Ep. 600: Rut, Lockdown, Late November, and More of Your Deer Hunting Questions Answered

Today we are talking the rut. As this one drops, it will be kind of smack dab in the middle of November, So we're gonna be talking about what has just happened and what we still have to look forward to over the coming weeks, and then we're gonna big

picture here answer a whole bunch of questions. We had a whole slew of questions submitted from folks in the wire hunt community about hunting during the rut, about the second half of the rout, about how to find dear the rest of the season, all kinds of stuff like that. So we're tackling your questions and joining me is the one and only space near Tony Peterson. How you doing, buddy, I'm doing great, buddy. How are you good. I'm getting a little more rested after that marathon we had there

in early November. So yeah, feeling good. Are you recovered yet? I feel pretty good now, man, But I was. I was pretty tired after that whole run too. It was it was a good run. So last week on the podcast, I recapped my first week in November hunt. Uh you want to give me like your high level synopsis of your seven days there in Minnesota Wisconsin? What was like your big a what happened? B? What was your big takeaway? Uh? Man?

You know, the first three days of the hunt, I spent and in public land in western Minnesota trying to figure something out and just got my butt kicked. I got around some deer, but man, I could not overcome the seventy degrees forty mile prour wins. It just had weird,

weird bad luck. And then I went to Wisconsin thinking it was going to be sort of a vacation being on good private land there and had two days and just pouring crazy rain, and then finally two days to hunt where the weather didn't suck, and even then it got better, but it wasn't It wasn't great, and I had I had one eight pointer kind of saved my week on the last the last morning, so that was very much appreciated, But I don't know. I'm sure I'm

just not remembering it very well. But I don't know if I've ever had a rut that quite kicked my butt like that. I mean, I just could not get on them and then just got really lucky towards the

end and figured something out. And so my takeaway, I guess is it's so easy to go into the rut thinking it's gonna be just you were fun and a crazy chase best and all that stuff, and most of the time it ends up being a true grind that's, you know, influenced by other hunters and the weather and the whims of the deer, and it's still it still requires you to really get after it, dude. That's exactly

my big takeaway too. And the biggest thing that kind of hit me as I was traveling out to start that hunt and then especially when I was traveling home from it. Maybe the biggest thing, like the biggest problem a lot of us have with the rut is our expectations, Like we all go into this thing thinking it's going to be we hype it up so much. You and I are as as much to play about this as anyone, But we all hype it up so much in our own minds and we celebrate it, and we're like, that's

the super Bowl, It's gonna be amazing. This is what we wait all year for. So we all go into this thing thinking that November is gonna be rainbows and butterflies and big bucks running everywhere when the rail they is what you experienced isn't too far off from you know, probably the usual experience for most people, a whole lot of tough hunts sprinkled in with a couple really exciting moments.

But if you I think if we were to go into these hunts kind of better accepting that and and just knowing like, all right, this is this is not going to be like a great big hunting show highlight reel. This is gonna be a grind, like you said. And maybe, maybe, just maybe I'll get lucky and have that awesome moment. I think that might help some of us enjoy it more, because I I always find myself out there pissing a moment in my own head about this sucks. This isn't

what you dream of during the run. This isn't like what you're supposed to get. This isn't what I was hoping for when really it's just the real world, oh man, big time. And you know, I mean the saving grace of all of it. And this is something that you know, it has happened to me just about every time I've had, you know, maybe five six, seven days to hunting a road during the rut. You're gonna get your chance if you if you're putting in the time, it's probably gonna happen.

You're gonna get your encounter. But it can be really, really mentally tough to just to write it out and put in the time to where that's going to happen. And I think I think we do kind of build this up in a way that's just reality doesn't match it. And then you get out there and you just like smacked over the head. It's kind of like, you know, when you prep for an elk hunt and you just think, like, I cannot wait to get in the mountains. I'm in good shape, I got my gear ready to go. You know,

it's it's gonna happen. And then you get out there and you start climbing elevation, You're like, oh, yeah, like this this is never easy. It's you know I could get my chance, but I'm gonna have to work for it, and it's just never. They're never gonna come easy. Yeah, that's that is the truth. Um. But hey, we've managed to pull it out in our first week in November. We both killed despite tough circumstances. Me at the end, you're in the beginning. So kudos do us, handshakes, backslaps,

that good stuff. We managed. Well, you know, we got to carry the weight for you know, guys like Janice and Clay. If they're not going to contribute, we gotta we gotta step it up. I guess even with extra days. Yeah, even with their golden boy pie on the totem pole, throw a little bit, get a couple of extra days thrown in there, they still couldn't make it happen. God bless him. Next time. We'll get it next time. Hey, speaking of well, not speaking of anything, but just popped

in my head. Have you heard the most wonderful time to Kill Deer song? Yet? Uh? Oh dude? All right, Hayden Cill the music boys. Good to see you, Hayden. It's been a while. Hey, sorry I'm late. I crashed my ponty at gast I can do a light pool and how to walk the rest of the way. But I'm here now, that's what matters. Give me a glass of scotch please, Hey, just two rocks in there. I don't like guys. We're starting already. This is happening. Okay,

just give me the give me the glass, thank you. Okay, here we go. It's the most wonderful time to kill deer. With the rut now just starting and dashing and totting and thanks cutting clean. It's the most wonderful time to kill deer. There's far too much ice in this class. It's the half happiest seasing of all. There's gotta be at least twelve cues with grunting and bleeding and called fronts and seating the last weeks of far. It's the

half happiest seasing of all. There'll be pictures for posting and bragging and boasting and drunk beds with big bucks and tow. There will be narrow miss stories and tales of your glories of booner bucks missed with our bows. It's the most wonderful time to kill deer, not just one baby two. There will be no dose of blowing and loom and knocks blowing and blood trails so clean. It's the most wonderful time to kill dean. Excuse me? Can I have a napkin? Please? I just spilt some

scotch on my loafers. I can't have dirty loafers in the studio. Thank you tailgate beers for drinking and big boxes thinking and chasing and sent checking dose. They will be fighting and scraping and no more escaping and arrow shot true hitting home key change. But no one told me that it's the most wonderful time to kill deer. I was very unprepared for this. There will be much morning sitting in coldfronts, hitting the dawn crispin clean. It's

the most swonderful time, Oh, the most swonderful time. It's the most swonderful time to kill Dan. There's too much ice in the glass. Two rocks, all right, So Tony, you you didn't actually get to hear. Everybody else got to hear, but you didn't. So I'm gonna make you listen to this later. But our podcast editors Hayden and Phil rewrote the song the Christmas Carol the most Wonderful Time of the Year, and they rewrote it and recorded it as the most wonderful time to kill deer, and

it is amazing. Everybody just got to listen to it for the third podcast in a row. I'm gonna I'm gonna make this happen every episode in November. We're gonna listen to it because I like it so much. Uh, But that celebratory tune out of the way, now, Tony, I think we should turn to the main thing I wanted to do here, which is rapid fire Q and A. Um,

I got half a million questions from folks. I asked folks in the Wired community if they had any questions for this time of the year, you know, what to do during the middle of the rut, what to do as we get to the tail end of it, How should they be repositioning as we move into the second half of the season. Um, and I got just tons

and tons and tons of questions. So I thought, you know, we haven't done something like this in a while, so it seemed like a good time to just address specific concerns, specific circumstances and uh, you know, hopefully give some give some health to folks that are trying to uh trying to make it happen. Right now. So are you down for a dude? I'm I'm down. Do you remember the last time we did a Q and A? No, I feel like it's been a while. So this is how

dumb my brain is. So we did We did that Q and A out in Bozeman when we were a spense in Hayden, remember, and we got a question from the dude's who who's handled? Was Chollopa Batman? And I still I think about that once a day. I don't remember anything about that podcast other than given Hayden's girlfriend that nicknamed the rodeo clown and a guy named Cholupa Batman asked us a question. That's it, oh man, that is a legendary I didn't I would not have remembered that.

