Ep. 738: Consistent Target Buck Success and Late Season Tactics with Mike Reed

believe he's one of the co owners. He is doing all sorts of good work there, putting out daily blogs and being a part of Chasing November and their main season shows. You can follow so much of what he's doing there, and he's doing it really, really well. Mike had a incredible twenty twenty three season, killed his top two target bucks, has had his family out there hunting with him and helping them have success. So today in the show, we actually end up talking about hunting with

kids and his experience with his family. We talk through each of his successful hunts this year where he did fill his tags there in Iowa, the lessons he learned, the tactics he used. We dive into a lot of how he approaches targeting one single buck, because that's something he's really found a way to be successful at over the years, consistently putting his tag on his top one or two deer on the properties that he hunts.

the late season. So if you're listening right now and are trying to have some of that last minute luck around the holidays or early in twenty twenty four, Mike's got some ideas as well. So that's the game plan for today. Let's get right into it. Let's not beat around the bush, and let's get going.

She's had great success. And I'm trying to build up that woodsmanship in her and some of the scouting and some of the stuff that my grandfather taught me and you know, pounding out on Louisiana Public Ground. And you know, now, Ryan and I actually were just talking a couple hours ago about what next year is going to look like as my you know, so my twelve ten eight year old girls, my twins are going to be six in February, and I said, you know, I Brian, my eight year

old killed two bucks this year. I just killed her second one a week ago, and Bellas killed two. My ten year old is circling back saying, I think I want to go again. She shot one when she was seven, and I want to be like my mother. Two sisters and the boys are chomping at the bid. I was like, there's no way I'm going to be able to take five. Ryan, my wife trying to help me. It's it's a lot of fun, though. It just is so much fun, and I get way more I think, enjoyment out of that

than even you know, hunting for myself. I think it's just it's just a lot of fun. To see their excitement.

four year olds would be. So one of the things I've struggled with or just thought about a lot of guests is trying to find this balancing act when you take them out, whether it's hunting or camping trip or whatever, balancing this idea of keeping it fun right. You want them to enjoy the thing so they want to keep doing it.

lot of things we have to work for. It's hard, It's okay if it hurts a little, it's okay to you know, suffer a little and have a challenge that you overcome. And I actually use it a lot in everyday life talking to them about you know, if they're whining about something or crying about you know this I got to out or something, I'm like, hey, you know

you you we talked about going elk hunting. We talked about going out west in the mountains and and how tough you have to be to go and do that for a week in the mountains, and you know, sometimes you got to suck it up and like it's okay to push through some pain. And you know, I think it's hard to get that in other places in life. That Aldre certainly offers some opportunity there, and I definitely try to, you know, capitalize on those.

go Late Muzzy with the crossbow. And she was like, I want to go Late Muzzy just because she gets two weeks off of school and she'll she'll want to go every day.

here until the end. I take every day off, every afternoon off, starting January first, get I get busy at work the end of the year, and so we hurt we hunt the holidays. You know, it's kind of a family affair. We'll all be out there on Christmas, even Christmas Day and all that, so those days will be good. But then starting New Year's that ten day stretch will gover afternoon. Wow, there's still there's still plenty of plenty of hunting to be had for the Reid plan.

They from the time they were little, we talk about what we actually go after, and they always say, we want to shoot Grandpa deer, and I'm like, exactly, So you know, if a buck comes out like it's not a Grandpa deer, and I'm like, that one's not a Grandpa dear, We'll go ahead and keep waiting. And it's not because I have good age structure and I haven't. You know, they don't have giant racks, but there's plenty of five year old type plus year between the properties,

and it's been a luxury. It's been a blessing for sure to be able to say, okay, you know we can we can go in harvest and a lot of them, I mean the kids. We'll shoot some four year olds and things like that. I mean, obviously a first year is difference kind of go shoot whatever. But I try to start fairly early thinking about conservation and the herd management.

And it's been a challenge though to set up enough spots that you can say crossbow hunt out of, because when they're real little, they're not super interested in the gun. I almost ruined my oldest daughter with the gun getting on a muzzled or when she was six and she killed one, but then she was seven it kind of got her. And well, I've really taking a step back saying, look, whenever you guys are ready, and that crossbow has been a blessing to be able to take them. Doesn't make noise,

doesn't kick. I just got to get them within forty which obviously that's a challenge, especially late season.

wait a while. But what I've struggled thinking through what that right age will be and is there a difference between when he physically can pull the trigger accurately versus when he's like mentally ready. Just thought about that a lot. How have you gone about you know that decision with your kids.

felt very comfortable when she was six. You know, Anna went when she was seven, and when we did it, I was like, oh, that's probably a little bit early. Brin. When when she was six, I was like, it's definitely too early. I mean she was just in the blind doing all this and you know, late season in a blind with the heater, with some hot chocolate and snacks and like a puzzle and some books and like trying to make it very very fun. But say, you know, let's get up and count the deer. Let's talk about

the deer. You know, it's interesting. I think your situation, it matters what you're going to put a kid into. They gotta be comfortable. It's got to be fun. It can't be too long. And I definitely started like last year, I didn't take brand when she was seven. This year at eight, I mean, she's totally ready in the zone,

knows how to get focused. And you know, some of my kids are a little more eightyd than the others, and so that's fluctuated with with how I might approach you know, them individually, And it's hard to know the right answer because I've had buddies take their five year

olds and just knock it out of the park. But you know, with my kids, I kind of tiptoed around that six seven age mark and sort of feel better a little bit older, like come, come sit in the blind, come watch, but you need to sort of show me that you can do it before I just turn you loose.

