Ep. 68: Remi Warren’s Glassing Spectacular, Part 2

understanding size, reference and shape. This week, as promised, we're gonna talk about changing those search parameters to color and adjusting your varying view looking for movement. By combining that in with the other two items we talked about last week, you for sure we'll be able to spot more animals faster and train yourself to have a sharper eye through having a sharper mind. But before we do that, let's head way north to the island of Kodiak and search

for blacktailed deer. Right now, I'm actually sitting in my little cabin. It's raining outside. I'm hoping to go out and hunt some deer this afternoon. But I would need to record a few podcasts, and I'm I'm thinking about what we talked about last week, glass NG, and I was just trying to, you know, kind of rack my brain of some some good hunting stories. And then I look over and I see my brothers Sitka blacktail deer mounted here on the cabin wall, and I'm like, that

was an amazing spot. And so this story takes place on Kodiak, Alaska, and it was in early October, which if you're familiar with blacktailed deer hunting, that's not the best time to hunt. It's pre rut, post alpine like bucks out in the summer range. It's just kind of an interesting time where well, actually, for many dear species, that October time frame can be really difficult because the

bucks break off there by themselves. They're just in these thickets kind of preparing for the rut, saving up, conserving energy, and they can be very little movement, very hard to find. This week was definitely that we had trouble just turning up any dear. Not only that, but it was just kind of an off year for Kodiak, where experienced a little bit of a die off and there wasn't a lot of year round, but you know, you you had

a good opportunity maybe finding a good buck. This was Jason's first blacktail hunt, and we're out there and we're just like, it's like the last day of our hunt and he hasn't got a buck yet. I shot a buck. A friend of mine shot a buck that we were hunting with, and Jason's just like, he's always that guy that's willing to just help everybody and then puts himself at the bottom of the list. He's you know, he's just one of those guys that is a great guy

to hunt with. And he's not only really fun to hunt with, but he always loves to just help other people get their animals and he always ends up doing pretty good even though he sends it down to the wire. And actually it's a fitting story because he's actually hunting blacktails right now with some other friends. So I figure, what a great, great story to tell this week. But it was just one of those weeks where it was very tough, very difficult hunting, and we weren't seeing much.

It's the last day and so me and Jay are like, all right, we're just gonna give it her all. We're gonna go on a major mission. We hiked up from the beach. We're gonna hike up to the alpine. We're gonna work this ridge the entire length of this ridge and just glass in all the spots that look good. We get up there, we're glass and we aren't seeing much. Um. As we're halfway up the mountain, I look and I spot a dough and like a fawn in this little

there's like this this ridge. As we start to near the alpine, these little tiny pine trees and they crossed from this like thick stuff like almost like, um, I guess it'd be like alders and Devil's Club on this on the one face over into these like subalpine little furs or a little short, little Christmas tree looking things and disappear like, oh, deer up on that ridge, let's go. They were does we're hunting bucks, But hey, dear, that's

maybe a good sign. So we bust through a ton of brush to get up there, just like really thick alders growing in that. I would say they're like twelve foot tall alders and baseball batsize just like we were just battling to get up to this spot. We break through into the alpine and we just got this really great view. We're glass and we don't actually see the same deer, but we work around the face. The winds

blowing up from the bottom, so it's good wind. And we're like, okay, you know, it's mid day, is our last day. The leaves have started to fall off this one like pocket, and we're just looking at this pocket, going okay, dear, we're in here. This pocket looks incredible. We've got a really goodvantage. We're just gonna sit here in glass until we find a book. So we're sitting there glass and glass and glassing. I've got the binoculars, and I'm like, we cannot turn up a deer. So

