Ep. 723: Four Strategies that Led to Mark and Tony’s Rut Success and What to Do Next

themed tune, Big White Tails. So before we get into our main episode, our main topic of conversation, I want to set the mood appropriately and get that song playing.

are gone. I've ate up all my snacks, my hands and toes unnumb and we're gonna climb down.

You might be wor out, have a sore tail end or a sore back, droopy baggy eyes, or whatever it might be in your case. Because we've just endured the marathon of the peak of the rut. That's when rocations usually happen. That's when we're pinning all of our hopes and dreams on a certain set of days. And Tony and I we've survived it and we came out the other end, and we've got some stories to tell, don't we, Buddy?

of exciting things to tell. Fortunately, every single one of these episodes that we've done just you and me, we've each had a shot out, a deer or a kill to talk about, so we've had big things to talk about every week, and the same ghosts for today. Because I killed the buck during the rut in Nebraska, you kill the buck during the rut in Wisconsin, and you with your daughter when she killed a deer. Was that beginning of November as well?

So how we might be thinking about our hunts the last week of November, how our mindset must shift once December comes around, and just help people you prepare for this next phase of the season, because I think you know, I don't know if you feel this way, but once Thanksgiving hits, it's a big shift as far as my hunting approach and really what I'm expecting and planning for. So yeah, we should probably cover that a little bit too.

later that I'm really looking forward to. And it's just been, you know, it's it's a weird I feel like this season has been weird for me, you know, Like I know you'll probably talk about this with your Nebraska recap. I feel like I've had a lot of stuff kind of go wrong, but also the opposite end has hit pretty quick. And so even though some of these things that like could ruin a hunt happen, I mean there's

going to happen. I feel like I've had a pretty level season as far as the you know, the downside being meeting the upside and it kind of just being a really really productive season. So I feel good man.

hit him in the shoulder and couldn't recover him. But coming out of that, I felt so confident that he'd be back, Like just what, you know, I can see the footage, We see the arrow like ninety nine percent of it sticking out of the shoulder, and then we do the blood trail, and the blood trail is exactly like you would expect with a shoulder shot deer, Like there's decent blood fur ways, drippy, droppy, and then just

slowly dries up and then nothing. And we were able to follow like a little tiny drip drop blood trail with a dog for three quarters of a mile, you know, And after that, I was like, man, we all were at the end, We're like, hey, we're following a living deer. This deer's just been walking in a straight line forever. And now he just curled back into his bedroom. And you know he's going to be chasing dose tomorrow probably or something like that. That's what we're telling ourselves on

October thirtieth. But I still haven't seen him. I still don't have pictures of him, and now it's mid November, and so I just have not been able to shake that, Like I just keep thinking about it and dwelling on it, and so that's clouded over everything, like even and.

like this because of what happened. So this is a long winded way of saying that I know I shouldn't feel this way, but I've not been able to shake that kind of gloom that has settled on me because of what happened with the why nine and and so

I you know, I got to work through that. I'm working through that, and I think, you know, some of the upcoming hunts will help me with that, because I'll be going out with my kids, taking them to deer camp and that'll be a lot of fun and all those other things.

single day or two i'd have pictures of him. I mean, I'm in his core, of his core. And I'll jump ahead a little bit to one of the things I was going to tell you about, which is, you know, after so I shot him, had the shoulder shot, had all that kind of stuff happened. And then a couple days later I went to Nebraska, which we will talk about here shortly. And then as soon as I got back from that, I got back out hunting in the

Wide Nines area. But then I also started bringing new cameras with me, and so every time I went and hunted around his core zone, I put a new camera up, and so I like, I got cameras now, like right in the good stuff. Like before I was all on the xterior and safe locations, but now I was hunting, I was like diving into the good stuff and placing

cameras in there now too. So the level of surveillance I have on this deer is way beyond anything I've done before, just because I so badly want to know when he's back or if he's back, and despite that, it just just nothing's showing. So that has just, you know, every day, I've lost a little bit of hope every day, I've like, ah, gosh, why is he not back?

I've wanted to go and just like do another tear down, like walk everything all over again and like check every single place in the world. But I've been battling like do I do that because I need this peace of mind? Or what if he's alive then that ruins my chance of being able to kill him and everything says he's should be alive.

I got pictures of him in a two week window from October twenty you know, from October twenty eighth through November fourteenth, I only had pictures of him two or three times. Last year, and the year before I only had one picture of him all of November. So history has shown that he does kind of vacate a little bit in November compared to other months of the year, and then at the end of November last year he

showed up in a big way. So I'm hoping that maybe that's what's happened here, Like he had this crazy thing happen at the end of October, like you said, he's like, hey, I'm not into this, and then he usually kind of ruts somewhere else anyway, So maybe he took off and was doing that kind of thing.

could just be coincidental. But I think you'll just show up again, like I would just I would just think a deer like that is like he's going to play it safe for a little while and then he's gonna start sniffing around and come back in. And I don't know, I think he'll be back. I sure hope you're right, man.

deer every year. But what do you mean? Yeah, but but like in a case like this where I just you know, you just invest so much time and energy and everything into it and you try so hard for it to go right, and and when it doesn't, just kind of it's a tough pill swallow.

it just sucks. But yeah, I mean, you know, like you know, you're on a bunch of group texts in the fall, and you know, every everybody who haunts and has their buddies, I mean, stuff breaks bad a lot, like it's so it is just you know, we we are like force fed and you know, like we're like hyper aware of this through hunting media. We're like force fed the positives, the sizzle reels and like the ones

that go right. And it is just so the hunting deer with a bow is so ripe for something to go wrong and it just happens.