My third daughter, she kind of was arguing with me in the blind, you know, years old, and there's a beer at forty and I'm like, just use the forty dots. She's like, I want to use a twenty dot and I'm like, uh, well, I'm shooting this dough right here, you know. And then I'm like there's deer walking and moving and she's all over the place. I was like, wait, okay, everybody, just take a step back. Let's stop for a second, wait for a night, let's make sure we're shooting the

right one. And you know. So, I think it is different for each kid, but and the gun, I've wanted to wait until they just feel super comfortable shooting the gun. Tak them some out turkey hunting where it's not so much chaos. But yeah, I think that six seven range has worked well for me. The boys are certainly beating on the door. They're five, and they really want to go, and I'm like, I want them to wait one more year, just because it's hard to take five kids.

or early muzzloder, but youth and shotgun. And I got a little youth three fifty and I really had the recommendation of a bunch of my buddies just saying, and the gun shops and that's a great youth gun and they shoot it very well, very consistently out to one hundred, great group and they don't complain about the recoil, and so to me, I don't have a lot of experience with a lot of other but you know, at the recommendation of a lot of people, tried it and I have really loved it.

And uh, yeah, I took down DK on October thirtieth buck that I kind of come into the season. He was gonna be my primary target. And really before we even got going with the with the rut, he comes strolling in and in a in a spot that I've had a lot of good luck with on my river Bottom farm and a spot I called the pinch. It's

just a great natural, little funnel area. And yeah, he just walks into twenty yards and you know, yeah, I hut some deer for years and you know, can't even get him within fifty you know, but that one worked out pretty well.

it seems like for for a long time now. I'm I mean you've gotten your target bucks or one of the bucks on your list, or several of the bucks on your list every year, So you've you've really seemed to have nailed down this process of like figuring out

a specific buck. So that's something I love to do, and I guess I'm just curious about what that process has evolved into for you now after you've done this for so long, you have a system that obviously is working now, like, yeah, maybe with DK as an example, or if one of these other bucks is a better example, can you kind of walk me through how you go about kind of putting that entire plan in place to dial it in and kill that one deer.

And you know, I am fortunate since I own the property and I've owned the river bottom since twenty seventeen and the home farm since twenty eighteen. Now to have years of history, probably what works the best for me is I get to sort of pick up on these deer when you are three, you know, and then four and I'm just not going to shoot him then, you know, and I'm I'm watching them and learning a lot about their moving patterns, where they like to be, what times

a year. And I mean I knew DK pretty well because we've got four years of history with him and where he likes to be, and so coming into the year, I just designed my plan around that, you know, where am I going to put food, where I'm going to set up my spots, How am I try to get him early? And then you got your good natural rut spots that if you sit there enough and they're in

the area, you should probably encounter them. And then I always fall back on late season, you know, if I had a good good amount of time to have success growing my crop and my food plots. You know, the river bottoms of Wetland, So there's a lot of rules and I have a compatibility use agreement with the NRCS that allows me to put five percent of the property into food plot and so it's not there's no agg there as far as just I planted one hundred acres,

I combine eighty and I left twenty standing. I mean, I've got five percent and it can and I mix it between green and grain. But the deer population is so high there and I'm still working on that. It's hard to grow grain, you know, So I do sorghum, and I do beans and corn, and I got to fence it and then it's just been a it's been

a struggle to grow it. But the years that we can get good food late season ends up being you know, if you haven't got them yet, you probably are gonna be able to get a shot at him late season. But I prefer archery hunting. I love the chase in October November, and so really historical knowledge and then learning the property. I mean I added onto the River Bottom farm in twenty twenty, and you know that was an extra three hundred and forty acres in addition to the

two twenty, So there's a big chunk. And I feel like just this year I start of know how deer like to use it, just natural movement patterns, and then what it's changed over the last two years is the drought years, which slews have water and how that affects your movement. And then this year the mass crop, the mask crop was just insane and both the bucks I shot.

You know, I have all my spots I like, and I'm like, if I just rotate where I'm hunting in the wind, I'm going to encounter them at some point. Like this buck lives over here, I'm kind of dips in the farm over here. This one's over here, and five hundred and sixty acres. Mean it's a good it's

a good chunk of ground. But it's not like I encompass their home range completely, right, So all these deer are coming and going and they're they're they're crossing roads and encountering other hunters and all that kind of stuff. But this year I modified a lot what I was doing, just based on the mass crop and where the does were, and I mean it worked really well.

I like, with a north wind, that's just sort of a good spot. I'm just going to keep hunting around these oak trees, playing the wind, just in the spot and kind of staying in those locations. And just because all the deer were coming there, and you just knew the bucks they were going to be there that morning, you know, the amount of encounters we were just having, it was it was just it was hard to want to go somewhere else. I'm like, I mean, this is obvious.

