Welcome back to cutting the distance. September is now well in our rearview mirror, and beagles are few and far between, if any at all, But that means we're in the thick of general miliear seasons in most places, and the ruts just about ready to kick in here at the end of October. Today's guest grew up down the road
in scapoose, Oregon. He spent a lot of time hunting blacktail deer in Roosevelt Elk with his dad growing up, and he was able to take some really nice blacktails over the years, and he feels that this is where he kind of fell in love with deer hunting. Throughout college, Duke didn't get to hunt as much due to college supports. He was a wrestler and a long distance runner at
University of Oregon. Once they cut the wrestling program, he decided to move over to Eastern Oregon and that's where he was able to spend a lot more time in the mountains pursuing meal deer. It was there where he really got hooked on meal deer and had the opportunity to work for a fishing game in a heavily used winter range area for deer. He also now works for first Light. I believe he'll correct me if I'm wrong. He tests gear and it advises on some of our
product lines, and he's he's one of the best. He won't admit it. He's as humble as they come, but he's one of the best and probably most passionate meal deer hunters and guys I've ever talked to about the deer themselves.
So welcome to the show, Duke Hither, Thank you.
So are you ready to explain to all the listeners why elk are better than meal deer?
I like el cutting too, man, Yeah, I.
Think one time we were talking and uh, you have kind of a mindset where you like, you like el cutting, but usually you kill like maybe the first legal bowl or whatever you can find, so then you can concentrate the rest of your time on meal deer though.
Yeah, that's I would agree with you on that. And and I feel like even when I'm talking to people it it always transitions over to talking to talking about deer too.
So yeah, yeah, we're recording this on October seventeenth. I think it'll come out on the twenty six, So I know your guys' deer season there and Idaho's kind of already got started. Have you been able to get out much this year? You just getting ready to kind of give it a good go.
Here at the end of season, shoot as much as I can. Really, it's been It's been tough this year, though, but I've been any chance I can get I've been out.
So any any luck yet or seeing any good movement or is it still a little early, or.
Haven't really turned up anything too great? But I mean, I have been surprised there are a lot of deer out this year. We had a pretty tough winner last year, I'd say, both on the deer and the elk. One of the nice things is I do feel like a lot of the deer do move out of here for like their winter range and stuff. So it definitely seems like we haven't been crazy impacted by the deer or by the winter the deer's.
That's a good sign. So I've never asked you this before, but I've heard stories about about some of your early morning hunts. You know, it stems from your wrestling and I'm sure your long distance running. But what some people would think is is crazy. There's a lot of stories running around where you would run five to ten miles into an area so you'd get a quick hunt in
prior to work, and then you'd run that back. So like for what would take me a whole day to run maybe fifteen to twenty miles, you were doing it just to get a quick hour to two hour deer hunting. That's how dedicated you were to making sure you were on the mountain every day. Is that Is there any truth to that story?
I would say more of it has been like in the summer scouting, like getting into certain areas before work and stuff like that. Definitely have done some stuff like that after work, say trying to get to a glossing point after work, but definitely in the summer for forgetting to areas to look right before dark or early in the morning.
You know, that's crazy, Like I'm not anybody that knows me. I'm not much of a runner, and Duke's built for this stuff. But it's just those crazy stories, like when you always think you're hunting hard, there's somebody doing crazy stuff like that. So, uh, I was just curious to ask you that. So, like, like all Cutting the Distance episodes,
we're gonna jump into a few listener questions. If you have any questions for me or my guess, uh, feel free to email us at CTD at phelpsgame Calls dot com and we'll do our best to get it, uh, you know, answered by my guest or myself. So the first one. And and like I say, Duke's humble as they come. He's pretty secretive too. So I already I already gave him permission that if if we start to talk about something he doesn't want to talk about, he's got the you know, the freedom to get out of him.
So Duke, when when we talk about Duke being a mildieer hunter, he's not just a good meal deer hunter, he's a he's a good deer hunter of mature meal deer. Bucks Like he targets big Bucks. He focuses on Big Bucks, and uh, a lot of a lot of what maybe he passes up is is something that you know, many would like not saying. But a lot of what I'm trying to get at is what he finds on Big Bucks is gonna work even better on the rest of them.
So I think what we can take is everything that Duke does and some of the strategy uses they're going to work on all meal deer, except for he uses some of this stuff to maybe find some of the bigger ones. So the first question is kind of right in your wheelhouse, what in your opinion, like, what's the most important factor in finding big meal deer? Is it is it an area or the genetics in an area?
Is it seclusion? And then is seclusion is that different when you're scouting versus where the deer are going to be during the season. Is it pressure like if somebody is trying to find big meal deer or or something like that, Like, what advice do you have to like find.
Those m h, Well, definitely in the summer, I would. I mean, my favorite thing in the summer is just to get to the highest point where you can look over like multiple different areas and not just say one basin.
And sometimes I mean that could be going two three thousand feet up to get to where you're looking over tons of country, you know, And I feel like one of the best things I've been able to use, say is I've got a BTX to where you're you're looking over miles and miles of country, you know, to pick out different areas to get to. Okay, So I see these deer and then you start moving into that country. But as far as like say hunting them, I would say the biggest thing I have found is like just
the seclusion. And it's not necessarily like super remote areas, but it's like an area where they can be safe and not be seen by people. I know that. Yeah, It's it's just weird how you find consistencies with finding like really really big deer, like you could all put on Google Earth, like dang, that is literally the same exact type of area, like not necessary terrain, but like it's the same type of area all of the deer I've found are in, you know, if that makes sense.
