Ep. 65: Whitetail Habitat and Hunting with Jeff Sturgis
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They've got ranches, forests, mountains, streams, you name it. Search by acreage. You can search by location. You can search by the kind of hunting and fishing you're dreaming of. Land.com. It is where the adventure begins. Welcome back to Cutting the Distance. Today's guest is a whitetail strategy expert. He's published more than 600 deer-related articles, 1,300 videos, five books, and four web classes.

But surprisingly, Jeff Sturgis wasn't born into a hunting family. He was born into a non-hunting family, so he had to figure it out all on his own. He had to learn how to squirrel hunt, rabbit hunt, and then eventually deer hunt. He did most of this largely on public land. He continues to hunt both public and private land in several states each year on DIY hunts. And he's used his experiences to design private hunting parcels for close to 1,500 clients in 26 states since 2005. So he founded Whitetail Habitat Solutions in 2004.

After being awarded QDMA's Deer Manager of the Year and at the present time has a team of experienced habitat professionals that combine to work on 300 clients' properties and dozens of states each year. He continuously involves his family in all of his outdoor endeavors. When he's not busy creating hundreds of videos each year for his social media platforms, he loves to fish.

And he's also one of the driving forces behind his family-run food plot seed company, Pure Wildlife Blends, that they established in 2022. So as you can see, Jeff has quite the resume when it comes to helping whitetail hunters, but he still places a priority on spending time with his wife, Jen, son, Jackson, and the rest of their families. Welcome to the show, Jeff. Yeah, thanks, Jason. It's great to be on with you.

So how was your season? You mentioned you guys just kind of wrapped up your 23 season or last week, I believe. So how did it go for you? It was a really good one. It was nice, shot a real nice buck, a couple target bucks, one in Wisconsin, one in Minnesota with a bow. And that's really my priority. But we also got to go out and hunt public land in Pennsylvania. That's a place near and dear to my heart. I've been

I started hunting there in 93. This is my 21st gun season opener. And that's always a special place. So Jen got to go with me, Dylan, and ended up shooting a buck on the second day. Got to pack it out. And that was a lot of fun. And then Jen shot a beautiful buck a couple weeks ago in the blind with Jackson, our 20-month-old. And that's always...

That's always a chore. We both hunted with them this year, kind of like we take turns and she still has bow tags available. So she'll be hunting and I'll be on Jackson duty too, but it's been a really good season so far. And, and we're not over with Jen hit the woods too, but yeah, it's, it's almost depressing when it Sunday, I counted down the days, the hours, minutes, and Sunday was my last set. So.

Gotcha. And I'm sure you've created lots of good friends through your consulting work. You stay in touch with your clients. How was their season? Was it good for them? Yeah, I get a lot of updates and it's crazy because we have so many clients or some that I've talked to. Some are really close friends, clients that I had back in 08, 09, 2010.

that you keep in touch with. So it always seems like there's a handful each year out of 70, 80, then to as many as 125 in one year that you end up keeping in touch with long-term as far as more of a friend, where you actually see them at other clients, or I've had a few stop out at the house, taking them on tours, and a couple of partnership relationships with some of them now. But yeah, we get a lot of really good feedback, and we just actually...

I used to collect client testimonials, feedback, their hunting experiences back in the day. This is going back 15 years, but we just started doing that in the last year so we could put them on the website. And it's been overwhelming as far as you get lots of pictures, lots of stories. And that's kind of what you feed off, keeps you fueled up. And we get a lot of that on YouTube and our social media too. So it's fun. A really fun process. Yeah.

Yeah, you mentioned that that's kind of the feel, you know, when we started making calls, you know, it was it was cooler to see. I didn't care so much about selling a call to somebody. I was more interested in what they went and did with that call. You know, when you got the emails or the texts or the messages, that was more important than I mean, you need the business to for a livelihood. But it's like that was that was what did it for me was to see the success they had with something that we designed and really liked that.

And if you're not, I talked to, I put a hunting video out just a couple days ago. So we do that a little bit. But it's all about teaching on the YouTube channel, social media. And so if we're not teaching somebody something, if it's not something someone can learn from, then we're wasting our time. It doesn't hit. Right.

So other people are more entertaining. I'm not an entertaining person. I need to actually offer good information or it's going to be a dud. And so it's a fun process. Yep. I'm right there with you. When, when, uh, they asked me to take over cutting the distance, I said, as long as you guys are in for a very technical and tactical podcast, I can do that, but I'm not going to sit and like make everybody light up with jokes or be that entertainer. So I, I know where you're coming from.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, that's great. So like all cutting the distance episodes, we're going to jump into some Q and a, that we either gather, um, from social media. We have people email us. If you have questions for me or my guests on future episodes, please email us at CTD at Phelps game calls.com. So the first one was one that's just more of a generality. I've got, you know, or, or,

is you hear people talk about this or it's just a question that goes around out there. So as you're designing a property and you can only guarantee one, are you taking habitat or genetics to start with? That's interesting. Genetics, you really can't change, especially in a free-ranging herd and the habitat is so critical. And so we focus really on that. It's kind of like

I go to clients that I have one client in Southeast Ohio and they and their neighbors have seen at least a 200 inch animal every single season for 15 years. And so there's areas like that. And obviously the genetics, everything is coming together there. I have a lot of other clients say a Northern Michigan client or Northern Minnesota, maybe poor soils where to them, 140 inch five, six year old buck would be the king of bucks for, for decades. And so I,

It's, you know, that's all a matter of, it's all relative and, but, uh, changing the habitat and just, they're already locked into that site. There's always something that can be done better so that they experience a better herd and hunt. Gotcha. Um, and this kind of rolls right into the next one. When you get consulted, what are the majority of people wanting to manage their farm or property for?

Are they always wanting top end bucks? Are they wanting like a band in the middle? Like, is there a way to manage for different outcomes or is it just manage the best for the deer and then let the cards kind of lay where they are? And I think that's more what we look at is, yeah, you know, it's interesting because I work with a lot of individuals that are worth, you know, you could, someone that's working at a factory, someone who's a school teacher, you know,

And then you have the professionals. You have a lot of small business owners, people that have 400 employees or five employees. And so there's just all across the board of people. I've never had anyone say, I just want to shoot giant bucks. I don't care about anything else. And what's interesting is, is that you're really trying to do the best with the habitat, the best with the design so that

If they want to take it to the level where they're only shooting the oldest bucks in the neighborhood, and that's all relative too, that might be a two or three-year-old in some areas. In some areas, it's a five or six-year-old. They can really let them grow until that because it's that state or that county, that area, or that size of parcel. And you really just want them to do their best. So we're looking at one of the things I talk about a lot is if you

are hitting the property and hitting what you need to for whitetails. Now, strategy aside, you know, there's so much strategy, how it has to be laid out, where you're not spooking deer, where you're, where you have the potential to spook deer, how you get out on and off the property that was spooking deer. That's so critical.

