Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to the White Tail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on the show, we are running Jared Sheffler through our what would you Do? Gauntlet, which I will be presenting Jared with some of the toughest deer hunting situations I can think of to see exactly how we handle it. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by first Light there Camo for Initiative and the brand new white Tail line. It's good stuff, go check it out over at first Light dot com. And today's episode,
we are continuing the What would You Do? Series. Today's guest is Jared Scheffler, and I'm gonna give you some background on Jared and some background on the series just in case you're new the series. The what would you Do Gauntlet basically entails me running really good deer hunters
through a series of hypothetical deer hunting situations. So I try to present a very specific situation, some certain circumstances like, hey, you're going to be in this state with these conditions at this time of year, and here's what's going on. What would you do? Why would you do that? How would you do that? That's the kind of stuff we're going for. And the whole the idea behind this is just to get a different way of learning from these people. Right,
there's all sorts of hunting podcasts out there. There's a lot of these people who have been heard from on many of these podcasts many times. So I'm trying to find new ways that we can learn, new ways that we can grow and gain experience from these people's stories, you know, explanations and lessons. So that's what we're trying to achieve here today. And like I mentioned, the guest,
our guest today is Jared Scheffler from Whitetail Adrenaline. If he haven't seen Whitetail Adrenaline, this is some different kind of stuff. This is a style of hunting that is aggressive, that is mobile, and is essentially all on the ground.
Jared kind of pioneered a lot of this stuff over the last I don't know, maybe fifteen plus years now with his videos showing you know, very aggressive hunting techniques on the ground with a bow, sometimes just stalking up on white tails, sometimes setting up on the ground and ambushing white tails in this kind of way, sometimes using a handheld tacoy. Jared's very good at what he does, and what I want to do today was understand a little bit more of how and why he does what
he does. So, as I mentioned, presenting him with a bunch of different situations, some of these out in the planes where he does a lot of stuff. Sometimes back in more challenging scenarios like back east or in the Upper Midwest, timber, open country, good conditions, bad conditions. I try to get Jared to kind of consider all these scenarios so that we deer hunters that maybe have a difference that of circumstances can still take something from Jared.
So I would encourage you, even if you are, you know, always a tree stand hunter or always a saddle hunter, give this one a listen. Consider some of these new ideas. Consider the thought process that Jared puts into his strategy. Even if you think this stuff's crazy. Hunting on the ground, slipping around, stalking in on deer, or calling deer in
on the ground, or using a decoy. If all that sounds a little out there, I would still encourage you to give this one a listen and think about is there any way that this could inform what I do to make myself better? Is there any little trick you can take from here? Is there anything you can take from his scenario that might be different than yours? And do this thing we've talked about, like parallel thinking, you know, take an idea from one world and apply it to
your world. And I think that's something we can all do here with Jared. Not to mention, just try some of the stuff he's talking about, just the way he talks about it too. I mean, for many years I thought I was stuck in a tree and had to have a perfectly prepared situation to kill a deer. Once I started trying some of these things to myself, I came to realize that it is much more possible than you realize to kill a deer on the ground without a blind with a bow in the open. It just
takes some experience. It takes ripping the band aid off and trying new things. Tony and I talk about this a lot, right, try new things, if for no other reason than the fact you are going to learn, you are going to grow. And I guarantee you what Jared proposes here, what he discusses, if you try even a tenth of that, you will learn some new stuff. So that's my long winded way of pitching you on this one. I think you're gonna enjoy it. Great guy, interesting guy.
If you haven't checked out his videos, you should. They're wild, they're entertaining. I can't believe some of the stuff they do. So I hope you enjoy our chat here with Jared. I hope your season is going well if you have started already, if you're one of the lucky ones with a September opener, and if not, man, we are getting close to October as we speak, at least when this
episode comes out. I am in Alaska right now, but hopefully I'll be back from that safe and sound here and chomping a bit and ready to rock and roll White Tails in a matter of days. So without further ado, let's get to my chap with Jared. All right here with me back on the show is mister Jared Scheffler. Jared, thank you for being here.
Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.
I'm excited to have you on this one. We've done this mini series over the last like three or four years, I think has proven to be one that folks really enjoy. It's fun for me because you get this different kind of look at how people do things and why people do things. And you're someone who already is so unique compared to a lot of other folks in the hunting world that getting your unique take in this unique format I think is going to be a lot of fun.
So well, there's more than one way, you know.
I love it because there's a lot of different strategies and angles that work, you know, and we do something that's maybe not as mainstream or whatnot, but it works good for us. So I'll let you continue.
Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's that's a perfect way to describe what you do and why this is I think a good way to dive into it. And I gotta say, I've been watching rewatching some of your videos and have my sons watching with me, and and they have started to refer to you as like the crazy guy,
Like that guy's crazy. So I think that they're catching on to what many other folks have said when they see some of the stuff you do, which is maybe a little crazy to some people, but awfully effective, and so I'm excited to dig into it. So it's all that said, I want to be respectful of your time. You got a lot going on. It's you know, fall is very quickly approaching. So do you feel like you understand the game plan here with this what would you do series? Are you game to get through it?
I think?
So, all right, we're gonna We're gonna start with some soft balls and then kind of move our way through. All right, Okay, so let's imagine this first scenario. This is this is going to help us understand kind of how your mind, how you get your mind right and ready for a hunt. Let's imagine that this coming fall, you are going to go on a brand new hunt, brand new location. So this is some You're in hunt of public land you've never been to before, in a
region you've never spent any time in before. You do not get to go see this property or this area at all before the hunt, so you're gonna have zero physical experience heading into it. It will be a one week hunt and it's going to be somewhere in the Midwest Great Plains, Ish region, So going to be kind of in your sweet spot, but a new spot within that. What I would like to know this is going to be an early season hunt. What will you do before the hunt?
So?
What is what e scouting or map studying or prep work do you have to have done before this hunt starts? Tell me that for early season?
Sure?
Can I ask one question?
Is this based on public land or knock on door and public or.
Oh well, you know what if you wanna if you want to throw on some knock on door, that's that's available to too, I'll say you're as you say, uncuffed. You can do some private, you can do some public. I'll let you go whichever way you want with.
That, okay. And the reason I ask is because the first thing I'm going to do is get an idea of if there's public in a particular area, that is it like a state wide tag or am I pinned down to like a general region of the state kind of thing too?
You know?
I mean, I mean some some states operate like that. So I'm going to pull up on X or whatever map service that's going to show what's available for public land. Get just a I'm not looking at aerials or anything. At this point, just how much acres do I have to work with? Is there a lot?
Is there?
Sometimes the better stuff is where there's not a lot, you know, it's it's, oh, you've got one hundred and sixty acres and the next piece of public is ten or fifteen miles away, and that sometimes is a little gem that people don't want to go out of the way for. So I'm just kind of going to take a brief and it's it's going to take probably five minutes to just kind of scrub around the read. Okay,
there's a lot of public here. If it's early season like that, I'm gonna then go in and just spend just a little bit of time and I'm saying not much, probably a half hour to an hour tops maybe on my drive out even and just kind of like look and see what the crops, you know, see see what
the ails look like for crops. Because it's early season, so those deer are most likely going to be using crops, and it doesn't necessarily need to be crops on public, but at least adjacent to public that those deer may be betting on the public and then using private crops as well, so you know, some states have good amount of crop on public lands, some don't, But that doesn't mean that the deer aren't residing on public in early season before they've been pressured and then using those private
land crops. So that's gonna kind of just narrow things down of maybe my starting point from the vehicle when I get to that area, then what I'm going to do is I'm going to spend probably that first early season gets to be long days, and depending on the state in the area, it's not real productive in the middle of the day to be driving around other than if you're just trying to see what the terrain and
everything looks like. But even on trying to gauge if there's other hunters, that's you know, I mean sometimes early season like that, guys are all amped up and they're set in tree stands in the middle of the day and stuff. So sometimes I mean those drive rounds, but we used to do a ton of that in North Dakota, and a lot of times in the middle of the day you just mentally go down a rabbit hole and then you know, a couple hours before dark, it's like
that's your time to you know, at least. What we normally do on those hunts in early season is we hang back. We don't generally go in with a plan of attack based on aerials out of the gate. We'll hang back that first day or two and try to cover ground and get visuals on those deer in the
morning and evening. You know, in some states and reagion into those deer are going to be more active in the morning, and depending on the you know, all the other you know, moon stuff and stormfronts and things like that.
I mean, there's a lot of variables in there.
