Ep. 951: Debunking Conventional Whitetail Wisdom with Thermal Drone Research

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
the show, I'm joined by Derek Dixon to discuss how
his year long thermal drone study has helped him better
understand white tail deer behavior and how it's debunked some
of the conventional white tail wisdom that he grew up with.

(00:21):
All Right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast,
brought to you by First Light and their Camo for
Conservation Initiative. And today we have a very interesting different
kind of conversation because we're going to be looking at
a number of you might call it whitetail wisdom, conventional wisdom,
you might call it like hunterisms, the typical things that

(00:43):
we've heard over the years about how dear behave, how
they move, how they bed, all that kind of stuff.
And oftentimes, you know, expert deer hunters have these deep
foundational beliefs based on our anecdotal observations, based on things
we've heard from other PEP people about what deer do
and why they do it and when they do it.

(01:04):
But a lot of times that's just based on our
you know, what we've seen from the tree, or what
somebody in a podcast said. Maybe it's based off of
GPS collar studies that have some real science and data
behind them, but that's kind of rare. Today, we're going
to have a set of insights that are backed up
by something pretty different. Our guest today is Derek Dixon,

(01:27):
and what he brings to the table is the very
unique perspective of somebody who has watched deer from above
or days and days and days and days with a
thermal drum. Now, if you're not familiar, Derek Dixon launched
a YouTube channel this summer called white Tail Research. It's

(01:49):
taken the Internet by storm. A lot of people have
seen these videos. A lot of podcasters have been scrambling
to get Derek on the show. I did as well.
I reached out to him August and we've finally gotten
around to having this chat. But I'll be honest with you,
I originally was not sure that I wanted to have
this conversation because I was concerned about the Pandora's box

(02:16):
that could be opened with this technology. Because well, let
me explain. If you're not familiar with one of thermal drones,
I want to explain to you exactly first why they
are so incredible of a research tool, Why Derek has
been able to see so much interesting stuff and bring
it back to tell us about. But then number two,
the really concerning fair chase implications of this technology too.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Now.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
I actually got to see a thermal drone in use
for the first time this summer, and let me tell
you about that. I went visited with a friend and
he said, I've got this thermal drone. It's pretty incredible.
It allows you to see what's out there in a
way that nothing else ever has before. Told me the
story about how he showed up on this property the
day before, and the landowners said, well, you know, last

(03:04):
year I had this booner that made it through the
hunting season. So I'm thinking he should still be out here.
I'm hoping he's still here. And my friend said, all right,
I'll find him. He throws his drone up in the sky.
Within I believe it was ninety seconds he had found
that buck, zoomed in and was filming it so close

(03:25):
that you could see like the flies buzzing around the
steer's head. What a thermal drone allows you to do.
These are very very high powered drones. These are different
than you know, the little dji things that some of
us have flown to take pictures and cool videos and stuff.
This is next level technology. These drones have, as the
name would indicate, a thermal camera, so it will actually

(03:45):
show the heat signature of an animal on the landscape.
So you throw this drone I don't know how many
feet up, three hundred feet up or five hundred feet
up or whatever the max is, You flip on that
thermal and then the animals just light up and show
on the screen right away. You see where all the
deer are right away. And then these cameras, these next
level drone cameras have I'm not sure what the optical

(04:09):
zoom is, but it's ten x or one hundred x
or something crazy. Just tap on that screen, double tap,
and it zooms right into that animal, and all of
a sudden, it's like you're hovering ten feet above this buck,
right over his shoulder, watching everything he's doing, as if
you are I don't know the CIA on a military
emission watching a target. It was, you know, to see

(04:31):
that firsthand was fascinating, I guess to say the least,
but also scary, like what this could mean if somebody
tried to use this technology to change how they hunted.
So if you have this technology in the right hands,
though in the hands of somebody like Derek Dixon, who

(04:52):
is using this tool for research purposes, it's pretty incredible.
Because what Derek was able to do last year, he
took the year off from hunting. He decid, I'm not
gonna hunt while I have this tool, and while I'm
using this technology, and I'm just gonna wake up every
day and I'm going to follow deer. I'm going to
watch deer from above and track and kind of measure

(05:12):
and take notes of everything they do, where they go,
how they do it, when they do it, why they
do it, and film all this and track all of this.
And he did that for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds of hours. He you know, we didn't get
into it here in this conversation, but as I understand it,
he lost his job and he had this free time
and he decided to devote it to this research project.

(05:34):
So he basically took this research project on as a
full time job and study these deer all day, every day,
all fall, for hours and hours. And so he has
a level of insight. He has a window into the
world of white tails that's different than almost anything else.
You're able to see things. He was able to see

(05:55):
things and watch things and see how deer behaved throughout
a day, watch a single mature buck or multiple mature
bucks through many many different days, and watched how they
moved through a landscape, watched how they betted, when they betted,
how they chose to bed, how they got to their bed,
what wind conditions helped them choose where to bed. But
about how they approached a feeding hear how do they

(06:16):
do that? Do they coming straight in? Do they jayhook in?
Do they curve around the downwind side? How do they
impact to hunting pressure? How did other deer move in
through the area change their behavior. There's a million different
questions that Derek was able to answer with this tool.
Absolutely incredible and those are the things we talk about
today on our podcast. We cover the many different Aha

(06:39):
moments he had as he watched these forty four different
deer that he studied, these forty four different bucks. I
believe that he studied extensively throughout this project. We're going
to get insight into what kind of impact he saw
when it came to cold fronts. We're going to get
into the impact that he saw from hunting pressure from
different access route strategies. We're going to talk through how

(07:02):
bucks bed, how they travel in the wind, how they
utilize wind, how they utilize funnels. We're going to talk
through how effective trail cameras actually are or are not.
This and much much more was illuminated for Derek while
using this thermal drum. So that is why it's such
a wildly interesting technology and tool to use in this context.

(07:25):
On the flip side, though, can you imagine how inappropriate
and unethical it would be if you had this tool,
Let's say on October first, and you were going to
go out for the opening day hunt of bo season,
and you decide, Okay, I don't know where to hunt tonight,
so I'm going to throw out my drum and I'm
going to send it over my property and within a minute,

(07:47):
it's going to tell me where every single deer is
on the property. And with this camera, it's going to
be allowed me to zoom right in and identify every
deer and then I can say, oh, yep, okay, the
one buck I'm after is betted right here in this spot.
I'm going to go sneak within sixty five yards of
him get down when set up, wambam, Thank you, ma'am.

(08:08):
That's your hunt. Can you imagine that? Is that hunting?
Is that what our forefathers trained us, taught us, built
this tradition around. Is that what we want to leave
to our kids. Is this kind of hunting? As far
as I'm concerned, the answer is no. That is not hunting.

(08:28):
That is not what we want to pass down to
our kids. That is not an appropriate fair chase method
for pursuing game in any in any kind of way.
So my hope is that by having these conversations, by
sharing this technology, it will hopefully bring greater awareness to

(08:52):
the fact that this is out there and that it
needs to be carefully regulated and managed. I've already been
working with the National Deer Association on their position statements
around drones and have actually talked with them about the
implications of thermal drones and how our position statement might
need to evolve in the future given this new technology.

(09:12):
I hope and I expect that our state game agencies
will continue to monitor this technology and take the appropriate
steps to make sure it's not being abused. I know
that there is a real case to be made for
using this technology to recover deer, and I think that
is a great use of it to make sure that
we are recovering wounded and mortally hit game, making sure

(09:35):
that that meat is being utilized. Absolutely, but we need
to make sure that in season use outside of that is,
if it was up to me, it would be banned.
I don't think these should be used in season other
than recovering game. That's my take. Smarter people than I
will debate this and determine what the appropriate regulations and

(09:56):
rules are. But I would ask you, if this is
something that you have access to, to think really long
and hard about what the appropriate way is to use
it so as not to lose the soul of what
we are doing as hunters. So that is a long
winded on ramp here to our conversation. We're going to
get into this conversation around fair chase and the ethics

(10:18):
of using drones with Derek at the end of the conversation,
and he has some strong opinions on it as well
that I really appreciated hearing about. So without any further ado,
let's get to my chat with Derek Dixon about the
many fascinating AHA moments he had as he studied forty
four different bucks over the course of last year. With

(10:40):
this incredible thermal drone technology, We're going to learn a
lot about how dear actually behave what he saw these
deer actually doing. It's going to maybe confirm some things
we believe, but also upend some of them as well.
Without further ado, my chat with Derek Dixon of White
Tail Research. All right with me now on the line

(11:06):
is Derek Dixon. Welcome to the show. Derek.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, yeah, thanks for having me on, Mark.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
I appreciate you making time to do it. You are
a hot commodity right now. I ran across your first
video probably a day or two after it came out
on YouTube, messaged you right away back in August, and
so we started talking then and then life got crazy
and we just now got to recording this. But I'm
glad we're doing it. I've got to ask you, in

(11:33):
the month or so, or maybe it's been a little
bit more a month or two since you kind of
started releasing your findings in your first videos, how have
you felt about the feedback, about the commentary, about the
interest in your work so far.

