Ep. 11: Finding the Grey Ghost and Winning the “He Who Spots it Stalks It” Game

goes like this. He who spots it stocks it, or at least gets the first rider refusal. Well, what's that mean for you? That means that you want to spot something before the guy next to you. How do you do that? This week, I want to teach you how to spot animals fast with hypercentage scanning, where to look, when to look, and how to focus in and pick apart the landscape. I think the best way to go about it is to tell you a story about a trip I took with four friends down to southern Arizona

to hunt cous deer. This hunt takes place down in Arizona right on the Mexico border. It's the Southwest Desert. We're hunting an area where we got these over the counter, pretty much tags leftover rifle tags for cou's deer, which can be some of the hardest deer to spot, especially in early October. The reason is they're really, really well adapted to their environment. You gotta picture it. It's a

big cactus country. There's a lot of these bushes we call oka tillo, which is is essentially a spiny pile of branches that almost looks like you can look through, yet everything behind it can hide the cou's deers coat. I would consider it very close to digital camo. It blends in it's gray. They call him the gray ghosts for a reason because they can just blend into the gray rock without having to try. In October, they aren't

moving around much. They aren't running. They're just sitting in their hidy holes off away from roads and other things, making them very difficult to find. You might have a little bit of movement in the morning, little bit in the evening, but for the day you are just glassing, hoping to turn up and pick up the slightest piece of an animal at a long distance. A hunt starts out on a lasting I'm there with three of my

best friends. We got John, Mike, and Joe. Now my buddy John moved down to Arizona, and that's kind of what spurred our whole CU's deer or my cuse dear fascination, pretty much all of ours, because we figured out we don't get a hunt much anymore, so we'll make a trip, a pilgrimage down to Arizona, will go hunt the cous deer, and uh, it would be a great camp, great trip. So John had yet to shoot a couse buck, but

he've been living down there for a little while. So I really wanted John to get a buck, almost more than myself because I had taken one years earlier with my bow. So we're all out there, we're starting the morning out and the rule is simple. It's the same rule we have lived by when other people have a tag. If you spot it, you stock it, or you at least get the first right refusal. And why is that, Well, it's because you're the one that found it. Once you

spot it, you own that animal. So we're up on knob, all four of us. We've got our tripods out, we've got our binoculars out it's dark. We actually hiked in three miles to this perfect little knob away from the roads. It's got a good basin and background. The sun is gonna be rising behind us. It should just be lit up perfect. I think that basin. The term this is lit was referring to that basin because it just glows. So we're sitting there, the sun's coming up. We start

scanning for bucks, four of us. Somebody spots some does. It wasn't me, but you know what, I wasn't looking for does. I was looking for bucks. While everybody was distracted with the dose that they'd spotted off to the left, I focused in on a spot that looked bucky to me, and sure enough turned up two bucks. Now I have the option I can stock or I can pass. Having been the spotter, I decided to give John the first

crack at it. He set the whole thing up. I knew that he wanted a buck as bad as anybody's ever wanted a buck. John makes a stock, makes a play. We're all sitting there on the knob watching him, and Mike went over to do the stock. While they're doing the stock, I'm just continued glassing, John ends up getting too close to him, takes his shoes off like a true bow hunter, Wood even though we're rifle hunting, sneaks in within range and shoots the buck pretty much within

bow range, one buck down. While they are cutting that buck up, I turned up another buck over on the other side of the range. Well, I decided I could either stock it or pass. Yea, I might as well keep looking. It's the first morning, so my buddy Mike's up to bat. He sneaks in, makes a perfect shot buck down. We've got two deer down and it's the day. Now we're continuing hunting. The next day, we go to a different knob glassing. It's just me and Joe left

at this point glassing, I turn up yet another buck. Oh, I'm in a good position. This is a wider buck, a better buck. But I've already shot a deer in the past, so I wasn't too concerned. Nobody else had taken accused deer buck at this point yet, so I was like, Joe, you can take it if you want. Joe sneaks in, gets set up, boom, perfect shot. Third buck down. This is on a hunt that has very low success for CU's deer spotting or for coming home

with a buck. Because of the time of year. Now it's the next day, Joe and I decided to go on a mission. I'm looking for a better deer. We go on a big hike, get to the top of the mountain. That evening we're sitting glassing side by side, and there I go again, spot the fourth buck of the trip, which happens to be the biggest buck. I decided, I'm gonna take it, move down, get the rifle set up, make the shot. Buck falls just tagged out. Out of that entire trip, I ended up spotting every buck first.