That was like two years ago. That was a while ago. That's a very strange memory. It's all I got, buddy, I do appreciate. Well, let's do this thing, man all right? Question number one comes from Tommy and he's wandering, are all day? Sits still good? Late in the run? What do you think I would say they might be better?

Why is that? Because I think you get into, you know, the stage where they're locking down they've had tons of pressure, a lot of guns seasons are open, and I don't think there's a better time to do something a little

bit different than your competition. And when we start to get into the back half of November, and I don't know about you, Mark, but when I run cameras through the whole rut and I check them, I get a lot of mature buck movement, like sporadic mature buck movement in the back half of November, and a lot of it's daylight movement. And I just think it's because people are kind of giving up and going it's not worth

it anymore. And you know, I get it, it's cold and you're not going to have you know, probably an all day long chase best to keep you awake. But man, the chance, the chance to kill one at noon is real high skill. Yeah, I've seen it myself a few times now. It's it's a little bit different for me in Michigan where our guns season opens and so everything

really changes after that. Um. But when you go to a state like Ohio, where I've hunted quite a bit in the past, in that latter part of the month, like you said, the big boys know that the game is still on and they're still after it. And I've had numerous, at least multiple four or five year old plus bucks that I've been hunting all day and seeing them at noon or one, um so one at two thirty. So so yes, I'd say they are not a bad

idea at all. They can definitely pan out, but there they're hard after doing it for for days on end, for weeks on end. If that's what you're doing early November, Um, they are. But you know, on that note of the gun season thing, if any listeners are sitting there going, well, yeah, I'm gonna be sitting out there with a rifle, get in someplace tight and said all day, because if you have that gun season open, you know what most of

your competition is gonna do. You know, they're gonna they're gonna go hunt the mornings, they're gonna go hunt the evenings. Maybe they'll put on some drives in the middle of the day, but most of your competition isn't loading up for an all day sit in one spot with some

good cover. So let's talk about that more because we do have another question, UM from a guy named Mike who was asking about what you would recommend what we would recommend doing, you know, on opening day of guns season or those first few days in the gun season. And I think you bring up a good point. Um. You know, his question was like should I hunt the best food source or a travel corridor. Um, but so many people you've actually done. I think some Foundations episodes

about this at one point. Um, so many people want to set up for guns season in these spots where they can see two three hundred yards. Um. You and I have also seen a different approach, probably being better. Sometimes you want to walk us through your your thoughts on the better way to be situated for those guns

season days. Yeah, you know, I mean I'm not, I'm far from a gun hunting expert, but you know my experience doing that is go big on your first sit you know, opening days, sit where you really want to be. If that's the best food source, or the the power line or the clear cut or wherever you can reach out and stretch and shoot him a long ways away.

Go nuts. But when that's over, you know, in my experience anyway, it's always been time to get into where you're almost hunting at bow hunting ranges and hunt the cover and you don't so many gun hunters they just go, well, I have my spot, it's my ladder, standard, my box blind, and that's where I sit. And it's like, you know, these tier they figure this stuff out so fast, and the ruts still happen, and they're still gonna chase and cruise, but they're not gonna they're not gonna engage in a

bunch of risky behavior across and open stuff. And so it's I think the best strategy for a lot of gun hunters would just be to have one dreamy location that's that's pretty standard, and then one thick, gnarly you know, I might shoot forty yards fifty yards tops type of spot and make that switch as long as the winds right for it, and and get in there where they're

going to go to those little sanctuaries. Well, you know, like especially if you hunt, this might be different in a low pressure area, but in a heavily hunted area like here in Michigan. The only reason there's a buck in the places that I hunt that makes it to four or five years old is because he has a little hole that he buries himself in during gun season. If you can find that hell hole and get there before that old buck comes in to his one little

place he can stay safe. You can kill him, but you're not going to kill that big deer in most places with a lot of pressure. You know, on that field edge, he's gonna be in that thick cover because the only reason he made it to four or five years old is because he was one of those bucks that found a spot like that. So you know, I think Andy, our buddy Andy May had a situation exactly like this, like two years ago. Maybe. Um. I was just listening to tell the story the other day where

he he did this exact thing. Everyone on opening day gun season wants to be in this field edge spots. As buddies were in field edge spots. He knew of one nasty thick patch of cover on this piece of property he had permission on and just got in there like two hours before daylight, got right in the hell hole, and waited in like an hour and a half after daylight. This buck was right there and he shot him at like forty yards I think with a gun. Um. So, uh,

it's a good way to go about it. If you're in a low pressure place is different if you are you know, when I'm up in northern Michigan where there's not a lot of deer and everything is a sanctuary.

It's a little bit different. But um, but I think that's it's it's worth, it's worth going against the grain when it comes to gun season if you hunt that kind of area, um, and the all day thing, like you're like, you're saying the all day things another against the grain because everybody else wants to go out and

do the lunch thing. You can take advantage of them. Yeah, and you know, I mean that that Northern Michigan example is a good one because you know, people listen to this and go, well, I don't have you have this mono habitat right, Like I have thousands of acres of timber company land or whatever I hunt, But I look at that that kind of deer hunting just like I look at and over the counter elk hunt. Like, Okay, so you have thousands and thousands of acres to work with,

where are the access points? Where the trails? You know, up in northern Michigan, I'm sure you're dealing with logging roads and two tracks and specific access points and those deer, you know, even if they have tons of different swamps to bed in and hide out in. They're still going to adjust themselves according to where the pressure is coming in and where the pressure is sitting. And so you know, I mean you can find those places where there's going

to be that concentration. And yeah, it might not be the same concentration you'd find in you know, Iowa, Missouri or something like that where the deer population super high,

but those deer are still reacting to that pressure. They're still ending up somewhere, and those bucks know where the doors are hiding out, they know where they're going to be going to search, And to me, it's just like figuring that stuff out, and especially getting out right after the gun seasons over and going and walking through that through some of that stuff is like a crazy eye

opener and how deer avoid us. So, speaking of the all day sit then, um Flint asked about how we keep our head in the game after you do like multiple all day sits, you know, and that that grind really it's wearing on you. Um, what do you learn this year after doing almost seven of those or whatever it was, how do you how do you fight back the mid day? Um, the mid day woes man to me, it's just sitting in a place that I have confidence.

