Ep. 795: Mindsets of the Whitetail Masters: John Eberhart

I'm back. I don't know what kind of crazy things Tony said that I was up to over the last few weeks while he was manning the ship, but none of it was true. I have been out west. He probably said I was doing a little fishing, and that's true, doing a little camping, that's all true, but also chomping at the bit to get back into some white tail things. Got some good bucks showing up on camera already. I'm

excited to talk about those things. But today the main story, the big picture here is that we're kicking off a new series, and this is a series that I'm excited about because it is different. It's different than what we've done in the past. It's different than I think, you know, pretty much what anybody else is trying to do with their podcast, because I'm not asking our guests over this

next month really about, you know, their hunting tactics. I'm not looking to understand their perspectives on patterning deer or deer behavior, or understanding dear habitat or different spots to set up your tree stands, or how to shoot your bone, none of that stuff. What I'm interested in is is

one or two levels deeper than that. What I want to achieve with this series is to get a look under the trunk, behind the curtains, behind the scenes, inside the minds of the best of the best deer hunters. How do they think about deer hunting problems and struggles and challenges. How do they make their decisions? What are the routines and the habits and the little things and their mindsets that lead to their success? Like these are the building blocks of success. That's what I'm trying to

get at here. So I put together a series of twenty questions that I think will help us get a glimpse of that behind the scenes machinations in these guys' minds. These are questions, like I mentioned, we're going to try to help understand how they set their goals, how they define success, how they think about failure, how they get better at things, who they look up to, who they observe and see as successful, and what do they find

success to look like in those people. All of these things I think will help us have a better underlying understanding of what the tools of what the mental models necessary are necessary to have success as a deer hunter. So this is different, different level of thinking, different several layers beneath the surface that I think will give us all a better idea of how we can become better deer hunters ourselves. And my first guest, the guest to kick this series off this week is John Eberhart. If

you've listened this podcast, you likely know him. He's the author of many books. He is a long standing outdoor writer and one of the most successful DIY white tail ball hunters in the country. He comes from Michigan. I've learned a lot from him personally. I know many of you have too, and so he was the guy who I thought would be a great person to kick this

whole thing off. And what you're going to see is that this series of twenty questions will be the same series of twenty questions I ask to every single one of the guests we have in the upcoming week. So we're going to get to hear all of these different, very very good deer hunters answer the very same questions, and we'll see what's you know, what they have in common.

We'll see how they approach these things differently. And I think it's going to be very insightful and interesting to be able to compare and contrast all these different folks who all have tremendous success but maybe approach it in different ways. Or maybe what we're going to find is that while their tactics are different, maybe their mindsets and their habits and routines and philosophies, maybe those are more consistent than we realize. It's going to be interesting to

find out. I'm very excited about it. And we're going to kick off the conversation with John here very quickly, but real fast. We want to give you a heads up on something that is going to be coming up in a matter of days if you're listening to this in early July. Next week, we have a new educational white tail video series launching that Tony Peterson and I are hosting called Whitetail Edu. And these are a series of kind of foundational, relatively beginner whitetail how to pieces.

This is the kind of thing that if you've been hunting a long time, these will be good refreshers. If you are relatively new, or if you have a new friend or a new family member, someone who's getting into this stuff but hasn't been doing it for twenty five years, these will be great videos to send to them to help level them up. Because what we found is that there's a lot of people who listen to this podcast

and we end up speaking over them. We end up talking about details, little nuanced things that they just don't quite understand yet, and then they miss out on a lot of the really good stuff we cover here in

the podcast. What we want to do is establish a resource that will get you fully up to speed on the very most important core foundational elements of deer hunting, things like understanding where, why, and when deer feed, what they feed on how to determine that things like really diving deep into understanding tracks, not just the surface level, but what can you read into those tracks and how

can that apply to future deer hunting efforts. Same thing with scrapes and rubs and understanding maps and how deer use habitat all, that kind of stuff. We're going to try to establish a really good baseline for all of those topics for folks. So the place that you can go to see these videos when they come out is a new channel for met Eator. It's called meat Eater Clips. That's what you need to do right now is hit pause on this podcast, go to YouTube and search for

meat Eater Clips that clips, subscribe to that channel. Then when the new videos drop, you will be the first to know it and you'll see them right there. You can give them a watch or pass them along to your friends who are still getting into this and still learning whatever it is. We'd love it if you check them out, share them around. Hopefully this can help a lot of folks and better build people to be able to listen to these in depth, know more advanced conversations

and get the absolute most out of it. So again, that's white Tail. First one comes out, I believe July tenth, and then it should be I think every week from there on for a while. And again that's on the Meat Eater Clips channel. So that is my one heads up for the day. Without further ado, let's kick off the mindsets of the Whitetail Masters series today with John Eberhart. All right here with me on the line again is mister John Eberhart. Welcome back to the show.

so well with the What would You Do? Series that We've continued it for years, so now John, we need we need to make that happen again with this one. But you know, the guy was telling you before we started. What I'm hoping to get at with this series and with our chat here today John, is to kind of,

you know, get a look underneath the hood. It's like popping the hood on a muscle car and seeing what's going on behind the scenes, the habits, the routines, the mindset, the philosophy, those kinds of things like what's going on in here as you were out there deer hunting making decisions or preparing in the off season. So we're probably not going to talk about, you know, what's better a rubb or a scrape or a how big of a

track you're looking for? Not that kind of stuff. It's it's going to be a different kind of angle we're going to take today exactly. So, So, John, I guess the first thing I want to look at with you is a simple thing. How do you define deer hunting success?

