Ep. 635: Deciphering High-Value Deer Sign During Winter Scouting Sessions with Aaron Warbritton

You guessed it. This is not Mark Kenyon's voice. It's the old second stringer Tony. Mark is off recovering from a surgery that I guess doesn't sound too serious. Apparently he got a Brazilian butt lift so that he can fit into his saddle a little bit better and be a little bit more comfortable on those all day sits this fall. So I don't know, feel free to wish him a speedy recovery or whatever. Today I have the

one and only Aaron Warburton on. Aaron is most well known for being the glue that holds the hunting public together, but he also happens to be an absolute white tailed slayer. Today we're talking about the sign you should look for while winter scouting, and about the sign that probably won't do you much good even though it looks like it should. This is a really informative episode and I think you're

gonna love it. And as I always, thank you so much for tuning in war about you doing, buddy, I'm doing. I'm pretty good. I'm cold, but I think that counts with just being in the midst of winner. But you know all about that. I know all about it, buddy. This winter has been a long, long winter, and it makes me you know, you know, I don't know how this happens. You never know when you're getting old, but

you start to have these little reminders. And I always thought, like, you know, growing up, you'd hear about somebody who was a snowbird, and I was like, that's so weird, Like you just go spend the winter in Arizona or Florida. And now I'm at the point where I'm like, how the hell can I make that happen? Because being up here, you know, locked in this arctic ship for five months, it's a lot, but it gives us a few opportunities with a deer, which isn't so bad. I guess, yeah,

that's right. I'm in the same boat I ten twelve years ago. I was a young buck that you know nothing. I know, there was no mountain too big, you know. But now it's like four or five days a tent somewhere freezing my butt off. It's like, man, I need to really go somewhere to get some legitimate sleeper and there or two and regards my batteries. Yeah, I hear it. Part of your problem is probably having to manage that entire THHP crew there and kind of be the mother

hend of the whole thing. Huh yeah, yeah, oh yeah, we got we got quite the litany of personalities amongst our group. Do you had that call this morning and like, it's just so so much diversity within our group and so many different perspectives. It keeps you on your toes though. Yeah, you guys have I mean, you've done such a good

job with that and you just expanded so much. But what's it like just with the you know, the content production that you guys have going on, you have to kind of feel like you're always like one step ahead of the combine and it's just running you down the whole time. Yeah, it always. It's always like that through the season, NonStop. This last year, we kind of trimmed back the amount of videos that we put out and we tried to do like a better job with them

as far as the production goes. But they did pretty well, and I think the viewers. The viewers liked them, but I think they liked our old style more where we were just doing stuff. You know, as we went this last year, we gave ourselves like three or four days to get a video out, so that gave us more time to kind of relax and work on the video. You know, maybe instead of editing six hours every night, you're only editing a couple hours and then eventually getting

it done. But I think we're going to go back to I don't know if that's for better or worse. It's definitely for worse on us to go back to editing videos every night, but um, people definitely seem to like that. They seem to get more value out of that from our at least our audience does. So I think that's what we're going to go back to. But to answer your question a long winded fashion is it's pretty trying. I lose I still lose ten to fifteen

pounds every spring and every fall. Yeah, gets around Christmas and my face starts thinking in my mom's text to me every other day, like are you alive? Are you gonna make it? Like yeah, by it's it's a heavy lift man. And it might not be directly relatable to a lot of the audience when you say you gave yourself three or four days, or you gave you know, the crew three or four days to put out a video, you know, editing wise, and anybody who's ever edited a

long form video knows that that's not very much time. Still, So when you when you crunch down, that's a that's a stress filled situation, over and over and over again. Yeah, especially when you're thinking about the hunt and like just being on the road on one of these hunts. You know, it's like fifty percent of your time is just surviving, or fifty percent of your focus is just like what food do I have to eat today? Where am I going to sleep? Where it's dry? Do I have all

my equipment in order? Do I have all my gear in order? What's the weather going to do tomorrow? How you know where am I going to hunt? All these things are going through your mind, and that is literally a full lift for somebody just on its own. And then you introduce like every night you've got to catalog this footage and then sit in the truck and you know, edit it and then find a way to get enough WiFi to upload it somewhere, either be it through your

smartphone or a Starbucks that's thirty miles away. Like there's just a there's it's a lot. But that's that's why there's there's no way we could do it without our group. For an everybody has to wear a number of different hats and to get the job done. I think what you said there, uh the logistics of it of just one out of state hunt, Like, I think that's that's

the sort of piece of the puzzle. We haven't really discussed a lot when we talk about hunt planning and doing you know, doing these over the road hunts and selling this idea that you should go try to shoot

a deer over state line somewhere. Is just the amount of thinking you have to do, not only like we kind of boil it down like, oh, e scout, find your spot, get in there, you know, burn through there be mobile hunt and it's it's tied around that stuff, but it's not tied around like nearly it's tightly like where are you going to stay? And like what what food are you going to have? And how good of a sleep you know, pernight are you gonna get? Like all of these things. You know, if you get a

flat tire or how do you get it? Like can you change it? Like where do you go for that? Exactly? Like do you have jumper cables in your car? It's the most basic thing ever. But if you go out there and you're in the middle of nowhere and you know your car dies or whatever, what are you gonna do? Like how are you going to figure that out? In some of the places we go, you're not allowed to camp, and you know, the nearest place where you can camp

maybe thirty miles away. So you have to deal with all that before and during your hunt, and it takes an enormous amount of time. I mean, on five to six day hunt, the first day or two is spent

dealing with that stuff. Yeah, half the time. Well then, and like you said, I mean I was bitching to my wife about this at the end of this season because you know, I'm sure you guys do this too, where you go through a whole season, you know, you know, you hunt quite a bit, and you're like, can I just get the right weather, like for three days in a row. It's like it always feels like you're just

fighting the weather. And it's you know, seventy five degrees, you know, November fifth, and you're like, what the hell? And then you know a rainstorm comes in for three days and you're like, can I just you know, like when we when we plan these hunts and we start thinking about them, we're like, Okay, I'm going into this spot or I'm going to hunt this chunk of public.

It's it's really easy to just kind of ignore the fact that mother Nature is going to throw something at you that sucks, and you know you kind of like factor it in. If it's an early season hunt, you're like, Okay, i'm gonna be around some water. You're gonna think about a little bit. But so often, you know, like fifty sixty seventy percent of your hunts in the fall, you get weather that is like actively working against you. Like it's not even like a net neutral or a positive.

It's like it's it's trying to make it rough for you. And it's like almost impossible to factor that in when you're planning, So you have to cover that other stuff, like the logistics of where you're gonna stay and how you're gonna eat and how you're gonna get there and all that stuff, because you know, if you do it enough, there's all these things you haven't thought about that are coming in that are gonna kick your ass in some little way and just make it tougher. Oh yeah, that water.

I mean, it's the most basic thing ever. But if you're staying somewhere and you're and you're trying to be as efficient as possible and spend as much time hunting as possible, you gotta have a way to have water. And if you don't have if you don't have the means to have it while you're there and have enough of it stored in your vehicle, then you got to have a way to get more of it in some way. So yeah, all those little details survival survivaling is what

Zinger calls it. But all those little details are like overlooked by a lot of people that are just getting into this. It's like, holy crap, what am I gonna do? Yeah? Well, no, once they get there. I was when I was elk hunting earlier, you know, elk hunting in the beginning of

September this year. You know, my buddy that I'm hunting with, he's from Colorado and he's he's so good in the mountains, and you know, I'm this idiot that comes from Minnesota, and what we you know, we were kind of doing some stuff where we'd go in and look at a spot or going to spend a day in a spot and just try it out in different areas. And I'd be like, why don't we just vivy in here? And you know, if we're gonna if we're gonna do the heavy lift of getting in there, why don't we stay

for a couple of days? And like twenty seven times that week, He's like, there's no water, dude, we don't have any water, so we can't, like we can't just go in there and get it. And I always forget that, you know, like you you just sort of take it for granted if you think, oh, I'm just gonna I'm gonna hike in here, and it's like, well, water is heavy, and if you can't filter it, what are you gonna do?

