. It's it's crazy. It's almost like turning a sound machine on for a baby at all, sleep like like a baby. With those deer will come out and see feed like they're supposed to. They're just not nearly as nervous in a mid range wind as they are in a high wind or a low wind some of the worst days or low wind days, because they hear everything. You know, no wind, look out every dear and the plot is going to have her head up all night long. It's it's amazing. So that brings me to my next question then on on wind speed. When you have those no wind days are very very light wind days, can you talk about the impacts that has not just on dear movement, but then also on your scent. Can you elaborate a little bit on what happens and what how that might influence a hunt. Negatively, it's if you're in a high ridge and it's a morning and it's high pressure, that helps you. But where it really hurts you if there's no wind in your lowan topography of an afternoon sit, you've got some things working against you there. Number one, when you first get to your spot, if you're sitting there three the last three hours of daylight, say, your pressure is gonna be rising. You don't have enough wind speed to take your scent to a defined spot, so it's gonna be variable, especially if you're low end topography, so you're literally scenting an every direction that you can. Then on those high pressure days with low wind, when that thermal sets in, that's one of your your biggest thermal days because it goes from a very warm trend boom. Those thermals hit and take your scent and push it straight to the ground, and it'll be doing it almost three degree radius around your tree. It's why we have been so successful on those days. It's why you see us hunting out of blinds when the wind is not blowing. So often you see us not a blind a lot. But on those days, I'm generally low in topography and I'm somewhere in a scent proof blind and every window is shut, even if they're fogging up. I have to keep my scent contained inside that that blind, and it it makes a huge difference to your over overall success. I've been blown and boogered and spooked and seen and heard by so many deer on low wind days. It's it's very tough to get one killed. With low winds. So what about if we if we're in a scenario we don't have a good black splind that can kind of seal in things like that. Um, what would be like the safest bet ground ground? Get it down as close to the ground as you can get inside of a ground blind. You can always get that scenario set up for yourself. Get low and get in that blind and sit there and don't freaking move because they're gonna catch you. What's the threshold there? What's like where do you draw the line as too dangerous? Low? Seven and blow? I hate it. Predicted seven and blow is really a booger, especially if you're five and below almost it's almost impossible to kill them those days. Plus they're going to react to the sound of your bow. And I'm talking archery down I mean guns a different scenario obviously, But if you're talking with a bow and you're trying to kill a deer, that's when you do it. Pat yourself on the back because it's hard to do. Now, I've got a scenario I want to lay out for you related to this kind of but the opposite. Um, And I'm curious to hear if you think I made the right decision of the wrong decision, because I was put into a situation where I to think through all these things we're talking about. I was looking at all these different factors to try to determine the first day to go hunt holy Field last year, and I wanted to wait and strike for the first time with the best possible situation. Um because he's very impected by pressure, I thought, I'm just gonna have a handful of opportunities, probably to get a stab at him. So coming to the season, I want to take I take what I said for a second back. I did hunt opening day, but then after opening Day I said, Okay, I'm not going to go back in until all the stars aligned. One of the things I was using was the fact that I had historical encounters with him the past two years. One year was on the twenty four one years on and so I thought, Okay, in two thousand seventeen, I'm gonna wait till that time frame because that's when he starts becoming daylight active. Based off these two years of histories, I thought, somewhere around give or take is what I'm gonna start hunting. So I had that in the back of my mind and then I thought, okay, I want that time frame, assuming good conditions are present. So we get to like the twenty one October, and as you probably remember, there's a big cold front rolling through, and I thought, oh my gosh, the deer hunting gods have shined on me. This is perfect. His historical patterns line up with like the first really great cold front of October. This is gonna be dying to win. So I said, all right, I'm hunting. It was gonna be like fifteen degrees cooler than the day before. Um, I had a right wind direction to hunt, an area where I thought he'd be, So I kind of had set in my mind, I'm gonna do it. That's the day. I'm gonna go in that night. But when I got to that day, now, all of a sudden, it was really windy. It was much windier than what they've been showing over the past couple of days. And I found myself it was like noon, and I'm sitting here going back and forth in my head. Do I hunt because the cold front past, the winds, the right direction, I need the time of years, right, you know, we've got the pre up starting to ramp up. History tells me that he starts moving right around. Now I can be right in that area, all those things that go, go, go, go go. But then I see the wind speeds at like twenty miles an hour one hour, And is that enough of a negative impact to say, no, negate everything else, because that's that's gonna hurt things. And again I'm thinking, I really need this first set to be great, is what I was thinking in my head. Well, I would have unted him out, you would, I would? Yes? Okay, Well then I feel less bad because I did go hunt him, but I well, I went and hunted. I got into the tree and the winds were worse than even the weather had said and