anybody like TV guys. I shouldn't say any most TV guys I do not look up to as as serious deer hunters because they're hunting in ultra managed properties almost as do like settings, fantasy land stuff, and it doesn't

take much skill set to do that. So so to me killing three and a half year old in older bucks in heavily pressured areas against tons of competition, and probably at least half of my competition on the public lands and free permission properties that I'm hunting, which is exclusively all I hunt, you know, at least half of the people are targeting just deer, So that's a different

type of pressure. Anytime you're hunting ultra managed property where nobody's shooting at anything until it's four and a half years old, you know, you can have several hunters on the property, but that's not hunting pressure, because you know, once the deer hits to kill kill engagement criteria. You know, they move a lot during daylight hours, they move out

into short crowd fields. They'll walk into your little shell corn in the weeds in front of your twenty feet in front of your box blind that sticks out like a sore thumb, and you shoot them. So you know, to me, that's that's not deer hunting, or at least

that's not a skilled deer hunter. So a mock. Personally, on my end, it's being able to hunt against heavy competition and target three and a half year old and older bucks because in a lot of areas I hunt four and a half year old bucks just do not exist.

Maybe he's with the hot dough and she turns and leaves, or maybe he comes in and then all of a sudden he turns ninety degrees and goes a different direction where he did offer me a shot and I passed on a thirty yard shot because I think I'm going to get a fifteen yard shot and I didn't take it. That'd be about the only time I look at failure because being in the woods. To me, being in nature,

there can't be failure in deer hunting. You know, I've went three years in a row in Michigan without seeing a buck that I would shoot, or without having a buck on camera that I would personally shoot. Do I consider those three seasons it's failures? Absolutely not. I was out there, I had the best bucks in the area walk by me that I did not shoot. So how

can you look at that as failure? You can. You can only fail when you don't when you don't take advantage of something that's there, or you don't get the opportunity. It's something that you know is there. You don't get that opportunity, then you may have failed in you know, your location or your seasonal timing, your daily timing not being there it's the right time of season or right time of day you did your sequence is wrong. Maybe used a tactic it didn't work, but Overall, I really

never look at deer hunting as a failure. I just enjoy being out there in nature. Got I'm seventy three years old, and I just have a passion for it. So unless I unless I do what I said early as far as missing an opportunity because I passed on what I know, I could have taken the thirty yard shime and killed it waiting for a fifteen yards hid and then I don't end up getting that shot. And that's happened to me several times. And those are things I've never ever gotten.

ever had an opportunity to shoot. And he came down to thirty five yards. He came down that little draw in weeds, and he stopped. And it was a bluebird afternoon, sunny, sunny, sunny afternoon, and I'd had twelve other doze and ponds, and one other subordinate buck go by me within twelve yards and feet actually on acorns under my tree, and then moved on. And so he was coming through the same route, so he was on their trail. And at thirty five yards he stopped and he gave me a

broadside shot. And at the time I shot leagues a lot back then, and at thirty five yards, I have the thirty thirty five yards ten and I could have shot that deer with no problem stand a dead broadside, and I thought, well, you know he's on he's following all these deer where they went into the timber. So I just well, I'm gonna wait till he comes within twelve yards fifteen yards, And all of a sudden, he just took off and ran up the side of the

hill to the west. And when he started running up the hill, in the saplings, you know, these saplings were probably tempoly tall, there was a dough and I had not seen that dough. But when he started running up that hill, I saw that doe spook from him, and so you know, obviously in the evenings the thermal drafts from the hills are going down, so he winded her and took off after her, and I didn't get an opportunity.

I never saw that buck again, and that probably is why I mentioned what I said, what I think is a failure that's happened to me two times. But I've never ever forgotten that. And as you well know, you you remember your mistakes far more than you remember your success.

up to your question. It seems like the takeaway the lesson from that experience was, as you described it in a minute ago, take advantage of that first opportunity because they can be fleeting, which is.

his head and his rack sticking up above them. And he was following her, so she was obviously on her own way that was going to come right by me as well. So I was watching him, and I was moving around in my saddle to get a shot opportunity when he came, because I knew exactly what route they were on. He was on, and when I made that move, the dough, the doe had already stopped. She was standing there. I didn't see her, and she picked me. When I made a move. He wasn't looking, he was looking at

the dough. She spooked and he went with me. I don't know if that answered your question, but.

which is monster for Michigan. And at about that straight up noon, here he's coming out of one betting area. You know, he was gonna sent check for those in one others betting area and take the pinch point of security cover to the next bedding area. And he came through ten yards again. It was straight up twelve o'clock and when it was on all day said probably twelve yards, I mean a perfect it was a chip shot. He was on my wall mentally, this year is dead. He

threw my bow dead broadside twelve yards. Man stopped him. I shot right over his back. I didn't think there was any way in God's green earth I could miss a bear. And that's probably the last year I can ever remember physically totally missing. And that that gave me thought that don't ever take shots for granted, you know, don't just draw back, and because he's so close, it's like shooting in an elf, you know, you just you

pull your pin down. And as soon as my pin got some someone so in the Bibles, you know, I just let it go. And I must have jerked a little and shot over his back. I just didn't take my time and follow through with my form.

it is that makes him or her so successful? So who would that person be, if you're willing, if you want to share the name, or if not, describe to me what makes this person so special, what's their their secret sauce, what's behind the curtain for them?

as well. He was very detail oriented. He targeted specific bucks, you know, and he had a cool job. He drove around in the countryside. I can't remember what his job was, but he got to see deer, and back in the eighties it was a lot easier to get hunting permission. So when he would see a monster buck, he would go and if he could get hunting permission, he would target that deer. And typically that deer was in he was in trouble when Miles Keller targeted him, because he

had a pretty high success rate. And Miles Keller always, you know, he used to wear shower caps over his hair because he knew, you know, a high percentage of his order. This is before sunt lot was coming out of his hair follicles, so he shaved clean and he put a shower head band over his head so he wouldn't have as much older he Even though I'm not a believer in the sprays you know, the sodium bite carbonate and water sprays. I think they have very minimal effect.