We don't need to go down, but sometimes, I mean I was quite surprised when I first started going to North Dakota back in early two thousands and how productive it was to hunt them in the mornings. You know, I wasn't used to that in Wisconsin. I mean, it was it was more nighttime in Wisconsin in early season. Yeah, I mean, your success rate was a lot higher, at
least in the early season in Wisconsin. So when I got to North Dakota, it's like I'd see shooter bucks still two hours after the sun came up, and I'm like,
WHOA cool. I was going out there thinking, you know, and I've so it varies on the state, but I mean essentially those first couple of days and it might drift into three days, is going to be used to really just eliminate acreage and fine, you're you know, in those particular cases open country like that, trying to get a visual on a big one or multiple by that point. Usually on those early season hunts like that, usually there's a few good bucks depending on the you know, every
hunt's different. Sometimes it goes that way, sometimes it doesn't. But then that's when it's like, Okay, now we're going to move in. We've eliminated a lot of wasted time in pockets that maybe wouldn't be holding a big deer, and and so now we're going to go in and hunt more a specific deer or there could be a couple of shooters right in there, but we're going to
start to move in more aggressively. At that point. We're not going to go in there trumpson around in the middle of the day and do any of that.
We're not going in.
Until it's like hunt time. They're not going to know we're coming.
Yeah, all right, let's let's rewind back to pre hunt. Still, Okay, so same scenario, new new area, new hunt, everything, but instead of early season, let's move up the eight to like mid to late October. Does any of your pre hunt planning changes, any of the scouting? Do you look for anything different with maps? Do you look for anything different or playing anything different? If the date is mid to late October?
Are we still talking about like the plane states?
Yep, everything's the same.
Ye, not much changes.
I might not put as much focus on on the UH food source. I may not put quite as much emphasis on necessarily that, because by that point, quite often there's some amounts of pressure that those deer have been getting, whether it's pheasant seasons that opened up, or small game or pre scouters or early season bowl hunters, and you know that they start to get a lot of activity.
So those deer begin to travel longer distance. In those plane states, it's not uncommon form to be vetting a mile a mile and a half from where they're actually maybe even two miles at times from where they're actually feeding. And so I won't put quite as much emphasis. And I may look for pockets that are further from from any crop, but I don't put quite as much emphasis they generally are from what I've found further.
From that crop source.
The later the season gets, you know, obviously on rutkicks in a lot of things change.
But so then that's my last thing is okay, now, what if I said this is going to be November, do you look for anything different for planning the rut hunt.
I pretty much don't look at crop at all for any any any of that because those plaine states.
You know that second year we did the Kansas planes, and I mean they are where we were at in that particular time. There is planes as you can get pretty much almost And there was one big mature buck during the rut and when I went back and edited the footage, it turned out we had filmed that buck. I think we filmed them on all these occasions, but for surely seeing them as well in eleven different square
mile sections. So that told me the range of those deer, how far they can you know they're they're And even I've come to learn more on the wooded side too, even in northern Wisconsin. It's you know, I've had multiple guys that have a trail camp picture of the same bucks six miles apart, five six miles apart in the timber that you know. So you know, in those earlier days of the plains, I just kind of assumed those deer covered more ground than you're you're wooded.
You know you're you're wooded, but I don't know as they necessarily do. I shot a buck back in five that turned out a guy had been chasing and that was pretty wooded stuff, pretty wooded terrain stuff in Wisconsin. I killed the buck and a guy was chasing him about five six miles away, and that's where the buck actually normally lived and it was late season when I killed them.
So you know, I'm getting sidetracked a little bit.
But in those plain states when it comes to the rut, I'm not looking at crop.
So on the maps, is there anything that you mentioned you'd look for a little bit more isolated cover for that October hunt? Does anything like that register on the maps? When you're thinking, Okay, I'm gonna go this area. I know I'm gonna drive around a lot in Glass do you try to come into that trip with a list of here's like ten properties I know or ten areas I know I want to hit, and here's like a bunch of spots that happen to have the pockets to cover.
I want to do not worry about that at all, because you're just gonna cover ground and figure it out in the fly.
Yeah. I don't like to get too pre invested on what I see on areos. I just don't because I get there and then it's like you got hunting pressure, you aren't ape and that totally changes everything because no matter how good it looks on the aerial, if there's pressure there, you know, you know, most of the time a mature buck is not going to be there. You know, there are occasions where where that happens. You know, for instance,
I'll give a couple examples. One one instance would be, you know, a buck that's been heavily spending his time and living his time three miles away on private not getting pressured, that has no idea that this public skin been getting pressured the last month and a half. May come stroll him through there, find a hot dough or push a hot dough into there, and he's in the midst of a piece that's been pressured all year but doesn't know it. So there are flukes like that that
that come up. Another example of that that crossed my mind. God, I lost my point, so we should probably keep rolling. But it was there was another example I had, so.
I believe you.
Oh oh yeah, yeah.
We're talking about the plane states where those deer they can cover some ground, they can get away from from pressure pockets. You know, you get into those higher pressured states, like you're in Michigan. Now, I haven't hunted Michigan, but I've gathered enough intel over the years to understand that it's a highly pressured state. You know, I came from Wisconsin. It's a very very pressured state. Probably not quite as
pressured overall as Michigan. But now those deer can are there, but they're used to getting bumped around all the time, and they're finding little tiny pockets to a lot of times to live in, and so they might I think they got a higher higher tolerance those deer do for pressure. They're willing to handle, you know more and and jivjive and and and whatnot. Whereas you get into those areas where they have a lot of ground that isn't pressured,
they don't tolerat it as much. They just get the hell out of there.
Yeah. Yeah, true. You mentioned at the beginning with that early season hunt. That day one, you would be cruising the back roads, right, You'd be cruising looking for where there's other pressure, looking for a deer, trying to find a couple of shooters, start crossing spots off the map, trying to figure out where you're gonna focus. So that would be your early season day one. Would your day one be any different if it was? Or I'm sure it is, But how is your early Let me rephrase this,
how is your day one different? If we're on the new property not new property, new area. It's November. It's very cold, but it's very still. So imagine this is day one of your trip. We're somewhere in the planes or Midwest. It's November, twenty four degrees zero wind. What does the first day of this hunt like for you in that set of circumstances.
Uh, not terribly much different generally speaking, first day, new area. I'm still gonna I'm still gonna do pretty much that I'm gonna.
I'm gonna hang back and just kind of see what's going on.
And and sometimes there's still days like that during the rut, it's like you can gather a lot of information and you know it's a great time to catch a big, big buck hung up with a dough on, you know, and and then you know you might she might be just coming into heat and you got three days to play with them, and you know, unless something like pressure moves in on that specific dear, a lot of times they're not gonna be that far away once they get that.
You know, it depends.
It's in the great planes where it's really wide open and there's not as much cover and pocket those deer can end up a long ways away from one day to the next, even when that dough is hot. But now you get into some of the more Midwest stuff, you know, Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin. And I shouldn't speak for Illinois. I don't have experience there, but the terrain is not much too terribly different than some of you know the Iowa Wisconsin.
Now, if there's enough cover and whatnot. There what we.
Found is those deer, once a big buckets locked on a dough a lot of times, if he's a real mature buck, he can just drive off all the satellite bucks and that dough is pretty content being with them, and usually in less pressure comes in and disrupts it.
And if she's just coming in.
Usually they don't end up too far away over that two three day period. Now in the planes with a wide open planes, like I said, totally different story. I mean, satellite buck could come in and you can watch him run for a mile mile and a half. So yeah, So.
What about that first situation. I want to dip in that a little bit further. Let's say we're in the midwest, Iowa or Wisconsin or something like that, and let's say you had your day one drive about and you spotted a mature buck locked on a dough. It's a super still, quiet day, and for whatever reason, I guess I have
two parts. Number one, if it's a super still day like that and you spot them and it's getting towards the end of the evening, would you try to make a move on something or would you say, well, I'll wait till tomorrow because there's a little bit more wind and slightly better conditioned. So that's question number one. And then question number two is if you lose sight of
that deer at dark, what does the next morning look like? Again, it's Midwest, mixed cover and lightish wins the next morning, So Part one, Part two questions.
Okay, I'm going to answer the part two question first, just so it's in because part two is if it comes to dark, and I mean the next morning, we're gonna be hunkered pretty close, probably not on foot, depending on the situation, Probably not on foot, probably in the vehicle. It doesn't mean that we might not hike a couple hundred yards to a high point where we can really you know, and maybe it's five hundred yards to a high point, but we're gonna be things could have changed overnight.
You know, they'll probably be in the vicinity, but it's probably gonna be I shouldn't say probably. There's a decent chance they'll be somewhere in that four or five six hundred yards. They could be right right there, you know. So, uh, that's what we're going to do in that particular case, rolling back to point one, very still, calm conditions, not a lot of time left in the day to make it happen. That's gonna be situations, situationally based.
Because there's.
When you got a big buck that's on a hot dough like that, and Chancey is phenomenal at this being able to recognize that those just coming into heat or she's probably on day three of heat and she's probably gonna be out by tomorrow morning.
Explain that that it's.
It's really hard to explain. He would be better at that.
But I've watched him, whether I'm with him or editing the footage, I've watched him pick up on things and he doesn't necessarily always just explain it, but he's usually very accurate on that. And so, I mean, a few years back, he had a big one that he found,
I think that was day one. He found it and it was hung up with a dough, and he read it right out of the gate, and he it was pretty fairly calmed conditions, and he he probably would have gotten more aggressive, but he read it right that that dough was just coming into heat, so he knew, Okay, that's a mature enough buck. He's not going to be too intimidated by satellite bucks and everything's going to get disrupted and he's going to end up a mile away.