Yeah, but but one has pressure, one doesn't, and they're just not gonna be there, yep. And we're gonna dive into that a little bit more like once you find a target buck, like what's the radius on where you think you might find him or if you find him maybe somewhere in the summer where he's not getting pressure, but hunting comes in. So I'm gonna I'm gonna pick your brain a little bit more on that down down
the road in this podcast. But yeah, so you're saying seclusion and just an area where that buck has everything he needs right when he needs to have that that good summer forage, he needs to be semi secluded, you know. And so that's same thing we found here. You know, we don't have near the deer you guys do in Idaho, but some of our high high country Washington spots is you just need to get away from people, off the roads, off the beaten path. And we talked about this a
little bit before the podcast. It's not maybe it's not necessarily always in right, you can go five miles in, but if it's an easy trail, lots of hikers, lots of hunters, it might be better to go half a mile in, but go fifteen hundred feet up the mountain. Like you said, it's that type of seclusion, not necessarily deep m yep. The next question we've got for what type of terrain is your favorite to target deer? You know,
you're where you're located. You've got a lot what I would consider like similar terrain, but like are you trying to get into avalanche shoots? More wide open stuff like fringy stuff above tree line like you know in tree line seems to be sometimes tough, but like, is there is there a certain thing you're looking for, like you know, finger ridges with timber, but openings in between, Like explain kind of your ideal mealior spot if there is one.
Specifically some of the stuff that I've been hunting out here, I would say, you know, timber pockets, small openings. It seems. Another consistent thing is around Rocky you know, avalanche types, shoots, stuff like that steep high elevation. You know. That's what I would say.
Is there is there anywhere to kind of piggyback on that. You know, we show up sometimes in what looks like goat country. Is there have you ever found like an elevation or an area where deer just won't visit, or are those big mature bucks they're willing to live like right in the rocks. There's nothing that's necessarily too steep or too nasty, or there are there spots that you sometimes write off like a deer can't live in there, or what he needs isn't here for him to survive.
I mean, the only thing I can say that I've found is like sometimes it could be a little bit too high where they have like no feed, you know, But I'd say just below like that upper tree or say, what's the best way to explain that? Like, seen quite a few deer in goat country, you know, but like I feel like just below the goats is a good you know that type of country.
Yeah, yeah, where they can come down and grab a little feed and sometimes those bigger bucks are those deer will go up in bed, even in those rocks, but they've got the ability to come down and grab food or go into the timber to escape if they need to. Mm hm.
And I think a lot of it too is just safety too. You know. They they can hear anything coming into them, they can see from a long ways away, that type of stuff.
Yep, yep, yeah, it's crazy. You know. I grew up in the lowlands, you know, similar to you and scapoos and and what you think we have around here. Like, oh, deer want to be in the fringes, you know, in the edge of clearcuts, or they want to be, you know, at these edges and fringes, and you get up in the high country and you just can't imagine deer living there. But you know, avalanche shoots, it's it kind of transfers.
It's that fringe on the avalanche shoots, because you got brush that sometimes goes into timber or into rocks, and that's where I always seem to focus, no matter whether I'm in you know, Colorado High Desert or you know Idaho Mountains or Colorado Mountains. It's it seems like you find the mix. Like you don't want to be out in a wide open you know field or meadow. You don't want to be in like never ending timber. You
want to be like on the edges of world. All these things intersect the brush, the trees, the rocks, like find all of those you know, intersections of you know, changing vegetation, changing terrain features, and it seems like that's where you like to focus and kind of pick up. It seems like the majority of time you'll pick them up, you know, they always are where they are, but that seems to be the general spot is on those fringes and edges.
Mm hmm, yeah, I agree.
Perfect. So we didn't have too many listener questions. We're not really fully into meal deer mode yet, but once again, if you have questions for me or my guests, please email them to us at CTD at Phelps game Calls dot com and we'll do our best to kind of get those answered, and and do kind of had to chuckle there a little bit because I think he's always in full time meal deer mode where I kind of
go through the seasons. I love l hunting, and then I love meal deer hunting, and then you throw white tails on there at the end. So, uh, yeah, now we're gonna jump into some of my questions I have. You know, I always go back to we we got to what was it two or three years ago? We were there and you know, in your neck of the woods. We were doing some team building, uh skeet and trap shooting, and I think we quickly turned into as competitive as
both of us are. We were done shooting skating trap and we sat and bsd about meal deer and areas for the for probably the next hour and a half and didn't really care about shooting shotguns anymore. But but you know, knowing about you know your you're as humble
as they come. I can't reiterate that enough. You're very successful at killing very big meal deer, and you seem to kind of have a plan or a strategy to do it year in and year out, and you don't really accept anything besides what you set out to do. And that's really why I wanted to have you on the podcast and just pick your brain a little bit. So I'm gonna kind of jump into some of my personal questions I had for you, and maybe we've talked about them before, but maybe some of this stuff is
is new. Can you can you give myself and the listeners just kind of your overall approach to meal deer hunting, Like how do you pick an area? You know, if you weren't if it wasn't in your back door or a couple of units over familiar, Like how do you pick an area? How do you decide where you're going to go? And how do you decide on that area?
You know? You talk about a lot of scouting like walk us through just finding good meal deer, and how you kind of break down an area, a unit, a part of the state, whatever it may be.
