Welcome to Wired to Hunt's rutfresh Radio, bringing you the latest reports from the whitetail Woods, presented by First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light Go farther, stay longer, and now your hosts, Casey Smith and Tyler Jones.
Welcome to rtfresh Radio. I'm your host k Cy Smith. The October lawl and the Acorns are making things tough around the country with some weird weather thrown in there as well. However, man made food sources seem to be the ticket this late October for killing big giant bucks.
This is Retfresh.
Let's go.
Welcome to Retfresh Radio. I'm your host, Tyler Jones and I'm sitting next to Casey Smith. This podcast is brought to you by First Light, and these two guys are brought to you by the Nebraska Furniture Remark couch Man bringing it back.
Yeah that's cool.
So here we are sitting on the couch looking at a front rolling in Casey. The front has some moisture in it, maybe some lower temps, but I think more than anything, we're going to see those lower tips hitting later this week. And there's a lot of anticipation, it seems like, across the country about what's going to happen with this this drop, and you know, as usual, the front's going to hit different points of the country at
different times throughout the week here. But I think it's something that is to be noted that there are a lot of people right now that need to be getting on a weather app and checking out when things drop and figuring out via on X or whoever they use, where is a place that I can hunt a north wind.
That's exactly right, figure out what your north wind stand is, and get there because it is coming in from the north northwest. By the way, after the first front day oftentimes you get to northeast, So just keep that in mind. I like those northeast because it's like the second day and everything's like kind of chilled out pretty good. I'm trying to capitalize on this this week. I'm headed up
north country from here go do a little hunting. And we are actually both have been scrambling to increase our personal on our own properties, our man made food sources this week because in Texas food plots, you know, you can watch some guys from up north or even in the Midwest, you know, do the food plot thing and it looks awesome and I love it, and we do all that work down here, and then you end up with just dirt because the rains don't come or the rain.
What happened in my house, at least I have poor soil, very sandy soil. The rains came, germinated the seeds, and then the oven turned on and cooked all those seeds.
So you have bread.
Yeah, I have all these loaves of bread, and deer don't eat them. So it's it's kind of like try and try again down here. So we've been trying to get some food plot stuff out in the ground. I've got some cereal rye to put out cereal man, And it seems as if a lot of people are having success right now on those type of food plots. Yeah so I.
Uh so I actually hunted, so we planted a similar time. Uh and mina ended up coming up here. I've got a little bit of wheat coming up. It's not that great, but it's okay. And Michael and I have sat one time back there and we had a group of pigs come in and it sounded like the cookie monster was in the field. With they're just eating these little tiny wheat sprouts, you know, and they were thin. It's like
it's for whatever it's worth. It's tasty enough that hogs will take that big old mouth and eat like one wisp of a week, you know, and at a time, it's like it means enough to them. And I think that deer feel the same way about it seems like it.
I just wonder what their little taste buds are like, because I've eaten a lot of things in like just little grass whips are just about as low as it gets on the taste scale.
Yeah, for sure, So it means over that.
But this past week or not this past week, but recently, I also set a food plot on some public funny enough, that was pretty much just brascas, which is the Northern word for turnips. And oh, I thought you said Braskers. Yeah, it wasn't Inbraskers, but it was. It was some purple tops and some eyesicle radish. It looked like and uh, I have never got to sit and watch deer just do the thing and that, and it was very very cool. It's it's it kind of gives you a little insight
in the way deer's minds work. They like don't stop moving, even though they could just stand in one place and eat it the whole time, but they just meander all the way through that stuff.
Uh.
And I was just interested to see how they eat that stuff too, because they don't like pull it up and eat the whole green. They don't like pull it up and eat the whole like tuber or whatever you wanna call it, the whole root. They like bite the top off and then chew like the stalk per portion and don't eat the leaves and just throw it down and then they'll go along. And you know, because they don't only have teeth on.
The bok, this is a time of year thing where they would do something different when it got colder or something potentially.