He's probably going to be pretty close the next day, so I'm not going to get too aggressive. And he he did it right. I mean that this game of on the ground, it's a constant passive aggressive, you know, and over the years you get it more and more honed, and there's a lot that goes into it.
Now, if it appears.
Let's say you got a three year old buck and let's say four and five year old bucks in this area are somewhat common, and you're already dealing with some satellite bucks that are poking around, and he's real aggressive and real you know, you can just read the book and he almost kind of feels maybe a little bit threatened,
like he's not the dominant necessarily. Maybe it is a good time to move in and just try to make it happen, because that's an indicator right there that a lot's probably going to change overnight.
And either.
And if you're playing the public land game, there's always that risk too of are they even going to be
on public the next day? You know, So there's a lot of factors in there that you know, I will say this though, sometimes we've taken chances with like, yeah, we got like a five percent chance this is gonna actually work, but we just kind of feel like there's no point in not trying because they're probably going to be on private the next day or whatever, and we've pulled it off or we've been so narrowly close, and it was just a slight little mistake on our end.
In similar conditions to what you described, where there's like no.
Win and it's like this is gonna be next to impossible, and then it's like, damn, we got that one, or we almost got that one. We were so close. And then there's been plenty of times where it's like, okay, you almost count your chickens before they hatch, like this should be a slam dunk, and then we get slapped in the face.
So so what about this one? What about let's just paint this picture a little bit further. Let's say you had those conditions the night of you observe the buck with a dough, but for whatever reason, decide that you're not going to press the matter. You observe them for the last half hour of daylight. You watch them kind of just milling around this tall brushy stuff. Okay, there's like there's basically crp type fields, and then a few brush your draws in the area. You come back in
the next morning. You said you would probably observe from a truck. Let's say you're on the side of a road, your glass and your glass and sure enough, you spot them five hundred yards away, and you spot them move down towards one of these draws and bed, you spot the two deer bedded. It's an hour after daylight, now dead still. You're five hundred and fifty yards away. It's November seventh, it's public land. And you've seen three other cars drive by on the road that have hunters in them.
You haven't seen them stop. You haven't seen them get out to hunt this area. But you know, like, hey, there's pressure around. There's a big buck betted with a doll five hundred and fifty yards away. You watched them bed. It's crisp, it's still. Now what do you do? And I'll tell you the wind is subpar, Like the wind is kind of blowing ish towards them, like kind not straight at them from you. But you don't have the wind in your face.
Okay, all right, So the first thing I am gonna do is today we have the app, so tell us what the wind's gonna do throughout the day. And it's not always one hundred percent accurate. And then you got trains in there and stuff, but I'm at least gonna get an idea. Am I gonna get a fifteen to twenty mile an hour wind here in a few hours, is that win gonna switch? And I'm gonna take a look at all that, And that's only gonna take a
couple of minutes to boom boom boom boom boom. Okay, all right, that's what we got to work with over the course of the day. And then you brought up the other hunters. Okay, so I'm assuming this buck is hunkered down. Okay, good, the hunters can't see them, you know. Okay, all right, we got them all messled in, so that's good.
But being a buck with it hot though, all it's gonna take.
Is a satellite buck, cruising buck to come in there and stir things up and they get on their feet and the hunter just happens to drive by and sees that. So it's it's kind of a risky deal to lay back too. So in this particular case, from what I you, without being in the exact situation, I'm probably going to try to get boots on the ground at least to get a little bit of a footing down right out of the you know, to get an edge on other hunters. Potentially.
First thing I'm going to do if I'm doing that, is I'm going to get the vehicle parked in a way that doesn't appear that something's going on. Like you know, if I park the vehicle right along the road and there's a parking lot three hundred yards up the road, it sends like a message any hunter driving by, like, Oh,
something's going on around here. And then all of a sudden people are slow rolling through there, doingmultiple passes, maybe parking and stopping, and and that could totally disrupt them when they're vetted, just by the sound of the vehicle or just by visual maybe that the deer can see the vehicle and then it stops and it makes them all fidgety.
So I'm going to get that vehicle.
Away from the situation a bit and parked in a way that you're playing defense a lot of times here, you know, because you're trying to buy some time, you know, you know, And I mean when I say playing defense, I mean that in all good, good, good fair competition fun. You know. It's not like you don't want other people to have a good hunt too, but you're in the
battle with a big buck, you know. Yeah, And and then yeah, I mean being a very call what sounds like a calm day at least starting out, I'm just going to gradually, just ever so slowly work my way
in there. Now, when I say gradually and slowly, if there's no risk from sight or sound or smell, I'm going to cover ground very quickly because I'm not going to have a visual and anything could happen at Bumpslow's deer and the last thing, and I've been in this situation before where to make your entrance you have to lose your vantage point where you would maintain your visual, and you want to cut when you're doing that. You
want to get through that whatever, whatever that is. You want to cover ground as fast as you can to get at least your vantage.
Back, because we've done that before.
And then spend hours slow creeping in there to find that they exited the whole situation while we were doing the ten minute you know pass where we lost our where we had to lose our vantage point, and then we crawl in there and it's like where did they go? Where did they go? Where did they go?
They're not here?
Oh no, so so and and two when we're talking about you mentioned like you're in your vehicle, I want to The reason so often we don't like to leave that vehicle in these situations until we're actually going in is because the vehicle allows us to cover a lot of ground. It's it's it's a lot of times a vehicle gets referenced as a vehicle, it is in this case a vehicle that allows us to get to the next vantage point in case something you know, I mean,
something happens and they take off running. That happens a lot of times, and you maybe need to get to the next vantage point. So and and like I said, sometimes the vantage point is a hike in a little bit from the vehicle, and sometimes it's a long ways in from the vehicle.
But you're.
When you're lead even that vehicle and you're you're not ready to move in for the stock, you're at high risk of if they decide something happens that triggers them to cover ground and you're a ways away from the vehicle, you're at high risk of losing it for the rest of the day, losing your opportunity because they might take off running over a hill or whatever that you can't maintain your visual, You have no idea what happened where they went after that, and by the time you get
to the vehicle and get to the next fountain, they might already be vetted down in a pocket. You don't know if they're half a mile this way or half mile that way, or or whatnot. So that's why a lot of times we like to, you know, during that time of the year, we like to keep fairly close to the vehicle in case we need to relocate to another vantage point pretty quickly.
You know, so makes sense. So you stayed by the vehicle for as long as possible, But now you're going to make the move. You said you'd cover distance as fast as you could, as long as there's no risk of sight, sound, or smell interfering. So let's say you did that. So we went from five hundred and fifty yards to Let's now say you were able to cut it to two hundred and fifty. But at two hundred and fifty yards you come out of like you lose your little hill, and now it's there's a risk of
being seen. Now from two hundred and fifty yards and end it's still the wind is still low, it's still dry.
What Now, that's where you start putting on the brakes a lot of times and moving very very slow. You got good thing here is you got all day. You got a lot of hours in the day. So there's and you got your advantage. So you can see if they if something happens and they decide they're going to relocate or whatever.
So you're not in the dark.
I guess you're not slow creeping in the dark where they could take an exit route, not an exit route necessarily because they know about you.
Just for whatever reason, they get flighty.
A vehicle comes up the road, a satellite buck comes in, whatever the case might be. You've got your vantage to that point to observe that you got all day. Now it's time to most of the time. It's going to be time to put the brakes on. And all that hustling you did through that point that you bought a little time too in there, and so now it's time to You were a rabbit before, now it's time to be a turtle.
Yeah, so you're slow rolling. Now, let me introduce a red flag. Maybe at two hundred fifty yards. You're sneaking a long, nice and quiet, you're the tortoise right now, and then all of a sudden that buck stands up and looks right at you and staring at you, and I guess I'm assuming you have your handheld decoy with you. Do you have your decoy with you.
This most of the time, I'm not going to have that popped out yet, you're not if I if I have it, no, but you.
Would possibly take it with you on this type of stock, So it's probably with you.
Maybe it probably would be, but it's probably not pulled out yet. If I'm two hundred or two hundred and fifty yards away.
Okay, so then let's let's say this. Then, so he stands up, You're two hundred and fifty yards away, and he locks right on you, and you you have no reason to think he smells you, but somehow he pegged you.
Now what, Freeze for a long time, don't move for a long long time, and you're far enough away if he's not. If he's not, the general rule I've come to find is if they aren't exiting, they just saw something. They haven't confirmed that you're a human or your threat or anything yet. So since he's got a hot dough there, if you just freeze and don't move, you'll probably be fine. He'll he'll get preoccupied and sidetracked after a little while, and he might kind of pop back in, you know,
and check on it a couple of times. Usually if he's gonna do that, it's it's not gonna be a long time. Like he'll get sidetracked at the dough for a minute and then he might come back to you, but it's usually not a half hour later or something.
He's you know, moved on.
