Welcome to Wired to Hunt's rut Fresh 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 Case Smith and Tyler Jones.
Welcome to Refresh Radio. I'm your host k C. Smith, and it is full fled December right now.
Guys.
That means late season patterns and all the good cold stuff that comes with that. But there is still opportunity to kill the buck of your lifetime. This is Retfresh. Let's go.
What is happening in all my woods people?
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Where on the phone right now? Tyler Jones, what are you doing?
Oh yeah, in Oklahoma?
Trying hard with it ain't half anyboy man.
Let me just ask you a general question because we're gonna get into some some ret freshness here in a bit.
But does it work to try harder into your hunting? Tyler?
Uh?
It can?
It can't.
Good answer.
In fact, it usually does if you just say try harder. If you're talking about going in further. It's not always that way.
Now, got you? Got you, and that's something you're experiencing at the moment.
Yeah, good, yes, dude.
Yeah, I've been a hunted last night a mile and a half like straight line. There's no telling how much I actually walked because I went further than that in and found out there wasn't a tree. According to the aerial there was, but there wasn't a tree when I got in there. So since the grass is I don't know, seventeen eighteen foot, I decided to not hang out there too long. Went got in a tree actually near some bag, and had three dos and a spike come out within bow range on me.
I picked the right tree. I just didn't see the buck I wanted, So I don't know. I'm making a I may try.
To get in further and deeper into the nasty, nasty grass that is the Plain States.
This year, after all the timely rain they had.
Good golly man, that's uh.
You know, it's like rich people problems, you know, like we all complaining about the drought and then we have this year, which we'll find out later from some of our guests that the drought there is some drought in the country, but the plane's got a lot of rain and with that comes a ton of cover.
Yeah, well that's what happens when you get rain in June. But I don't think it's rained a whole lot sinse, Yeah, cause I'm seeing the same thing. It's pretty they got they had some snow and rain last week. So now there, you know, it looks like it rained recently, and in fact, I think it might have.
There's not many fresh tracks to be seen, so you know what's fresh. I guess that's an upside to it.
But it has been pretty dry, I think since since this summer and until just recently.
Yeah.
So you're gonna do kind of a guest to interview kind of at the end of this thing, right, Uh, but it's gonna be a little extended because you and I have been hunting together some and we're apart right now.
So I'm interested in what you got going on.
But you're in Oklahoma, And would you say that in Oklahoma you are still in the rut right now or the deer are Maybe you're always in the rut, Tyler, but what are the deers?
Man?
It's I just actually.
Just bombed into a spot that's remote and not super far in, but it's just like hard to get to.
There's a bunch of beaver sloughs and stuff around.
And the grass is super tall, and you're like backtrack and try not to go, like it's too deep here, so you.
Got to cross over there, you know.
But I guess what I'm saying is I had this little high spot that had like I don't know, five.
Or six elm trees in it and one seed, and there was.
A rub on the seed pretty high, and then there was like several scrapes in there around those elms, and then it crosses this slow and goes into some hag and I man, I think I saw a fresh track
in one of the scrapes. I don't know if there was a fresh track outside of that in any of the scrapes that that I looked at, which I only looked at a few, like really close, probably three, but then the other three or however many I saw, you know, I would look at from eight foot ten foot away or whatever, and just didn't look like anything fresh in there. So and then the rub also wasn't you know, for a cedar, it should be pretty orange if it's fresh,
and it was more on the brown side. It's wild, like I would expect the deer to still be running right now here in Oklahoma, but it is not really appearing that way. In fact, I saw the spike come out behind those and did not once acted ready. And then I saw another buck probably eight hundred yards away, and he sat and fed in ag food bagfield for the whole evening forty five minutes probably, and did not one time like do anything else, not cruise, not you know,
look up and try to see something. I mean, there was another deer with him over there. I don't know what it was, but he never got frisky of.
That or anything.
So shooting monkey man, Well, it is kind of kind of tough whenever you start encountering and stuff like that. And I think that this is something that a lot of people around the country might start seeing, because you know, two thirds of the country. He has a rut that is based around November, right, And that's an arbitrarin number I'm throwing out there, but that's kind of where it
comes to my mind. And so a lot of guys focus their efforts on hunting during those times, and then some guys tag out, some guys don't, and then there's guys that are left trying to kind of, you know, pick up the scraps and try to steal kill a deer post rut. But there's it's like you're dealing with the leftovers of a ton of pressure. So I kind of think that you know, you're hunting public ground, and
that's the thing that could be happening. How does the dude just circumvent Like maybe there's not pressure now, but there had been.