If I keep sitting here, it's gonna it's gonna work. And even when we switched to my second buck and who was all the way on the south piece of the property, and again, the form I've just kind of been learning the last couple of years, and I just I'd hunted this one particular tree a few times in the past, but it was always okay. I just noticed that those red oaks were just dropping like crazy, andess all the year kept going there. I said, well, I

think we keep sitting we're going to kill him. And you know, five years of history with this deer, it's been kind of all over the place, all over both pieces of the river bottom, and you know, I had three encounters with him in one day and then ended up shooting him November eleventh, and it was just like, well, it's hard to talk myself out of going, you know. RIGHTE asked me where do you want to go tonight? And I was like, we got to go back to

that spot. You know, you climb in the stand and there'd be deer you could see embedded and they get up, come feed and the a carns go back in bed, and it was it was just interesting dynamic. I don't know that we'll see that again soon. I mean, in six years of owning the place, I've never seen a mass drop like better. Is it changed the deer patterns for sure?

I should move. Okay, she go to the next spot, she go to the next spot, bounce around, bounce around, keep them on their toe. But then sometimes, like in a situation like you're talking about, the right move is

actually to stick it out. Or I've had a deer like I was hunting this year that it seemed every time I would go to A, he'd be at B. So then I would go to B, and then he'd be at C, and then I go to C and he's D. And I kept on the rotating round and he'd always be random in which way he was going. And then I finally got to think, and I just need to stay in a spot, and then he'll eventually

cycle to me. How do you how do you think through that and manage those two kind of competing thought processes when picking out where you want to hunt.

blown out deer every time you go, you know. And the Pinch is one of those spots where I really feel like I can just hunt it over and over and over, particularly in the morning. I don't hunt it in the Afternoon's hardly ever I can get in there in the morning the deer or nowhere around. We get in early, and the thermals helped me so much, got deer on all sides of me. We never get picked off there. They all work past. I hunt till noon

or whatever. You get down, get out, and I've got a mode path that basically goes almost directly to the stand, and we hunt it repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, and I say it like wee hundred it twenty times. When that doesn't happen, I naturally, with wind directions and going back to work and all these things give it breaks. Yeah, but I try to be conscious about over hunting a spot. Three spots is kind of three times is my number. And

then I've changed what I do for vacation. I used to take a week off, you know, and hunt nine days, and then that was it. So now what I do is I take three days off, two or three days off the last week of October, two or three days off, two or three days off, and so I break up my vacation days. I usually take seven or eight vacation

days over a three week period, flank weekends. And you know, before the time change, I can hunt afternoons a lot of times, and so you know, earlier I'm not hunting mornings, you know, and we're we're working into the end of October, you know, and then just that naturally gives my farm's breaks. And then obviously having more than one spot I can rotate around. It's it's a little different than it used to be now that you pick a bucket, Like I'm hunting K and he's on this piece of the farm.

I mean, I'm basically rotating around that one spot. So I try to be conscientious of it and hunt smart. You know, I'm not. I don't dive way back in there very much. I mean a lot of it's got good access, it's on the edge.

it's got great ground level horizontal cover. And so I have a lot of mode lanes all over the place, primarily for fire breaks. I mean, I want to rotate my burning, and I have a fifteen foot mower that I keep everything mode really really short. But it also allows, based on certain wind directions, access because I can just use an e bike or walk in boots and there's just no vegetation to rub up against, and so all my spots I can generally access fairly well because of

the mode paths. The river is on the west side of the property. We have this one hundred acre peninsula that is just thick, gnarly wetland and it's all bedding, and so the deer work their way out of that peninsula up the river in the in the afternoons to the north to all the big aggfields that I don't own. They're just destination agfields, and then in the morning. I get there early, and don't I don't come down the

river edge. I come at it perpendicular. So I come in from the road and I have a modepath essentially that kind of comes at the river perpendicular. And so the pinch, there's the river and then there's a slew and it's a strip of timber oak trees, and then when you get on the other side of the slough, it's all that wetland grass, which is really it's a lot of bedding as well, but it's little pockets and

deer bed out there. And they don't all come through the pinch, obviously, but all the deer that are going back into that peninsula, they naturally come through that pinch. It's and when the slough has water in it, it works really well because you got you can have deep water in there and then the river and they really

walk through there. Right now, you know, they spread out a little bit, some of you can see them going through the grass and the natives and some are in the slough and and all that, but it's still that that peninsula pulls them to the river's edge because they're going around that bend, and it just it's one of those spots where I mean I've killed four I mean I've owned the place six years. I've killed four bucks there. Wow, I mean I've hunted a lot in the spot. Funny, Yeah, seventeen, nineteen,

twenty one, twenty three. So my camera guys, all right, every other year we got a shoot buck. Wow, it works. It's a good spot.

dough later in November. But that morning he just was eating acorns. I mean, there was does and some little bucks and he's just kind of feeding and walking around. They're just socializing there, eating and where the stand is, it's right in a little cluster of oaks where you can see the deer walking. They hesitate there to munch for a little bit. So it worked out well.

little acre acre and a half turnip plot. And when the deer come through the pinch and out of the peninsula, they often work through my turnip plot off to the north to all the agg and just way more deer traffic there, and the little clover plot it's it's just not in a high traffic area. So you can sit there and see a dough or two and it is what it is. And so I tend to gravitate towards the other plot because I feel like he's more likely

to show up there. And I had him the beginning of September, multiple afternoons in a row eating turnips, and I put a bunch of radishes in there in front of the stand and it just had it just made a nice plot. And he was there a lot in early September, and I said, okay, you know, the food patterns are going to change and this, that and the other. But I still thought statistically that one's going to be better.