Mm hmm. Shoot. I think the I think the biggest thing for me is I do strike out a lot. That's the one thing is like go to as many different areas as I possibly can get into in a summer, say, but the tough thing about a lot of the country out you know that I hunt out here is like it seems like a lot of the deer in the
areas I'm at don't get there till really late. So it's almost like you're going into these areas and you're not really seeing much at all, and it it kind of seems like they show up like the I don't know if this is completely true or what it is, but it's like it almost seems like they show up like right at the end of August, mid to l late August, and then you start seeing them like during
bow season, you know, elk season. But I feel like, I think the biggest thing for me, man is just like cover as much country as possible, and you got to be there early, and you got to be there late if you're gonna be you know, that's the biggest thing. Be there in the dark and be there at dark.
And you know, and I think the other thing too, Jason, is just just okay, if you strike out, all right, let's go try it again tomorrow the next day, the next day, and and that one time it's gonna pay off, you know.
Yeah. And and so during that summer scouting, will you go back to an area like you just said, sometimes those bucks don't seem to show up until late August. You know, I'm sure they're arriving at different time. Maybe there's a certain basin that that they're there, you know, late July or mid August. Will you go back and check on them again if it's if it's one of your better spots, or you just firmly believe they're gonna be deer there, or like how do you write off
a spot versus how do you keep going back? And you know, because I run into the same problem and I'm gonna gonna get into it here a little bit with you is like planning your day because you can only be in one spot on one day and you want to maximize that time, like you want to be in the best spot every day, or a new country.
How do you kind of determine like when you're going to write a spot off for a year, or you've we come back and check on it a couple of weeks later knowing things have changed, Like how do you process that when you're scouting?
Mm hmm. I read the craziest things. I read an article a couple it was a couple of years ago about a guy was talking that specifically how we he went into an area, didn't see anything, went in there like three weeks later, and it was full of deer. And some of the spots out here are like that.
The other thing I'll say is it's not like most of the areas we're looking over a ton of deer in general, you know, so I kind of think, like, check out this spot and then say I'm gonna go back there three weeks later, two weeks later, and if if I'm not seeing anything, I kind of just start moving, you know, to the next basin over. Maybe they moved into here. You know. It's tough because this year specifically
has been really really weird. Like I said, I had a couple bucks that I was really excited about from last year, and I wasn't able to turn any of those deer up this year. So it's you're kind of starting from zero, you know.
Yep, yep. I'm gonna probably get ahead of myself when you say excited about last year, is that stuff that you found in the high country or stuff you saw like on the winter range.
High country, like like scouting July. No, it wasn't even July. More August August scouting, I had found two bucks that were together, and then I found another single Buck and I wasn't able to turn up any of those this year. You know.
Ye uh, I'm going all over the place because you keep talking about stuff that spurs me in a direction. So you talked about two good bucks running together. Do you typically find we we talked about this actually prior to the podcast, one of our spots that you know about that I hunted and we found two giant bucks running together? Is that pretty typical that big bucks like to run with big bucks?
So what's that's interesting? You said that too, because what I've actually found a lot of the time is like you'll see one really big Buck and he'll have like it's almost like I don't even know if this is true or what, but it's almost like he has like a little scout with them, you know, or a couple of little bucks with them. So usually I haven't seen where it's like two really big bucks together.
Though, yeah, yeah, I mean growing up, you always watch like the the Kibob you know videos, and and you know all the Hickorya back when they had giant meal deer, and it seemed like some of those big bucks that even the famous bucks would sometimes run together for certain amounts of time right up to the rut, And I was just curious if you've noticed that early summer before they you know why they're still buddies before they hate each other and want to kill each other if they were,
if you see that they kind of run like that. We have some elk areas, you know, our good buddy Brian Sanders that we both know really well, like some of some of the elk spots. He's a firm believer that some of those big bulls for some reason, like they could go have their own herd. But sometimes some of those like subordinate big bulls will run a herd or run second to the herd bowl and even third.
It's like they just like to be around each other, which is kind of a crazy, crazy idea, like you can go run any other herd in this entire area, but yet you're stuck with the one bowl that won't let you have any cows, which you know, similar similar ideas. All right, before I went on a tangent there we were talking about like winter range bucks. I'm getting way ahead of myself, but I'm just gonna let it go
where it goes. Is do you pay a lot of attention postseason, like what's showing up on the win range? Like is that to get an idea for specific deer or specific areas that may have big bucks in it that you may want to look at in the in the future, Like how what do you do during that winter range time? And then how do you translate that into you know, maybe hunting them the following year.
Mh. So we were actually just talking about that a couple of weeks ago here. That is actually one of my absolute favorite things to do is like as soon as the season opens, especially if we can get some snow, I like to be like be right back up on the mountain as much as I can too, for one, finding like the migration routes, try and find where where those deer are coming from, and then see see what what's up there too, you know. That's that's absolutely one
of my favorite things to do. Shoot. I'd say from like the first week in November almost all the way through November much as I can.
Be out there paying attention. And then if you if they're not in the high country and you catch them when they're down on let's say, down on their winter range, do you have a plan that you put together, like I think he's going to go back up this drainage or when they get down to that winter range. Sometimes it's a little messy, right, because you could have came
from any direction. Do you have a plan or you just kind of put your feet, you know, but your boots on the ground and just try to start checking off like basins that look good or basins you think you might be in to try to find him when he shows back up in July or August.
I would say like it's more just it's almost like a guessing game because it shoot, those bucks could be coming from so far away too. But I think it's more of like it's just kind of clewing into different areas like Okay, I'm going to go check this basin, maybe he's up in here, or did he come through this direction, you know. And I feel like it has kind of worked worked pretty good, find in new areas to see deer migration routes and whatnot.