But I don't know enough about this stuff, you know, because we don't get the hunt them that often. But it seems as if once it gets really cold, they go to eating the turn it more from what I've heard, right, but these deer would go around and take them bottom teeth and scrape on the You can hear them just on those turnips out there, scraping off shavings and eating that basically eating dirt. Yeah basically, but that video actually is going to come out on the Element YouTube channel
here pretty soon. And there was a big buck into the turniplot when don't say that, but yeah, man, like it's I kind of opened my eyes to the fact that those things can be pretty bad because I feel like, you never see you know, deer eating those things around here, but I think they do. And I think it's just hard to see the deer pressure on a field like that because they just you look at it and you're like, oh,
nothing's eating that because it's all there still. Well, a decent food plot has more food than the deer can eat, you know.
Yeah, but yeah, anyways, it's, uh, it seems like, at least from from my intel, that a lot of people right now are really preferring that green food source, even over corn. Uh as far as like fuel corn, you know, I guess you'd say, and it's it's it seems like it's it's working.
It's for whatever reason. You know.
I've heard a lot of people in certain areas have acrons like they've never seen I know for us around here, we haven't seen just a ton even uh, you know, the day I had pretty good success on public land and didn't see hardly any acrons around there. There's a few here and there, and I mean that's pretty ideal where you know, you can you can really focus in by the hot tree. Yeah, but it hasn't been just
it seemed like it's just been crazy around here. But I guess if there's enough of them too for the deer, then I mean there's certainly like ar trail cameras have been slow the last week or two.
I feel like they have man real slow. And I think that we have true cameras, you know, in different parts of the country even and it's that way, so there's some stuff going on. A lot of us need a frost too. Is that frost will knocked down a lot of that natural browse outside the acrons. You know, it even rots some acrons if you get it cold enough. But you started out talking about this cold front that's coming in. This is like a white till high week
right now. I'm about to go hunt it. But I'm a little torn, and I want your advice for everybody here as well, because you've killed seven bucks already this year. Actually it's not that many, but it's half that you have laugh you've done some killing man, and congrats on that. But and I've hunted with you a long time, and I know that you think about this stuff very, very strenuously and make some good decisions. All that to say,
we have a cold front rolling through. It's at a good time of year, but it's actually not like top notch rut dates. It's just on the cusp. Do you treat it differently than a November sixth cold front, like say October thirty, Like the thirtieth is like the heart of the cold front right now? I think I think you do what do you do different? I think I still would be hunting two things, and it would be
more than likely I would hunt. And you know, when you show up, the big part of when you show up to a place is taking a little time to understand what's going on. It's like it's like when you get to a riverbed as a fly fisherman, you can go to casting, or you can watch for rises, or you can flip over rocks. I really try say that, I really try to not have a fly tight on whenever I go. I don't. I'm the worst dude.
I can't stand it. I'm like, I ain't flipping that rock over like case do it.
But there are times of the year that you just know having a hopper on is gonna work.
Yeah. Yeah, so we're kind of time I like to fish.
We're kind of in that with with the sure coming Markene right now is fly fish and talk to bitter.
Stop it is his part. Maybe it resonates. Yeah, no, so I think that I guess what I'm saying is outside of seeing what's what's under the rock or what rises are happening right now in an area, I would go into an area the first afternoon, I get there without knowing anything, and I would either hunt a scrape that I can find, or I would hunt deer very similar to early season, just with the knowing that they're
going to move earlier. So essentially probably if you had just if you could just pick exactly how it goes down, you hunt, you know, one hundred yards from buck betting or a betting area that typically will hold bucks right and in between one hundred yards towards the food source that they're going to destinate in that night. So, uh,
that's like ideal for me. Now if you're I mean, I have an idea about the area you're going to potentially and there may not be a great just food source, and there may not be a great pattern of travel. So I think in that case, definitely finding pinches and stuff is gonna is going to still be okay, you know. I mean, if you don't have the food source, you don't have the betting nailed down, then it's gonna be okay.