If if I'm in a place where I'm like, it could just happen here, that's a big deal for me. I mean it just it really is. If I'm in a place where I'm like, I don't think so. Like I had to do almost two full uh all days sits in box blind this year because of that rain and you know, the camera gear considerations and all that bs, and man, I'm sitting there and I'm just like, I hate this because I don't have confidence in killing a

big one out of one of those. And so if you if you're doing your homework and you're like, this is this funnel or this pinch point should be banging, or I'm downwinded, this really really thick stuff. Even when the action slow, Like I mean, the action for me this whole first week in November slow, but getting into those spots was good enough to keep me there all day and just get me to believe that it was

probably gonna happen. And that's it's a huge component of it. Okay, So Devil's advocate on this a little bit, though I have been and and this comes down to partially my my shift in trying to have more fun with hunting

this year and partially with a practical thing. So I have decided to give my permission to take a few days off from all day hunts because they're miserable, but also because, um, you know, if you get so burnt out doing six or seven of those that you're not focused on day eight, then maybe you miss out an opportunity entirely because it's five o'clock in the afternoon and you're so burned out and sick and tired of doing this seven days in a row that then you're not

fully with it. And so I've told myself, well, you know what, if you have to do a couple of things a to keep this fun and be to keep you fresh, maybe that's worth it actually in the long run. When at all and that nets out? Um, is that me just being a lazy pos? Or is that a reasonable thing to consider too? No, that's you being a lazy ps. That's just that's just no discipline there, um

and no real desire to actually be a hunter. I guess um No, no, No, I would say there's two ways to look at it, right, Like the all days sit and it's like most basic form, as you go out to your standard, you go saddle up and you're there dark to dark. Um. I do that a lot, but I also will structure some of my days so it's like, I know, I'm gonna sit this spot until noon and then I'm gonna pull up and I'm gonna

move somewhere else. So even though you're really kind of almost hunting all day, now you've got that little break up in the middle, and maybe you walk to the other end of the farm or something like that. But to me, you know, if you're if you're like I really want to enjoy this rout, you've gotta you've gotta be there in the woods, you know. And I mean if you're if you're fading bad and you can't handle it and you need to sleep in and go ahead,

and who cares, it's just a deer. But I always just look at it and I go, like, try to figure out a way to stay out there, Like bring enough coffee, bring a book, whatever you gotta do. Try to figure out a way to just be there, because you know, this is a short window thing, man, and every all day that you have to be out there, you really only have like eleven hours to be there, you know. So it's it's not like a crazy big ask of us. I mean, some people really have a

hard time with it. But you go out and you kill one at noon or one o'clock one time, and it's sure changes your perspective on it, you know. Yeah, man, it's it's a it's an interesting thing. I've been thinking about it more and more for for the last fifteen years. I basically looked at all day sits as mandatory unless you want to be a lazy pos and so I did.

I'm like every single day. Um. And then I looked and I have yet to kill midday buck ever, And I've hunted a lot of what should have been good betting, you know, should be good midday spots, thick nasty cover, funnels back in the cover, doe betting, all that kind of stuff. I had one that I absolutely should have killed, but I was looking at a book instead as the buck came up behind me. Um. And then I've had I've had a handful of like seeing good bucks movement there,

just couldn't get a shot. So it's possible, but it's yet to pay off for me myself. But I know plenty of people who have. Have you had a lot of those mid days? I know you killed one last year midday? No, I haven't. I've killed a few, you know. I killed one last year at one o'clock and that was just that was November six, and it was going to happen. And I honestly think if I hadn't killed my buck last week, I think I killed him at

like nine thirty or something in the morning. But I honestly think if I hadn't killed that buck, another one would have come through between like ten and two. I mean, who knows, right, But even even so, I think there's a difference of going in all day, you know, like your mentality is different, and you're not like second guessing, and you're not like I gotta leave or I'm gonna go or should I was gonna leave at noon anyway, so I'll leave at eleven. You're just like I'm just there,

and there's less of an impact on the woods. And so I think overall, it's just you know, I mean, we had such an interesting experiment with one week in November because we had you honest this year, and man, your honest checks into that group chat and he's moving, and he's moving, and he's moving and he's moving, and you're like, dude, you gotta maybe maybe pump the brakes on this a little bit. But it's so easy for

people to talk themselves into going. The ruts not happening here, so I'm gonna move, And it's like you're not probably gonna move and find like a magical difference, like you might get into a better spot. But if you're sitting there and you're in a spot that you're pretty confident in and it's a pinch point or something like that, and it's just it's really not going that great yet.

The odds of just like discovering the place where it's blowing up, especially on a smaller property, it's not that likely. So it's like, Okay, do you sit tight and let the rut come to you or do you keep going and going and going to find it? Like I honestly don't know what's a better strategy, but I know what I pick. It's I feel like it is the question for the rut, at least for me, Like every single year during the rut, that is the debate I'm having NonStop.

If it's if it's slow, I'm constantly debating, and I was doing this all last week. I was debating, do I search it out or do I trust this place I'm in? Do I trust this feature? Do I trust this habitat edge? Do I trust this betting year? And And basically on my hunt last last week, I had two spots that I just really believe should work. I mean, it was a great wind situation downwind of an epic dough betting area. I had a really cool thing going

on there in these two locations. And I end up giving one spot a day and a half and the next day, with the wind shift, I switched to the other side of it and didn't see a single buck in those three days that I was hunting in this this spot, the two sides of this betting air that I thought should be amazed. And so I'm having this debate back and forth myself, and I'm thinking, Man, at the end of the hunt, I was like, am I an idiot? I spend too much time in this little zone.

Now again, it's a thirty two acre property. I really didn't have any other great options. Um, but I checked my trail cameras the next day. So the day we left, so the morning after I was there, there was a shooter buck in front of my tree stand in that spot that I had spent the last day and a half. So it was one of those cases like if I you know, if I didn't have to leave and I had stuck it out there the next morning, I could have got a shot at one of the big bucks.

He didn't come through the previous day and a half, but you know eventually they will if we're in a place that you have experience or confidence in. So yeah, it's well, it's a tough one. There's two ways to look at that though. I mean, that's that's the easiest conclusion to draw. But the other thing that I would question is did that buck not come through when you

were there? Because you were there? Yeah, you know what I mean, Like I always I always wrestle with this when you when you do when you have trail camera intel and you're like, oh man, he was there this

time whatever, it's like, well you weren't. And there's always like that little nagging thought like maybe he wouldn't have come through there if you were there, and I just you know, like there's no way annoying, but I always think about that because we beat ourselves up and go, jeez, I should have been there, and it's like, well, yeah, it would have been better to be there than not. But it's not a foregone conclusion that you all of

a sudden got that twenty yard broadside at him. You know, yeah, yeah, I don't think, like you said, we'll ever have the perfect answer to this questions. It's just a thing that with your own personal experience and the information at hand, you've got to, you know, make the best judgment. Call Galen asks, how do you manage a hunt with corn still standing in your area? So standing corn rut A lot of times people worry this is gonna have all the all the deer are gonna be chasing and doing

their things in the standing corn. You'll never see it. You'll never get a chance of this. Bucks. What's been your take, Tony? You know, I've I've dealt with that quite a bit in Minnesota because we have such an early gun season that I hit it so hard. Uh, you know, the the last couple of days of October, the first couple of days in November, and I've just dealt with a lot of standing corn, and I kind of look at it like that really thick patch of

cover that I have to set up down window. I mean, it's dumb, but you know, if there's if you're in a place with some pressure, those deer are gonna bed in there a lot of times. They're gonna use it for food, of course, and it's just a sanctuary like it just is. But you can find places down wind of of a corn field where those bucks are going to cruise it. And if you can get into one of those spots where there's like a little grassy waterway

or something man like, that's kind of the ticket. And so yeah, it kind of sucks because you're like, oh, they picked this corn, these deer would be in the woods. Well, that's not the hand you were dealt. The next best thing is just to use it to your advantage as much as possible. And you know it's I don't know, I've killed a lot of deer on the on the edge of the standing corn. Let me put it that way.

