Ep. 49: Advanced Spot and Stalk Hunting: The Art of Cutting Off

refer to as spot and stock hunting. But what that actually means is not just one specific tactic, but so many tactics involved in the art of being good at getting close to animals that you go out and find that day, As opposed to maybe like a lie in weight tactic, which would be setting up an ambush in

a blind or tree stand. Spot and stock hunting is very fluid and it uses a combination of so many different tactics, many of them all at once and some just singular tactics that you might use once a week or once a season. But if you're waiting for that perfect opportunity that you have in your mind, if I'm going to go spot and stock hunting, and this is how it's going to play out. That opportunity probably won't happen. There's so many hunts. In order to be successful, you

have to make the opportunity. So this week I want to cover a segment of spot and stock hunting and a tactic that I refer to as the cut off. There's so many stocks I believe that include and like. In order to make it work out, you have to have an advanced prediction of what the animals gonna do and then plan accordingly. I think that this cut off tactic can be one of the most widely deployed stocking

tactics for a variety of big game species. What it involves is understanding where the target animal wants to be, how to use the wind, a little bit of hustle, and then the decisions to wait or move in the final moments. But before we get into that, I want to share a story of an early season archery mule deer hunt for this goofy looking lopsided buck in one

of my favorite hunting spots. This hunt takes place in a remote section of central Nevada during the early August archery season for mule deer in one of my favorite spots, the place I like to call the Bowl. Now I've talked about the Bowl before and probably will many times. It's because it's a place that over the years I've hunted a lot. I really got familiar with the area by spending a lot of time there the deer habits,

and became really successful hunting this particular area. And outside of that, it's just a really remote spot where very few people. We would run into and just really enjoyed the experience hunting there, so I would go back year

after year. On this particular year, I happened to have an early season elk tag and my brother and I always applied as party for deer tag, so he had a tag, but I was away on an elk hunt and tagged out on my elk and then drove out there to help him on his deer hunt, and figured I would hunt as well after I helped him, because

he'd been out there longer. So I got into the area, and I think my brother had two days before he had to get back to work, so I figured i'd help him out and we started off the way the terrain is in this particular spot, one of those particular spots here the bulls like this big sage flat about a thousand vertical feet below the rim of the top of this high ridge and the ridges maybe like nine feet in elevation or something like that, and then the

bulls around eight thousand somewhere in there, depending on where you're at in there. And so we started out, you know, he had seen a few good bucks, he'd been chasing a few deer, but just unsuccessful so far, and I only had a couple of days left to hunt. So he decided we're gonna just like hunt together glass and then that way if we see something, you know, I can help direct him in or whatever. While we're glassing the first morning, I spot this group of deer and

there's this buck in there. It's just like this three point kind of goofy, lopsided deer. It wasn't a big deer. It wasn't necessarily a young deer either. It just was like a mid age deer three points on one side, kind of like three on the other. But it kind of drooped down and made this like the antler actually kind of dropped it down past his face. And I just thought until my brother. I was like, chasing, you

should go chase that buck. I think it's cool. And while there's other deer in this particular bachelor group that are really nice, typical four points, and my brother just started getting into archery hunting, but he's like, man, I want to get one of those better deer. So I'm like, all right, whatever. I was like, man, I would chase that goofy looking buck that thinks sweet. So he ends up make, you know, play on these deer and it just doesn't work out, and the next day hunts hard

and ends up not getting on any deer. Um, We're getting within arrange, not getting any shots on a deer that he wanted. So he had to pull out and go to work. And I figured, oh, I'm gonna stay a couple of days and just hunt around try to get a buck. Um. I had actually had a California archery tag that I drew. I just was one of those years where I drew a bunch of good tags

and I wanted to try to hunt them all. So the California season started in a few days, so I figured, well, I'll just hunt this for a couple of days before that California season starts and then I'll head over there. And so he left like mid day, and that evening I'm up on the glassing spot. And the way that works in this this particular like Sage flat is it's timber kind of all around and then drops off the mountain below the flat, and it's just like thick mahogany