I don't think. I think you can hunt them a lot like a rud in a pinch or a funnel and just hope that that deer funnels through there going to food in one way or another, or going to a scrape in one way or another. But I just don't know if they're going to be just in a in a zombie walk yet, you know.
Yeah, for sure. Here's my thoughts on it. My best experience with this a cold front at this time is, I believe twenty nineteen Iowa. Is that right? We were up there? Yep, we had a cold front roll through, I believe on the twenty eighth. Yeah, I think that's right. Was the first day it came in. It was like six inches of snow. We were freaking out. We didn't know what we were doing.
You know.
It's so cold, but we saw deer frolicking, for one, But they the bucks were very aggressive towards one another. They might not have had like hot doze, but they were definitely like working things out. And that's what I'm going to try to capitalize on. I feel like my rattling antlers are going to be a big things. A good idea. I didn't even think about that. Yeah, that is a good idea.
I mean, do you think that if you stuck a buck decoy out somewhere it'd be a good idea?
I think so.
Yeah.
In fact, I believe so. We've done Retfresh for a few years and we've interviewed this person on our own podcast a few times as well. But Michael Unsucker is a big believer in buck decoy's this like last week of October. Yeah, I've seen him do it quite a bit, and so like, I think that that could definitely be advantageous for a person for sure. Yeah. And you know the reason I say is because Mike is a big buck killer, So I believe when he says things.
I believe it. Yeah, Yeah, he is man.
Yeah, he's not on rough Fresh this week, though I believe he has been recently. Last week. Yeah, last week, the days it gets all confusing east and said days go by.
Yeah, man, what a classic song.
Oh so good feeling man Todd ribes, as you like to say.
Who is on ret fresh this week? So we've got our very own Steven Ranella. He's gonna give us a report for the charge from Oklahoma just to I mean, just a passionate white tail hunter. Yeah, I mean, just absolutely much more important to him than you old there hunt. I believe it, man. He definitely doesn't get to do as often as you would like, but he he does love to pursue America's most popular big game animal.
Yeah for sure. We've also got Chris b Up in Michigan. Right, he's a good friend of ours from the past. Uh not not the ghost of Christmas past or the ghost to Christmas presents and come in and know me better, man, Mister Sam Hogan, right, who's got a report from us from Ohio. And then we also have Dave Skinner who's just somehow is just always killing these bucks despite having a beard that I don't know how he sees past that thing is a mondo. I mean, the dude is
just the beardiest of bearded guys. He's killing beards in the bigger bucks now, I'm telling you, Kentucky bucks layer for sure. So that's what we've got on the on the podcast this week, and they've got some good information. These guys are worth listening to. I promise you they know a lot about killing deer. Cool.
Well, let's get them guys on and see what they have to say about it.
Now on the phone, I've got Steven Ornella from Meat Eater and his faith favorite game species, the white tailed deer. Steve, what's going on, man.
Hey, thank you for clean that up like that. It's going great, dude. Listen, man, I.
We just were down in Oklahoma hunting out of tree stands, man, and I had so much fun. I was just telling my uh friend Johannis that I can't stop thinking about it.
I grew up.
I grew up hunting tree stands and just being back up there and how much stuff you see because you're not you know what I mean, you slipping there and then a couple hours later the whole woods forgot that you're there and you see a lot of stuff.
It's cool, man, Dude, our cameraman freak out more about big squirrel footers and they did a big deer foots.
They love it, you know.
The squirrels just come crawling down, they film them. It's just and they know exactly what you're talking about.
Yeah, I know.
I was with Tony Peterson. He had a bobcat come in under his tree totally unaware. And I don't know the last time you tried to sneak up on a bobcat. That ain't easy. Yeah, suck dude. It was such a blast.