But at the same time, if you're hitting the habitat for white-tailed, you're going to encompass a lot of indicator species. For example, around here, some of the best indicator species were in mixed ag land, southeast Minnesota. I hunt in southwest Wisconsin, too. If you have pheasant, grouse, rabbit, and you have good turkey nesting cover, then those are really important indicator species. If you get all four going on a property, then not only, of course, will you have

great wildlife but then you'll have a great whitetail person nice nice i like that um

And then the last question I've got for you, um, you know, us coming from out West, say we don't get the luxury. Like you said, picking, I think we were talking before the podcast, like picking the days, you know, so you're not always hunting. We come, we come from out West. We've got basically, we got to pick a 10 day or a seven day or a 14. What would be that like 10 day period of time when you'd recommend somebody, um, you know, come out on a, on a whitetail hunt? And that's a tough one in our area. It'd be, um,

Can we ask what kind of buck they're hunting for? What I mean by that is it one that they feel is in and around their property in October? And if that's the case, I'd really like to hunt the last several days of October, first several days of November.

If it's one that they see years prior that they typically see in the middle of the night in October, but they get daylight sometime in early November during the rut, November 10th, November 5th, whatever that might be, then I'd have them pick more of the first 10 days of November. They want to see those bucks that are...

actually cruising and coming a long distance where you're not going to see that necessarily in the pre-rut in that last 10 days of October. So those are more of the local bucks, call them core bucks, and then the non-cores. So it depends on the property. But sometime around there, I always like, I shot my bucks October 27th, October 30th. So that's my favorite time to get them before they start leaving and, you know, might get shot on someone else's property on the 7th of November. Yeah.

Yeah. And, and I'm a very inexperienced white tail hunter, but I've absolutely fallen in love with it. But, uh, my first year out to Kansas, we hunted November, um, first to the 10th. And then this year we went out because it didn't jive with a mule deer hunt. So I came out November 15th to the 22nd. Um, and, and, and,

At least where we were at, we got an unseasonably warm patch in the middle of November this year anyway. So I don't know, but we hit like lockdown, we hit warm. And this year I would have told you that there wasn't a deer at times in our entire County, you know, in some of the best places in Kansas yet last year.

I, I was like at the edge of my seat the whole time. Cause we had deer coming around or moving. And, and so, yeah, it was like you said that the, the guy's property, I get to hunt in Kansas. Um, Randy, who's awesome. He, he agrees like either that late October, kind of that pre-rut staging, um, which are still kind of covering their ground versus you getting that mid-rut. It might be tough, but like you said, um, if those deer may come from the neighbor's property or might be cruising, then you may get a chance at those. They may want to push that into November a little bit.

Right, right. Yeah. And that's it in Kansas, like down there, I would say there are 10 weeks to two days behind us or two, 10 days or two weeks behind us. So kind of like, uh, I used to hunt Southeast Ohio a lot on public land and they would be about a week to 10 days behind us down there. You kind of look at that. Gotcha. As it moves across country. Yeah. Yep.

Well, thank you. Yeah, thanks for grabbing those few Q&As. Once again, you got questions for us or myself or my guests here at Cutting the Distance, feel free to email them to us at ctd at phelpsgamecalls.com or send us a social media message and we'll do our best to get them on here. So now to really get into what I wanted to hear, some of my personal questions and really what I want to...

to dive into hunting whitetail bucks. I'm still learning. It's not that I know everything about mule deer, elk, but I've been able to cut my teeth and then got to test my ideas and theories and everything. But whitetails, they're new to me, so I feel like I'm still learning. There's a lot that I can apply from some of my Western hunting. You're trying to do

you're trying to manage what's within your control and then there's some things out of your control and so i try to look at it like that what what can i take care of what can i do to get myself kind of in the best position um and that's kind of you know it all boils down to hunting um but there are some things that that you know just in my conversations with the guys out out in the midwest you know chris parish randy milligan brock shelton these guys that i get to hunt with that have did it for a long time know their stuff i'm like what i didn't think of it that way you know or or there's certain things so um

uh what is the best management so one thing like for me out west i'm able to use optics my eyes right and so right off the bat i go into the whitetail woods and sometimes i'm like well this is

This is unfortunate. I can only see 50 yards, so it kind of takes that ability. Do you ever like, um, you know, and seeing them in the daylight, that's a whole nother thing. Like I live in black tail country, which is, which is maybe even a more nocturnal than white tail. I won't go on record saying that, but I feel that there may be just as nocturnal, um, as it is.

so seeing these things in the daylight and giving yourself a chance, which a lot of times means maybe moving closer to bedding, which then some people are like, it's, it's not worth the risk. So what's your, what's your approach? What's your opinion on being able to see deer target deer in the daylight? Like what's your strategy for that? And I've got some follow-up questions, but I'm going to hear your answer and then kind of, kind of run into these other, I guess, additional questions. You know, what's interesting. It's,

There's a lot of properties where you can go out and see does, fawns, young bucks during the daylight on every sit. There's other properties you have trouble seeing the deer. When it comes to older bucks, I always look at them as independent thinkers. They don't have a herd around them. In fact, their buddies keep getting picked off as they grow older. So it's a little bit different. They do and act on their own. To me, when we're looking at private parcels, and you can even extend this to public land,

There's 3%, 5% of all public or all private parcels that actually hold daylight bucks. There's not a lot. And so a lot of people are looking at, well,

We're getting pictures of that buck at 2 a.m. and consistently middle of night, you know, three times a week. He must be just over in this corner on this 80-acre woodlot and he's just not coming out to light. And I look at it like if you're in a normal whitetail property and they're not coming into middle of night, it's because they came a mile and a half, two miles, a mile from a direction. So that's part of it. So why are they around during the daylight in some areas? And

Mature bucks, to me, have the knack for finding the best food in the area. Their home range is several times greater than a doe family group. So they're going to travel three square miles instead of a half square mile or three quarters of a square mile. And they're going to find that best food. If that best food is unpressured and they can go back and forth to bedding and it's unpressured, there's not too many does. You want to have a certain number of does. If there's no does there, they're not attracted. Why would an older buck be attracted? But

That's where it starts getting a little bit difficult between public or private land is let's look at areas that, for one, have good food, two, have good cover, three, have good movement between, and four, aren't pressured at all by hunters or at least have that illusion that they're not pressured. And when you look at those factors...

It narrows it down to very, very few areas that actually hold mature bucks. And so that's part of it is, you know, hunting those. So on a private land, it's so critical that, yeah, you have to have great habitat. You have to plant probably food plots. You know, if you just work on the habitat, but you don't have food plots, someone else a mile away, if they have a good food plot program, those deer are gone. You're not going to see, especially those mature bucks. But it has to be set up and you have to hunt that private land.

Very, very strategically. So you cannot push a deer off your property. And I always give an example, a long, narrow food plot that's starting in the center of your land and goes to the outside edge. It's very lengthy. Let's say it's 200 yards long by 40 feet wide.

that's just going to push and pull deer off your border. If you create that habitat improvement parallel to your borders, then you'll keep them on your border and running parallel. That's just one example, but everything has to be aligned so that you're controlling that 300 yards of mature buck might move during the daylight and

within your borders or around your borders, even taking into account your neighbors, what's a safe neighbor and what's a high pressure neighbor as far as where you might pull deer from. And then you look at public land, you're just, instead of trying to do that on 120 acres and create it and apply a lot of strategy and work really hard, you're trying to put a lot of boot time in on public land and find that over 10,000 acres or 5,000 acres.