or us. Anyways, that's that's, I guess, not where I expected to start this, but but that is where I am, which is awaiting the Wide nine's return, and and in the meantime, I've been hunting a different buck, which I'll tell you about here a little bit later on a different place. But let's start with some good news. How about we start with a good story and some good takeaways. Do you want to talk Wisconsin?

in is like rough. I mean, the deer population is just low. I've I've got I don't know, five or six cameras over there, and I think I've gotten pictures of two dos that had faons the entire fall, and so it has just been a grind. My one daughter killed a little spike right away, and then my other daughter, you know, we hunted I guess five sits, saw one little three pointer. No, you know, no shot nothing. I mean, it took me twenty days over there between hunting with

them and myself to see a dough. Just it's like it's hard to describe it. It's just like you're hunting where there are no deer, and but it's a it's a it's big woods. It's fun you see gross like it's a cool. I like the environment, it's just tough. So I told my daughter, I was like, this is our chance, Like we have a rut hunt to go do because usually you know, they'll kill pretty early and they're kind of out. They don't usually have a buck tag this late and so I was like, we're going

to go do put a decoy out. Put that Dave Smith do out. We're gonna do all day sits and we're gonna get one like we because we're hunting anybody, right and know she's dude, she's awesome, man. I mean we've done We've done all day sits for turkeys, you know, like we'd never done it for deer because we never needed to. So we go over there and I had put this blind up in this spot and we sat. I said, let's sit here till noon and then we're

going to go to another spot. We're just going to carry everything and move over because I think we have a good chance this evening the wind was going to switch. Whatever we sit. Nothing perfect, you know, like November sixth seventh, whatever, like frosty, beautiful, no dear, nothing moving. So we moved midday, walked over there, set up in this box blind on this on this private ground that's just in this kind

of corner that's just good. Like they cut through there coming from the neighbors and they kind of go around a swamp through this little corner and I'm like, man, if they come through here and we have this decoy out. They're going to come in, you know, like they especially a little guy. Right, So we sit till like, you know, ten minutes after sunset, right, like you got like a

little bit of time left. Maybe it was maybe it was a little earlier than that, but it was like we were staring down the barrel of an all day blank, right. We had twenty minutes left, half hour whatever. And I heard a stick snap back in the swamp, and I was like, that's a deer. He might be going to the neighbors or he might be coming here. And I'm like, but we got to get ready because this is going

to be our chance if he shows. And I look and this little six pointer comes walking out of the swamp and he comes out and he looks at that decoy and he's about, I don't know, forty five yards away, and it was so cool because his body language just shifted like he was just like a little scrapper on

the hunt. And then he saw that loan though, and he like kind of puffed up, stuck his chest out a little bit, and he walked to this scrape and scraped it and he got on his hind legs and he raked his antlers and he like it was like

such a palpable difference in his body language. And he finished that up and he just walked in and he couldn't take it and ran right up to the decoy, you know, stuck his nose right on the butt, sniff it and she laced him at you know, fourteen yards and he ran off and tipped over, and it was like, it was so awesome, Like you don't you know, I don't. I don't use decoy as hardly ever, And you know, I've had very I've killed a few deer with him, but I've had like, you know, at least way more

negative interactions than positive. And to have it just position one like that and it just him play the game and put on a show man. It was so freaking cool. And she was just geeked.

focused on that decoy. And that we were on a corner of a field that was supposed to be planted this year and the farmer never planted it, so it's basically bare dirt, worthless to the deer. But I knew, like the eye lines, like the site lines are really good. So I'm like, if if a deer pokes his head out and sees this in this field, he's going to

see that decoy. And so I'm like, you know, if they cross through or you see a cruiser or whatever, there's a good chance that they're just gonna lay eyes on it and come and a really good chance they're going to pop out of that corner where they kind of pinch around that swamp. And so it was like

it was like scripted. Man. I mean, the way he came out as soon as I saw him look at that decoy and his body language changed, I'm like, this deer is gonna die, Like he's going to come you could tell, and it was just so fun, you know. I mean, like, you know, everybody breaks about their kids and they're so biased toward their kids. But she's eleven, and she did all day out there, and she smoked him, and I was like, that is badass, man, that is cool man, that's great. That's that's as good as you

can get. Yeah, especially you know, especially when you're in a situation where I you know, I told her going over there, I'm like, we might see a couple deer this weekend, like we might. But in that situation, if you you know it's the rut, and if you that and I know we own Dave smith whatever, like take

this for what it's worth. That freaking decoy looks so good, Like when you when you look at that in a field and you're like, man, especially a little scrapper sees it, they're not going to turn that down during the rut.

lower risk. And my worry with the decoy Michigan was always like, you put that thing out there, and deer are gonna be blowing at it and freaking out.

I think was a hot dough. Well, a doll that could have been approaching it came over and just hung out by the buck and she just stood around it and would then start feeding next to it. And then I had another buck come in and you know, try to get that dough from the buck with my decoy. So it was very cool to see that. So I mean TBD on killing one on one hopefully someday, but uh, it was fun to experience that. At least. A question

for you related to decoying. Back to what I just said, the risk of using a decoy is that it can spook some deer, at least other decoys. I've used a different decoy in the past and have had that happen in Ohio and Iowa. But do you think that in a low deer density kind of place like where you were at, decoying is actually more effective because you've got a lower risk of deer spooking, and it's maybe a

higher opportunity. Like if a deer sees another deer in a low deer density area, they're even more keyed in to go check them out.

certain pattern. But it's like, I don't know, if you're in a place with tons of good food already, you know, betting cover might be way more important, or you know, water might be way more important. Or if you're up in the big woods, you know you have betting cover everywhere.