Man, that's cool man, I know. Uh, Tony was pretty pretty sycked about how everything went. You guys had a little success there, right, Oh.
Yeah, we did.
So we had we had well, we had four full days to hunt. We had an extra evening.
So what's that make four point five days sounds good? He got two bucks. I hit spike and lost it.
I got a nice I got a nice little eight point Michigan ate.
You know, yeah, I like it. Influence into this thing. Yeah, it was great. It was.
It was a bumber to lose one, you know, and you know, I tried to learn lessons from and all that, but I.
Just I hit it too far back and we looked and looked and went back and looked and looked and looked and just can't couldn't pull together.
Sure, man, it happens, that's uh, that's a boat hunting. Oh yeah, yeah, it's fun to be close. So what were they what were they doing? Why were why was that tree such a special place to sit.
Eating, just feeding, chilled out like no, I mean zero any thing of zero, anything of like cruising behavior zero, you know, no posturing, no interest in doze, dude, hot right, eating on acorns, checking out beneath per Simon trees. Just real leisurely, real leisurely, not like not traveling.
Yep. So did you see much as far as like scrapes or rubs, And it seemed like the bucks had been laying down any of that type sign.
Dude, Two scrapes about the size of two scrapes, both had been freshened up, but they weren't as big as my laptop gotchall close together. And like, it's funny because we never saw any sign of that. We never saw not any signs, saw signs, saw scrapes, never saw that buck. And I actually hunted that spot and saw a little three inch spike, so he wasn't the cold print. But yeah, they had been you know they had been done, and Tony he had run into a couple more.
I ran into those two. I ran into those two. Bit the way things went, we never we never even.
Hunted them heavy. Yeah, gotcha. So uh, you know, seeing that little bit of sign that just no interest. The whole country essentially is gonna go through a cold front over the next week, and Oklahoma will be the same. Uh, with a lot of weather involved as well, a lot of rain in the forecast. What do you think that's gonna do to the deer? You know, kind of as we look to the next week.
Well, I'll tell you what Tony Peterson said, and and he was definitely the brains behind our operation down there. You know, he does a lot of public land white tails, right, and I've been out of that game for a long time. It was funny because the terrible drought down there, so bad in fact, that like there's a couple of little dry like little pools in a dried up creek bed just full of all these car gasp and for air. We found a little pool smaller than a car, had
three beavers living in it. They got nowhere to go. Anyways, Wow, he was he was saying, man you know. It's funny because he kept saying to me, man, can you imagine if it rained. Can you imagine if it rained, how much movement there's going to be. So I'm sure it's gonna you know, it was like when we hunted.
It was just hot.
You know, it was fun, it was great to be out, but it just didn't have that feel in the air. And I know Tony was saying that he was feeling that some cool weather and some moisture would really be what turned things around and kicked it off.
So I trust him more and I trust me on that man.
Yeah.
Yeah, So a scale of one to ten, if you had to pick a number based off of whatever excitement you might have thinking about scrapes and the cold front coming in the time of year, those kind of things, what would you put buck movement at on a scale of one to ten?
Next week?
Oh well, I guess i'd have to say it when my time there, I guess i'd have to say that it was three or four.
So it's gonna be way high.
Yeah, yeah, it's gonna be way higher now.
I mean, it's happening.
Man.
Here's the thing is, it's gonna you know, you got the inescapable reality of of.
Like length of day. Right and and and.
Let's say you had a heat wave and that heat wave lasted, all that heat wave lasted the next month. De you're gonna get bread, right, right, So it's gonna happen. They're gonna get out. Uh if within that window, if they can pick cool you know, moisture, cool temperatures, they're gonna maximize on that right time.
So why not?
It is the perfect time, sure, sure, coole Man, Well, congrats on on the success up there, man, and thanks for hopping on the phone with us as a as a busy dude. And uh, well hopefully see you're shooting some more whitetails scene man.
Oh yeah, yeah, and and and thanks for having me on.