Gotcha. You brought up a point there. I'm going – I've already kind of shot my itinerary in the foot here, but now you sparked it. No, no. You made a point that – can you design – when you go in and look at a property or if an owner is looking at their own property, do you design that based on what your neighbor is like? If your neighbors already have all the ag, would you –

Maybe just, is there ever a time where you'd leave it like this is good bedding? Like, well, you'll try to kill them on this wind when they come back to bed? Or will you still want to have food in there for them? Or how much do you take into account everything around your piece in the ultimate scheme of what they need or what your piece provides? So when we, when I sit down with a client, the first hour to two hours, usually have coffee, breakfast, whatever we sit.

And we talk about a lot about food, what's going on on their land, what they planted, what's worked in the past, what's going on in their neighbors' lands to the best of their knowledge. We even pull up aerial photos, see if they have food plots, just see what's going on. And the cool thing is if your neighbors have food plots, 90% of the time they're probably overpressuring and spooking the deer off those plots.

So then you can become the daylight parcel. It's the same with public land. If you're, you know, a little secret, if you hunt public land, look for large tracts of land with lots of food plots, go about a half mile, mile off their borders, get in, even if it takes an hour and a half to walk in and you'll probably have those deer come into your lap in the morning because most people are pushing them off your property. So,

The food around you is critical, but you never want to let someone else's food dictate your hunt. And what I mean by that is, let's say you have ag land around you. Ag land's always rotating. For example, here we could have standing corn one year, and then another year, which is half the years around here, it's plowed down in early November, manured, and chisel plowed down, so there's zero food. The alfalfa frosts out, turns yellow, stormy, dormant.

So are STEMI and dormant. So you can really shoot yourself in the foot counting on ag land because it's always changing. Now, on the flip side, if you're counting on someone else's food plots, then if they're doing a good job, all those deer are going to stay within two, three, 400 yards of that food plot, which might not even place any deer on your property. So to me, it's critical you have that food.

And great habitat is critical too. You have to have daytime browse form, and then you have to have that afternoon food source in a food plot. If you don't have both,

They're not going to stay on your land just because you have great browse and great habitat consistently. It's going to be very random. You can't define or build a deer herd. And then if you have food and you don't have great cover, then why are they going to bet on your land? Even if you have great food, it turns into a nighttime parcel. So you always consider what's going on around you, your neighbor's access, what kind of food that they're planting and where, water sources that they might have.

But in the end, as far as the food control, that sets a structure for the movement on your parcel every single day. And ideally, you'd have enough food, which doesn't take a huge amount, but you'd have enough food that would start really hitting an August peak in November as far as attractiveness. And if it runs out the end of the deer season, that's okay.

But that gets you in through all the way into December, January in most areas. And that'll give you an ability to actually not only have a great hunt, but to build a great herd too.

Gotcha. And then, so with that, if it's small pieces of property or the terrain lays out so that you can't put big, like, are you a big fan of like the hidey hole food plots, like something that's back away from the bigger ag to, to, to get them through there, like in the daylight or like, what's your opinion on that? Cause not everybody's got, you know, 500 or 400 acres. You know, some people are dealing with these smaller ones. Like what would be your recommendation? Right. Like on these small food plots to get them to hit it prior to ag or, or what's your opinion on that?

Well, you got to look at it too. If the ag is no good, then you could have a nice eighth of an acre, quarter acre food plot. And if the ag's no good, then there's not going to be any deer to go through that hunting plot anyways. So that in itself, a small food plot, isn't going to put deer on your land or through that movement. So like, for example, one of the property I hunt in Wisconsin, I've hunted that since 2014. Then I hunted the neighbor since 2002. So I'm real familiar with that area.

But we have about 30 acres of woods and we have about eight acres of fields that we can work with. And out of those eight acres, only about three acres is flat enough to plant food plot. And we do. And that three acres sets the tone and structure for the movement on that parcel.

Um, for the entire hunting season. And so we have, we have yet to hunt those food plots with a bow since 2014, because we can't get into them without spooking deer. They're in a big valley and that's like an arena of hillside all around them. But what we do is,

travel to is we get around those points and we hunt deer on the way to those food plots or we hunt deer up in the bedding areas. So a lot of times we're killing deer up in the bedding areas, mornings, afternoons when they're exiting a bedding area.

Or on the way to food, down close to the food, but not so close that we spook the deer. So even on a small parcel like that, the only exceptions are I've worked on five, eight acre parcels where they just, they're not going to have the room for food. And it has to be more like a pass through. And obviously if their parcel is that small, typically there's neighborhoods involved, subdivisions. It's less rural. It's not out.

Now, if you had 10 acres and it was surrounded by national forest in a remote area, you'd want to plant five or six acres of food plots if you could. And then you'd draw deer from a mile and a half, two miles in any direction. And I'd probably go try to kill them out on the public land and maybe sit on that food in the afternoon, evening during certain times. But so those little hidey hole plots, we love them, but they have to be supported by consistent food. And so we'll have a

three-quarter acre plot here and then a tenth of an acre food plot off to the side 50, 80 yards away and we'll hunt those gears or they're coming back and forth. So it really depends. You have to have those anchoring food plots to anchor that movement. Yeah.

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So Jeff, you mentioned in certain situations having to kill them in their bedding. How close are you willing to get? Now, when you say killing them in the X where they want to bed, how close are you willing to get to that point? Just on the outside edge where I feel I'm safe. And so safe place to blow my scent, safe way to get in and out without spooking them in that bedding area. And then what that allows you to do, I'll give you an example. We have a

a ridge system on the property in Wisconsin in the one side. And you can count on deer bedding on that backside of the ridge system in the hollow and valley between there and the neighbors. And so we'll get up to the top of that ridge system towards a crest, but you never want to break that crest and go down on the backside because you can spook out the whole hollow.

So, the buck, I can think of some of the buck bedding areas in that valley, and they're 150, 200 yards from where we're sitting, 100 yards from where we're sitting. And as long as those bucks are there every day, then we have a chance to shoot them because they'll come up to our ridge system on the funnels we're hunting, on a waterhole we're hunting, while they're cruising for does, on the way down to our food.

There's a lot of different reasons they could go through there. And so what I find is you just chip away at the outside of that bedding area safely. And as long as you maintain them in that location, then you'll kill them eventually. You know, 80% of the time, over a long period of time, you'll shoot 80% of those target bucks by just chipping away at that moving plane at safe. Gotcha.