And it's it's not so simple. I mean, that's that's kind of a Western thing, but like you're talking, it can be a white tail concern too. Oh yeah, if you're a waste from in a gas station or town or whatever, what are you gonna do? I mean, sometimes we're able to filter it if we can camp Like we did that in Georgia a few years ago when we were hunting down there per deer. We just can't next to a stream, and then we filtered with our

storrier like bag filters. We just fill that thing up every night and then we'd wake up in the morning our jugs would be full where we would filter it out. But we didn't figure that out until we got there. It's like we got there and we found this cool campsite, and then we're like, okay, where what are we gonna do for water? We have some obviously in the truck, but yeah, there's all those things that you just don't

think about very often. You're staring at the map trying to figure out where a deer's gonna be, or where people are gonna be so you can avoid them, and then you get there and then all of those other things are thrown in and then on top of that, we're also trying to you know, have our computers plugged in the generator so that they don't die and all of that. It's yeah, it's an ordeal out there, the

traveling rodeo always. Yeah. I think that if you're listening to this, you should and you're planning a you know, an out of state hunt or you've you've gone on one and maybe it didn't go the way you thought it would. Take some solace in the fact that Aaron Warbritton and his crew have been been to seven thousand different states over the last ten years, and you guys have hunted everywhere, done everything, and you still don't have

a system that just always works everywhere. It's just no matter what you do, you're going to be dealing with that stuff. Oh yeah, always gonna be hurdles always. So I wonder. I always wonder with you guys, And that's that's what I want to talk to you about on this podcast, is how how hard it is to maintain that balance of you know, you you have a business aspect to it in a content production aspect that the listener doesn't. The average person doesn't. So that's that's kind

of out the window for this conversation. But knowing that you have that and you're going to hit a bunch of different states, and you know, Jake's got a tag here,

Tag's got a tag here, whatever, how is it? How easy is it or hard is it for you to keep a balance of like thinking about what the deer should be doing while you're managing, like juggling all the logistics of that life outside of just like the mission focus of killing a deer, because that's what most people when they go out there, they're like, that's my concern. They don't have the other things that you're worried about, necessarily, but they have that like how do I find the deer?

And like, how do you balance that? Because you have all that other stuff going on? Whoever's got the tag, we've more. We try to let them worry about only that. So we try to help whoever has the tag as much as we can. And I mean just from the standpoint of make sure that they have all the gear that they need for a day to get to go out and go honey, make sure they got food, make sure they got water, all that stuff that we just talked about. Make sure that all of those other things

are buttoned down. Like we're in Arkansas. For example, Nick was cooking every night, so as soon as he would get done filming or hunting or whatever it is that he was doing, he'd come back to the camp and he'd start cooking food and he'd cook enough food for everybody there. And then I had a tag, but Greg was filming me. So Greg's priority is just filming and capturing footage, and my priority is trying to figure out

how to kill the deer. So you guys have our roles and you just say, yeah, we have our different roles, and then we go to the next place and then we switch and you know, I'm filming and editing or whatever it is. And that's kind of how we roll. We usually end up with groups of like three four guys when we go somewhere, and we may only have one tag or two tags, but the everybody's got their role is in camp so that all of those things

are taken care of. Yeah, because I've had to do that where you're juggling tend everything and never ends well, it's just like never well, And I mean that's kind of a that's the situation, you know, I've talked about quite a bit where it's amazing, you know when you when you do enough hunts over the road where you know, you take a buddy along and their wife calls and she's pissed off before you even get there, and you see how it changes, changes the dynamic, changes the mission,

and it's never for the better. Or you know, like we talked about, something goes wrong. You know, you get the second flat tire in three days and you got to deal with that and you got a half a day into town to Wally World to get it changed or whatever. And you see how quickly just things can just sort of suck away the focus, and man, it just makes it that much harder to be successful out there. So you guys have kind of just morphed into understanding who has you know, ABCD role on the hunt? You

stick to it and everybody. Once everybody has that kind of defined role, it's like, Okay, now all these pieces are working together and not take can away from the other one and you can just keep going and killing deer. Yeah,

that's essentially how we do it. Oh that's interesting. I think I think it would be really easy for a lot of people to assume, you know, with a guy like you and all the content you guys produce in the fall and all the travel and time away from home and everything that when it hits you know, January, February, March, like we're at now, you're probably like, I don't want to be in the woods. I don't want to think about deer. I don't want to have to deal with this.

But you're actually really into winter scouting. We were talking about this before the podcast, and you kind of view it as sort of almost a relief from not having to hunt and getting to answer some questions for yourself. Oh yeah, all the mistakes that you make throughout the fall. Because my buddy Joe Elsinger puts it a real good way. He basically said, bow hunting is like you get one

or two guess is right all year. So when you're hunting, you you're gonna guess like forty or fifty times times if you hunt that many times in a given year, and if you guess right one time, you're going to end up with potentially a filled tag. And that's kind of what you're doing all fall is You're just you're going in there and you're making a mistake. After mistake

after mistake. Now before you go into those individual hunts, you think you got to think to yourself and have the confidence like I'm going into this betting area, this big bucks betted right here, and he's going to come out on this trail. But you know, ninety five percent of the time it doesn't work like that. I say percent of the time. Yes, I mean you blow him out of there, he's not there, he comes in from a different direction than you weren't expecting, your wind switches.

I mean, we could go on for weeks with things that happen, but essentially that's what you're doing in postseason right now, or that's what I like to do, is like go back and solve for all the mistakes that I made throughout the fall, So go in. For example, I was hunting a really big one last fall for like a week and a half where I had pictures of him in an area that was new to me.

I had scouted it before a little bit, but I haven't scouted the whole piece, and he was coming out of this set of ridges that I'd never been into before, and I didn't want to just dive right in there and blow him out because I was getting him on two or three cameras. They're pretty regular, and like, I got a chance at him before the pressure really hits here and the rut because this was the late October hunt. It was at Iowa, Okay, Yeah, and Iowa where we're at,

the pressure really ramps up early in November. And I was getting this buck mid October into the late October. I'm like, and I was getting pictures of him on an access path like I had. I had a camera set up there to monitor people and deer over a scrape, but I did not expect to get any deer during daylight on this thing. I figured it might get a big buck or two, but I figured it was gonna

be a two in the morning. But this thing starts showing up right on the edge of daylight and a couple of times during daylight walking this trail, and I didn't get any pictures of people for like two weeks down this thing, and it was like unbelievable. I was getting pictures texted, you know, to my phone on this cell camera, and I had no I would just assume that there was going to be people in there all the time, and I knew there would become November because

that's when the floodgates open. Everybody saves their weeklong vacation hunts first week in November happens every year, So I knew I had to kill this thing really quick, well, if I was to kill him anyway. I got in there and I tried to be as aggressive as I could without bumping him out of the area. But I was unfamiliar with it, and I never saw him. I hunted in there like ten different times over the course of a few weeks. Never saw the buck. So now

getting back to it, it's postseason. I want to go in there and figure out where in the heck he was coming from and what he was doing. And I can kind of saw for some of those equations that were left unanswered. Right now, I might not be able to figure everything out, but I might be. I can go in there with a clear mind. Now, just blow the whole thing up, dive into those ridges, and figure out everything that went on last fall. Because you can't do that in the faller you risk flowing him out,

you know, and then having to start over. What do you what would you say to somebody who would be like I have watched Zach Farronbell run across much of the Midwest. Yeah, and seem to seem to go through everything, because that's the way you're talking. Seems like a much different style than the way he would go about it. Sometimes we both hunt, we both hunt similarly. Actually, it

just depends on the situation. Like if I'm going in somewhere where I have no intel whatsoever, I'm going to get the wind in my face and be super aggressive, and I might even plow right through betting areas because I'm searching for a buck to hunt, or I'm searching for a good spot, and you keep the wind in your face because if you bump one with the wind in your face and he doesn't smell you, there's a better chance that he's not going to react as negatively

as he would if he did smell you. Yeah, But in this situation, I had intel telling me there was a big buck in there, and he was really close to that spot, so I didn't you know, I didn't go in there completely blind, and I wasn't as aggressive as I would have others as I would have been otherwise. Now, for better or worse, that's just how it worked out.