Speaker 3 (11:49):
Yeah, that was something that I was actually pretty impressed
with it. Took quite a long time to start finding
the people that were a little more negative towards it.
And I feel like the group of individuals that were
being negative towards it, they hadn't actually watched anything that
I'd done yet, So it was just kind of seeing
a guy with a thermal drone and potentially applying it
to a hunting situation, and you know, hysteria hit and

(12:11):
other than that, though everyone that's actually well not everyone,
but like ninety nine percent of people that have actually
watched the videos that have commented on it and made
their their opinion vocal, they're they're really positive about it.
And that was something that going into it I wasn't
one hundred percent expecting. I kind of felt like I
was throwing myself into the fire a little bit by

(12:31):
introducing the capabilities of these drones in a research application,
but I was hoping that I could do so in
a way that everyone would be able to immediately gain
respect from it and be like, Okay, like this guy's
intentions are really really pure in what he's attempting to do,
and you know, kind of kind of run with that,
And that's exactly what happened definitely had a massive, amazing

(12:53):
amount of feedback and beyond anything that I was prepared
for for sure.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
Yeah, well it's it's fascinating stuff. And I know folks
have told you this already, but you've done a really
good job with it, so kudos for that. But the pushback,
I could see there being two angles of pushback, one
being you know, fair chase implications of this kind of tool,
which we're definitely going to talk about. But the second,

(13:17):
and I'm curious if you've seen this, if you've heard
from people in this, one of the pieces of pushback
I've wondered about might be related to your methodology, like
the sample size and the process you've gone through to
you know, accumulate your findings. I could see some kind
of wonky research expert coming in and saying, well, you know,

(13:38):
this is an end of one. This is too small
a sample size, you're basing your findings off of something
that's too anecdotal. I'm curious what your response is to
that possible pushback. And then if you could walk us
through in more detail, you know exactly what your process
has been here, How did you you know what's the
scale of what you've done here. What kind of you know,

(14:00):
time and sample size have you explored here to come
to your fund Yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:07):
No, And actually to that with with the experts kind
of contacting and reaching out and being a little bit
potentially skeptical. I've heard from many many of the experts
in the field already, and a lot of them highly
respect what I've done so far and they think that
I've done in a really good manner. So that was
definitely a massive pat on my back whenever. It took
a while for any of them, you know, the people

(14:28):
that I would recognize in that field, to reach out
to me, But then they finally did and we started
talking about it, and they definitely had a lot of
really positive things to say about it. So, you know,
I have heard from the experts in that field, but
my methodology is going into it. Last season, I was
really heavily focusing on mature bucks during daylight activity, and

(14:49):
I was just going to gather as much data collection
as possible.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
There really wasn't.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
There were a few times, and you'll see this in
future videos, where I had like a couple individual topics
that I went into it really harping on. But for
the most part, my goal was to find as many
mature bucks as I possibly could and track them for
as long as I possibly could until I lost them
in that timeframe, and that's exactly what I did. And
then across the board, like say I found one particular buck,

(15:16):
this kind of gets into what I was actually doing
and what I was actually collecting. Say I went out,
I found a buck early in the morning, then I
would document quite a few variables about the day, just
basics about the day, thirty to forty variables that across
every single year that I was researching per day. But
then whenever I would finally locate him, whether he was
standing or he was betting, then I would mark that

(15:37):
as an event. So let's in this story, let's say
that he was betting, because oftentimes I could find them
betting in the morning. Then I would mark twenty five
to thirty variables based off of what he's doing in
that particular bed, so and everything in relation to it,
so wind direction, wind speed, temperature.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
Time of day, time spent in bed, all.

Speaker 3 (15:56):
These different things, and then I would mark all those
down and as soon as he would stand up, I
would time stamp it and then that would be his
movement pattern from then on, and then I would document
twenty five to thirty variables depended upon all of his
movement patterns and what he was doing throughout that time frame.
And really during movement you potentially get more because there
might be a scenario where he hits a rub or

(16:17):
he hits a scrape, and he's doing these types of
activities while on his feet or he's feeding, and you
can document that as well and also time stamp every
single one of them. But then as soon as he
beds back down, then you mark that variable as again
it's an event, and then the time stamp it, and
then twenty five thirty variables once again. You just repeat
that over and over and over every single day and

(16:38):
crossed every single buck, and in the end you end
up with over one hundred and fifty variables per day
per year that you research, and it gets pretty overwhelming.
But all of that stuff becomes filterable in a spreadsheets
where it just kind of automates itself and kicks out,
and then you have like a master sheet where you
have deer one, two, three, four all the way. I
think I think I have forty four bucks that I

(16:59):
researched last season, and then they all have filter bowls
based off of like yards per hour, So this buck
travels at an average yards per hour in the early
season kind of in October, November, December, January. If I
was able to watch him that often at this rate
of speed in terms of yards per hour, here's like
his general tendencies here. Did he have any injuries? Did

(17:20):
those injuries seem to have an effect on the way
that he was behaving? All these types of things, literally
anything that you could possibly think of. I was attempting
to document it across the board, but I wasn't entering
it with an individual goal in mind except for just
document as much as you possibly can, and then later
on after the season's over. And obviously there's a few
things I noticed during the season where it's like, okay,

(17:42):
maybe maybe start focusing on that a little bit more.
But in the end, I was trying to just get
as much data as possible so that way, whenever season
was done, I can go back and I can really
harp on it and kind of like phone in on
those individual topics like deer betting on the leeward side
of the ridge, deer moving and coordinates with wind, and
all these types of things and see if there was

(18:02):
a correlation with any of that. And in the end, yes,
my sample size isn't crazy large, but still there's forty
four deer that I recorded, and I recorded mature bucks
moving for over twenty one hundred hours, which it's quite
a long timeframe. I don't know anyone else that has
visual movement of twenty one hundred hours on mature Bucks.
If you do, then contact me. I'd love to see it.

(18:23):
But that's quite a bit of time. And I think
that the experts also agree that, like, that's a pretty
big sample size, especially for my area, and that's where
that's where you can start getting into the where maybe
it's not as applicable a lot of the things I
talk about.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
It's very very applicable for my area.

Speaker 3 (18:39):
But you know, maybe going down into Florida or southern Alabama, Mississippi,
those areas or big agg country where there's little pockets
of timber and it's just flat as can be and
you can see forever. You know, it might a lot
of the topics I talk about may not apply in
those areas, and I would love to go to those
locations and do research on them. But there's also only
one me, So I'm trying to figure that out in
terms of how we can kind of expand this a

(19:01):
little bit more in a really healthy way.

Speaker 1 (19:04):
Yeah, have you heard from any institutions yet about wanting
to take this idea and scale it? You know, has
Mississippi State University reached out or any one of these
deer programs said hey, this is a great idea, how
can we do this within our program?

Speaker 2 (19:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:18):
I've had a couple of universities reach out, But my
problem with teaming with a university is I don't personally
want to get involved in a situation where you have
to rely on government funding because at the moment that
you do that, then you kind of have to fine
tune your ideas and projects towards what they're wanting because
they're the ones providing the funding. So I have been

(19:41):
been in talk, like I said earlier, with some pretty
big names. I feel confident being able to.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
Throw one out. We're going to collaborate later in the season.
Bronson Strickland.

Speaker 3 (19:48):
I think everyone probably knows his name, so so yeah,
we're going to be collaborating later in.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
The season, and we have some ideas going to the future.

Speaker 3 (19:57):
But really the big, the big goal is going to
be trying to gain private funding for large scale research
projects over government funding, so that way we can choose
what we're going to be researching and really make it
a little bit more applicable for our space, and also
still retain that science side of things, like we're really

(20:17):
it's going to be science based, but in the end
it'll be able to spin off better for the hunting
community and really just to allow people to.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
Gain more confidence and what they're doing.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
Yeah, that's great, so wonderful. Segue Bronson has done a
great job of discussing many of the different studies around
deer movement and how various atmospheric weather, moon factors, different
things like that all may or may not impact deer movement.
Just came out with a report last year looking at

(20:47):
the moon in quite great detail and kind of breaking
down some of the different myths and whatnot. And I'm
curious when you consider what you've seen compared to GPS
collar studies, the conventional wisdom, the popular science out there
right now, I'm really interested about what you have seen

(21:08):
that's diverged from what those studies have shown. Because the
big thing that comes up time and time and time again.
Is that when you talk to serious deer hunters, you
hear wow, cold fronts man, they get deer moving. Or
there's everyone's got a favorite moon theory about how this
thing or that thing might impact deer movement, or a
high and rising barometric pressure. There's all of these different
variables that such and such expert deer hunter says, well,

(21:31):
that's the thing that's really going to get a mature
buck on his feed and moving. But every GPS color
study to date has never found a statistically significant impact
on movement. None of those things have lined up in
a statistically significant way. So you watched forty some different

(21:52):
bucks for twenty one hundred hours over the course of
so many different days. Have you found anything different than
what those studies indicated? Is there some variable, Is there
some factor that did have a statistically significant difference make
a statistically significant difference on the chure buck movement?

Speaker 3 (22:14):
Yeah, And in relation to all the topics you just mentioned,
like moon and temperature and whatnot, I have not found
anything that correlates kind of similar basically, like you said,
a statistically big enough difference that it was worth worthy
of being able to, you know, kind of parp on
and talk about I haven't seen anything, but the one
thing I have seen is wind shifting in the middle

(22:35):
of the day. That's been one variable that actually had
you know, they mature bucks in particular, seemed to stand
up very, very consistently with a mid day wind shift.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
And that was the first time I recorded.