I think you get down when and you play it. Yeah, I agree, and I think that you you alluded to one example, but anywhere you can find diversity in that corn So by that, I mean, like you said, like the waterway or any point of timber that sticks out into a corn field, or if there's a little strip of timber that intersects too corn fields or something like that. Anywhere you have that difference and habitat type where you

create edge or any kind of opening. Like some side there's a spot he used to have where there's a big oak tree that stood out in the edge of two properties, and it was usually there'd be standing corn on either side of it, and then there was this big opening underneath this oak tree and every deer that was in that corn would check out that oak tree.

There was you know, always feeding sun underneath it. They were dear betted underneath it sometimes, So those kinds of spots can be you know, worth focusing on when you've got that standing corn situation. But like you said, I would look at standing corn as you know, great betting get on the edge of it. Those bucks make scrapes all along those edges. They cruise those edges. Um, They're not, despite what you think, gonna live their entire life in

that corn. They're still gonna come out. They need diversity in their diet. A deer that ain't nothing but corn all day every day would not be a healthy deer. They're still gonna come out and explore these other places. So it's it's not the end of the world. Yeah, it's it can be. It can actually be kind of a benefit to you if you if you have the right way to use it. Yeah. Um J t asks how long should you wait to hunt a spot on

public land? Again? If a buck bust you in that bob so public land hunt, you get busted in the tree, how long would you wait before coming back to that zone? Seven seconds? Seven seconds? Well, if he's there, somebody else is going to be there, right, I mean, man, there aren't any accidents out there in nature, right, Like I mean there are, but there aren't. Like nature doesn't do

random very well. So if you've if you've done your homework and you got into a spot and you know, maybe your target buck or a good buck spots you, that sucks. But you did a lot right to get to that point. And it's not like you you blow that deer. O. It's not like there he's the only one. You know. My my bigger concern with something like that is why did he bust me? That's exactly what I was gonna say. Yeah, yeah, you know, I mean, if he's and and that stuff happens, you know, I mean

I was thinking about this this year. I mean, you're at when you're doing these hanging hunts on public land, you're at such a disadvantage for that stuff because you don't own Like you go in there and you've got to set up where you can set up, and it might not be the most ideal tree that you can trim all the way up or do whatever, and you get picked off and it happened, So it's like, is the spot good enough and was it just a did

it just break bad for you? Or are you in a situation where you're gonna get busted by whoever comes in and it's time to rethink that set up and rework that spot. And I think that's my take in a lot of situations, whether it's public or private. If you get busted from a tree, um, you know a figure out why, and you might want to make a

small adjustment and a move just because of that. But then if you are after one specific buck, even like I had this happened a few years ago, and then this actually happened to a friend of me of mine yesterday. He had this exact scenario, but on private and he texts our little group and he said, I just had this big giant buck come in circled down windo me

busted me. He's out. I'm thinking I should just pull the plug on the whole thing, probably, And I said, well, are there any other do you want to kill in there? He's like, well yeah, um, And I'm like, well, you know you kind of are in the spot. Is there another tree where you have a better situation for wind um? Because that zone just proved it's a winner like your your general spot proved itself as a winner. Um, But

that specific buck. I don't know about you, but I've had during the rut, I've had a mature buck win me in a spot like that and then still come back within sight of me later in the day because of DOES. I think does can make bucks do dumber stuff than usual, as we all know this time of year. So I had in one case, I had this shooter buck come down wind of me just before shooting lights,

so I couldn't get a shot at him. He wins me bus out of there, and then like an hour later he's chasing does and gets almost within shooting range of me again. Because of that, And I think in that scenario, just even you know, readjusting a little bit

for the next day. I mean, hey, the same tree might work, but b if you just shift over forty yards or something like that, I think you're probably right back in the game still, and you can still take advantage of whatever the feature is that got him there in the first place, and then give yourself a little piece of mind that he's not going to be staring up in that same tree if he does slip back

through in the next day or whatever it is. Um. So, so yeah, I wouldn't worry about too much if you have like fifteen does win you every you know, dough wins you every hour, every two hours, you've got another thing like that, maybe you've got a bigger problem and you need to shift to a new zone because of that. But one single buck, um, I wouldn't worry about too much. Yeah, I mean, it's it really depends on why he got

you too. I mean, if he was just traveling down Win and he got you, then the setups probably not great for that those conditions. But you know, if you saw him a hundred yards out and you called to him and he swung down win like you were talking about with your buddy or whatever, like different thing, you know.

And I think that's one thing people kind of forget during the rut because they go out there with all their call their calls and everything, and they're like, man, if I see when I'm gonna grunt him in, And there's situations where that's us a bad idea because how they're gonna approach you. So you've called attention to yourself, and now you've set up an encounter that's less likely

to break your way, you know. And we so I'll just give you a quick example that when I was in South Dakota in the beginning of October um, I was sitting on some public and finally found what I thought was a concentration a good buck sign and had like a one thirty come out just on the wrong trail.

And the way he was headed, he could he could get away and not win me, probably possibly, but if I called to him, it was almost a guarantee that he was going to swing down wind and I had no chance, and so I just let the situation unfold. I didn't kill him. And then the camera guy I was with, he's like, why didn't you grunt to that, dear, And I was like, because there's there's no way where he was in the way our wind was blowing, that he was going to just turn and march right in

and not use that wind. And so that's that's something you always have to think about when you're making contact with him, is like how easy to use it for them to use their nose because they're gonna And is it better to not draw attention to yourself, let the whole thing play out naturally and figure out what to do next time? Very true. I've got another question that kind of naturally fits into this discussion, Um, Chad asks, are you concerned about over hunting stand locations in the rut?

I think that's that's kind of related to some of the stuff we're talking about here. Um, what do you think? Um, you know, I think you're always worried about over hunting locations and you just gotta let the deer tell you whether you are or you aren't, you know. And the other thing to that, A component to that is it is really hard to not go into a place you want to hunt bad during the rut and sand beg

it wait for better opportunities. But man, that happens to me the last two years, the two bucks I've killed in Wisconsin, I've had to sand begat and and basically kind of waste Sits waiting on the right conditions ago where I wanted to and that is a hard thing to do, but sometimes you've got to do it. Has that ever bit you in the ass? Probably dozens of times?

I mean, you know, it's hard to know because you either go in or you don't, and you don't know how it would shake out if you took the other option. But for me now I find myself just planning, like what what is my next what do my next two days look like? Right? Like? What what do I need to do? And where do I have the most faith in a spot? And what do the conditions say about it?