And one of the things where we're talking about betting, getting close to it. So I'm going to continue down that. You know, one of the things for me is like, how do you know that's a betting area? Like, and this might be a dumb question for you, whitetail experts or people that have been there. Like, how do you, how are you for sure? Or do you do like your best guess? Or, you know, let's say you see a buck on one of your food plots and he comes from this direction to that direction. Like, how are you placing the X on the ground?

um without maybe knowing exactly where he's getting into or where he's actually bedding are you giving it like a range like that's a great question you know obviously if they're coming in right around dark from a certain direction you can pinpoint where their bedding is because the majority of the season on an average whitetail property you know when we get into big wilderness parcels they might travel three quarters of a mile during daylight to go from bedding in a swamp area to a food source especially if it's a bait pile or something i'm thinking up in michigan

They get pushed off a long ways, but then they'll hit that bait pile an hour after dark. And they probably came from three quarters of a mile away at least to get there. On a normal whitetail parcel, though, those bucks are not going to move more than 300 yards during the daylight, especially the older they get or they'd be dead. And so it's pretty easy to say, okay, this buck is showing up right around dark, half hour after. You just go the direction he's coming from and you probably know the thick cover that he's at. And then you back up a little bit.

So does and fawns will typically bed right next to that major food source. That buck's not going to bed there. And then you might have younger bucks and then you have that older buck. And I call that depth of cover. If I've gone to a property, Southern Michigan, I can think of as 400 acres near Jackson County, beautiful buck area.

And every 100 yards, 125 yards, they had another food plot, over 20 acres of food plots. In that case, that buck never had that depth of cover. So they'd grow up and they'd year and a half, two and a half, all of a sudden they're gone at three and a half, four and a half. Neighbor shoots them two miles away as a 180 inch five-year-old. And the point was it grew out of its level of reclusiveness it needs. It grew out of the depth of cover requirement that it needs. It didn't have a space where it could go back and call its own. And so a lot of times you're looking at

a private parcel, if there's major food here and you have decent cover extending to the west, and then you have some knolls or a little swamp edge, some diversity like 250 to 350 yards back, I can look at a client parcel and say, well, there's the food. There's an unpressured neighbor. You have about 300 yards back. You can say, is that where the buck's been? You know, is that where you're finding all the sign? Can you just look at it

food, layers of doe bedding, young bucks, and then you have those old bucks, and it's no different on public land. You know, if you have major apple trees, white oaks near the road, and then you can look at that and say, well, that's going to hold a lot of does, fawns, young deer, and then you're going back a mile and finding out where those mature bucks are. No different than, I love hunting public land that's near private land, big public land chunks where you can come in from an opposite direction, walk back an hour and a half,

Get about half mile, three-quarters of a mile from neighboring golf courses, subdivisions, ag fields, food plots, house and house and house, because then you know those bucks are going to be in that wheelhouse. Those does and falls will be a lot closer. So I hope that makes sense. It's kind of part of its distance, but you have to have that depth for them. And then part of it's timing. If they're not getting to your food plots until 2 a.m., they're literally a mile and a half away, probably two miles away. Yeah. Before I ask...

When one thing that I've struggled with is as a Western hunter, we're just always keeping the wind in our face. Right. And we're either keeping track. We can see the animal we're hunting. We're white till you don't get to see it. And so you've mentioned a couple of times, like your example of coming in, you know, an hour, hour and a half behind. How do you decide? Cause you're playing the wind. Maybe it, it, it,

90 to 120 degrees, right? You're not playing it perfect because you can't, but how do you make sure when that deer passes your location, he doesn't get your wind or, you know what I mean? Like, are you just hoping, are you, are you knowing what trail that he's on or you're guessing what trail? Because if he, if you don't do it right, like he can wind you on the backside or if you're just off the trail by 40 yards, like there's a little bit of a, you know, stand placement, there's a science to all of that or, or an art to it. Maybe, maybe more so like that's always been,

my thing, you know, the, the property I hunt, the stands are somewhat established, right? They know the travel corridors, but say on a piece of public, how would you go in and are you going to use pinch points? Are you going to use ridge lines? Like what's your, what's your strategy on going in there and hanging a stand on, on a, on a piece of public like that? First off for, uh, for scent control, the number one form of scent control is stand location. So you, you have to have a good stand location. Um,

meaning you don't expect deer to be downwind of you. And so in that case, like I love ridge systems because in hill country, that'll dictate where deer are not going to be. For example, on a really steep face, they might not be there. But then at the same time, you can use that elevation change and the thermals. So morning hunting up high, we can blow our scent right over a deer trail down below us and know that 100% they're not going to get our wind.

You know that if you blow it down on this steep face for the deer or not, they're not going to get your wind. A lot of times when we're working with small properties, 40 to 80 to 100 acres, lakes, ponds, open mature woods, horse pasture land, a neighboring house, neighboring school, factory, whatever it might be, road, then you're backing up to that area where you can blow your scent into, and I call them scent blockers, where you know that you're not going to spook a deer.

but you're getting in close to the movement where you accept balance where you're moving as close as you can to the movement without getting so far that you get deer back behind you and then that's the way you have to hunt and so every time that's what a lot of times we're working with clients is assessing that balance so if we put a stand here is that too close to your access is it too close to the movement is a far enough way to not spook deer off the food plot every time you get in and out of the stand

And so it's all about if there's a question of if I move in on the stand and deer might get downwind of me behind me, then we just, to me, it's black and white. You just don't hunt it. You can't. You always have to have, always have to. I had a big buck I was after. It was four seasons. We had videos of him, pictures.

I've been hunting in the last two years. He was a legitimate six-year-old, beautiful buck. And that was my number one target buck here in Minnesota. I went into an area where we actually had a picture of him in the morning going into a bedding area. We had a stand back there, went into that stand, sat there for 10 minutes, couldn't wait to go sit in there, gave myself about a four and a half, five hour sit.

Get in there and 15 minutes later, the wind was just iffy. And it was good two-thirds, three-quarters of the time, and then it wasn't. And then it'd do it again. So I gave myself 15, 20 minutes, and I got out and moved to a stand about 150 yards away and ended up shooting that buck probably as he was coming from that bedding area. And you have to have that discipline to – you can never look at it like I sprayed this –

I use this machine and it's going to block your scent. If you do that, then for example, on that night, if it was bad and I've done that before where I've,

gone out to sit and the winds just didn't feel right from what I thought. Maybe a calmer wind than I thought. So the thermals were going down too soon and being pulled down where I wanted that steady wind. So I get moved somewhere else. And then all of a sudden check the trail cameras later and realize that he came in that night. And if he, if you were there, you would have spooked him. And then you shoot him four days later in that same spot. Kind of like I've had many opportunities like that. If you didn't,

If you weren't disciplined, you wouldn't. And then once you spoke them, you're not getting them there two or three weeks from now. It's maybe a five, six weeks from now, if he's still around, but, uh, you're, you're in big trouble if you spoke them.