I just started thinking to myself. I'm like just trying to picture it. I'm just thinking to myself, Okay, what am I going to look for? Everything. I'm kind of looking and like the colors, there's all the colors of the deer. They don't have a lot. I just started to think, okay, just look for something white. Maybe I'll get lucky and spot you know, it's tail or whatever. So I'm just thinking, find something white, find something white,

and I'm glassing. I've got my binoculars out on top of actually had my spotting scope, and I set my binoculars on top of them. So I'm glassing on the tripod and just thinking, white, white, white, Let's find something. And all of a sudden, my eye catches something. Okay, that looks good. I go down, get the spotting scope on it, kind of lose it because it's just so much I'm like looking through all this crap. It's just so many sticks and twigs and everything, and it's ways

off on the other side of the canyon. Look back through the binocular and spotted again. I'm like, ja, okay, I think there's a deer here. Let's and so get the spotting scope out and I start focusing and there's all this stuff in the way in between me and this white spot, and so I'm rolling the focus and

finally get it focused. I'm like, oh, buck, big buck, there's this nice what i'd call three point three by three with eye guards like past these years, just a solid hundred type black tail on a week that we hadn't been seeing very many black tails. So like, this is the best buck of the trip, last day of the hunt. Heck yeah, And he's just bedded in the thicket kind of by himself. So like, dang, Okay, well he's too far to shoot from here, and there's just

like way too much stuff and he's bedded. So we're like, okay, we're gonna devise a plan because we gotta get this buck is a good buck. So we decide if he stands up, there's like a log right in front of him. Picture it almost like it's on the side of a mountain,

but it's just it's kind of thick. There's all there's there's like this falling log, and he's kind of like in this real wet spot kind of hiding out where I mean, there's like some dead fault in this little open and that's how we spotted him, and there's enough clearing above him. We just need him to stand, but he's very well hidden and you've got to get into

the right position. So I think I arranged it. I was like seven hundred yards away, so Jason is gonna We kind of picked a spot where we thought there's this intermediate ridge. Jason could get three hundred yards and have a shot. But we're now racing against the clock because we're on a time crunch. It's the last day. We spotted him in the kind of late afternoon and

it's gonna get dark. We still have to make our way back to camp because we're getting a boat right out, so we need to get We're kind of like racing against the clock to get to the boat. But also we've got this big buck and we're gonna get him. But Jason hasked to get a position, so we make this plan. Jason is going to sneak in and I'm gonna watch him. I'm gonna give him hands signals if the buck gets up or does anything crazy, because if he moves in that and we're both stalking in, we'll

never know where he went. So if he moves, I'm gonna guide him into where the deer is gone. Now we have this contingency plan. I'm gonna stay up on point and just watch the deer, and then I'm gonna guide Jason in with hand signals. So the way we do our hands signals, like I like to take my hat off and point in the direction that the deer is going. If I'm close enough, I've got like I'll turn my hat backwards or like wave my arms if the deer's like gone. If it's blown, you know, wave

my arms, and I was gonna move positions. So we have a couple of different positions. So if the deer is still where it was, I'm gonna be sitting right where I am. If the deer's up, I'll probably stand up. And then if it's like still betted, you know, I'll be sitting there where I was. And then there was this other rock over to our side. So if I go to the rock, that means it's blown, it's over, and then I'll guide him in if the deer moves, so it's close enough where we can kind of see

each other. So Jason creeps down. He has to lose sight of the buck to go around. He drops down, he pops up to the right spot. I kind of guide him to the spot that I thought he'd probably get a view. So, you guys, he's glassing back at me. I'm glassing back at him. The bucks betted, So Jason set up. He's I can see he's on the gun. I'm just watching the buck. Okay, nothing's happening. Nothing's happening. I'm kind of in line where I can see both of them at the same time. So Jason turns around.

It's like getting late, and I'm like, man, this deer is not going to stand up. So he looks at me and he kind of like taps his wrist like he's like times running out, and I'm like I'm thinking, I know, I know. And then we've got this like buddy that has this is kind of a joke but kind of serious. He calls it the warning shot. It came about on accous deer hunt. We call it the Mike Markasy warning shot, where somebody you shoot to get the animal to stand up, then you can get a shot.

So we're running out of time and I see Jason and he's looking at me and he's like giving me the like pointing at me and then like aiming and like shoot. And I'm thinking we're just we're kind of joking because before he went down, I was like, hey, if the buck doesn't stand up in time, give him the old warning shop. So he's like pointing at me and like trigger. Okay. He wants me to try to get the buck to stand up, and I'm far enough away. I'm like that's not a bad idea. There's a tree

close by. I've got my rifle, I'm like, all right, we're gonna try this because we're almost we're just cutting it close. By the time we butcher it, hike out of there, get back. You know, somebody's meeting us with a boat that night, like it's their last night. We're going out of there after this. We don't have any communication devices, so we really need to figure this out, get that deer, and hopefully make it back within a