Speaker 3 (22:48):
I actually started kind of freaking out because I went
out there with the intention of recording that, and then
as it was it was sprinkling a little bit, and
as the wind kind of started wrapping around him from
the south off to the west, then he just stood
up like right right on whenever my phone kind of
I had documented where I thought he was going to stand,
and he stood within five minutes of that. And I

(23:08):
remember just like spam texting.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
My wife like he's up, He's up. He actually staid
and so watched him do that.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
But I watched that across the board multiple times, and
over time I started trying to piece together why why
are they getting up out of their bed whenever the
wind is shifting in And this is kind of a
it's a really interesting topic because you initially would think
it's it's it's because of the wind, and they're wanting
to reposition their bedding location because with that wind shifting,

(23:34):
it's putting them at a potential disadvantage in their current location,
so thus they need to relocate. But I don't think
that's exactly why, and maybe maybe some scenarios that's why
they're doing it, But I think the reason that they're
shifting dependent on wind. And the reason for this before
I say it is I've recorded multiple times in mature

(23:55):
Buck bed it kind of in like a thermal hub
type situation on a south facing slope with a south
facing wind. He's betting on the windward side of the
ridge and the wind wraps all the way around to
a north wind ten to fifteen miles per hour to
the cold front moving in, and he decides to get
up and move based off of that. But in that scenario,
he would have been in a perfect betting location for
that because he's in a thermal hub, he's on the

(24:16):
leeward side of the ridge. Why why are you getting
up and moving out of that scenario? And the only
thing I've been able to piece together from that is
I think they have a predetermined idea as to where
they want to spend that evening movement period, and whenever
the wind shifts based off of that, then it kind
of makes that location that they were going to be

(24:39):
going to not as viable in their mind. So therefore
they have to shift dependent upon where they want to
be that evening and not so much as where they
need to be betting for safety and to have everything
to their advantage. I think that it's really dependent upon
where they're wanting to be in that evening time frame.
And that was pretty veastinad.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
Interesting. So you in some of the videos and some
of the conversations I've heard you had in recent weeks,
one thing that has come up a lot is is
how deer use wind. And this is something that I
think there's a lot of conventional wisdom around. There's a
lot of beliefs. You know, some people have got hard
set beliefs around how bucks use the wind to bed.

(25:30):
Other people have hard set beliefs around how deer use
wind when they're traveling. So I want to throw a
couple of these pieces of conventional wisdom at you, and
I would love to hear some detail around what you've
seen in real life when you're watching these deer right
So a big one is that, as you mentioned just
a second ago, deer prefer to travel into the wind.

(25:52):
If they're going to approach a food source or if
they're going to approach somewhere of importance to them, maybe
a betting ear, they want to smell what's there first,
So they're going to try to move into the wind
in some way, whether that be right in their face
or quartering two. Does that Does that track true as
you've watched all these deer, Yeah, no.

Speaker 3 (26:10):
Movement and betting in relation to wind is something that
I have not been able to see much of a
correlation to. And that's actually the second fascinating thing that
I found, And I started kind of having to force
myself to ask why and what, Like why am I
seeing these weird scenarios? And I'll give you one of
my favorite scenarios, and I've used it before, but it's
just it's such a fascinating one where I had recorded

(26:32):
a mature about betting on the leeward side of the
ridge pretty consistently. He'd been doing it for maybe three
or four days in a row, and it was like, okay,
maybe there's maybe you know, percentage wise, we're starting leaning
towards leeward side of the ridge here, which is is becoming,
you know a little bit more like what people had said.
And then one day there was a cold front that
was moving in. It was twenty five mile per hour
north wind. It was spitting ice. It was like five

(26:55):
degrees think it felt like negative one. It was disgusting
that day, and he was betted on the windward side
of the ridge facing the storm. And he's just laying there.
His antlers and everything are just getting piled with ice,
and he's just facing the storm. And as soon as
I saw that, I just kind of took everything about
leeward sides of the ridge and I just like threw
it out the window because I had no idea and
I still to this day really that particular example, I

(27:17):
have no idea why he was there. I don't know
if maybe he was moving back towards his evening bed
and he got tired and he just decided this is
where I'm plopping down, and it's like, well, there's a
storm too bad, like I'm just going to stay here,
or really why he decided to.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
Bed in that location. But I've seen that multiple times.

Speaker 3 (27:31):
Where they bet on the windward side of the ridge
with a storm kind of coming in and it didn't
make much sense. And then in coordination with moving up
to a feeding area in the evening timeframe and kind
of trying to wrap the downwind side of it prior
to entering up nearby it or kind of into a
staging area location. I haven't seen that correlation hardly at all,
and I think that the reason why is because thermals

(27:54):
are kind of king. I think thermals are number one
for what a deer is attempting to utilize in terms
of how they're moving and whenever they're gaining access to
an area that they want to be able to smell,
if the wind is not volatile enough to be able
to actually disturb the thermals at the top in that area,
then I think that they're really trying to position themselves
at a thermal advantage way more often than they are

(28:15):
in a wind advantage. I think a scenario like from
a hunter's perspective, where you're going to see and I
didn't record this much because I didn't record hunters a
lot across last season, but everybody's seen it where you
rattle out of buck and he just completely ignores you
who walks away wraps down.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
Wind of you, and then he moves in.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
So like, they will attempt to use wind to their
advantage whenever there's something that is outside of the norm
that occurs and they need to go out and check it.
But in terms of wrapping dough bedding to go and
get down wind of every dough bed and every single
food source, you have to think about it from the
efficiency mindset of how efficient and how inefficient actually a

(28:52):
mature buck would become if say, on a morning travel route,
he wanted to scent check I don't know, eight groups
of doughs all the way across a mile on a
high stretch that he's going to walk of train diversity,
and in that stretch he's going to try to wrap
downwind of every single group of doughs along the way.
He's not going to that would be extremely inefficient for

(29:13):
him in terms of how many steps he's going to
be taking. So for him in that scenario in the
morning travel, he's going to try to intersect every single
dough trail along the way and he's just going to
scent check the ground versus wrapping downwind of every single group,
and that makes him extremely efficient at that point, and
it allows him to stay back further and cover away
from where those dough groups are. So yeah, And in

(29:36):
the end, the answer to that is, I think they
utilize thermals far more often than they do the wind.

Speaker 1 (29:42):
So tell me, then, let's talk thermals. You've emphasized that
numerous times as being maybe the big aha. Is that
accurate to say, like the thermal impact was maybe even
bigger than you thought originally?

Speaker 3 (29:55):
Yeah, I think I think definitely a big aha moment.
And also it's it I'm not one hundred percent on
it still, but I think that it's really dependent upon
the wind and how volatile that wind is. So if
you have a really harsh wind that's kind of eight
to fifteen twenty miles per hour that's going to shove
and swirl and mess with everything, then I think in
that scenario, wind might become a little bit more important.

(30:18):
But I'm not one hundred percent sure, but I do.
I do definitely see quite frequently bucks utilizing thermals to
their advantage in a scenario where there's just really low
winds that are steady and they're not volatile, You're not
having gusts up into the fifteen mile Prower range. Ever,
they're just kind of like in that two to eight
mile Prier range and just very very steady. I think

(30:38):
at that time frame, that's whenever mature buck is the
most confident to be able to get up on its
feet and be able to utilize thermals to his advantage.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
So, how have you seen mature bucks do that? What
does that actually look like in real life?

Speaker 3 (30:51):
Yeah, Well, one of the first times I started noticing
that there was definitely a correlation with thermals and when
mature bucks were moving was in the evening timeframe. I
was seeing whenever the thermals switch. And whenever I say
thermal switch, I don't particularly mean that they were rising,
you know, all day long with the sun and then

(31:11):
all of a sudden they just switch and out now
they're dropping. It's more so whenever the thermals switch, and
thermals in that particular location that their betting area or
that they're betting in should start to start swirling. And
that swirling effect can take quite a long time before
it actually switches and it starts to drop. And in
that particular instance, I think that they realize that they

(31:32):
are at a massive advantage whenever thermals are swirling in
the section that they're going to be moving in, because
they're able to gain intel from everywhere around them in
that setting. And that's whenever I've noticed that, whenever thermals
switch in that area kind of based off of my estimation,
But my estimation for that was really where they were
betted at, because really you have the sun that rises
in the east and then it kind of wraps in

(31:53):
the wintertime kind of on the south side, and then
it moves back over in the west, and you can
depict where the sun is going to be hitting. You
can also see it with thermal drone fun fact, but
you can depict where the sun is hitting on those
ridge systems in relation to where they're bedding, so what
ground is potentially being heated, So that way, the thermals
can start rising in those areas, and then whenever the

(32:14):
sun leaves that location and it starts to become shaded,
and then that you know, at that moment it might
take a while, but then everything's going to start swirling
in those locations. And I was seeing whenever you related
it to temperature as well, kind of within five to
fifteen minutes of the peak temperature for the day as
it kind of just started to get back off. You
could just look at your weather app and see it.

(32:35):
For whatever reason, they were standing within five to fifteen
minutes of that range, or five to ten minutes somewhere
in there, and it didn't particularly mean that they were
going to move off of that. Sometimes they would just
stand and they would just browse around, kind of clean themselves,
ruminate a little a little bit, and then all of
a sudden they would just kind of head off and
decide to move on with their evening pattern. And then

(32:55):
in some scenarios they would get up and they would
immediately move off with their evening pattern. I don't really
know that correlation between why one or the other, but
there was definitely something in relation to the thermals starting
to switch in that area and swirl and then deciding
to get up.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
Did anything you saw from a thermal impact standpoint change
the way you would hunt one of these deer?

Speaker 2 (33:20):
Yeah, I mean probably quite a bit.