So like what's rare? Right, like the food is. And I was thinking about this with this dough decoy, I'm like, there's so few deer here that if you're a buck and you're on the if you're cruising and you don't have a dough with you, which is very likely, there's no way you're going to pass that up. Yeah, you know, and the buck that I killed, we can talk about this later, but the one that I killed in Wisconsin,

this is the same scenario. So I went from never taking a decoy into the field the killing back to back deer on a decoy in similar situations.

you know, I mean, I guess it would kind of be like, you know, fishing in a pond with like three deer or I mean three fish. You know, like you'd be like I would, I would switch my tactics on how I would do that versus just you know, like throwing top waters all over because I know there's tons of smallies here now I'm in a place that has nothing to work with, like I'm going to switch things up, you know, And I think I think it's like a really good teacher to hunt places with different densities,

Like I think it forces you. I mean, that's part of the reason why the public land thing is such a great educator. Like even if you're in a really good state, you know, you if you go hunt public land, you've you've often disadvantaged yourself in a way where you have to level up a little bit to have success that you might not have to do on private land. It just forces you to think, like, how do I get through this the right way to have that encounter?

tag for this reason. I was like I just want to have something for myself to go do, and I kind of want to do a late rut thing anyway, because I was just I keep thinking it's going to be like a good chance to kill a big one. So anyway, I went over I guess maybe like on the eleventh or twelfth or something, and I had five or six days to hunt. And my plan was, you know, like get in deep, you know, hunt these swamps, get into these some of these places where I know there's

some big deer. And I knew it was going to be like a mostly mostly I was gonna blank. But I'm like, I feel like I have a chance. And I had one spot I was saving. And this is another thing that we should probably do a whole podcast on. But I find myself, I know you do this too, Like there's a place I want to hunt, Like there's a location where I'm like, that's where I want to be now, But the wind isn't going to be right for two days, So what's my next best option? To

leave that alone and just be smart about it. And I was doing that on this this spot that I really wanted to hunt, this kind of travel right along this swamp and I'm like, I can't go in there until the wind gets right, and I've got to wait like two and a half days. So I'm working other stuff and blanking, and I finally saw a dough nobody on her tail. I saw her twice like she was like all by herself, and I hunted the wind was It was like the third day I was over there.

I've seen, you know, one deer so far in three days. And I sat this stand, had some neighbors come in with their four wheelers and stuff, and so it was like early in the morning, and I'm like, well, I was gonna go saddle up on this swamp edge where I really wanted to hunt. Anyway, like I was going to do that midday when the wind switched. I didn't want to do it in the dark, and so I drove back to the cab and I switched my stuff out, grab my saddle and get ready to go do that.

And as I'm driving back, I saw this buck. You know how like when you see deer run, they have different kinds of ways of running, right, Like some of them are just kind of trotting along. Sometimes they bound. But when you see that like greyhound just like down digging. You know, it happens a lot if you like heart shoot them or you hit them in a heart and a bone, like they just dig.

I'm like, they just ran in there. They weren't anywhere near where I was going to go set up, but I was like, maybe I should go do that setup I did with my daughter just for two hours, just maybe there's maybe that dough is hot, maybe they'll come streaking through like something, you know. Kind of just like fell into my lap and made me rethink my plan because I'm like, I still have time to go do the thing I want to do, but maybe I should give this just like a little bit of time.

in there. And I was like, this is so dumb, Like I'm I know where I want to be, Like I want to go hunt like a real hunter and not do this, Like this didn't feel right to me. But I'm sitting there and I'm like, you just you just don't know, right, And I'm like at this point, I'm like, I just want a deer to come by so I can shoot it. Like I'm like, i just

want that part of the hunt. And like ten minutes after I sat down, I looked and here comes this buck trotting and I'm like, oh shit, there's one right there, and he comes through. I don't I don't think so I'm I'm not exactly sure. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Uh, but you know, in one of those box lines you have, like those tall windows on the side like to bohon

out of. So I've got the decoy out sixteen yards quartered away, same kind of deal, and this buck's coming through at like thirty five, and he's like not looking at the decoy at all. He's just trotting. And so I'm like, I know because I've ranged it a million times because I sat there with my daughter forever, and so I'm like, holy crap, like is he gonna stop? And I'm like trying to murp him, and he just runs right on through and stops like where I can't

shoot him. And so I'm like looking at him, like I can't believe this worked. And there's a buck right here, and now I'm not going to get to shoot him, like he just he's going to ignore this decoy. And I'm telling you, dude, that book. It was like his brain was running in slow motion because he was like, I'm gonna go run over here and go check for

doz on like this neighboring property. But you could see it like kind of grind to a halt, and he stopped, dude, he stopped, yeah, facing yeah, He's like, oh my god, another deer. I can't believe this, like, can't be right. He's facing into the swamp and I'm thinking, I can't believe that this is gonna I'm not going to kill

this deer. And he looks for like twenty seconds into the swamp, spins a one eighty and runs right up to my decoy and I shoot him just like it was and he and I don't know, it was wild, Like I couldn't. I could not believe it. And he ran off and I could see the blood coming out of his side. It was one of those wonderful blood trails where you're like, I know there's going to be a dead deer here, but I get to do the blood trail part, you know what I mean? Yeah, And

so it was. It was wild. So I did basically the exact same setup twice with that decoy, and the two deer that saw it came right in. Just that's amazing wild. So and I mean, he's he's a weird deer too. I'll send you a picture. But when I saw him coming, I was like, man, that's a big deer with a runty rack, Like you know how when you're like in Texas and they're hard to judge, Like body to rack is just weird. This one's like it looked like a horse coming in with this little eight

point rack and it's just it's just weird. Like I'm like, you know, like we always joke about like a call buck. I'm like, I think I just killed like the ultimate call buck because this guy's his head gear sucks and I don't you know, but it was it was wild. It was cool.