reasonable hour before you know, boat leaves. So I decided, all right, I'm gonna do the warning shot from my position and then hopefully that we'll get the deer to stand up. So I pick a tree that's near me in like a safe direction. I load up around. Boom, fire right into the tree. Why am? The sound goes out. I look through the scope. I'm like, oh yeah, let's get nothing happened, Absolutely nothing happened. All right, let's do it again. Boom, who am, hammer that close tree. Look

back through the scope. Nothing happened. Jason just ready, all right, one more boom, wham. I see the buck kind of like shake his head, look up, and then just slowly stand up. Looking through the scope. Boom, one shot. Jason drops the buck. Buck down and the patented warning shot in this particular instance paid off. It was a really crazy spot like the last day and just a lucky I would almost say a lucky spot, but just a spot where we were trying to use everything we could.

Defined one last year and turned out to be a great buck and his first black tail deer. Last week we started on part one talking about glassing, and my four tenants of glassing were size, shape, color, and movement. We already covered size and shape, so just as a little bit of a recap, we kind of talked about understanding what you're looking at the distances and how much time you need to spend, but also what's the size of the animal you're looking at compared to things that

are already on that hill. And then shape, not just looking for the shape of the animal, but looking for certain shapes that identify that there's animals there or things that your eye picks up faster unless your brain process. What we've been building out is kind of letting your brain be the computer of the glassing and letting your eyes do the looking. It'll save you time and will allow you to pick out things that a lot of

other people don't pick out. You know, I mentioned last week about the gorilla on the stage and people not recognizing it. Now, I think color is one of those things that it's something that's easy to identify and think about. It's something easy to look for, and it is often what gets animals spotted. But I think what the trouble is is people just have an idea of a color and then they end up missing a lot of other things.

When I talk about color, what I do is I actually start thinking about what am I hunting, and then what are the colors associated with that animal. I know when I think thought about times in the past spring bear guiding, people that like think about black bears being only black tend to spot only black black bears. There's been many times where I've been looking at a single hill, had someone with me, I spot a bear, you know, whatever,

Hey there's a bear over there. There's actually a couple of bears over there, and they look and they immediately see the one that their brain was thinking of, the black black bear. And yet you know, there's two brown or cinnamon colored bears also on the same hill, and those just get glanced over like, oh, I didn't even you know, didn't even recognize that because they had in their head. I'm looking for something that's black, the same

ghost filk. You know, people think, oh, I'm looking for something brown or mule the or that white butt, and he goes looking for that white butt. Well, they miss a lot of the deer that are broadside or facing them, and they only spot the deer that are facing away. What I like to do is I like to think of all the colors that are associated with that animal I'm hunting, plus one color that kind of is universal

for all animals. So let's say we we think elk a couple of the colors that I like to think about. As I'm glassing, I say, okay, look for this color, and that color would be that caramel brown, white and then black, that black of the bulls, the white of their blonde bodies, the kramel color of the cows, and

then that brown of their neck. So I try to break down all those colors that I'm looking for, and by doing that, it kind of weeds out many of the colors that don't make sense, green, some of the grays, some of the other things, and I start focusing on colors that makes sense, so I can scan a little bit faster. And I've got the search parameter of looking for colors that don't make sense in the same way.

It's kind of the reverse effect of that grill experiment where people didn't notice the gorilla, but they're focused on one thing. When you're focused on that one thing, you're very good at seeing that and thing. So what I try to do is I try to pick a few things that I know will stand out and focus on

those and let those pop out at me. So, just a couple of days ago, you know, off the distance I'm glassing, it's it's fairly kind of like overcast, dark forests, um meadows and other things, and I just start scanning. I'm looking along ways away, but I've got this mental picture of certain colors I'm looking for. Really, I'm looking for bull elk and that blonde body is a dead giveaway. It's the largest portion of them. Glass and glassing, okay, And so my eyes are keying in on those things.