juniper type country. You can't really see into it. The deer going there in bed during the day, and then they filter out into this giant like opening in the evening, and you think that they'd be super easy to see in there, but it's quite a ways away. The sage can be tall in certain places, and it's like two or three miles across, and so they pop out of the timber, but you just never know really where they're

gonna pop out. Sometimes you try to watch where they go in and then plan accordingly, but sometimes they come out on the other side or whatever. It's just one of those games. Plus, the wind generally blows into the direction that they're bedded in from where they're feeding, so they feed out into the wind most evenings. So I'm sitting there glassing and I'm looking into a few of the pockets of timber on the back side, and I see that lopsided buck. I'm like, oh, sweet man, I'd

love to get a chance to chase that. But the wind wasn't good, and I started thinking. I'm like, all right, I'm gonna try to cut this deer off. I know where he wants to go. I know he wants to be in the sage flat. I just gotta get that sage flat. But I have to time it, because every evening, once the sun goes behind the ridge that I'm on, the thermals start to drop and this this flat sort of tapers off downhill, and then that wind shifts and starts going downhill. So as soon as he gets in there,

I'm hoping that he'll be feeding slow. I don't want to be out there too soon, but I don't want to be out there too late. So I just start watching him, watching him as he gets closer to the edge of where he's gonna pop out in this stage flat. It's about the right time when the shadows should start hitting and I can make my move. He pops out and starts feeding. I think this is perfect. I've got

my route planned out. I literally just start running down I'm out of sight, but I'm trying to run to a place where I can cut off while he's distracted and out of sight, because there's a few undulations in this flat, So as long as I keep him behind the couple of trees that are in there, I'll be good.

So I go, I use the cover that I have available, and I'm get down in there as fast as possible, because I don't want him to get out into the middle, because once he's out in the middle, there's just no way to get close. There's this one little knob in the middle of this flat, and I'm behind that and I don't see the deer, and I start creeping out and then I peek up over I think where he's going to be, and I can see him feeding, and he's maybe like a hundred and fifty yards out. I'm like,

oh sweet, and his head's down. So while his heads down, I've got like my bow on my back, just army crawling out through this flat, trying to get to any kind of sage cover. And as he's feeding, he's picking his head up looking. Luckily, he happened to be with the first deer in the group, and I could see

some other deer further back, but I was working. He was quite a bit ahead of the other deer, so I was still paying attention to the other deer and making sure they wouldn't see me or spook, but also like trying to anticipate where this buck was going in this three mile long sage flat and try to cut

him off. So as he's working towards me, I'm like moving and crawling, and then as it heads down, I'm making my moves and I finally get into this spot where the sage gets a little bit taller, and I think, Okay, there's this set ship of where he's feeding and then this section of kind of no real good feed and then feed behind me, and I think this is the spot, and so I set up and get ready and wait, and sure enough, he kind of like picks his head up once he gets to the edge of the no

feeding zone like the smaller lower stuff, and kind of starts walking fairly briskly in my direction. I see that he's going to be a little bit too far out, so I kind of crawled to continue to try to cut him off because what I'm trying to do is not so he stocked him, but intersect his potential path. He gets within range and starts feeding again. Like perfect,

I draw back and raise up. Unfortunately I raised up a kind of the wrong time, because he happened to put his head up just as I was at full draw, and so I knew that he didn't see me, because I was just watching his body position and scene as tail flick and feeding and looking around. He wasn't focused on me, but I was just holding back, waiting for him to move, waiting for him to put his head back down again. He put his head back down, feeding and I released the arrow. I don't know if it

was like the sound of the bow. It must have been the sound of the bow that the buck actually jumped to the string. Fortunately, at the time my bow wasn't very fast, the buck actually jumped to the string I could. I watched him like duck down. I thought, oh man, that's not gonna be good. But he duck to this string early enough that by the time he got back up he was at his original position. He didn't run, and the arrow hit exactly where I was aiming.

Buck ran off and it's just this big white open He ran maybe twenty thirty yards and fell over I was like, that was awesome, you know, And then of course I'm thinking, oh, that was funny. My brother was out here for a week. And then that buck that I thought was really cool, the one that I saw that was ended up being the one that I got. So I go to the buck, I'd set up my camera, I took like a couple of photos, and then quartered him up, cut him up, and then packed him out.