Speaker 3 (33:22):
I think there's a different There's a ton of scenarios
that you could come up with, but I think the
number one thing that you need to start trying to
pay attention to as a hunter is how those thermals
are going to play into not you know, really a
lot of times whenever you traditionally, for me, especially whenever
I would try to place the stand location, even in
hill country, I was always trying to think of ways
to position myself with an advantage with the wind. But

(33:45):
there are some scenarios where you can have a disadvantage
with the wind, but you can have a thermal advantage
in that particular location because you're going to be getting
heated by the sun still kind of late into the evening,
and your thermals are going to be able to potentially
rise out of the area. And there's there's quite a
few very depend on that.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
You know.

Speaker 3 (34:01):
If you're in a situation where it's early season and
there's a lot of green foliage, and it's a south wind,
and you're kind of hunting off the off down towards
the bottom of this kind of southwest facing slope, and
that south wind is going to be kind of it's
gonna be edging you you're scent up that ridge, but
there's a lot of green foliage, then your sen is
going to probably roll up underneath the green foliage and

(34:23):
start swirling up the ridge and at some point it's
just going to become a kind of a big ball
of nastiness where yeah, mature Buck's gonna be able to
sent check you still because your thermals never actually left
the canopy, they got trapped underneath it. So there's a
lot of ways to apply it. That's it's going to
be probably my biggest video that comes out someday, and
it's gonna be like forty five minutes or more long,
and it's going to get really nerdy and that pickular topic,

(34:45):
but just because there's so many different variables that can
take place across the season in relation to thermals, but
definitely trying to find ways to not just look at
wind direction to put yourself in an advantage with the
wind direction, which is a massive thing to be able
to do if you can put the wind to your advantage,
because that that just helps shove your scent in that
particular direction. I do think that as a hunter we

(35:06):
can utilize wind more potentially more than a mature baccan
to your advantage. But trying to position yourself at a
thermal advantage, and you know, for me, one of the
one of the coolest things that you can do is
try to find locations where there's pockets of like a
really steep drainage that's impassable for a white fild deer,
especially in hill country, and you're you're always trying to

(35:28):
push your scent into a location that's impassable by white
tailed deer or it's very very very unlikely that they're
going to be moving by that location. And if you
can find a scenario where you can do that, where
you can shove your scent in an area where they're
not going to pass through, but you're also in a
high traffic zone, then you're pretty much undetectable that entire
hunt if you're able to get your scent to go
down there, and then they can just move past you,

(35:50):
and yeah, et cetera. So the hardest part for a
lot of those areas that is gaining entry and exit.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
That's yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:57):
You talked about this entry and exit thing a few
times as well, and I heard you you mentioned this summer.
I can't remember where I heard this, but you mentioned
that you had been studying a little bit of the
impact of different kinds of entry and exits and that
you found that the well, let me let me take

(36:17):
a step back and describe two approaches. And you guys
were discussing this, but I have often thought to myself, well,
should I try the really sneaky and slow way to
get into my tree stand? Or should I try to
rip the band aid approach off? Which is like, you know,
imagine a frosty cold morning in November when there's no
wind and the leaves are so crunchy, and every single

(36:39):
step you take seems to echo for a mile. I
just hate those mornings getting in because you just know it.
It seems like every deer in a mile or two
must hear you walking in. So I've sometimes thought, on
those days, maybe I should just sprint to my tree stand,
rip the bandit off, be loud, but get it done
with in five minutes, rather than a slow and still
kind of loud forty five minutes. I heard you say

(37:03):
that you think the rip the band aid approach might
be better. Can you hear that right? Can you describe
what you saw and what you've learned about that?

Speaker 3 (37:11):
So I've done a lot of research worth prefacing on
private land, and on a lot of the private lands.
A lot of these guys, they're gaining entry in it,
or you can gain entry an exit by use of tractor, truck, UTV,
et cetera. And in a private land scenario, the best
way to gain entry an exit, just a super fast
answer for it, is by whatever means you use to

(37:31):
travel that property. So if you use an ATV all
the time, have someone drop you off with an ATV.
Do you use a truck all the time, have someone
drop you off of the truck, And in that scenario,
you're you're gonna have extremely minimal impact. But if we
kick it back over to public land where maybe you
can't have a truck drop you off for a UTV,
then you're gonna have to be walking in And in

(37:52):
that scenario, I haven't documented it enough. I'm not sure
which podcast. Maybe i'd misspoken on it, but I haven't
recorded either of these events take place a lot. But
I have gone in and intentionally bumped here multiple times
by use of giving them your scent, or by use
of showing them that you're a human and really letting
them know that you're a human, or just kind of

(38:13):
trying to sneak up on them and bump them that way.
And I think I think that the brip the band
aid off approach is going to be the best because
you're running in, you're giving them something audible to hear
at that moment, so they're going to hear it, and
then they're going to kind of get a little bit
interested in it, and then they just see a blazing hunter,
you know, darting through the woods and kind of ducking
and dodging timber.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
They're really not able to piece together that's human.

Speaker 3 (38:35):
And if they're not able to piece together that's human,
they're just going to bump back off one hundred and
fifty to two hundred and fifty yards. And this is
in a scenaria where you would actually bump them. And
then by the time you get to your tree stand,
coast is clear, and then they'll they'll they'll they'll wrap
away for thirty minutes to an hour, and they're going
to be on super high alert and high high edge,
and they're going to be looking back in the direction

(38:56):
that the event had just taken place. But after thirty
minutes to an hour, if nothing's chasing them from what
I've seen, they cool right back down and it's as
if nothing ever happened. And then they just go right
back to kind of normal activity. And one of the
things that we're going to be studying this year actually,
we've all probably seen the Zach Barrenbaugh kind of joke
of darting through the woods and popping a pop grun

(39:17):
trying to sound like a deer essentially running through the woods,
and we're going to try to record that this season
and see if that could be potentially the best way
to gain Andrey nexit. I think it would be hilarious
to see like fifteen guys on public land all running
out the same time trying to sound like a deer.
That might not be the most applicable setting for this,
so hopefully, you know, I don't know how that's going
to work for public but I think if you were

(39:38):
to run in and try to sound like a deer
and you're on the ground and you just immediately get
set up with your bow and you're able to actually
kind of sound like a mature buck running through the woods,
then I think you're gonna have to get ready to
shoot within like the next five minutes, because I would
I feel like I feel like at least he's going
to move in on you and see what the crap's
going on so interesting.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
So speaking of deer moving around and and moving from
where they were to where you are, I want to
I want to rewind just a little bit back to
some of the conventional wisdom of like what hunters believe
versus what the studies believe. And let's talk cold fronts.
Cold fronts are something that just we all seem to
experience it. We've we've felt those days that just seem
to be on fire, and oftentimes it's it's with that

(40:21):
cold front moving through. But the studies don't back it up.
I've seen in your work you described the numbers that
you are measuring maybe are different, and I'm curious that
they're different than what many of these other studies have
because I've often thought to myself, well, these studies aren't
finding something statistically significant about the total amount of distance traveled.

(40:42):
But maybe you know a little bit more movement a
little bit earlier is enough for it to matter for
a hunter, but it wouldn't show up in these studies.
I've seen you take a look at two different things,
one being like the total distance a deer has moved
in daylight. But then you've also looked at something you
call net displacement and how you've maybe value that as

(41:03):
a more important variable. Can you describe what net displacement
is and what you've seen with that. And I'm curious, like,
is there a higher net displacement when a cold front
does come through, or the day or two after a
cold front or anything like that. Might that showcase? Oh yeah,
there is an impact here possibly. I know you mentioned
you still haven't quite seen the correlation, but I'm just
curious if you've looked at that.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:25):
And one thing also to think about prior to mentioning
net displacement in relation to people seeing a higher priensity
of deer moving in a cold front and over the
cold front hents. It's if all you do is you
go out and you hunt those cold fronts, then naturally
you're going to see deer activity on cold fronts because
that's the time from that you're hunting. But as a hunter,
and probably likewise for many other people, you've hunted those

(41:46):
days prior to the cold front and not seen a
lot of activity, and then all of a sudden, the
cold front moves in, and that that's kind of where
that the idea comes from and stems from a little
bit more but still just worth noting. Is like, I
think there's a lot of hunters out there that are
probably trying to fine tune themselves around those high you know,
those high odd situations because they don't have the time
to go and hunt, and then they go out on
a cold front they see really peak in their mentality

(42:06):
activity and it's like, well, yeah, it's because that's the
day that you went out in the woods, so you're
gonna definitely yeah. And then you make that correlation with
it was the cold front or maybe maybe you were
waiting for that perfect moon phase or whatever and you
went out on that you know, that particular day and
then you saw deer movement, so it's like it was
because of the moon.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
It's like, no, it's because you were in the woods.
But anyways, back to well.

Speaker 3 (42:26):
You said with net displacement, Yeah, net displacement I started
focusing on in the morning. In the morning, it's really
whenever you locate them where they're bedding, and then where
they move to and then bed back down. What's the
displacement between those two locations just in a straight line.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
The straight line distance from point A to point b.