Yeah, gotcha, that's I mean, I live in an area where there's not a lot of migration, but we have hunted those hunts. You know. We talked about the area we were in Idaho where we literally didn't see a deer take a bite of grass for a week. You know, they every dear we saw was on its feet moving through through the area. And we just caught that migration right, and you know we happen to be we stayed high on the mountain, you know, up in the snow, trying
to catch him high in that migration. But if you would have caught him a day later down in the bottoms, or two days or however wherever they finally staged up, you wouldn't have known that that deer came, you know, off the ridge we were on and down in there, you would have just been kind of had to guess like did he come from the west the east to say, you know, you would have never known like where the heck that deer came from to get there, and putting
that back together maybe tough, like all right, in a year that where there wasn't snow, you know, you want to go find him next year, like where where would he be? It's sometimes a lot of guesswork and you know a lot of scouting to try to try to find him or find him where he's out when you can hunt them before the snow.
Mm hmmm, especially especially in a situation like that when they're where they're covering so much country and such a short amount of time too. That's what makes it really really tough.
Yeah, yeah, it was literally and I don't know if it's like that everywhere, Like some deer seem to have more like winter holding power, but in some of these units in Idaho, it's like they get a skiff and they're like, we're out, We're going down until there's no more snow. And it was it was crazy to see that in some of these areas, which makes it very difficult.
And you know it, it was on the you know, opening day, and it would really almost all that scouting you did lead up to rifle season almost make I don't want to say useless, but you were in the right area. But now they're gone. Now you have to go hunt them in some transition spot that makes it real difficult.
Mm hmm.
Do you have any tips or strategies for in that transition, because I mean, it's it's pretty typical. You guys get that that weather early right in the middle of your season, these deer end up in a spot they're not so familiar with, Like what's your strategy at that point where deer end up in I don't want to say foreign, but not where they in an area where they didn't spend their entire summer and we're kind of patternable.
Mm hmm. What also seems weird about that too, is it it's almost like it's an internal clock more than yes, when they get the weather, because there's quite a few mountain passes and stuff they got to go over. But I feel like it does seem like there's an internal clock at this date, roughly say, the middle of October, no matter what, they kind of start moving. The tough thing about that for me is it's it almost just seems like you just kind of are getting lucky in
a sense. You know, like you're just hoping that you're gonna find a big buck as they're moving through more more as like, okay, I got them found in the summer. You know, that's that's the one deer I'm gonna hunt. But it's like there there are some like it's almost like they have these little staging areas to where you can going to an area, say next week, and you'll see fifty deer, but all summer you're not going to see anything in there.
You know, yep, yep. It's a staging area kind of between where they summered versus where they're going to run, where all the dos are going to end up. So they're kind of just those bucks. Don't want to jump in yet, but they're just kind of off, you know, or just off of that group of dose, is what it seems like here at the at the end of October, middle of the end yep.
And I've always had it in my head too that like the really really big bucks, I don't know that they go. Like it's just hard for for how many people that are out hunting these days, it's hard for me to believe that those deer are going somewhere not remote or secluded, you know, like for them to be that big, say five plus, it's like, I don't know. That's what's so cool to me about deer in general,
is that like, where the heck are they going? And that the fun thing is like finding where the heck they're at, you.
Know, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a it's a yeah, it's it's a big mystery. And that's what I think is hunters that can do it over and over, like you know, your assumptions, your guesses, your your ideas on where these things are hanging out and going it. Really, you can only luck into it so many times before it's all right.
You're starting to figure it out, like where to find them or where they're going to go, and you just start to understand meal deer a little bit better for sure, to be able to to to figure out all those
clues and figure it out. So kind of on the same uh this in the same realm of scouting, have you found that certain areas tend to hold similar age coast deer or are you always moving around trying to find the one or or a group of deer, or have you found like if you find a good buck in a certain area, like the next biggest buck is going to take that buck spot or be in the area, and do they come back to the same basins year after year.
I will say I've found certain little pockets or that do have a lot more bucks than other spots. I mean, the country can look the exact same, but there's ten bucks in this little draw, but there's nothing in the next one. I do kind of feel like they're there for a reason, you know, And I feel like, obviously, if if you are able to kill a big buck in there. There's some reason he was able to hide and stay away from people. He's got good feed, he's got water, and he's able to bed down where he
can hide from people. You know. I feel like the I don't know, it's tough because it's it's like you find a really really good spot and you can go back in there three years after that and you don't
see anything that much bigger. Say so, I feel like, eventually, yes, you're gonna get a big buck in there, but it may just take quite a few years to find them, you know, or from It's just tough because I mean, so many people are just shooting deer in the in there a couple of years before they're even able to get that big I think is a big part of the issue, you know.
Yeah. Yeah, And and nothing against like I always have to like, you know, we're doing you know, you're doing what you want to do. We're not necessarily yeah, but I We've always talked about like a meal Dear's brain doesn't turn on till about four and a half, you know, and it seems like up until that point, like he's very susceptible to being killed by maybe maybe any any hunter or any any idea. But then as we're going to get into is like do these big bucks start
to bet in different spot? I almost I always tell myself like how would a hunter hunt this? Like what's the easiest way up the ridge? What's the easiest way to this base? And I'm gonna do it a different way? Like I'm I honestly feel those bigger bucks sometimes know like, well, this is how every hunter would approach me, Like I'm gonna bet on the opposite side or under a rock where you couldn't see me. And and are you starting
to think like a big meal deer. I we're kind of always joking like what a meal deer expect us to approach from this way? Would you expect us to be able to see him from here? Because he's probably not going to be there. We need to do something different, you know, whether it takes walking across the base and they're coming in from a different direction. But yeah, I,
like you said, I think it's that buck. For a buck to get there, like he's got he's got to be of age and he gets smart enough to like figure out how to not be seen or he just got lucky in the spot where he started to bed, just you know, kept him safe. But I doubt that that's it's a little bit of smarts and they're and they're putting more into it, and they've seen people and they've escaped people. They're they're they're just getting smarter. So so we kind of walked through scouting kind of what
you're We've talked about hunting a little bit. How do you take what you find scouting and then translate it into season? Are you assuming that the buck and of course it's obviously going to lead up to if you've seen the deer the day before considered scouting, you know
he's probably gonna be there the next day. But will you when you scout something, will you if it's something you really like, will you stay on that deer and and see you know, is he moving base into basin or are you staying on that year to make sure he stays in that base? And then as season gets here, like, how do you how do you take your scouting to help you be successful during during season? Aside from knowing he's in a certain area.
