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Welcome back to Cutting the Distance. When it comes to managing land and setting it up for whitetail hunting, there seems to be hundreds, if not thousands, of guys to choose from nowadays.
But shouldn't a proven hunting track record be the most important thing that you consider before choosing a land consultant, somebody that knows how to set up for hunting? Well, Don Higgins may be the best doing it currently, and some may say the best to ever do it.
Killing mature bucks year after year with a few 200-inch deer sprinkled in the mix, his track record speaks for itself. And that's one of the things I like about Don, at least from my perspective. He seems to be a humble man that has allowed his track record to do the speaking and not necessarily his own mouth. Don has quite the resume when it comes to educating whitetail hunters. He is the host of the Chasing Giants podcast. He is the author of two books, Hunting Trophy Whitetails in the Real World and Real World Whitetail Icons.
He's the owner of Real World Wildlife Products that stems from his agricultural background. In addition to all of this, Don continues to speak at seminars around the country, and then in all of his free time, he still runs a whitetail consulting service that continues to grow in demand with each and every passing year. With no further ado, welcome to the show, Don. Well, thanks for having me. Glad to be here. Yeah. How's your season been? Oh, it's been... I don't even know what the word I'd want to use is. Probably...
different it's been different than any season that i've ever experienced that's saying something after 46 years of deer hunting but uh no i've got i've i've had some really nice bucks in range um i've passed a
three bucks that are really good one of them would have scored over 180 inches and uh got all that on video but uh you know i like to build the story with these bucks and let them get mature and when i say mature i'm talking six years old i know a lot of guys are saying calling them mature at four but uh
So I, you know, my season's been good. I haven't shot anything, but I've seen a lot of really nice bucks that have the potential to be super in another year or two. Yeah, good. Do you have any time left in the stand or are things starting to wind down with the tags that you have?
Well, I hope I still have some time. The thing of it is my consulting business just gets so busy starting about December 1st through the rest of the entire winter into spring until it greens up that it doesn't leave me a whole lot of time. But I'm hoping around the holidays and such that I can find some time to get back in the tree. Perfect. Perfect. Can you give the audience a quick rundown for people that don't know who you are on where you started and kind of the quick timeline to where you're at now?
Well, I actually started as a freelance outdoor writer back in 1996. North American Whitetail published my first article. And in the years since, I've had literally hundreds of articles published in just about every major hunting magazine. That led to me writing a book. And also, you know, a lot of the readers of those magazine articles published.
I think they recognized me as speaking from experience instead of just repeating and regurgitating things I'd heard. And, uh, you know, I did things a little different. I kept, I keep things simple, but, uh, but they work. And I think the readers recognize that. And I started getting calls from people asking me to look at their properties and, and, you know, help them with their hunting success. And so that led to my consulting business and,
But then along the way, you know, the whole land management thing kind of exploded. I think it probably started about 15, 20 years ago.
And with my ag background, I started a food plot seed company. We're getting ready to start our 15th year in business next year, but it's a company that's just done fantastic and continues to grow as it has every year for 15 years. So you can see that I've got my hand in a lot of different pots, but they've all got to do with whitetails and whitetail land management.
And it all started, you know, back with those first magazine articles 26 years ago. Nice. Yeah. You, you, you touch on something there about it's fairly simple and you know,
we talked a little bit before and out West on, on the elk education and elk hunting education, you almost feel guilty when you try to break down what you really do. And it, you know, we, we add all of this additional information to it, but it is when you boil it down, it's a very simple recipe sometimes. And people I think want to make this monster out of a molehill. And it's like, no, it, it really is that simple, but you don't,
You almost don't want to insult the person by telling them it's that simple because they're struggling to grasp it. And yeah, I picked up on you saying that whitetail hunting may be simple if you choose to make it that way.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of deer hunters that overcomplicate it. They make it way more difficult than it really is. And there are some basic rules that you've got to follow. And I think what happens is a lot of times deer hunters don't follow those basic rules. And, you know, one of them is learning to play the wind. There's no getting around it. You either learn to play the wind when you hunt these big bucks or you're not going to be successful. And there's nothing you can buy that's going to help you
Sure, there's products that are made to control your odor, but do you realize how a mature buck's using the wind? Even if you was 100% scent free, that mature buck is maybe not going to come past your stand or probably not going to come past your stand if the conditions are not right for him to do so safely. He's got to feel safe or he's not doing it.
And it is really simple, but there's some basic things that you absolutely have to nail or everything else doesn't really matter. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. And we'll make some more comparisons down there. I got some questions for you on set and, you know, given the wind a little bit. But like every cutting the distance podcast, we're going to field a few questions from
from our listeners. And if you want to submit a question of your own, you can email us at [email protected]. So the first question we got
I'm trying to get a count of deer on my property. When and how should the census be taken? And I'm going to add something on that they didn't. I'm assuming it's going to be a little dependent on region and kind of where you're at during the cycle. But what's your answer to when should people be looking to try to get a good count on bucks and does on their property? Well, to be honest, that's something that I don't deal with a whole lot. And the reason for it is most of the landowners that I'm consulting with
or have smaller acreage and why smaller i mean under a thousand acres some of them under 100 acres but um definitely under a thousand acres for the most part and i've done a couple bigger properties and when you're talking about a property of you know two or three or four hundred acres it doesn't matter what you do on that property to try to influence the the local herd if your neighbors aren't on board it's not going to work
And, you know, you could, if you've got an overpopulation of deer, for example, you can shoot 25 does on your farm. And if your neighbors aren't helping you out, 30 more are going to come from their farm and replace the 25 you just shot and you're gaining nothing. So, you know, and most of the time it almost takes the state game agencies to set the regulations as far as, as herd management or herd control. And, and,
the individual landowner really doesn't have a whole lot he can do. And for that reason, that's something that I just don't address with my clients. Now, if I was like on some of the bigger ranches, say down in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and that part of the world, it would be a totally different story. But those just aren't my clients. And that's not my niche, if you will. Okay. That makes a ton of sense. Um,
The second question, when bowhunting from an elevated stand, where do you like to aim at a deer? Does this change on the feedback you're getting from the buck, head down, looking your direction, ears back, any of those things? But where are you aiming from an elevated stand? Well, first of all, shot selection is absolutely critical. I will only take a broadside or slightly quartered away shot.