And so I actually had a set up for a south and set it for a north wind, and I would go sit that blind and there was a time or two that right at last light, with five minutes ago, he'd pop up on that clover plot and basically what he was doing he was coming my way, you know,

but where he was betting off the property. He would swing, he'd come through all this standing corn and then swing through that clover plot, get his picture taken, and then he'd keep working his way eventually after dark onto the turnips, and I thought, man, and I was always saying, well, if he's better on me today, he's going to hit the turnups first. But if he's not better on me,

he'd probably be over there. It took a lot for me to go hunt the clover, and I ended up hunting it twice, and it was pins and needles, because just like, man, if he's better in this corn right here, he's going to be on us. And the first time we hunted it, we actually stayed in the stand for thirty forty minutes after dark and we got a picture of him. I mean he walked probably sixty yards from

us and was working a scrape in the dark. We couldn't see him, but yeah, because I was like, well, let's let him if he is coming in, let him come in and get past it. Because so early, I never I never felt like I have other deer. In fact, like last year the Bucky shot October sixth I mean, he just was in the property and I felt like, man, I could kill this dear early, I never really felt that way with DK, just because he wasn't really on the property and yet had the cards feil the right way.

I mean, it could have happened. I was. I was still focusing on these October cold fronts and kind of playing my moves. But those two food plots aren't terribly invasive, and I just kept hedging on the turnups and the one night he daylight while I was there. It just happened to be on the other one man.

one of your best spots on a morning hunt. Was it the combination of it's the end of October and cold front?

I started hunting mornings. I mean, if I look back over the last fifteen years of hunting Iowa, I've had some really great pre rut morning hunts starting October twenty somethinghere around there, so I'll start hunting more mornings. I have to negotiate all this, right, so our balance out how much I hunt, and so early I've done a lot of afternoon and then sometime around October twenty I

start focusing more on mornings. And you know, like you said, the cold front, but I'd actually hunted the pinch maybe three or four times before that day, and we had gotten his DK's picture before I killed him. We got him way south into the farm, in fact, the spot where i'd really never gotten him. And I was like, man, what this is so weird, because what I was thinking

was going to happen wasn't really happening. And we took six bucks off the River Bottom farm last year, which was kind of what I was like, Man, I really cleaned out. I mean eight year olds and seven year old and six year olds and my daughter shot two, I shot two, Rye shot one, and his wife shot one, and it's six bucks. They were all six year older except one of them him if I remember right, No two or five, Wow and so. And we hadn't taken

a lot of bucks to previous years. We were hunting Marino and Dax so much and just got a lot of age on some of these deer and somebody's here one hundred and ten inches. But you know, they were bully bucks, like we like to call him, and we've taken him out of there. And I do think that was probably a factor in inviting DK being able to roam in there a little more was he didn't have as much competition. But you know, Mike ran, we're talking it over about where to go because we got his picture.

I think that night to the South I was like, yeah, I'm not going hunt over there, though I'm still going in the pinch because you know, whether he's coming out of me or coming back in after a night of tomping around. I mean, that's still the spot to focus on. And you know, just trying to get that area where you can get him in bow range. You know, it's one thing to go sit somewhere and see a deer off in the willows, but get him in bow range.

So yeah, the end of October, the food, the acorns there, the cold.

eighty like stuff like that. But I've had situations where they'll be like that really nice three year old, and then there's a four year old and a five year old, and they might be like the standard, just like, hey, he's going to be one hundred and twenty inch eight and he's a hundre in twenty three inch eight and

he's one hundred and twenty seven inch eight. And I've always been so paranoid to go and hunt some of these spots too often in fear of educating the deer and pushing them off under the neighbors and stuff, that I've sometimes avoided targeting a deer like that at all because I don't want to go muck it up for that really nice three year old that I'm hoping to hunt in a year or two. Sure, so how do you balance? Do you ever worry about that? Have you

thought about that? Like you got to kill the bullibucker? You want to try to open up a space for these younger, higher potential deer, but at the same time, you don't want to blow all the bucks off your farm and then have him get shot by the neighbors. Or you educate that three year old and then the next year he's like he's on you already. Yeah, anything that ever happened.