Speaker 3 (42:41):
From point A to point B and then Likewise, for
the evening movement, what I was doing is whenever they
get out of their bed in the evening, so that's
point A, and then where they were shooting light ends
in most cases because a lot of cases they're still
on their feet going to the dark. So I would
mark all the way unto where shooting light ended for me,
and then that would be point B. And for this
to make it more appable for a hunter, I also

(43:02):
did continue to document until they bedded down in most cases,
but that's not appable for hunters, so I didn't I
don't include that. But anyways, Yeah, what I was noticing
was that in the morning time frame across the board
pre rut, post rut, late season, that morning activity, especially
in some individual characteristic bucks, but really the average, the

(43:24):
average out from all forty four year that I studied,
it's almost four times greater the amount of distance from
a net displacement versus their evening net displacement, and in
terms of total hours traveled and total total time traveled,
the morning is a little bit greater in my scenario,
but it's not a great enough difference worth talking about,
but it is. It is a little bit. You know,

(43:45):
they are traveling for a little bit longer during daylight
hours from what I've seen in the morning. And then
the last thing is total yards traveled. That where they're actually,
you know, every step they're taking and in total and
in terms of total yards travel, that numbers actually really
similar in the morning and the evening, because in the
evening they're still traveling that entire time, they're just walking
back and forth and browsing, and it just seems as

(44:06):
if they're a little bit more lazy. But their yards
per hour is pretty similar, and their total yards travel's
pretty similar, but their net displacement is way closer to
their to their betting location, whereas the or in the
morning it seems very missional driven, really very missional mindset,
where they had a determined location where they wanted to be,
and they're they're trying to intersect dough trails all along

(44:28):
that travel route and scent check as many as they can,
and then oftentimes for whatever reason, And I don't know
if there's a correlation with this yet, I don't think
I have a large enough sample size to really speak
and say that it's true. But for me, I was
seeing a lot of bucks hitting their scrapes, in particular rubs.
They just make rubs all the time. There was really
no especially in staging areas, rubs are extremely common, but scrapes.

(44:50):
I was seeing those being made, oftentimes at the end
of that morning travel route. And the only thing that
I've started thinking about off of that is maybe that's
why some guys try to You know, if you're hunting
near a scrape or over a scrape and you kill
a buck kind of like around ten am or ten
thirty am, and then you start placing it in your
brain that like, you killed him on a midday movement pattern.

(45:13):
In my opinion, you killed him at the end of
his morning travel route. You just picked him up at
the very tail end of it in that scenario. So
I think that's a lot more common than some people
might think, where bucks are moving deep into the morning
nine am to ten thirty am. And there's a lot
of people for me from like conventional hunting wisdom just
where I grew up, particularly in how I was taught.
You go out the morning, you hunt, that kind of

(45:35):
light comes up, et cetera all the way until about
eight eight thirty and it's like, all right, get out
of your stand and head back to the cabin. And
I think that's a pretty bad idea, and just based
off what I've seen, because I'm seeing a lot of
bucks almost always moved past nine am, but I've seen
them move all the way into like ten thirty ten
forty five am before betting back down. And like I said,
a lot of times those scrapes that were being made

(45:56):
happened to be And I don't know if there's a
correlation with that or as the orphan's just this particular
property but happen to be at the very end tail
end of that travel route.

Speaker 1 (46:15):
Did you have any ability to under to know about
pre existing scrapes and if they were ever going to
visit scrapes? Like I guess what I'm getting at is
sometimes we think like bucks will go where, we wonder
will Bucks go out of their way to check a
scrape or are they going somewhere because they already want

(46:37):
to go somewhere, And if there happens to be a
scrape right there, they'll hit it or they'll happen to
swing down wind of it. I'm curious if you've found
anything related to that.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
Yeah, it's actually a really good question.

Speaker 3 (46:47):
I haven't had anybody asking that question yet, and it's
probably something I need to bring up more often, because
I think that I have noticed mature bucks. And once again,
I think the sample size is probably too small to
say for sure, but there are some bucks that I
have where I know their home range probably too will
like I really know where they bed, I know where

(47:08):
they move, I know where they frequent and then all
of a sudden, I would be going out to find
this particular buck and he would be outside of that
home range, kind of off in a different direction, and he's
kind of walking this and oftentimes it happened in the morning,
but he would be walking this somewhat semi straight line,
just a more missional morning travel route, and at the
end of it, he would make it to a scrape
where you had to think he knew where that scrape was.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
He didn't just run into that scrape.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
He walked out of his way, like you said, to
get to that particular scrape location, hit the scrape, moved
off of it, betted down for a while, and then
moved right back into his home range after that. So
I definitely think there's something to be tapped into on
that topic.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
Interesting. So you were just discussing how there's maybe more
morning movement than a lot of hunters. Give these bucks
credit for two questions for me coming out of that One,
was that consistent throughout the year or was that just
during their rut or during a certain portion of the year.
That's that's question number one.

Speaker 3 (48:05):
Yeah, No, that was consistent from really whenever bucks split
from their bachelor groups all the way unto the end
of season. And I think whenever you make it into
late season kind of from my area, that would be
December twentieth, twenty fifth and then onward into January. I
think whenever you make it into late season, it starts
to become a bit more of an individual characteristic. Because

(48:28):
I had some bucks, some mature bucks that would just
settle back down and they became really calm, and their
home ranges shrunk dramatically, and they were really focusing kind
of on themselves, browsing on acorns, drinking water, not really
going out and sent chicking does. And then I had
some bucks that were lunatics the entire season, and they
just continue to travel all the way across the property

(48:48):
every single day in the morning, and they never cooled off.
So I think that in the late season in particular,
that can become really an individual characteristic. But across the
kind of pre rut timeframe, peak rut, post rut, and
even into that like maybe lateish late rut time frame,
then you're you're still gonna see more movement in the morning.
And even on the bucks where they did shrink their

(49:09):
home range, it's like, for I have one really good
example where he shrunk into an eighty acre home range,
and he was very consistently inside of that eighty acre
home range. The only time he left that eighty acre
home range was in the morning, and in those morning
travel routes, it was just as if he was making
a pre rep you know, post rep peak ret type
of movement. His yards per hour traveled was identical. They met,

(49:31):
the type of terrain that he was walking, and how
it was trained driven in the semi straight line and
path that he was taking. It was almost identical to
those early season or to the you know, kind of
pre rep post rut peakret timeframes. But he was doing
it in the late season and he was being marked
by me as a very sedentary Bucks. He's living in
such a tight range, but he still did every once
in a while. I think I think I recorded him

(49:52):
doing it four or five times, leave that small home
range to go out and check for intersect dough trails
all along that way, and it every time it happened
in the morning.

Speaker 1 (50:04):
When it came to you know, outside of this uh
checking for does the long morning movements of the late
morning movements is this My first instinct was like, Oh,
this must have all happened in deep like sanctuary bedding
cover and people just don't see that because they're usually
not hunting in that back there in the thick stuff. So, yes,
these deer are still moving, but it's you know, deep

(50:26):
in these safe places. Is that true? Or was this
late morning activity happening in maybe surprising places.

Speaker 3 (50:34):
Yeah, most of the times it was happening in surprising places.
But I think that a lot of the properties for
my area where I'm researching, there's a ton of mature timber.
And it's like, in terms of thinking from the mindset
of like deep thick, you know type cover, we don't
really have a lot of areas that have deep thick
type cover because there's not a lot of a lot
of guys going out and doing a you know, heavy

(50:55):
TSI and then you know, doing controlled burns in the
timber to be able to make those areas really and
green and thick. We just have a ton of really old,
mature timber in this area. So you know, I guess
that's probably a bad question for me to be able
to answer at the moment because I just haven't been
able to be in a type of train where there
is truly that you know, betting sanctuary type thing. But

(51:15):
I definitely have properties this season where I'll be going
in different states that are going to.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
Have that type of habitat interesting.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
Yeah, after having watched forty four different Bucks for hundreds
of hours, do you lean more towards oh Bucks or
all individuals and they do a lot of things that
are just unique personality type things or is it more well, yeah,
there's a lot of things that are almost like rules.
They do this, they do that. There are strong trends.

(51:46):
Where are you leaning more towards now or what's that
percent split if you had to say, well, it's like
forty percent predictable and sixty percent. Man, every Buck's different. Yeah,
do you have any sense of that after looking at
this data?

Speaker 3 (51:57):
Yeah, I would say that it really heavily leans towards
the individual buck characteristics. I think that in particular, mature bucks,
if you backed it off from ature bucks and you
started looking at younger deer kind of two three year
old bucks, maybe even four year old bucks, but I
think that they're going to get shoved off into the
mature side of things in terms of individual behavior, especially
during pre rut and peak rut and post runt and

(52:20):
then dough groups and whatnot. I think dough groups, for sure,
you can lean that back towards the side of like
they're not really that individual they all kind of do
the same thing. And then younger deer they're kind of
leaned on the they all kind of do the same thing.
And it seems like they're really curious into mature bucks,
by the ways, which is maybe something if you want
to do, we could get into. But mature bucks in particular,
they seem to all be very individualistic in terms of

(52:43):
how they behave, and I'd seen that across the board,
and I think almost every GPS color study that's been
done in the past it kind of backs that as well,
saying that individual buck behavior is extremely common and that's
kind of the standard for mature bucks.

Speaker 1 (52:58):
So what have you seen with these young being curious,
because I've seen a few of your videos where there'll
be these bachelor groups of young bucks that go and
like almost seek out the big old buck and kind
of bump him or butt or bug him. Is this
is this a consistent thing you've seen and b having
If that's the case, is there any way to take
advantage of that? Is there anything that a hunter can

(53:19):
use with that knowledge?