access to the best stuff. Yeah. So but I don't know, I was pretty I was pretty freaking happy anyway. Yeah that's awesome, man.

really big deer. Like if you're gonna if you're hunting, you know, a specific one sixty in the corner of this field or whatever, like you want to challenge that deer, right, And like we said earlier, if there's you know, if you're in a high deer density place, he might have

does everywhere, like that's not that special to him. But I think for a lot of people who aren't, like I don't you know, if you're like I just want a decent buck, I don't need a one to fifty or whatever, or you're like, I just want to put a buck in front of me that will give me a good shot. I think that dough decoy is like way underutilized.

way there. They might not. But when I would put that out, even the dose they'd come out, they get they'd get a little wiggy. They'd almost always come right over to it. And so this one and and if you're calling, you know, if you if this, this is obviously a heads up decoy. This uh, Dave Smith. You know the head's up, it's looking you know, if you if you could put one that was a head down so you couldn't really see the head, but you could see like it was a little body calling to deer

all season long. Would be amazing with that because they wouldn't you know, a buck would look over there. You could and you know, dose could look over there. You could bleed Adam. Bucks could look over there. You could grunt at them whatever. They don't really there, they don't. They just know there's a deer there that's making noise. And so I think there's applications for this in a lot of ways. That would be really cool.

photos and drive around. I had to go pull some stands and blinds and stuff. So I was just in and out of the woods in different spots, driving around. And the amount of trucks I see pulled like all the way through the field parked on the edge of the woods. It's like, man, you could have walked two hundred yards and not done that. Like you put a totally different impact on there. And that's like that's super common, right, Like you hear that story a lot. You hear it

during gun season a lot. Like riding the four wheeler out to the tree stand. Like, man, you are advertising your presence in a way. Like think how often there's a there's a truck parked right there on the edge of that field. Almost never? Yeah, and when when there is, there's always a person one hundred yards away in that ladder stand, you know, like that that kind of stuff.

How you get in there, where you park, that doesn't change, man, Like it's it's like universal across the white tail space that if you're kind of taking the easy way out, you're you're probably costing yourself some encounters, I think, you know. And it's and it's often the difference between you know, fifteen minute walk in a ten minute walk or a fifteen minute walk and a five minute walk, you know, because this is white tails and we're not going that far.

But it so that and just time, like you know, I had two sits in a row between North Dakota and my daughter's Dear that were all day sits where the first deear that came in at the end, which is right at the end, is the deer that we killed. And you know how it is like sometimes you kill

that noon buck, sometimes it's one o'clock. Sometimes you just see something that clues you into what you should do you know at eleven o'clock in the morning, and I just think I'm getting to the point now where I'm like, I just think most hunters don't put in as much

time as they should. Like if you if you're sitting there, and you're like, I could go out at three o'clock or two o'clock or one o'clock, or I could go out right now, go out right now, as long as the wind's right and the situation works, because it's just like it's just time in there, and it's it's like, you know how it feels when you walk out, especially if you're sitting in the woods, you walk out for an afternoon sit it feels like it takes a while to calm down, like the woods has to get back

to like the normal rhythm. You know. It's like it's the same thing when you're you know, if you sit an elk wall or a water hole out west in September, when the frogs start chirping again and things start settling, now, you're like, okay, now something could come in. But when you walk in there, it goes quiet, and like there's just things like that. And I just think that the

more time you give it the more time. And I know that, like people want to hear something way cooler than that, But I just think it's like you have to put in the hours.

filming one week in November the two years we did it. Man, you can be on a property and be in a dead zone, just dead, and you can move five hundred yards away to a different valley or something and it is on. And so sometimes you know, sometimes you think you got a volume hunt that pinch point, make it

happen there. But if you if you're not wired for that, like okay, go sit a different stand, but put in your time there, like you know, make a qualified decision, but make sure that you're giving yourself a chance to like see this through, like what you need to see it through. Yeah.

But I kept on telling me. I said, hey, you gotta just set this aside because you're gonna you're going on your dream hunt for the year, Like this is your hunt that was just for you.

point in the first night. So I said, going into this Hunt'm like, okay, Mark, let's take your time this time. Let's be picky. I bet you could kill like a big, big deer out here if you just gave it time. It's the rut in the river bottoms of Nebraska, where you know, anything's possible. So I was thinking, like, this is gonna be the dream hunt. I'm bringing my decoy

in the evenings. I'm gonna put the decoy out in these open, grassy planes and gonna rattle and call and like, do all the stuff that actually might work in a place like this.