By this point, it's a pretty good climb to the top to where I need to get out from. I just loaded the whole deer in my pack and actually went down in the bottom pretty light like not a whole lot of stuff in my pack, left most of it up on the ridge. And the one thing I will always remember about this hunt wasn't necessarily the stock or how all that played out, but the pack out.

It happened to be on night where there was no moon, and it was like during a huge meteor shower, and as I was walking up to the top of the ridge, I remember looking around and just in that high desert is really high altitude, and you can see there's like stars below you as you're packing out, and it's one

of the most incredible meteor showers I've ever seen. So I've got the buck on my back packing him out looking down on this meteor shower is like, I've never seen anything like it, and it was just like a really cool experience that I'll never forget if I think back to like just successful hunts over the years, many of them, especially with a bow, mule, deer, elk antelope. It's hard to think of any kind of hunt, even hunts with rifle or muzzle or whatever, it doesn't really matter.

A lot of them involve some form of what happened in that story of the lopsided buck. Where you see the animal, you don't have an approach where they're moving, and you need to figure out where they're going to be in order to get close, to cut them off, or to make a good stock. And while it might seem like, yeah, just cut them off, there is a tactic that can make those movements and the moves that you make and the decisions that you make a lot

more successful. And it starts with understanding where your target animal wants to be, Like, well, okay, they've got this whole. You know, they can go any direction, especially mules here they like to you know, you might think as soon as you think you've got to mel your pattern, he's going to do something different. But the best way to predict what an animal is gonna be is not necessarily seeing where they are right now, but where are they right now? What is going to change, and what do

they need when things change? So what are they gonna want next? If you can identify what they want next, you can put yourself into a very good position to close the distance and get that shot where the animal does a lot of the moving for you. You know, spot and stock. You think of it like, oh, I spot the animal. Maybe like classic spot and stock spotting an animal, it beds down, you creep in on it. But that happens only a certain amount of the time.

If you're only waiting for a certain type of scenario, you're probably gonna be waiting a long time and you're gonna be blowing a lot of potential opportunity. Those potential opportunities are going to come by just understanding what that animal wants. So let's just break it down and kind of identify the way that I look at it. If I see a mule deer in the morning and it's out feeding a big sage flat. Well, what's going to

happen next? Well, the sun's gonna come up, the animal is gonna get hot, and then the animals gonna want to bed down. So what I'm gonna look for is, Okay, how much time do I have to get into position, like where is the sun in relation to or the shadow in relation to where this animal is? And how long is it going to take for it to hit this animal? And then what kind of temperature is it going to be that day before it needs to get

into some cover. Then I'm going to say, from where he is right now, which way is the wind going? And where is a good potential betting spot? So where

is it going to go to bed? Where it's going to have the wind in its favorite It's going to be bedded comfortably, It's going to have good shade, you know, based on the orientation of the hill where that shade is now going to be cast from that sun into a spot where it can sit but also have like an advantage wind, so it's protected and safe while it's betting.

Where's that spot going to be? Once I narrow down that spot, then I can have a high likelihood of knowing where that animal is going to go from where he is now to where I predict he wants to be now. Obviously they can do other random things that you might not think about, but for the most part, those predictions play a huge role in deciding where you're gonna go to make that cut off. To make that stock, also understanding possible travel routes and habits of the animals,

especially like for elk. You know, you might see the elk feeding in one place and they might have a trail where they like to go into the betting area from there or come out to feed in the evenings. Knowing their routes, knowing their habits is key to the ambush and the cut off as well. But if you're just like glassing spot deer and elk for the first time and having not necessarily an I D of its routes or habits, you can kind of analyze where that

animals gonna go by understanding what they want next. The same as the reverse. You know, if you see an animal bedded in one spot and it's got shade, but you know that the sun is gonna move and it's gonna get hot at some point, and once that sun moves, it's not really gonna have shade where it's at. Well, where can that animal go to where then it can

re bed and get shade. They often, like mule there especially, often will bed in the morning one spot, and then they'll move once that sun kind of hits them again and and makes them hot, they'll go to a second, more long term bedding zone. So maybe not necessarily waiting for them to bed that second time, but if you've got an advantageous wind and other things in your favor, you can kind of catch them and cut them off

where they want to be. I think most of the way that the cut off tactic works is really catching animals moving to and from bedding and feeding, and that seems to be general, but it's not always the case. You know, if you think about maybe depending on the time of year you're hunting, but maybe it's a rifle hunt, archery hunt, whatever. Let's say it's a elk hunt during the rut. You see a bull out in one area, and the bulls by himself. Where's that elk want to be?