What do you look.
For in a situation like that, Well, don't give me a scar sarcastic answer.
I can tell it's what you're trying not to do.
Okay, it's uh, it's thick and it's remote, and those are those are two places. It's the same things I always look for though, Yeah, are thick and remote and then like also just the overlook spot. So it's the three spots that you always look for. But the problem is you just have to look harder. I think right now, you got to the idea is just to strap the boots on and go after it, man, I mean, and That's what I'm doing. And I'm dude, I'm telling you.
Last night I was like my my calves are on the brink of cramping, and I don't cramp very easy, man. And I mean it was just like, you know, just ridiculous amounts of just you know, and it's hot.
That's that's another thing. It was it's pretty cold this morning.
In fact, it was cold enough that you know, when I tried to separate my sticks, I just ripped my entire.
You know, all my skin off.
But it's it was like probably twenty eight this morning. So for us in you know, I guess the South Oklahoma, you know, it was it was cold, but like during the day it's getting up into like mid sixties, and you know, it's it's hard to go and walk in six miles in an afternoon when it's that hot. You know, you're just gonna sway. You can't carry enough water. So I don't know, you just gotta you just gotta be the guy who's meaner than the rest of the people.
I guess, and uh, you know, wants to go out there and try to find find something, or uh you just use your map expertise and you know, you just say, okay, well this should work.
It's overlooked.
Whatever I'm gonna, I'm gonna give her a shot, which is what I just did. I tried to do and I found scrapes, and I found a rub I found some pretty.
Fresh trails, and I bumped three doughs.
Out of a spot pretty like probably two ind of yards from the road.
So I mean, it can it can't work.
It's just so you know, we don't always we tend to be running gunners like all the time. I don't really think about it that way. It's just kind of the way we hunt. I'm not like I'm gonna run a gun guy, you know. But I've been thinking about it some in the last couple of weeks, and that's kind of how we operate, no matter what timing.
Year it is.
But I think that that might not always be the best. I think that if it's the heavy rut, then you could be better off just sitting that pinch point for a while and he'll come by, you know.
But we tend to not do that.
We uh, well, if we want to be completely honest, it doesn't make very good video of when you just sit in the thing spot all the time. And that's one of the things that one of the things that we move around for. But I personally, I always feel like if I ain't moving, I'm not trying hard enough, you know, I need to be trying to figure it
out the whole time. And so do you think that right now kind of in your situation that moving around is the way to find a deer to get on or at least are they kind of are those bucks drawing back into their core areas or they still out on the move?
Roaman see this is I feel like we're getting back into like our early seasoned pattern where rut's not raging. I did see one buck yesterday, probably three quarters of a mile from the maybe not quiet, and he looked like a decent frame buck, and he just stared into the grass and his ears pinned, you know, pinned forward for like five minutes, and then he finally like took off with his head down like he was running.
So I thought yesterday things were different.
But now I'm looking at sign and stuff and I'm actually on the ground, it just looks different.
And I based off of.
Sign and what I saw last night and didn't see you this morning, it just seems like it's more like a really season pattern. So to me, it feels like a guy to bounce if you're not seeing it, like I mean, the only time, I don't know, and I might end up hunting the.
Same tree tonight.
There's actually probably like nearly a fifty percent chance that I hunt the same tree to night that I hunted last night, And you just kind of hope that, you know, a buck is still doing a little bit of stuff where like last night he ended up in a different spot, and so he's going to come out into the week, you know, a little bit, or not initially into the wheat, but you know, to the edge of the week, you know, in the.
Time that I can get a shot. So that's I mean, I feel like I have to bounce around. I don't know, what do you think.
I think you probably have to as well, unless you have some weather changes, you know.
I think we're gonna hear from our guests around the country here in a bit about like what the weather, because weather's really big right now.
If you have this hot spell.
It's tough to kill deer, just straight up, especially if you're hunting public ground where the mornings are better because it's cooler and you have to walk, like access is difficult, Like you you just feel like you're bumping deer, right, So it's like you're just condemned either direction, you know, it's and that's pretty pretty tough to to to stomach, really, so maybe you know, a still hunt might be the
thing to do. I don't know, I'm just kind of spitballing, you know, as far as like what to do right then.