I'm glad you explained that because I think it's easy to look at you guys kind of like it's always just foot on the gas, but it's foot on the gas in specific situations till there's a good reason to pump the brakes and then you know, and that's something it's so hard to sort of convey that message a lot of times when you talk about like a kind of an aggressive mobile strategy, is like, that's a great strategy in some situations if you know how to rein

it in or use it. Like so it's not just like this cavalier thing where you're like, I don't care if I blow them out because they're gonna come back whatever. It's not. It's not so simple like there's a there's a given take there where you're like, I know, I need to know more now, and as soon as I start learning just enough, then it's time to just back off and go now I play it safe and figure

out what's what's going on here. Oh yeah, definitely. We've bump and dumped a few of them over the years, but every time it's it's under very specific scenarios like that. I mean, you'll even see us when we're when we're hunting out west and we're being super aggressive and trying to get in the bed with them. We're glassing from a high nob or something early in the morning. We're trying to spot him first and then get that little piece of intel and then booms, go in there and strike. Um.

It just is so situational. Yeah, I mean, spooking a buck in the rut that's locked down with the dough is much different than spooking a buck in early October and he smells you and say you're hunting a betting area that's at the corner of public, and you walk into that bettering area, blow him out, and he goes on the private next door. He may not visit that

betting area again for a few weeks. Conversely, or in a different example, if you got four thousand acres of timber and there's a couple really solid spots in the middle of it, you got more room for error because if you bump them out of there, they may only go through four hundred yards before they reset, and that may still be on property you can hunt on. So

it all depends on the situation you're dealing with. Well, yeah, and I think I think it's really easy especially if you hunt public land to just kind of convince yourself, if I jump him, this program's over for a while. But man, there's so many times where, like you said, depends how the wind's going, like what kind of a

bump was it? Like, you know, like what happened? You know, it's so different kind of trucking through there looking for some sign and seeing a white flag go off in the distance on the other end of the clearing or something versus you know, climbing up in that tree and looking over and he's watching you set it up and now he takes off, or you know what, there's like I've started, you know, I grew up thinking, you know,

if they saw you, you're done. If you jumped him, you're done like they or you're never going to see anything. And the more you hunt, you realize, like, man, it's not so simple. Like sometimes you jump a big one and you think it's over and you set up and he comes back like forty five minutes later, and you're on public land and you're like this is like this should not happen. And then sometimes you don't see him again for three weeks or they are truly gone and

it's there's so much to it. But what I want to go back to something you said with you know, Joe's advice on you know, you might you might make two good guesses right out of fifty in a season, and that that's like almost universally true for unless you have like a really banging spot to hunt, that's kind

of a different kind of deal. But for most people, I believe that, Like I I think that the best hunters have just figured out how to get comfortable with what they got wrong, and they've figured out these things like we're talking about with the winner scouting, where you're like, I'm not happy with that with only two. I want three or four because if I do three or four, you know, that might be three or four encounters and I might kill two, you know, because if you get

two right, you might have those two encounters. You might have buck fever on wine, he might you know whatever. But you know, yeah, at that point when you're bow hunting, I mean, there's a lot of luck involved. Once it gets to that point, it's like just getting the opportunity. Though. If you can get yourself in those positions, you will eventually start killing more of them. Yeah, I mean, yeah,

I mean you just don't. I mean I hunted forty some times with a bow in Iowa, and most people are like, oh, yeah, you know, you go to Iowa for a week in the rut, you're gonna shoot one fifty on public lant. It's like, and maybe you, but not, um, not not this year. At least um some years it does work that way. But this year, I just I had three or four bucks that I knew about that

we're really either there. There was one of them was really old that I was trying to kill, and then there was a couple more that were really big antler bucks, and I had just kind of played them close to my vest and tried to those deer for a large percentage of the fall. And I regret doing that, honestly. I wish I would have done way more stuff like we were just talking about, where you just go in blind to an area into the wind and you kind of figure it out as you go. I seem to do.

I seem to almost do better as far as stilling tags doing that then I do. Sitting back and watching cameras and things like that, Like trail cameras will totally screw your brain up at times, if you put too much information or if you infer too much from that information. But these deer, there was one that was really, really big, and it's like, man, I got a couple of pictures of him. I didn't think none of it, and then he showed up on daylight and daylight on that camera.

It's like, man, he's right there, he's living there close by. You don't get an opportunity to hunt one that is this big very often on public. So I just threw a bunch of hunts at him and never did any good. If I could go back and redo things, it would have been or aggressive. Yeah, but he was showing up on these cameras, So it's like you're you know, what

decision do you make? Do you sit right there where the camera's at, or pretty close by where he's gonna where he's coming by there occasionally it's safe you can get in and out of there, or do you push in even further? And I did a little bit of both with no success. But that's why I want to go back in there right now, is to kind of figure out what I screwed up, or what I did wrong, or where he potentially could have been. Because I'm assuming I'll learn a bunch of things and see a bunch

of mistakes that I made. Yeah, that the way you're talking is exactly how I feel. If I want to have an unenjoyable season, just show me a picture of a really big buck where I'm hunting, Because I don't. I start to second guess, and I feel like it sort of just takes me out of that like day to day rhythm of what did you see? What sign did you bump into? Like what's what's going on right now? And for me, I know some people are really good

at that. That is not my style either. And I look at this like like you're talking about when you find that situation, you know, you look at it and go, Okay, you had this giant, you had some intel on him, you know, going down this trail you didn't expect doing a few things maybe you weren't Like You're like, maybe he shouldn't be doing that, but he is. So what now?

But you go in there and what you learn from that or what you will with this winner scouting, that'll feed so much of your hunting beyond the interest in that buck, whether he's still there or not or whatever. And that's I learned that years ago on some public land by my house in the Twin Cities where I found a giant shit. My dog actually found it, and it changed the course of like a couple years of my life because this was like a booner on public

land buy my house in the Twin Cities. You know, like a situation where you're like, yeah, and you know, I actually found that buck the first time I went into glass where I thought he was going to be, and there he was, and there was two other good ones with him, and I was like, oh my god, and it dude. I hunted for thirty days straight for that deer, and you know, I left one day because I had to go to a funeral and I was like, it got to the point where I was like, I

don't I'm not enjoying it. I ended up killing the smallest buck that was in the trio, which was still a good one. He was the one that stuck around, I don't. I think he was the only one who didn't go live in somebody's backyard because there's some subdivisions and stuff there. But what it made me do is I win or scouted the crap out of that area. There was cattail slews and stuff, and I just found some spots where it's like, Okay, I'm never gonna kill

that booner. Probably I thought I had a chance, didn't work out. But what it did is it put me on some spots that other bucks used for years and just showed me like, Okay, that special deer was there and he was doing that thing that wasn't an accident, and other deer or kind of satellite around him and doing similar things, and it just makes you look at

that offseason process differently. And even though maybe that dear's the motivation, what you're out there finding is just like I'm just learning about the bucks here and what they like to do year to year, and that's so valuable. Well, right now you have no foliage on ye, which is a tremendous asset. If it's cold enough, things are frozen, so you can get to places a lot quicker than

you could have otherwise. And on top of that, you're basically looking at a chessboard after the game has been played, and you're able to look at all these moves that were made by you and them in a sense and then assess what went wrong. So I go in there, And I think a lot of people get tripped up when we get to talk about hunting beds. They go in there postseason and they find some beds with hair in them and they're like, Okay, I gotta hunt right

here over this bed. Like, No, don't think about it that way, because deer in March in February may be in completely different spots than they were in October and November. Like they may be using that area for different reason. Now, that's good that you found the sign, but think about why it's there and what else is going on in their environment during that time. But I would I really get pumped up about is finding scrapes from last fall.

Finding rubs from last fall. You can even look at like some rubs you can tell what time of the fall they were laid down. Like you may find a group of rubs that is starting to get they look older, like they just are they're kind of cresting over, they're losing that color, that brighter color, and you may be able to infer that those were left when the velvet was coming off in September from a bachelor group. You know it was feeding on an oak flatter or whatever.