land that I have permission to hunt now. And you know, it's several miles of river bottom and so there's it's just grass all around it, and then there's this river that runs through the middle, and along that river there's cover and the white tails hang out down by that

and they cruise up and down. I mean, as we've talked about the past, you couldn't ask for a better rut situation because you've got a built in funnel all along that river, and you also have visibility, so I can call, I can decoy, I can do all that stuff that works particularly well during the rut too. So I had a game plan going in to go back to the zone that i'd hunted the last two years. So the I had permission two years ago, I guess was two seasons ago and I hunted just two evenings

at the end of a public land hunt. But on those two evenings I got to know a little spot. And then I came back last year and scouted the first night, hunted the next day, same zone, got to know it better, killed this buck, scouted around some more, put up cameras and stuff. So I'd learned some more that second year, and now coming back for year three, I had like a real game plan. You know, I knew, okay, this is one of the main betting areas. This is

one of the main betting areas. This is where I think I can set up for a morning on day one. And I, you know, thought through all this on the drive out there, and you know, I'm thinking, you know, definitely holding out for like a five year old type buck, a big, big deer. You know, I don't know what that means, but like a deer that would be like And I was like, I told myself, I'm gonna pass some deer, like I'm gonna pass mature bucks that are not giants, because this is like my only chance to

do that every other hunt. You know, I can't I couldn't possibly pass up on a mature buck. But this might be the kind of place I could actually be picky. So I get there chatting with the landowner.

And I don't know, I don't know what I said, but I think I just said what I just said over and over again, because all of the cover, all of the habitat, all of the stuff that I had hunted in the past, was all to the east side. Like that was my entire game plan, was hunting the east side, and basically two thirds of the property were now off limits to me because these other guys had got there first and had claimed it, and so all I had was the other third to the west, which

had like very very few trees. There was cover, but it's just like this buckbrush kind of stuff is what they call it. It's just like shoulder high brush that's just right along the river. There's no trees, is set up, and I'm talking like there might be twenty yards of it along the river, and then otherwise it's grass and then there's a couple of pockets where it goes like on an inside bend, and maybe there's like fifty sixty yards of it, but I mean we're talking slim pickens.

And I'm standing there thinking what am I going to do? And yeah, just what am I gonna do? Like all of my hopes and dreams went out the window, and all of a sudden, I'm thinking, like, whoa, I won't have a hard time killing any deer now.

in flames. So we're gonna have to do some real crisis management over the next half hour or half the head.

you know, relatively unpressued. So that's going for me number two. It's still the rut that's going for me number three. This is still river bottom stuff. So even though the area that had a lot of good trees and a lot of good cover and next to an amazing ranch with tons of deer and stuff like, even though that was like three miles away, I still am along a river that still acts as a funnel and there's still deer.

They're going to cruise up and down this that the deer do cover some ground, So I had to believe. I just told myself, like, hey, there are still things going here that can.

That was the mindset shift I tried to have. And that first night, instead of going I was originally going to go and hang a stand for the morning and then hunt a different spot that first night over in the zone. I knew, but when this all happened, I decide, Okay, change of plans. Instead of doing that, I'm just gonna go get up on a hill with my spotting scope and glass this area and just learn it. So I brought my bow just in case something crazy happened, but I'm just gonna need to learn.

both seen that be true time and time again. So I knew in this case, like I'm going to sacrifice the night's hunt to get a really good idea of what's happening in this new spot. So I sat there on the hill my glassed, and what I saw was at first mostly discouraging. There was like nothing moving on the proper da could hunt. But I could see to a neighbor's property, and I did see some deer coming out there and feeding out on a pivot field. They

head over there. The neighbor has a crop field. There's no food on the proper deck can hunt. So I saw a lot of deer leaving the river bottom on their side of the line and going.

a tree I can get up? And I spent a bunch of that night glassing trees, just trying to find a tree that would set up to get a stand or a saddline, and literally tony the entire night, I could not find one tree that I could get a saddle up into where I could like confidently say from this view, like, oh yeah, that's a tree that would get me up. It was almost all like the little low, scrubby junk trees that like are ten foot tall and

a thousand branches of that kind of thing. There was a few cottonwoods like way down by the river, but they're like, the way this area works is like a shelf, and so like the shelf right by the river, the shelf drops down like ten to fifteen feet and then there's like another layer there, and there were a couple of cottonwoods down the bottom layer, so I could see

the tops of them. I just couldn't tell like how much there was to work with and if I'd be able to get in it, because the thing is like if I'm going and setting up, I can't be down there and doing a bunch of limb trimming. So not only do I need to find a tree that has a trunk I can get up into high enough, but it also can't have a million branches because I can't, you know, do major trimming renovations on a tree right in the area while I'm hunting that day, right, so

trying to find a tree, never find a tree. So as the evening progresses, I'm starting to think, Okay, is there somewhere I could hunt on the ground tomorrow, Like maybe I could bring my saddle stuff with me, sit in the ground for the first hour or two, and while I'm down there on the ground, maybe I can get a better look at these cottonwoods from up close, and maybe I can find one I can get up into. And as I'm thinking through that, it's last light, I'm

still glassing. I spot a single deer come off of my property on the other side of the river, about six hundred yards away, maybe something like that. Five hundred six hundred yards away. I spot a big body deer come out of this brush right along the river and kind of go up this grassy hill and cross over to the neighbors. And I can see it is a decent sized buck. It's a solid buck. I can't really see well enough to tell you if it's a big big, but it's like a decent buck. And that gave me

a little hope. I'm like, Okay, there's a buck doing the thing that you would hope they'd be doing.