Speaker 2 (53:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (53:21):
Yeah, I haven't thought about it from the hunter's perspective,
where if you're seeing young bucks move through the timber,
how they might be potentially trying to seek out that
mature buck for you, I haven't thought of that yet.
That's a pretty good idea, but yeah, now I've definitely
seen them intentionally seek out mature bucks, whether it's in
the peak rut time frame, post rut late season, like
a in a peak rut time frame, you'll have a

(53:42):
scenario where a buck has mature buck has a dough
kind of vetted, and she off down and what would
be a thicker area from my area, and then he's
betted within fifteen to twenty yards of her, just kind
of pending and waiting and backed off from him. Thirty
to fifty yards away, there's like three or four younger
bucks all just kind of like waiting in line or

(54:02):
sitting back to observe and watch what event's about to
take place. I don't know if it's like a if
it's a learning situation, or what all they're exactly doing.
But I've also heard from some perspective, and I haven't
recorded this yet, and I would love to, or if
somebody else could, where there's an idea whenever there's there's
twins in a particular dough, that it's actually two bucks
breeding that one dough, And in this scenario, it would

(54:24):
potentially make sense where the mature buck would move in
and breed that particular dough at that time and then
move off, and then one of those younger bucks, potentially
the most dominant out of that group that's kind of
sitting back on the bench waiting, they step up to
the plate and they kind of went out the fight,
and then they take over and then they potentially breed
that exact same doe again. And that's how sometimes twins

(54:47):
are able to come from that. And that's something I've
heard from guys like Bronson and others that have asked
me whether or not I've recorded that, and no, I haven't,
but I think that would be a really cool thing
to be able to capture, and that might be what's
taking place there. But I've also seen the peak rut
where a mature buck will be bedded in his kind
of in his morning bed at the end of his
travel house, so there's his midday bed, and a younger

(55:09):
buck will move in on him, and in my opinion,
in that scenario from what I've seen a lot, the
mature buck generally doesn't like to be messed with, but
sometimes and take their bucks. I've seen where they let
the younger buck move in next to him and he'll
bed down five yards away, and they'll just stay bedded
next to each other for that entire midday time frame,
and then they'll get up together and oftentimes the mature

(55:30):
buck gets him up, which is a really fascinating thing
to watch where and some people have probably seen this
in the early season whenever bucks are bachelored up where
if they're all bedded out, you know, kind of beyond
an aggfield, the big one will get up and he'll
kind of walk over and get the other bucks up
onto their feet. I've seen this in peak rut timeframe
with a mature buck and a young buck, where the
mature buck will walk over to him, get him up

(55:52):
on his feet, and then they both kind of sit
there for fifteen to twenty minutes and just clean one
another in the middle of peak rut. And I watched
that and my brain just kind of is, like, what
relation do you guys have in the past that's causing
you to be able to have You know, he is
very uncommon from what I've seen, but I have seen
it happen multiple times. And then going to the end
of the late season, you have a scenario where a

(56:14):
mature buck like the main one that I recorded last
season that I call Winter Big Main Forrin ten, he's
six or seven years old, where he traveled individual on
his own almost all the time, and there were quite
a few scenarios where he would be bedded next to
a staging area next to food or food source or
something where he's going to make his evening travel route
and bucks that are down wind of him will move

(56:37):
in on him in a bachelor group of like five
to ten bucks in some cases.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
I think the biggest one I seen.

Speaker 3 (56:43):
Was nine or ten, and they will move right up
into his bedding area and get him onto his feet,
and then oftentimes, for this particular year, he didn't enjoy
that at all, Versus the other one where he kind
of seemed like he was being a teacher. This one
was kind of a jerk, and he'd pin his ears
back and let them all know that he was about
to plant them all but if they didn't.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
Move out of his way types of situation.

Speaker 3 (57:02):
But yeah, no, it seems like younger bucks are even
four year olds, are highly curious into what that most
dominant buck in the area is doing.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
Did you notice anything unique about how the dominant buck
in the area would bed or travel compared to the
whole rest of the buck herd in that zone. Was
there anything like, oh, yeah, the top buck would always
get this spot where the top buck would always come
in last, or any of those things that sometimes we believe.

Speaker 3 (57:32):
Yeah, I, as a hunter, I feel like there has
to be something in relation to that, but I haven't
been able to see a massive correlation. I mentally, I
feel like he since he is the dominant buck, he's
probably claiming the best zones that in that particular area.
But then I've seen him in situations where quite a
few mature bucks will bed down in an area that

(57:53):
puts them at a complete disadvantage from a me being
a hunter perspective, and it's like, why are you in
that location? Maybe maybe he's not in as much of
a disadvantage as I think, but from what I see,
I think that he's in a complete disadvantage based off
of where he's going to probably move in that evening
travel route. And uh, that's that's one thing I've seen.
But no, I would like to think that mature bucks,

(58:14):
definitely the dominant buck in the area kind of gets
to pick the best location that he that he wants
to be in. But I think there's some scenarios where
whenever they're moving back into their evening bed or to
their midday bed or whatever, where they just sometimes they
just get kind of exhausted, kind of in that post
rud or late red timeframe, and they just bed back
down wherever they are. It's like, screw this, I'm getting
off my feet.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
So these bucks that you got to know over the year,
would you say that most of them you could eventually
like write a bio of, like a summary of like Okay, winter,
he likes to do X, Y and Z, and pretty
consistently he's gonna do X Y or Z, and then
the six by five he's usually going to do X

(58:57):
Y or Z. And you kind of know that. Is
that the case with all the bucks that you studied
very well, that eventually you could pattern them to some
degree or were there some deer that were just random
deer like their personality trait was they throw a dart
at the wall and they're going to do something different
every day. You can never correlate it to anything. Was
there one of those or other one or the other

(59:18):
of those more common?

Speaker 3 (59:19):
Yeah, that is something that I tried to do pretty
consistently throughout the season because I actually have a video
idea going into this season where I'm going to try
to pattern the buck and then go out and hunt
him with my wildlife camera and see if i can get,
you know, within sub thirty yards of him in a
hunting situation and take pictures of him in video them,
et cetera. And I think that it's actually going to
be a lot harder than most people think. Andre where

(59:42):
the advantage comes in more for the hunter side of things,
isn't as much being able to predict these deer, because
very few times was I was I able to see
where a buck was betted and then say, for sure
he's going to be making this move, which I all.
I mean, I st trying to do that a lot
of bed for if it's what's that you start now?

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
Oh I just said, I'd imagine that I would be
tempted to do that a lot, Like you walked with
the steers and like, Okay, where's he gonna go? I
think he'll be here. Did you play that little game
with yourself a lot?

Speaker 3 (01:00:10):
Sorry you cut out again on that. You're really e
stat Okay, I think you're better now though.

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
Sorry. I was just I was asking if you had,
you know, played that game yourself, like Okay, he's betted here,
I'm gonna guess he's gonna go to this field tonight
or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:24):
Yeah, I played that game all the time because whenever
you sit there and you watch a buck bed for
four hours, like you constantly thoughts are going through your
head that entire time. And sometimes I'd put on a
podcast or something so I could learn something else other
than sitting and thinking about why this year is betted
in that particular location. But oh yeah, every single time
I watched one bed throughout the middle of the day,
I would I would try to make guess as to
what he was going to be doing. And I feel

(01:00:45):
like in most cases I was probably wrong, I just
but and also even in the scenarios where I was right,
oftentimes I would be wrong in terms of how he
was going to do it and the specific route that
he was going to take to get there. So yeah,
I think I think even even with a thermal drone
patterning one and trying to really narrow down on exactly
what he's going to do every single day and every

(01:01:08):
single move, I think it's still a pretty difficult thing
to do. But in terms of utilizing that scenario where
you watch a buck for as much as I have
and then being able to position yourself in a high
odds hunting situation, I think you can definitely do that
because of train driven type features where you see he's
being forced to travel, and whenever you start to piece
together those areas where he's being forced to travel, then

(01:01:30):
you just go hit hunt these areas on high high
odd situations and oh yeah, no, it'll make you it
dramatically better. Hunter. I think there's a couple of spots
on the property that I could one hundred percent guarantee
if I sat there for five days undetected in these
locations during the kind of pre rut or post rut timeframe,
that there's no way I wouldn't kill mature buck in

(01:01:51):
those areas, which is actually kind of sad because to me,
it makes it to where I can't hunt that property
that I grew up on my whole life, and that's
the main property I did research on.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
But that's just the way that I feel.

Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
I don't I don't think that it's ethical at this
point because I've seen with the drone exactly how these
deer are train driven on this property. I don't feel
like it's ethical at that point to go out and
sit in those locations. But in terms of actually truly
patterning one, I think it's a lot harder than people think.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
So if you were, well, when most people think about
trying to pattern a deer, I think they are usually
thinking about two different things, or using two different sets
of variables. One they're going to take like their own
observations of that deer and trying to learn something from that,
and then Number two and probably the thing most people

(01:02:40):
lean on the most these days, it's trail cameras. People
love to look at trail camera data and use that
to pattern a deer or attempt to pattern a deer,
especially these days with sell cameras and people getting a
picture of a buck in there this morning, they make Okay,
I'm going to hunt them tonight there, et cetera. You've explored,
at least preliminarily in some of your videos how effective

(01:03:02):
trail cameras may or may not be with patterning deer.
Can you walk me through what you found as far
as like what the actual efficacy of these cameras actually are.
Are they really as effective of patterning tools we think
or maybe not?

Speaker 3 (01:03:17):
Yeah, I don't think they're near as effective as a
lot of people think, especially in the way that it's
at least the people that I know personally that utilize
them and the level at which they rely on them,
I don't think that they're near as effective as they believe.
In that that probably correlates with why, you know, when
they were younger and they were going out and just
hunting these high odd scenarios and high odd situations and

(01:03:39):
really good locations they were having more success, and then
all of a sudden they started becoming reliant and really
emotionally driven off of these trail cameras and what they're
being what's being sent to you in the morning, like
you think about it from the perspective of a hunter.
And this is one thing I started noticing with this
trail cam study that I did where you know, in
the evening timeframe of particular, I saw this a lot

(01:04:01):
because we had a lot of acorns and deer were
browsing in the woods a lot where I had the
trail cameras where I would see with my drone thirty
plus deer all moving through the timber in right next
to this camera, within one hundred yards of it, and
I would get a trail cam picture of two, three,
maybe four deer but in that scenario in and none
of them were mature, none of them were even bucks.