He wants to be with cows probably, but you've got some cows over on this side of the hill that you know, maybe he's making his way toward that. Well, you want to cut yourself off in between that elk and those cows or a mule here during the rut, where are the doze at, where's that buck at? What's his travel route? You really have to try to get into the mind of the animal and anticipate what they want next from where they are right now. By successfully

doing that, that's going to guide your path on. Okay, here's where I'm gonna go, and here's how I'm going to make my move. Once you've decided that, then it's time to make the plan. When I make the plan, one thing that I think about is wind and cover. This kind of cut off ambush tactic works really well, especially if you have an area where the thermals will change and the animals aren't necessarily in an advantageous spot

for right now. So there's so many times where you see something and you go, oh, man, he's going this direction. But you know, if you go to try to cut him off right now, it's not gonna work. It would be better to be set up and have your time, and you might just say like, well, why don't I just go out and set up where they're gonna feed and wait for them to come. That might work, but it also might not because of the way the winds

are going. There might not be a good spot and it might be too large of an area to accurately predict exactly where they're gonna go. And once you're down there,

you might not have your vantage. So what you need to do is you gotta wait till you can see them, see what they're gonna do, anticipate, make that plan based on where they're going, the direction they're heading, and what might be over where they want to go to pinpoint where you think they're going to be headed, then you now have to think about the contours of the land

and the direction of the wind. Are you going to have a route that works to get into position, and are you going to have a ever will wind when you get there. A lot of animals do like to walk with the wind in their face because then they can smell danger. Certain animals like antelope may not necessarily be is keyed into that because they use their eyes a lot better. So every species is a little bit different. Keying in on what the winds might do later though,

is also like a huge factor in the ambush. Many times I use this cut off technique early in the morning or late in the evening when I know the thermals are gonna switch, so I try to time it where I can get into position to have that advantageous wind. And a few podcasts back, maybe a month ago, we talked about understanding winds and thermals and all that stuff. This is where I'm talking about. If you think about spot and stock hunting, how many different tactics are used

in combination. So in order to cut off an animal, you're gonna have to also think about everything talked about in that podcast with the wind, but it may play into your favor where instead of knowing, okay, I'm gonna stalk in now, you can wait in time it to where you can stalk in with that favorable thermal or wind shift. And that's probably when I use this tactic the most, or think about it in that term of okay,

now the animals on the move. I didn't have good winds before, but I know in a little bit, based on what the weather does here, normally, I'll probably get that down draft in the evening and I can go make at ambush where I'm in position the thermal shift, and then the animals start continue to move towards me.

The good thing about this cut off tactic is instead of having just stalking to the animal, you know, you're you're allowing the animal to do eight of the work, and you might be doing twenty year or as far as like closing that distance to say bow range that two hundred yards to twenty yards to thirty yards. You're you're allowing them to move into position to where you are. Because they're a lot less key to into a few of the little noises and other things they're moving around.

They're a little bit more distracted, probably with feeding or just travel and looking out for danger, but they might not just be like a bedded animals solely focused on danger and listening and smelling and watching. So you've got a little bit of advantage and that's probably why this tactic does work so well. But one thing you will realize is say you're sitting on a mountain, you're looking across the canyon. You see some bucks below, some big rocks.