And so usually if if they're pretty certain, if I sense it, they're pretty certain something doesn't look right to him, I pretty much expect the more attention they're given me in that one first instant stance, like they stand there for a few minutes, they're pretty convinced something's not right.
So that tells me that they're gonna come back to me, Like they're gonna get sidetracked here in a minute with something, but they've locked onto this situation enough to where they're going to come back to it in a minute or ten seconds or you know, I mean, it could be just the normal trick of you know, you see this a lot in early season, is you know they're trying to you know, they're i mean all kinds of predatory
game does this to them. So that's how they got so honed over, you know, thousands of years is is? I mean, okay, if I look away, they know I'm looking away, and that's when they're going to be moving up. Did I get you? You know? Okay? So and eventually they they if they start doing that and I and I'm not moving, I've already beat them. It's just a matter of I've already tricked them. They just don't know it yet. But I got to be patient and just
not move. And eventually, nine times out of ten and they eventually forget about it.
And except that it's nothing.
Okay, I'm gonna keep on playing this out. So that happens at two hundred fifty yards. He stands up, he stares you down. You freeze. Fifteen minutes go by. He does the head bob at the end, but you don't blink, you don't breathe, you don't move a muscle, nothing goes wrong, the wind doesn't swirl. Eventually he gets back, puts his attention on the dough. They re bet you now continue your slow creep. It's now noon, and over the next three hours you close the distance from two hundred and
fifty yards to eighty yards. But at eighty yards, because of the lay of the land, there really is like no way you can stay out of sight. I mean even if you were like on all fours, if you were to kind of you're kind of coming down a hill now towards him and her, and they're bedded facing you. So at this point you see no way you could possibly get any closer without them seeing you. Now at
eighty yards, it's three o'clock in the afternoon. You're eighty yards away from the buck bedded with the dough facing you in you know, anywhere from like shin to just above knee high grass. Now, okay, you have your handheld decoy with you, you have a cameraman with you, you have a bow with you. Still not a lot of wind we now have, you know, two and a half hours of daylight left something like that. What do you do over the next two and a half hours.
That is a tough scenario. The first thing I would potentially consider is I have this thing that sometimes I will try stuff that is it's nearly impossible. I don't know if it's just to see if it would work or or what, but I I would evaluate could I slither on my belly, not on all fours, but just literally on my belly. Could I slope slither down this hill ever so slowly and I'm in plain sight, but I'm moving slow enough and I'm low enough. Could I
pull that off? And could I do it quiet enough to where I didn't alarm them by sound without a lot of wind though? You know, compound guys, you're a lot safer because you got the range. So one thing I've learned over the years is you know, I like to get inside of twenty on them with a long bow. Well, you get inside of twenty and you don't have a lot of time. Yeah, And the tree stand guys know this.
When they get a big, mature old buck coming in, when they start to break twenty yards coming in to their tree stands set, they know a lot can that buck can detect them through various methods and ways very quickly, and oftentimes they do. So you're going to break that threshold of twenty sneaking in on them, and then you're going to hang out there for an hour.
To wait for an opportunity. That's very difficult to.
Do, especially when you don't have a lot of win because then that wind just sits there and turns and spins and you don't know what it's going to do, and you can't. You can have the most optimal win, but if there's not much of it, you really don't. So I mean, I had a big, big, mature nine pointer last year and it would have been a perfect situation for a compoundent and we had five I think
five mile an hour winds. It wasn't much. I looked at them, I'm like, it ain't picking up today, and it was I think it was late morning we went into this was in the timber, and I had a beautiful fifty yard shot with a compound, but we had what would be the perfect wind, but with it that looks.
You know, that soft.
I was talking about it for fifteen twenty minutes. We were kind of peeking, moving around this cedar tree on them, and I was like, I just there's no way, there's no way I can get inside of twenty do it in the I'd have to do it slow, and there's no way there's gonna be a wind current or whatever. And I kind of was reading it and I was like, this dough has got she's just coming in there's no pressure today disrupting this. It's it's during the week, so
that's good for pressure reason. And I was like, we should back out of here and just bank on bank on him him driving her back in here tomorrow morning.
We were.
Literally exiting backwards, very slowly, just a few yards, that's all the further we made it, and one of the wind currents from our location made it made it there and we had the primary win. I mean, I'm not going off the weather app I'm going we had the primary win where we were at.
But you know, I he hot around too much.
My gut was telling me I need to back out and and bank on them being there tomorrow. And I I wanted to move in, and I burnt a little too much time and it cost me. And I wasn't quite expecting that at fifty yards for that to happen. But I got sidetracked on that situation a little bit.
But so yeah, so at eighty yards, Yeah, if you didn't do the slide in there on your belly thing, would you try to bring him to you at all? Would you try to call any kind of way or flip up the decoy or anything, or just wait until dark and hope he moves your way. What then, So.
With that decoy, one of the things we've done over the years is if a buck's locked on a dough and we've had a little time to observe them and their satellite bucks, we'll get a pretty good idea on how close we'd have to get to break the comfort zone to where he comes comes in, you know, and every buck's different.
He might.
He might just stand there and stare at these satellite bucks and not take more than a few steps away from him.
Still, he might come eighty yards.
So if we sense he's an aggressive buck, we probably in that particular case, would whip.
It out on an eighty Now, we got.
Some footage in the works, not so much on the next film, but the one that follows, where Tanner he moved in three hundred yards with the decoy in plain sight. He did it very slow.
And that buck, I don't think that buck came from my understanding.
He was a big mature. I don't know. He looks like he's fifty to sixty field dress big. He wasn't budget from his dough, and a lot of times those big, big old mature I got this, like you want to come in here. Okay, I'm going to stare and look at you, but I don't got reason to come eighty yards. I'm not that threatened. So he moved in there in plain sight, I think it was three hundred yards and all the way to I think twenty or somewhere around there,
and it worked. He was a beat up buck. He didn't have a big rack, but I mean he was. He was a brew. So yeah, we got some great decoy stuff coming, not so much on the next one, but the one that follows.
So which of those things, though, would you end up doing if you had to pick right now, gun to your head. In that scenario, which fork in the road you'd pick?
I would probably do the decoy. But it gets funky there because you mentioned shin high grass. Shinned knee high grass. In my mind, that's enough grass to do the belly crawl slide down. But there's not a lot of winds. So me trying to move in with the decoy, all that grass in the way of the decoy unless I don't have you know, unless I have it lifted up, which is gonna look goofy, or the legs come up. All that noise from the grass hitting that decoy is going to be a huge problem and gonna be kind
of cumbersome. So that that's a really tough tough call on that particular one. But I'd say it's probably gonna be better suited for the decoy. But doesn't mean that I won't try the belly crawl in there just to see.
So okay, let's let's change it just a little bit. Yeah, this this scenario has given us lots of stuff to play with us. I'm just gonna keep on riffing on this one. Let's imagine that we had a little bit more cover, so instead of like shin hi grass, we have like waist high grass and some clumpy bushes of some kinds of shrubs and stuff. So actually, you're not hung up at eighty. You've got the ability to sneak within range, and you you do so, so you're slipping in,
you're slow rolling it in. You make it all the way to within shooting range. But at shooting range. So for you with the with your bow, let's say at twenty yards, a little word does swirl yeah, up, bounces off to thirty, pauses and looks at you. What do you do?
I take the shot if I got it.
If and a lot of times in my experience, if they get you by smell like that, not always, but a lot of times, they're going more than.
Thirty you know, they're not just they're out of there now.
If they get you by sight or sound, that's pretty common because they don't they haven't confirmed what that site for surely is or what that sound for surely is. Smell totally different deal. Smell is the worst one because it's one hundred percent confirmation they know exactly what that is.
Sound sound, They don't know site, they don't know.
I mean most of the time they don't know, like without taking in just a little bit more time, and that might.
Be a half a second, that might be a few seconds.
That might be the stare off for five minutes if they caught movement, but you're buying time. If they're getting you by as by one of those senses. Smells the worst because it is confirmation, and that's why it's so dangerous and you don't know when it's coming.
The second you make too much noise, you know, it can get wild.
You know, the second you maybe get a little bit off balance and create a little extra movement.
You know, it could get wild the smell.
Sometimes you catch the you know, catch it on the back of your neck or something, and you're like, oh shoot. But sometimes you don't, and you don't know when it's going to hit their nose, and so you're behind the eight ball a lot on smelled because you don't always know when they're going to get it, and when they get it, it's pretty serious deal to them.
Yeah, So you make a great point. So let's let me adjust it just a little bit. Let's say you step on a branch, it cracks, the buck jumps, We'll say runs a what's the range for you, Jared? Where you're like, Eh, I don't know if I want to take that shot or not. What's that What would that range be for you? Where you're like right on the edge of man, I could I could probably pull it off, but I don't know if I really want to. What would that be for you right now?
Probably?
Probably probably twenty. But I've only shot all year long. I don't shoot range until closer to hunting season. Other than this summer, I've shot in range four times, and so I'd feel good to twenty right now.