And when I do that, you know, I'm aiming for the offside shoulder. So not the shoulder closest to me, but the far side shoulder. I want my arrow to, and I only hunt with a bow, so I'm only talking about bow hunting. I want my arrow to hit both lungs. And that's what I'm shooting for, is a double lung hit.
I'm aiming, it depends on how close the deer is and how high I am, but typically I want that arrow about one third of the way up that deer's body and right behind the shoulder if he's totally broadside. Now if he's quartered away, then I want it back a little farther and I'm aiming for that off shoulder. But the double lung shot is the only shot that I think is ethical.
So with that, with that said, are you, you know, coming from, from out West, you know, a lot of our elk, our mule deer don't tend to jump. I say there's, there's always the exception, but for the most part, they don't jump the string. Like what, like we've seen whitetail, you know, growing up on watching all the TV show, you know, things duck eight, 10 inches. So you're not aiming any lower than a vital shot. So you're, you know, you're still aiming at that bottom third to make, or do you account for some sort of duck?
No, I don't. I'm aiming for that bottom third, but I also am not a proponent of long shots, to be honest. It's almost, I can't even remember the last time I shot over 30 yards, and most of my shots are 20 and under. The 15 to 20-yard range is where I'm shooting. So, you know, I'm aiming at that lower third of the body, and I'm getting a good hit and pass through and clean kills, you know, almost every time.
So, you know, shot selection is the key. Yep. Yeah, I was fortunate enough to shoot my deer at eight yards. And, you know, by that time, whether they heard it or not, they don't have near the time to move and, you know, your arrow is going to hit right where you intended it to. So, perfect. Thanks for answering those. Once again, if you have any questions for us here or my guests at Cutting the Distance, please email us or message us at ctd at phelpsgamecalls.com. ♪
So on today's episode, I want to dive into hunting whitetail bucks and maybe more specifically what it takes to grow and hunt the next level bucks, as well as making sure you have mature bucks kind of in the pipeline coming up.
I feel like a lot of Western hunting translates to whitetails in its simplest form. Hunting is always going to be broken down into things I can control, things I have an effect on, and then things that are out of my control. And within those, I tend to focus on things we can control. And then what I'm hoping to get from Don today is dive into some of those things where through decision-making, we can at least predict or at least limit the variables of
of those things out of our control when it comes to white to hunting. And that's, I'm very, you know, Donna, I've got an engineering background, a background. I break things down into like its simplest form and then start to categorize. So as an engineer, I, you know, I want things, you know, in their coffers, like I want it to make sense. And so that's,
everything out West, it's like, all right, I can control this. I can have an effect on this. And then there's some things that are out of my control as far as like, you know, where they're going to be. But by putting myself in a place where we're trying to, you know, um, limit those variables that are out of our control. Um, as we talked earlier, I'm someone that's new to the, you know, someone new to the whitetail game. Um, and then it's a little daunting as I got home from this past time, you know, I jump on the internet, I'm watching YouTube, I'm reading articles and it's very, very tough to try to figure out what information is good and
and proven and then what may have very good supporting arguments but may not work or actually make your hunting area or your hunting property worse. And so one of the reasons I was drawn and really wanted to bring you on the podcast is you weren't afraid to say, you know, that some ideas could be bad, you know, and I really like that.
I'm, I'm the same way. I'm not afraid to say that. I think that's a bad idea and you shouldn't do that. Um, when it comes to hunting tactics and techniques. Um, and I want to know, you know, through, through all of your experiences, you mentioned earlier, 42 years, I want to know if something, you know, how many times something worked out of a hundred and guess what? Even better if you've seen or did something a thousand times, how many times did it work in your favor? How many times didn't? So you can start to put a plan together. Um, so I'm,
I'm going to pick your brain a little bit. I've got a series of questions and we'll just kind of walk through them and see what you have to say. Okay.
So pretty cliche, pretty obvious statement here, but we all know when it comes to hunting, we can only kill what we can see. And this may be one of the biggest crux, it seems like as a whitetail hunter, I'm starting to learn very quickly the properties we were hunting had big deer on cameras at night and we were having a heck of a time finding them during the day because they just weren't, they didn't seem to be moving. Maybe we were missing them, but is there a best management practice
to make sure you're seeing, you know, the majority of your mature deer in the daylight. Can you affect that? Or is that something that's naturally inherent and just kind of built into a deer? Or can you design your property, you know, to help out in that situation for seeing mature bucks in the daylight? Well, I mean, that's a great question. And I address it with every single client that I meet with. And, and it's,
you've got to hunt mature deer on the property they spend their daylight hours on. And that means you've got to hunt them where they bed. So when I meet with a client, the first thing I'm doing when I'm looking at his property is I'm figuring out what do we got to do to get the local bucks to bed on this property. And most deer hunters, I mean, the vast majority of deer hunters,
put way too much pressure on their property. The bucks they're trying to kill, they bump them off and they don't have a chance. And I tell my clients all the time, if you are one property over from where a deer beds, so if he's bedding right across the line on the neighbor, your odds of killing that deer are 10% what they are if you're on the same property. So, you know, right out of the gate, you got to be hunting them on the properties where they bed.
Okay. And now, um, you know, you're, you're a big proponent of providing a sanctuary. Do you, do you, what if the bedding is that sanctuary? Do you consider the bedding, the sanctuary? And if so, how much pressure will you be willing to put on that bedding area or getting as close to the bedding and maybe away from their feet as possible so that you can catch them in the daylight? Yeah. I'm a huge proponent of sanctuaries. In fact, I've said many times, if I had a 500 acre property, um,
450 of it would be a sanctuary i would never go into 50 of it would be food plots and i'd hunt the edge so um you know i never go into the bedding cover of the sanctuary per se but i'm always hunting on the edge of it and it's always the downwind edge so my scent is blowing out of that sanctuary and i'm on that downwind side and it's just the perfect place to be when those bucks are cruising
um if they feel comfortable they think that sanctuary is a safe zone they've never encountered humans there they're going to be on their feet a lot more daylight hours and when they are they want to be on that downwind edge because then they can smell all that cover they can detect you know a hot dough or you know danger as well so it works perfect i've killed numerous bucks this way but having an undisturbed sanctuary on your property and
And hunting it properly on the downwind edge at all times is absolutely key to a lot of my success. So another way to pose this question, if you were to look at a piece of property and figure out where the deer like to bed, is it a good strategy to try to put some food plots within close proximity to it? As you've mentioned, not disturb their bedding, their sanctuary, but is getting that food or even minor food sources, you know, your smaller plots,
um is that a good strategy to get those deer on their feet and maybe catch them before they're you know on their way to big ag later in the night um or something like it would just getting you know that food a little closer to bed kind of assist in in daylight you know well as long as that food is not within the bedding cover if it's out on the edge yeah that's a great strategy um i've i've seen i don't know how many uh
consultants or whitetail habitat so-called experts claim, for example, when you plant switchgrass that you should have
you know, clover and forbs and things in there for the deer to eat. You don't want just a monoculture switchgrass. You want some food in there for them too. Well, I totally disagree with that. If a buck on my property wants to eat, I don't want him to just stand up in his bed and drop his head and start feeding. I want to force that deer to have to move from his bed to his food. And that movement is what makes him killable. That's the pattern we're hunting. If he doesn't have to move, well, he's way harder to kill.