The wind's good, and you think, man if I was there right now, I would kill that deer. But how do you get there right now? That's the hard part of it, where you're always two steps behind that. Animals always moving and trying to stay ahead of danger, and you're that danger. There is a certain amount of hustle that makes this tactic much more successful. And what I mean by that is there are times where I see an elk or a deer or whatever. I've got my

bow and I know, okay, it's feeding down low. I'm looking at the mountain. The sun is gonna come up, and I know as soon as the sun hits that deer or elk it's gonna want to go to bed and it's probably gonna go up the mountain for that. So I look at where there's potential places. Okay, here's a saddle above where they're at. It's probably going to go through that saddle because it's easier, or you know, they go kind of near a saddle and side hill

around it. That happens a lot. But I think, Okay, if I'm up there, I could cut this deer off. The trouble is will I beat the deer up there? So knowing that, okay, if I just go at a regular speed, I'm probably not gonna make it. I have to put a little pep in my step now before I do this. I like to look and make sure I I've identified other animals in the area, possible things that are gonna spook whatever. And I like to take a route that is out of sight and out of

the way. So if I do spook something, okay, well I'll just chalk that up to I blew that one out. But I've got a mission and I'm going there for that. There are so many times where the success of my cutoff has been the speed that I got there. I really recognized this guiding people when I'm like, Okay, we gotta get to this point at this amount of time. If we don't get there, we're gonna be just a little bit late, and then you're gonna have to redo it.

This is where a lot of that training, conditioning, and fitness comes in, because there are times where you know, you think, like, oh, it's stupid, You're like running after an animal. I'm not running after an animal in this instance, but I am running to kind of beat the clock, the buzzers going. I've got to get into position before that animal gets there, and I need time to set up and you know, make a play and make a plan. So a lot of the cutoff is actually based on timing.

If you're gonna be a little bit behind, then you're almost better to not attempt it and wait for those opportunities where you have the right amount of time and you can put in the right amount of hustle to get there. Honestly, the faster is better for me. I see something, I'm generally like, Okay, I'm buzzing over there. I'm gonna get there as fast as I can. And because of that, I've been very successful on many of these cut off strategies, just beating the animal to where

I think it's gonna go. Now, the final challenge in the cut off is going to be that final approach. If we're talking bow hunting, it's getting within range. And the real conundrum comes around when you go, Okay, you see an animal, you you think you know where they're gonna go. When do you sit and wait and when do you move? That really is the crux of the

whole success that comes with this. Because they're moving generally in your direction, they're looking out for danger in your direction, so you have to figure out a spot where you can get in close unseen, and you're it's always easier to be unseen when you're stationary sitting waiting in that lion weight ambush. So it's almost like just like you would set up a tree stand on the trail that

they're going on. This tactic is obviously no tree you stand, but it's the same approach of the animals coming to you and you're waiting hiding. That is the best for not getting busted, but it's also not the best for getting into position and getting close. Sometimes if you're too timid, the animal walk just out of range. Sometimes if you're too aggressive, you spook them. So how do you know when to move when to sit still. Here's a few of the things that I think of every time I

go in. So when I'm closing in, I make two assumptions. I always assume that the animal has moved, and I always assume that the animal is on its current path. And this is the same with every stock that I make, whether it's an animal that's bedded or an animal that I'm trying to cut off. So I assume that it's doing exactly what I thought, while simultaneously assuming that it

is not. You know, like that makes no sense, But what that allows me to do is constantly pay attention on the lookout for other potential scenarios of where they might be going, what they might be doing, while you know,

going forth with my intended plan of action. So what that allows me to do is it gives me equal attention to both options, and that really is the best way to do it, because there's times where you're gonna blow a stock by going in and thinking okay, it's especially if you have to lose sight of the enemy, think okay, it's not going to be there. I don't see it, and then you kind of go into where

you think you're going to go. You're not as stealthy as you should be, and you blow the animal out and it was right where you expected it and you go, oh, man, I knew it. Or you go right where you think he is, you aren't looking around, and you blow it because they did something different. So it's being on focus

to both potential scenarios. Now, the idea to wait or to continue to stock really comes down to whether you have eyes on the animal and how well you know their habits and their movements, also where the types of advantageous places are, and if you're going to have another reapproach later. So if I know that I can get into a position sit and wait, but if it gets messed up, I can probably see what's going on and then have a reapproach potentially later, like another cut off option.