probably being like something like that. And then I felt like it was swirling a little bit. It seemed like it was such a strong wind. It seemed to be blowing off direction and pitching in towards the bedding. So I was in the tree for ten fifteen minutes and then I said this, I'm screwing things up, and I actually climbed out and left and just didn't want to screw up anymore. So so you're saying, though my still gut reaction was okay, it wasn't stupid to go in there, so was your secondary reaction. I would have left the moment it kicked backwards, I would have I would have ran. Yeah, I basically did. Yeah, I would have you know the mote, the moment, and you know, if you feel like you know where deer's betting areas that and you go in and what you're dealing with there in that part of the season, the the heavy foliage acts like topography. So in other words, the wind can actually kick over the tree tops and then turn around and kick back because it's it's kicking off of a blocker, which is the full You know, if that would have been November, leaves are gone, the wind might have been consistent for you in that same spot. You know. That's why I wind scout a lot of places. Are I certainly when those things happened to me under those conditions, and I write that down somewhere in my mind, are on a piece of paper. I can't hunt here on this speed and ever again during this time brand you know, so you'll you'll learn that. And you only did it because said earlier in the podcast, you learned by I can your mistakes. You gotta go in there and get backed around a little bit and go, WHOA, that's bad. The wind kick back, and more often than not, I think people most people would have just went there and sat to hold hold old damn. He said, Hell with it, I'm here. You know that's bad. Don't miss mistakes like don't let a dear know that you're hunting them. And if you know that your wind is blowing into a betting area, you're making a dumb decision. Yeah. So so on that front, I sometimes have found earlier. I'm I'm making better decisions now, as we just talked about. But one of my excuses used to be if I'm in a tree stand and then like the wind seems to switch like that, or I noticed that the wind has switched and it seems to be blowing into a betting area, and I'm like, oh ship, it's blowing there. It's screwing things up. My I used to say, well, you've already done the damage. It's already been blown there for a few minutes. It's it's any deer that was there is gone or smart to what's going on now. You might as well just set it out because maybe something will come from one of these other directions. Um, that's what I used to do. Is that? Is it good that I'm not doing that anymore? Or is there something to be said about? Yeah? There, it's like a sunk cost. You might as well see what happens on the other side. Uh, compends how much time you have, you know. Um, for me, I'm down and I'm out, and I'm somewhere where the winds safe or UM in my truck up on a doing point, just to watch what happens. You know. UM, I don't like putting my wind over somewhere that I do not want it to be, and I avoid it at all costs and eliminate it any chance I get. I do not like that. It's safe. Wind directions cannot be overstated. Having one for every single wind condition, speed, and time of year is very very important. Um. That's why I think, no matter how many spots you got, you still don't have enough. Go find a good condition that you can hunt in where you have a safe wind direction, because at the end of the day, if you smell you if you're bow hunting, nine times out of ten, it's over. Yeah, gears and and and you don't see it happened like that's what's wrong with it? Like, that's how why it's hard to learn. You don't see the deer more often than on if you're in thick cover, that's five yards down wind reacting to your you're but sitting there hunting on the wrong wind, you don't see it. So therefore I didn't hear anything. Bro. Yeah, well, five different gear down wind anywhere from three D eight hundred all smells you, and all took a change in direction, and all will not forget your position like they are masters at remembering um being scared. In other words, human scent scares them. When you scared deer, he never forgets it in imprints in his mind, and he will not forgot where he got scared, how he got scared, and he will avoid that situation in the future. You have to make sure that you're not scaring that deer and making him afraid. Think of the thing. Think of some of the deepest memories in your mind. When you were a kid, If something scared to live and crap out of you, you never forget it the rest of your life. Dear the same way. Yeah, you know, when I was two or three, I put my hand on a burning grill and I've never done it since and you won't ever again, or just anything, any little thing that scares you when you get that adrenaline bump where you're scared, truly scared, you never forget that, and dear, don't forget it either. That's why they get so hard to kill in pressured areas. So two things that I've wondered about often on on this topic that you just mentioned there, and you you kind of throw some numbers, but I want to pinion down on a couple of things here. Um wind distance so something. So oftentimes I've wondered, Okay, how far away do I need to be worried if I'm crossing a field and there's a betting area way down wind, but it's it's two yards or seven hundred yards, or what's the distance that you think it's okay a to be from a deer bedding area or where you where every maybe more if it's the opposites at night in the feeding whatever might be. What's the distance that you think we need to be concerned about the threshold there? And then are there any kind of clean the boy are you? You know? So I think that would change based on how fanatic you are about scent control. If you are freaking over the top with washing and clean um uncented soap, the best you can find, uh titanium added ozone your clothes on a daily basis, clean your body two and three times a day, ozone every single thing, every piece of equipment you have. Then you could probably