But he used that. He used anything that he thought would give him an edge, and he was just an extremely successful hunter on regular properties. Okay, So I guess Miles Keller would be the only only person I've ever looked. I've hunted with a lot of high profile ball hunters. I've never been impressed by.

his you know, feeding there with a morning entry. So he put a lot of things in place that really if you read any of the media time no media people were talking about that he had knowledge of deer behavior beyond the normal ball hunter. And you know, I feel like I try to follow in that stuff, you know, seasonal timing, daily timing. Is this a morning location, is this an evening location? Is this a mid day location?

You know, like that those pinch points between the two betting areas, that's a mid day location, both to two big bucks. I've had opportunities at there. We're in the middle of the day, so you know, knowing seasonal and daily timing, and you know what locations are for what time of season. You know, Miles knew that, and I used to read his interviews. I don't read much media and I rarely watch TV, so yeah, those were those were the things that really stood out with Miles over anybody else.

one week window, and this is a seven day window, and this is a two week window, and this kind of thing will only work for this time of year. These specific locations are only right for this time of year. I didn't grasp that until I was twenty twenty one when I read your book, so that would probably be my answer to this question. But what for you, what change or what choice did you make that took you from here to here.

ever talked about in the media pre season. So you know, one season, I was like, I filled my tags early and I'm like, you know what, I'm going to go out here in December. You know, gun season's over and there wasn't any snow on the ground, and I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna scout early. And when I started doing that, I was looking at the property because in Michigan and in the heavily pressured areas that I hunt,

everything revolves around security cover. And when you go out there and you preseason and scout, everything looks like it's got adequate security cover per deer to move through because everything's got folageiants. Everything looks dense, so it gives you a false sense of what security cover is once the foliage is down during the rut phases, and that's when bucks start being vulnerable, moving more during daylight, you know, in pursuit of dose. So during postseason scouting, I can

still see all the scrapes. I can tell the fresh licking branches because you can see the white of the meat of the tree. The runways are still there from the rut phases, very visible. You can totally go in and rape bedding areas as far as scouting them without concern busting deer either, because they're going to be back in there. You know, when you're scouting, you know whether it be January, February, March, you know, even even into

April before greenup. You can just molest everything, prep your locations, do all your scouting, mark your public land locations on ONYX, and you know, have all that stuff set where you don't really have to do anything during pre season, so you're not making any intrusions and changing any visuals by making shooting lanes or or entry and exit routes. You're not leaving any human odor. You know, you don't have to worry about sick control when you're scouting in postseason,

and nobody ever talked about that. So that was the first thing that was a huge, huge That's big. Second thing was in nineteen eighty one when I bought my first saddle. I bought a treestling cost thirty nine dollars ninety five cents so and I'm still hunting from that same exact treesling. I've modified it a lot, but it's the same one I've used since nineteen eighty one. That made a huge uptick in my kills as well, because it gave me more tree options. It gave me three

hundred and sixty degrees shooting mobility around the tree. I didn't have to worry about leaving stands on public land because the saddle is always with me. You know, there's just a gazillion advantage of the saddle over at tree stand once you get used to it. Third thing was was as big as postseason scouting because the saddle made a difference, but it wasn't a major game change, but it made a difference in the locations that I could hunt and take advantage of the three sixty and not

worry about that. The third thing was hands down cent lock when I bought my first cell a suit in nineteen ninety six. It took me almost a year to learn how to because sell lock very does a very poor job at conveying how to properly care for store and use their clothing. You know, they make nice clothing.

It's not overly expensive, but they do a very poor job, in my opinion, of conveying how to properly use it in conjunction with other sent free things like your backpack or washing your aids on your sticks, or whatever the

case may be. So to give you an example, what a difference that made from nineteen sixty five when I started bow hunting until through nineteen ninety six, Because in nineteen ninety six when I bought that suit, I really didn't have a grasp on how to properly care for it, and what did you in conjunction with You know, I took my backpack out in the tree with me, which

I got into every day with my bare hands. So it was a huge human CENTERI So it didn't matter how well I took care of my body, I still got the backpack here to scoop from. So in nineteen ninety seven, from nineteen sixty five, through nineteen ninety six, which is a I think thirty two seasons. I took ten record book bucks in those how many years? Thirty two seasons, I took ten record book blucks. From nineteen ninety seven through twenty twenty three, I've taken forty five

record book blucks. It's different, so the stats are pretty much there. I went from yeah, ten and thirty two seasons to twenty or forty five bucks in twenty seven seasons.