Yeah. And that's where sometimes I think, you know, that place we hunt in Kansas, the perimeter stands, I love, like it all makes sense to me. Like we come in, we've got a very clear direction and you know, a lot of times those bigger bucks will run like the edge of, of that property, which the wind's perfect in our face. Our approach was perfect. That buck's going to come by cause he's trying to wind check that entire patch of timber or food plot or whatever it may be. So I love that. I've always just struggled when we go to the interior, right? We don't get a great wind. We can't hunt the right perimeter stand. And I'm like,

Well, unless I either shoot this deer before he gets behind me, like, and that means he's got 80 yards of this tree that we're in. And we, I just know that thankfully they weren't target deer, but even these younger deer, they're 50 or 60 yards off. They get past you and they, they, they wind you. And, and I'm like, that's where we don't have that freedom of being local or close where we just wouldn't hunt that day. Right. We're like, well, we're there. We got to try to hunt a stand that gives us a 50% chance. Yeah.

and i've always just like yeah if you know out west we would just you know or our thought process like this isn't going to work enough or it's almost got to be perfect like we got to know that deer is going to travel on this road and our trees set up for that travel path it's like you just we have no interior stands if i'm going to spook young deer there then it it

It's almost like if you're not spooking it, the red carpet's rolled out for deer activity, for mature box. If you're spooking deer, then they're not going to be there either. And so we can't afford to have... And we go to clients, it's hard because... And I'm pretty black and white with that. I've been doing it enough where...

You go to a client and they say, hey, what about this stand? And I'll just say, you can never hunt it. Why even have me here? Why have me design the property? You can't destroy your property. How long do you want to destroy your property for? Do you want to destroy it for two weeks, three weeks? You just can't do it. And I'll say, you know, if you're going to do it, at least wait till middle of November, go in there really early, sit all day.

But if you spook deer, and if you can imagine, even on 200 acres, the deer run, these whitetails run a half mile when they're spooked. And so you can be in the middle of 160 acres, spook them, and they're gone. And so our average client's about 100 acres.

And you just can't hear on our property here. It's 255 acres. So big difference from Wisconsin. But what area do I want to destroy in the property? So we have 77 acres over here, 38 over here, 110 over here. So which area, each one of those, if I, it's all connected, but it's weird shape, but which area do I want to destroy? And which area that we worked on for the entire year? And so that's kind of how you have to look at it. Like, yeah.

You just can't do it. And that's where like, I'll tell you, we went, Dylan and I, it was back in, I think 2018, we went on a guided hunt and I've only been on like three in my lifetime. And we went into the stand and from where they said the deer were coming from. And, uh,

you know, we thought they would go where they said they deer would come from. It's like, these winds are horrible. And, uh, we just went to breakfast. We never even told the guide. We just got out, went to breakfast and, uh, came back and it was like, I just don't, I don't want to re-answer it. I probably put out some Instagram reels or something that day, but it was more like we, we, we got stuff to do, you know, like, and that's what around here, I just, it's different when you live here and when,

When you have the choice of when you hunt, because I got other things to do. You know, I don't hunt. I might set 25, 30 times for an entire season, 40 times at the most, but that's over three and a half months.

Yep. Yep. No, and most of the property, like it's, you know, a 400, I get to hunt a South 400 that he owns a lot. And the, almost all this, all the stands are perimeter, but the one, um, or I guess there's two ones on like a very steep bluff. So we can get away with the wind going up and over and we don't get wind check. But the one in the bottom that actually killed my deer out of last year has always just made me nervous. Yeah. We can hunt on this wind, hoping that they're coming back off. This year was beans, uh,

um you know last year it was i don't remember what it was but um there's a lot of feed out there and they kind of come back up that valley but i'm like dang man if i don't kill them right here i'm gonna get winded and it's just it's like a last day last day hunt yeah yeah but it works it's just one of those things i think about like all the perimeter stands are awesome um you know it's just that one like it's there and it works but

It's like, even if, even if the wind's perfect for where you think the deer are coming from, it's not perfect for, you know, 90 degrees, 120 degrees behind that. Right. The deer could be in there and, um. It's never perfect. So when you, you can only plan for it, you know, but it, yeah, the deer are anything but, uh, 100% predictable. So.

I've got to imagine just like, uh, you know, elk around here, they usually walk into the wind, right? And these more mature animals, they, they understand wind. Do you feel your chance of killing a big buck on an absolute perfect wind where that deer is walking with that wind directly up as you know, at his tail?

Or do you got to give them a little bit of wind? Do you have to get them to make a mistake? Like, what's your opinion on the wind hitting your right cheek versus the wind hitting the nose? Like, do you need to give them a little advantage? Or have you found that the bigger bucks, they'll slip up either way? You know what I mean? Like, are they more comfortable moving when they think they got a little bit of wind in a direction? Or will they move in a direction with the wind at their back? So I find they, especially in smaller parcels, when you're talking a few hundred acres or less, they choose their bedding area.

And they might have a few bedding areas, but they're not choosing. They're not moving typically 400 yards a day from this side to this side based on the wind. They're choosing a bedding area and that's very sacred to them the older they get. And then their food sources stay very consistent, a lot more consistent. Now, there might be a football movement where they start in one spot, they more cheat to the north and then come into that food plot or another wind. They might cheat to the south, but they're starting and ending in the same spots either way.

And where does are more straight line moves. They just go from their bedding area to food bedding area to food in that afternoon without any care to the wind. When I see bucks using the wind the most or when they're sent checking for does. And so we're sitting on the outside of a bedding area winds in my face or somewhat where the bedding area winds are blowing towards us. And he's on the outside of that bedding area.

checking that doe bedding area, just looking for does, because he can check in 150 yards. So I always base the hunts not on what I think the buck will be using the wind by, scent checking, where he's coming, where he's moving. He's going to use this trail with this wind. I'm purely hunting because the wind is in my favor in this stand. I expect this buck to be bedded in this location and going to this area, or he's feeding gear in the morning. I expect him to be coming back to that bedding area

And now I've seen them circle the bedding area to get into that bedding area, use the wind to get into the bedding area. I've seen them come in on the downwind side of a food source.

A lot of times when they're cruising and when they're moving in between, I just choose a stand location based on where I think I can kill them and have that wind advantage. And I find they move and they'll move with the wind. The buck I shot in Wisconsin was moving with the wind because he comes from the bedding area to the right. He was going to the water hole to the left and he just came with the wind right in. My wind was blowing to my left side and off the steep face. And so he came in with the wind. I shot him at like 15 yards and

And, uh, and so, you know, that, that kind of thing happens all the time. I'm trying to think of, uh, uh, the buck I shot in, in Minnesota, the wind was blowing straight in my face a little bit to my right. And then he was coming in directly from my last left. So he didn't have a wind advantage coming in either. He was a six year old. The other one was a five year old. Yeah. So, um, I don't really go by that too much.

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And then last question, well, maybe last question for a second on bedding areas. Do you believe in like letting them be natural early on on like a habitat project or early on in a property when you're wanting to manage it? Do you believe to go in there and create them like, you know, hinge cutting, you know, burning like how or not burning the bedding area, making sure it doesn't get burnt? Like, do you believe you can create the bedding area or does it need to be somewhat in the right spot, the same location?

or the right location, right terrain, right tree species, whatever it may be. What's your opinion on creating that versus does it need to be somewhat natural? Yeah, that's good. I really like it to be somewhat natural possible. But when you go to a client property, they'll have traditional movement that's on and off the property. And those are always going to be based on major funnels, major movement areas.

And so those are something you can't change. But you can imagine if we put a food plot in an area where they might have had a quarter acre food plot before. Now we're carving that out to be a two acre food plot. There's going to be cattle paths coming from area that weren't the locations that weren't there before. If you put that food plot in there, that locates does next to it and then you'll have that buck bedding. So let's say, OK, we're going to count on this little knoll back 250 yards. It'll probably be buck bedding.