So it's hard to sell film still hunting though, That's that's the one thing, you know, I would be on the ground right now calling think if it, you know, if we're being honest, like if I'm if I'm listening to this right now, I think that's probably more what I would be doing. That's my advice, I guess, is
get out there and call make some racket. I think they still are going to be interested and have been here in a little bit of that in the last few weeks, and I'm hoping that I can find a way to pull it off out of a tree, because it feels like that's the way to do it right now.
I just I can't film it by myself, you know.
You know, I don't know if it was you or gregor Michael or somebody made the point the other day that they felt like rattling worked better like late rud or post truck because those deer have like heard that quite a bit already. And I never thought about that that way, you know. I kind of always thought that, uh, you know, they know what rattling is, but they might
have to relearn it every year. And there's always like a three year old that i'd probably shoot that probably doesn't know what the inks Mortenohugh know what that is, you know what I mean. So that's that's a good point, man.
I never it's like the It's like when you go fly fishing and a huge hatch happens and then it and then it goes away and you can still throw that a fly down there and there they're still familiar with it, you know, like a salmon fly hatch or something that moves up the river real quick.
Yeah, so got to just catch one the right mood man mm hmm. Yeah.
Well, so as far as Oklahoma goes, if you wanted to give just a bonus and an auxiliary statement as far as what you think Buckman is going to be like over the next week, what do.
You think man scale of one to two?
Yeah, one to two or zero to one good or not?
Oh?
Man?
Over the next week.
Well, I know what the weather looks like for the rest of the days I got up here.
And for my hunt.
I'll just talk about that because I don't know what happens after this weekend uh too much. But I would say we're looking at probably a three until we get some Really, if we can get some quickly, get some pretty harsh weather, I think things could change.
Yeah.
Yeah, And so I had a three. How confident are you that you're going to come home with a deer?
Oh?
Is that also a three? Oh?
It's a negative three. Oh No, I feel like, See, I'm just I'm not going to shoot anything.
I'm probably gonna try to hold out for like I don't know, a deer with like either a big eight or like a small nine or ten, not a small, but like a you know, medium size nine or ten.
I don't know.
That's kind of what I'm thinking, Like, I'm not coming home with a dough. So I feel like I felt like when I was coming up here, I felt like I was going to have a really good shot at shooting a deer, And now that I'm here seeing stuff, I feel like I really don't have.
A very good chance of shooting a deer.
But this is a particular piece of property that's it's got a lot of tall grass.
I can't see anything.
I mean, I had I legit the dough, the first dough I saw last night.
I could not see her until she was at thirty yards.
Wow.
So and that's I mean.
And I felt like that I would have been able to see her one hundred and fifty out there, but I couldn't.
So, yeah, it's tough, man, it's stuff.
But I think, you know, if I'm going to give somebody some hope, is that, ay, the weather is nice enough that like it's comfortable to be out here and hunting. It's not you know, like a chore, you know, especially if you've got excuse me, especially if you've got some
private you know, it's uh, it makes it nice. But I think, like if you I would, if I had to, you know, take some time away from the family or whatever, I would probably sit on the next big coal front and be, you know, looking for a bed to food pattern, and I would assume that there's gonna be some bucks that are killed on that next big coal front.
Cool man, Well, hopefully that is in the forecast. I don't know that it is in our soon forecast. I haven't seen one, but you know, those things can pop up at any time, so we all got something to look forward to until they don't let us go hunting for anymore. So then it see the season is truly over at that point in time. But anyways, let's uh. Actually, this week we're gonna hear from our buddy Dudley Phelps. Dud the stud down in Mississippi. Tony Peterson has been after the deer in.
The cold north of Minnesota. And our friend Matt Die has been hunting and observing over in Missouri.
He's got a good report there. And then Jordan Hotchkiss from Timber Ninja is gonna round us out in South Carolina. Right here, I've got Dudley Phelps with Masio gamekeepers and if you have everybody thing from Natives nurseries, he is the guy.
His fingerprint is on it. What's going on, dude, man.
Not much. It's always good to hear from you. I've always been a big fan of the Element guys, so glad to hear from you.