I think the biggest thing is just I mean the I can give you an example from a couple of years ago I spent I can't even tell you how many days I spent after this one buck, and I think I saw him total in a full year. I think I saw the thing like five times, and two of those five times it was literally me walking in to the area. It was almost the exact same scenario.
I actually put a trail cam in there, and I saw this deer twice, and I had sat up probably eight hundred yards away both days that I saw him in there and glass making sure he wasn't in there before I went in there. And both times I saw the dang buck. He was betted behind. I don't know, I don't even know where he was betted or what.
But I jumped him out of his bed twice, and I ended up killing the deer like I think I had missed him the year before, and I ended up killing him like less than two hundred yards away from where i'd missed him a year before. But the crazy thing about that deer is I found him in June then, the year after I had missed him, and I think I shot him within one hundred yards of where I shot him in October, and I had found him in June so.
That buck was living in a real tight circle.
Tiny little area, and I mean I had spent so many days in there, and I would never I mean I saw him in season once the year that I got him, and that was a crazy thing because somebody had jumped that deer and there was a bunch of bucks all running together, and I watched him from there were six hundred yards in this basin, and I watched all of the other bucks run down into the basin and he peeled off all by himself and stood behind this other tree and they they went down in the
basin and he went all by himself out of there, and I think he was. WE aged him, and I think he was the agent came back and he was at least six and a half, and it was crazy to see those bucks were three and a half maybe four and a half. And he did his own thing away from all the other deer.
Just thought differently than the rest of those deer.
Yep.
Yeah, And that leads to me to another. Is that another thing that you found which is obvious by that story, But in general, do you you know a lot of guys talk about like seeing a big buck and they can never relocate him, And I know it's going to depend on area, But are you a firm believer that that buck's around somewhere you're just not able to see him, like if he's in an area you know the reverse migration's over, or like is there a it's got to
come from your gut right or putting all this together, but is there ever a time like when should you pull the plug versus like when you should stay in like pound an area just knowing that that deer is probably there if he's anywhere.
Well, that was That's one of my best examples, is like how can you look over an area so many days and never see the thing? And I just doesn't. I don't get how he could have been there the whole time, as many days as you've looked and you haven't gotten eyes on him. But I have another example from a couple of years ago where I had watched this buck for two summers in a row, and he had been in the exact same spot both years and certain date both years it was I think it was
around it was three days before bo season started. He would disappear the first year I could never turn him up again. The second year it had been like almost two weeks, and I'd been back there almost every day and could never turn the thing up again. Well, I went in there on the other side one morning and I looked up on the hill like three hundred yards
above me, and the thing was standing up there. And all he had done is he'd went from the open hillside, super rocky country, and he had moved down across the canyon into the timber. And that, I mean, that was the last time I ever saw that deer. But he he just went into the thickest, gnarliest patch of timber. I don't it's hard to imagine how you would get him out of us, as steep as this country is, in thick blowdown, you know. But I think they're I
kind of think they are there. It's just they just get so good at hiding, you know.
Yep, yeah, and that yeah, that's that's like mission impossible when that big buck gets comfortable in like a big patch of timber, because you can't you're gonna make too much noise, You're never gonna sneak up on him. And he's got a huge advantage if he's not out in the open, you know. And we hunted Colorado in twenty sixteen, and we had a big, big buck pushing that like strange that he betted in the timber but then would
come out above. And then we bumped him one night and then we saw him run in there and never came out the rest of the trip. And it's like, well, at that point, you know, what do you do with them? We know he's there. We would keep hunting that ridge, but he just once he's in that timber, and once he decides to leave the opening, because he's got a little bit of pressure, it's gonna be real tough to
hunt him, you know for sure. Uh, do you have any examples of how far big meal deer will move or meal deer in general, Like you always hear the stories of like, oh, this bowl is rutting here, you know, because it's some unique bowl, and then he's killed seven miles away three days later, you know, or these meal deer have you had the opposite where some meal deer will just sit at home, versus like some meal deer willing to travel two to three miles as the rut
gets close, or you know, for for no good reason to go to that staging area or whatever it may.
Be the only real example I have of that is it's kind of the opposite. The first year we lived out here, I found it was it was a really really good buck and I saw the thing one day and I want to say, let's see, it had been four weeks since basically saw it, wasn't able to make it happen and could never turn the deer up again. Like I want to say, about a month later, the deer was like about a mile away and it was during a late season tag and he ended up getting killed.
But it was like, how in that small area was he able to hide out? You know? He like he literally didn't even go anywhere.