If it's wide open hardwoods, that's probably going to be part of a timber harvest. That's the easiest. And then to get into the backside of that bedding area, we might want to leave the timber alone so that we can actually walk through open timber and blow our scent into it while we're waiting for that buck to come back.

Let's say that's a solid cedar pocket area. Then we'll probably remove 50% of those cedars in pockets. Let's say it's a 15-acre area, so we might remove six, seven, eight acres of cedar in pockets, quarter acre, acre, and then try to get some herbaceous growth in there, some hardwood regen, some shrubs.

which will help wildlife too, but now they have that daytime browse and then they have the cover of the cedar. Switchgrass, we do the same. Looking for diversity pockets, pollinator blends, we'll put in the switchgrass so that critters have food and so do deer, but then they have that solid structure of the switchgrass to hold them in. So it really depends on the property. We'll try to enhance it if needed.

But then I was, I can remember those five properties last week. We go into an area and it's where a lot of bucks come from and go into a major food plot. And he sees them coming in from this area. We walk in there and he's,

It was beautiful. It had vines hanging down. It had a lot of junk timber, some box elders, some crappy cherry trees, occasional oak. It had some shrubs in there, some little knolls and flats. And he said, what would you do with this area? And I said, absolutely nothing. This is a really low priority on your property. They're already using it.

But then that, out of his 120 acres, he had about 40 acres over to the east side that was just all open timber. And that was a big, giant hole in his property where we need to work on that area and remove timber, leave the edges alone. And then on the other portion of his property, about half of the 40 on the west side, he had it. It was just nasty, briar-filled area.

thicket, gray dogwood mixed with white pine. And it was hard to imagine a big buck walking through there. It was so thick. So what they did is they went in with a rotary cutter and they made amazing pocket effect all throughout there so deer could actually use it. And then I was back now about a year and a half later after they did a lot of this. And it was amazing how the deer take to those areas. So it's kind of...

You know, in some areas you're leaving alone, some areas you need to do something to, to fill holes and then you need to do it different ways. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. No hinge cutting is hinge cutting is a tool, but we recommend hinge cutting on maybe, you know, not more than 20% of all properties, more like 15, but the habitat determines that maybe someone's not skilled with a saw, then I don't want them cutting hinge cuts. So we'll recommend they don't cut. Yeah.

And then if you can have a logger create your bedding areas and stem count for you, what an excellent time and a lot less risk to do so. And then that's a time for diversification too. We could add some conifers to those hardwoods, especially in pockets, start to diversify the landscape a little bit too. There's a lot of different ways to look at that. And it might be, we've had clients where the big bucks are coming from the public land to the north, for example.

And, and so you don't want to try to reinvent it and say, well, we're going to try to stick them 100 yards from a food plot. It's okay if they're 400 yards back on that public land, no one hunts it. It's really hard to access. And so you're considering that within the management plan too.

Gotcha yeah that makes a lot of sense and I'm always amazed at least when we're driving around in Kansas it seems like you drive by somebody's unmaintained like 80 or their unmaintained 160 or 320 and it's it is like you said just gray gray hardwood trees that are you know and then they got some cedars mixing it's a brushy mess never maintained and and it's like wow that I

unless you had the piece next to it, you couldn't necessarily hunt in that, but that thing will be loaded up. That thing will just be loaded up with deer right there. And, and, and my buddy Randy's property has a piece like that and some corners. And it's like, you sit in your stand and you're like, all the deer are coming out of that junk. You know? So it's like,

It's weird. He's got these beautiful oak hardwoods. He's one of those guys, if it can't produce an acorn or if it doesn't produce something for the deer, let's get it out of there. Let's cut it or get it out. He's got these beautiful hardwoods, but yet, hey, all these deer are picking this just brushy, messy cedar. They always do. That's important, or the CRP is important. You have to always remember...

looking at deer property is, and we talk about like land buying tips, land buying fails to avoid, the lower the timber value, unless it's underwater, giant rocks or something, but the lower the timber value, the higher the wildlife value. So if you have big oaks, maple, cherry, worst kind of woods for deer. A huge oak woods, worst kind of woods for deer. Acorns are not, acorns are more like browse. They're hard to digest. They're hard to digest.

And, yeah, we have acorns out here, but they're a part of the browse. The acorns alone are not going to hold deer on the property. So always remember that the lower the quality of the timber, the better the value for wildlife. That makes sense. And that's a really hard concept for, you know, for people buying because they want to have these big, beautiful woods.

But then, and then the worst thing is let's see at a hundred acres of hardwoods, do you know how much work and dozer time and land manipulation and diversification need to make that actually a good wildlife person? A lot of money. Versus just sending a, a, a brusher through or a most of, you know, something that just munches it up. You got to get out the big equipment and. Or buying, yeah. Buying a property that, and so that's where we try to keep people,

Make sure it's got a lot of diversification. You want to look at it from an aerial photo. This is even on public land. You look at an aerial photo and there's lots of different shapes and colors, probably a good place to hunt. Yeah, gotcha.

So now we're going to jump into weather. It kind of ties back in to what we talked about earlier. You guys that live there, just like us out here, if we're hunting out west and the day doesn't present itself right, the wind's wrong, or we can sit it out. So weather introduces all of these variables into it. You've got different temperature ranges. You've got different precip, whether it's rain or snow. You've got different pressures, highs or lows.

moving in you've got you know wind which we've already covered on but you know it's such a huge thing um but then to complicate it even more you get all these things that work in in unit you know they got all these variables that that change with each other they change against each other and then one thing like uh my buddy chris parish has said like he's always a big fan of like

He wants it to change, but then sit there for two or three days. Like he doesn't want to be, it's not as good like during the change sometimes where he wants to be like on the backside of that cold front a little bit. Um,

So how do you look at all these things? Like, I guess maybe a better way to pose the question is like, what's your perfect weather day? Like, what are you looking for temperature wise, precip wise, you know, higher, low pressure? Um, you know, obviously we want the wind, right. But, but like, what's a good day versus like, what's a marginal day or does it come down to wind? Um, and if you got the wind, are you going to hunt regardless of those other factors of the weather? Um, explain that a little bit.

There's a, and this is something that's near and near to my heart. My last book, it kind of ties in with that, but it's all weather whitetails. And so, and then I worked, I worked with HuntWise and I helped to develop their algorithm. I developed an algorithm for outdoor life back in 2015 on how I hunt the weather. And so it's near and dear to my heart. And what I'm looking for is not a certain temperature. For example, I'm looking for temperature change. And so I,

Temperature change to me is number one. And so let's say you have a time period where it's, and it could be late October where it's unseasonably warm. It's 71, 69, 68, 70, 70 for several days in a row. And all of a sudden there's a major cold front that goes through and it drops the temperatures down to 50.

So even then it might be traditionally a little bit warm, but it just dropped 20 degrees. Well, if it dropped 20 degrees, there's major weather that took place to get it to drop, meaning you probably had extreme winds, probably some extreme moisture of some kind. And it was volatile for a longer period of time the longer it's dropping. And so deer feed five times in a 24-hour period.