Now you might think that's a coincidence, but I think there's a few tips that I do that allow me to spot things before other people, and I'm going to share those with you. So when I talk about glassing, you have to first understand the game. Animals are really only in about ten of good looking country. So what's that mean. That means that you have to know the places to pick out within that good looking country. That's

the war. Now, when we're talking about fast glassing or spotting something before someone else, this whole tactic can be used when you're by yourself or with other people. It's because there are certain times of the day when you need to glass fast. Think about most game animals we chased, their pretty crepuscular. They move in the or at least move in the open the hours of dawn and dusk. So what that means is you have to really focus your attention on the places they are while they're there.

The key to spotting things before other people is reading the situation and critically thinking. There is what I would consider a formula to finding animals, especially finding animals fast, and that's what we're going to talk about. To outglass the guy next to you, you really just have to read the situation, then adjust your glassing based on the where, what, and when. You got to break down the critical thinking of where you're glassing and where your efforts should be.

So you also have to keep in mind you want to target high percentage spots, and that's the key. While other people might be wasting their time looking over all that country, you're going to focus on the ten based on a database of information you have on places you've seen dear previous times. But also it's the way that you glass the places you look first when we talk

about glassing. If somebody is going to give you a glassing article or glass and seminar, one of the things that they're gonna throw out there is this this idea of gritting. Now, what gritting is, I'll just define it real quick, is it's where you would take your binoculars, say on a tripod, and you go whatever is in

front of you. You create like a grid pattern. So you go, you start at the top, and you go left to right and you cover that, and you drop down slightly to where you couldn't cover last, and then go right to left and then back and you cover the whole mountain. Now, while there is a time and a place to glass for that, let's say the mornings and the evenings are not that time or place, or when you're trying to glass faster than the guy next to you, that might not be the time and place.

Now there's this also this other term shotgun glassing. That's where you've got the binoculars up and you're just ping ponging around, you just throwing them here, throwing them there, and you're hoping that something lands in your view. Now, that's not a very effective way to glass. If you're comparing it to gritting, right, because you're just kind of hoping to get lucky. So what I'm going to tell you is my personal secret. I don't even know if

I should be giving these secrets out. You guys are very lucky. You probably won't even This will be the one episode that doesn't get shared because you aren't gonna want your buddies to know this this information. Now, while there are a lot of different tactics to gritting and really picking apart the country, when it comes to what we're talking about here, spotting something before someone else, my

tactic I like to call strategic shotgun glassing. So what that is is, I'm quickly scanning the high percentage areas where deer or elk or whatever I'm looking for are most likely to be, and by doing that, I'm covering that ten percent of good country while someone else is looking over the whole of stuff that looks great. So let's break it down into a simple strategic way for you to start your approach. So let's start the glassing out like this. We're gonna execute on the knowledge that

we have about how animals move, where animals prefer to be. Okay, we're gonna start by looking for the easy animals to find. Now, that seems simple, but you can fast scan those areas, and there are a lot of high percentage areas where if something's there, you'll see it right away. This includes glassing, ridgelines, skylines,

major openings. What you're looking for here is you're able to move fast over these spots and look for the animals that stand out like a sore thumb, the one that you go yep, should have seen that, the one that everybody should see, but they're too busy focusing in on other places. These are areas that you can cover quickly, yet high percentage of seeing something because they are not