(01:04:21):
And often cases there were just groups of dose because
we have a kind of does But from a hunter's perspective,
if you receive that trail cam picture, especially me in
the past, I would view it and go, Okay, well,
the woods are kind of dead this evening, like not
that much activity, but if you were out in the
woods that day, you would have seen almost thirty deer
if you were if you went undetected, and it would
have been like the woods were popping off that entire timeframe.

(01:04:44):
And that kind of goes back to the you know,
the cold front idea of cold front moving in, then
you only hunting those peak timeframes, and that's whenever you're
seeing a lot of activity. It's like it's just because
you put yourself in the woods and you saw a
lot of activity. It's really hard to really narrow that
down on one particular variable that's causing that than to
take place. So yeah, in terms of trail camera effectiveness though,
I just I think people really especially on a private

(01:05:08):
land scenario, but kind of across the board, you need.

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
To take it for what it is.

Speaker 3 (01:05:11):
Is So if you get a picture of a mature
buck then and maybe a target animal that you're wanting
to really go out and potentually hunt, then take it
for the fact that he is alive and he's out there,
he's kind of in that area and maybe that's part
of his home range, and kind of hunt based off
of the fact of all the variables that you know
as a hunter, and from infield scouting and from infield

(01:05:33):
you know, activity that you're able to find versus that
individual trail camp picture, I think the only scenario that
you can really and there may be some more, especially
if you're on like fifty on one ridge, and then
I think in that scenario, like sure, yeah, you might
you might be able to start patterning a deer at
that point, because your bank account might not like it,
but you might be able to start pattern on. But
is trying to utilize the trail camera to determine buck

(01:05:57):
behavior because, like we talked about earlier, bucks are individuals
and that's kind of across the board.

Speaker 2 (01:06:02):
Everyone's seen it.

Speaker 3 (01:06:04):
And if you can utilize a trail camera to get
pictures of a deer say a mile and a half apart,
or even if you just have neighbors, so like say
you have forty acres and you get in the know
with all of your neighbors and they start getting pictures
of that buck on their property, but they're a mile
away and you guys are getting pictures pretty consistently. That
buck probably falls into a very highly mobile, highly active

(01:06:27):
kind of category. And you can use that to your
advantage by knowing that you can go and hunt these
situations that are potentially terrain driven if you have terrain
and get lucky at some point. But if you're only
getting a picture of a buck and you're really small
core area and it starts to seem like you know,
you might start narrowing down on his home range. A
great example I've seen this with was Bill Wink, which

(01:06:50):
not only did he utilize trail cameras, but he also
was in the field all the time because it's what
he does. But still he was able to narrow down
that this one particular buck lived in such a small
home range, and once he realized that, he used it
to his advantage. Instead of going in and hunting right
in his core area and pushing him out and stressing
that deer out, he was able to fringe hunt that

(01:07:10):
particular deer's location. And at some point, kind of like
I said with the it was a six by five,
he lived in that core eighty acres. At some point
he decided to move outside of that small home range,
and whenever he did, Bill got lucky and he was
in the right spot and he was able to get
a shot on him. So and he probably moved out
more often than what Bill had seen. He just that's
kind of in that particular location that Bill happened to

(01:07:31):
position himself. But that's a I think that's a use
case where you can use one is trying to identify
the individual, characteristic type behavior of that vigor.

Speaker 1 (01:07:52):
So it seems though that if we were to break
two overall schools of thought, if we were to break
kind of the hunting community into two schools thought on
killing bucks, there's one school of thought that is, like
they want to aggressively punch in and take a killing
strike on a buck when they think it's the right moment,
Like they think this special set of circumstances, the cold front,

(01:08:12):
plus I got a trail camera picture of him in
here last night, plus the winds just right, so I
think he's gonna take this route. He's going to be
at this little inside corner on this night, so I'm
gonna punch in there and kill him. That's one approach
that some people take, and they might be very selective
about how many days they hunt because of that. So
they're gonna hunt the four perfect days in the four

(01:08:33):
perfect spots. That's guy A, Guy B is what I
think you're describing, which is someone who says, well, actually,
I'm gonna hunt a lot because these deer are pretty
darn random, so I'm gonna have it's a numbers game,
So I've got to be out there fifteen times to
finally get one time when our paths intersect. But I'm
gonna do it in a place that I know is

(01:08:54):
a very safe for me as a hunter, so I'm
not detected, so I can get away with hunting fifteen
times and be in a place where terrain of some
kind is going to disproportionately funnel deer traffic through here.
So eventually, you know, even though I can never predict
what this buck's going to do on any given day,
I can predict that at least once within these fifteen
days he will come through here. And if you can

(01:09:16):
do that, you will kill that buck that might be
Guy B. Do you think that A or B is
the better approach based on what you have seen with
your own.

Speaker 3 (01:09:25):
Rise, Yeah, I think it's I think it kind of
depends on you and the properties that you're hunting. If
if your Guy A, then you probably know your area
like the back of your hand.

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):
You know you've hunted that area before.

Speaker 3 (01:09:37):
You know, how do you have to travel it and
you can position yourself in those scenarios that you believe,
in your opinion, you know, make you the highest odd hunter. So,
whether it's in relation to moon phase, cold front, et cetera,
then you go out and hunt on those particular days,
and being that you know that property so well, it's
probably going to position you in a pretty good location,
especially since you're going to fine tune when you're hunting,

(01:09:59):
Like say you're they want to hunt that area kind
of a you know, late October early November from my area,
so pre rut. Anytime you can be in the woods
in a pretty undetectable location in a high travel area
in the pre rut, it's probably going to be a
good time to be in the woods. So I would agree, Yeah,
going out on that high odd situation, maybe even correlating
it with a cold front and the moon phase, et cetera,
you're gonna put yourself in a great spot. But I'd

(01:10:21):
like to think the guys that are having success with
that strategy of only going out four times, et.

Speaker 2 (01:10:25):
Cetera, they really have their system dial.

Speaker 3 (01:10:30):
And then the other side of that is if you're
somebody that's just very aggressive, and you're going into these
public land scenarios where maybe you're only going to be
able to hunt that state for a couple of days
or five days, maybe two days, and you have to
go in and just be hyper aggressive in that scenario.
I think that it makes sense to be able to
do that as well. And in that situation, you're probably
going in and you're looking for extremely fresh buck sign

(01:10:52):
and then you're hunting over that extremely fresh buck sign.
But I guess in that scenario, you're really not waiting
for the correct conditions. You're just you're just kind of
full seen. So it's really not you're you're kind of
like a guy see. I think maybe yeah, but yeah,
and then then guy B I think is the greatest,
greatest hunting approach if you have the time availability to
do it, if you can, I mean, yeah, the more
times you get out in the woods and that you're

(01:11:13):
undetected consistently and you're hunting in these really good locations,
you're you're going to just continue to up your percentage
of seeing that mature back every single time barring that
you're undetected, you know, pretty consistently. I do think that
there's a room for you know, the whole idea of
being undetected on entry and exit. I like I said
with utilizing UTVs on private land or trucks, et cetera,

(01:11:34):
that that's definitely a great way of doing it of
constantly pushing out the deer of the area that you're
in so that way you can gain entry and exit
without them really knowing that there's a human in there.
But I think that's the most important part is is
trying to be even if like say you're walking into
your tree stand and there's a dough just bedded like
ten yards in front of your tree stand and you
spot her before she spots you, trying to get her

(01:11:56):
to bump out of that spot, or maybe just don't
go hunt that tree stand, but if you feel like
you have to be in that spot for whatever reason,
try to bump her out of that spot without her
knowing that you were a human. Just act like anything
in the woods and just crawl around on the ground
and try to look like a gigantic armadillo or something
to where she has no idea what you were, and
she'll bump away fifty to one hundred and fifty yards

(01:12:18):
for doze, especially because they seem to be a little
more curious than bucks in some cases. But and then
you just rush to your stand and get up, and
she'll probably be back in the area and try to
figure out what you were. But if you were an
advantage where you have thermost your advantage or the wind
to your advantage in an area that she's not gonna
be able to detect you, then you should be able
to remain undetective in that scenario. But now I think

(01:12:38):
there's a lot of different situations that you can craft
up in your brain.

Speaker 2 (01:12:42):
I can run down a rabbit hole pretty quick on that.