Yeah. And that, that makes a ton of sense. Um, you know, why would you want that deer to get up out of his bed, eat there without having to come where he's shootable because you're not going to be able to set a stand or a very, you know, a very effective stand necessarily in that switchgrass or, you know, you want that to be there, you know, their, their security, their sanctuary, somewhere where they feel safe. And, you know, it, it just seems, you know, common sense says, don't, don't let them eat in there. Just let them bed in there or, or use it for security. Um,
It's common sense to you and I, but I don't think it is to some people. Yeah, I mean, it's one of the things we use. We don't like to hunt elk necessarily in the center of their food. We don't like to hunt elk in their bedding area. We will at times go into their bedding area, especially late in the hunt when we're running out of time and we're on public ground. We don't got the whole, it's not a chunk of private, so we will go in there, but a lot of times...
we're trying to do the same thing is whether we want people want to draw similarities or not, we're really trying to hunt them closer to their, you know, their bet, their food in the morning. And then we're trying to hunt them a little closer to their bed in the evening. And we're doing something real similar. Um, one last question on, you know, getting deer in daylight. Is it your opinion? And I, I've, I've tracked this. I've, I've seen you answer this before, maybe that, um,
deer, maybe the best pattern you can put on a deer is what they did the year before. If you've got good indicators on that deer, as far as, you know, and some of the, the, the talk, you know, the, the examples that you've shared and other people have shared is it's almost to the day. Um,
um, you know, where that deer will start to show up on a property or that deal deer will start to show in the daylight. Um, is that some of the most valuable information you use when you, you know, if, if that deer is showing similar patterns from year to year that you're going to base, will you base a hunt on that, that similar pattern?
Absolutely. You know, I was the first one to write about this back in 2003. I wrote an article for North American Whitetail Magazine titled Same Time, Same Place. And to that point, I'd never heard anybody talk about it. Now, it's pretty well accepted today. A lot of people have wrote about it, talked about it, made videos about it. But there is an uncanny pattern among mature bucks to show up at this same time at the
at the same place year after year. And I'm talking down to within about a 24 or 48 hour period. So, you know, a lot of times these whitetail box will,
will spend their summers in bachelor groups in one location and then you know as fall draws near and they they start shedding their velvet and the testosterone levels start rising those bachelor groups will break up and those bucks will shift to their fall range and they will move sometimes you know miles and what i've found is when those bucks shift to that fall range it
it's almost to the day year after year to the day they'll show up on a property where they haven't been all summer. There was a buck that I shot in 2015. It's a buck that I'd watched grow up for six years and I watched him since he was a year and a half old. As a year and a half old buck he had six points on each side just a little tiny 12 point rack but I kept track of him and I thought he might have a chance to hit 200 and I guess
Kept walking away from the opportunity to hunt him. And during that six years that I watched him grow up, I hit on a pattern that this buck was showing up on this one property I had permission to hunt. About the first time he would show up for the entire year, the first date he would show up would be about November 6th.
And the last day he would be there, it'd be about November 20th. And what he was doing was he was, there was a lot of does bedding on that property. And this buck was showing up to, you know, find a hot dough, checking that dough group out. And, you know, I had him down to a T. And so the year I decided to kill him when he was six and a half years old,
Had my stands ready and I knew don't even go in there and hunt don't put any pressure on that property till November 6th Well, November 6 rolls around I had two stands in on that property and I needed very specific winds to hunt those stands November 6 rolls around the winds wrong. I can't hunt November 7th the winds wrong I can't hunt November 8th. Finally the wind was right I go in there the first morning that I ever hunted for that deer I killed him and
And, you know, nine o'clock on that first morning, six years, I watched that buck and then kill him on the very first hunt. Same time, same place. I knew when he was going to be there. That trail camera history is so important when I'm chasing these big deer. Trail cameras have almost made it easy.
yeah yeah it's it's nice to to have those trail cameras to build those patterns and uh you know really really put the the variables or the unknowns or the things working against you you know at least you can get a solid plan on those and then let the wind like you said the wind was the variable on that one you just had to wait for the right wind and then that was the only one you're really having to play so um yeah it makes a ton of sense so my next question um
there's a lot of information about you know creating bedding areas and figuring out where the does like to bed and the bucks need to bed behind them according to food and and you know you've been um i hope not i hope i don't misquote you here but you know you you've said to allow them to bed where they want and don't put the pressure on them no need to go in there and make bedding they're going to be there um with that said
If you're building a property and say you don't have the timber or you do have the timber, what would you say the preferred bedding is? If you were going to go in and work over a property, are you trying to create timber bedding? Are you trying to create CRP bedding? Are they always going to bed behind the does? Can you give us a little bit on if you're going to build perfect beds, are you going to go in a hinge cut? Where do big mature bucks like to hang out and feel secure?
It boils down to one thing, freedom of human intrusion. They would rather bed in a wide open woods with no cover whatsoever if there's no human activity in there than they would to bed in the thickest, nastiest place they could find if it's overrun with human pressure. I totally, totally disagree. And I got all kinds of firsthand experience to back it up. This idea that the bucks are going to bed here and the does are going to bed in front of them and
all this nonsense. It's total garbage. It doesn't work that way. People try to make it way more complicated than it really is. It boils down to freedom of human intrusion. Now, you asked about the type of cover. Well, I look at bedding cover on a property that I'm managing or I'm developing a plan for.
The same way I do the food sources, diversity. I want as many different food sources on a property as I can get. And I want as many different kinds of bedding cover also. I want diversity. I want some switchgrass. I want some thick second growth. I want some mature timber with a really thick understory. I just want diversity.