I mean, in the season though i'd well by season.
You know, if I shot two three sessions and practiced to thirty, i'd feel good to thirty, right, you know, in two to three sessions.
It factors in pretty quick with where I'm going with it.
Though, if I'm inside of fifteen and I cracked that stick, I'm probably gonna shoot him right there right now. I've gotten fast enough that if that happens, it's gonna be an explosion.
It's gonna be really wild, really quick.
So, and we do have one one documented that it worked good doing that.
So but what about this situation where what if it's just a little bit outside of like what you feel really good at. So let's say thirty five, he stepped on the twig, he bounds off to thirty five, he stops, he's head bobbing. He's given you time. But in your mind you're thinking, man, maybe I can make the shot. But if I do, he's gonna is he gonna duck? Is he gonna spin? He's all amped up. But if I just freeze and do nothing, I'm going to miss
this opportunity. Then maybe you're thinking, but maybe if I hold still long enough, maybe he'll get curious and get a little bit closer like they sometimes do, and they don't really know what's going on. There's a whole bunch of different ways this could go. In that scenario when it's not a perfect easy shot, it's not the worst bump. Ever, what about then.
I probably I would say what would probably happen now is I would probably have already hit about full draw by the time he was coming to a stop, and that arrow's headed that direction about the instant he's coming to a stop.
Not necessarily saying it would play.
Out like that, but that's probably what my instincts would kick in and just do and it would all be like, whoa, that just happened kind of. That's probably probably probably the scenario on that one. So that's one of the advantages. You know, there's pros and cons to traditional bows and compounds. You know, you can with a traditional bow, you can execute a very quick shot, and you can you have the ability to become very versatile in that with that
weapon as well. It's a give and take though there's a lot of situations where the compound has a significant advantage in accuracy, range, drawback. You got to let off, you can hold it, you know, I mean it's it's if I'm inside of twenty, I'd much rather have a long ago. I'm at an advantage now now at this point. So I mean different weapons and different shooting styles, they all have their strengths and weaknesses.
Yeah, so all right, I want I want to do one last one in this scenario, one last possible difference. So instead of you stepping on a twig and spooking him, you get all the way to twenty and he stays betted. We're down at this point, though it's taken more time. Now, we're down to the last fifteen minutes a day light and they're still betted. For whatever reason, they have not
gotten back up to move around for the evening. They're betted down and you can see his vitals, but it's not perfectly clear, like there's still some grass kind of around it. Do you take the betted shot or do you roll the dice and hope he stands up the next ten to twelve minutes, or do you do something to make him get up at this point?
Yeah, what I would what I would do there with where I'm at now is keep in mind we're filming all this, so I would ideally I would have whoever's filming me be in a position where they can not move and film everything that's about to happen.
And then I would try to get to fifteen.
Very as fast as I can, but it's slow enough not to get detected. And then at that point I would saddle up. And this is going to sound radical, but I would move as quickly as I can, but still trying to not get detected, if that kind of makes sense.
So when you say you're trying to move as quickly as you can, you were at twenty, and so you're gonna just like I want to get to fifteen, you're gonna walk fifth.
I want to get to fifteen without being detected. Once I get to fifteen, now I'm gonna be ready to shoot, and I'm gonna, you know, if it's tall enough grass, I'm still going to be staying fairly low, but I'm not cross anymore. I'm ready to shoot. And the second he gets me now, I want him to get me by sights or or or hearing. I don't want him
to get me by smell. That's why I got to move quick, because now I've hit fifteen, and you want him standing up or in motion of standing up, it's it's uh and and then in one one fast motion it uh.
It's like throwing a football.
Huh yeah, yeah yeah. And I've I've.
Worked on archery a lot to be.
Able to to to be confident enough to do that not you know, I've ran the clock speeds and and all of that, you know, on how fast white tails react and that, and and that gave me the confidence to implement that that one and it worked really well. So yeah, I'm giving a lot away there. But that's there's a great danger, like I said earlier, of getting inside of twenty and then hanging out there for an hour,
especially when you don't have much wins. I mean, even if you got fifteen mile an hour, pretty good wins. One kick of that wind, when you get that tight, you don't have much mark.
When you're hanging out.
At forty to fifty, you know, you get a kick of the wind. You got a quite a bit of distance to get that straight for that wind to get straight and back up. But when you get that tight on them, you don't have much cushion, so you don't have much time. And so time is is that's it's a head scratch of what I just explained there.
Well, it's it's impressive though too that you can pull it off. Not an easy thing to do.
No, No, it's it's it's not.
And I've I've learned a lot in a lot of ancient archery stuff that that makes it seem impossible or we how do I explain this to us? That sounds crazy, But to actually do it, you know, trained off a lot of this stuff, it's once I get to fifteen, I feel like it's it's not hard now, but.
It's required a lot of a lot of.
What is the what is the most important skill set or the very most important variable to really focus on when trying to close in you know, to fifteen yards, that last fifth let's say, from thirty yards to fifteen I think a lot of guys maybe could maybe could get to thirty yards on a deer and they would feel like, man, I'm in his wheelhouse and taking that shop. But that last fifteen yards or the last five from twenty to five, like from twenty to fifteen like super
super tight. What's like the ninja next level thing that someone can do to be able to close that extra distance if they're trying to do something like this, or if they're just you know, trying to get better at getting from forty to twenty whatever it is, what is you know, what have you picked up that's allowed you to get really good at closing those last few yards the final ten.
Gosh, every situation so different. The last two I shot, I shot on my feet standing up.
You know.
I was kind of half cocked on the one I just explained. The other one I was fully standing up. And both of those one was at four yards, one was at four and a half yards, So.
I had just tall.
Enough grass to pull off the one that I just explained, And I had the guy that was filming Ethan at fifteen with the camera and we had they were buried in the grass enough, and I knew from experience we had probably less in thirty seconds, and he was going to have us by wind, and that was going to be very difficult because I don't know when that's exactly
gonna happen. So that's why I made the decision I did in that moment, and I felt kind of actually I had already premeditated for the right situation, like this is this is where I'm going to go with it. And trained quite a bit in archery to do it. But when I was in that stock, I felt a little bit it behind because I didn't actually think about doing that. And then all of a sudden it hit me.
I was like, what am I doing? This is what I've trained, and I just I said, get ready, it's happening right now, and it all came together and I never had to. You know, now, in the old days, I maybe would have been on my hands and knees a little bit longer crawling in well, you make more noise doing that, you stay more concealed. But I wasn't worried too much about concealment anymore, so I could so that that's because I'm I got fast enough.
Shooting the bow that the concealment isn't just needed anymore.
So now I can That allows me to keep my feet on the ground not worry so much about Once I'm that tight, I don't have to worry so much about them seeing me because that I'm gonna have a half a second because they're gonna what is that? And so the shot can happen fast enough that now I can be quieter because I don't have to be a worry about concealment as much once I get that tight, if that kind of makes sense. So that allowed me
to actually, in that particular case, get get closer. Now, if they weren't buried in the tall enough grass, they would have me by visuals. I'd be on my hands and knees. So it's everyone's a different chess match, you know. Every every situation is a different a different deal, you know.
Yeah. Yeah, So let me put you on a different chess. Now. I'm going to take you out of this awesome scenario where you can see stuff.
Yeah, taking out that scenario.
By the way, I was just getting ready to get dumped off to do a two mile timber stock, and this buck he pushed a dough right out into the crp on the edge of that timber out of nowhere. They were going to drop me off. We're four hundred yards fromhere. I was getting dropped off. I wanted to do a timber stock all day, and you know, so it was a beautifu one hundred and fifty inch public Land.
Bok and I was like, I wanted to do with timbersuck, I gotta do it, you know, I can't not well, I'm gonna let you do a timber stock now though, because the next scenario I wanted to walk you through, or have you walked me through, is a timber situation.
Let's say that this coming season, you can't leave Wisconsin. You have to hunt Wisconsin, you have to hunt public, and it has to be timber, okay, and you're gonna We're on a particular day here, a week here, and we've got kind of ten twelve mile in hour winds, so there's a little bit of wind, otherwise dry, and it is November one. Walk me through how you would kill a deer, a decent buck on that kind of day in Wisconsin.
What I'm going to probably do there's a different scenario than what we started out with earlier. Talking by this point, I'm going to probably already have some different pieces, and I'm probably not going to spend much time in the vehicle starting out, you know, in that particular setting of a lot of woods, and you know, unless it's like day one and I'm in a whole new region, you know, then i might do that whole driving around and whatnot.
I'm probably going to focus. I would probably shift from what we did what was working for us quite a while back, which was a lot of the MFL grounds and stuff like that that a lot of people didn't know about and know there wasn't maps for and stuff, and you know, a lot of those parcels were pretty small, but they didn't get a lot of pressure. Now they've gotten a lot of pressure, and it doesn't take much
pressure to blow out an eighty or one sixty. So I'm probably going to go back to a lot of the actual big public acreage stuff, you know, more along those lines and put boots on the ground, and I'm probably gonna cover ground in the timber. And if I got ten to twelve dollar hour winds, well there's gonna be enough leaf blowing and branch movement with that that I can move at a faster rate in the timber.