White rock, get the spotter out. Nope, that's a white rock. Keep glassing that same color. Spotter out. Boom, two bowls right there, in a matter of minutes, instead of taking a lot of time to really analyze every little piece going slow, I can throw up my binoculars. I can do a quick preview and overview of the area, just running those those color scenarios in my head, thinking find this color, find this color, find these colors, and then I do a quick initial glass on those colors, and

generally I turn it out. Now let's talk about another animal, Say mule deer, what are some of the colors? Gray? White, brown, black? The bucks get that black back, they get that black tail, they get that white. So I start running those colors through and you'll you'll notice you'll start picking out the things that are those colors. What I also do is I try to weed out certain colors depending on what's If there's snow on the ground, I don't want to

look for the white. I start to think, look for gray, look for blacks. As as things get lighter, the color of those animals kind of changes based on you've got a more monochromatic view. You've got snow and everything looks white, but also everything looks dark. So now I'm looking more for the grays and the browns, and I also start to think think orange. If I'm looking for mule deer in the snow, because their antlers look a lot more orange.

Their coats starts to look a lot more orange. You start to pick those orange colors out a lot faster, even over distances. Now, I would say for a lot of animals, also understanding that as you get further away you know the environment and contrast. But think about light and dark contrast. If everything around is dark, I look for the things that are light. If everything around is light, I look for the things that are dark. If I'm glassing a big lots of open, big grassy meadows, maybe

that gray sage, I'm gonna it's like light background. Now I'm gonna start looking for the shadows of the animal, or the necessarily shadows of the animal, but the way the animal looks shadowed in what it's at. Think about seeing a you know, you talk about camouflage, and you've got a person up close, the camo blends in, and then they go a mile away and they just look like this human object that's really dark walking around the

same goes for animals. Yes, their coats blend in, but also you know, getting your mind to picture the differences in contrast the lights and the darks. If I'm glass, like I said, if I'm glassing big open grassy meadows for elk. Everything's light, everything's that kind of elk color. So now I just start to think dark, that dark brown, that dark, that black. Maybe that's around the back end of a bull or that like mane of a bull. So a certain thing dark, and you start picking out

those pieces. If everything around is dark, maybe it's a more forced area, maybe more I don't know, like a little bit more brush and other things that I start to think the light, start to think out, okay, pick out the whites of the bodies and and and start to kind of narrow in what I'm looking for, or the the white off the mule there as opposed to the gray in the lot of sage, or maybe some more of those brown colors, and combine that with the size, the shape, and then as we go into it, movement.

Movement is the first thing that most people look for, but movement is honestly the easiest way to spot animals. I would say most animals that get spotted are based on movement. Their movement looking at something that everything should be still and something moves through it that catches your eye allows you to focus in. One thing. I like to do whether I'm quick glassing or just previewing an area. When I sit down and glass, I like to think

of looking for that movement. And how I do that is I generally want to find a movement based on a wide view. That means getting using my binoculars more than my spotting scope. It would be looking at the mountain or the hill and this really wide view and this is kind of more panoramic, and just letting my eye stare at the picture and then catch movement in between. There's many times where the movement might just be the tree swaying back and forth, but you're keen in on

the movement. When you add movement into your search parameters, you start to pick up a lot of other things that aren't just what you're looking for. It's crazy because you'll be looking out there and you'll be like, huh, there's a magpie. I just spotted a magpie from a

mile two miles, five miles away. You're like, WHOA, Okay, because you caught the movement, your eye was drawn to it, and now you can also use those other things that you see moving to go back to your size, reference your shape, and and just test the fact that you're actually seeing what you're looking for. Movement is one of the best ways to verify that something is what you think it is. You know, you you these other search

parameters go off. You focus in on something that looks like it might be a deer, and then you watch it. You stare at it, and you see if it moves. That's like the tried and true test of is that what I'm looking for? How does it move? Is it moving?

Many times, what I'll do is I'll go between not only glassing but also using when I talk about movement, using my naked eye or without glass, I'll do a lot of glassing through the binoculars, through the optics, and that wide you have been zooming it out, sitting there and just staring at the hill and just looking for things that move, things that look different, things that change, not necessarily trying to look for the animal, but just

looking for things that are moving. In that really wide view. You'll be surprised that you start to catch movements of different things, and you start to notice a lot more so things that you might not notice ahead of time. When you're looking for an animal. You go to this really wide view and you just stare and you go, oh, there's movement. Then you throw your binoculars up. It turns out to be a deer. It turns out to be this,