And the reason for that is I've noticed on my own farm that there are certain individual bucks that will prefer different types of bedding cover. For example, I've got bucks...
And I've had mature bucks on my farm that they preferred to bed in the switchgrass. And day after day after day, you could just about count on those deer in the afternoon, evening coming out of the switchgrass. That's where they would bed day after day and other mature bucks. They always wanted to bed in the wooded cover. So I think diversity is key. And if you think of it from a land management standpoint, um,
talk about diversity let's say you're the only guy in the neighborhood who has a big switchgrass patch on your farm and one of those bucks comes along that likes to bed in the switchgrass well guess what he's bedding on your place day after day after day that's why diversity is so important so that you can kind of um you know curtail your farm or design your farm for every buck you're not just
trying to accommodate those bucks that like the switchgrass, you're also trying to accommodate the ones that like the wooded cover. So diversity is key, but it really boils down to human intrusion or freedom of human intrusion. That's what a mature buck demands. He's not going to put up with it.
I'm going to talk a little bit later about the sanctuary, but I have to ask the question just why you talked about human presence and you, I think, you know, if people go back and watch material, you probably said it a thousand times, if not more, which, you know, I've always said, you hear, you hear something more than three times, it's important by the guy talking about it. And so, you know, obviously sanctuary is very, very important, but to a, you know, when you say no human intrusion, is that,
zero is that checking your trail cameras three times is that you can ride your your you know a four-wheeler trail along the edge of it a couple times a year like the definition of you know no human intrusion or is it just one of those things where the more the better or does it have to be you know you know i guess another way to phrase this is what will a big buck let you get away with
Well, they're all individuals and one will let you get away with a lot and the other one nothing. And a good example, that's trail cameras. You know, one buck, he'll walk in front of a trail camera and he'll pose day after day after day. And you get dozens of pictures of him. Another buck, you get his picture one time on a trail camera and boom, he's gone. He's not coming past that camera ever again. With bedding cover or sanctuary, when I say zero, I mean zero. I mean, I don't have trail cameras inside the sanctuary.
I don't have paths for four-wheelers or anything in the sanctuary. The closest I get to the sanctuary is hunting the edge of it. As far as going into it, there's only three times I'll go into it. One is to do habitat work in the off-season. Once the season's closed in the winter, before spring green-up, I will sometimes go in if I need to thicken things up, you know, I'll go with a chainsaw, whatever I need to do to maintain good habitat.
The other times, if I shoot a deer and he runs in the sanctuary, well, obviously I'm going to go get him to retrieve a deer. And the third time is one day every spring. One day I go into my sanctuary to look for shed antlers. And when I go, I usually take...
my grandsons and son-in-law and daughter they go along sometimes a couple friends will go along and we do the shed antler hurt one time we don't drag it out we don't go back three or four times it's like one day we go in we cover it all we get out we stay out but from the time that things green up in spring say around April 1st or so through the entire summer and through the entire hunting season nobody's in the sanctuary nobody for anything
Okay, that clears it up. So sanctuary is absolutely, you know, as close to zero as possible with three exceptions. Yeah, so no human presence. All right. You've been quoted many times. You said it earlier in this one, you know, on the November 6th buck when we're trying to put together patterns. You know, you typically only need two to three days to go in and kill your target buck.
Um, with that said, do you have a preferred time to be in the stand? Would you rather go in pre, you know, pre-rut, um, you know, in the lockdown phase, post-rut, um, or are you looking for weather or something else determining when you're going to be in that stand? You know, cold fronts, um, rut, um, you know, some people have said they're more patternable in the pre-rut. Like when do you like to be in the stand when you get the right conditions?
Well, the rut is absolutely my least favorite time to hunt in the rut. If you kill a giant in the rut, there is more luck involved than anything.
And I want to kill them on purpose. I guess I'm not that lucky. So I've got to work and put the odds in my favor. And, you know, I'm fine with a pre-rut. That's a great time. Early season, right out of the gate. If you've got those bucks coming to a food source and they're undisturbed, that's a great time to kill a giant. You know,
The end of October when they're starting to hit scrapes, that's a good time. But, you know, after about, say, the 5th or so of November, they become pretty tough. Now, I say that my favorite day, if I had to pick a favorite day of the entire season, it would be November 7th.
simply because those bucks are on their feet so much. The does aren't quite in heat yet, and those bucks are covering a lot of territory looking for them. But to be honest, if I had to pick the best time to kill a mature buck on purpose, a one particular buck that you've got your eye on, to kill him on purpose, the best time to do it is in the late season during a brutal cold spell and on an afternoon hunt because in those conditions, there's no such thing as a nocturnal buck.
When it gets down to zero, those bucks got to feed to stay alive. And every afternoon, an hour before dark, they're on their feet and they're headed to the food or they're in the food by that time. That is the best time to catch a mature buck on his feet. Because I'm not talking about one buck. I'm talking every buck in the area during those conditions are on their feet feeding.
Yeah, and we noticed that this year on that whitetail hunt. We had good intentions of being there from October 25th to November 5th. I drew a big bull tag and schedules got mixed around and we couldn't get out there until November 10th and we hunted until we had planned November 10th to the 20th.
And it was an awesome time to be in the woods, not such an awesome time to figure out where all the deer had been that had been on cameras the entire time. And then when we did see a big buck, a lot of times he was running, you know, 120 yards away and you had no control over getting him to go on the path he had been going for the...
you know, three months ahead of that. So we learned really quick that, you know, lockdown stage, whatever people want to call it, the peak rut, it was just like, he doesn't respond to a call. He doesn't look this way. He doesn't respond to rattling. There's nothing you can do to get him off that doe. And so you became an observer of the whitetail at that point, not a hunter of them, it seemed like at times.
Yeah, where the week before they had great success, you know, the bucks that they knew were there, they had on cameras coming to certain areas. You know, they get a little bit of that pre-rut, you know, bucks on their feet a little more, starting to cruise a little more, get a little more confident. And they seem to do really well that those 10 days before we had got there. So, yeah, they all seem to be on board with that as well.