Can you think of any new belief, behavior, habit, something like that that you've picked up in the last five years that has significantly improved your hunting or hunting enjoyment. Is there anything that stands out absolutely?

the lull. You've got that October lull when handy mature buck you want to kill is typically going to be vetted all day or they're going to move into their betting area before daylight. They may move a little in their betting area during the day, but they're in heavy security cover. So you've got that lull period and then you get into pre run and that's when you start spending most of your time on stand again. So during

that lull, i wasn't hunting much. And one thing I have learned over the last four years is I'm hunting a lot during the lull now, but i'm hunting, I'm sparring, I'm doing spiring sequence. It's a long standing or six four of the last bucks I've shot six book bucks in the last three seasons, four in Michigan, two in Kansas, and full of the four bucks I shot in Michigan

in the last three years that made book. Three of them I rattled out of either standing corn or in a betting area during the lull because when you do sparring, not rattling sequences, not aggressive rattling sequences, because during the law bucks are still they're sparring for pecking order. They're just you know, you may see a ten point sparring with a four point. Okay, you never see them fight for breeding right now, but they're sparring for pecking order

in the four areas and so doing spiring sequences. Bucks tend to bed a majority of the mature bucks bed in the standing corn because it's for the most premium security cover. You can have nobody walks in the cornfield and then you can eat in it, so you got dose betting in it, you can feed in it, and it's the most superre your betting area you can have. And most people are afraid of corn. Well, I can't hunt this. You know this is going to suck until

the corn gets harvested. Well take advantage of it because you can hunt the edge of the corn. You can spire bucks out of the corn, and you're not molesting your rot face hunting locations so that you're going to hunt in the timber once the corn has been harvested, so you're not ruining anything in the timber or betting areas outside of the corn, you know for pre rud hunting once the corn is down, but you can still rattle or spar bucks out of the standing corn or

in betting areas. So to give you the betting area scenario, two years ago, I was scouting some public land and there was in the postseason and there was a betting area at one of them that I it was a decent betting area, but I had better betting areas to hunt in my rotation. But it was a good betting area, So I said, what the hell, you know, as is the lull, I'm not going to hunt this betting area during the rut phases on this piece of public land.

So I'm going to go in there on a morning hunt, get in my tree two hours for daylight, for the bucks transition into the betting area, and if there is a big mature book, if there is a decent mature buck in that betting area, you know, about seven forty five, I'm going to do a rattle of sparring sequence and see if I can bring in because once they're in their betting areas, they're much more apt to respond to something. And it's a social thing, you know, it's it's also

sparring as a social activity. It's not a battle. And at seven forty five I did a sparing sequence and I did another one five minutes later at seven fifty and the buck came in and I shot, so two of them. I rattled the bucks out of standing corn and the other one I sparred in in a betting area interior of the betting area of a betting area. Was not planning out on injuring the rough. So I've learned three of the four bucks I've shot in the

last three years in Michigan to make book. We're during the law and that's a time I try to avoid.

I think my mature buck might be betted. Corn can oftentimes look like a blank sheet of paper, like it could be hard to find a specific concentration zone as compared to when you're looking at a forest and you can see, oh, there's this one area that's you know, very very thick, or a different habitat topic. I know

there's probably something better there. But when you go about trying to choose how you want to sit alongside of a cornfield where there's not as much diversity, how do you choose your hunt location for that type of hunt?

up to other security cover. You follow what I'm saying, because I'm mature bucks much more likely to come out of a out of a standing cornfield if he's going from security cover or the corn to security cover of the location off corn. So a lot of times when I'm scouting postseason scouting and I'm walking the edge of a perimeter of a crop field. You know you can even do this on public There's a lot of public land butts up the private corn. Okay, so you can

walk the edge. And if you see, let's say a scrape area during postseason on the edge of a standing or on the edge of a crop field and it obviously the cropfield wasn't last year, Odds are is going

to be corn this year? Well, if that scrape area has any semblance of security cover around it, that's going to be the number one spot I'm going to want to be because odds are that's that scrape area because dos and bucks are going to be traveling in and out of the standing corn, that scrape area will probably be active again, you know, when it's in standing corn. So if there's any tree there, that's going to be

the number one spot I would key on. But if there were no scrape areas around the standing corn, I would key on wherever the best security cover is that butts up to the standing corn to make him feel more comfortable committing to come out of the corn. Otherwise, if you're just rattling along standing corn and let's say it butts up to a weed field or a wide open area, odds are he's not going to commit to

coming physically coming out of the corn. He'll probably still come in, but he'll probably stop, you know, five to ten fifteen rows from the edge, and if he gets close enough to the edge and he can't see a visual, he's not going to commit to come out and give you a shot. Now, if it's on property you have permission to hunt. You can actually make like a B a B lane in the standing corn, maybe twenty five yards out, make of four three or four foot wide

B lane. That way, if you see a buck coming through the corn, if the rollers are running parallel, to the edge. You could maybe see a buck coming through the first one and shoot him when he goes through the second b Yeah, get ready for it. But man, two years ago, I raddled sixteen bucks out of standing corn by the fifteenth October.

how long would this sparring sequence be. I'm assuming it's very subtle tickling and stuff like that, but please some details on the sparring sequence and how often you would do that and when in a sit would you do that? Okay?

night nail rattle bag for over thirty years. I've had to replace the fabric, but the sticks are still the same.