But then you may find other rubs that are fresher that came towards the back half of the rut. That deer's doing something entirely different than the other deer that would leaving those rubs there. And the biggest thing is, and we talked about this before the podcast, because I want to get into the middle of those thick, nasty and early betting areas and I want to scout every

trail in and out of them. I want to find the beds that are in there, because those are the areas A lot of times those really thick betting areas, and some are not that thick. I mean it's situation once again, but some of those betting areas they will use during different times of the year. They may or may not be there right now, but it may be a situation where if oaks drop and there's a bunch of white oak acorns in there in early October, they may be you know, socked in there during October and

bow season. Ye see, you always have to kind of be thinking ahead and behind, like how the deer using the landscape as so much as changing, because that's always I feel like that's where I always get tripped up from where so many people do is they don't realize in the White Tills world, things are changing every single week, not just throughout the fall, but also throughout the winter

and even the summer at times. But if you can find some commonalities in the secure areas that they're using to live in, then you can take some of that information directly from march scouting and tie it into what you find. Like you're talking about finding that shed. If you find a shed or a deadhead or something like that, especially if you scout that area in multiple years and you find big dead bucks in there over and over again, there's something secure about that area and those bucks are

choosing to go there to die. And you'll find that the more you track dear that people hit in the fall and that they hit marginally, it's like they will go to their most secure location where they feel the safest, and they will give away a lot of their cards right there in those moves when they do that, So you can you're looking for all those little bit of clues to kind of tie together. But you can learn

so much, especially with that foliage being off Man. That's I scout a lot in the summer because that's the time when I have available as well. A lot of times we scout in February, in January and then the first remarks, But then you know, we leave a go turken, so we pick up our scout and again in the summer. But it is so much harder in the summer to find last fall sign because it's just green and full

of ticks and hotter than hell. So yeah, I mean I kind of look at it like my winter scouting is the time for me to learn the land first and the deer second. Yes, summer I'm learning deer what they're what are they doing now that I can play into like on an opening week or whatever type of strategy,

and then the land second. And I'll tell you what man like when you said that about when you go out, you know, you walk out there in March and you look at rubs and you find a you know, a giant you know, signpost type rub that's got a ton of shavings, you know, still kind of hanging off of it, and you're like that that's like November first or Halloween. You know, like that big bastard he spent some time

on it. And you're like, that's great. But when you find those that concentration of rubs in a different spot, maybe out a little closer toward the fields or something, and it's like, Okay, those are a little older and they're not as big, and you know people look at that and go not as cool, right, like not as important.

And to me, like you were talking about in Iowa, when you get out there in October before the masses get out there, I look at that stuff and I go, if I can find early rubs, man, oh dude, I will take that. Like when I drew. The last time I drew Iowa was twenty twenty, and you know, I hunted Opener and then the middle week into October because I had to go film some stuff in November, and I found three spots with some concentrations or early rubs.

It wasn't like blow you away sign, but you're like, you know, like they're they're staging here and they're moving around a little bit. There were good bucks in every spot, and it wasn't like the kind of sign that would just blow you away, but it was like they were using this enough, you better get eyes on this area. And every one of them had big deer on public land. And it's the timing where I did the same thing. I'm like, I know there's gonna be tons of people

out if I don't. If I don't, you know, if I get if I have to come back in mid November because I haven't filled my tag, I know I'm going to be dealing with a ton of people. It's a different situation. But you find that kind of stuff. That's an advantage you have over the competition that winter scouting gives you in a way that like I think a lot of people kind of overlook it. Yeah, And if you know the land man, that's just so key. That's such a huge deal, just to know the little

subtleties in the terrain. Even it's like it where that big buck is laid up when I'm getting pictures of him on that camera, I'm pretty sure it's on one of three secondary points ridges that come out, and I did not know how that lays through there. So in the wintertime, when you can go in there with no leaf cover, if you can find ways to hide from

that betting area. Right now, because you're not only scouting for deer sign, you're also thinking about like how to get in and out of these places without burger and deer and if you can come up with a plan to get in and out of those areas right now when there's no leaf cover on early October, you're set because you got way more covered during that time. Because

that's I mean, we talk about this a lot. You're always trying to get close enough to kill them during the day because if you're sitting back too far, they're getting too that they're leaving a bunch of that sign there, but they're not getting there until nine to ten pm, yep, and you're out of the game. You're just leaving your scent there for him to figure you out. So we're always trying to get close. You're always trying to get close,

and that is man. When you know the lay of the land, you just have a card that a lot of other people don't have to play, especially if it's a bunch of non residents coming in in early November that haven't spent a bunch of time scouting boots on the ground, like they don't they don't know all of those little subtleties in there. They may not know where that little ditch depression is that only drops you two feet, but it drops you just enough to get out of sight.

From bedded deer that are hundred yards away. Yep. Yeah, so important. And like that that big one that you're talking about on in Iowa that you were hunting last year, When you think about a deer like that, get a getting a picture of that deer on an access trail is something just about any any like even halfway competent hunter could come by, you know, like that's that's not

high level stuff, right, Like that's low level. But if you go out winter scout now and you find a couple of rub lines pointed in that direction or pointed away from that direction, and then you find those secondary points, you go up there, maybe find a big bed here

or there. Now, if that big one's using that next year, or somebody takes his spot because he's out because he got killed or whatever, now you know, like okay, if if the average guy gets a picture of that buck on the trail, he's set up over that access trail, right, they're doing exactly what I did this year exactly. Yeah.

But if you're the only one that knows that that intel that you're talking about, yeah, yeah, if you if you go out and winter scout that and backtrack that a little bit, now, you go, okay, if somebody else gets on this or that deer, let's say that deer's getting there ten minutes before shooting light ends two times a week or something, and you go, okay, I could kill him on the scrape on this access trail, But

where's he more killable? One hundred and fifty yards back there on that like like somewhere between where his bed is where that is, and you'll you'll be in a different position than most hunters already because of one or two or three winter scrouting sessions where you go in there and you go the sign kind of shows me this, the rubs show me this, and I know he was there a few times. That's the kind of stuff I

look at and I go, okay. Instead of getting those questions right twice a season, now you might get it three or four just from that. Oh exactly that and that man, that is an ace in the hole because you've got lots of those little areas across the landscape, and everybody in their dog knows where that access path is. It's the easiest way to get in and out of there. I mean, so whenever people show up, that's exactly that's

where they're going to go. That's very predictable. But you have all of these other areas around there are pretty tight and small, and people don't even think about diving in down this ridge. It just there's fifteen ridges that all look the same all the way down through there, and there's two or three of them that have points that drop off into this little bottom that are thick, but you can't really see it from anarial photo. They're thick enough to hold a couple of deer, and that's it.

But if you've done that scouting, and if you go in there during march, you can see that right now, Whereas if you're going in there completely blind in the fall, that is really difficult to see without just blowing the whole area out, which is what I should have done. I should. I wish that I would have never had the camera there, because I feel like I would have had a better chance of killing him because I would

have went in there, like we talked about earlier. I would have went in there and went straight to those betting areas with the wind in my face, and I would have risked bumping him out of there to get the intel that I needed to know where to hunt. Ye instead, I kind of instead, I just stage hunted in there, and I felt like I was getting closer, but then the pressure hit and gone, He's gone as soon as people start going up and down that path.

No more. Yep. But I think that you'd probably see with that buck, at least maybe in the October time frame, where if you, if you could have got in there and figured him out a little bit better, he might have not been that far away from that access trail, and he might he might have known everybody who was walking in there, like because you see that. I saw that This year I hunted some public land in southwestern

Minnesota that you know, i'd been pheasant hunting. This was my first time deer hunting it, and there was a spot at this river bottom spot. I was real curious in I went in and kind of speed scouted it a couple of times and didn't. I didn't fall in love with it. It was okay, but I ended up jumping a big deer right by the parking area on

my way back one day. So I had walked out by him one through one area, came back and I must have made him nervous and got up wind of him or something and he took off, and in my head, I was like, there was there's a lesson there, like you know, But I had three days to work with, I had other stuff, so I didn't hunt it. And then I went back there right after the Minnesota gun season ended. I went pheasant hunting in there, and the first thing we did is pulled into that access area.

My buddy pointed over in the woods. He goes, look at that, and there was like a one twenty five one thirty standing there in the woods right off of there. And I don't know if it's the same deer or not, but where he was was forty yards away from where I jumped that deer out of a brush pile, And

I'm going, man, there's a river there. There's there's ways to get out, Like if you want to know, if somebody's in there with you, you could be there and bedded and you can make a decision to lay there tight like he did the first time and let you walk by. Or if you know, seven guys get out of their trucks to make a drive, he can bail

across the river into private land. And the advantage is like so distinct when you start figuring it out and I went, I bet I should have probably been there, and I should have figured it a way to park way down the road and sneak in there and catch that dude off guard when he came back through the river.

And I just you see stuff like that, and I'm actually, I'm going to head back down there and just a little bit and look around because it's kind of haunting me knowing that we jumped another good buck in there in the willows, you know, maybe a quarter of a mile away, And I go, that's two big deer after the Minnesota gun season on public land, and I just missed it during bow season. But I think, like you're talking about, with a winter scouting session in there, everything's frozen.