And just to clarify, you guys know this game better me, but I appreciate you letting weigh in for sure.
Man. Thanks Steve, All right, take care on the phone. Now, I've got Chris b He's one of my good friends. He is up in Michigan, the home state, doing some hunting. Well, the old home.
State, right, old home state.
Yeah yeah, the origin of Chris B. Man.
Yeah, the capital of the world.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, how's it. How's the hunting up air right now?
It's been good.
This is my third day now, and actually afternoon sits have been pretty dang good. They're starting, you know, starting to bump, doze around and stuff. We had a pretty nice bark last night, just plow through the field chasing after a dough and then we never saw him the rest of the night. But they're definitely definitely feeling it. Morning sits are have been slow for some reason. I was kind of hopeful, but kind of seems like, you know, we're not quite to where they're they're on that morning,
you know, where they're juiced up. So afternoon sit sitting food, you know, is still kind of the play. But they're definitely they're definitely feeling it.
Yeah, what kind of food are you sitting?
So thankfully one of.
My buddies here in Michigan he put in some good food plots, so we're sitting over just brascas, you know, and there's also cornfields and bean fields and stuff, so we've just kind of been switching all around the acorns. I don't know about you guys or what you've been hearing, but they've been really really good this year.
So not.
You know, I feel like that sometimes throws a wrench and stuff because they're kind of mixed up and more in the woods for food sources and whatnot.
Yeah, it seems like that where we're from a little bit right now. But I didn't think it was going to be a great crop. So who knows, man, But for you, have you seen more action on green food sources or grain up there?
We have seen more on green, would say, if I had to put it on, a lot of the corn here is still standing. And I'm sure if they cut it here. It's been wet though, but I'm sure if they cut it here the next week, they'll they'll switch over pretty hard, you know, the fresh cut corn they always do.
You know.
But yeah, right now, I mean, if you got good food.
Pots, it seems like they've been hammering them.
Yeah. So we got some weather rolling through the US, you know, in the upcoming week here, are you gonna focus on pinch points or are you thinking still more rock? We're in. That's kind of scrape time period right now, you know, as kind of we get a cold front that pushes through.
Yeah, this is scrape week, I like to call it. You know, it's last week of October now through Halloween. It's like find a fresh scrape next to a food source, especially for afternoons, you know, morning if you want to sit mornings kind of October twenty fifth is my start of morning hunts. I've been cheating a little bit and hunting in the mornings early because I got limited time here.
But that's, you know, October twenty fifth when I really start doings, because they will start, you know, trying to find the local doughs a little bit or at least get fired up.
But you know, just starting.
We sat a pinch this morning and just had a terrible morning, so we should have should have not done that. So I think it just depends on your area too, you know, if you get a hot dough that comes in early for some reason and kind of gets bucks fired up a little earlier than usual.
But scrapes, I mean, right now, it's scrape, scrape, scrapes.
It's hard to jump on that stuff. Man, you know, we're all this is so keyed up on it now. You I want to talk a little bit about the tactic of the scrape. Are you trying to be able to shoot the scrape or are you finding access trails to that or what are you thinking whenever it comes to like sitting up on that thing.
Yeah, So good example right now is we have it's actually like a down oak tree on the edge of this big maybe one acre food plot, and all over the edge of the oak tree, you know, hanging out in the field is just like five scrapes all torn up. So we got to you know, a stand right on the edge of the food plot with that at about twenty yards. I like to shoot scrapes at least one of them, you know, if it's a scrape line, you know, set up to where obviously you're not gonna booger the
spot up. But yeah, I mean I love shooting to your own scrapes because they're one distracted and two it's a good probability you're gonna have a good range on them and they're gonna be standing still field for a minute. So you know, I'm all about just hunting right right on the scrape or you know, the trail plus the scrape. You know, a trifecta of food scrape trail would be you know perfect.