If they miss feedings, they're really hungry on the backside. So if they're not going out into the open ag fields because it's blizzard, because it's windy, because it's raining thunder, lightning storms, it's stressful to them. They're burning energy through stress because it's loud and it makes them nervous. They're creatures of stress. They're burning energy because they miss feedings and they're burning energy because

because of the temperature drop. They're trying to stay warm. So you have three things that work for them. And then on the backside of that, what we see when that temperature drops, when the wind modifies, now it could have been 40 miles an hour, it's dropped into 20. Could have been 30 miles an hour, it's dropped into 10. The bottom line, that's a modification of the wind. Then it still could be really windy. Let's say it was 50 miles an hour, it's dropping to 25. They'll notice that change.

So once that change takes place and it modifies, then that's when I want to be on the stand. Now look at pressure. Let's say that there's five or six days of consistency. You have this big whammy of a cold front come through. And then all of a sudden on the backside, it drops 20 degrees, winds moderate, weather, but the pressure is still low because there's another front coming.

It doesn't matter what the pressure is, those deer are going to move. They just miss feedings. The weather dropped, the temperature dropped. It's moderating right now. They're going to put the feed bag on and they're going to move. So that's a great time to hunt. If it's higher pressure, let's say that it comes through and there's a high pressure, great time to hunt. If the moon's bad or good, it's still a great time to hunt. So I look at it like they don't have a pressure meter in the head. Everything that they do is tangible.

And you can even look at, so you'll have a front coming through, a big blizzard. And you'll probably see this in Elk too, where they know not to be caught out in the open. And I think they know that by wind speed, temperature, moisture, wind direction. They live out there at 365, obviously.

They know not to get caught out there, but then they, you have a snow that's coming in. It's going to be three inches. It's wet snow. The winds are going to be moderate. Well, then you see them feeding like crazy out there in the fields. They know. And I don't think it's, and it could be the exact same pressure. They just know by tangibles. So there's times where like, you'll have it come through. There's a high pressure right at the backside. Awesome day to hunt low pressure. Doesn't matter. All those changes just took place.

There's times where the second or third day show a higher pressure day because it's slowly rising after that front took place. To me, that first day after the front, part of that second day is when you need to be hunting. By the third day, it's just more of the same. So even if the pressure is higher, and I'll see some of the formulas for looking at weather change and predicting deer movement,

If you'll have those models showing that that second and third day is higher than that first day, you just miss one of the best days of the year. Just because the pressure is higher doesn't mean a thing on that second and third day. So kind of look at in a deer's world, it's kind of like us being lost out in the wilderness. We get rescued.

We're probably going to gorge ourselves on food. But do we do it the second day, the third day? And that's what I look with deer. When that change goes through, they're ready to replenish that energy. But two days after that, they're not doing the same. And that's when you want to be there, right there. So I hope that makes sense. It's kind of based on feeding, based on temperature. Obviously, we have right now, just on those two properties, I'm talking about a total of 300 acres.

We have almost 60 cell cameras out in two states. And so we can see when the weather's windy, when it's super hot, when there's blizzard conditions, deer don't move. It's pretty easy. It's pretty, obviously they don't move. So weather does influence, obviously, but it's fun to watch them and be able to predict it.

Yeah, we watched them in Kansas. We went from mid-70s when we first got there in the middle of the day where it's like you couldn't stand to get in the redneck in the afternoon without just being insulated, just being in an oven. Oh, yeah. And then we had this weird low-pressure move-in that brought a bunch of rain, which they needed. So I wasn't going to complain because everybody needed the rain there in Kansas. But then it was like the heat kind of stifling their movement a little bit. And then you throw this rain and wind on, which...

we know we're like well they maybe it'll change it didn't they still and then we got a high pressure the last day we were there high pressure and the weather dropped from that mid 40s with the rain down into the the high 20s at night and you know my buddy Randy that owns it is like get on the food

And sure enough, like that night, it was like somebody flipped the light switch on. It's like, oh, where have these deer been the entire hunt? You know, they all came out of the woodworks. And so we just needed that change. And it wasn't the change from hot to rain, which we thought may spark it. It was a change from hot to rain. And then all of that stress built up, like you were saying. And then the cold and the clear came and they were everywhere that night. You got to look at it too. Some of the whitetail research that's out there.

shows them not really moving that much different during better weather, but they're not looking at it. That deer can move the exact same, but he's doing it during daylight. They're sitting in their beds all day. They're ready to eat, and they want to go to their best food source, their afternoon food source, which sets up the reason for those food plots on private land because you want to have that great food source on there to anchor that movement. And so it's really important to understand the weather,

and how it plays. And it's no surprise like in that situation where you see those deer move. And if you look at it, you can see those major fronts, usually 10 days out, seven days out. You might not know if it's gonna drop 17 degrees or if it's gonna drop seven, but you know there's gonna be a change and it's important to get out in the woods. And even during the front, some of those fronts, we had one just a little bit ago, we had over 40 mile an hour wind. We got a little precipitation with snow

during that, but you can find those days where there's super wind and the temperature's dropped already a lot. And when you have ridge systems or you have them in the backside of a big cedar swamp or conifers, you get on the lee side of the cover or the lee side of the ridge,

And you can take a disproportionate number of deer that are up on those ridges. They don't want to be in those 40 mile an hour winds. So they get down on the lee side and you do that during the rut or something. And it's like throwing gasoline on the rut because you take a high percentage of deer, you put them all down on the lee side and then you learn how to hunt those areas. And it's pretty cool. So even when, even in the wind,

you can have some huge advantages by finding the calm side of the cover and habitat. And I want to make a correction there. I think I misquoted my buddy, Chris. I think he actually wants to hunt during that change. And then once things stabilize, it's not as good. So I know Chris knows what he's doing. He killed some great public lamb bucks. And I think I actually misquoted him there as we talked through that. I think he wants to hunt during those two or three changes or those big drastic temperature drops or big pressure drops. And I want to be on the...

I want to be on the backside because those winds will stifle movement, even if the temperature is changing. So unless you get on the Lee side, you get in the quiet. And, um, and so wind is a huge thing, even, um, you know, and not saying that they won't move. It's not a certain mile per hour change. So it moves from 50 mile an hour down to 25. They're going to move. And Kansas, it's weird, you know, always blows there. And, and these guys that have hunted Kansas for a long time and, and,

you know it's just from a lot of times hitting the stands those deer seem to like a north wind better because that means that they're getting that cold wind you know and and they'll still move on a south but they said they get better movement on the north and those deer they're like some wind they don't want it to be two to three they want it to be 10 to 15 um it's toughness around these hills it's tough too because the thermals get thrown out all out of whack you know i'm

You're counting on winds coming up from the hollow, but if it's nighttime and it drops down to zero, and so you always have to look and see what the wind's going to do two to three hours after dark. Because if it's calming two to three hours, that means an hour before dark, you're going to get some calm winds in there and the wind just goes right back downhill, even if it's to your face. Regardless of the prevailing. Yep. Right. Yeah.