I can get everywhere I want to. And I'm like, I'm I'm gonna answer one of those questions, like I'm gonna get a little bit of intel that's going to feed into next season. You're always just building. You're just building and building and building to try to increase your odds. I mean, that's all it is. Like, that's all it basically boils down to, is you're just learning these little

bitty tidbits here and there and everywhere. And then eventually they lead to you shooting a buck, and then you can then you can retrace that in your mind and realize, like, oh man, when we came in here five years ago shed hunting. I learned how to get down this creek. I realize that this is only knee deep water, and I can come in here with a pair of hip

boots and get up this thing. And you overlook those little details like that at the time, but when you are after it's over and you really have time to kind of decompress and look at the hole, you realize, like those little details were incredibly important and things that most people don't know going into that. So like most folks didn't know to look over there where that buff was at. But you know, since you bumped him out of there, now you're like you're glued to that spot

because you're expecting that pattern to repeat itself. But what tripped me up on this big deer was all the I've spent a lot of time, as you know, filming hunts on private land that is very unpressured, and those deer don't act the same way that public land pressured deer or private land pressure deer. I mean it shouldn't matter public private. It just comes down to huge pressure's pressure.

But like on a big chunk of private landor there's only one guy hunted and the deer are largely unpressured. They act different, like they will walk down an access path during the daylight, or they'll pop out on a little food pot, you know, next to a beating area during the daylight, and you can pattern them and you can kill them. Well, what happened to me was I don't have a lot of experience with self cams, like

I've used them a little bit. I love trail cameras, and I like leaving them in a spot for an entire year and then going back through and being able to dissect when bucks used it and figure out how they used it or what food sources they were using, Like I'll put it up over honey locus pods to see what time of year deer start feeding on them,

Like I love him for that reason. But anyway, I was using these cell cameras for the first time this last fall, and they really just mess my brain up because I got pictures of this buck on this access path and no people. So for like two weeks straight, there was not a person, and I'm like, man, if a person is going into this section of woods, they are walking that path, They're not coming in here any other way. They're going down that dang path. And then

more and more Bucks started showing up. This big Bucks started showing up, getting closer and closer to daylight than he's on there in daylight. And I'm thinking to myself, like, from the days of filming guys on, you know, manage land where you can manage the pressure. It's like just going there and hunting like that, because he's gonna walk right through there until I get pictures of somebody else walking down that path. He's gonna come down that path

because he hasn't got any pressure. That line of thinking obviously didn't work, but that's that's what was going through my mind at the time, was when dear don't have pressure on them, they act much differently. But what I overlooked was the fact that these deer live in an area where there is pressure and they have encountered it before, and that that changes their habits permanently in some ways,

like they're betting habits. And I've all the stuff I'd learned just went out the window, and you know big Hank showed up. I think that's a good point, though, Aaron, because like I think, you know, I mean, there's a situation where you go in there and you sat there and you do kill that dear like partially been there

day before. He walks right by, But I mean you got to look at that and go even okay, so that deer is acting like he kind of lives on unpressured ground, partially because he's not getting pressured at that moment. The difference there is you go in there and you make a mistake, it's over. His reaction to your mistake is not going to be the same as that reaction to those deer on that well managed private land, you know, but it's still like a possibility, like you could still

do it. But when you go and you find that situation, you second guess yourself and you're dealing with cell cameras and you're like, I don't know should I should I not like what I know about deer, this doesn't make sense. But then you go and you win or scout that for a year and now you're like, I don't just have to go hunt him over that scrape on that access trail, Like now I can play this like I'm hunting a public land buck. Even though he's kind of

acting like he's not getting a lot of pressure. I

can play him better. And I know, like that deer. Okay, maybe he's daylighting here a little bit, and he might be killable, but there's a staging area to one hundred yards away down below that bluff or that ridge point where he's really killable, like you might you might be able to observe him and see exactly what he does in person one night, move that two hundred yards and kill him without ever bumping him or laying down a cent trail that he's gonna So like there's I mean,

it's just like but that's that's part of the fun of it, right, Like it's it's the reality that you sit there and you go, you know, like I think a lot of people would be like if Aaron Warbritton encounter is a big one on an Iowa public land, he's probably gonna have a pretty good plan pop into his head instantly and you go, Man, just depends on the situation. That's so simply nah. I mean, some of them just put themselves in terrible spots for them to live.

But it doesn't. It doesn't happen like that very often. Right, most of the time you have to find some little chink in the armor where you can get in there and exploit a weakness in their plan. Yeah, and what we've already found with that buck that we're talking about is that not only him, but many of those bucks are betting. And you can probably guess it within sight of that access trail. Yep. Ye. So I come walking down that access path to hunt where that camera is

and guess what, I don't see anything. You know why that is? It's because that thing is laying there a hundred yards away where he can see the access path because people walk down it often. And that starts to make sense, you know, at this time of year, when we were able to go in there and figure that out. But now I'm thinking, like, after scouting in their summon, I'm going back in there because I got two or three more ridges I want to scout in the next

couple of days. But after scouting that sum I've already found ways to come in from the back door and get into those bedding areas, potentially in the morning before daylight, using a creek system that I had never been in before, and I didn't go into this last year because I was afraid of bumping them out of there. So all these things, I mean, sort of confirm what we're talking about.

Like you you just mentioned that example up there where you've got bucks that are monitoring pressure on public and that's something we see all the freaking time, all the time. And I just I did. I got caught up in that damn in that trail camera, and I just figured out this access path is a nice and quiet, it's wet um, it just rained. I can be I can move super slow, and I can set up right on it.

I can make hardly any noise. But what we noticed is like we kept bumping deer as we were walking in, and I'm like, why are they betted right here on top of this thing? And like I'll see them bedded off the side of a parking lot or whatever in an area where you're not gonna bump them when you walk in, but where they can watch you or they

can slide out undefected. But yeah, that's what we've found already, is the dang things are bedded off of this little point that's one hundred, one hundred and fifty yards in the camera and they can see everything that's going on where that human human travel is at and all they gotta do is bounce off the end of a ridge

and you've got no idea they there. But that's so when you when you just I have that scenario, though, I think a lot of people would listen and they go, Okay, well he's unkillable or they're unkillable if he's going to bed there and he's onto this access program. And it's like, that's why you win or scout, because now now you go, I do have a backdoor entrance, like I can get

through that, through that creek or whatever. Or instead of just that, you go, now I found another concentration, a sign or a secondary betting ridge or something I can work and so I can be actively hunting and figuring out these deer without just going I have to take that risk that's too high because they're going to be betted right there where they expect nine percent of the hunters to come in. And you give yourself those secondary options.

And I think you know, especially when you talk about kind of getting crazy locked into a big deer like that, and you're running those cell cameras and every time your phone dings, you're like, oh God, is it him? Like, you know, you start to get into this mentality that it's like he's here and here's my spot, and it's like that deer has a home range of a square mile, so you go instead of you know, like I hate

I love cameras. I don't like using cell cameras on public land hunts a lot of times because I know, you know, I might be working on old information even if I'm getting cell camera pictures, and it just it's a different deal because of that. And it's like, I don't want to get locked into the idea that I hunt this deer here because that's where I got the

picture of him. When that deer he might be a half a mile away for half of his life, he might be in a more killable spot somewhere else, or he just might have, you know, three more holes in his routine that are so much better for you to exploit than that one. And if you don't win or scout and figure it out, if you're if you think you're only going to given that information in the fall through cell cameras or hunting, it's not gonna happen. You got you got to come in there with that knowledge

of the land and the knowledge of the sign. Yeah, you're going to fail a lot. That's that what you just said there is is one of the most overlooked things. But these simplest things in bow hunting deer that people just do not think about, including myself in this particular instance, it's like, how do you get in and out of there without burger them? But how do you get close

enough to the area of interest? So and also on top of that, how do you get in and out of there to understand what's going on in the area, Like how do you read the sign in that particular area to understand what's going on? And when you start introducing those cameras into it, you just you're thinking gets deflected to that when all you gotta do is just get back to basics. You just gotta look like, Okay, there's a really big fresh track right here in this

sandy dry creek bed and it's going both ways. There's one coming out and there's one going back in. There's a bunch of oaks up on that ridge, and there's three or four fresh rubs I can see coming down off of them, and white oaks have been dropping at those elevations this year, so it's like there could be a buck that's bedded up there, and if he's not, he's using this trail to come to and from somewhere