Moving on to weather, it includes all kinds of variables. We've got when people talk about weather, what's the temperature going to be? What's the precept? Are we getting rain or snow based on the temperature? Barometric pressure rising, dropping, the wind and so on. And then to complicate all of that, you've got
you know, how those factors change within a set amount of time. So, Oh, the temperature is 32, but it's dropping from 60 is important versus, Oh, the temperature is 32 dropping from 34. It's not as big a swing. So you have these factors, but then you also have how those factors are changing with a set amount of time. Um,
So all of those factors, I've heard you say it multiple times, you know, weather affects your decision, but what, what weather are you looking for? What are you looking for as far as temperature, precip, you know, barometric pressure, wind, you know, all of those things. I know the answers, but I, I'm kind of, you know, I know what your answer is, but if you can kind of, kind of lead into what you're looking for, you know, from an ideal weather standpoint. Well, I want a cold front. I want that cold front to,
For example, last year we had a cold front that the temperature had been 20 degrees above normal. And then the cold front come through and it just dropped those temperatures to about normal. Well, that ain't much of a cold front. I want that cold front to come through and drop the temperatures below normal for that time of year by at least 10 degrees or more.
And that will really affect deer movement. I want the barometer to be rising. If you can get over 30, that's fantastic. At the same time that weather is coming through. I like those fronts that come with east winds. For some reason, I've just had phenomenal success hunting east winds. Those east winds almost always accompany a weather front. They don't just happen. So, yeah.
You know, I've had success on the front end and the back end of the front. They're all just a little bit different, but it needs to drop the temperature at least 10 degrees below what would be considered normal for that time of the year in that area.
Okay, so you don't necessarily care about a 20 degree temperature swing if it's only getting you back to normal. You're looking for a temperature swing that gets you below normal. And then at that point, it could be maybe a 10, 15 degree temperature switch, but at least it's getting colder than normal. It's not just... Now, would you look at something, the example you gave where you are getting...
a change in temperature, does that not necessarily equate to good hunting? It's going to obviously be better than maybe what you had during the warm spell, but it's not going to be that exceptional switch. Right. Yeah, if the temperature drops 20 degrees and it had been 20 degrees above normal and it drops you down to normal, well, the deer activity is definitely going to be better than it had been. But it's still not going to be what it could be if it was normal and then dropped 10 degrees. Right.
um i would rather hunt that cold front the rain or snow affect your decision to be in a tree positively or negatively heavy rain will keep me out and it's more about the blood trail than anything i don't want to take a chance on losing a deer and you know if it's heavy rain well
Who likes to sit out there and get soaked anyway? But I don't mind a really light rain. I really like when it's one of those overcast November days and you get some sleet, just a little bit of sleet. That first kind of really winter cold front moves through. I just love that kind of condition.
Yeah. I think that's maybe precipitation might be the one factor on why I don't like hunting blacktails out here anymore, because my dad doesn't even get excited until the wind's 40 miles an hour straight sideways and you can't hold your eyes, you know, eyes open. And that's the time our blacktails move. And, and it's like, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm with you. I don't necessarily want to be out there, um, getting soaked. Um, you know, why I'm hunting now, if it, if it's good, I'd be out there, but similar to, to what you said, you know, your blood trails, you always got to worry about that. Um,
you know, and no matter how good a shot you, you, you may be at risk of not finding them. So, um, and then wind. Absolutely. Yeah. In fact, this, this season, I, we had some really windy days and, you know, I run a series of, uh, cameras. I've got about 50 trail cameras and,
A dozen of those are cell cameras. So I know without a doubt with that many cameras on different properties, when the deer are moving or they're not moving, I know it because when they're moving, my phone's lighting up with those cell cameras going off. When they're not moving, my phone is dead. And the interesting thing this year is I really paid close attention. And on the days that was dead calm, the deer activity was dead as well.
and I came to the conclusion that I just came to it this season. I'm always learning just like everybody else. I don't know it all and always trying to get better, but I just figured out this season that on those windy days, that's a great time to hunt. Just like you were saying your dad likes to hunt when it's 40 miles an hour. I'll tell you what, my cameras were lighting up when the wind was 30 miles an hour and the dead calm days, the cameras were dead.
I know where we hunted in Kansas, they don't like being out at all if there's no wind. The deer movement almost goes down to nothing on those days, at least from their experience, at least where their stands are at. Maybe they're moving somewhere else, but not where they want them to be when there's no wind. They expect to have wind. They use that for their safety, and if there's no wind, they're just going to sit still a little longer.
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This is Brent Reeves from This Country Life. What makes South Dakota the greatest for pheasant hunting? With over 1.2 million pheasants harvested last year, South Dakota boasts the highest population of pheasants in the nation. In fact, you'd have to add up the total harvest from neighboring states just to get that many birds.
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on the second rut i i know what it is but then uh do you believe that those younger fawns um yearlings will rut later and so it's just one long continuous rut or do you not believe you know in any of that and and you know the rut it happens in you know middle of november well i i think outdoor riders me being one um have kind of
You know, we're always looking to coin terms to, you know, sell articles and gain attention. At least that was the way it was before the Internet became so prominent. And I think today these guys that have blogs or videos on online YouTube channels, they're always looking for terms they can coin, like the dough factory, for example. The second rut was coined by outdoor writers, I don't know, 30, 40 years ago.
And I think that people just don't understand how the rut actually plays out. And it plays out the same every year. You've got, if you think of those does coming into heat in a bell-shaped curve, you've got that period where it peaks where there's the most of them in heat. And then towards the end of November, it tapers off. Well, doe fawns are not going to come into heat, you know, exactly 30 days after the
mature doughs. It just don't happen like that. Dough fawns come into heat based on their body weight. When they get about 80 pounds, they're coming into heat. And that, in fact, the majority, in my opinion, the majority of dough fawns are bred in January. There's some bred in February and even later. But I think the majority of dough fawns that get bred their first year, now some of them don't get bred that first year because they never achieved the body size goal.
to bring them into you know sexual maturity and into heat but the majority of doe fawns that come into heat and do get bred that first year are going to get bred in january but it's not going to be like a certain week in january or anything like that it's just going to be you know here and there and when it happens you know the bucks are on top of it they're going to take advantage of it um but that's nothing that you can mark on the calendar the other thing that
The whole second rut idea, a false part of that theory, if you will, is they promote the idea that during that peak breeding season, some does don't get bred on their first estrous cycle. Well, I believe that the number of does that don't get bred on their first estrous cycle is so minuscule. I mean, it's probably not one in a thousand does.