Okay. Um, I can't, I can't let you go here without talking about calling deer a little bit, you know, running, running calls. I love to be able to call them, but I also understand their situations or times when, if your stand placement is correct, you may not want them to, even though you're on the, on the landscape, what's your opinion and strategy for making any noise in the stand, you know, calls, grunts, bleats, wheeze, you know, snort wheezes, any of that, like, are you a quiet hunter? Are there times when it works? Um, what's your opinion on that? And they're,

I'm a pretty quiet hunter only because, and I'll explain that, that we're in a higher pressure area. So you look at Wisconsin, had 350,000 bow hunters at one time, 800,000 gun hunters going in the woods. Michigan, my home state, had over 400,000 bow hunters. Minnesota's in that 275 at one time. Where you talk about Kansas, the 25,000. Iowa, 65,000 bow hunters.

So when you have high pressure areas, people are calling all the time and that's a really bad thing. And so we've even had a neighbor, he was rattling, snort wheezing and grunting and bleating. And we had all the deer run from their property. He was probably 400 yards away. At first I got excited. I'm like, what's going on over there? And then all of a sudden you're running from that area. You realize it's a neighbor and they were actually guiding on that property. And this is down in Southwest Wisconsin and,

And that's what the guy was doing. Someone probably paid to hunt there and he's just throwing all the stops. Now, that being said, I always have a grunt call in my, in my hand warmer tube. That's something I carry in the woods all the time. I like using a bleak can in those. You can imagine in my area, those are pretty low impact. You know, if I have a mature buck that's going by and I can't get a shot with a bow, I'm going to try to grunt them back or bleed them back. And, and then also I'll use rattling antlers. There's some on the wall right behind me right here, but

But I use those rattling antlers more on public land. Like, for example, where we went in Pennsylvania, we didn't see another hunter for two days. So you can be in a really remote area. Calling works awesome then. So I'll use a combination of rattling antlers and grunt calls.

But I'd be more aggressive there, even though it's public land, but it's big and open, not a lot of hunters. And then same with Southeast Ohio. I bring my rattle antlers out there because we didn't see a lot of hunters an hour and a half in. And we're around here using them to try to get them to come back when I can't get a shot. And we rarely blind call around here.

Unless our downwind is completely secure because a lot of times they'll go right downwind of you and circle around. So get your way, especially the older bucks.

Yeah. That makes sense, but it's kind of all over the chart. Yeah, no, that makes a ton of sense. You let the situation dictate whether you're going to make noise out of the stand or whether you're going to be quiet. And I was going to give a little example. Last time we, um, we used a rattling bag on, on the Kansas hunt last year and the deer didn't know exactly where it came from. And we had three bucks and it was my very first morning ever. Um,

like run past our blind and all ended up winning us because they didn't know exactly where it was. They had ran past. I'm like, well, that, that didn't work. Like you didn't get him to stop in the right spot. It worked in a way. It got him real close, real fast. But, um, I'm like, well, this, this works. And yeah, I,

I last year we hit the timing right where I'm like dang calling these deer in is maybe easier than calling elk in out west and then this year like very very I mean we grunted a couple in that weren't quite shooters but the big bucks that were were interested in does there was

It didn't really work. Like you said, in the lockdown, that's a tough one. But as a side note, have you ever, I like with these rattling antlers, there's a pretty long rope on them. And have you ever done it where you've dropped them down out of your stand with the rope and then it's on the ground down there? And then all you have to do is reach over and hit it like this and they're on the ground hitting each other right against a tree? Yeah. It made me think of that one. Yeah.

with a rattle bag that works with a rattle bag too yeah it does yeah and like just kind of tickling them down there and maybe giving a little bit better location um we we tried to put a longer lanyard on ours and do it and i'm just i didn't and this is where maybe my my um not having enough time in the stand i just need to spend more i'm like man it's real quiet down there like if something was close they might hear it but real horns i think make a little bit better of a clash when you're dropping them together but the rattling bags really need to be like hammered yeah they need to be hammered and

rolled around, but no, a great idea. Like all of this stuff is going through my head as I'm in the stand. Like I'd like to be able to do it down at the bottom of the tree or, um, you know, my hands, but that's where like these, you get nice set of sheds or something. They, they really bounce off each other down there. And then that way, if they come in and, um, you know, a lot of times they're back there at 70 yards, making a rub, they're being aggressive before they come in posturing a little bit. And, um,

In that case, to me, like you grunt, they are so good at pinpointing exactly where that came from. Not meaning like that came from 22 feet up in that tree over there. They know. Whereas if you can tickle those antlers down there and there's some brush between you and them, that's at ground level. I mean, that's, I think that's a great tactic. I didn't come up with that, but that's something I heard a long time ago. And that's, I really liked that, that tactic. Yeah.

Yeah, no, that's a great idea. We'll have to, we'll have to play with that more. See if we can get some volume out of, um, like a rattle bag. Yep. Yep. Yep. Figure that out. Um, so no, I really appreciate having you on Jeff and your busy schedule. I know you're a busy guy, but, uh, how can our listeners find out a little bit more about you, what you got going on? Um, any of the other tips? I know this is just scratching the surface on all the videos and info you put out there, but how can people find more, more about you and what you got going on? Well, we, uh, you know, uh,

Mostly on YouTube. I try to put out 208 videos a year. Last one he missed was summer of 2019. So that's four a week. It's all whitetail strategy, depending on what's going on that week.

Everything is different. We're not talking about building bedding areas in August, for example. We're talking about that in December, January, February. No different than the rut. We're talking about that in early October, you know, because that's coming up two weeks away. We're not talking about that in July. But it's whitetailhabitatsolutions.com. We're very active on Instagram, too.

And putting out reels and pictures, that's a little bit more personal side. And then also the books, the web classes, whitetailhabitatsolutions.com, the website, there's over 600 whitetail articles on there. We have our food plot company, which you can find on the website, also Pure Wildlife Plans, WHS Wildlife Plans, you can

Find that too. And most of all, if you don't want to buy anything and we, we go to client properties a year, we booked those. Like my client schedule right now is booked by 95% out through August. And I might go to 70 clients this year. But if you don't want to spend a dime with us, to me, the whole business and what's been very rewarding is giving as much information as I know about

out as much as possible so whatever fits for the for that time of the week or month we try to help people out whether they ever spend a dime with us and that's the most rewarding because we'll have people say I bought some of your seed I don't even really know if I'm gonna plant a food plot but I did it just as a way to say thanks for all the videos and stuff like that we bought a book you know that kind of thing thank you and we sell hats and stuff and the books and web classes but

Like I said, if you ever, it's not, not trying to push you to buy something. It's a, we'll try to keep putting this out as much as we can, as much free content. So it's always time to catch solutions. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks. Thanks for jumping on. Have a, have a good winter, you know, and getting property set up. And this one will launch a,

I think it'll be, but if not, it might be after Christmas, but Merry Christmas to you and your family. And thanks for, thanks for being on here and we'll, we'll catch up with you later, Jeff. Yeah, it was great chat with Jason. That was great.

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