Yeah, so yeah, I hit it. There the only examples we got, and it's it's a different setting than where you're at, you know, high mountain with with what I would consider wintering range pretty close like in our Montana spots where they kind of live in their winter range year round. You can get some of those bucks, you know in the coolies or in some of that country, and it seems like they can go three or four
or five miles in a night. But it's different, you know, I think those mountain meal deer are a little bit more homebodies, and they kind of they stick to that, and you know, the rut can pull them off, or dose can pull them off. But for the most part, they don't move as much as as the you know, desert meal deer or the high you know, the the high desert deer or the breaks deer, whatever you want to call him. So you talked about a little bit earlier.
You know, you're you're in there earlier, they're late, which kind of leads to glassing. Like do you have you mentioned you have a bt X, you know, which for those that don't know, it's the dual eyed Sworrow set up.
I've you know, we we run big spotters, which I didn't learn until I had talked to a guy that used there's an old there's a company called Doctor Optics, right, and we went to a unit in Colorado and this guy would just drive up to the highest knob and uses twenty to forty by eighty eight binoculars or whatever they are, and he would tell me where every deer was in the country. And I was only able to
hunt one drainage, you know. So it's like meal deering optics maybe go together better than any other type of hunting, you know, So what's your glassing strategy? You know, are you only using that BTX during scouting? Are you bringing it up during season or are you more focused on like close close to year at that point, like you're in hunt mode versus like looking for any deer mode.
Mm hm, I feel like it. I do use it a lot more during during the summer. Just get into those big high high ridges or whatever to where you can look over as much country as possible first thing in the morning. I will say I have a pair of twelves that I've been used in the last couple of years, the the in all peers, and I've I do really really like those binos. But I feel like you get to, like say, it's the range between the
twelves and the BTX that like I'll hunt. I got a buddy that I hunt with quite often, and he's got a pair of the fifteens and for that mid range, I mean, he kicks my butt for spot and stuff, and so I do feel like I'm gonna try and get a pair of like either fifteens or eighteens. It just makes your pack really freaking heavy, you know.
For sure. Yeah, And I've even went to a you know, like on Steve's Milder hunt last year, and really coming from the Coups deer hunt, like all scan with my tens, you know, anything closer within a thousand yards and then I've found ice spot more just going straight to my spotter, Like go from tens to spotter, that fifteen to eighteen range might be, you know, the right solution, but we just crank our spotters down to twenty or twenty five or whatever the lowest setting we can and like literally
just walk it along the mountain, especially after you kind of cream the easy stuff. You know, if there was a deer out there, we would spot it and then we just go to work and pick things apart with the spotter, and we've started spotting way more deer going to a spotter on a tripod. And then the other thing is like even if it's just a monopod or something like binoculars on a stick for meal deer is
you know, you need to get those things stabilized. Like I was always like the elbows on the knees had on the brim, you know, my hands are on the hat brim, and it just you can't keep still enough to spot ears flicker or a horn or whatever it may be at distance. So as much as I hate add and weight, it's like we're adding, you know, even if it's a trekking poll or a tripod, Like we're
trying to stabilize our optics at all times. So you're you're glassing, like you're you're going through that, Like do you go as far as thinking, like, all right, the sun's gonna rise on the west, like you're trying to put yourself in basin so that the sun's at your back, Like do you do you overthink that or you just like thinking, I've got a good forty five minutes before sunrise that I can glass everything and it doesn't really matter which direction.
Or that's a good question because I have screwed myself up pretty good getting into like getting way back in places and not even thinking about that. But I do feel like the first I mean, if you can get in there the first forty five minutes or so for the most pipe part, you'll be okay. But I mean I need to get better at that. Put it that way.
Yeah, it seems like the morning you can get away with more, but sometimes that night sit where you're like if you don't put it where that sun's on the horizon. You're like, well, I shouldn't even came to glasses base, and I should have thought about glass in the other way or looked at this in a different direction. But yeah, I just I've always caught myself and I always wonder if like guys are thinking about that or if they've got a different strategy. So so, how long will you
glass an area before moving on? Like do you as far as coverage? Are you gonna look it over a couple of times? Is there like a point in the morning, like, oh, he may be betted to start with, Like he's gonna get up an hour and a half later? Does it depend on whether like if it's raining, they're gonna be on their feet or if there's snowing there on their feet? Like how do you decide, Like I've lasted here long enough, I'm going I'm hiking out the ridge to the next basin or to a different area.
You know What's what's kind of interesting about that is I've noticed that when it starts getting colder, like last weekend, for example, I was glassing into this base and I had not seen anything in there, and I think it was it was. It's been light for what seven thirty or so, It was about three hours before I started seeing anything, and so I gosh, I kind of feel
like I'm becoming more of a believer. You got to you gotta just kind of wait it out, you know, maybe take a little break back on the glass start. I feel like it doesn't really matter in the when it starts getting colder, I feel like, you know that ten eleven in the morning, that two three in the afternoon, I feel like it's all good, especially if you're in an area where you can pay pick apart a ton of country too, you know, yep.
And that's that balance. I mean, it's that internal fight we always have, like you should have probably put yourself on the best spot, or at least what I thought was the best spot starting the day. Are you willing to leave that to go find deer or she? Just grind it out? Like and a lot of it comes down to what you just said for me, like what what percentage of ground can I see? Like if I can see a whole bunch of ground, versus I'm gonna go only see twenty five percent of that ground from
hiking up and over, Like is it worth it. But then there's always that like other other guy talking to me on my shoulder, like, but that big buck could just be standing in that little twenty five percent patch and you know right now, like should you go check it out? And that's always one of those internal fights I have with myself, is like when because you know, as time goes on the days, changing bucks or deer getting out of their beds moving, you can catch them.
We've but we've seen it both ways, right, And so that's really like that one thing we struggle with is stay in glass or move and get to a new area. And I don't know if there is a right answer. I just didn't know if you had a preference or or if you're more inclined. Now it sounds like maybe just staying to what you think is your best spot.