get by it maybe two or three yards, and they may not detect you if you do it quickly. I mean you can't stand there and let it permeate the area. However, if you're sloppy and you've got human scent all over you and every other scent from the day, you might affect him in a half mile. You know. Interesting? Now, what about obstacles? I heard someone recently kind of theorizing that they thought stuff like a big feel of standing corn or really really thick cover of some kind that might block enough wind that you could get away with a closer distance um from a wind standpoint and not get sented. Do you think there's anything to that depends on speed and your smell again, in my opinion, and how fast it passes that dear like it. Dear's natural reaction is to stay put and stay betted, and it's It's one of the only reasons we ever kill them. If they if they got up and ran every single time they smelled a human, heard a vehicle, heard a four wheeler, heard a guy talking, you'd never kill them. Luckily, their natural um defense mechanism is to just stay betted. So that's why you can walk to your stand even even on like you know, make a dumb choice going into your stand and and walk right by dear. If it's in the cover of darkness and you do it quickly, they're more than likely going to accept it, and they'll come back down after an hour or two they forget what happened. Um. Luckily, they will stay put more often than not. So I always go to my stand rather quickly, especially if I have a strong wind because it's covering your sound. Uh. If I've got a good visual you know, position to where I can sneak in, I go very quickly. I'm a very quick access guy because I don't want my wind going down wind of anyone position for a very long period of time. Something I just thought of that I that I think you alluded to when you're talking about the original influencers. UM, but I didn't ask about yet. Was the change in wind speed? UM, Is there anything there that you're seeing as a big influencer. Is is the change from high to low or low to high, or anything like that's pushing deer in one way or another, only in the sense that as it changes in and out of that suite spot that I mentioned I love seven day about twenty somewhere in that range is really good. Once you start to go above it, it can suppress it a little bit. Once you go below it, it it can suppress it a little bit. So as it floats in and out of the sweet spot. Always think in terms of that look for that sweet spot. Man, those days when it's out of south and it's sustained that twelve until dark on that first south look out, they're all coming. Something you talked about, I think last time we we had this conversation that you said that you were investigating UM but hadn't come to the firm conclusions yet. Was humidity Relative humidity? Is that something where you having found I found no correlation. I have studied it and studied it, and I cannot put a correlation between humidity and dear movement. I can't do it. I've had high humidity days where they move their butts off. I've had low humidity days. To me, it was other whether in fluencers had a much greater effect on them than the actual humidity. Then sticking with moisture, then talk to me about precipitation. I love it, absolutely love it, especially when we haven't had it for a while. If you're into a dry spell and it starts, it goes back to that delta. You know things are changing. You've been dry, it's about to get wet. Get ready because they're fixing to move and moving a big way. If it's been wet sustained three or four days heavy rain, when it's about to stop, it is the biggest trigger you will ever see for a white killed deer in your life. I don't give up. I don't care if it's at nine, ten, eleven, twelve, one o'clock of the day when it slows down. They're fixing to move. So what about the intensity? I get a lot of people. I personally love rain, but you hear a lot of people say, oh, they're not gonna move during the middle of the storm or during the middle of the all day rain. Um, do you have any thoughts on that? The heavier the rain, the less likely they are to move during it. The lighter the rain, the more likely they are to move during it. Those light, misty days like fog bordering on mist, man, they're gonna move their tails off. Heavy foggers a suppressor. But those those days where it's real wet and damp in the air and you can still see. If fog affects your visibility, it's probably affecting mayors. And if it reduces visibility down to where you can hardly see, they're not going to move very well. Um. If, however, it's one of those days where it's foggy just above where you can see, you know, it's kind of just moisture in the air, and then it turns into a light presept Whoo, that's a generator, man, Look out, cools that body they're gonna move. Light precept is fantastic snows the same way. Heavier the snow, the less they're gonna move. Lighter the snow, the more of an influencer it is. Yeah, I was gonna ask about snow next. Is there anything, um what about accumulation? Have you noticed any kind of correlation between a certain amount, like is twelve inches of snow going to result in in a heavier feeding impulse than a one inch snow bends on the time of the year and how many snows we've already had. If it's just if it's the first snow, that they'll react one way. If it's the tents snow, they'll react a different way. Once they get used to it. The snow really doesn't affect them that much anymore, but they got to equalize to it, and they gotta get used to it in their environment. You know, snow down in Texas and watch them versus snow up in Michigan and watch them. It affects every deer heard differently depending on how used to it, uh they are, how I'm not used to it they are? Yeah, Yeah, I feel like, you know, you've got you gotta use your own common sense in certain areas, you know. Yeah, we had snowed out that Texas ranch and I mean they literally didn't move for two days. It's interesting completely, Yeah, And I feel like I could see that's a unique scenaria, I think. But if I were to take a look at a lot of what we're