here recently. Like just those little tidbits a signer almost that they are more valuable than anything else, or a fresh scrape with pea in it that's right next to a thicket of high stem count cover yep, Like, Okay, he might be home today and that's all that matters. It's like if he's home just today and he's not here for two weeks. If you guess that he's there today, you're in the chips yep. Well if you see that sign and you're like, I'm gonna put a camera over

at wait till he comes back. Well, then he comes back, you get a picture of him, and then you're like, okay, I'll hunt now. Well he made he's making a loop through there. It's a rut loop in late October. He was there for a day and now he's not gonna be back for seven more. Yeah. I think I think that's one of the most I think that's one of the things we miss with cell cameras a lot is Yeah, you think, Okay, it's gonna show me there's a deer there now, and I'm gonna go in tomorrow and I'm

gonna kill him. But what it does is if it sends you that picture now and you've got it on that you've got that camera mounted over a scrape, and it's October eighth, and you've had you know, random movement, midnight movement, whatever, and all of a sudden you have one evening where there's three bucks visited in daylight and

you go, oh, I should have been there today. It's like you better pay attention to what the conditions were, like, what was going on, because next year on October eighth, if it's a cold front or if it's whatever, like you even not even hunting that scrape, you might have your night to kill a buck because you have that information that it showed you there's a reason here, or like you said, there's a ramp up to that you know, oh,

he's getting there little earlier, a little earlier, a little earlier, Like that's valuable deer intel way outside of just killing that specific deer. If you if you use it right, if you use it wrong, you go, well, that's just I either go in or I kill him now because it showed me or not, or like you're kind of behind the eight ball. Like you said, there's so much more to it, and so I always I like tell people,

you know, we get so married to cameras. I'm like, man, if you want to run a cell camera on a scrape, you should because you will learn a lot. It might not help you kill a deer on that scrape this season, but it might inform how you hunt scrapes for the rest of your life, because you might be sitting there and go everybody else is going, it's the lull. I'm not going to go hunt. You're like, well, I'm hunt in public land. I don't want a bunch of people

out there. It's a little warm. But it's October twelfth, the moon's doing this or whatever, and all of a sudden, you're like last year, this week I had five different good bucks come in in daylight, and when I didn't think they should be there. That stuff so important, Oh yeah, no doubt, and just knowing the lay of the land, like you talked about earlier, this is the time of the year when you can understand that stuff better than

any other time. And that's honestly how we killed me and Ted killed a mature buck during the late season in a blizzard there a couple of weeks ago. I think that was right after Christmas. But the reason we killed that thing, and I'm just I'm just kind of remembering that as we're talking. The reason we killed that thing is because as a group, we have intel from past year shed hunting and scouting this area, and it's

as simple as knowing the lay of the land. We knew that this particular area had a lot of really good south facing thermal cover like cedars and hedge and really thick stuff. It's all south facing in hills. We had a blizzard come in after Christmas, had got down a negative nine with wind chills and forty below. Like you're you're more used to that than I am. South of you, so that's like a real shock to the

system for us. But it's getting down that cold and we're sitting there looking at maps thinking about where we're gonna hunt. It's like pops into your head. We need to look for south facing stuff where dey're gonna get out of the blizzard and get out of forty below wind chills. So where's a place with north winds? Where are some south facing stuff with heavy thermal cover? And we thought about this spot immediately, like me and Ted each thought about it. He's like, I was thinking about

this spot. I was like, I was, just I gotta pulled up. I'm looking at it right now. He's like, that's the spot, man, we gotta get in there, and like, hey, yeah, let's go. We went in there, no camera, intel, no nothing all year. We just went in there based on the fact that we knew the lay of the lamb before and we anticipated dear to react to those current conditions in the way that they did. And they were. Boy,

they were stacked in there. I mean bucks on bucks on Bucks just pushed in there because of that blizzard, trying to escape those conditions, and would have never known that had we not had that prior intel of being in there and walking around. I want to talk about

something when I saw you. I saw you make that social post the other day about or you know a little while ago about winter scouting and finding some rubs, and you made a point that I think is so important that we kind of overlook is you know, you had a rub that was in a like I call it a turkey hunting woods, Like it's the ideal woods you want to go put your Yeah, you put your back to a big oak and you call them a gobbler through the woods and it's the best hunt ever.

And that's like, that's what you want. But those woods, even though they're pretty and that's kind of what everybody wants for turkeys, and you know, like they like looking at it when you have pressure deer. I just like in my experience, they do not. You know, I don't kill him in that kind of woods ever, Like it's always there. No, I mean, it's just it's just not like you kill him in the edge cover somewhere that's

that's just thicker. And you you talked about stem Count and you said, you know, you look at this rub in the open you go or open woods and you go, yeah, a big buck made it. This is that's great. He lives somewhere around here, this is his neighborhood or whatever. But you don't kill him here because this is probably a nocturnal you know, he probably made it at night.

And then you showed a place way thicker, you know, way different kind of habitat you know, it looks like you would be jumping grouse or bunnies out of there, and you go, that's where you're going to kill him. Maybe not right in the middle of it, maybe right on the edge of it, but not out in that open woods. And I think, you know, I think I've been like guilty of not explaining this enough because I've

talked about this a lot. But like the you know, scrape on the field edge, the rubs way out there, way out toward the field edge, we always like take it for grant and go, okay, that's a nighttime sign. Who cares. You get into the woods and you go, there's a rub. That's good enough. I'm hunting here next year during the rut because that big rub is here and I found it in March and I got my plan.

Then you go in there, and if there is a deer around there, they all know you're in there because there's a bunch of oak leaves on the ground and they can see for you know, from one end of the woods to the other. And you don't kill them.

But then after the season, you walk through that thick stuff like you're talking about, maybe you're rabbit hunting or you're just in there winter scouting, and you go, well, there's a huge concentration of you know, maybe smaller rubs in here because the cover is kind of a little bit different. But that's where he's killable. And I think

people don't. I think a lot of people don't understand the difference between that because the sign looks good, but it's where it's at that makes it not so good. They know they're in danger during the day once they reach a certain age and they've encountered human pressure on private republic. They know that the days when they're when they're vulnerable, especially a big buck, like they don't in our part of the world. What do they got to

worry about? Kyotes? For the most part, a healthy big buck they just look at kyotes as they run by and like, no big deal. Fawns a different story, obviously, But big bucks got to worry about us. So he's gonna go to wherever he feels safe during the day, and then and then on top of that, wherever he

can escape too, even more safe areas. So in that high stem count cut or cover like that is exactly what you're I mean, that's the stuff where he can bed in and then when he hears somebody coming, he can stand up or he hears something around that betting area, say it's a calm day, for example, he can stand up in there and he can look out of it into all those open woods and see that danger coming, and you have no freaking clue he's there until he takes out of there like a rabbit out of a

brush pile. It's just and you can't shoot at him in there because it's so thick. That's the that's the tricky part with cattail marsh is like what you're talking about is sometimes you might find where they're living in the middle of that cattail marsh, but how do you get an arrow through there? Like they realize that over the years, I don't. I mean a buck probably doesn't think about it obviously the way that we do. But they just know that they're not getting shot at, their

buddies aren't getting killed in that stuff. So advantages. I mean, you think about it. If you could hunt deer with a grenade or a mortar, I would be the best cattail slew hunter because I find those bastards all the time and I'm like, well, unapproachable untouchable when you're talking

archery hunting in some of those situations. But when when you talk about that situation where that bucks he's either he's betted right in that high stem count thick, gnarly stuff, he's moving through the edge of it, yeah, or staging in there and he's he's looking out from that if he's hears something, or he's got the wind in his favor, which he's going to. I always think about it in terms of like a big large mouth right, like you

think about a big large mouth bass. They live in the shadows, like if you've got a stump or a dock post or a piling or something, And just think

about it. If you're in the middle of the summer, if you're standing in your garage working and your neighbor walks by, you can look out and see them perfectly, and they can barely see you moving around in there, kind of like the like being in a ground blind for turkeys, you know, like if you do it right, and those deer in that situation, that advantage is so distinct because of their camel and their ability like just hide and not move and watch and listen, and you're

walking by looking into it, and he's got every advantage because he's in the cover looking out, Like I think we undersell that a lot of times, but they use that so much, like it's like ingrained in them, like it's genetic, you know, like even fawns do it. And when you get a buck that's five and a half years old and he's lived on public land or in pressure ground, he knows those tricks. It's so much better

than we could even imagine. Oh yeah, and a lot of people think that they're nocturnal, but I mean you can talk to Bronson Strickland and those guys that you know MSU Deer Lab, and they'll show you exactly where bucks move during the daylight, especially mature bucks, because they put radio collars on them and they monitor them NonStop

and there. And you ask them about mature bucks being nocturnal, even on heavily pressured land, They're like, no, there's very few, if any, they said, they don't have a single one that they can say is nocturnal completely, like they all move around somewhat during the day the half to I mean, how could it be possible that they were absolutely one

percent nocturnal? Right? They have to get up they gotta they have like five feeding bouts in a day, even if that means they just stand up and walk to feed and brows a little bit, they're not just betting and living in a hole in the ground. And whenever they looked at they looked at the habitats that those buck used. Bucks used during the day only, and that

was the consistent thing. Man, those pretty open woods with all that sign in there and acorns dropping and everything that looks awesome, and those bucks are in there at night.