like cuts, they go down to the river. And what I had seen the previous year in the other area is that sometimes these deer would leave the river and take an erosion dish like can imagine, like like a t junction, right, and the river bottom is the top of the tee. But then every once in a while there's this ditch or gully that goes into it at a ninety degree angle, and if ever they were gonna

leave the river, they would take that out. So there was a couple of those that kind of angled out from the river up towards the crop fields on the neighbors. So I thought, hey, there's a chance that a deer might you know, come into the funnel through that too. So I got where those two met, tucked myself into

a seater tree. The next morning, sat there on the ground, hoping that some people come cruising through again, thinking, you know, from a rough perspective, out there, hunt the funnel, which is the river corridor, and then be close to those bends in the river where there's a little bit of that brushy stuff where you'd hope some does would bed. And nothing did that. I sat there most of the morning,

had no deer moved through it all. But late morning I spotted deer on the other side of the river again and pull up my bios and it's a tank. It's a big buck, and he's over on the other side, on the neighbor side of the line. And then a second buck comes out and the two of them stand there for a while, and the big guy starts making a scrape, and I tried to snort weeze, and I tried to grunt see if I could get this deer's you know, curiosity peak to see if maybe he'd come across.

Never did, but they were out there doing the thing, just kind of milling around, and then finally five doughs came out of this little brushy stuff he was standing by, and they run down cross the property line onto my side of the line, and go down to that same little patch of buck brush that the buck came out of the night prior. They drop in there, and then that big buck runs down and follows them into the same stuff. So I'm excited to have seen like a

really nice buck. And he's on my side of the line, and he disappeared into this cover, and I washed him go into this brush, and then I saw him pop out on the other side and then disappear right back into it, and then nothing. And I keep on watching further down the river trying to see if he pops out of it again. I do not see him pop out the other side.

a long ways down the river. So if you were to add up all that brush, you know, it'd be it'd be quite a bit. But like the pocket he went to was like, you know, an acre maybe two acres, and then and then you know, then it's just like a couple of little scrubby trees. And then there might be another half acre of brush, and then a couple of scrubby trees, and then there's an acre or two

on another bend. Like I think, it's that kind of thing, you know, and it doesn't look like much, but when you're standing in it, it is, you know, tall enough that a deer could be moving through there and you would never be able to see him. So to the deer, it feels like, you know, great cover. So I saw him going there, I couldn't see him go out the other side. But at the same time, I knew like he certainly could just keep on going on that edge

and I would probably never see him. About an hour or two later, maybe around noon, I'm still glassing over that. I keep on glassing that whole area, watching, watching, watching around noon, I see a little tiny scrubby tree in there start shaking doing that thing right, and I'm thinking, ooh, like that looks like there's a buck work in that tree.

So it gives me another little glimmer of like hmm, because my big thing I was debating was is that buck in there and gonna hunker down with those dos or is he cruising two miles down the river and he's gone?

to a trend. And I didn't necessarily think that I had this buck patterned by any kind of me, like I did not go into this thinking like, oh, he's gonna do the same thing tonight. But I said, I saw buck come out of this buck brush here last night, and I saw buck go into that buck brush this morning, and I've seen nothing else. This is something like, this is the absolute best thing I have to work off of.

I need to be over there where these deer moved through there, because there's for some reason they prefer that side of the river, and uh, they don't like to side I'm on right now, So I need to figure out a way to get to that side. Two problems with that, though. One problem was that you can't cross

the river. It's too deep to get across the river, and the only way to get across the river is to go several miles down the river to a bridge, get over the river on the bridge, and then you have several miles to get back to this area where the deer were. Now we could deal with that, but we had a north wind, and this is the north side of the river that we want to hunt, and so if I were to cross the river and try to walk down, I would be blowing my wind into

all that brush. For these deer bedded, so I can't do that. So the game plan I have is I end up walking back to camp, get to the truck, drive the truck down a couple miles to.

get past them. And only once I was way past them, I circle back down to the river on their backside, and did that that afternoon, got set up over on that side. The issue with this spot again, there's no trees, so I can't hang a saddle sid I can't get up in the trees stand. So I was thinking about all this when I was sitting on the ground, thinking

about how I was gonna pull it off. I was gonna have to just figure out a way to hide in that buck brush right by the river, so that with that north wind blowing, I'd be tight to the water, so my wind would blow straight into the water behind me, and hopefully that buck or some other buck doing a similar thing would come cruising through that buck brush step out of it, and then hopefully I could get a shot. I had to figure out a way to stay hidden

in there. And the other thing I didn't like about it was it was gonna be uphill, so I was gonna have to shoot uphill because down the river is the lowest point and then the hill rises from there, so I was gonna be lower than the deer and trying to figure out a way to hide myself in this grass and brush. So long story short, we sneak our way over there. The wind dies down, so it's like very very very quiet trying to creep in there. I'm like a little part of my soul is dying

with every step because of how crunchy everything is. Plus have a camera guy, so there's two crunches for every step, and we just went really slow, painstaking as much as we could. I actually was very frustrated because there was cattle in there, and there weren't supposed to be cattle in there, but there were. So that was like just kind of like bumming me out because cattle sometimes don't

always mix well with deer. But it helped me in this case because I actually spooked some cattle as I was trying to walk in there, and I was trying to be really quiet, but when those cattle spooked, I thought, Okay, well, I'm just going to take advantage of that. I'm going to be a running cattle. So we just started scooting. As soon as those cattle started running, I started like half jogging to like pretend like mix my noise in

with theirs. So I get down to the river. Then I spend like twenty minutes just standing there, thinking through, Okay, where's gonna be the best possible place to sit my butt down and hide? And I'm weighing, Okay, I have to be able to stay hidden, and I need the