And sometimes you're just like I can't rationalize going in there today when tomorrow is going to set up real well, and so it's like I gotta I'm gonna leave that whole thing alone. And you know, it gets different when you're on public and somebody might go in there, or you know you're on private that has a bunch of people on it. It's they're so situationally variable. But being a little bit cautious with your best set ups is usually a good idea. Yeah. You Another consideration here is

how to define over hunting. Right and you you said listen to what the deer tell you, which I think is a good thing, But you need to know based on the context of where you're hunting and what you know about the area. You have to have like a sliding scale of how you interpret what the deer tell you. And a big part of that is, like deer density

is a big thing right there. Right, So if you are hunting a stand three days in a row in southern Michigan where you know you could easily see twenty or more deer in a day, and there's deer everywhere, Um, you could very easily burn out a spot if you're getting winded by dough after dough and a buck and a dough and a buck and a buck and two dolls and five dolls and all that kind of stuff

that could hit fast. Um, if you were to take those same three days and hunt up in northern Michigan, where I might see one or two deer day, three days might be you know, not even enough time to sit in the right spot because it might take four days for one mature buck to pass through this little terrain feature whatever is I'm hunting like, they just it won't he won't come through it because they're traveling miles and there's only be one day in five that buck

comes through. So in that kind of spot or the big woods up in Pennsylvania or somewhere, you might need to spend days in a saddle, I mean like a terrain saddle, or days on that pinch or whatever it is for a deer to pass through. So you need to look at your situations there, right, how much pressure can this spot handle and how much time is necessary for me to even have a chance at one of these deer working through this area. I think that's a

key consideration. Well, and not only that, but also just what kind of impact are you putting on it with every sit you know, I mean some places. I killed a buck in North Dakota in public a few years ago. In the spot I found, I think I could have hunted that every day. The way I accessed it through it was through like a pasture. I mean there were no cows in there at that point, but that federal land had been grazed there weren't a a deer in there.

I wasn't blowing deer going out in there, and I had this great big river bluff beside me that the wind could blow like most directions, and the cruising bucks weren't gonna get you. It was like it was almost perfect. And then you get to other spots where you're like, man, I gotta you know where I killed my buck last week in Wisconsin. If you get the right wind, it's amazing. If you get wind that's not right, and I mean real right, then you're gonna just you're gonna put that

whole valley down. And so it's really kind of dependent on that too, very very true. All right, Adam asks, I have a beard. Do you think that switching to a mustache would change my rut hunting luck? And I'll just come right out and say, absolutely, Adam, I believe that will be the case. Make the switch, Tony, Do you have any kind of opinion this? I think Adam absolutely would look amazing in a mustache, and he should definitely do it, alright. You should even maybe diet like

red or something, really really go strong with it. Just own it at them. There you go? Uh, Greeny asks, what actually triggers the rut? Does the cold weather have anything to do with it or start it? Uh? Tony, you and I have both talked about this many times, but you want to take a stab at tackle on this one for people that aren't familiar. Yep, Uh. Photo periodism,

what's that? That is the amount of daylight that those deer getting every day and how much of it's reaching their brain and those little fonds have to be born at a very specific window every spring, and we need we need this natural phenomenon called pray saturation to hit where as many fonds as possible hit in the same small period of time so that the predators just can't clean them out, just like when you have billion tab holes and little frogs in your backyard, if you have

a pond, there's a reason for that because it ensures the survival of enough of them. Now, I can't remember who said it, You've probably said it on here a billion times, but some wildlife biologists or some famous dear person said that photo period is m cocks the gun, but weather pulls the trigger. And so for us, in the interest of daylight movement and those dreamy just banging rut days, then Yeah, the weather is huge for those because you'll get that really special day if it gets

cold and it's just the right conditions. But that rut's gonna happen either way. Yeah, I think that, like you said, like another way I've heard it put is that the weather, like the photo period, daylight that impacts you know, the rut actual the breeding actually happening. The weather will reveal it in daylight. So if you have the right weather, you will simply get to see more of it and more intense daylight activity during the day when we are

out there as hunters. UM. So yeah, it's it's happening, you know right now across most states in the northern half of the country. You know, peak breeding is usually somewhere around the middle of November. UM, But it's a bell curve, so you gotta remember, like there's peak breeding in the middle, but they're still breeding, gonna be happening

earlier than that. They're still gonna be breeding happening after that, and so you know, when this podcast drops, this is kind of what most people would refer to as maybe in that lockdown period when the most dose of all year are ready to be bred and are being bred with a buck. So there was a question from someone basically just asking what are key ideas were for the lockdown stage and what to do during it and what

to do just after it. Uh So, Tony, if somebody's listening today on November or eighteenth or nineteen, and they've noticed that, man, the activity has really slowed down, not getting a lot of deer on camera. I'm not seeing much. What do you do in that situation? Man? For me, it's just getting tight to the thickest stuff and stay down wind because that those open woods, those open fields, it's just not It never happens for me in the back half of November. It's always tight cover thick stuff

in faith, lots of faith. I feel like that's a big one during the lockdown because no matter, no matter if every single dough is in heat in a particular on a particular day, there's always going to be a buck that breaks off at some point. Like it's going to happen. It's not happening super often. Maybe it's not happening as much as is happening ten days earlier. Um, that crap, did I lose you there? You did? Just for a second, all right, I'll jump right back in. Um.

You know you were hold on Mark. You were saying, there's always gonna be a buck, and then I lost you. Okay, there's always gonna be a buck that's breaking off of a dough at some point, right there will be bucks breaking off and searching out new ones. So you'll have these short windows of opportunity where there's a year again seeking out a new dough. You just have to be out there, staying focused and with faith that it can actually happen. Um. You know, it brings up though another situation,

which is what about seeing a buck locked on a dough? Um. This is something I've had happened a number of times now, and I've seen it work in my favor and I've seen it work against me. Um. And there's a lot of different thoughts on what to do. Some people see a buck better with the dough or standing with the dough and think to themselves, Man, that buck's not going anywhere. I can make a move and stalk in and try to kill them. There's other people that would never consider

doing that. Um. There's other people that will tell you that you can zoom in on that spot maybe the next morning or something, because they usually don't don't travel a whole lot when a buck's locked on the dough. Lots of times that buck will kind of push a dough into a little tiny patch of cover away from all the other deer, and they just kind of hang out in that zone or kind of close to it

for that you know, forty hours or whatever. It ends up being what's been your approach or what are the different variables that will impact how you would deal with that snarratory? You know, just you got to look at what mother nature has given you. You know, if if if you have a twenty five mile prior winds and they're they're in a approachable spot, it's time to get down and go. You know, I mean, if you have some rain and they're in a stalkable situation, it's time

to get down and go. You know, if it's two mile prior winds and it's really really dry, and you know you'd have to belly crawl across three yards of you know, pasture to get there, it's probably not time to go. It's probably time to figure out what how do I get there tomorrow morning? You know, But that's a you know, seeing that is like such a gift you know, like, yeah, it might not work your way, but seeing a buck locked on a doll like that where he's not going anywhere, and there's a lot of

ways to use that to your advantage. And so it's I look at that, go that's a that's a huge gift if you can see it, even if it doesn't go your way. Well, so many people talk about how you can't pattern a buck during the rut, right because they're so unpredictable, But this is one of those scenarios where they kind of do get predictable in most cases, at least from what I've seen. You know, when you see a buck on a doll, you know a couple

of things. You know, Number one, he's not going anywhere else, he's staying close to that dough. Number Two, you know, unless it's like chase. Like I'm not talking chasing, I'm talking like a buck standing with the dough and they're just like there. Um, I've never seen a deer like that move a ton. I've seen them kind of travel maybe from a betting ear to a food source and back, but I've never seen him cover major distance. And I've seen a pattern developed there. I killed a buck in

this exact way. I saw a buck locked on a dough follow that dough into this edge of this bedding cover, and I thought, man, that dough is gonna be right back on that edge of the food this evening. I watched this happened in the morning, and I just know that this is the foods. If a deer bed's there, that do is gonna pop back on feet to here again, you know, at four o'clock or five o'clock or whatever, and I know that buck will be with her. Sure enough.