talking about here, one of the core that consider sencis is whenever we veer from the average, or we veer from the status quo that seems to cue this change in behavior with dear, whether it be the change in temperature, or the change in wind, or the change in precipitation. Um, would you say that that's a consistent thing we're seeing here over and over again. Is is it's that shift? It's the shifting conditions oftentimes that's triggering something. Um that seems to be like it is. It is quite often change which the weather is ever changing. Right, So their energy conservation or you know, energy consumption is really what they're doing. They're either going to conserve energy or they're gonna go try and recharge their batteries. Really depends upon what time of the year it is, how big the front is, how much change there is. I mean, that's how they live. You know, they have to eat their slaves to their stomach and it revolves around the you know those fronts. How much it threatens their well being, how much it threatens their ability to stay at peak form. All of those things will affect them. So it really depends on the time of the year and how vicious the front is, and it it changes through each phase drastically, honestly, what let's let's let's switch to something different here, um, because there's one topic that everyone likes to argue about, and you've got some some strong opinions about I think that are interesting, but their counter to some opinions by many other people. And this is the moon, of course. Um. Can you give me the marjury one on one on your thoughts on the moon, and then we'll go from there. Weather Trump's moon in all cases, but the moon is a major, major influencer to deer activity. If you take the five to seven days on either side of the full moon each month, you're going to see the peak of daylight activity, whether it be morning or evening. If you take the five to seven days in and around the dark of the moon, you're generally going to see the least amount of activity. That has been my observation for the past twenty plus years. The app interprets that on a day in and day out basis, and our our history within our journal shows that if you want to watch the Dree Outdoorge Journal each and every year and watch it when it lights up, watch the few days that precede the full moon and the few days that follow it, and then compare and contrast that with the days that precede and follow the dark of the moon. Now does that a lot of these factors you talked about. You've said that at certain times of the year, an influencer will be weighted more heavily. So doesn't it's weighted the same. It's weighted the same throughout every phase. Okay, Now, what is one influencer that did not change? Interesting? Now, what about um? I'm sure you've heard about the red moon charts and days and that's essentially the overhead underfoot. Um. Have you seen anything there? Any thoughts on on that theory that a lot of people seem to have, Because I know, if I remember right, the moon the days that you just mentioned ahead and after the falling or the full moon that typically coincides with the moon setting and rising times matching up with those key morning or evening time frames. I know that's something you've pointed to. When those things match up, that's a that's a good time. UM. Folks like Adam Hayes or someone would say, well, when the red moon, which is overhead or underfoot, matches up with your key morning or evening times, those are the best. What's your take on that. I haven't noticed that nearly as much. Um. What I have noticed is that during certain times of the year, certain times of the day are very important. In other words, if you look at midday on September and compare that to midday on November, drastic difference in how the deer are going to move as it pertains to time of day. That's why I mentioned earlier when you when you download the app and look at it, always watch time of day for each individual phase because we're gonna break down what times of the day are optimum. So September, give me a moon that has overhead or underfoot at noon, it's not going to influence them because it's not a normal time that they would be moving, not nearly as much as it would. However, if you look at it on November fifteenth, when it is a normal time that they might be moving, it will absolutely influence them more. So, it really comes down to what time of the day do they normally move during that time of the year. If you look at the app, most of the year, it's the first hour and a half to two hours. In the last hour and a half to two hours, a lot of the year. It's the first hour, last hour as it pertains to sunrise around sunrise for the next hour to hour and a half to an oh about thirty minutes before sunrise to the thirty to forty five minutes that follow sunrise. Those are that's dear thirty both morning and evening throughout the year. However, there are those phases in mid November where you could throw that out the window and look at the middle part of the day and go, Okay, everything is moving between about they start then about the time that they end during the rest of the phases, and they end about the time they normally start during the rest of the phases. So it is drastically different. So there is a correlation and how will they move with the moon, But you have to time that and compare it to what phase you're talking about. Yeah, so I know when we chatted last on this topic, we talked about the moon in relationship to the rut, and if I remember correctly, you would talk about the fact that you know the same as most biologists and everyone point to that the rut is relatively consistent, is tied to photo period, etcetera, etcetera. Um, so I know, as You've mentioned a lot of the states as you guys put into the deer cast app peak and estus around with November fourteenth or fifteenth. That seems to be peak est states for most of the Midwest, a lot of parts of the country. Um. But you did say that the moon illuminates certain portions of the rut and makes those better for hunting. Um. Could you expand on that a little bit in