would let me hunt some back in Louisiana. And but you know, what I've come to the conclusion is if I really make my property as good as possible, so food, water cover very inviting, and hunt it smart, those deer are going to want to be in there. And so like I don't worry too much about running off the three year old because of my human pressure, I worry

much more about the bully buck doing it. You know, I mean, I've just seen it over and over where you get this, you know, five year old, six year old, seven year old book that I'm like, well, I don't want to burn my tag on that. Even at one point, you know, I get one bow tag and before I own land, and I wanted to just hunt the best buck. Well then you sort of think, well, it's great if there are multiple deer, but every farm is a little bit different, and how much cover do you have, what's

your carrying capacity? I mean, you've got a couple five year olds, it's not like there's so much covering the river bottom area. That deer density is ridiculous. I've never seen anything like it on anything that I've personally owned or hunted, and just a year after year, there's just there's just so many deer. So it's it's really a luxury. But like what I teach my kids, we still have

to manage the herd once they get to five. And you could argue, I think in a luxurious situation that six would be better, you know, as far as seeing the most potential out of a out of hampers. But whatever they have on their head, they're probably not going to get a whole lot bigger, you know, and you might as well haunt them and harvest them. They've reached

full maturity. This is a grandpa dear, let's let's do it, you know, and so trying to just focus on taking out the mature ones and then hopefully keeping those young ones there to grow up and have future deer to harvest. So that's kind of how I look at it.

get it, get a good age. Guess. I was like, he's got to be three, and you know he's a stocky three year old and uh, this year I actually saw him getting involved and uh, I mean, I just love those brows and I don't have I've never killed a year with like a big drop time. I've killed some little ones. But he's got he grew a big bass kicker, and it just takes everything I have to say. You next year comes at ten yards like three times.

But you know what I mean, See I try to commit, you know, DK okay DK nothing and play the game. But good news, I did get a picture of moss. Like yesterday night, I was like, he made your gun season, So that's great, Like statistically he should hopefully be there next year.

a four year old ten. Talk to me a little bit about a deer like that and how a deer like that can kind of slip through the cracks for years and then finally this year it all came together.

I started kind of picking the deer to hunt. And it's at the same time as my chaos in my life between kids and work and Midwest whitesel and everything else is on ramping up. And I said this on our podcast talking about I used to just I didn't have kids, and you know, all the trail cameras and all the time and just going through stuff, and I just knew everything about everything, and I never would have

looked over at any deer. I just knew who they were, and I could tell you from a one hundred yards novel that so and so and you know. And so anyway, getting focusing on a certain target, and when I'm flipping through trail camera and sell cam picks. Over the last few years, as I've transitioned to that, you know, I'm usually blowing by stuff that's not the buck I'm after, and I just want the information I need to strategize. And so a little bit of that played into it.

But a couple of years ago, you know, fits we were seeing him late season. Every time he'd pop out of the timber, I'd say, man, that's a good dear, what deer is that? And oh it's that big four year old ten? And then last year he just didn't change it all. In fact, I think he got a few inches smaller. And so then I started questioning myself, was he three last year and he's four this year? How old is that, dear? And so I started going through tild camera pictures and I was like, oh, man,

he was. He's been four a long time.

and certainly age is the most important thing. Just seven and a half year old buck. I mean that so.

in November. But he was the one I wanted. But all the while, I'm getting pictures of fits in daylight over and over and over and over on the south end of the farm. And I was telling Ry, I was like, man, mid October, I think we could have killed him, gone in there and killed him. He just was so it was on such a pattern, and I was like, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna It's not

gonna be that way now. And so anyway, kill DK go to work for three or four days and I come back to start over, and our first day back, I said, you know, I still think because it was November third, maybe November third, I still think he's betting in this one particular spot, and I still think he's going in there in the morning and bedding down for a while, kind of mid morning, nine o'clock after he

does his rounds. And I had had a few pictures of him doing this this thing the previous two weeks, and so I thought, that's our best chance, hopefully before he really leaves or goes and does whatever bucks do in the rut. And we sneak in there, and I was right, we're in the but we're in the tree goofing off because we're not overly confident what we're doing. Then all of a sudden, I hear running, and I turn around and he's coming up right behind us, and

he got out of there. Both of us were pretty disappointing ourselves because we had let our guard down, and that was that would have been an opportunity to just I mean, bang bang. But yeah, so he caught us, and I actually shifted to the other side of the farm, probably eight hundred yards away the direction he ran off in that morning, I thought, you know, he's gonna probably

go bet up somewhere over there. And then I had a food plot over there, and we saw him twice that afternoon, once kind of harassing oze out in the timber about one hundred yards away, and then at dark he came through the food plot and I hunt that particular spot on A West and I have a different where I killed him on a south. And so I said, you know what, in the mornings we can go hunt our runt spots, but in the afternoons we have these

two food sources. I've got the acorns right here, and I've got that turnip plot that we almost killed him in, And just based on where the wind was, I was going to bounce back and forth between those two spots in the afternoon. And we actually never saw him again until the day that I shot him. So we had three encounters in one day, and then actually he wasn't on camera for three or four days. And what I think was happening was, I mean he was locking down

with a dough. In fact, I went through that little four or five day cycle of hunting, went back to

work for two or three days. We had some good weather come through and I got a picture of him in the morning with a dough, and then I got a picture of him that afternoon going back out with the dough, and I was like, Okay, he's just in this little area with the dough, and it's something that I actually seen the year four with him right in that spot, and so it's where he liked to be in the rut, and so I just kind of said, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna hone in on this area.