That's what happened. Um So I think you can you can look at this as a hey, how do I move in on this pattern? And no, it's not gonna last very long, right, you've got a twenty four ort window something like that, because you don't know when they came together. Um but I I would get aggressive with that kind of thing if I see that I'm swinging for the fences because I've got more information than almost any other time when you're hunting. Um So I would

push in that kind of situation. Do you agree with that? Yeah, big time. I mean that that's really kind of the time to go for broke because that's just a that's a gift of an opportunity that's going to go away from you. You know, I mean it, and you're right, they don't really seem to go anywhere. And the other thing that occasionally happens in that situation is every other buck in the woodlot swings through down wind to see if you can take a poke at her, you know,

like there's I don't that. That's that's the cool part about the lockdown. And and here's one other thing all that's going for you. You also have the perfect um distraction, so that buck is as unfocused as he will ever be on a predator, So you might be able to get away with more than you otherwise could, because there's all sorts of other deer running around circling him. Like you said, there's the whole satellite thing going on. He's used to pushing off other bucks. He's very very focused

on protecting his his dough right there. So this is a time when you might be all sneaking close and spook some does maybe, or spook a younger buck, and he might completely ignore it, or he might not care because he's used to that running around, or he's used to other stuff going on. So don't be afraid to get a little aggressive, whether it be sneaking into stock or you know, slipping in and trying to set up a stand where you think they're not move back through

in the afternoon, or whatever it is. I think you have a number of things going for you, assuming you know conditions are right right doing that kind of aggressive move as you mentioned, if it's zero wind and super crunchy leaves, that might be a lot harder to pull pull off. UM, but you've got some things going for you, definitely. Here's another question from Joe, and it's about the same question we've got. We've got a few things around this, um lockdown doll. I don't know about this. I'd be

curious your opinion on this. Joe asks, have you seen a buck typically lockdown does again and again in the same area or is it location? Is the location dependent on the dough? So do you think that where a buck will lock down with the dough is that the buck's decision, like that's a buck thing, or is this like, well, each dough he hooks up with is going to pull him to some different place. Have you noticed this before? I'm gonna I'm gonna go on a limb and say

Joe is not married. Um, because I think the dough chooses. I don't. I don't think this is the buck's choice at all. I think that dough is like, this is where I'm going, and you come along for the ride if you want, bro, and he's like, yes, please, I will. But I think it. I don't. I don't think. I just don't think a buck could really push a dough consistently where she didn't want to go. Yeah, now here's a not a Devil's advocate kind of position, but yes,

but kind of thought. I have seen a single buck, a specific buck, lockdown with different does throughout the rut in the same general pocket, and I wonder if that's not necessarily him being in control of the situation, but rather that he finds a pocket of does and he returns to them throughout the month of November or early December, and as he returns to them, they suck him into the same general zone for that locked in because that's where this Doe family group or two Doll family groups is.

So it might kind of look like this is his zone he likes to push does, but it's more so, Hey, I found a good spot for females, and I'm returning to it multiple times. I think maybe that's what's happening big time. And you know, I mean, I'm sure so much of that is just tied to you know, a layer of thicker cover on a property. Yeah, and they're just ending up where they end up because that's where

the dough is bed and the bucks know it. Here's one that people had to deal with earlier in this month. Hopefully people aren't dealing with this in the second half of the month, but I'm sure there's gonna be people in the South Britain asks about our favorite tactics when the movement is slow and the weather is warm during what should be their rut. We already talked about how weather can kind of reveal more daylight activity. Um My take on this is I'm not doing much different when

it's warm. I'm simply knowing that I gotta push through the harder times. This kind of goes back to what you do in lockdown. You just gotta have faith, you gotta stick with your rut plan and you just know that it will happen eventually. Maybe not the middle of the day like I was hoping, but it will still happen in the morning, it will still happen in the evening. You know. I killed my buck on a eighty degree

day November one, eighty degrees. They didn't start moving ntil forty five minutes before dark, so zero movement from you know, thirty until forty five minutes before dark. But they moved at the end. Um So I don't get fancy during the warm weather. I just tough it out and kind of know in my head and this is gonna suck a little bit, but we'll make the best of it.

Anything different for you, not really. I mean, unless you have a limited water source, then yeah, you know, I'll get on that because I've seen deer that are chasing hard that will they will hit that water, you know. But otherwise, to me, you know, there's a difference between being way on top of a ridge and you know, it's eighty degrees there, or being way down in the bottom by a little creek where it might be seventy degrees and there's water, you know. I mean, little things

like that, those microclimates. But really to me, it's just like I look at it, go okay, they're not going to be probably cruising out in the wide open in the sunlight all day long when it's eighty degrees, but they're going to be looking somewhere, and again that brings you back into the cover, you know, and and and will it be subdued compared to what it would be

if it was degrees shut. But they're still there, They're still going to do their thing, and so it's a matter of just staying out there and having faith in your spots. Again, here's the flip side of that question. Crundle asks, Um, I hope that's his real name. I hope its first name is Crundle, because that would be a hell of a name. Um, you get the perfect weather event of temperatures dropping thirty five degrees overnight, but the wind direction is bad. Do you still hunt? Well?

The wind direction is bad for everything. That's what I would ask Crundle, Like, I mean, that's why, that's why you don't just pin your hopes on you know, like this is my spot, because I don't know, Like I could never imagine a situation where I wouldn't even on small, small properties like twenty acres, where you probably couldn't swung a different setup and use that weather to your advantage

and just find something new where the wind works. You always have to give up something, and maybe you have to give up a little bit more, but especially during the rut, if you're going to push it a little bit, Man, now is the time during the rut with a thirty five degree temperature drop, like sign me up, I'm out there. Find the best possible scenario, um and go with it.

Yea well, and and not only that, but like, okay, so you think, man, I have this set up and the wind sucks for it, It's like that that's a bummer. But you also have a situation where all of the bucks are going to be looking and they're gonna be using their nose. So that wind, even if it's not right for where you want to sit, is really going to position those deer and you can count on that. So in a way, even a crappy wind gives you

an advantage when the conditions are just perfect cruise. So this kind of ties into a question from a guy named Elliott Um and he basically just says, does wind directions still play a big role during the rut or is it more just if you have the dos dot

dot dot uh? And so I'm not exactly sure what he means by this, But I think I'll kind of extrapolate out to it, which is a can you get away with more stuff during the rut with wind because of the fact that they're just focused on doughs, Like, that's a question, I guess, And so my answer to that is, yeah, wind still matters. Yeah, you're still gonna get busted if you're not set up smart. So you do need to play the win. You do need this, barn about it, etcetera, etcetera. Um, but be kind of

back to what I said a minute ago. If you're ever going to try something a little bit more risky, or if you're ever going to give up a little bit more, if you're ever going to take a swinging for the fences, and um, you know, play all your cards at the house. This is not a bad time to do it. Um, So just know that you're not gonna beat their nose, So you better have a darn good chance of avoiding their nose, or you better have something that's gonna play, you know, into the strategy you want.