They are almost never in there during the day. And pressured land, you start getting in the cover that's wasted chest high, and that's areas where they're going to start moving, Like down in the southeast, and the examples they were showing me, it was like river cane, and it was just flat, wide open woods for as far as you

could see. And then you walk up on a patch of acre acre and a half of just chest high river cane and it's not super thick, but it's just enough cover that a buck could bet in the edge of it and stand around and move around about that river cane and feels safe moving around it during the day, and then as soon as it gets dark then they're off to wherever, leaving sign all through the woods and you know, tricking our brains non stop. Well, I mean,

but this that's like to tie this together. So when you when you find a spot like that, or you you know, you're out winter scouting and you find that open wood sign maybe the scrape that you can see or whatever, and then you get to that cover. It's not enough to just find that cover. You got to wait in there. Look at those trails in there, Look

how they're getting in and how they're getting out. You know, you're gonna find some rubs in there, you're gonna find some beds probably, And then start thinking about, you know, what conditions does this work? Like does he need to be there on September fifteenth when it opens or is there enough cover around where he could be somewhere else? But by October fifteenth, when the leaves have fallen and the pressure's gotten to him. Now is he going to be there? Like? What what does it do for you?

And that that's the beauty of this time of year is you can go wait into that stuff and go you know, even if it is only an acre, how many trails are leading in there, how many trails leading out, like how many different ways ailable food sources right there close by one, and like those those those food sources may not be interesting right now in March, they may not be interesting in July, but towards the end of November or early December they might be, or in early October,

like what you're talking about, they might be, and they'll they'll shift around the landscape using these different parts of it based on food and water and covering and pressure, all those different things are going into it. You know, there there may be a creek right there that's intermittent stream, and if there's no water in that thing, they may not bed there very often. But if there is water in it that particular year, they may be socked in there.

Especially if they have water right there. They got good cover, a lack of pressure, and they have multiple food sources leading out on both sides. Those are areas that where my brain starts firing thinking like, okay, these are spots that bucks are going to use often, and they're going to use them, you know, every single year in mull Tople, Bucks will like that big one may be in there this year, and then there may be a different big one in there next year because all of these conditions line.

But you're not gonna learn all of that until you go in into those bedding areas and scout him from the inside out, and then especially getting in there and like seeing what the deer can see looking out of them, because you're you're playing that scenario in your mind, like, Okay, this thing's standing up in the middle of this thicket and he's walking to the edge of it. He's gonna make it a hundred yards during day, Like what can he see in that hundred yards? Like what is he

alerted to? And is there a way that I can use this little ditch over here to the left to get up here when the wind is when the day winds are blowing at noon and climb up in a tree to where I can kill him when he's sixty yards from that spot. Like you're you're just putting together so many little details like that when you're when you're finding those areas and scout him from the inside out

during this time year that you're missing otherwise. Yeah, and that's a really really important point about now it's not enough to just find it and go, Okay, here's a place a big one spent a lot of time last year, because if you don't take a look and figure out how to hunt it, then it doesn't matter, and yeah,

you're missing your opportunity. Yeah. I used to do that a lot, where I would I would win or scout my ass off almost to the point where I would forget stuff, and then I'd like, Okay, I know there was like a good staging area I found here, but I'm like, you know, I never looked for a tree to set up in. I didn't look for the access or multiple access or something, and it was like it was like you only did like twenty five percent of

the work. Like I've done that exact thing so many times, and we should definitely mention that as a caveat here. If you guys are getting out there and doing this more often, especially this year, like don't overlook those little things because I have a tendency to do that. I definitely used to where I'd be like, Okay, I got scout ten betting areas today, I want to go this one,

this one, this one, this one. You know, I got my coffee and my sandwich and we're just gonna go and then before you know it, you scouted them all and you definitely learn where some big bucks were living, like you said, but you didn't pick up those little bit of details. They're gonna help you kill him when he's in there. And that's so that's so crucial, like looking and seeing can you get up the back of that tree without getting spotted, or how do you get

in and out of that area? Not only walking every single one of those trails, but I mean even tracking them on your map, like on X has got that tracker thing, and we started doing that more where we'll start tracing those trails. And I used to over I used to just drop a red pin on it, and then I'd leave and then and all that stuff's fresh

on your mind then, but you're gonna forget it. You come back in there in October and it's like, Okay, I know this is a good spot, but I don't really know like what the deer can see, so I don't know how close I can get without spooking them. And I don't really know how the wind behaves in here because I didn't check it. I didn't check any of that, and I don't really know which food sources they have available on the outskirts of this betting here. I just know there's a bunch of buck sign here,

and then there were some beds in here. I know. Then you got to go in and re scout that thing like five different times before you finally get it figured out. But now when I when you go in there, it's if you're super anal about really gathering all those details right now, it's just gonna speed up there in saving them in some way. Yeah, like journal maps, phone all that stuff, and don't drop a pin. Drop a pin and put notes under it that's say specifics about

what you're finding. That way you remember it not only what you're finding, but you should hunt this in a northwest wind or you know what I mean. And that tracker feature, man, I started using that out west and just like it changed everything, and now I use it

for white tails all the time. Like if I go in and you know, I mean not only not only like what we're talking about here with a winner scouting deal where you might find some badass sign, you're like, I gotta hunt this and I want to know exactly how to get to this tree. But even going in like the buck I killed this year. For one week in November, I walked in and hung a stand in

the evening. This is on private land, and we had an okay, hunt's off, you deer, but it was like a brand new setup and I'm filming, so I'm like, we're making twice the amount of noise. And it was you know, calm and just November conditions whatever, And I ran my tracks on the way out, even though it's like a you know, one hundred yard walk in the woods. But I'm like, I don't want to get off of this route by six feet because I have two guys, you know, me and another guy who are going to

be making a ton of noise. And so even following like every little turn on that trail and just like the exact road I need to take to get there, it's just a game changer. And then you think about,

you know, that's from one day to the next. Now you think about go out in March tenth and find your perfect tree on that river crossing way back in the woods, and you think you're going to go back there on October twenty fifth, and remember your exact route and take the no way like especially if you used to drink like I did there with a pair of freaking hiking boots on to cross water, and I got all the way in there and then I realized, like

this water's waist deep. Ye, I'm gonna have to take my pants off and my boots just to way across this to get back in where i'd scout it. I mean, just minor details like that. But you're talking about killing them now, Like that's the difference between seeing them and killing them is having all of these things buttoned up, because I mean, whenever we kill them, it's always like

you're one step away from from not killing them. Or you know, there's one limb that almost got you, or a couple of years ago, I killed a buck that we bumping dump, you know, real close to the house, and that thing hit it. That arrow hits a limb like as soon as it's going into the deer and deflects, and I killed him. But I never even saw that limb there, had no idea because I've never even been

in those woods before. But that's my point. It's like, you come when it comes down to actually killing these things, there are so many of those tiny little details in place and things that have to line up in order for this to happen for you. The more of that stuff you can put to bed ahead of time. With you're scouting, the more killing opportunities you're gonna have, not just the more encounters you're gonna have, but the more

killing opportunities you're gonna have. Yeah, and you may not be able to like trim trees and whatnot on public land, but you can still climb up in them. You can climb up in it and see what you can see. I can't tell you how many times I've I've found signing a new area and I've climbed up in a tree and then realize once I got up there, like crap,

this ain't gonna work. Oh, so then you shoot all the way down, and then you move ten yards and you do it again, and before you know it, you've spent four hours out there, and then afternoon trying to find a right setup to hunt the edge of this bedding area. But all of that could have been taken care of before. If I have a major chess grabber when I'm like forty eight, it'll be because I've done

that to myself five thousand times. Hung a stand and got up there, or you know, climbed up there to set your stand or saddle up and you look around. You go, Nope, no way, can't shoot if you want to walk out there and look back at the tree at what the deer's looking at. But you also don't want to leave ground sent three sixty degrees around your spot. Yeah, so it's it's hard. Yeah, And why I do it this time of year? Then you're just you're you're crossing

those off of the list, man. Yeah. And I would say on that note because I did that for some of the stuff I hunted in Western Minnesota this year. You know, I scouted it before we went out there, and you know, I looked at trees and I go, that's my tree. And then when I get out there to set up, I actually walk up to that tree and I start looking like where are we going to be?