It turns out to be that. If you've got decent vision, it's a really good way to kind of back that view. Like I like to back the view in and out, So I'll go from really wide eyes, two binoculars back to eyes too, maybe spotting scope at a distance to

binoculars at a distance. And what I'm doing is I'm just looking and observing and waiting for that movement because there might be especially in the times of morning and evening when you're expecting movement, but even in the middle of the day when you aren't expecting movement, could be the best time to really hone in. One caveat to movement is what about those times a day when there isn't any movement, like the middle of the day, heat

of the day. How do you find animals when it's a really good area, You know there should be something here, but they're probably bedded up. What I do in that scenario is I more zoomed in and try to catch little movements. There's so many times that the deer that I've spotted were bedded deer in the shade, and I caught the flick of an ear. There's always something moving, the flick of a tail, the step of a leg.

Zoomed in on those bedding areas, trying to look for small movements, not necessarily large movements, and you might get a little wind and branches are moving, but at least you know you're you're keying in on things that are moving, so you're you're using your brain to kind of go from this just looking for the animal to looking for pieces of the animal, shapes of the animal, colors of the animal, and then certain movements that will trigger you

into spotting more animals. If you think of it broken down into those pieces and then start giving your brain queues to look for all these things at once, I guarantee you you're gonna start spotting a lot more animals, a lot faster, with a lot less effort than most of the other people looking. You're gonna find things that other people don't notice, and it's just gonna come natural.

At some point. It's going to be something where you just throw up the binocular and oh, there's this, there's that, and it might just be a piece of it you saw, but something in your brain triggered the effect that Okay, now I gotta look a little closer there, focus in, focus in Yes, that's what I'm looking for. And that really is the essence of you know where to look, you found the good spot. How do you find what you're looking for fairly quickly, fairly easily, or knowing that

you didn't miss anything. And honestly, I think that's the best way to do it is having those kind of search parameters, by using by utilizing and understanding the size reference of how things are looking for different shapes, understanding that you can turn on and off this thought of color to help you eliminate a lot of the things that don't matter and bring in some of the things

that do. And then using this difference in zoom where you're looking wide and then moving wider checking for movement. By combining all those things, you will be way, way, way more proficient. Well that concludes our glass NG strategy

are two part glassing what to look for. I think if you can put all those things into practice, as I said last week, you know, understanding all those things in the way that they work together, what you're doing is you're you're letting your eyes do the looking, in your mind doing the sorting, and you can turn those filters and those layers on and off. If you think about your eyes are just the window to your brain processing everything, and you say, Okay, now I'm gonna pick

those colors. I'm gonna boom, throw those search parameters out there and do that fast, and then you're you're also constantly looking for that shape and that size and understanding and trying to catch that movement. By doing all that all the time, there's gonna be very little that you

don't catch. You can be the guy. There. There people that are really good at it, and hopefully I know there's a lot of people that listen to this podcast that are these people that not very much gets by you, not much gets spotted before you, and they probably, if they really thought about it, have this similar process going. When I talk to other people that I know that, I say, these guys are good at picking out animals, these guys are good glasses, they're good at spotting game.

These are some of the things that it's hard to verbalize, but it's actions that happen that we might not even realize. So I think it's something that when you go out there and you you put um a label on it and say this is how you do it, and you start to pay attention to it, and you start to

home that skill and you start to get better. I think it's just something fun because when you've you've got limited maybe've got limited time, You're you're gonna go out on the weekend and hunt, and you've got a good spot, you're looking at the right times in the right areas. You want to be able to find what you're looking for. One of the main complaints or like I think struggles I get from people is them saying, how do I know that I've seen everything? I don't know if I'm

looking in the right areas? Did I what did I miss? And you know, building this out being better at picking out the things that are there. Yes, you will probably still miss stuff, but you can train your brain to help you find what you're looking for by understanding you know, those four basic things, the size, reference, the shape, choosing the colors, and then looking for movement, and you're going to be a lot more successful in the field. So

as always, thank you guys for listening. I think you appreciate the support and all the great messages of success that have come in. If you get a chance you like the podcast, feel free to just share it with your friends, family, co workers, hunting buddies. Make them as good outdoors as you are, and then you would just have be unstoppable. It would just be meet filled freezers for life. And that's the whole goal here, right, So keep filling those freezers. I will catch you all next week.