rattle sequence. There's nothing aggressive about this. But you do that about you do a spar, you do quiet, You do a spar, you do quiet, you do spa, you do a quiet. It may take a minute to do a full sequence, and then I'll do them five minutes apart. So on a morning hunt, i'll do it between seven forty five, depends on where I'm at first. If I'm on the edge of a standing corn, I'll probably do

it about seven point thirty. If i'd me in a physical betting area, like I was on that public land betting area, I'll do it about seven forty five because I know the bucks are still going to be up and moving around, and they're in a betting area. They don't have any issues coming back and forth by you. I'll do it five minutes apart and then I'm done. So whether it be morning or evening, I only do two sequences. In evening, I'm going to do them about

forty five minutes before dark. The first one and then another one five minutes later. I always do them in succession, and I always do the first sequence lighter than the second sequence because the first sequence, let's say there's a buck betted fifty yards from you. If you make the first sequence, it's too loud, he may not commit. Because spiring sequences are very quiet, low key. You've heard them before,

I'm sure. So you want to do the first one a little bit lower key, to a little bit lower volume to possibly bring something in that's close, and then the second one you want to raise the volume a little bit to possibly catch the attention of something farther out in the field. And it's kind of interesting because when you do a sequence for a minute, you know where you're doing probably three or four physical sparing sequences. The rattling noises bucks have like an internal GPS.

call that alka. Yeah, I think I was the first guy probably ever to shoot an elk out of the saddle and definitely the first guy to rattle in and elk with a white tail rattle.

four daylight. It's not going to make any damn difference. But the five percent of the time, you know, the one out of twenty times a buck goes into a betting area forty five minutes or half an hour before daylight and then you make your entry. You know, twenty minutes before daylight, you're not gonna get a shot at that deor you're not even going to know you spooked him when you walk into that bedding area during the rough. So being on stand early is a habit that a

lot of people. Man, you're getting a treat that early. Yeah, And it's it's something I've just been used to and I've I've always done it since the mid seventies. And probably what got me to do that was again in the mid seventies seventies seven. I remember I was going in and I was hunting where there was a cedar swamp and then there was a small ridge up up to an oak flat white oak, white and red oak

both And this is in Michigan. Obviously I didn't hun out of stay killed in ninety seven, but I went I was going in on a morning hunt and I was going in about a half hour before daylight, and I'm walking I'm gonna I'm gonna hunt one another trees along the edge of the cedar swamp, catching deer coming out of the oak ridge down into the cedars the bed for the day. And as I'm walking down the

edge of these cedars, I spooked the deer. And when I got up to where the deer spooked, I mean, the tarsloder was just the stench was strong, and I know, you know exactly what I'm going to do. There was a buck bedded here, and I really didn't think a lot about it, but I walked by it and I got in my tree and all I'm thinking, blah blah. So the next time I went in there, three days later, I didn't shoot anything. That day, I spoke the same deer in the same exact spot at the same exact

time with my half hour before daylight entry. And then it clicked, he is staged there, and he probably came in there, betted there an hour before daylight to intercept all the dough activity coming off the soak ridge. So that's when I started getting in my trees an hour and a half before daylight. And I've had a lot of guys email me that read my books that read that, and they said, boy, what a difference that made to them.

The guys that shot bucks that were moving, they basically transitioned into the bedding area or to the edge of a bedding area where they were physically at but then they felt comfortable. The bucks felt comfortable. They were either going to stage there for those coming through, or they started feeding on acorns under the tree, and then they stayed there and fed because they're next to or within

security cover. They felt comfortable and they could hear anything coming, any danger, and they kept feeding until you know, five or ten minutes after daylight, and then they shot up. Yep, And if they would have went in with a half hour before daylight entry, they would have spooked him in never mom.

them and how to hunt them. And I don't know if you call it a habit.

I'm right on that edge. I mean, I've I've killed every deer i've shota with a forty pound bow and had a clean pass through because I'm shooting lighter arrows and fixed blade small cut fixed blade heads. I wouldn't consider that a mistake though. That's just part of life. Sure, mistake or mistake do I consistently make I have a harder time getting up out of bed to hunt hunt in the mornings. I mean, as you get older, you just I just I still have the passion and the desire.

But sometimes when the alarm clock goes off now and it never would have happened ten years ago, I turned the alarm clock off and go back to sleep. And but I think a lot of that is attributed to motion cameras as well, because I've got motion cameras now, because they're all sell cameras and I have them. You know some at my locations that are fourteen feet off the ground so the deer can't see them, and I put them in August, so I'm not you know, having to intrude into the spot to check an SD card.

So I guess that would that would probably when there's nothing on camera, it's hard to get motivated on a morning hunt. Sure, and I've shot, you know, I've several three times I've shot bucks that were book bucks that I never had on camera. So just because you don't have one on camera, the meaning couldn't come through the area, just not going in front of the camera.