I I get multiplying my variables there now, Yeah, based off of like weather variables or lunar or just even time of year. In the next week in Michigan, what's the buck movement gonna be Like? Is it gonna be good? Is it gonna be better? And if you had to rank it on a scale of one to ten, what would you put it at?
You know, I think it's it's just the time of year where it is gonna be good regardless of weather. I mean, we're getting there. It's no longer you know, good weather's gonna but we're getting into the rut soon and it's like you just gotta be in a tree. It's it's good to have good weather. It'll enhance the hunting, but they're gonna do deer things regardless of how I kind of.
Look at it.
I think we got some cold weather coming in soon, though, and that'll help. I mean, it was thirty degrees this morning. It was kind of like the first hard frost, and I honestly think it kind of.
Shocked deer, Like deer were like, ooh, it's cold.
You know, and just kind of I feel like that first hard frost, they really don't move as much as you would think. But I think, you know, these next couple hard you know this next hard snap is.
Gonna be good.
I think it's gonna get.
Them fired up.
Cool scaleing one to ten if you had to rate it.
I mean, I love this week up to Halloween.
I'm gonna say like a seven.
Oh yeah, let's go, dude.
I mean, especially if you got a good local buck. I mean, this is the time to kill your local bucks. Sure, yeah, you know, or nocturnal buck. He's been nocturnal all October. You get a good weather snap and you know you got him on camera. Now you're hitting scrapes. It's like, this is the time hunt those scrapes and and get a good weather and he's gonna slip off.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Man. Well, Chris, I hope it goes well for you up there in Michigan and wherever else you go the rest of the year. And I appreciate you hopping on and giving us the report.
Yeah, guys, good talking.
Get him man, Okay, on the phone here, We've got Sam broken Hogan. What's going on? Broken dude. It's been a while since I've actually talked to you, but you and I keep up on, you know, just passing on social media. And dude, it looks like giants just follow you around.
Dude, I like to think I follow them around.
But oh you pretty get that too.
Situation.
They definitely made it a little.
Easier on me.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Man.
You shot a giant up in Ohio and you know it looked like the pictures looked just like the falls is there? Are you seeing many acrons dropping or what you what? It's what's going on in the woods there.
You got to be careful not to roll your ankles out there.
I mean, yeah, the hold on, I got that. The acorns are big, round and slippery.
You can't even continue talking after you say that. It's so dishonest.
But actually, I mean they are hot. But where I was hunting was was largely maples. It was there weren't many olds. It was walnuts and maples. But in uh, other properties I'm hunted, the oaks are just going nuts right now.
So that's kind of We've seen a lot of people, especially in like northern states that are that are seeing that right now. Is that affecting what you were doing hunting that funnel that you were hunting this this week?
Yeah? It Uh, when it's so widespread, it's really hard to key in on like one producing tree or one producing stand. So what I was, frankly, I switched a little bit to UH to hunting tactics and with that UH spot where a couple of big ridges came together and and fortunately it came together for me.
That's cool, dude. So you know, it's weird how some of those those acorns or acorns, how they they will be yellow sometimes you know, yeah.
Yeah, you know, the the corn flavored one.
Yeah, it's crazy, man. So talk about talk about, like, you know, truly the tactics involved in that, like how how do you find a place to put it?
What do you what are you thinking there? Yeah?
So this this was a obviously it's private property in Ohio where I killed this buck, and corn piles are legal, so for us, it was largely an intel, Like we hadn't hunted this place in previous years, so it was a new farm, and it was just seeing what was in the area and putting them in semi strategic areas where they're going to be anyway, but you're just ensuring they're going to be in front of your camera.
So whenever you do that, essentially you're hunting a deer that just found a new food source. It's not like you were drawing deer in from miles to like a two thousand pounds pile, right, It's kind of more just like a hey, let's get him in front of the camera type deal.
Correct?
Correct, And and we're I live in Michigan, so hunting down in Ohio it's it's I'd have to be a much stronger man to get two thousand pound of cornder one spot up in them hills.