Like where's where's the camera gonna be wearing? And then you're like, man, it's super crooked and it's actually not like figure that's like that is the stuff, like the details in the offseason that make the difference, Like it's it's all of that, like every little box you can check and go, this is actually a tree I can get in and be comfortable and and I'm gonna go say, team feet up and I'm gonna hang off this side

with my saddle or what like know that stuff. Don't just go oh, there's a nice you know, pine tree or whatever there, I'm gonna just use like Nope, not good enough, like you got to know it. And what I started to do, especially when I'm laying tracks or I find a you know, you talk about a spot like a high stem count spot in the middle of the mostly open woods, I started to do where I'm like,

here's here's where I think I'll kill. There's my pin, here's my tracks, Here's where I'm going to observe like I'm in And I think it's really hard, especially if you're traveling or you don't have very much time to sand bag of hunt and just go I'm not I'm not gonna bonds eye right in there to my best tree and sit like a lot of times because you don't know, right like you don't know how they're gonna stage through there, or you don't know you know, if it's a two acre betting area and he pops out

here and not there, or at ten twenty acre betting area and it's like, are you if you have that plan and go I'm not one hundred percent sure where the X is, but if I can sneak in here and I, oh, I won't get busted. I'm probably not going to kill one tonight, but I'm gonna be able to look over that whole thing, maybe see him stand up, or maybe see somebody coming or going, and then tomorrow, if the conditions don't change, that's where I kill him.

If you plan that stuff out too, where you're like, if if I want to get in there, but the conditions aren't perfect or I'm not one hundred percent confident of it, I'm going to hang back a little bit. Man's that has worked for me a lot, and it's alert. Oh dude, it's so time hunts. Doing that. Then you are diving in there and guessing on which one of the fifteen trails he's gonna use coming out. It's either that or you also develop a plan. If you can't see in you develop a plan where you can scout

the exterior in that area without boogering anything. So it's like, if you can observe in there, where can you tically scout those exits? Like how far follow those exits out of those betting areas and get to a point where you can come across and cut that sign without boogering anything out of there. Like that's the stuff you can really use during the season to figure out if there's

a bucket there or not. Like we use that tracks example while ago, if you get one hundred and fifty yards in that bedding area where that trail crosses a little sandy dry creek bed and you can go walk that thing and see tracks coming and going up and down that you know where that trail leads because you've

done that scouting. Ye. Yeah. The other part of this is the attitude, Like your confidence is gonna go up so much when you have a plan to go into these spots, when you have a tree really nailed, like what you just talked about in an access route in there and you've been you're just more familiar with it. Just I most people are uncomfortable. I'm not uncomfortable anymore with going in at three am in the dark, completely

blind to a spot because I've done enough times. But at first I certainly was, you know, but now if you've got that, if you have all that intel, you're going to be more apt to get in there. And get in the right spot. You're not gonna second guess yourself near as much because you know what's going on and that's just gonna that's gonna help you mentally during the season. And you know what that does for you that we never talk about. I've been writing about this

quite a bit. It makes it more fun. Yeah, just think about I mean, this is so dumb, but it's so true. If you go out and you fully expect to see a deer, even if you blank, you're gonna have a pretty fun hunt just because you're like, it's gonna happen, like I'm gonna see him. And I mean that stuff happens a lot where you're like, oh, yeah, this is this is gonna happen. The conditions are right, I know this spot, I'm gonna see one. Even when when you blank it sucks, but whatever, it happens a lot.

But at least the sit is like you're not sitting there going I have no confidence, which is no fun. And man, there's like an intangible there where you watch people who are we kind of think that everybody's like this terminate, like everybody who's a really good public land hunter specifically sort of has like a terminator mentality where it's like just get it done at all called sit all day long and just like hard man, dude, it sucks.

But if you go out and you figure out a way to have fun, which is just building in like your knowledge and building up your confidence and going listen, I know this fall, there's gonna be a buck concentration here, or there's gonna be a good one using this little you know, creek bottom in the woods or something like Like, there's just something about it that just makes the whole thing so much more enjoyable. Even if all the wheels fall off and it doesn't work out, going into it

is so it's so much better. It's gonna and you just hunt smarter. You make your I mean, the way you walk through the woods, the way you set up when you have that belief that you've like you've built all this work into this already and you you're like he's gonna be here. It's a total game change around how you conduct yourself out there and how you feel about it. Oh yeah, I definitely would I go that. I mean, and I've seen that personally with the way

that I hunt. If I just go into it with that mindset like I'm gonna enjoy myself today and I'm gonna learn something. It just pays off in the long run because if you just are constantly learning something about these areas, it's gonna take care of itself downstream. You're hunting with a bow and arrow, like, you can't just

go out there. It's not like turkey hunting, where you can just get mad at one, you know, and then just go, go, go, go go, and you're hearing them every day and you're getting tighter, you're getting tighter, and you eventually kill one. It ain't like that with deer hunting. A lot of times it's a freaking marathon and it's a it's a worl wheels out there. And the more info that you have, and if that, if that's really your goal, your end goal isn't to kill a buck necessarily, well,

I guess that's what your end goal is. But your goals, in your smaller goals in the meantime is just how much can I learn today? How much can I learn next weekend when I get to come back here, and how can I take that information to sort of spend this web up of my strategy going in the next fall. And if that's your mindset, man, when I'm when my brain is rolling like that, I just always end up in better situations to kill Bucks in the fall big time.

And when I don't get diverted on these these shell camera paths, that's what happens. Um And you know you said that, you know we're bow hunting deer, but honestly, this is this is probably the most underrated aspect of being a successful gun hunter too. Like you want to talk about winter scouting and finding sanctuaries, Like there is no time in a Big Bucks life that he needs

a sanctuary more than that gun season. So if you if you're sitting there and you're listening to this and you go up to the cabin every year and you got your you know, your hunting party and it's your uncles and your dad whoever, and you're like, you know, I've been crossing my fingers every year, sitting on the same ladder stand and hoping somebody comes down the logging

road or the power line. Man, you know, this is the second best window to scout, right after the gun seasons, probably the best window to go burn through everything and pay attention to where you jump them. But when you go out there now and that woods is laid bare, like you're talking about their warb and you find those thick areas and that high stem count stuff, that's where your bucks are gonna go. When five hundred thousand people walk into the woods with rifles like that exactly, it's

so valuable. Yeah, if you don't know it, you're so well yep, so get out there big time, right, we're out of time, buddy. I always just absolutely love talking to you. I'm pretty sure everybody who's who's listening to this knows where to find you guys, but why don't you let them know? Anyway, the hunting public just check it out on YouTube. You guys don't have a social or anything. Yeah, we got Facebook, Instagram, and we're on the TikTok too. I'm still figuring out what in the

world that thing even is. But yeah, yeah, everywhere you want to find some good hunting contact, that's where you go. Thank you so much, man, I always love talking to you Youtubo brother. Thanks. That's it for this week, folks. Be sure to tune in next week for more whitetail goodness. This has been the Wired to Hunt podcast and I'm

your guest host, Tony Peterson. As I always, thank you so much for listening, and if you're looking for more whitetail content, be sure to check out the meat eater dot com slash wired Again, that's the meat eater dot Com slash wired, and you'll see a pile of new articles each week by myself, Mark Beaumartonic, Alex Gilsher, I'm a whole slew of white tail killers. Or head over to the Wired to Hunt YouTube channel to view the

weekly content we put up. You see all kinds of strategies and different stuff that might help you kill a buck. This ball