general, but then talk to us about what that's going to do this year than you think. Absolutely, the rut differs in intensity each and every year, in my opinion, because the moon that same influte. So that I'm talking about if you look in and around the ten to fourteen days around the full moon, specifically to ten five before or five after, and compare that to the five before and five after the dark as to when you see the deer and how much daylight activity you see. It expands it in and around the full moon, it decreases it in and around the dark of the moon. Therefore, if the full moon hits during a normally good phase of the rut, in other words, the seeking phase, oh my goodness, man, did we have a rut? Well? It enhanced and otherwise grow eight phase. If, however, the full moon hits like it's going to this year during some tougher phases. In other words, it's going to be full at the tail end of the um October law and also again at the tail end of November, which is party's over and on into uh green revisited. It's gonna be a little bit tougher and a little bit later because it's coming in phases that aren't normally nearly as good. And conversely, the dark of the moon, which subdues movement, is going to be hitting in and around those phases that are generally better. So you're gonna see you're gonna be ce shortened periods of activity first hour, last hour, and not nearly as much during the middle part of the day this year until you get in and around that full moon. I think October could be deadly for some really mature bucks on scrapes as we lead in the full moon going into like the twenty one to leading into that all moon, and then right after that as as movement switches over to mornings like catch the front in and around the full moon, either leading into it or just following the full moon two or three days, and you're gonna see some major monsters get killed in and around scraping activities at the food source, because those are the first places they're gonna go looking for the first available dough. It could be dynamite. If it's warm, it's gonna subdue way down. It's not going to be nearly as good going into November. I think it could be a tougher seeking phase and into the peak of the rut, it's gonna be more subdued first thirty minutes, the last thirty minutes. But then when you get back into the full moon around November, I think it is then all of a sudden you're starting to see deer free up, go back to the food source. That's when you get back on your green green plots and you look for that cold front and then catch them back coming to green green revisited in November. This year will be fantastic for some giants in my opinion. So do you think that this full moon or what you're talking about, how that affects intensity of activity during the daylight that we can see as hunters. As you mentioned, this year does not line up with the traditional time frames that we're expecting the most seeking and chasing and daylight activity that we hunters want. Do you think it makes so much of an impact that if you had like a week of vacation time or two weeks of vacation time during the run. I think most guys would usually say maybe the first two weeks in November are safe bet for typical best running activity. But the moon, as you're describing it, is not focusing on or is not going to help us out during that time frame. Do you think the moon has so much of an impact that you would not say those would be the best two weeks anymore? Uh? No, those are still the best two weeks because that's still the phases where they're going to move the best. However, it's going to subdue it. You're not going to have as much daylight activity. So what then you're depending on is the weather. Uh. If you get bad weather during that period, it's going to seem like an awful run. If you get good weather during that period, it's to seem like a good rut. If the moon was lined up and you had great weather, then you go, oh my goodness, it's the rut of ball ruts. So it really takes several factors lining up at once in order to make something incredible versus just good or poor. Okay, I filu you there, and that that's that's kind of what my assumption was, UM, So that that makes sense to me. So I've got one last kind of line of questioning here before I take up your entire night mark. Um. If we're talking predicting dear movement, it's not just outside fact or it's not just like atmosphere factors like whether, it's not things just like the moon. But there also can be something to be said about knowledge like intel can help you predict dear movements. This is something that obviously dear cast can't do for you. This is something that you, as a hunter have to do, UM. But this is something I know you've talked about a lot already today. You've mentioned the importance of like your long distance observation sits, things like that. And then I brought up earlier when I was talking about that late October hunt for a whole field, how I was trying to take advantage of annual patterns, the fact that I knew that this deer had done something two years prior. Consistently I was hoping you'd do it again for a third year. UM, So, I guess if we continue the pattern we've done, Can you give me a quick overview of your thoughts on how annual patterns and what you can learn from historical trailcare pictures can help you predict dear movement. Um. And then I've got a few specific things that I've always wondered about that that I'm hoping you can help me understand. Absolutely, you know that they're extremely habitual animals. They generally do similar things during similar times of the year. The things that can affect that our moon phase and overall crop rotation and overall mass crop production. So while you could scout a deer one year you were you were giving your whole field example that while ago and I thought back to the year that you mentioned would have been six team when that moon would have been very favorable for that period, uh specifically September. I don't recall what fifteens moon was, but sixteens moon would have been very favorable right then. Uh, So that could