But when they'd come when when they came through, which was the only time I saw them, they came to the down wind side of the scrapes, twenty yards and sun checking.

can't do as fast as I used to. I usually prep everything myself, So I'm getting I'm getting better over the last ten years, i'd say, and being a little more detail and oriented when I'm prepping locations, because, as you well know, scouting and proper location preparation is ninety percent of the game. You know, the kill is just

the byproduct of all your other hard work. So I tend to as I'm getting older, I'm forcing myself to work harder because I have to put more hours into my work and location preparation because I can't do it as well and as fast as I used to. So I'm having to work harder if you get the same amount of work done.

shooting lanes. You know, that's all. That's all work. I I never view scouting the physical scouting has worked because when I'm scouting, I'm just on foot. I don't take my location preparation here. When I'm scouting, I will totally go in and scouting area and you know, waypoint, mark what air, what trees I may want to hunt, or locations, and then I'll come back with my location preparation gear to prepare them. If they're on private or you know,

I'll clean them up a little bit. If they're on public. You know, I'll cheat and cut some stuff on public, you know, during postseason, so that it's out of the way. And I'm not making a pre season entry to change any to change anything and cut anything, so I'm leaving any order. Sure, So work is just it's just the physical labor I'm doing out in the woods. Is what I would be buying is work, And I can't stand it when I'm like with my kids, like Joe, my

son who owns saddle Under Nation the Facebook page. I shouldn't say this, but it's true. I can't watch other people prep stuff because I'm so fussy on how I

want to do it. If I'm preparing a tree, even if you know, like Joe picked up twelve acres and we were prepped four locations on it, you know, I prepped all the trees even though they're for him, because he likes the way I prep them, because all the stuffs and everything are perfectly placed where you can move around the free and one point doesn't go lower than the other. So I do all the prop while he may be doing lane you know, shooting, lane clearing, or

whatever the case may be do. So that's what I consider working labor.

not being molested. You know, they'll move down into lower ground where they're more protected from the cold winds and where they're closer to a preferred heating or in a lot of times they'll migrate, you know, like in the up up to fifteen miles with cedar swamp. So so sign you see in the snow is totally misrepresentation of what those deer are doing in the fall. So what was the question? You don't you forget the question?

of locations do you use at. I think I think sparring is something that ninety percent hunters are afraid to do because they've done rattling and it's spook beer and that they don't understand. Sparring works anywhere if you're in the right types of security cover, you know where a buck can has to come through the security cover to commit get buck close enough to commit to seeing what

made the noise. Obviously, you don't want to spar if you're in an area where a buck can see eighty yards to the base of your tree, because if he comes out, you rattle him out of something, and then now he's got to go eighty yards across open and vulnerable area to get to where the noises were made. He's not going to do that in the daylight. So if he can't see a visual, he's not going to commit to it. So it's got to be security cover butting up close to within your shooting branch.

replaced with entry level products. So all of your hunting gear was going to be replaced with like the bare bones, entry level Walmart version of all your hunting gear except for one thing. You can keep one category of top tier, high end stuff, So you could keep your high end bow, or your high end camera, or your high whatever. What would be that one category that you would want to

keep the high end. So another way to look at this is, if you had to only choose one category to spend extra money on, what would that be?

can use it. So everybody else says it doesn't work, and everybody else is followers like Lemmings jumping off the cliff with somebody that says it doesn't work.

and double checking my thought process all that. What does that look like for you?

so I'm not paying attention to wind direction. Wind direction never enters my thought process. I shouldn't say never, because a lot of times when I'm sometimes when i'm setting up a primary scrape area location, you know, I'll set up a tree if it's on the south side or

southeast side of the of the actual scrape area. I'll set it up knowing that big bucks mature bucks sent check scrape areas from downwind, So I'll set it up where I got a twenty five yard shot to the actual scrapes, and then I'll have a shooting line twenty five yards down wind to me. So if a butt checks at any place from twenty five yards for up to fifty yards down wind to the scrapes, I will get that shot. So as far as driving going to

my which location what drives my thought process? Okay? Or the acorns still on the ground, if they've been scarfed up, apples still on the ground, if it's you know, if it's a destination mood location, the time of season obviously, if it's if it's pre rut, which is in my opinion,

the best ten days of the season. If it's during pre rut, you know, which of my locations offers the best funnel or the best opportunity for a buck moving during daylight hours, because all signed in the world is meaningless if it's not made during the daylight so, you know, and it's not revisited during daytime, so just rain. You know, if it's if it's a nice drizzle of rain or

if it's a bluebird day. You know, if it's if it's windy or it's raining, I may go into a bedding area for an evening hunt, Whereas if it was dry and sunny, I wouldn't because I'd be making too much noise. But if it were windy or rainy, I'd have the wind the rain to mask my noise. Because

I love hunting interiors of betting areas. That's my number one go to spot after early season, you know, when everything's betting defeating, so the time of the season, the weather, not the wind, but the weather, and obviously what I have on my cameras. You know, if I get if I'm getting some consistent moving you know, like every third day, I'm getting a buck every third or fourth day, I'm getting a buck coming by a specific location. That would

definitely play into Okay, I need to go with that spot. Yeah, kind of a vague answer, but that's all I got.

in the evening. But other than that, typically, if I, if I'm committed to a location, even if I think I should be in this one, I'm going to stay where I'm at. Once you commit to something, you should stick with it because I think when you get down and move, you're just possibly altering your activity. Because I mean been in the tree a while. Obviously the deer could be starting to move, and you may alter dear activity because human human activity affects deer movements more than

any other factor period human activity. So I don't want to molest anything by moving once I'm committed to a spot.