When he was three or four years old, he was farther to the north, but the previous couple of years he had moved down to his pocket of doze, and I was really making decisions based on that and hunting the dose. You know, where the dough is going to be, and those acorns and I mean that dough drug him under the tree three yards just.

fifteen or something like that. Before that, you were Louisiana, right hunting some public and hunting other people's stuff. So something of a lot of folks, you know, like to gripe about when it comes to like the hunting media today is they say, well, we're just seeing these guys kill these big giant bucks on a bunch of land they own, right. But I always like to kind of look at the situation and then separate the situation from

like the strategies that have got them there. And I always think that even though I have better situations now that I hunted than I had fifteen years ago, man, I've learned so much that I could go back to those places and be way, way, way more successful than

I was back then. So this is a long winded way of getting to what would be like the top one or two things that you've learned in these recent years that you would take back with you if you had to go back to Louisiana or if you had to go back to hunting public or buy permission stuff. What do you think have been like those most important things now that would translate to a less ideal scenario.

of year and having a lot of fun. That's how I grew up hunting public, because all the deer get pressured and go into that. But in the Midwest it's a little bit different. I mean, it's different than the swamps of Louisiana, where it's just thousands and thousands and thousands of acres and similar to what you probably hunt Michigan, right, I mean, it's like big wood stuff, you know, and especially if it's heavily pressured, you're getting back into certain

areas and that's a lot harder to look at. I would say aerials and pick out okay, betting feeding, and I had some experience doing that, but it was private ground still in Louisiana, where there were food plots and there were things where you say okay, and there were cuts where they were doing rotational logging operations and you knew where the deer were going to primarily be betted,

and so you could sort of say okay. And that's really back in the early two thousands when I started sort of honing that idea of I'm not just hunting a trail, I'm not just hunting a scrape line, you know, in a way I am, but I'm still trying to figure out, okay, where these deer really betting, and then where they headed out to and is that acorns right now? Is that ag? Is that something I planted? I think

it's definitely easier in the Midwest. But any property I get and I talk to a lot of people friends that have property, like, how would you approach this? And I mean you pan that camera out and where is the cover? You know? And then topographically what draws because deer man, you go out hunting out in Kansas and it's a ton of grass, you know, and it's little ditches and are you look at what Caleb just did recently on the show, Like you know, it's just tree

lines and waterways, you know, and deer. They're resilient creatures and they find areas, but trying to figure out where you're at, where they like to hang out and where they're going to feed and get in between, and that's probably the most useful thing.

really really well. If you had to put your finger on that one or two things that made the just difference, what do you think that would be?

four creek crossings for different access. I did sad busts where I could start planting, because you know, I'm investing a lot of money into land, so okay, let me start farming where I can because maybe CRP or whatever I need to do to generate income to help cover costs and things like that. And I didn't need to make the bedding be better on that property. It was already very centralized. Cattle pastures that are allowed to grow up, you know, tend to be gnarly things. I mean, lots

of locusts and hedge and multiflora rows. So the bedding was pretty thick. And so I just optimize feed there, you know, basically strategically putting food where I can hunt it. And then the river bottom is is similar. You know, the whole place is cover. It's interesting now over time finding out okay they really like that peninsula, then trying to work with the nrcs and the forester about and

the whole thing is not wetland. There's there's about sixty acres that's not a wetland that I can do what I want on. But where can we do TSI work to thicken up some areas and really hold them there, and then release some of those valuable trees, those mash trees, those white oaks that are in there, the swamp oaks and that kind of thing. But it still goes back to food because for years before I owned it, there wasn't food on it. And the year that we flooded,

and another year where we just didn't have success. I didn't have the right equipment and I was trying to figure out how can I grow food, and I hadn't bought electric fence yet. It's amazing that you're gone. I mean, once the rut's over, they go find food. And so I've made that a priority there and here in the Midwest. In these situations, particularly as you get late, food is just king. It's a must. But it helps a lot throughout the entire season, right, I mean early season. It matters.

If you're holding dose on your property, the rut's going to be better you're going to hold more bucks. I mean all these types of things. So just really putting a lot of time, energy and effort into diversifying food plots and being successful with them and what it was going to take there.

it a few years. It just it was so eroded and it just was a tough place to hay. So that alfalfa, I want to get back to it because it's so valuable early. It's so fun in velvet season, and it's a great spot to early bowhunt. And I've changed kind of how the home farm hunts by putting that into a crop rotation. But my green plots, like where Bella, my daughter shot big Mac in September, this eight and a half year old deer, five years of history,

I do braskaz. I usually have clover mixed in, and I love radishes for early and so I'm gonna do a Braska mix. Got some turnips and rape and sugar beets and everything in there with a clover base. So I'll either depending on how old the plot is and how weed it is, sometimes I kill it, turn it under,

put the clover and everything at one time. But what's even better is, you know, if I have a healthy clover plot, or like let's say I do that to a green plot and I put clover in with the brascas, it's mostly gonna be brascas that year, but in the spring it's gonna come up thick, lush clover. I'll mowed a couple of times have a nice clover plot for

turky season and through the summer. But then when it comes time for the end of July, I'll go in there and either till under strips to put brassicas or drill brascas in there and have a nice mixture and then broadcast radishes like what I did this year in front of each stand. I just went in a thirty yard circle and just put some extra radishes just onto the ground on top, and it was interesting to watch

the deer kind of gravitate there and concentrate there. And I just like having a mixture in the green plots because I don't have tons and tons and tons of green plots. I have a couple that I like, and each one of those different things is more palable at different times. And you know, it's fun to watch what the deer like to eat. But I think they all kind of might feel like something different each day too. You know, they're in there and they got a shortage bark, so it works out well.