cameraman to be able to stay hidden. I need to also be within forty yards of where I think this deer is gonna pop out of this brush, and then there's all this tall grass, and how do I stay hidden, Like I want to use the grass to stay hidden, but then I need to be able to shoot, and I need to be able to range, and this tall, wispy grass, as you know, is a nightmare to try

to get a range on anything through. And it was gonna make getting a clear shot really hard because not only am I trying to use grass, but the deer's gonna be uphill with me, so I'm not going to have the downward advantage advantage. I'm going to be shooting up and so that grass is going to be even

more challenging. So again, my cameraman must have thought I was nuts because I took so long to Like I would go to one spot and I was like, uh, yeah, this is good for cover, but I just don't think I'll be able to get a shot if he comes Like if he comes this way, if he comes this way, no, I'm not gonna work. So I'd move five yards over and I'd sit here, and I'd think about, well, I could I hide here, where's my camera got go? And YadA, YadA, YadA. It took forever to do this, but I just I

didn't like the situation. I was worried about shots. I was worried about us getting pegged, and I just if I had to be on the ground like this, I had to pick like the very best possible place to pull it off, and finally found a place that I thought balance those criteria. I thought I could stay hidden behind this tall grass, and then I had a patch of that buck brush right on my tail, and the camera guy could hide behind the buck brush and film

around the side of it. And I had a little bit of a lane where there had been like a trail from cattle or deer or something, so you could shoot through this trail, or I could get up on my knees and kind of possibly lean around and shoot around it to where it opened up just a little bit. So I thought I had the best possible scenario and settle in, thinking to myself, like, what an idiot, You're

gonna sit here, You're gonna see nothing. You've got a thousand little cactus things stuck in your stuck in your hand, and YadA, YadA, YadA, like what a disaster this is turning out to be. And then I hear some crunching to my side, and I hear like a twig snap, and another twig snap, and like, holy crap, there might be a deer coming. I like get my camera guys

and say, hey, focus this deer. I hear another twig snap, and the holy crap, there's actually a buck's gonna come popping out of here, cruising early afternoon because it wasn't like primetime yet so anything like at this time here, I'm thinking it's got to be a buck, and so I like.

and he starts walking. He's like on a mission, like he's just he's cruising, moving through the quickly doing his thing. And I'm trying to range and figure out what range she was at. And I try to pre range a bunch of stuff earlier because I knew, like this is gonna be a tough scenario, so I try to pre arrange a bunch of things. But again, like everything is ranging through grass, so I'm trying to like figure out, Okay, this little part on the hill is thirty and like

if you're over there, he's forty. But long story short, I'm able to get my bow get clicked on, can't get a range on him, gets him at thirty shoot and it sails right underneath his belly.

while and stairs for a while. And as I realized that he's not running off, I'm thinking like, hey, maybe there, maybe I have another shot here. So I reached back and grabbed my quiver, and I'm hiding. I'm behind this great grass. So I picked a spot thankfully that actually did hide me very well, because I'm able to get an arrow out of my quiver, I'm able to knock another arrow, I'm able to get clipped back on, and I'm like trying to melt into the ground as best

as I possibly can. And that buck starts walking towards me. So he has no idea what had happened. He never you know, saw me, He never heard me. He just heard like a weird sound and that was it. So in his mind he's thinking, like, maybe there's a dough down there, maybe there's you know, what's going on down there.

So he starts coming towards me, you know, just very inquisitively, slowly, takes a few steps, stops, looks around, takes another step, stops and looks around, and just starts closing the distance. And so, you know, I shot for thirty. Later I ranged it, he was more like forty. So he's now the win from he's at forty when I shot, he bounded it off to fifty. And then he starts closing from fifty to forty, from forty to thirty, from thirty

to twenty, coming head on at like twenty yards. And now I'm thinking, okay, you cannot do anything obviously, when he's coming at you like this, you need to wait until he hopefully breaks off and starts to head back off where he wanted to go. And I think he will eventually do that if you just don't get spotted. So just wait.

wanted to go. And as soon as he got to where he was slightly cornering away so that I was not fully in his frame of view, drew back, raised up him right behind the shoulder, and because of the angle that was at, because I was weighed downhill of him, I went through that front lung and top and like clipped the back of his spine and it dropped him right in his tracks and he died within ten seconds, right in front of me at twenty yards. It was nuts.

It was very very intense, and I just like when you when you watch the footage of me after that, I when I turn and look back at the camera, my face is just like aw, it was just pure shocked, Like did all that just happen?

when he's doing that. But that's the right move, is just to let it play out till he gives he's when he's that close, he's probably going to give you your chance.

I always take my quiver off. But you actually, like three years ago, did a little video for Wired to Hunt about this about the importance of like are you ready for a follow up shot at all times? And you know that's something I thought about a lot. But for some reason after we did that video together, I just always think about that every time I get set up in a new place, like double checking, like okay, if you have to have a follow up shot, are

you sure that your quivers accessible? Are you sure you're at a good angle that you could reach it and do it? And so like I thought about that that night, I made sure, like Okay, where am I going to position my quiver? So if I need to carefully and hid and pop out another arrow, I can, So you know, of my last two thousand hunts. That's never mattered once, but this time it did matter. It made all the difference.