It's been a while, thanks man. Yeah, we exchanged text message every once in a while, but I hadn't talked.
To you so in a good while, and I've been following y' all. You guys have just had a stellar season and most importantly having a lot of fun. Y'all seem to be really good at that point. Yeah.
Well, you know, if any having fun, you ain't living, man. So that's what it's what we try to make happen around here. And I know you're the same, and people's fun is different paced a little bit. You've been hunting down in Mississippi, and we were talking beforehand about just kind of how our hunts go and different things, and you very much embrace kind of a more traditional way
of hunting. I would say, you kind of do the still hunting thing and walk around and take things in which you're a very observant guy.
So I bet you're pretty good at it.
I'm I'm I'm decent. I you know, I feel the freezer.
That's not good.
That's that's my trophy.
So that's cool, man. Uh.
Mississippi is a is a southern rut state, right, so we want to talk about some of that stuff a little bit, uh in general on the white Tail calendar.
Where are y'all at there in Mississippi?
I would say, we are you know, early pre rut. You know, it varies across a lot of the state. The Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks puts out a rut date map that people can check out, like if they're ever coming to visit and it's it's spot on around here. I would call it early pre rut. The you know, I think most people are going to be shifting their cameras from like feed to to scrapes,
you know about now. You know, scrape activity probably started about a week ago, and in a lot of places in the state, the butts are ready, the doze are not, so it's not crazy chasing time yet. But you know we're starting to see you know, more photos in daylight and you know that early scrape activity. That's so what's going on?
So right now your tactic you were telling me a little bit about earlier, but you're moving a lot right.
I am. I probably hunt public, I don't know, sixty or seventy percent of the time, and I move around a lot there and then when I hunt private, I kind of do the you know, keeping the pressure low game. But you know, I've been looking for feed trees We've had a really poor acren year around here, and I have found a rare species of oak called swamp laurel oaks.
They drop their leaves really late. So like I can get on on X right now and look at that recent imagery and I can find little pockets of green trees down in the river bottoms, and that's gonna probably gonna be those slump laurel oaks that are just starting to drop.
That's pretty sure.
There's no other acrons in the woods right now, so that's gonna been my strategy. How about that, I'm still hunting food.
Yeah, well that's cool, dude.
Then that's a high level tip right there, as far as like finding the trees that might have leaves on them still, and there's a good chance it's those trees.
That's that's pretty good.
So that tree is a lot like a water oak too, from what I have seen, just what you think. It's almost impossible to tell apart, okay, and what differentiates it outside of like.
The leaf a little bit. The leaf is just a little bit different. They're tardily deciduous, so that you know the leaves. It's not a true evergreen, but they stay on a lot later than your regular water oaks that typically drops acrens in you know, like mid to late October.
Got you and and so guys kind of across the south off you can kind of paint a little bit broader stroke and say that those high tanning you know, water oaks, laurel oaks, willow oaks, those are going to be pretty key things to target on a low acron year.
Huh oh, yes they will. They'll gobble them up. They'll walk right fast a corn pile to go to acorns, even if they don't taste as good to us that they need them.
I ain't trying to eat those, that's for sure.
Well, what do you think is going to be going on in the woods on the upcoming week as far as rut movement goes.
Well in the in the areas I hunt, it's probably my favorite time of the year to hunt. You know, it's it's typically like what you know, we refer to as the second weekend of Muzzloder season in Mississippi. Uh, in a lot of areas, that's when you start seeing uh, you know, chasing beginning. You know, bucks are gonna randomly come out into a food plot when they normally wouldn't you know, but it's it's before the chasing gets just absolutely crazy to where it's almost hard to make a
shot on one. But yeah, this next week is where it's going to pick up a good bit in a lot of areas of the state.
Well that's exciting, man. So if you had to rank what you predict the buck movement to be like on a scale of one to ten in your part of Mississippi there, what would you say it for the next week.
I'd probably say a six. You know, it's not quite as much movements as we want, but they're not moving so much that it's hard to get a bead on them when they're chasing, if that makes sense. I would almost call it a searching phase and the younger deer chasing if that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah, that makes me.
Quite full on. But it's easier to get it get them in the scope, you get them in the crossairs.
Yeah that's cool. Duh.
Appreciate the information, man, and I hope you have a great risk of the season.