Yeah, I would say that, Like, especially from like scouting in the summer and stuff like that, I feel like, Okay, I'm gonna get here to where I can spend like two plus hours and just keep going back over this stuff checking it you know.
Yep. So yeah, no, I like that. And it's what we usually end up deciding too, is that you you know, not to repeat myself, but you put yourself in the best spot, your best bandage, your best spot to spot. Dear, let's just stay here and and some people may think it's like the lazy way out, but it's just I think it's just your best chance. You know, I don't know if you. Ryan Lamper is one of my buddies.
Like he's you know, he's similar to you, hikes all over the mountain, like physical never gets in the way. But like he talks about his he killed one hundred and ninety inch archery buck there in Colorado, and he's like, I didn't move for seven days because the thing just went in bed in the right spot for me to approach. So it's like, yeah, he ultimately killed this buck, but he's like it was one of the easier because he didn't move for seven days straight until they embedded in
the right spot. And so it's I think it's just being patient, you know, having faith or confidence that they're there. You know, it can be can be huge.
That's that's the other thing too. That's I mean, that's I know, as hard as it is as it is to find a big one. That's the nice thing about like putting in your time to scout and find one.
It's like, Okay, this is where I've seen him. And the other thing that I've noticed is like it doesn't take very much cover for them to to be able to hide, you know, like for example, like I was saying last week and the bucks that I turned up, I had looked over that spot probably ten times that morning, and then I gave it a break for fifteen minutes looking at some other stuff, and I came back and
there they were. And I mean there was so little cover for them to bed down in, and that's where they were, in that little tiny patch of timber, you.
Know, yea yeah, so and I think you know, as a hunt goes on, like I, I don't get the chance, especially on out of state hunts, to scout near as much as I want, So you're kind of learning on
the fly. But you can pick up little things off the bat, like oh, the deer on their feet for the first fifteen minutes and it but it's like, so you're in that area, but as soon as they bed down, like if you I'm sure we've all been there, will you follow a deer right or something that you're maybe interested in or you kind of just keep tabs and
it was in the wide open easy to see. But as soon as that thing beds down, like you won't see it for the next four hours and then it gets up out of bed and then so it's ideas like that, like if you don't catch up Buck in the exact right spot at the exact right time, you're not gonna see him no matter where you're at. And he may be right there, which is kind of the underlying story on some of these things, like they're typically going to be where you think they are, you just
might not be able to see him. So so rolling through, you know you're you're about what you're seven days into your Idaho season, you've got another thirteen left, or you know some units close off a little bit earlier. Do you do you change the way you hunt from start
to finish if weather it doesn't come into play? Do you assume if if you know there's no or are you gonna start like as season progresses, are you gonna start checking in on those staging areas that are a little lower on the mountain or the ridge, or like how do you how do you change your hunt or do you at all? As season goes on? You know through the end of October.
Well, this year has been a little bit different because, like I said, I wasn't able to turn anything up
that great, you know. But it's like what has been kind of fun this year is like, Okay, I'm gonna hunt till say twelve or one, and then I'm gonna get out of there and I'm gonna go to a completely different new area and check that out and tell dark and like, typically, I mean, if it's if it's a deer that I'm after, I would probably just hunt that Gosh, I would probably just hunt that thing the whole season or as or as long as I needed to say, you know, yeah, yeah, so it does. It
really depends. I mean I feel like, especially around here, if you are getting the snow, so many of the deer do move out of the country. You just have to be content with not seeing very many deer period. You know.
Yeah, you're just kind of going off your gut whether you think that target deer stayed up in the high country you're hopefully didn't move down, and you're probably second guessing yourself all along the way. But it seems like typically those big bucks are the last ones to bail off you know, so if you're still seeing deer in the area, I like to assume that they're still around, but you just never know.
M Yeah, I agree.
So I want to talk a little bit. Me and Steve got to to go to Idaho last year on a meal deer hunt. Yeah. I don't know if you've even been in that area or not, but it was it was one of those cool hunts. You know. It was a little bit of a special area, but it was one of those things where, you know, we we implored some of the strategies we're talking about now. We we you know, stayed high on the ridge and just
you know, glass as much country as we can. You know, he had a few little hot tips here and there. But but we found, as I mentioned, on that hunt, at that time of year, those deer were on the south facing slopes. They would come out of the bottom and you would get about a fifteen minute chance to spot them between like where they were starting in the creek bottom or somewhere on that ledge, versus when they would flop over to the north side, you know, the
brushy timbered side of the ridge. And so we started to use that to our advantage. We would look at you know maps, like where can we go to see them, you know, as many south facing slopes as we can, and and it's just stuff like that like throughout the hunt, like we didn't have necessarily a target buck, but we were kind of just trying to put as many many
options in our lap as we could. You know, it was it was an amazing hunt because you know, the first day you pull up and see a thirty inch plus three point and you got to like walk away from it. And then you know, around the next corner you see you see a one eighty plus you know buck, and so it was it was a different hunt, a
very very special place. But I'm trying to like roll some of this this you know what we've talked about into that, like you know, getting to a good advantage spot where where you can you know, where you can look into where you found the deer. You know, on the first day we realized kind of what the deer are doing. The second day we kind of you know, took advantage of that. So we're trying to be educated deer hunters as we go on. And it was one of those things where we didn't have a target buck.