have been the thing that had him on his feet during daylight. So always keep those conditions in mind and understand that there may be influencers on certain days that have him on his feet. The best thing you can do is go back and look at weather history for those days and go, Okay, why did he move on daylight activity here? What was it about the weather? Was it a major coal front, what was the wind, what was the departure from average, what was the pressure, What had the weather been, and what was it about to do? And try to understand why he moved that day, And then look at what the moon phase was. So I look at historical data from my photos. I always scout a year in advance, but then I take this year's coming conditions in terms of moon, how it affects the rut, what the mash crop is, what the actual crop rotation is, and then try to apply that to the own knowledge within my head and go, Okay, what's he gonna do this year? So it's one thing to analyze past information. It's another thing to take it, interpret it, and then make a prediction on how he's going to maneuver through the season based on all those conditions this coming year. Yeah, So you you you're, you're, you are who you are because you're a rock star market because those are exactly all the things I've struggled with to try to figure out which is you know, so what manners? More? Is it the date? So should I be so tied to those dates October I was? Or or do the specific conditions that happened matter more? Should have been more so looking for Okay, I don't care what its October. I'm more so should be looking for the X moon with the fifteen degree or more temperature drop and high pressure. Um would you rank one of the other or how do you how do you process all that in your head when you're weighing those things. I would have looked at conditions for sure, and I would have looked at what he would which direction he was heading, like what food source was he going to, what was he coming back to? How good was the mass crop, how much did it affect his daylight activity? How poor was the mass crop? You know, all those different conditions, and then you look at this year that the Andrew dealt and see what he's doing. You also look at the health of the deer, and this is something you I don't talk about a great deal, but it's something that absolutely makes a difference. In other words, I have seen dear in supreme health because they've had great feed all summer they've had great rainfall, and then they get into the fall and they move their butts off because they're in super good condition. And then the next year you go through a drought, you've got e h d lingering. They don't have the food source quality that they had all year. They don't feel as well in my opinion, and therefore they don't move as well. So I look at the overall health of the deer herd. What does rack look like from one year or the other? Did he all of a sudden not grow the rack you expected him to grow? Why did he not grow it? Okay? Did he have something nagging at him the previous year? Was it an injury? Was it a foot injury? Was it an antler injury from another deer? And is that why he was nighttime all all year last year? Holy Crappy had a small rack last year. Even though he went from three to four. He looked the same at age four that he did at age three. Oh he blew at age five? Has his help regained as he backed to the safe he was in at age three? Can I expect similar movement out of him at age five that a candid age three? Even though his methabolism is going to slow down. He's physiologically mature. Might he move a little better than he did at age four? So you can look at a deer's health from year to year, and almost almost every time it will be an indicator, along with weather and moon as to the overall amount of daylight activity he gave you. I also look at the herd dynamics. The population was I in a in a population area where are the doughs were way out of whack. Oh, all of a sudden they changed the season and we were allowed to take a lot more does or c W D sharpshooters winning and shot a lot more does or shot more dear and took the population down. Is he gonna move more because there are fewer dos available? Or conversely, the state took the dough limit down in this area there are more doughs. I'm seeing more doughs this year than I've ever seen. Is he gonna move less because there are more doughs available? So you have to look at almost every aspect that could affect that deer's movement and then put a game plan together on him. Because there are certain years where they moved very well and certain years where they don't. Some of that's help, some of that's weather, but a lot of it is just all the other aspects that influence him in an annual basis. Huh wow, you're you're blowing my mind right now, Mark, because those are a lot of interesting things to think about. And as you were walking through that like hypothetical scenario, a lot of it was kind of matching up with my holy Field situation last year because fifteen and sixteen he was very daylight active, he was following I kind of, he had some consistent behaviors, etcetera, etcetera. And then last year, Now this could also just because he was more mature, but last year he ghosted all of October. I wasn't getting many pictures, no daylight, Tavity, didn't do the things he's done the past. He showed up in early November for about a twelve day period and then he was a ghost. He was completely off all my cameras, no sightings, nothing for the next month and a half. And then I found his shed in January. So he shed really early. So maybe he kind of injury. Yeah, Yeah, something's naggot at him. When a deer's not moving during daylight and he should be. Something's naggingt at him. He's got a foot injury, he's got a horn that he got horn. He's got a touch of DHD. He's trying to recover from it. He's got some virus, he's got some infection, and he's not moving. Man. I've seen him. We've sat there and watched him freaking hoof rot in December. Bucks that have been moving great on all November, you get a muddy December. They get infection in their