Well, you all do the same, and I'll I'll look forward to seeing more from you guys.
Now, I've got my friend Tony Peterson who is a deer slayer. If y'all didn't know, I'm sure you do. He's with meat eater. What's happening in Tony.
Not much, man, I don't. I don't feel like a real deer slayer lately. I feel like a deer looker for kind of guy.
Isn't that weird how it goes? Like you and I were just talking beforehand. We both had very nice seasons where we killed some deer. But it's like, it's the what if you've done for me lately?
Thing?
You go two weeks with that, I having a good encounter, and you're like, man, I'm terrible with this, right.
Yeah, dude, I've been.
I've been dividing my time between some public land in western Minnesota and some private land here by my house in eastern Minnesota. I can't even see a deer here on the east side, and the ones they see on the west side are in eight foot tall cot or cattails. So I'm like, it's almost like I'm hunting ghosts right now.
Well, that's probably what the problem is.
They probably put on Mark's white sheet and they look like ghosts south there running around and just can't flatching it into the snow, and they're hard to find. If do you ever figure out that trick, we're toast.
I don't. They don't need to.
I mean, the deer that I've been hunting in those cattail slews, it's like we've had a dry year, so there was a real growth in those cattails. And when I walk in there a pheasant hunt, some of those spots, they're like ten feet tall. And so even where the growth wasn't that great if you put a deer in there, I mean you could hide an elk in there, yeah, let alone a white tail. And so it's like they're
they're you know, it's almost like they're underground. It's like it doesn't do you any good until they step out.
You know, how are you how are you finding like specific either deer or areas to target.
Well.
The good thing about that, you know, you guys know this is those areas you can observe pretty well. And so I mean you lose them when they get into the cover, but you can kind of.
Predict a pattern.
And the cool thing about it is is you get an aerial view of those cattail slews. They look kind of like mono habitat but then you see a little patch of willows in there, or a little vein of fragmighties, which is that tall invasive grass, and those bucks follow
that stuff. It's unbelievable. In fact, two weeks ago we had a little bit of fresh snow when I was down and I started tracking just tracks in the slough, and I got on seven different sets of tracks and jumped seven deer out of their beds, including three bucks close within like twenty thirty yards, and following a buck track through. There was like a education that was just amazing to me. How they stick to those lines of cover, and how they travel with the wind in there and
everything and where they bed. It's just it's so cool. They have so many advantages and they know how to use them.
Yeah, so you were, I guess it sounds like you were kind of doing the old just track them up and try to shoot them thing.
Huh.
Well I did that because I was I had posted up for three sits and had had some really close oppertunities I should say they were.
They could have broke my way, they just didn't.
And then when I was leaving, because it's a couple hours to get out there for me, when I was leaving one morning, I had I had blanked, and I knew those deer made it back into the cattails and they didn't go buy me, And so I just happened to have a lucky set of circumstances where there was fresh snow and I started getting on the tracks, and man, it was like the most fun I've had all season, even though I knew the odds are getting a good shot.
Were real low.
But man, when you can when you can follow how a deer walked into a cattail slew, the route he took to get to his bed, and then see where his bed is and when he was in it, it's just it was cool, man.
Yeah.
Man, When I think of cold weather, I think of trying to hunt deer that are actively headed to food sources because they just got to eat when they get cold.
Ride. Is that something you're targeting or is there just food everywhere in that country?
There's there's enough food, but the pressure is everything. The day, the day before I did that little track in Festival, I saw a fourteen deer go into that cattail slew in the morning, and I saw twenty hunters on that property.
Throughout the day.
Wow, So their whole thing is they've got nine hours of daylight or whatever, however much daylight we have, they go lay low and then they have all night to feed and not get harassed. And so the deer I'm hunting anyway, it's all tied to pressure. You can kind of predict and go, they're going to go to that cut, cornfield or whatever, but they're not going to get anywhere near that until dark.
Yeah.
Well it seems like at least looking at kind of the weather forecast for your area up there, you have very very consistent days ahead, like even there's not there's like one day in the fifties, but it's really like forties and thirties and lows that are all pretty similar. So with that like just looming on the horizon, there's no fronts to kind of hunt. What do you think is going to be going on over the next week.
I don't think it's going to be very easy.