Or another thing. I took so long to pick the right spot to hide on the ground, and I literally apologized to my cameraman. I told them, like, hey, I'm sorry. I know this is taking so long and you must think I'm nuts, but trust me, this is this might be important. I took so long trying to make make sure, like like looking at it like a ten yard square, but what's the best one yard square in this ten yard square that might possibly give me the balance of cover and a.

that stuff mattered a lot. So again, like the little details and trying to think through Like I said this to him that night, I said, I can't remember why I said this, but I think that one of the very most important things that white tail hunters do, like good white tail hunters, to be a good white tail hunter is almost all about predicting possible futures and accounting for them. So it's all about, well, what if this happens, what will I do? And what if this happens, what

will I do? And this is what I think might happen, So because of that, I will prepare it in this way, in this way, in this way. So like that whole night, like as we're trying to pick the right spot, I was then thinking through, Okay, if a deer's up in this spot, here's what I need to do. Here's what you need to do. If a deer pops out in this spot. Here's how we're going to react. If I need to make a move, if I need to reposition, like I practice, how will I reposition in this situation?

And like there are all these little things that I try to do that most of the time don't matter, but I think, you know, in this case, it did, And so I just think those little bits of anticipation and preparation, the more of those you can stack up, the better, because, as we've talked about, so many things are outside of our control, so many things can go wrong, so many things can be surprised when the deer does this,

the deer does that. If the more of those possible contingencies, you are prepared for the better And this was one of the best examples of that for me.

buck that I killed in North Dakota we did. I did the same thing. I apologized to my cameraman too, because I looked at every tree, every angle, like can I get a stand? Can we saddle? Can we stand on a limb with our saddle? Like what? And then finally, just like the best scenario here is to tuck in on the ground and pick the best spot and cross

your fingers that they follow the script. But if you if you're going to force it or you're just like not that confident in a bunch of different styles of ambush. You're gonna let some of those opportunities slip through, and the only way to learn is to do them. I mean, that's that's why it's so beneficial to go on hunts like you're talking about, where you put yourself in a situation where you don't have like that tree cleaned up.

That's you've been planning on hunting since March, you know, like when you when you have to show up and the deer like we're here, now do your job. That stuff. It's it's different and it's important for your development. I think, oh, yeah, so so much.

work out you know. All of that over many years of trying this over and over and over again has given me the confidence to a to take the risk and b to believe in it enough to pay attention to the details, because the flip side could have been like I could have been willing to take the risk, but then have gotten there and been like, man, this is such a stupid idea. I'm just gonna sit somewhere

and see what happens. But I tried really hard to really believe in it and really believe enough to check all of those things, to dot all those eyes, and and hey, nine times out of ten you do all that stuff and it doesn't work out still, right, like I got I happened to get lucky that on this tenth time out of ten, this one time out of ten, the buck actually followed the script and I got the

opportunity and got the opportunity for the follow up. So there's a lot of luck and good fortune that went into this, of course, But you don't get to take advantage of that luck and good fortune if you don't do all those other little things that put you in a position to take advantage of it. For sure, for sure, Man, that was That was the takeaway for me from that hunt. It was the you know, the little detail steck enough.

It was shaking off the bad news and like believing in the thing, like okay, hey, like everything I thought I was going to do, like Plan ABC and D are gone. And I remember telling my camera guys like, man, bad news is I don't really have a plan B, Like I don't have a Plan C or D, Like I really was all in on this zone and I had a bunch of abcde options over in that zone.

a big way. And then finally, I think the last thing to think about here is you hear a lot about how you can't pattern deer during the rut and everything's random during the rut or whatever it is, YadA YadA, YadA, Right, And it might be true that a buck, a single specific buck, may not do the same thing every night, like he might do in September, right, But I think in this case, like I saw a trend, and I

couldn't guarantee. I couldn't. I didn't know for sure if it was the same buck from the night before and that morning, and I didn't know if the same buck from that morning would do the same thing that night. But I noticed a trend and that was enough of a pattern, quote unquote pattern for me to say like, hey, I might be stupid, but I'm not that stupid, Like

you gotta be over there. And and so I made And it was inconvenient to have to figure out a way to go over there and do a big hike, and knowing I was gonna have to hunt the ground and again, and knowing that there was the.

Yes it was the rut. Yes, I wasn't counting on that exact deer do the exact same thing, but hey, you know what he did and he's dead now. So that was a big lesson and reminder for me during the rut that when you see something like that, you've got to jump on it pretty quickly. If you know, there might be something like a random buck chasing a dough, right, and that happens in one place, and that happens someplace else, and okay, like in that situation, yeah, that's random if

it's a completely wild, random thing like that. But when you see like a cruising buck do something and then a cruising buck do the same thing again, they're telling you something about that area, like they're cruising through there for a reason. You got to listen to that.

he's there, he'll show. And he did not, So now I'm now I'm waiting, and went hunted a new farm because I eventually decided I was gonna wait to hunt the Wide nine until he shows back up. So I went hunted a different spot where I was after a buck. There's a pretty nice deer over there, kind of a funky titan tall deer. And the only interesting encounter I had with him, I think, is the one that I

told you about. In the beginning where I saw him runnerunerneath another other hunter and then another hunter came in and all that kind of stuff.

What's a few things people should be thinking about because that's happened in a bunch of states right now.

what does the deer need? Right now? When half a million people go into the woods, it's always going to be in the cover, unless unless you just have a banging spot. But if you know, if you're primarily hunting,

your crossing your fingers, do something different. Get in where it's tighter, where your shots are, you know, forty fifty sixty yards whatever, not this not just reach out and touch them on the power line and go hunt where those deer are going to go, you know, like that that field edge stuff, the open clearcut stuff's great maybe opening day, but after that they're pretty clued into what's going on, and it's time to get into the into

the thick stuff. I think. I think that's like the the hardest thing for gun hunters to do, but probably the most important by the time you're on day two of the season.