hoofs because of all the scratches on their hooves from running through the rut. They get a little infection that leg. Man, it shuts him down. They can hardly walk anymore. The next year, they don't. They don't move very well because they've had that infection. They didn't. They didn't do very well. Conversely, I've seen the opposite. If a deer gets injured early in the season, like October, he gets a cut all right, and then he doesn't participate in the rut. Sometimes that healing process that took place because of whatever bugged him in in September October that holds him out of the rut ends up making him an incredible calm the next year because he did not partake in the rut and and pull all of his body weight down. He was actually healing during the rut, and then the next years the year you see his rack explode. I I truly believe that that's one of the factors why you see these unbelievable monsters just pop up and you go, how in the hell did that happen? When he looked like this last year, It's probably because he did not participate much in the ruts the previous year, and it might have been an injury that that put him on the d L during the toughest period of their life each and every year, and that's why he rebounded, went through the winter healthy, and then came out of it smelling like a rose. Herd health and individual deer health has a lot to do with your ability to take any particular deer any year, and also what he's gonna look like when you take him. Yeah, yeah, I can I can see that being the case for sure. Um hm. All five year old all five year olds are not created different, are all not are all not created the same. All six year olds are not created equal. They are different. Animals with different personalities, dealing with different things in their life, and there's there are a lot like dogs or cats are people. I mean, there's stuff nagging at them out there. And the more you watch this herd health with c w D, e h D and the minerals that they take in, and what health they're in with drought, how much rainfall they got, what the winter was like the previous year, all of those things end up being factors that end up controlling Dear movement in future years. Look at how look at how subdued and the movement was following the e h D outbreak of twelve. Not only did we have fewer dear because they died, we had a sick herd that was trying to the ones that got it, that didn't die from it, we're trying to get rid of it. And it subdued the movement for the next couple of seasons. In my opinion, they just we didn't have as many. They weren't healthy. The racks look like crap. It took years to get that worked out of the herd. They're finally now getting back to where they should be, where the herd starts. The herd now to me resembles what it did in eleven and twelve before it hit. And here we are dealing with a monstrous drought in the Midwest again. It is almost unbelievable that we're put up against us again this year. But that's that's the way it goes, man, That's what they're dealing with every year. It's all weather related. Yea. So one last question on this annual pattern thing that that popped into my head as you were kind of walking through this um those couple of items there, And I've heard a couple of people theorize about this, and that is the idea of looking at annual patterns within doe family groups so that you might be able to predict when, like maybe a certain mature dough might go into Estra's at the same time every year. And if you know that the best dough betting are in your farm is over you know by the creek that whatever the most, that mature dough might be back there year after year, and she comes into Esther's the first dough you know every If she's the first one to come into Estros every year, you might know to focus there in a certain time frame. Is there anything to that you think how to percent accurate, I would adhere to that. I think that was very well articulated that that dear is not stupid. If he went there and she she came into Estra's early the previous year, guess who he's going to seek out early next year, He's not dumb. That is absolutely a true statement. And herd health goes into dose participation in the rut. If them honeys aren't out there moving around, those bucks don't have to move around. You know, how well the does move sometimes is indicative of how well the bucks are going to move, the dose or what caused the frenzy. Yeah. Yeah, So if you saw a particularly great amount of running activity during maybe maybe on this property early in the year, let's say, for whatever reason October twenty eight through the thirty one, it was just lights out on this property the last two years, it's probably good indicator that there's a reason for that, maybe outside of other factors, and that you should make sure to be at that spot again maybe around the time frame. Yes, but it could be a food source that has a certain dough group in that area. It may just be that there's more does there that year. It might be because there's acorns faller. The next year there may not be an acorn crop. They could be a half mile away on on a cut corn field, and then all of a sudden, the magic circle moves over there. So may sure you're trying to interpolate everything, you know, not just oh, it happened this year, so it's it's going to happen again next year. It might be three or four years before that same scenario happens again, but don't forget it because it's going to repeat itself at some point. You've got to look at everything else and and go why are they there? Are they there every year? Is it a food plot that I put there that wasn't there last year? You know? Is it a clover field that's green this year but it wasn't last year because we had a drought. Is it the acorns that are dropping early? You know, those types of things, So look at why the does are there? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So you see you see a pretty significant flip flop with the crop rotation then from corn to beans, corn to beans a lot of years massive, Yeah, it's massive. Yeah, yea yea, that makes sense. Well, Mark, I've kept you longer than I'm sure you wanted, probably, so I'm gonna I'm gonna let you get off the line now and get back to important things in life. Um. But this is, as it always is, fascinating. UM. I really appreciate taking the time to do this. And I guess any more details regarding dear casts that you want to share with the audience. We haven't talked about timing of when that's gonna be available yet. Can you talk about that too and anything else folks should know if they want to get their hands on that. When's your podcast going up? This is going to go out Thursday of next week, which is the twenty ninth. I think maybe, oh perfect timing, it will be available at twenty eight God willing, Fingers crossed. Fingers are very crossed. But I hope we have put a tremendous amount of support behind this app in terms of marketing, and our biggest fear is that it's something crashes so we won't know, you know, it's kind of like Y two K, We're not going to know where it happen here. So, UM, you know it's due out on so God willing it will be available in your podcast? Okay, okay, and they can find that just by going to is that available on Apple and Android and all those things, and just go to their app stores. You got it, Man, it's gonna be under deer cast d E E R C A S T one word deer cast. Perfect. Well. I'm definitely gonna be picking up as soon as it comes out, and I think, just based off what you've shared with us today, I gotta imagine there's gonna be a whole lot of other folks that are gonna be very intrigued to check it out as well. So I'm excited about it. Mark, Thanks for putting in all the work for that kind of thing, like, for putting in so much time and energy to create a tool like that for us hunters. I appreciate that, and I appreciate you being here and answering these questions. Man, I'm happy to do it. I hope everybody downloads it, enjoys all the different content in there, watches the kills as they happen. This year, looks back at some of our old VHS stuff. I've been sitting there watching videos that I haven't watched in twenty five years. I'm not joking of the Spring founder spring and I'm I'm thinking them stuff, what were we thinking? It's pretty funny if you want to have a laugh and the and the app, go into the old video section and watch it, and then of course deer cast. We're anxious to hear back from people how we can tweak it. The algorithm is relatively easy a tweak, and we're gonna be tweaking it as the seasons come and go. You know, if there's something that we're missing, we're gonna add it in there. If there's something that's a little too optimistic, we'll pull it down. And Uh, I think it's gonna be a tremendous tool for people to help them learn. And I hope everybody downloads it and and check it out and let us know what you think about it. That's one of the reasons we have it as as the inaugural season at at no charge. It's a pre app this year, uh next year will probably move into a pay model for certain parts of it. There's still be a large portion of it that will be free, but there will be certain portions of it that will be a pay model. But we want people to to get it, use it, feel it like it, UH like it or hate it, we want to know about it and we want to make it better, and we all we all get better if we learn. That's that's one thing I know. You never want to stop learning. That right there, I think is the perfect way to end this out right there. If all of us can continue to learn and grow his deer hunters, it's going to be a good thing. So I wish you all the lolong in the world. Mark, I hope you have an amazing season. Same to you. Are you still on Holy Field? Do you have pictures of it this year? So? He I found a shed, so I believe he's alive. He does not live on the farm. I can hunt during the summer. I've never got summer pictures of him. He always shows up, but you know, September seven somewhere around there. Um, so I'm hoping he shows back up again. Um, I just don't know. Yeah, I've seen there's a big eight point velvet buck that I've seen way off in the distance, a little ways away from that property that I think could maybe be him. But I can't stay on for sure, So the question still is unanswered. Your moon is very reminosus that this year, as it was in the fall of two thousand and sixteen. Those pictures should be very helpful to you. All right, Well that is a good pro tip. I'm gonna go take a look at those and think about that. So so I'm good at my man. Thank you, Mark, I appreciate you, all right, thank you? So what did you think about that one? Talk about just truckload of information, A lot to process there. If you're at all like me, you're probably gonna want to go back and listen to this one again. Maybe take notes, think back through different past situations of your own, think about future situations. It's it's just fascinating stuff. Mark's got a lot of interesting theories in this deer cast app. I think it's going to be a pretty neat tool. I've already been checking it out, and um, I like how it can kind of help you confirm or refute kind of what your assumptions or your theories might be about upcoming deer movement based on your own understanding of these factors. So hopefully you enjoyed this one as much as I did. Just want to remind you again follow along with my hunts. I take off here in just a couple of days for Montana and North Dakota. You can follow all that on the wire You're Done Instagram account, the Wireton YouTube channel, the Wireton Facebook page, and then we will continue with our podcasts as well. And by the way, radio kicks off next week two. So lots and lots of exciting things on the horizon, not to mention maybe your very own hunting seasons as well. And if you are going to be hit in the woods here in the coming weeks or month, good luck out there, shoot straight, enjoy your season. It's going to be a great one. I think we are all learning together throughout this process. We are all becoming better hunters, and I think this year it's all going to pay off. So thank you so much for joining us today and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.