Yeah, we are unseasonably warm here, and you know, we got a little bit of snow this morning, it'll be gone. And you know this happens like once every I don't know, five or ten years, where I'll be bow hunting like Christmas Day or Christmas Eve and there'll be no snow, and you know, other years we'll have snow that starts in the beginning of November, and so we don't They're not stressed like this is a great winter so far to get them like recovered from the rut and not
have a big die off in the winter. But it makes it a heck of a lot harder because they don't have to work that hard right now, and they're they're not going to risk it.
I don't blame him, man, he it can't be too risky up here in the North Country. So if you had to give the next week a rating on the scale of one to ten for buck movement, what would you think he would be?
Man, I'll give it a three, but I'll qualify it by saying you should still hunt anyway.
I like it.
The optimism is good, Man's. That's what you gotta have. I mean, if you're looking at a three, you gotta be optimistic. So that's good stuff, man, Tony. I really appreciate it, dude. I hope you find one more big one.
Awesome things, buddy.
I've got my brother Matt Die on the phone. He is with landing legacy and you might have seen him on TV with a show called hunt Works. Matt, what's happening man.
Not much, dude, just rolling through, uh, rolling through season and trying to keep trying to keep my head above water with work and everything like that. But that's just the norm. That's one on your word.
Well, right now I'm watching two road runners posture to one another, which is a pretty fun thing. Oh, there's three. There's a he's chasing a grasshopper. It's going down around here. Which Oh, he's.
Running under my car right now. Goodness, gracious, Okay, back to deer. Sorry, I'll get distracted. Yeah, but uh yeah, I'm just home from a hunt Man and trying to figure out what's going on around the country. You're in Missouri, and you've got.
Kind of an interesting take as to what's been happening in the woods lately, right.
Yes, it's such an interesting time with the season for us. You know, Missouri's got a rifle season that is short and sweeten eleven day season, but it hits right in the smack down the middle of the rut and there is an incredible amount of pressure that happens during that timeframe.
I think this year's totals were somewhere around one hundred and seventy thousand deer that were harvested in the state in that eleven day period, and so there is just an incredible amount of just all of a sudden, just random pressure that just hits the deer woods. And at that same timeframe, deer are most active, and so as you like rebound after and the following few weeks, you've got the post rut that happens, and then now we're kind of in this weird tweener stage of there's a
little bit of running activity. There's a whole lot of deer that just feel like they're almost coming out of the holes in the ground after all of that pressure. That's kind of that scenario of finding ourselves in right now, from both in the field observations as well as trail camera observations, it's like, who made it through? And is there any pattern to what you're doing right now? It's kind of the mindset.
And so right now you're fixing go out on the evening hunt because you've been kind of following show camera data, right.
Yes, yeah, so you know, the ven to food pattern is really beginning to take its place after that post run activity has really started to subside. Deer still bucks are still hitting scrapes and checking those on the way out too, some of the larger food sources, which is great place obviously from the camera to get kind of
an inventory of what's happening. But started to see quite a few of the bucks from kind of the pre rut really November swing starting to settle back into kind of that evening pattern of bed to food, which is great and to see inventory wise who actually just made it. So that's kind of what the tactic is for right now. We've actually got a pretty cold day here for us today.
Then we kind of getting this little warming trend for the next four or five days, but we've got high pressure northwest wind and it's going to kind of push some deer to feed. And a lot of this is honestly clover in a large secluded hayfield, and so it's not like it's a big crop field or anything like that in my region that we're hunting, but some recent temperature, some recent rain, the clovers popped and the deer are heading to it.
For sure.
Yeah, I'm going to give you opportunity to just showcase your skills, man, because you land management is your business is what you do, and you're really good at it, and you approach it from such a unique holistic approach it and I really appreciate it. So I would imagine that your properties that you get to hunt, you do your best, at least within your limitations to be able to kind of make them places that deer would like to be riding in. That clover, I'm guessing is a big part of that.
Yeah.
Absolutely, And for us being in the southern half of Missouri, Sir, we absolutely get cold. But a lot of people overlook overlook clover and in a good stand of perennial white clover into late season. But if you get these warming trends and there's moisture, whether it's from frost or whatever, that clover is going to live and back up. And as soon as that happens, deer respond to it. And that may be it could be winter week in your area.