And I'm going to cover ground through the timber and try to get a visual on a big one or a dough or a pocketed doze, and you know, things kind of shift in there. You find out a little pocketed dose. It's November first, you know, I come across that. I might try to get a little bit in the right situation to catch a buck coming in and hang out there for a couple hours and try to catch a buck cruising in. So I'm still in the timber like that. I'm still going for visual that you know
we did that I didn't. I only got to hunt a few days this year. I filmed some, but but I haven't done the timber that much in recent years. So I'm like I got into the timber and and we were fortunate on that one.
We're very lucky.
I just caught just the slightest glint of movement and it was pretty thick stuff and we were only I don't know, we probably left the vehicle twenty minutes before that, that's it. And TC was filming me, and I was sure I just caught something, just like a just like a deer.
I'm sure I seen something. What is that?
Sarah? And we just put on the brakes. We hardly had any wind, and it was pretty thick stuff. I just had a pocket that I could see across a little bit of an open There was trees and stuff, but that's where I caught it, probably seventy yards out, but it was pretty seatory type stuff around there, and I thought it was a deer. I thought I saw a tailwig and I think it was about five minutes.
We we just didn't move our location, and I kept eyes on and kept glassing in there and I couldn't and then all of a sudden, boom, there's one hundred and sixty inch nine pointer with a with a dough and I was reading it and I'm like, I think she's just coming in, you know, And I was like, and they looped in and there was one pocket there where it was he stopped broadside at fifty and it would have been beautiful for a compound. But so, I mean,
we were going in one hundred percent. And that's how I would do it with timber too, is I'm going in one hundred percent to try to get a visual in the timber and then go from there.
You know, how fast are you moving when you're working your way through, you know, with a little bit of wind, so you've got some amount of sound cover. You know when you say covering distance and covering ground, is that like you're stopping and glassing every twenty yards or use cruising or what.
A lot of times in the timber. A lot of times in the timber, I'm going off my eyes for picking them up. I don't That's how I pick most of them up. Occasionally I do it with with binoculars, but usually I'm picking something up by eyesight. I keep my eyes going while I'm moving. We actually moved in fairly aggressively into we started to slow roll it a little bit when we got close to where I picked up that visual.
I don't know how fast we were going. We weren't stop in every.
I don't think we were really stopping hardly at all, really, but we weren't moving at We were quietly moving at a slow pace, steadily but quietly and fairly slowly. But we weren't really doing too much stopping in that particular case. Now, that was some fairly heavy brushy with a lot of twisting and turning of branches, so it totally disrupts. You know, if you're in the a lot of the wooded stuff, like in Wisconsin, you got fairly not always, but you
got fairly vertical. Like let's say you're in the hills of Wisconsin bluff country or whatever. A lot of times that you don't get a lot of that brushy stuff. Well I shouldn't say you don't. You can.
You get clear cuts and all kinds of stuff.
But where a lot of times in that timbour, you can see one hundred and fifty two hundred yards. Sometimes, well, I'm going to be moving at a pretty good clip through there because I can see them long before they can hear me, and a decent, pretty good chance of if I'm playing the wind right on where I think they maybe would be. I've got that somewhat to my advantage, so I'm not as risk, so there's a better chance I'm going to pick them up, then they're gonna pick
me up. Therefore I can move and cover ground quicker. Now you get into that hairrier, thicker stuff. You got to put on the brakes more. So, it's.
The game.
The ground game in the timber is very it's so variable of you know, there's not one pace I move at all the time. There's would you.
Would you give a shot even if you had no wind and dry so it's like potato chip leaves and no wind, would you still try something like that? If that was like you know, a hunt this or I don't hunt at all?
Yeah? Yeah, And when it gets that quiet, you can there's you have the element of hearing as well, so you can slow down your pace really slow and hear them, but if you're moving out of slow enough face and we A perfect example of that would be in twenty ten in the Regroup video. We went into a piece of public in the dark that we had never laid eyes on before, so we didn't even know what we were getting into. And it was a pretty quiet day and it was my first day of that hunt in
that area. We drove through the night to get there, never seen this ground in daylight, and I almost got it. It was a one hundred and sixty sixty five inch buck. I should have had them, but I didn't. But it was a pretty calm, calm day, I mean, Chrispy Frost like no win. And then the hunt kind of went on for a couple of days. I should have got another big one.
The next day.
I was having a rough hunt. We left, went to Kansas for three and a half days. That could have went better too, and then we had something come up and had to head back to Wisconsin and we decided
to hit for the morning. I or again where this hunt took place, and again we didn't have I mean, it was like no wind and we just we just went in there using our ears a lot, moving real slow, and I shot one hundred and forty some inch or low forty eight pointer, and we we played, you know, we could hear them up there, and we kind of pushed it. We kind of pushed getting closer, and then we put the brakes on and him and a couple of small bucks ended up falling right into our lot
and it worked out perfect. I think he was twenty twenty four. Actually that's the first buck we ever shot facing with the head on shot, so it was an accident, but it worked out. So you can do it on the ground in those scenarios of what you just describe those super still frosty, Well, you got your ears, and that can be a huge advantage. You know, it's it's.
More suited to.
Not very well for you sneaking in on them, but in terms of you hearing them coming. And you got some advantages in that that way in department too. But in those particular cases though, where it's real quiet like that, though, you want to pick your pathway of how you're moving through the timber in a way where they're probably going to land up in your lap or land in your
lap on their own. Like if I'm going in and I got wind of what you describe earlier ten twelve, fifteen mile an hour in the timber, I'm not necessarily gonna be on where I think they're gonna be walking, and I might be a distance off trying to get a visual and then planing more for a stock approach. Whereas on those crispy mornings like that, you're not gonna
get away with much either. So it's gonna you're gonna have the element to hear in them coming, but you're gonna want to be closer to the court, the natural cord or of how they maybe be moving.
Yep, So do you pleat do you pre plan out a route like, Hey, I'm gonna follow this edge, or I'm gonna walk this pinch point, or I'm gonna cruise along the downwind side of this dough betting area or something like that. On a day like that.
And not so much from the area, I might glance at it and kind of like roughly like I think I'm gonna move through it like this, But once I get in there, I might totally change what my premeditated, loose plan is.
So any of those.
Things that I gather from looking at an areil, I try to put that into a loose planned, but it could. I'm not going to stick to what because I don't want to call an aeral not real. But it's not as real as me being there in person and seeing every aspect of what I'm dealing with, So I want to I don't want to get too fixated.
On what's not real.
The aerial is real, but it doesn't give you as much as being there on site in person. So I want to keep that plan loose that I might be with if that makes sense.
That doesn't make sense, Okay, I've got one last scenario and then I want to run you through like a set of rapid fire quick questions. Okay, so the final, this last scenario. Let's imagine you've been on this hunt. You're gonna we're gonna put you back in not necessarily Wisconsin, but we'll go kind of middle country, somewhere mixed AG, mixed whatever, and really the specifically the train don't matter. This one. You spot a good buck. He is on
ground that you're not sure. Let me rephrase this. You are on a buck. He moves into ground that on your app shows public. So you say, ah, man, big giant shure buck on on X or whatever tool you're using, you see like, yep, he just crossed over into public. Game on, you cruise down the road where there's a spot, like there's a ditch along the road, but finally there's a spot you can pull off, and when you get to the spot, you can pull off onto the public
to park. There's a bunch of no trespassing signs private property no trespassing signs there. So your map shows public on the ground though there's no trespassing private property signs, and your big buck is now cruising across this piece of potentially public land.
What do you do, Well, you gotta confirm it. You know, I went through some stuff in twenty sixteen. Two scenarios. Never had an issue over the years, but I ran into two scenarios and I started to get very confident, and I should have double checked a little bit deeper.
And there's some more to it. But and that information has gotten more and more concrete at the county level, which then you know, whether it's on X or any of the other map providers out there, then they get more concrete information, but they're getting it from the county. So the counties have gotten better.
About that.
So you got to In our latest video on Cuffed, we had a scenario that Matt was their filming and I had hunted this area before and it was broken up piece of public, piece of public over here, and this was always private in the past, and.
So I'm banking on that.
I haven't actually pulled up that side of the road yet we got the visual, and I hadn't been up the other side of the road yet.
Well, we come around and.
I had seen a sign from way out, like a mile out, but I didn't even register. Yeah, I just assumed it was a private because I had always been private. Well, then there was a bunch of walk in hunting.
Signs I remember seeing this. Now, Yeah, there.
Was a bunch of walk in hunting signs in which it had always been private. So it threw us for a loop because now I'm like, well, this big buck that was on private, then jumped on public, then got on private. But then as the direction he was going, there's another piece of public. So I was sure he was going to end up on that other piece of public and zip right through that private. Well, it turned out the whole thing had changed over to public over there,
according to the signs. Well, then I pull up the map app from the state. This isn't from on X, this is direct leave from Kansas. It doesn't show it as public, and neither does the book I had, the printed book for that year doesn't show it as public. So now it's like, well, I got signs, it's always been private in the past.