I remember watching these episodes with my son and he got a kick out of it because two of your daughters, I think, if I'm remember right, two of your daughters and your wife killed bucks in like back to back to back sits right around Christmas, and I think from the same blind or we're like very close to the same place, like over and over and over, and that blew me away.

deer up on their feet over and over again? And how'd you manage to to do that without educating these deer the fact that hate we're getting hunted here after you had a shot and recovery a shot in recovery. How did that all work?

that goes back in there. And so what I did when I bought the farm, I just sort of looking at it and how it set up I was like, this is right up against the bedding, big thick draws that go down into the timber, super gnarly old cattle farm. As I mentioned, tons of multi four rows. The deer cannot see out into the field from the timber. It's just so thick. And so when I bought the property, it just kind of looked at where I could put green. I made four little green plots, you know, north south,

east west sides of this thicket. And so this backfield, this little finger that goes back there at the very tip of it, I have a little green plot turnips and whatnot, which can be pretty effective late season as well. But then when we're drilling all of our crops, we go back in there and make a loop and turn around and come back out. And what I have done is I'll take plot screen, and the co op works

with me on this. It's kind of nice, but I'll once my beans were coming up, I actually go and I'll till under a six foot wide strip or a ten foot wide strip and hand broadcasts of plot screen some Egyptian weed and sorg them and whatnot and pack it in fertilizer and flag it so that when they come back to spray my beans. They skip over that and where it works out great for a northwest wind, and I can come all the way around to the

back of the farm. We walk up this big hill and we're in the blind and I've got plot screen and so you got great entry and exit for late season. And then it's just right butts up against the bedding area. And we had it was Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and then we skipped one day because the wind had switched out of the south, and then went back to that

same exact line when the wind switched back. So three sits Thursday, Friday, Sunday, three kills and it was a five year old, a six year old in my four year old, my seven year old daughter. It was her first deer, and we were being we're certainly being less less picky, and my wife was with us, and so it was really cool. There were four of us in the blind. And I think, you know, the farm is interesting because it's in the center of a pretty big

section and it gets hunted pretty heavily all around. So through gun season deer move in there. Every year, deer move in there. In fact, side note the buck my daughter Brin shot last weekend. I don't know the deer, and it's it's a big, mature deer. And I got one picture of the night before and I texted my Ryan and I said, man, look at this buck. And we went in there the next day and he was still in there and she killed him. And I don't know, the dear big ten. You know, it's like so and

he actually had a bullet hole through his neck. Just yeah, And so, you know, they just get a lot of pressure. And in fact, that night there were three or four other shots. Right, there's just a lot of activity. So my farm, in the grand scheme of things, is not very pressured, and I'm very careful about how we go about hunting it. And there's great cover on it and food. So that particular year we sneak in there, we're using a crossbow, so that's also you're not shooting up the

place with the gun. And both my daughter at the time she was would have been nine or ten, Bela, and my wife, you know, thirty yard shot, heart shot deer runs forty yards into the timber, and both of them died in the same exact spot. I mean they shot him the same spot. They died within three feet of each other and so quick quick recoveries. I think if we were tramping all let's say they hit him back and we were tramping all around the timber, maybe

that wouldn't have worked out. But being able to slip in there after dark because they shoot him right before dark, get the deer out, get out of there, you know, I mean, it's it's And I think the other unique thing is that we were seeing like a different mature buck each day, right so, and I noticed that now if I go just rotate around my farm, because the way I have all the food set up around that central area, there might be a buck that likes to

go to one. But it's not at all surprising. They'll come out to the east one one night, they'll go out to the south one one night. So you kind of get a rotation where that buck that we were shooting the next day wasn't there the night before, so he wasn't part of that exposure to all the deer clearing field or whatever. So it's sort of a perfect storm. But again it goes down to I think low pressure, good deer numbers. At that point, I hadn't shot a

lot of deer on that property. So we were getting we're some pretty good age amongst the bucks, and you couldn't draw that up any better. I mean, what a memory, right, I have the best photo ever of my wife and two older daughters, all with with bucks, all with a crossbow, and it's just a crazy story.

go there. You know, we farm it, it butts up against a lot of cover. And it was January first we had a huge storm coming in and I was like, we got to go sit that place, and you know, one hundred eighty inch deer comes out, and you know, you're like, well, there you go. That's the recipe in Iowa for success. And I think I was unique in that we're far enough north where we get we get we're post rut ruts. In November, we're post rut and then we have these can have this harsh weather and

it just it just drives in the food. Of course I don't hunt mornings. Then, just that sort of concept of the deer feeding feeding, feeding, feeding, feeding, and they're not betting very far off the food. And so if you go in there in the morning and blow them out of they're not going to come back out in the afternoon. And so not only are we transitioning from hey, we were worn out. We just hunted however many days and we need to get back to, you know, other priorities.