So don't set up in the spot where there's no chance that you can be on the up wind side of things. But if you have to maybe hunt a cutting wind, or if you have to spot, or if you have to hunt a place where, yeah, you know, to kill the buck the way I think a buck is going to use this. I'm great, but I know probably some doughs are gonna get down winding me at

some point. Um So most times I would never hunt here. Well, if you get that cold front and this is a spot the bucks always cruised through in November or whatever, you know, I might be willing to hunt this spot on that great day, even though I know there will be some does a bust me. I'll know there's a chance the bucking cruising up wind and I can kill him. Um So that's how I interpret his question. Tony Gimny,

I have thoughts on that. No, I mean, I would just say again, you know, we if you look at this like purely academically, we always think about it like, well, I'm gonna have I need a west wind that's gonna be perfect for this spot, and then you go in and it's just never really what you think sometimes, like the wind swirling or the winds doing something a little different, and so you you always go I've got you know, I've got the potential to get caught in this zone.

But I'm banking that they're going to come through here. And you know, like my my first set up in Minnesota last week on that public there was like a little ridge above a kind of cattail slew, and where I expected the deer to come from, I had like maybe fifteen degrees from the where the wind was blowing to where it would kill me. And it was just like, Okay, if they go this way, I'm in trouble. But if they do what I expect him to do here, I'm gonna be okay by a small margin. But it don't matter,

you know, even if it's two degrees. As long as they don't get me, it doesn't matter. And so you always look at that and go, well, no, spots probably gonna be super perfect, and yeah, you're gonna have to like there's there's gonna be a downside to every one of them as far as win, but like whatever, like that's just hunting, Like I don't, I don't. You don't get around that. Yeah, you have to. I was talking

about this the other day. Um, if you if you never are willing to swing, you know, for the fences, if you're never willing to hunt a great spot or push in and get aggressive with something because you're always so worried about, you know, something bad happening. You know, you're never gonna hit a home run if you're constantly just playing it safe and hitting singles over and over and again. That's great, but you're not going to be

the home run champion. Um. And when it comes to deer hunting, right, we're trying to hit a home run, It's gonna happen once, maybe twice if we're really lucky over the course of a whole hunting season. Um. Never. If you never swing for it though, So yeah, you gotta give up something. You gotta go for it when the time's right, when situations right, when the setup is right. Yeah. Well, and you know, and you do get a little bit of a little bit of grace from the deer during

the rut to. I mean, like that buck that I killed in Wisconsin. He came in from a direction I would have told you it was not going to happen, and he spotted my cameraman getting into position and got a little bit wiggy, but had to go by us to get to where he wanted to go, and gave me a shot, and so we made mistakes that you might not get away with any other time of the season, and then we still you know, he still gave me a chance. It was a fleeting, lucky to go my

way opportunity. But you know, like that, in a lot of situations that does not happen, but during the rut, you could get it. Yeah, Okay, here's a question that um I talked a little bit about last week when I was discussing my kill. Um, but I'm curious about

your take on this. Tony Mitchell asks during this rut time period, so this could be November or maybe even early December when you get that second rout, or you know, different parts of the country we've got later ruts in that during this rout period, I'm struggling to get bucks to stop for a shot. They're always chasing or locked on a door and moving. Any ideas just murp them a little louder and a little more persistently. I mean, sometimes they don't stop, but most of the time you

can get them to stop. So, so, yes, what's your I had this situation last week where I had like a buck that was moving, stopping, moving, stopping, moving, stopping, moving, stopping, And I made the impulse of the impulse decision of mrping when I probably didn't have to murp, and that caused him to jump the string in a big way. So what's been your experience with that when it's not necessarily a chasing buck, but a buck that's you know,

been on the move, stopping, starting, stopping, starting. I think in the moment I was so paranoid about him taking another step and hitting him back that I I aired towards man. I just want him stopped for sure. Um. And then that that led to him moving down instead of forward. Um. How have you dealt with that situation? It's so no intellectually what to do, but it's so hard to do it in the moment when you've got

a thousand things happening. Yeah. Well, and the enemy of most of us being closers is our paranoia that they're going to get away, right, and so it is really easy to default to murping them even when you don't need to. And so it's just you kind of kind of just read it. I mean that the buck that I shot last week, I had two shooting holes that he was going to go through this trail and there's really thick stuff, and I murped him on the first one and he didn't stop, and imurped him louder on

the second one and he stopped. But that was it. If he if he'd got through there another foot, it's over. And so in that situation, you're looking at like, I don't have a choice that situation, and you're talking about, Yeah, in hindsight, you probably should have just shot him, but it's so hard to just let that go without like I need to make this happen this way now. And so I think it's I mean, this is a really tough thing to talk about because even with lots of experience,

you get it wrong a lot. But my thing that you know, with the original question, if you've got a buck that's trucking through there, and you know, it's like do or die time, Now, I'm gonna make that dude stop or I'm gonna scare him, because what do you have to lose? You know? And sometimes you know, like the buck I shot last year and the beginning of one week in November, that dude was he was cruising.

I murped him like five times before he stopped, and he was fifteen yards away, you know, but it's like I just gotta ramp up the frequency across your fingers, you know, So in that case, you make a bunch of noise to finally get this buck to stop. Do you aim low? Would you always say aim low in that kind of situation because you're assuming jump string scenario or what? Yeah, I would tell everybody that, I promise you I've never done that once. Like I don't have

enough brain power. When I've got one right there, I tend to just get that pin where I think it needs to be, and I don't. I don't think like, well three inches lower because he's gonna drop, you know. And you know, sometimes like on that buck you shot, if you watch that versus the buck that I shot, and I think yours was like maybe five yards farther than mine. But when I watched the footage of the buck that I shot, he didn't get out of the

way hardly at all. Yeah, And so you know it's kind of like, gosh, you know, which deer is it, and what specific conditions and what mood did you catch them in? And what are they thinking about? And so it's it's a crapshoot, man. Yeah, it really is. There's no perfect answer for every scenario because they're all different. Yep Uh. Arrows North asks a question that I think we all, I think most of us dealt with something like this over the last week, which is, how do

you morning hunt a new location. Do you prefer to hang in the pitch dark well before daylight or do you wait for pink light so you can see stuff? What do you do? I hate hanging stands in the dark. Um I did it to you know, our setups, whether I was using stands or I was using saddles. Um. If I have a tree scouted out, which is what I usually try to do, then and and this is a lesson that I learn a lot is don't say you scouted out a tree until you stood there and

you thought about it for like twenty minutes. Like I'm going up this side and I'm hanging off this side, and my shots are here, or you know, my sticks, like I'm setting them up this way, like because it's so easy to walk into a spot and be like, there's my tree, and then walk out and come back. And then you get there and it is way more crooked or way more gnarly than you think, and so I try to make it so I can set up in the darkest quietly as possible and be there way