What do you do?
I've got And in that particular case, there was two big bucks. One that was on what now appears to be public, but just off of what for surely is public.
The other one had disappeared on.
What is potentially public according to the signs, but had always been private. So now I'm in like this dilemma of like, well, we got to find out, but this could be awesome, but it would have been nice to know that earlier. And you know, we eventually did figure it out and it had all changed over to walk it, you know.
So what's the best way really quick? I just I asked this because I think a lot of people are finding themselves in these scenarios now right where we're hunting new places and we live and die off of our phones. What's been the best way you've found to quickly confirm like yes or no on this being public or not? Who do you call?
Well, in this particular case.
With the Kansas walk in, and I went through this the season after twenty sixteen, I was in Kansas again and I was filming a couple of old guys, older guys, and we pieces marked as public. It's on the book, it's on the app from the State walk in. We go in there, it's opening day. See two big bucks, part of the public. It continued on that way. There was no fence line. As we come around this corner, the public land signs you'd never guess it, showing it by signage and by the app and by the mapp
from the state it's public. So we watched this big buck and he looked like he was probably a booner. And then there was one hundred and forty in sure with him. They dipped into this.
This dry draw excuse.
Me, and we had dropped off one of the old guys's son on the other end of the piece, and he was kind of slow making his way through from this direction, and we're going to meet up with him and then maybe hit this part that continued, So we went down. They eventually made their way. We went down to meet him and as we're and we're all excited, like we got two big Bucks. They're in a draw. It's a thin draw. I think we can good chance we can get both bucks. One of them's a tank.
And there was a big pond between us and the Bucks, and so we needed to kind of go around it. Well, as we went around it, I see this red sign and I'm filming, and I'm like, I know what the red sign usually means, no longer in walking, but I wanted the reaction from the old guys to catch so I didn't say anything. You know, they were gonna see it in three seconds. So but I'm like, in my head, I'm like, what is going on? If that pond hadn't been there, we would have vlined right to those big
Bucks and shot them. And this had come up earlier in the bostseason, probably an hour and a half away. I was with Matt on that hunt. A piece that had always been public was marked as public walking on the map from the state and on their app. I have their app on my phone. It come out a week before right during the run, got pulled out a walk in. They didn't pull the signs down on one road. I sat there for three hours. It was a morning
that I decided I can see a long ways. I'm gonna hang out here for three hours and just watch from the vehicle and see if a buck pops up out any of these draws, public signs, public on the map, public in the book, all from the state. Eventually I caught one that looked like it could be a shooter way over by the other road.
We drive around the other road a red sign.
I'm like, what so in that particular case, I eventually I first tracked down the game warden. He didn't know much about it, which you know, it's not his department to necessarily know, but he got me in contact. That was a Saturday. I was actually quite impressed. But he ended up getting me in contact with the head of the walk in program at the state. And I wasn't too thrilled because I started to put some things together and there was three parcels of property, one of which
I was on two days before that. Now I pulled up to and there's a red sign there, and two days ago there wasn't. So I'm not in a real good state coming out of what happened in twenty sixteen. And all the information's coming from the state and he clarified all three pieces. He said, Okay, the guys that put the signs out on this one, that's actually not right.
That's actually still public. And I'm like okay, and he's like, yeah, the other piece that came out here over the last week, but they probably didn't get the signs up on the other road. And I'm like, that's that's neat. So if I'd walked in from that other road, technically i'd have been according to your maps and the signs, I would have been legal. But it's.
If it's pulled out, it's pulled out, you know.
Yeah, But how can anyone expect folks to know that in the situation like that, That's crazy.
Well, and I was very frustrated because back in Wisconsin, when I used to hunt all them MFL grounds and forest crop lands before they were ever mapped, I for several counties went through and made my own Google maps with the lines of the parcel, so I had it right on my phone before the maps had come out. For all these counties. I'd go in and plot the coordinates,
is what I'd do. So I had that access. So when it comes to in this case, Kansas there, I would have their Google Earth created maps of their walk in on my phone, and I know how quick and easy because once I got that those maps created on my end for Wisconsin, it was really easy the next year to just go through and confirm if any came out at the end of the year, and then Uptown came out.
It's an eyeball on that layer.
You turn it off, update your map, and boom that parcel's no longer in right, And so I kind of was like, well, I cannot stand the book being printed.
You know, I was like two things.
I think once it goes into walking, you got to you know, guys are coming from non resident spending five hundred dollars. They're expecting your book to be accurate. So if you're pulling out Walkin's partially through the season at any moment's glass and you've got a printed book here that says it's public, it creates a lot of confusion. And I'm like, so I think that maybe once it's entered into walking, it can't come out till the first of the year.
It would maybe be a good policy.
And then if we can't do that, maybe at least update the maybe at least update the Google earth Maps, because that's instant, you know. I mean that takes five seconds to I shouldn't say five, but thirty seconds to go in there and you save the new kl kml or kmz file and boom. At least guys using not now have accurate So I've ran into a few scenarios of that. Now. I had those two and no trouble
came about of those. They were caught in time and he confirmed the piece that I had been on two days or three days before that is I was still good then, but you know it, it could have been really bad, especially in the case that them two older guys with them two big bucks in that draw that pond hadn't been there, we'd have went right in there and probably I mean it was set up pretty well to get to get one or two.
Out of there, and then it's like what you know, So I mean.
That one with matt in in uncuffed, it was you know, you know, they didn't change anything from from those situations that happened years ago where I contacted them, Like they can still pull them walk ins out at any point in time. And and you can't trust their Google earth Maps, and you can't trust their printed maps because they they I don't have that, they don't have it implemented on to like the first of the year. See, like in Wisconsin,
it wouldn't matter if it changed ownership or not. You're in contract, and you know, with those programs, and so they they didn't have an option to till the first of the year. They couldn't be so even if a new owner came in and bought that piece, if they were part of that program, they had to wait till the end of the year to pull it out of that program. And so that kept it pretty clean on that front. So it can get messy out you know.
I mean I've run into guys. I mean, even what happened in twenty sixteen therein you know, in Minnesota, that should have never happened. Yeah, I should have done somewhere digging, but that should have never never happened. There should have been signs put up that was marked wrong. And those people knew that, and so did the game word and that information got back to me. I had somebody that detected that in my video and they come up to me and they said I was bow hunting that, and
I thought the same thing. After a few times and they're like, something's not right, and they identified exactly what peace without me telling them and who the warden was, and that.
Threw me for a loop because he told me.
He said, well, the warden told me that that's not public, and I was like, well, the wharton told us he didn't know anything about it, and that was after you So what was going on there? You know? You know that, yeah, there was I should have done some more thorough but I mean that I looked at everything and that it was there was some responsibility on other parties there on that particular one too, that would have made.
It pretty.
There was multiple instances of other people hunting that ground that thought it was public that year.
Man, Well, I think it's all. It's all a good reminder to just double check, right, I mean, that's that's the thing is, like, it's with all these regulations, I find myself always trying to remind myself, like double check, see if anything change, make sure this actually matches up, make sure the map matches, the website matches, the whatever, because there is unfortunately, there's a lot of things to keep track of, and in the end, if someone wants to give you a hard time, it's going to fall
on you. So that's a good.
Yeah, that's that's one thing. You know.
It's written in a way where it's your responsibility. So even if the signs are up that show at public even if you have the state maps, uh, it's still your responsibility the way the law is written, which is very frustrating if you end up in one of those situations, you know. So we we had that situation. Nothing really came about of it, but it would have been a really bad deal on the ride and where the refuge
wasn't marked as refuge. It was marked as public hunting from Iowa DNR map that we had, and they didn't have signs up marking it.
We went in by boat.
We went in by boat, had never hunted there before, but oh, all this public acres, We'll go in by boat.
Spot one hundred and forty five inch.
We were having a pretty tough hunt already, and that's why we were cruising. We were an hour and a half two hours from where we normally are, and there was a couple of questions earlier that day on pieces that we called in another county award to get clarity on, and in that particular case, we're boom parked, spotted this big buck parked the boat on the beach, and we're going up the beach and we're getting pretty close to where we're in kill zone, Like we're I think sixty
seventy yards out from this buck in the weeds. Turn back and look, and there's a guy and a dog over by our boat, and he's walking towards us, and we kind of realize, we're like, we need to get him stopped or we're gonna blow this stock. So chance he goes, you know, sneaking back, and I go with him to film this, you know, like, hey, we're on a buck. Turns out it's a gaateboard and we're on
a refuge. If he would have stopped, if you would have stayed at the boat and not killmar away, we would have killed that buck right right in front of him, right in front of him, and never knew. And when I went down there, you know, of course, they make up a lot of excuses of why it, you know, and in my mind, I'm like, there's no excuse. A refuge is not refuge if it's not if it's not marked that way on a map and signs. I went down there and did a range fine, because they say, well,
there's signs. The closest sign to the water's edge was one hundred and fifty seven yards up in the timber.