So it's kind of nice over the Christmas holidays, a lot of family time in the morning and then we go do a three hour hunt in the afternoon. It works out well, but I also think strategically you just have more success that way. I think some farms set up well to hunt bedding in the morning, the way their access is. I have friends that can do that late season. They can get in the back of a bedding safely and catch deer coming back from the crops.

But none of my places really set up like that, so I focus on food and afternoons and cold weather.

Some of my food plots, like at the river bottom, a lot of deer, even though it's a three acre food plot. They come out of the peninsula. They they'll feed there for an hour, but then they work they work off I mean every time, right, And so if you could somehow set it up where it's not truly the destination, that's ideal, you know, because you can just keep going back and they're not there when you get out. And then the other strategy that I've used where legal

is like electronic calls, like a coyote call. You know, you put your your coyote call under the blind in the bushes thirty yards away and have the remote. You know, that's not legal everywhere, but you know you can turn on a coyote yapp and and then all the deer run off and you just get out, sneak out and get out of there.

deer off the food plot. Another strategy, I don't use a ton I used to use it more like shoot a dough or something, but then you got to go recover the dough. And so I've never technically liked that one thing.

most of this December. Does anything change for you when you have this warm weather, Like, you know, if someone's got like, hey, this is my time off, I was gonna be a hunt around the holidays, and now we're stuck with this kind of lousy weather. Do you still try?

Do you hunt a different food source, like I know some guys might prefer some type of food and warm weather versus some type of food and cold or is there something totally different off the wall that you'd be thinking about with that set of conditions.

it's a huge family bonding time. I mean, we're going sit in the blind, we're spending time out there, and if we kill a greade, if we don't, whatever. But I do think the warmer temps, you can see even on like Troke coming stuff, that the deer might hit the green more. You know, they might be in the turnips more that day. And so I was actually looking

at the forecast thinking about I had just drug. I have my blinds on trailers, and so I pulled a blind out to the beans, and I thought, I'm watching the cameras and I'm watching my turniplot have a bunch of deer in it every night, and it's actually easier

to hunt with the crossbow because it's smaller. And I was like, man, I should probably pull a blind back with these warmer temps, and still trying to decide if I'm going to do that, but I I mean, I'll still go hunt my corn and my beans all the same, and you know, all that action might be the last thirty minutes, but you're still getting most of those deer coming out there, at least in my situation where it's it's private ground that you aren't super pressured. I mean,

they're wanting to eat. I mean this is not everywhere that cold weather. You know, they're out there at two o'clock in the afternoon, and that what I love about. Yeah, you're out there so early, and that's when you get those jury you maybe never saw before that they're like, we got to find food, and they're traveling miles to find food and you're like, what buck is that you know? And so you know, we still have a lot of fun, a lot of success even if the weather's not perfect.

highs the lows, that's the strategy. That's the goose egg hunt where you didn't see anything that's going in there having great hunts that some of that stuff gets replicated on the main show if we have good encounters. But that's where it pops up within twenty four hours. Typically it is the daily channel, and so we have a there's small group of people that enjoy watching the grind, I guess, and it is fun because you don't miss

anything following along with that. And we also have our regional channel where all of our regional pro staff from across the country we post their content. And while YouTube is the easiest, we've got it on pretty much all the major platforms, so you can if you just search for Midwest White Tail, you can find those.

But let's just hypothetically say there's someone who's new who's not familiar with Midwest White Tail somehow, and you were gonna point them to one video that you guys put up this year, I can I mean, there's a couple of you guys have been pretty stoked about I know, all right, you guys have had some really good stories this year. If you had to pick just one that you're gonna say, Hey, you gotta gotta go watch this one. What would that one be?

he he's a master of it. And so to be able to pin that deer down six and a half years old, all the history and just get him just like that was It's awesome. It's a great episode. And then our most recent one, Caleb Grinder, the story of his entire season. I mean, we'll bring a tear to

your eye. The emotional stress. I mean for those of us that are like really obsessed with this and just live and breathe it and Caleb's one of those guys to go through what he went through this year, having just a dream hit list and hav an ehd ravage like everything, and then to come full circle and to do a spot and stalk on the ground on a giant I mean, it's just crazy. So it's they're both. They're both way up there. I think in the history of Midwest whitetail as just top in and they're both

this year. And there's some other good ones this year, but those two, man, I'll be saying that in ten years, like these two episodes, you know that's I mean.

tell the whole story. When you've got some of these stories, I would say, you know what, we're not trying to fit it into a TV channel like we used to be, like this, this is YouTube, like hey, you know what, people could fast forward through if they don't want to watch it all. And you know, but for the ones, I really enjoy that story. I mean, they're just great stories and like you just find yourself, you know, I mean I find myself just at the edge of my seat following along, so so free.

been fun, successful. I hope you've learned some things, and I hope, as we all try to do every year, I hope you've grown. And next year, hey, it should be even better. So enjoy the holidays. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year. Whatever are you doing however you're celebrating. I hope it's great. And until next time, stay wired to hun