And I was worrying, like part of me is saying, you don't want to move because you know you're gonna spook deer and he might be coming, and you know, when you're climbing down from the tree, he might show up and you can blow it all up vice versa. He might be going into that bedding area any moment now, and get a big whiff of me, and then my hunt's done too, and there could be twenty other deer that would want to use that betting are and you're going to blow out twenty deer or ten deer or

whatever it is. And so I went back and forth, back and forth on that, and then I finally decided, you know what, I got to get out of here, like it's it was blowing the worst possible place. And I take my son control really serious. But I know that I'm not. I'm not I'm personally not able to make it one hundred percent. So I knew that, you know, stuff would win me. So I pulled. I started pulling down my set, and as I'm about to about to

climb out of my platform, I hear snap. I turn over my shoulder, and it had been a windy, rainy day and the one buck I was after was twenty five yards away walking right through my tree through my shooting lane.

a gun. At that point, he was wounded. I could tell he was infected and it was a bad deal and I needed to do whatever I could to u.

to move tonight, blah blah blah. And I have killed deer in weather conditions that were you would never think a deer would move in and typical dose and stuff don't use you know, they like blueber day. But when you're hunting in severe in clement weather. You know, mature bocks during the rough phases, they want to breathe and

they're going to move, they can't go inside. So I think mental conditioning, where you don't let anything affect what you're going to do concerning hunting plays a big, big part in success because when you're hunting pressure areas, opportunities are so few, and the more you're out there, I'm not saying you have to still hunt smart, but the more you're out there at the right times of season and the right times of day, no matter the weather

conditions you're you're going to have higher percentage of getting opportunities. I think that has a lot to do with mental toughness. Getting up in the mornings is mental toughness. Getting up, you know, three hours before daylight to go hunting and be in your three an hour and a half or daylight every day, even though you know one out of twenty hunts is the only time it's going to work for you on average. That's mental toughness. Staying in your tree.

If you're at you know you're in a betting area. If you're in an all day sit in a betting area, you got to be in tree an hour and a half before daylight settled in, and you don't want to leave the betting area until at least a half an hour after dark. Even though you can't shoot, you want to make sure if there was a mature buck in there, he's gotten up and moved out of the betting area, so that you're not spooking him with your climbing down the tree and your exit out of the betting area.

You know, right at dark, you know when he probably hasn't exited the betting area yet. You know those are all or you know, if you're on public land and you know and it gets heavily pressured public land. Mental toughness is knowing that if you find a bunch of sign Let's say you find this awesome location and it's got some seonone's of security cover, and there's three active scrapes here, and there's rubs on all the perimeter brush

around the scrape area. But yet it's an easy to access location for anybody from the parking area or wherever the public land parking is on, and is you know, mental toughness is knowing that if there's a mature buck using that scrape area, it's probably at night you know, all the sign in the world is worthless if it's

not made or visited during daylight hours. So knowing there's three other guys bee hunting this section of public land, you know, not every day, but on and off the and of course of the season, that's just ball hunters. You know, they're going to find that and they're going to ruin it. They're going to ruin that location for

daytime hunting. So, you know, mental toughness is knowing that when you're hunting public land in a heavily pressured area, you've got to go places other people aren't willing to go. You've got to don waiters or hit boots, or use a canoe or a bolt across the lake or whatever the case may be, because that's where the buck. Mature bucks are pushed by all the other hunters because they're typically too lazy and they're not willing to do the

work to get back to those places. So the mental toughness is knowing you have to do that if you want to have any semblance of being consistently successful in a pressured area. Yeah, and and most of the time you do these things and it doesn't you don't make it kill, But you have to do them all, and you have to do them consistently for the few opportunities you're going to get in a heavily pressured area your body.

going to be worth hunting. Now, back in the old days, I would, you know, in the late seventies and eighties, when I was postseason scouting, i'd prep locations at let's say an oak tree or at a lost apple tree in September, and then I wouldn't I wouldn't do a speed tour because doing a speed tour back then, because I wasn't using sut lock, it was an intrusion into

that spot prior to season. So I wouldn't do a speed tour to see if the oak had acorns, or the apple tree we're dropping apples, or what's see into what's seeing what kind of buck sign is around those trees just prior to season. So I wouldn't take those pre season speed tours. And then I'd go in and hunt, but go into a hunt, maybe a white oak tree, and I get to the tree for an evening hunt and it's doesn't have any acorns that year, so it's

totally worthless. So I've just blown a complete hunt. So but nowadays, because I mentally prepare for all that, I do my pre season speed tours in total clad in selt lock where I'm not leaving any odor, and I'm checking to see all my early season locations and which olks have acorns, which ones don't, you know, and I whatever locations are not producing mass or fruit they're discarded for that year, you know, and those they're still good locations,

but they'll be for another year. So you know, back in those days, I go in and be frustrated because now I'm totally wasted in evening hunt because I'm hunting in a with no egghorns and there's no sign here.

So if if your best hunting buddy was asked, what's John Eberheart's greatest strength as a deer hunter, what do you think they would say work.

mental toughness. I'm sure it would be my mental toughness and my work ethic, which I think you'd get that same answer from almost any really successful ball Yeah.

you know. So they call me the deer hunting Nash, So I guess my discipline would be what they would say.

misconception for the most part. You know, there's so many people that talk about, well, buck's only betting, you know, only bucks betting, betting betting areas, buck betting areas, and you know, if you have a small betting area, let's say it's cup lakers, you know, and there's a dominant or sure buck betting in it during the rush phases, obviously those don't want to be in there with their fonts because they're going to get blested and bugged all

the time. But I'll hunted in hundreds of betting areas over my career, and I have seen those come in in the mornings and bed and they have bucks come in and bed, you know, fifty yards from them. And in the evenings, I've had bucks get up and move and then does get up and move in the same

betting areas going buy me. So you know people that say only bucks betting bed and betting areas and those don't that is totally totally yes, I've got hundreds of I would maybe not hundreds, but fifty to one hundred occasions where I've hunted in betting areas and seeing those in bucks in the same betting areas betting down, not bucks in there pursuing and you know, searching for those,

but actually betting down. And obviously the bigger the betting area, the more you know, it's just like a cornfield's a betting area, and good grief, I've seen multiple bucks and betting in cornfields and dose in cornfields on many, many occasions.

sport that bucks. You know, one in two year old sport bucks. So when you're hunting a specific buck bed, first off, how are you going to find a specific but bed? Okay? And but if you did, let's say that you did find a specific buckbed and I have found them before, but there it's not something I would key on on a regular basis looking for buck peds.