Yeah, that's tough.
It's tough to have a refuge if you got marked on the map otherwise, you know. So, oh, you know, I mean, nothing serious came about of.
That, but I was like, yeah, stressful.
Yeah, so you know, and I've heard stories of of you know, and I think overall things are getting getting better, you know. I a few years later, I h I saw some changes on some some of the different apps and things where it told me they're getting more accurate information from the county level and that and that's to be expected that things get more and more refined.
Yeah, And I got to believe that now there's more and more people doing this kind of thing and looking into these kinds of things. I think probably the various government officials are finding these oversights and realizing, oh wow, yeah, there are people actually wanting to come in here, and we don't have it properly signed or labeled. So so hopefully this stuff gets fixed. Hopefully, uh, hopefully things become a little bit more clear, because it can get very confusing out there.
Yeah, yeah, it can't. And then every state's different, you know.
You know how it is in the West, where it's you're you're come across, there's fence lines and stuff all the time, and that doesn't mean that it's a property line. A lot of times that public continues, whereas like in the Midwest, you come across a fence line and almost always that's a property line, and so it can get it can get pretty you know. Well, you've got a lot of experience by this point, and a lot of these different states too, to have seen how things change from state to state.
And yep, you just gotta gotta stay up on it, do your best, right, all right, I'm gonna let you go here, Jared, with final few rapid fire quick questions. You're allowed just like a one word answer to the okay, okay, just first thought right off the bat, here we go. Does the moon matter to deer movement? Yes or no?
Yes?
Would you take a fifty yard shot at a white tail with your bow? Yes or no?
No, I shouldn't.
I'll give you.
A tiny done it before by log but with a compound all the Yeah, yeah, I did that all the time, back in the early days, you know, and not shouldn't say all the time, but it's you know, I mean, it's pretty easy with a compound, but.
Possibly yeah, Okay, if you can only have one of these tools for the rest of your hunts, would it be a set of rattling antlers or a grunt too, rattling antlers expandable or fixed blade broadheads?
I'm a fixed.
Should you stop a buck with some kind of sound before shooting? Yes? Or no? A moving buck?
I don't think.
All right, this one of the it's relative.
It's relative of the hunt, hunter to and experience and certain things.
Yep. Yeah, and you've got a very unique situation compared a lot of guys too, with how you're shooting and everything.
Yeah, And there's the the animals react different when you stop them compared to sometimes it's easier to gauge if if the movement's very steady and there's no panic in the hunt in the arch, sure he can probably execute that shot much smoother by not stopping them with less reaction from the animal.
So there's a lot of variables in there.
You know, some some archers may be better to stop that year, but your reaction from the animal is going to be you know, so that that one's a tough one to really susy.
Yeah, all right, this one you can you can riff on a little bit. Imagine that I control hunting access across the country, hunting rights, like I can control whether or not you get a hunting license. Okay, and I'm going to take your hunting license away for the rest of your life unless you kill a mature buck this year. You need to kill one mature buck this year, and if you don't, no more hunting the rest of your life. Okay. But here's the trick. You only have one day to
get this done, in one place to do it. So I need you to pick the date on the calendar that you think you'd have your very best chance to kill a mature buck. And I need you to describe for me the location that you would set yourself down on. Now you're a little bit different. A lot of guys would pick like a tree stand in a certain kind of zone. I know you're different, so I'll let you like you can. I'll pick the spot you want to be dropped off at. You have to be on foot.
You can describe to me what kind of spot you want to be dropped off at and what kind of stuff's around you? All right, high stakes hunt, Give me the date and the situation to be dropped off at.
I can pick the location, right.
Yeah, yep, you can whatever location you want, Okay.
I'd probably go.
November twenty second, and I'd go Iowa, and the terrain would be wooded with mixed with some CRP grass, you know, button up to kind of an intermix of both. That's that's what I would do.
And why why November twice second? That's later than a lot of guys pick, and and why mixed timber and cover in CRP versus like a wide open thing that we see so much?
Okay, Well you said mature buck, right, yep? Okay, So in the early days, I maybe would have picked Kansas. But Kansas on the planes has gotten a lot more pressure and over the years, and so it can take several days to actually land a big buck visually a big mature buck on public in a good scenario to kill it. So not so much in the early days. And then you know, ten years ago, I probably would
have picked Kansas in this in this particular scenario. The reason I went late in Iowa is because I would pick an area that has a lot of bucks and a lot of dose, and I could probably find a mature buck on that day around those dates within kind of what I laid out there, that's cruising or trying
to find another dough. There's enough good bucks in that area and enough dose that some are probably still coming in and you know out and I would as far as like, we don't know what conditions we're going to get to deal with, whether we're going to get a lot of wind or not. So having timber as an option and grass as an option, I can work my eyes, I can get in the timber if I need to. And that's kind of what I did with a little
bit of time I got last fall. And I did get on a shooter every day, so I didn't kill one, but I you know, I I also damn near had one hundred and seventy five inch typical in my lap too, so.
You know, I had a good few days getting out there.
But it was a situation much like I described, and so that's that's why I went. I kind of digested it after, like I wasn't quite expecting that, but I dissected all the different factors after I seen what I've seen as to why that was really good for.
Me, So it makes sense. So yeah, all right, what I would do? I like it. I like the plan. I think it'll work. Hopefully you'll never find yourself in a situation like that where you only have one day to get it done and uh, such igh stakes. But uh, but tell me this last thing. What should folks be looking forward to from White Tail Adrenaline? Uh, in the in the short term or in the long term. Anything you want folks to know about anything people should be
checking out right now as they listen to this. What do you want people to know?
Yeah, I mean, we're as far as the next film goes. It's very far along in production. It still has some time to go on it, but it to to really make it what it needs to be that people really like about our content, you know, it's it's gonna be an incredible set, a lot of really good hunts and really good bow hunts. And then moving forward, Yeah, it's
it's a fairly large project. The next one. H moving forward after that, there won't be people won't see as much gun, it'll be much more bow and even the next one has quite a bit of you know, quite a bit higher ratio of bo i'd say, and some I can't wait for the next one to come out, but.
It's gonna be.
I I expect it to be the new, the new you know, Defiance has been for a long time, probably our overall top picked video, and a lot of people have really enjoyed the Uncuffed series. The next one coming out, the Hunts are gonna come. They came together so smooth and such incredible hunts that.
It maybe be too much if it came.
Out too quick on top of Uncuffed, it maybe be too much.
So I'm excited about it, you know.
And uh, I just want to thank everybody who hung in there for the production of Uncuffed. And it seems like we got through that and and it seems like people really enjoyed have enjoyed Uncuffed, and so uh some people are new to the company surprisingly buying DVD's. That's that's awesome, welcome and uh and those that have been there for the long haul, I thank you for for hanging in there and and.
Uh so and you've got more available on digital right, like, like that's becoming more of an option in the future. Is that correct, Yeah, it will be.
Resurgence is on digital for available for purchasing. For those that don't know how our business model and company works. We don't take outside you know, sponsor. We don't do sponsors funded you know, by companies within the industry.
There's a couple of companies.
I use a lot of optics, you know, and and and and whatnot. But I don't do any exchange of money for for any to to fund the productions. So people actually buy the content. What we try to do is produce it to the best of our abilities, to produce a really good product. The offsetter is it is not free too, you know, uh for people, so it is purchaseable and I do in time plan to have all of them available on digital.
But the vinyl.
Record discs look cool on the bookshelf, and uh so thanks for everybody that's been buying them over the years.
And uh and for the.
People that really are like you, better not stop making DVDs. We don't have any plan to stop making DVDs for a while, but yes, I hope to have Uncuffed available on digital around the end of the year. Is where it looks right now, So.
Cool man, keep up the good work, keep on grinding that. I know it sure seems like a heck of an undertaking, but we all have been enjoying your hunts over these many years. We've all learned a lot. You've been an innovator, someone who has really brought a lot of new things to light for folks, and I, for one, I'm very appreciative of that.
Thank you, Thank you well. When you make a lot of mistakes, That's one thing I've been doing some reflected because I'm working on in our story page on the website, and so I've been posting up some of the old photos and it's taken me down memory lane a little bit, and I was like, you know, from the get go, we we made the decision we're going to show our mistakes as they unfold.
And I think the caveat on the flip side.
Yeah, that's a little hard to swallow sometimes, right, but you just over time, I mean, we actually accepted it pretty well. But that refined us. You know, you're facing the truth of what went wrong, and so you eventually put some dirt in those holes or would you know, some of them and other ones then you know come to development.
But that's we are humans. Yeah, yeah, exactly, so that's the truth.
Anyway.
Well, thanks a lot.
I really appreciate you having this has been fun and hopefully people got something out of it.
I know they did. Let's talk again soon, Jereck. If you can add just a little bit of a wrinkle to your usual strategy and see what you can learn. So that'll say, appreciate you being here, Appreciate you being a part of this community. Best of luck on your upcoming hunts, and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.