before first light and up. But if you're not that confident, you know, if you don't have a bunch of experience doing that, you know, right right at first light might be the way to go. Yeah, you know, especially in the rut when a lot of times the best activity is actually late in the morning. Anyways, when you're getting those bucks that start cruising, you know, nine o'clock, ten o'clock, ten thirty or whatever it is. Um, you might be a get away with that first light kind of scenario

if you're back in a betting your ar something. UM. I like to be set up before dark as well. I get in there like two hours ahead of time, just because I'm I'm worried about noise. I'm worried about all that kind of stuff. So I get in there super early. I set up. I always my approach is slow, slow and smooth and quiet, so I don't worry about rushing it. I try to take my time, do it right, do it quiet, um, and then I can sit and be there for fourty or five minutes before daylight and

just feel like everything's calmed down around me. But yeah, it's not fun. It's not easy. It's always disappointing when it gets daylight out and you see, I know there's a branch there, and there's a branch there, and you know I've had this past week for example, I was fortunately we had a lot of windy days, so you know, there was one day where I got down midday and did a bunch of limb trimming because I got set up in the spot and dark, that looked like it

would work. And then when I got daylight, I realized, holy smokes, there's almost nowhere I can shoot um because of how thick the cover wasn't there. So I used that wind to open up a couple of lanes. So yeah, that's what the air towards. But it's it's not foolproof doing it that way, no, I mean, it's so much better to have a stand up and just walk out to it and follow your nice tag trail and climb in quietly. Yeah, man, that's for sure what I thought

about that this year. How even though I mostly saddle hunt on like my local stuff that I hunt year after year after year, at a minimum, I think I'm gonna like put ladders or tree steps up more trees just to make just to take that step out of least of um of extra spots, you know, because it does get tiring setting up a mobile, set up up and down, up and down, you know, seven days in a row. Well, and it honestly, it doesn't make that much sense if you could set up ahead of time.

You know, Yeah, you're gonna do the work. Why not do it ahead of time so that it's easier while you're hunting. It's quieter while you're hunting. Putt in that work earlier in the year when it won't hurt you. Yep. Um Rick asks, if I'm honeting all day, that means I have to pee. Just go from the stand, take a bottle. What do you do? This is one that people always ask, um Tony, what do you do? Let her fly? Buddy? Yeah? Same here, Yeah, it doesn't matter,

it doesn't matter. Okay, what about number two? Let her fly? Life that stand? Our buddy Dan Johnson does that? My uh, I was joking with my camera man a lot about that this year, that he liked to do that while he made eye contact with me the whole time. No, I mean I think number two, you know, maybe get down and save yourself some embarrassment. I guess I don't know.

I mean, I'm sure there's situations where you could just drop a bomb off there and okay, But in all seriousness, do you think that if you had to do that, that a deer would be get freaked out by that smell or be like attracted to it, Like what is this? I have a hard time believing they'd be attracted to it. Uh, but I don't think they'd be spooked by it. See, I've wondered. I've never had this happen, so I've never seen it, but I wonder, like it would it be

like a curiosity thing like holy ship? What is that? And um kind of just like swing further down wind of it and be you know, curious, like what is this? Um? Because it'd be like an overwhelming smell that's different than the usual UM. I've worried about that. Like, so I've positioned if I have to do it, like, I won't poop up wind, I'll go I'll go down win where a deer would win me. Anyways, So you gotta be gotta be tactical of all decisions, don't it Jesus Christ.

I don't know, man, I guess you just have to experiment and drop a growler in different spots and see how they react. I don't know. We'll cut. We'll report back on this in a few years once we have more experience. Okay, how about one more and then we'll wrap this up so that folks can get out to the woods. Um, my rutcation is coming to the end. What is one auto the box idea I should consider for mid to late November on my next chance. Mm hmm, you know. I mean, I guess you would say maybe

try to still hunt or something like that. I mean, I think that that person is looking for you know, use a decoy or you know, get out there and rattle. But I wouldn't. I mean, maybe I'm too boring for this. But my my shake it up strategy is always just to ask myself a question like where where's a wild spot? I never hunt that they could just be there, Like where where have I written off? Or where am I just like that's not the place? And is it now?

Like is it worth? Like? Is there is there enough curiosity there to just take a flyer on a day and be like I'm gonna go someplace that I just for whatever reason, hasn't drawn me in before. But I'm not seeing him here. I'm not seeing him here, and I'm gonna go, I'm just gonna take a leap on one of these and go find it. And I say that because I've done that a lot. Like my dad was like that with his hunting. He would do stupid ship all the time, and you're like, why are why

are you doing this? And he's like, I was just curious to see if they'd come in there. And it's sometimes works because it's not typical white tail hunting. Yeah, I agree with that. Um. The one other thing I would add would be to kind of do the opposite

in order to find that place. And so what I mean by that is once you get to you know, the second or the last third of never November, let's say there's been a lot of hunting pressure in most places, and in many states there's already been a gun season that's kicked into gear. So now deer have really changed

their patterns. Um, stuff is different in late November than it was two weeks ago, significantly different than it was six weeks ago, and since the rut hit let's say late October, the first couple weeks of November, most of us have been like diving into our honey hooles. We've been hunting our best stuff. We're in the thick cover, we're hunting deal betting areas, we're hunting pinch points, back

and cover. Whatever it is. We're in the stuff. Um, the end of November might be a time to go to an observation stand, go to somewhere where you can glass or see some new country or just maybe not see far, but just observe something different and try to learn. Like, if you're not in them, now, get out and find where they are. So either like you said, plunge into that off the wall place that you never go to, or get to a place where you can watch several

spots like that. Maybe you are just driving the back roads and glassing different spots, but just figure out, you know, if you don't know this already, I would recommend trying to take a day off from your rut grind maybe and on November twenty three or whatever, seek out where is that new hotspot of activity, Where is that little spot, Where is the sink that all the deer have pushed into? Because of pressure everywhere else that maybe you weren't expecting. Um.

So that's one more idea that you know. I don't think many people would do observation sits in November, but if you don't know where they're at at this point, you might need to rEFInd and figure out what these deer are doing to adjust to that pressure. So that's that's an idea. You could also, you know, have an enormous meal at Taco Bell and then drink some espressos and then go out there and just blow mud all the way around your standard wait for the curiosity to

kick in. You know that that's a really good way to come three sixty on this wrap wrap, put a bow on it, and uh give you some real original content here and wired to hunt folks. So we are really breaking some boundaries here, buddy. I think we've we've really set the stage for the end of our careers. But so it goes uh any final thoughts tony four, we send folks on their way. Just keep going. Figure out a way to stay warm, you know, handwarmers, whatever.

You gotta do, the right food, the right entertainment. However, you got to do it and keep after it because there's still some time loft. Yeah, it's possible. Um, know that there will be slow days, Know that there are going to be some moments of suck, but enjoy it for what it is, stick it out, have fun and uh good things are still ahead big time. Thanks Tony, thank you, and that's a wrap. Thank you all for tuning in. Appreciate it. Hope your November has been great

so far. I hope the second half of the month is even better if you're still after it. Wishing you all the luck in the world. Appreciate you being a part of this community. Make sure you were following all the stuff we've got going on over at wired Hunt and the media, your website, and until next time, thank you. Get out there and stay wired to