If you typically during season a mature buck, they're pressured, they're going to move deeper into the interior, of the betting area to bed they want to get deeper in. Typically your dose fonds more than the bucks they're going to be betting more out on the peripheral edges because they're not pressured the same, their security precautions are not quite the same as a mature buck that probably has

been shot at or wounded. So when you are hunting, let's say you were hunting a specific buckbed, Obviously, when you went in to hunt that buckbed, you know you're hunting it where you're going to be upwind of that buckbed. But when you're entering into that betting area to get near that buckbed, because there's forty to one other deer, you're highly more than likely to spook peripheral, doze bedded or subordinate bucks before you get close enough to that

buck sixty to one hundred yards from that buckbed. And when you spook these other peripheral deer, they're going to run in the direction you're coming in from, So they're going to run towards the supposed buck that's betted there. So obviously, if that buck here's deer running past him, if he stays betted and he does get up to move before dark, he's not going to move in the direction you're spooped from.

gets up to move to move. So if all these other deer are moving in the same direction that that buck is, that means they're going to be moving by you. And if you don't have a control regiment that works, once they're on the down wind side, they're going to blow or spook, and obviously then that buck's not going to get up later and move in that same direction either.

So that whole buck betting thing, it sounds cool and it gets a lot of it gets a lot of press, but you've got to be hunting in some semblance of a managed area where you've got quite a few mature bucks in it for that to even remotely work in a pressured area where you've got, you know, such a high ratio of other deer to the few mature bucks that exist. The odds of hunting a buck betting area successfully, a buck bed successfully is very very low, extremely well.

And everything I do is based on percentages. What are my best percentage ods? And that's right at the bottom of the percentage jobs.

they're ready. You know, every location to me has a ready time, you know, like mass trees, fruit trees, you know their early season time. Rock based locations, they're a rock based time. You don't go anywhere near them until that time of season because you're molesting. You're altering the dough activity at them, and all bucket activity during the

ruck phases revolves around door activity. So if you're altering door activity to a rough phase location prior to the rut, obviously, if those dose quit coming in there during day light hours, the buck when you start pursuing does he ain't gonna come in there in the daylight either, So hunting smart would be the simplest two words. But I mean just saying hunting smart, there's a lot of different directions you could take those two words. I mean, what does that mean.

And it's a book. It's a new book. And when I send it to the book designer, he laughed and he said, John, if I put this on a six by nine book, which is what your other three books are all six by nine, And if I put it in an eleven fonts, which is kind of a small font He said. It's going to take nine hundred.

going to cover train features. You know, he'll country, egg slash, rural swamp areas, hunting in pine plantations down south because Greg Wi Greg's from Georgia, Florida and Georgia. It's gonna cover pretty much every aspect, thermals, how to hunt, swirling winds, thermals in the evenings going down, thermals in the mornings going up. It's going to cover side control in detail like nobody's ever seen it before. It's gonna talk about,

you know, ticks and mosquitoes. Activated carbon actually absorbs all your you know, lactic acid odor and your ammonia odor. You dispel and your carbon dioxide so you don't have issues with ticks and mosquitos. It's gonna cover everything there is to do with bull hunting. It's gonna have a chapter on saddle hunting and everything you need to know about saddle hunting. But it's not a book for just saddle hunters, you know. It's gonna be for any anybody

that hunts white tails in America. And it's going to be three volumes, and I'm going to actually do an audio, so it's going to be in paper, it's going to be in an ebook, and it's also going to be an audio. The audiobook will come out later. I expect the ebook in the paper books to be available sometime in August. That's our plan. And Tethered is going to be the fulfillment center, so all orders will end up

going through them. And for your subscribers, Mark, they might be happy to know you have participated in this book.

the two owners of Feathered, also have kill stories. And I have about fifty five kill stories in it, I think. So it's going to have a lot of photos or they are going to have a lot of photos. We're probably going to be in the twenty seven to thirty dollars price range per volume. And and I'm really excited about it because I think this is going to be a basically this is going to cover everything there's about.

to cover more different types of train features. It's going to have more information than the other ones had. They're definitely different than the other ones, far far more detail oriented.

at the moment. But you're not going to need that if you end up getting these other three. The downside is these other three books, you know, you have to kind of have all books. They have it all fit together. I did not want to do three volumes. It just happened that they were going to be too long to put into a single book.

I don't I don't know if i'd be here today if it weren't for those books I've read of yours and subsequent lessons I've learned from you. So so thank you for that. Thank you for your time today.

You're trying to educate hunters to be better, and what's your successful ball honor? Because you put so much time into it, it just gives your self gratification. I mean, it's just awesome. So thank you as well for your format.

to share with you. One last reminder, go subscribe to the Meat Eater Clips YouTube channel so you can check out our new white Tail Edu video series. And with that, I'm gonna let you go. I appreciate you, hope you're having an awesome summer, and until next time, stay Wired to Hunt.