So yeah, it makes sense. So I want to talk a little bit about like how you strategize shots and stuff in those big hills. Are you setting up a spot like that? So say you have a bait station or you just have a spot that you want to hunt. Are you trying to set up where you can shoot a lot of trails? Are you trying to set up where you can shoot the spot, or are you you know, just finding the tree and mine have to take a forty five yard charter? What does that look like?
Well, this this particular situation was the top of the ridge wasn't like one trail.
It was it was one hundred yards wide.
So I was banking on them doing kind of getting a little ruddy. It was the twenty third when I killed them, and I was I had rattling antlers and a grunt tube in the tree, and I learned from you guys to make sure that the the yellow acorns are within shooting range. I remember that and back back in Kansas, I think it was like seventeen hsh.
You don't remind me that.
I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to do that case, but yeah, the I always make sure I've got a shot to it. I don't like being right on top of it. I like being thirty thirty five yards away from it. But I set up so the wind obviously isn't going there, because your likelihood of getting those fawns little box something you're not really gonna shoot is pretty high.
Yeah, that they're going to be right there.
So I set it up with that in mind, but also with all the trails that coming through my wind dropping into one of those bottoms where if they're running the ridges, they're not gonna they're not gonna get me.
Yeah. So in this week, based off of like variables that may may affect deer or deer movement, do you foresee it being very similar and on a scale one to ten, when you think the Buck movement will be like.
Uh, last year, I think I gave it like a six point eight, and then I killed the one fifty the next year. Okay, so I'm gonna give it an eight.
And uh it's it's.
Warm until Friday, and then we got a real, real, real cold cold snap at the perfect time.
Oh man.
So the twenty eight through, I mean the foreseeable future twenty eighth is when it starts real cold range.
Let's do it.
If Sam says listen, if you if you're listening to this and Sam says it's gonna be an eight, you need to be in the woods. He is one of the most under the under the radar quote unquote experts at deer hunting that I've ever met in my life. So I appreciate he'd listen. I know you're a humble guy.
I ain't even deer either. Dude, he's killed like pigs. Need I'm telling you, Sam, just you.
Were like, I don't even do that.
Hey, you're gonna be the next like Eberhart, just like the guy who's got the following man.
Yeah, really, Mark, it don't matter. You're an expert. Hey, thanks for hopping on the phone. With the Sam and uh, well, we'll hope that we get to talk to you again maybe in maybe from Michigan sometime.
All right, let's do it, all right, thank you?
All right, now I've got Dave Skinner from Kentucky's with whitetail properties. Dave, you've been killing some bucks. It looks like, man, I got one on the ground.
I shot one Sunday.
Sunday was a week ago?
Yeah, man, uh was it? What was the weather like when you shot that deer?
Just a perfect October mid October cold front come through, got the deer on our feet really early in the day. Uh, yeah, it was beautiful weather. Had had a good stiff north wind that day and spent a little rain.
He stepped out in the in the food plot like at four fifty in the afternoon.
By yeah, yeah, what'sh what's in that food plot?
Not much of anything really, it's a it's a pretty it's a pretty poor food plot. And uh, I will tell you what he's stepped out there for was the Golden acres.
That's what he stepped out there. The wow in Kentucky, we can we can baite.
I'm not going to hide that fact.
But yeah, so he come out and get a get a belly full of full of corn.
Sounds like you were pretty close to where he is living. I mean, if he's there at four fifty in the afternoon, that's pretty early. Is that strategic that you were setting up close to where you thought that deer was core ranging at or did it just happen to be something he had just died to throughout the season.