Um, every buck in the woods is capable of breeding a doe, including a lot of button bucks. If a doe comes in heat, she's going to have the attention of bucks and she's going to get bred by at least one, if not 10 different bucks, she's going to get bred if she comes into heat. Now, you know, I think there's a...
I had a research herd of captive whitetails for 25 years, so I got to see a lot of this stuff firsthand in a captive setting where it was a lot easier to observe. And I think there's some individual does that
that are going to come in heat on about the same day every year. So if a doe comes in heat on November 14th this year, next year she's probably coming in heat on the 14th, if not the 13th or the 15th. Within 24 hours, she's coming in the heat the same time. And the idea that they're not getting bred is just, I think it's just total garbage.
Yeah. Gotcha. No, that makes, that makes a ton of sense. And you know, you've got the, you've got the experience and the, the, you know, the, the observation to, to support that. So a few things, I don't want to dwell on these ones for too long. Do you, there's, there's, there's some of these factors that I've heard you talk about before. How would you use mock scrapes and, you know,
and water um you know you can answer these separately but how would you use mock scrapes to potentially plan a hunt around or water or would you use them at all to plan your hunt around and would you rather go you know back to the idea of being on their path from bedding to food well i would never use either to plan my hunt but i do use mock scrapes
to inventory bucks on a property. You know, I can put that mock scrape wherever I want. I can put it in a place where I can easily check my trail camera and not disturb the property.
you know, so I can create a mock scrape anywhere. And I don't care that the buck checks it at night. That doesn't bother me whatsoever. I just want to know what bucks are on that property. And if they're there, if there's a shooter buck there, I can figure out where to kill him. I don't need to bring him into a mock scrape to do that. That's how I use them for inventory purposes. Water. I think water in much of the country is overrated. Um, I don't think that, uh,
Water is is the factor that's going to change a lot of properties and make it take an average property make it really good Now there's some situation especially when you get out in the plain state you talk about Kansas that could be a different story out there Water could be critical, but you get into the Midwest I just don't see it as being an issue whatsoever there's just way too many water sources creeks and and ponds and whatever here and there and
Now, with that said, you can build a water hole and the deer are absolutely going to use it. No doubt about it. And if you put it in the right spot where you can put a stand nearby that has good access that you can hunt the wind with, well, yeah, it can have a positive influence on your hunting success. But I think, you know, water sources, artificial man-made water sources are
have been, you know, way overstated or their importance way overstated in the whitetail management community? I have a real dumb question, which I assume, I don't want to assume the answer, so I'm going to ask it. You know, out west, we always say elk have to go find water. They have to find standing water somewhere. They need to go to a pond, creek, lake, whatever it is. Now, mule deer, it's been well known that they can pull moisture either out of their food they're eating or out of the precipitation recovery at night. You know, it cools down,
water condenses out of the soil, out of the plants, and there's water available. Can whitetail, in your opinion, do they have to, you'd mentioned it, do they have to go to water or can they get it through food and lush greens and precip recovery as well?
Well, you know, one of the reasons that I've got that opinion about water is an experience that I've had near my home. There's a place that every summer there's a bachelor group on this section of land.
And from road to road to road, you know, surrounded by roads on four sides, that section of land, there is not a water source anywhere on that. And I've been all over it. There's not a water source. It's mainly ag fields with some hedgerows and such. But every year, there is a bachelor group of bucks that stays on that section, and they're there day after day after day. And I've long wondered, where are these deer getting their water?
I've got to believe that a majority of that water has to be coming from the plants they're eating. They're feeding heavily on soybeans that time of year. The moisture content in those green soybean leaves has got to be high. I never dreamed it was high enough that they would not need to drink, but apparently it is. That experience, and these bucks have been using this same place this summer
for decades now. And they just, every year there's a bachelor group there, but there's no water. And that's kind of driven my idea that water is way overrated here in the Midwest. Yeah. I, like I said, I would think of a mule deer could make it without ever going to a water source. Um, whitetails should be able to do the same, but I just didn't know that one. So yeah, thanks for that. Uh, next one, um, wind, you know, out West, uh,
it's all we think about. We've got, we go through 10, you know, puffer bottles of wind and a sea, not really, you know, two or three bottles. We're always checking the wind. It's very, very important. Um,
and one of my strategies is because why I do like a frontal shot on, on bull elk. Um, one of the things we've always talked about is giving them a little bit of the wind and I'm willing to give them 45 degrees and 90 degrees of the wind, because what that does is somebody calling to the elk, those elk are similar to deer. They're going to get to 60, 70 yards and try to circle us and get wind. Well, if I give them 90 degrees of wind, when they go to circle, it's going to pull them broadside in front of me. Um, you know, or if we have a caller and a shooter, um,
So we've heard whitetail hunters talk about giving them the wind a little bit. And like I said, I don't want to misquote you, but some of your, you know, some of those mature bucks, they're mature for a reason. They're smart. They're not going to play the wind perfect. You know, you have a direct north wind. They're not going to be dumb and they're not going to walk necessarily
necessarily perfectly in a spot where they can get killed without putting any thought into it. And now that now they may, but that's the anomaly. And we're trying to, you know, like you said, you're trying to kill a deer on purpose, not because he just, for some reason, walk directly, you know, with, with no regard to the wind. Can you give us a little bit of insight on how much you're willing to risk the wind? And when you say, give them the wind, um,
Are you willing, like are you taking as big of risks as your wind may be crossing the trail you expect him to be on, but you'll shoot him before he gets there? Or are you talking, you know, 90 degrees, 180 degrees? Kind of explain what giving him a win to maybe fool that bigger buck or, you know, beat him in that chess match. Well, when I was probably about 19, 20 years old, I met a whitetail legend, Roger Rothar. Yeah.
Any whitetail hunter that's 50 years old or older should remember Roger Roth, an absolute legend. And he told me, I'll never forget it, he told me the wind needs to be almost right for the buck and almost wrong for you, and that key word being almost. So if he's walking down that trail, he doesn't even necessarily want that wind straight in his face, but he wants it quartering in his nose, quartering into his nose from either direction,
then you can be off to one side of that trail. And he's still got a good wind for him to move, but you're off on the right side of the trail. Your scent is blowing not straight down the trail, but kind of down the trail, but off to the side. And that's the situation that I'm always trying to set up. I think too many deer hunters, a mistake they make is they're trying to get a buck to commit suicide. They're trying to get him to give up the wind.