But just for us and our general resources in this landscape, that's kind of what we key into now. If we have a big bumper crop of red oak acorns, we're also go to key into that at this time of the year. If there's any more left over, but between clover that starts to pop back as well as the red oaks, than man, we're definitely keen to that. From a food source standpoint, two weeks from now, I'll be in western Iowa, kind of northwestern Iowa, and it's completely different.
Like that's we're hunting standing grain, standing soybeans on a couple of different farms, and that's the game there. But for us in this region, you gotta hunt where you gotta hunt the resources that they're after. And for us right now, weather temperatures, they're hitting clover.
Yeah, yeah, for sure, it makes a lot of sense, man.
And so if we look at that warming tree and you're talking about it's kind of a thing at least here in the South and the Midwest. It's just what we're looking at, and it makes it for kind of I don't know what you feel like, might be stagnant to deer activity, but there's always a move right, there's
always something to do. So if you if you looked at at kind of our weather in the time and year, and you have it to give it a rating on a scale of one to ten, of which you think buck movement will be like over the next week, what would you rate it.
I'm gonna go with the I'm gonna go with the five. Okay, for two reasons, which is about just as plain jane as possible. So the reason I give it like, hey, there's some chance there is because of just the the biology of the animal, Like they're coming out of the rut where they've expended a ton of energy, so they're gonna hit food sources for sure. If you get a high pressure day, despite temperatures being maybe a touch warm
or something, they're probably gonna move within daylight. So there are some decent chances that you might get a swing or a crack out of buck. But if not, if it just gets warm and you don't have you know, decent wind or or that pressure situation, then you can be sitting there twiddling your thumbs and see a bunch of fawns and doze and not your target till after dark.
Right, So.
It's really that hit or miss. And I'd say that for the just the time of the year itself. I'm really gonna start keen into as we get to mid December. Okay, are any fawns coming in to heat any any If I's coming into estrus. But then also, when when are we going to get those two to three day cold snaps that just kind of set in here. I want to hunt the front of it, and I will have the back end of it, but for us the next couple of days, it's pretty pretty stagnant. So I'm gonna give it a five.
Hey, man, five's better and zero, that's for sure. Matt appreciate it, dude, Thanks so much for the report. No problem.
Then, Jordan Hotchkiss is here. He's been hunting North Carolina, probably out of a timber ninja. If I had to imagine Jordan, what's happening?
Man?
Just getting after it? How about you, buddy, He's.
About the same.
You know.
Actually, I'm in a little bit of a lull here. I've been on the road for a good portion of the month in November, and I've got five or six days here at the house to to just soak up some family time. And it's actually well appreciated, it's and it's a it's a good time you do that weather it's still nice and all, you know. So what's it like for your neck of the woods.
Yeah, about the same, man, I got a I got three little kids. So if I'm not working or spending time with the family, I'm trying to be in the woods as much as I can. But right now it's a little bit of a loll out there, so it's a good time to try to get it in while I can before I hit it hard.
The last three weeks the season.
I got you, so, can you explain that we were talking a little bit off air about the lull.
That we're all kind of experiencing right now.
But in you're part of the country there in North Carolina, how does the rut lay out?
Usually?
Yeah, so I'm in in the Appalachian Mountains in western North Carolina. As I mentioned earlier, it's it's it's very sporadic, really.
I mean that first week.
In November could be hit or missed, depending on really what holler you're in. But usually we'll have an uptick there around Thanksgiving. This year, Thanksgiving was really good, a lot of bucks hit the ground, some real good cruising activity, and then right now is starting to die off. They're they're hard on food right now, and then the last the next I'd say next week it'll start ramping up a little bit.
But those last two weeks of.
Season is really one of the best times for rut activity. It seems like those yearland dos come finally coming to heat, and those bucks just really get back on the move trying to catch those young.
Does, gotcha?
And you know, in North Carolina, as far as latitude goes, it's pretty far north, but it's still like what I would consider the South, especially, we have similar accidents. And then also, you know, like the climate there is probably going to be more like that.
Right, Yes, I'm not I'm not exactly sure about what your climate is, but I mean it's in the thirties here in the mornings, next week's home from the twenties.
Then high's probably forties, fifties, things like that.
Okay, got you a little a little cooler than I expected, are y'all? Uh, do you experience the fronts that kind of come in from the Rockies or I know, the East Coast stuff. You get a little bit different weather patterns over there.