necessarily hiding that well. Think about first thing in the morning, some of the first places I look when I sit down would be on that skyline because whatever is up there sticks out like a sore thumb. You don't have to spend a lot of time on it, but you can continually keep scanning these areas ridgelines. Another great travel corridor or betting area where animals like to be is

on finger ridges or other ridges coming down. These are often easier to see as well as like meadows, openings, mornings and evenings, places where deer or elk or other animals would frequent those times a day. I got to think about what an animals doing mornings and evenings are generally feeding. So I hit up those open areas first, scanning areas where I'm expecting animals to be. Yet they're

also fairly easy to see in those places. Now as the day moves on, right, that's not gonna work all the time, so you're gonna have to move your gaze to a closer look and look into areas where the animals will move from to the areas that they will prefer. So these are those areas where they're going from feeding. Now, say in the morning, we started the day out, we're on the Now we're going from this feeding area to

now more of a betting type area. Well, think about where animals like to bed and where they might move to. You got to anticipate in playoff animal behavior to start scanning those areas next as a day starts wearing on, or scan those areas midday or like evening before they come back out to feed. These would be your betting areas. So now, logically, think about where an animal likes to bed.

He's gonna want to bed in the shade, right Oftentimes he's gonna want to be comfy while he's betting and looking downhill, so he's gonna want the wind at his back. He's gonna want to be in the shade, and he's gonna be wanting to survey what's down below n because he thinks that he can see that way better. So picture those places that fit that description and start moving

your gaze towards those areas. Another great spot for betting would be a finger ridge or what that would be as a ridge that comes off of a main ridge. The reason is because an animal has a lot of escape routes when they bed Safeties are number one concern. So you've gone from feeding to now focusing your gaze on areas or potential areas where they would be betting. Now they're going to be moving to those areas, so it's a lot higher likelihood that you can pick them

up quick while scanning those areas. Now the days we're on it's mid day, Okay, now we can break out our gritting because you're gonna want to take that close in depth look at animals or try to find animals that are bedded and the best way, the best use of your time, the best way to spot something before the guy next to you is to start taking that

close look into those betting areas. This is when I would break out the bigger binoculars or the tripod to really zoom in and look into the shade, look into those areas where they might be betted, and to effectively cover that. Now we're slowing down, we're changing the pace from earlier in the day to now just gritting, going left, right, up, down, back forth, covering an area, moving on, covering an area,

moving on. The best places to focus will be places that you've seen them bed before, or hill orientations, or near places where in that same area, whether it's that same exact spot or not, look similar, because that's how you can identify the ten percent of the country that they like. Where are they now? And then go find a spot that looks just like that somewhere else in the area or the next day, look in similar places

where you saw them the day before. It doesn't have to be the same place, but just something that has the same hill orientation, the same wind direction, the same type of shade throughout the day. Maybe it's the same type of food or an area where there's water, look at the places where they're most likely to be simple, but you can do it more effectively by targeting and scanning those hypercentage areas, using the tactics of not just looking for animals, but looking for the places they're most

likely to be. Then covering those first eliminates a lot of time scanning a huge area. It will get you on the board faster and make you the one that gets to pass or stock. Honestly, you want to be that guy. You want to be the guy that has the option, and that's how you do it. Now, next week, I think I want to talk about how to find

animals before you even step out of your house. We're gonna go over looking at topo maps and a little bit of east scouting, because if you've got a hunt coming up, the best place to start is honestly from home. Based on my schedule and all the hunts that I go on, most of the places I go are general areas that I've never been, and I can pretty much day one walk in and find animals. And the reason is because the time I put in understanding and knowing maps.

So I'm gonna give you well, I won't give you everything I know about it, but I'll give you a darn good place to start. So until next week, outspot your friends and don't be a jerk. You should share this with your buddies. They need to know it too, because then if you're out there together, maybe they'll be the guy that spots something that you didn't see and passes it on to you. Or maybe they are the guy that spots it and awesome, you gotta go help

them be successful. So sharing his caring Kids, sharing his caring until next week