And a mature buck is just not going to do that most of the time. Now, you know, occasionally they're going to do about anything. But if you want to kill them consistently, you've got to give them the wind. And that doesn't mean entirely, but you've got to give it to them enough that they think that they're safe and they're going to get up and walk in daylight hours with the wind that you're giving them.
Okay. Yeah. You know, we, we were in a few stands where we thought we had it perfect, you know, great win. When you look at an aerial, you know, great win everywhere. We think they're betting everywhere. We think they're going to go right is perfect.
We were just inside of a fence line, you know, 15, 20 yards is where we were in a blind that day. We weren't in a tree stand. It didn't matter. The wind was perfect. But what we noticed is these bigger bucks, we would hear something blow behind the stand or a doe or we'd hear something kind of jet and we'd peek out one of the corners, you know, everything's kind of screwed up. And he realized that he could walk down the fence line that was 20 yards behind us and wind check that entire patch of timber and
and we were inside of it, you know, and we're like, dang it, you know, but there was nowhere to set up because we had nothing but a wide open pasture behind us. But it got you thinking like these bigger, and that happened to two or three of the biggest bucks that walked by that, you know, some of the shooters that we were wanting to target, you know, of course we had all kinds of, you know, three and a half, four and a half year old bucks in front of us, but the two older bucks,
they win check that out in the wide open field where maybe they wouldn't feel safe, but it was actually safer to be there than inside where they could see. And it was kind of funny that
We were playing the wind perfect for all the deer in our shooting lane, but yet those deer still outsmarted us. So you almost needed to move back or if the blind would have been moved back and turned, you could have maybe seen them coming down the fence line and had a shot. You were only giving them 90 degrees of wind, but that wind would have been better for killing them versus not having a chance to see them. So it kind of got my wheels spinning of, it's like, yeah, you might need to give these things a little bit of wind. Who knows if it happens like that every time, but...
In my opinion, two times was consistent enough to get you thinking that that deer was outsmarting us and wind checking the whole entire patch of timber. Well, mature bucks are absolutely going to do it just about every time. We can go right back to the beginning of this podcast, and I said...
hunt the downwind edge of bedding cover those bucks are going to be on that downwind edge doing exactly what you just described and when i'm when i'm hunting the edge i'm hunting the very edge and sometimes those bucks are even downwind of me i've got my tree stand and the sense blowing this way and that buck he's walking by but my sense going right over the top of his back
He's actually downwind. It just, he's close enough that, and the wind's velocity is high enough that my scent just carries right over his back. I've shot a lot of bucks that way.
Yeah. And I got, like I said, I'm, I'm new, I'm getting educated. We spent, um, you know, after the hunt, we, we walked the property in some spots on, on how we could maybe hunt that better. And that was one of the keys we looked at, you know, where to set a tree stand so that we could intercept the deer going down the fence, still have good cover. Um, it was kind of on a high point. So they felt, you know, like no matter which direction the wind was
we were going to be able to blow over the top of, you know, the cedar thicket kind of came out behind us, which we thought they were running and they were running a lot of does in there. And so, you know, really quickly, like you could set up there, it's going to give them the wind, but they thought in the location that tree would be,
nothing would really smell us, or at least no area that was important would ever get our wind. And we could basically hunt 360 around that stand. So yeah, it was kind of interesting where I was kind of scratching my head, like why the heck would you put a stand here? But they were confident enough
you're high enough, nothing, you know, everything was dropping off. Um, you'd be safe there and be able to shoot. So it was interesting to give them the wind a little bit. And then, um, I suspect next time I go back and hunt that place, we're gonna have a stand there and be able to capitalize on, you know, that, that, you know, route that multiple big bucks were taken to check a, uh, you know, a big timber patch. It's all about the wind. Those big bucks are not going to give it up very often. If you're going to kill them consistently, you got to play the wind.
Yeah. Makes, makes a ton of sense. And, and, you know, just what I, on my one trip, um, you know, it kind of clicked, uh, you know, that, that whole idea of giving them a little bit, um, if not a lot of it, uh, what does your scent control regimen look like? Um,
you know, being a Western, you know, I keep going back to this, being a Western guy, like we don't, we've, we've kind of given up on scent control. We, you know, used to spray my boots and wear elk estrus wafers on my hat early days. And then it's like, well, I've always got to breathe. I'm always sweating as I'm walking around in the mountains. Like there's what I do in the washing machine and the dryer and throw them in a tub like the night before has no impact because within 20 minutes of me riding my bike or hiking up a mountain, it's,
and you know breathing out of my mouth or whatnot like I've given that up now you're going whitetail hunting you know I got busted a couple days I'm like man they shouldn't have got me so you know so you throw your clothes back in there scent you know put put the scent killers all over it whatnot um I'm curious what what does your scent control you know look like and how much does it matter or are you like us out west and if the wind's right it doesn't matter
That's exactly right. You know, at one time I did everything you could possibly do in regards to scent control. I even took the little chlorophyll tablets, you know, to control your body odor. I did use the sprays. I even carried a bottle to pee in in my tree stand.
And I was still getting busted. You know, I was going to all this trouble and I was still getting busted. Today, I do absolutely nothing, nothing at all except play the wind. My clothes are laying in my garage right next to my truck. They're not even sealed up in a tote or nothing. They're laying there. If you've got the wind, you've got the wind. He ain't going to smell you. If you don't, he's going to smell you.
And, you know, I've given a lot of seminars and, you know, I get this question a lot. Somebody will ask, what do you do for scent control? And I'll turn it right around on the crowd and I'll say, well, let me ask you all a question. How many of you use some sort of scent control product? Use the clothing or the sprays or whatever. If you use anything at all for scent control, raise your hand. Every hand goes up.
I said, how many of you have been winded by deer? Every hand's still up in the air. It don't work. It may work to some degree. It may control your odor to some degree, but you're on to it, man. Just forget that stuff and play the wind, and you either got it or you don't.