So it's I think having a target animal maybe like you are, versus somebody that's just looking for something that's that's in you know, what they want. It makes a different hunt. It makes a lot different hunt where you might not be willing to leave the base in the entire day. We would we would do what I would consider kind of your normal hunting, where we would glass for two two and a half hours, like, ah, there's just the place is dead. We've glassed ninety percent of it, Like,
let's move. And so that was kind of our strategy and throughout the day. And then the one downside is we moved, you would never really know like is this place dead because it's not first light anymore, you know, and you were kind of like, well, I don't even know if this is a good spot, Like you don't want to write it off for tomorrow. You may want to come back and check on it first thing. And
we just kind of evolved on that hunt. But uh, it was one the other thing I really wanted to take away from that hunt and talk about a little bit is we had you know, me and Steve, you know, Kenton was on that. We had multiple pieces of glass and it was crazy to like how well a meal deer can hide, Like I had picked up a meal deer the buck that Steve ultimately had killed, and we
couldn't get any other spotters on it. But I was in like the worst spot to like keep track of him, Like I had a bunch of brush and sticks, and Jack strawed brush in my way, And it was just one of those things and it really kind of led me to believe, like it, I don't want to keep tying things back, but it ties back to one of your original examples of like those deer are there, you
just they are at times impossible to find. And we knew they were there because we had watched them flop over the ridge, you know, an hour before, like we there was nowhere else for him to go, and they had did it two days in a row, right, And that's the other thing. When deer making these patterns and doing you know, sick clickl movements from food to bed, from bed to food, you almost have to go with they're there until they're not. But you know, picking them
up in the glass is a whole nother story. Like we had put ourselves in the position to glass into there and just got lucky and picked him out of there.
Did you guys, Were you guys able to get him the first day that you found him?
We did, We got We got real, real fortunate, and we didn't even know he was a shooter buck. We spotted him from two plus miles away, just six or seven deer working up a ridge, and you could tell that two of them through the spotter, like you could tell that two of them had frames. Right. It's you
hear about people saying like they've got good frames. But there was no way in hell we were telling you if you had any sort of forks, if he was a three point of four point like what it was, and it was so far away that you pulled out on X and you're like, all right, I think this is the ridge he's on, and I think this is
how we get there, you know. And we walked out a trail maybe a mile and a half to look into the backside of that to get a goo advantage, and we we sat there for even an hour before just like all glass on that thing picking it apart, and just happened to in the middle of the day it And the hard part is you don't know if he got out of bed right, he could have been betted he could have been feeding the whole time, but we didn't pick him up until about one thirty in
the afternoon, you know, and then we steve it ended up shooting him by two. But it's just one of those things that like, man, you know where you're going with with what's a low percentage just because it's so hard to see. But they're there, like the meal deer, especially until you bump them or get winded, like they're gonna probably keep doing the same thing back and forth, you know, until the the rut comes along, weather comes along,
or something bumps them out of their pattern. Mm hmm, go ahead.
Oh, I was just gonna say I'd be curious too, because it would be curious to see what that would like. Was he getting any pressure at all from people too?
I mean, with it being a limited hunt, there was another deer hunter around, and there was one other elk hunter in the area, but nobody was really up in that zone that we were in, and so that also adds into the hunt, like how aggressive you need to be, how comfortable you are that that deer is not going
to get bumped. So yeah, it was nice knowing that nobody had been really messing with these deer, which is a huge advantage, you know what you're talking about a lot of this over the counter stuff where you can get crazy amount of pressure where you get into deer like this, and it changes their behavior. It changes maybe how reluctant they are to be out in the open because nobody's really laying eyes on them or even you know, bothering them at all.
Yeah. And and what's interesting too about that that I've noticed is like the deer that you see, the big ones like that you see that are not getting screwed with, it's almost like they even have a completely different They're just so much different, like compared to the ones that are getting very pressured, like some we've seen like out here that are in a high pressured area. I mean, they don't really get up, and if they do, they're moving like really really fast to get to more cover.
Yeah, you know, so you almost think it's like it's like a switch goes off in their head. Like they're the same age class. But yet this deer recognizes all the pressure. He's like, I've got to step up my game or I've got to be safer, where this other dear is like I haven't seen anybody like I can continue to do this and get away with it in some sense. Yeah, yeah, Just just a note for all the listeners, like Steve's Idaho meal deer Hunt will be
coming out, I believe on November two. Meat Eater Season twelve, episode four. I believe, so for anybody that wants to go check out a meal deer hunt where I explained to Steve white elk or better than meal deer, Well, you can go tune into that one. But it's a great hunt. We had a lot of fun. You know, it's sometimes cool to get to hunt real special places like that. It's not like the majority of the places that Duke gets to hunt. You know, it's a lot different.
But I wanted to have Duke on. Like I say, he's he's as humble as they come. He won't talk about what he's killed, but just you'll have to trust me when the guy kills some real, real big meal deer, and he knows what he's talking about when it comes out.
So I really appreciate you having you on here, Duke. Normally, at the end I would say, let people know how they can find out about you, but you probably don't want anybody to follow you or pay any attention, So uh yeah, I won't put you through that, So.
Yeah, thanks. I I honestly haven't been on the social media stuff for quite a long time, so you know, yeah, I don't. I don't really have any of that stuff.
I don't. I don't blame you, and uh, you know, I grew up real similar like everything was a secret. We never talked about where we killed stuff, and so I can I can really really respect all of that. No, I appreciate having you on, Like I say that you probably know more about meal deer forgot more than most and appreciate having you on and sharing a little bit
of what you know. And good luck. I know we had to this podcasting because you're getting ready to take off I think for the rest of the season or at least this week. So wish you the best of luck and hopefully you can find one of those target bugs.
Thanks Jason, thanks for having me.
Ye take care