Yeah, and we do.
I mean, we get some some pretty good fronts, but all it just depends on how it hits these mountains.
But yeah, I mean we can we can get some you know, single digit tempts.
I mean the other morning I went hunting, it was eleven degrees, but then you know, it could we could get up a heat spike and it'll be seventy in December, so kind of up and down.
But in the mountains here it does get pretty cold.
Yeah, what have you been doing here? You know, as this low approaches, like, what's your tactic? You're going to to try to kill a big buck?
Still focusing on you know, travel corridors, uh saddles ahead of hollers, things like that, because you know you still have some roamors. But right now, like we talked about earlier, I'm kind of just taking some time, spend time with the family, and then I'll hit it hard the.
Next three weeks.
And really that late later season is kind of an oddity as well. I don't know if you experienced this, but it's like, you know, the dose are still they're starting to get hard on food because it's late, it's getting cold, and.
Some of the bucks are on food.
But at the same time they're checking those food sources for dose coming in heat. I mean, I killed a seven year old buck last year on December seventeenth. Before I saw him, I was watching a two year old ten point run a dough for an hour. So it's really sporadic, but I think it's one of the best times to hunt on.
Oh that's great December action. Are you still having acrons in December or are those all dried.
Up for you?
No, man, this year they are. We had a bumper crop this year. It's made it Yeah, it's made it tough hunting. Honestly, there's just every acren tree has been loaded at least where we're at, so there definitely are still some acrons on the ground. I have a lot of buddies that you know that feed corn and stuff, and they told me that they're not even get getting picked on their corn because there's just so many acrons.
But so so as we look forward for the next week, there are you going to continue on just hunting those pinch points? Are you gonna get more aggressive with any calling or any that kind of stuff.
I'll hunt pinch points, but then also try to hone in on some of those food sources because while we did have a bumper.
Crop, it's now starting to get to where there's definitely some spots that are going to be hotter.
You know, they cleaned up.
I think a lot of those acrons, uh, you know, through now, but trying to find those late season spots where they haven't got them all cleaned up, mainly red oaks. Just finding those areas and then finding those close to you know, cruising spots, saddles and like I said, the head of drainages things like that.
Shoot, man, it sounds like things are far from over and your neck of the woods is pretty exciting that you can still hunt good action in December.
It is, man, it's it's uh, it's uh.
It works out good for for my schedule because you know, having three young kids, I don't really get to go on that many trips.
I usually do either a Elkhun or rut hunt, and I.
Try to hit that Midwest time frame out of state, you know, the first two weeks in November, and then it's like, if I'm not successful, I still have the latter season here to look forward to, because that's when it's best in my opinion.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Man's that's a great way to look at it.
For sure.
If you had to look at the next week, I know you kind of already gave us a little anticipation here, but the next week, if you had to rank buck movement on a scale of one to ten.
What would you call it?
I would say five.
That's a good number.
Yeah, I mean middle, you know, middle of the road. I think it just depends on where you're at.
But I'm starting to get a few more pictures during the day of bucks moving. You know that nine ten o'clock range. It seems like more than anything. But I think it's still a little lullish. I think you still have some mature deer there that are on dose locked down. But I think it's just gonna get better. But next week, probably about a five.
I'd say, man, that's cool, dude. Five is way better than a zero.
So that's right.
Good time in the woods. I appreciate the info, man, thank you absolutely, there is still a lot of reason for deer hunters around the country to be optimistic. Thank you for tuning in to Refresh Radio this week. Guys.
I hope the information that we got from all our contributors helps you make a good decision this week to get out there and get after the deer. If you need some more content, you need some more stuff, to check out, some things, some inspiration, whatever it may be, you might go check out the Wired to Hunt feed because Mark, as you remember we alluded to earlier, he in fact killed.
The Wide nine and he has a podcast about how that went down.
And then also Tony Peterson, a guest on today's show, tells us asks the question how many deer are there really?
On the latest Foundations episode.
Also check out the description below because there are some cool videos from the Element crew that just went out on the Meat Eater feed that you for sure need to take a look at.
Some big pigs go down.
And also Tyler Shott a really nice buck in South Dakota.
I hope you all have a great rest of your season.
We still have more rout action around the country to tune into, so tune in next week for another episode of ret Fresh Radio. This has been rut Fresh, Keep it Fresh.