Yeah. And, you know, similar to you, some of your whitetail management ideas, you know, of some of the other guys you say actually hurts you. I feel scent control can hurt you because if there's any placebo effect where it's in your head and you think you can get away with something, you've now just maybe shortcutted a decision on a location or you've shortcutted, you know, because you've now got some, you know, it's not that way. Like, you know, put the extra effort in, take a different trail to your stand, you know, whatever you got to do, just put in the extra effort and then
assume that, you know, that scent control is not going to work and you'll make better decisions. Um, you know, be a little more conservative on your decisions. I think that's a fantastic point. Um, you know, if you know the deer is going to smell you, you know, they're going to, and they are, then you're going to hunt different. You're going to do whatever it takes to,
to minimize those deer getting downwind where they can smell you're going to minimize or go out of your way to walk in in such a place or in such a way that those deer are not very likely to catch your ground scent or encounter your ground scent you're going to do that knowing they can smell you but when you start using all these magic potions well then you get this false idea in your head that hey i'm scent free i can do whatever and you know walk through the woods make all kinds of mistakes and
Those products have probably saved more deer than they ever helped kill. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. So I assume that I was just kind of curious. You know, I just get worried, you know, it's like not having a ton of experience, not, you know, having, you know, thousands of deer walk by or stand like you, like what can you get away with? But I learned really quickly, like, man, if they're in that situation,
I don't even want to, I don't know, 120 degree fog behind you. Like there's nothing you can do to, unless you're high enough and it's just blown over them. But if you know those molecules or whether it's 10 molecules, a hundred, a thousand, I don't know how to quantify scent, but if they get enough of it, there's nothing you can do. Um, you have to breathe, you have to, your body's putting off heat all the time. Um, in my opinion, you're just kind of, um,
So, you know, with my background being in deer calls and trying to, I've heard you talk about gimmicks and whatnot, but, you know, we need, there is a way to use a deer's hearing against them, whether it's rattling, whether it's calls, whether it's grunting.
What is your strategy when it comes to making noise from a stand? Are you silent? Is there a time where a snort, wheeze, a grunt, a bleat, a rattling may work? Or do you try to just be a fly on the wall the entire time and hope that the pattern of the deer works for you? Or is there a time where you will use a call here or there?
Well, I almost never call blindly. Now, if I see a target animal that's out of range and I don't think he's working towards me, I will definitely use a call. I do it a few times every year. But to be honest, I think at least here in the Midwest, I think every one of those gadgets, gizmos, whatever,
I think they get so overused by every deer hunter in the woods that by the time a buck gets mature, he knows the game. So, you know, it's so hard to call them. I'm old enough that I remember the first grunt calls coming out. And the first season that I had a grunt call, I'm telling you what, just about every time I blew that thing, a buck came in.
I mean, it sounded like a buck and those bucks had never heard it before. And they came in today. You're lucky to call in 10%. And that's if you see him and you know, he heard it because he pulls his head up and looks at you. You're lucky to get 10% of them to come into your stand. And that was not the case. And I think that if you're in, you know, places where there's not as much hunting pressure,
then I think they're a lot more effective. You know, the same thing can be said for decoys. I've had terrible experience with decoys, but I know guys in Kansas that swear by them. They decoy in multiple bucks every single year, but I'm telling you, around here they don't work. You'll spook 20 deer for every single one that comes in to check your decoy out.
Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that. One thing, one point I want to make and see if it kind of correlates with what you've seen. You know, this is Kansas, well-managed pieces of property. The deer on these really probably only see, you know, my buddy Randy that owns the place, if anybody, and nobody hunts it. What I noticed, even with a well-managed property, lots of bucks, different age classes, you know, we were seeing three and a half, four and a half, six and a half, you know, the whole gamut.
Do you find, or what I found sitting in the tree, you know, wanting to test the calls and use them, they were very, very effective on deer that were four and a half and younger.
Now, if I had a buck cruising that was five and a half or six and a half, and he wasn't on lockdown, he was just doing the same, you know, let's just say slowly trotting down a trail. Um, same thing that these three and a halves or four and a halves were doing. And I hit him with the same, the same sound, same volume, you know, as much as I can do to be the same, that, that, that older buck, more mature buck might look in our direction. And he almost goes back to what he's doing where I had a very, very high success rate on getting the three and a halves and the four and a halves to turn towards my tree. Um,
And so why, and that's my own observation, 10 days in a tree, I'm far from an expert, but there was enough of a pattern happening where it's like, oh, grunting in these younger bucks is really easy. These big ones just don't seem to want to play the game. Same thing with rattling. We had some bucks come charging the blind or the tree that we were in, depending on the day. Older bucks, very rarely, and that's not in lockdown. So yeah, just...
An observation I made, you know, those three and a half, four and a half, somewhat easy to call in. Older deer, not so easy. I agree with that 100%. Those older ones have heard it before. And they probably circled downwind of some guy sitting in a tree blowing the Star Spangled Banner in his grunt tube, you know. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha.
Well, I really appreciate having you on here, Don. How can people find out more about you if they're interested in reading any more of your material, subscribing to any of that, all of your platforms and whatnot? Well, they can go to my website, which is higginsoutdoors.com, and my social media, Higgins Outdoors, on Facebook and Instagram. I've got a YouTube channel.
Uh, chasing giants with Higgins outdoors, a podcast chasing giants. It can be found on YouTube or any podcast platform. Um,
I'm out there. If you just do a search for my name, you're going to find me. After digesting a lot of your information that you have to talk about outside of this podcast and even going through this podcast, I assume I know what the answer is going to be on this one. But in closing, if you have one tip that you feel would give whitetail hunters better odds in years to come on their own property, what would it be?
Freedom of human intrusion is the key. I mean those big bucks are not going to tolerate human intrusion and if you find a place where human intrusion is very limited or non-existent, there's a very good chance that's going to be the place you're going to find a mature buck. And you can, if you own your own farm, you can make it that way and that's what I've done on my home farm and I'm telling you the biggest bucks in my neighborhood every single year are on my property.
Yeah. And you, I've heard you, you know, the Joey Buck, you know, these sanctuaries don't have to be big. He was on like a three acre piece. Right. And I've heard you reference, you know, a single tree out in the middle of a field that's surrounded by some brush. Like that could be the sanctuary. You're just so when people go to look for these sanctuaries, you don't have to look at big, you know, never ending tracks of timber. It's just literally where nobody is bothering them. There's no, you know, it might be a corner of your neighbor's property. It might be a corner of your property you never go to, but that's where that buck wants to be.
Absolutely. Well said. All right. Perfect. Well, thanks a lot, Don. Good luck if you get a chance to get back up in the stand and always, always interested to learn from you. You got some great information out there. And like I say, I appreciate having you here on the podcast. Yeah, I'm willing to do it anytime. So thanks for having me, Jason. All right. Thanks, Don.
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