I'll do the sit and wait. If I know I'm not going to have another reapproach I'm not very familiar with the patterns or the predictions, then I'm going to be more on the aggressive side and plan on trying to get eyes on it, move in and do more stocking. And I would say if I was to count up the times I've done both, I would say I would probably do the more aggressive approach more often than not. For me, it works out. But I'm also very observant.

When I'm moving in. I try to stay quiet, and I try to find places and move in ways that it's less likely for the animal to see me. But I am generally taking that more aggressive approach. So if you're sitting there thinking, Okay, should I sit here and wait or should I continue to move and try to figure out if the deer's here or whatever, I kind of error on the side of being a little more aggressive. But that's always personal preference and situational But it's just

something to think about. As you're moving and you're thinking whether you should move or wait. Now, I'm gonna just add one more little point to the mover or weight. If you see an animal coming towards you, wait, because there's so many times that it's easy to get impatient and second guess your decisions. There's just a few things that I like to tell myself in my head while these things are going down, and helps keep me calm

and make the right decisions. And I like to think it's a lot easier for him to come to me than me to go to him. And if I can make that happen, I let it, and that gives me that patience and that confidence to know it's going to work out. I think some of these tactics really get blown by indecision and just kind of second guessing and then making moves at the wrong time. And I'm guilty

of it as much as anyone. But the cutoff works the best when the animal can come to you and you can get ahead of them where you can intercept their path and let them come to you more than you have to go to them. That doesn't often always work out, so there are those times you have to stock in and be more aggressive, and in those times,

that's when you don't necessarily have that option. So if you get into that kind of scenario and you're thinking, Okay, everything's working out, I think the deer is going to go to this particular betting area. You've moved around, You've got the wind right, you hustled, you got in there. You know, once you get on his own hillside, everything looks different. You probably don't have as good of a view, especially if you don't have somebody to help guide gian

or whatever. So that's when this kind of decision making comes into play, and the decision that you make is generally the most critical out of this whole tactic. I hope this week's episode really gets you in the mindset of just trying to understand and anticipate the movements that the animals that you're hunting are gonna be making, and

then how to exploit that and cut them off. You know, if I think about spot and stock hunting is a very fluid form of hunting, involving many different tactics at once. So next week I really want to kind of touch on an aspect of spot and stock hunting as far as stalking a bedded animal, and I think that that's one that with a bow, I particularly like it's a great set up. It's it can be very successful, and it kind of is the epitome of sneaking in being

stealthy quiet. It's a very adrenaline charged kind of approach where the deer might be in one place and you have to very quietly get within range. That's one of the things that just really gets me most excited about early mule deer hunting with a bow or some of the early elk and archery antelope seasons is just that fact of like moving in close and and kind of kicking in those predator instincts. So I want to help you with that, like get better at that, hopefully maybe

get you thinking about it in a different way. And maybe these are tactics that you do but you just don't necessarily think about all the time. So if you can really be strategic with it, and especially with like cutting things off and anticipating where they're going different animals, you can really be successful in a short amount of time by just understanding what the animal that you're looking

at is gonna want next. I like to use kind of this closing section to just thank everybody for the support. I truly do mean that. I really appreciate everybody who listens, and you know, definitely get a ton of great messages on Instagram, and I really appreciate that. You know, a lot of a lot of great support. We had the Q and A last week and just a lot of great questions came in. So thank you guys all for getting so involved. That means a lot to me. Hopefully

everybody's staying safe. You know, I was thinking back, it's like March started talking about COVID, and you know, just in that period of not knowing and what was going on, we're thinking, oh yeah, you know at that time, you're like, yeah, it'll clearly be over by by hunting season. But you know, now it's not looking like that. I actually have had a cheap tag in Canada this year and it probably is not going to happen. But that's just you know,

adapt and overcome. And that's like one thing that you're like, oh man, that's something that was really cool looking forward to. But you know, there's gonna be a lot of cool other things that um, I'm looking forward to as well. So it's gonna be nice to get out and get into the field bow in hand. This August September whatever, or you know, hopefully everybody out there has some hunts planned or something to look forward to UM, and hopefully everybody's staying safe. So thank you guys so much. I

appreciate you all and looking forward to next week. So until next week, let's um cut off some animals and cut off some jeans, might as well. Summertime. Catch you later.