So to be honest, that deer wasn't on my radar until the week before and he started just showing up at that spot. And I actually took a kid in with me to hunt. He won't shoot, but I took a kid in with me and we set up on him, and the wind just kind of messed us up. I think I would have killed him that week before, had had the wind been steady, but it was a lot warmer. He was coming out right at last right at last light. And then the fast forward the next week he had
gone underground. I know he smelled us because he just disappear. After that, he'd been real regular. And fast forward a week and this cold front was in and I just kind of, you know, I wasn't even thinking behinding that deer. I say, that I was trying to prepare a spot to kill him later on in the year once he was really doing what bucks do during the rut, which
is when I like to shoot him. But I was at the farm working and he pops on a cell camera at five o'clock Saturday, and I'm like, buddy, if you're going to do that, I will be there tomorrow because the wind's going to be right, so sure as the world's That's what happened to when was still good. And I slipped in there next day and he done the same thing two days in a row, which is gonna happen very often.
That's cool, man. So with that, I'm guessing you're not seeing a ton of rutting activity. They're pretty consistent to feed. Have you seen any scrape action.
Yeah, the scrapes are really picking up.
As a matter of fact, I got several bucks on scrapes last night on my cell cams. A new buck that I'm not familiar with showed up last night on the scrape and yesterday. We had our Muslim at weekend this weekend, so we shot some doe over the weekend and everywhere we went there was there was fresh scrapes popping up, So they're they're really hitting them hard. And actually got a got a buck on camera this morning. Dog in a dough in a food plot. So yesterday
evening we were out and uh, it was crazy. We were trying to kill doze and I think we'd saw five bucks.
Wow, finally had it.
Yeah, finally had a dose.
Stepped in the food.
Plot, a legit food plot that had a right at very last light, and there was a there was a three year old buck in the food plot whenever whenever she came in and he kind of trotted over to her and and when she showed no interest, he just turned the left.
So that's they're starting.
They're starting to get starting to get a little frisky.
Yeah, feels a little chipy up there where you're at. Man, that's that's cool.
So if you were going to look forward to the next week, it sounds like you got some buck movement going. If you had to rate it on a scale of one to ten for the next week on buck movement, what would you call it.
I'll be honest, we our cold front's gone and it's going to be pretty warm all week. I would probably try to get some chores done and be ready.
To hit it around Halloween.
It looks like there's a there's a front rolling through. I think it's supposed to hit here right right about the thirty first, So that's that's when I would concentrate. It's just too darn and warm, I think, and for a lot of daylight activity. Not saying it won't happen, but I think it'll get better around the thirty thirty to thirty first something like that.
Okay, so give me that one to ten number. Though, what are you gonna call it right now?
Right now?
Man, it's pretty low as far as red action goes. I would say three maybe.
Hey, I like an honest answer, man. A lot of guys get a little bit too optimistic. That's reasonable, look forward to that cold front coming. Hey, Dave, we appreciate the info, man, Thank you. All right, guys'll have a goo on.
That was a load of killer information.
And if you need more killer information on how to kill a big giant buck, the Element podcast is your place. Right now, we are doing a rut Q and A that is extremely extensive.
A little alliteration for you there. We're gonna have We have like.
Over one hundred questions and We're gonna have a lot of action packed a lot of knowledge based information on that Q and A. So go check out the Element podcast if you haven't, and subscribe while you're there. We
really appreciate that. By the way, if you want something more in the textual form, Tony J. Peterson has an article on the Wired to Hunt feed on media dot com that is about blind calling strategies for white tails, and I don't think he means closing your eyes in rattling, So you better have to go check that out to see actually what works for calling for white tails. By the way, Mediator Season twelve is out on the Media YouTube channel as well.
Tyler, what else is happening?
The Element has been posting some whitetail content. We got a Nebraska video that you should go check out. It's insane. There's a sixty yard bomb in that thing, so you can either hate or you can go and love it. And there's gonna be a lot more white tails stuff
coming onto the Element channel here pretty soon now. In fact, Casey and have to get off of here because we got to go look at four different videos and review them and make sure they are like we like them, and then we're gonna put them out on YouTube, so check that out and don't forget stay fresh. This is Reugh Fresh.