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
So this gets me thinking about another topic, which is,
you know how dear movement and behavior changes throughout the season.
And we have a whole set of kind of conventional
wisdom around this. Like I could tell you, I could,
I could give you a one minute. I'll tell you
right now. If I were to say, if a new
hunter came to me and they're like, hey, how does

(01:13:06):
a buck behave? How does buck behavior change throughout the year?
I might say, well, uh, you know, in the summer,
he's on the standard bedding to feeding pattern, he's pretty comfortable,
he's going to move in daylight in the evening, you know,
as he goes out to feed, they're pretty visible. That
might continue into the first handful of days of the
hunting season. That's a great time to kill a buck.
And then all of a sudden, the hunting pressure has

(01:13:27):
an impact on him. They they start being much more
you know, risk averse. They're going to be back in
the cover more. They're not gonna move quite as much
in daylight. Uh. Some people might tell you there's an
October lull. Some might say it's a hunting pressure impact.
Some might say it's changing habitat. But things tend to
slow down a little bit. And then we ease into
late October and the pre rut gets closer and closer,

(01:13:48):
and then that ramps up, and then he gets to November,
then there's the rut, and then there's all the chaos YadA, YadA, YadA,
And then we go into the late season and deer
get back on their feeding patterns. But they maybe are
more risk averse because they've been hunted for three months.
But when you get that really good cold front or
big snow event or whatever it is, man, they can
really get out there on those good food sources. So
that's like my sixty second over generalized over bee of

(01:14:11):
deer movement, right, a buck activity. What have you seen
as you watched forty four different bucks live out a
hunting season themselves that was either right in line with
the conventional wisdom on buck behavior throughout the season or
surprising from that, Like, was there a period of the
year where like, oh wow, everyone says that in mid

(01:14:33):
October their movement goes down, but it didn't, or everyone
says that in the early season, whatever, did anything like
that stand out that was a surprise.

Speaker 3 (01:14:42):
Yeah, I think that one thing that is really useful
to apply to conventional wisdom is what took place throughout
the summer and the spring in your particular area. So
if you went through a heavy drought like my areas
this year, that's going to dramatically affect the way that
deer act throughout that you know, the course of the
generalization that you just made. Whereas last season we had

(01:15:04):
a lot of rain, so they had a lot of
available forbs and a lot of a ton of acorns,
which that's kind of seasonal dependent, but still there was
a ton of acorns last season, and we had a
lot of native brows on the ground, and that kind
of dramatically changes the way that they're going to go
throughout the early season. And then you know, during the
during i'd say right up against the peak rut and

(01:15:24):
then peak rut and post rut. I think you're going
to see consistent types of movement patterns. But the one
interesting thing about the peak rut is that even though
form my area, you know, experts kind of state that
peak rut happens November tenth to November twentieth, a lot
of hunters know that that is a constantly shifting variable
and GPS collars have also back to that where you know,

(01:15:45):
for my area, one season, I could have peak rut
starting on November two, and then the next season it
could start November eighteenth, and it's just completely shifting around,
and you really have to be active in the woods
or maybe just have a ridiculous amount of trail cameras
to be able to identify. I win that peak red
is going to actually take place in your area, But
I think the number one factor in terms of what's

(01:16:07):
going to change what you're doing throughout that season. And
I'll be super excited to see this year with the
drought that we had is the amount of rainfall that
you get across spring and summer and if you don't
have available native forage going into October and November. Because
this season I think we have just from what I've seen,
I can make an estimation that we have like a
quarter to a half of the amount of acorn mass

(01:16:30):
on trees that we did last season, So that means
we're gonna have dramatically less acorns. We already don't have
native brows. They've already picked native brows pretty much clean.
There's a sweetheen field that I've been scouting in person
where a month and a half ago I have pictures
of This might include in my next video because it's
that amazing where this twenty acre field was just flush
and green and beautiful and there's been over one hundred

(01:16:51):
and fifty deer in that field every single evening, and
that field now it looks like a wasteland. I mean,
they have eaten that entire field off nothing, and they're
kind of, you know, barring any other little native brows
out there, they're kind of out of native forbes and
anything that's green and moisture rich. And because of that,
it gets me into a whole thing with microbiome. I

(01:17:13):
can get into that if we want to, but basically, yeah,
why not, I'll get into it.

Speaker 2 (01:17:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:17:18):
Basically, throughout the summertime frame, they're browsing on moisture rich,
kind of easy to digest types of food sources, especially
if you have some moisture in the area. But whenever
they convert that and they start browsing on acorns, then
there's a microbial transition that has to take place in
their gut. Because deer have four chamber of stomachs, they
have a room in and basically they have micro microbes

(01:17:38):
that digest the food for them and convert it into energy.

Speaker 2 (01:17:41):
That's the basic way of putting that.

Speaker 3 (01:17:43):
But in this situation where you have summer greens, like
these deer that were just eating on the soybeans, now
they're out of summer greens. So when acorns start falling,
which they're probably going to start falling earlier, and I
think today's first day of season for my area, I
think acorns have already been on the ground a little bit.
But as they transition in eating acorns, it's a completely
different style of food. It's a lot more woody, and fibrous,

(01:18:05):
and it's going to cause their microbiome their gut, they're
going to need a different form of microbes to be
able to.

Speaker 2 (01:18:10):
Process that food.

Speaker 3 (01:18:11):
And what takes place is when they start eating acorns,
their body starts realizing they need different microbes and it
takes seven to fourteen days you look this up. Take
seven to fourteen days for this for their gut, for
their women to be able to switch and change the
types of microbes that are inside of it, and across
that timeframe, whenever they start browsing on acorns, they're not

(01:18:34):
extracting near as much energy initially as they were whenever
they were eating the moisture rich.

Speaker 2 (01:18:39):
Easy to digest food.

Speaker 3 (01:18:40):
So you have a period where when deers start making
that transition and they start hitting acorns, they have to
do it at a much higher frequency. They have to
fill their roomen much more so that way, since since
their body is unable to extract as much energy, they
need more food intake. And then if you start mixing
that in with a mature buck in this setting where
he just sheds his velvet simultaneously, that means his testosterone

(01:19:04):
is going to start increasing. As testosterone starts increasing energy
output starts increasing and his metabolism starts increasing. Therefore he
needs more food. But he's also changing his brows at
the same exact time. So not only is he going
through a microbial transition in his roomen where he's changing
the type of food he's trying to digest and extract
energy from, but he's also shedding velvet and having higher

(01:19:27):
testosterone rates, which is going to cause him to go
out and browse more frequently and really hyper focus in
the first two weeks of season in most cases just
dependent upon when acorn when they make that transition, but
really hyper focus for around two weeks on one individual
food source as their gut makes that transition. So I

(01:19:47):
don't know if that has to do with anything we
were just talking about, but I.

Speaker 1 (01:19:50):
Well, as I hear that, it sounds almost like hyperphasia,
which is something that bears go through when they're preparing
for hybernation for a different reason and in this case,
but does that has that I'm curious if that leads
to like an increased opportunity or maybe that explains why
we see a better opportunity in the early season because

(01:20:11):
you have this transition occurring. Have you observed that yourself
last year when you watched deer doing this.

Speaker 3 (01:20:18):
As I feel like, yeah, I feel like I've observed
it myself, and I feel like I'm definitely observing it
right now with the drought that's taken place and how
they're having to make a pretty quick transition from because
they just haven't had much available green forbes, and I
think that that will definitely cause him ature buck to
be more active to try to get out and get

(01:20:39):
his brows. But we're also simultaneously being hit, you know,
opening day of season in Missouri right now, the fifteenth,
it's it's ninety degrees outside. It's hot, So I think
that I haven't flown today, but I would assume I
did see on trail cameras. I would assume that a
lot more activity is going to take place kind of
in the really really early morning timeframe where it's seventy

(01:21:00):
seven degrees outside, whereas a lot of guys in the
early season they're kind of waiting to go and hunt
the evening time frame, kind of that late evening whenever
they're going to be moving. But I think they're going
to move kind of at the start of dark or
really really close to the end of shooting light in
these really hot days, and then in the morning timeframe,
they're going to be pretty active because it's just so
much cooler. And whenever you have a mature buck running

(01:21:21):
around in eighty five to ninety degree weather and his
body's trying to put on a new coat to prepare
for the winter for the Midwest area, then that's not
a good situation.

Speaker 2 (01:21:30):
It's actually kind of.

Speaker 3 (01:21:31):
Dangerous for them to try to move around a lot
in these peak heat timeframes. So you're going to see
a lot more activity in the morning while this heat's
still here. But in five days, it's going to change
because a little bit of weather's going to come in.
It's going to be seventy seven degrees outside. Evening movement
might start to ramp up at that time frame where
they're consistently going to acorns or woody brows. And yeah,

(01:21:52):
but there's so many variables across the board for all
this type of stuff, So to be able to give
like a blanket answer on anything, it's very difficult because
things change season by season basis, and you have to
realize that as a hunter.

Speaker 1 (01:22:03):
Yeah, so, so I believe I heard you mentioned somewhere
that you're going to be releasing a video soon about
the early season to some degree and making the claim
that the early season might be the best time to
kill a mature buck. Is that right? Is that how
you feel? And what have you seen in your research
that makes you feel that way?

Speaker 2 (01:22:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:22:22):
And the heavy distinction on that is, I think it's
the best time to kill a specific target mature buck,
not just immature buck. I think that if you're wanting
to target an individual animal, then the early season is
the best time frame. And that's that has to do
with a lot of the stuff that I just talked about,
with how he's going to have to be forced into
browsing on these really hyper focused scenarios, which in the

(01:22:44):
Midwest is oftentimes on white oak corns in the early season.
But it also has to do with one their visibility
is pretty easy in this timeframe, and they're betting locations.
It seemed everything just seems to be a little bit
smaller and a little bit tighter, and they're oftentimes still
bachelored up for this first like especially the first week,
some of them have already split. I mean, I don't

(01:23:06):
know if that comes down to an individual characteristic thing.
But some bucks have already split from their bachelor group.
But oftentimes the ones that are still bachelored up, especially
they I just think they're a lot easier to hone
in on where they're bedding and where they're moving to
in the evening, and it just it makes that it
opens them up to a lot more availability to be hunted.
Whereas you start getting into the pre rut and post

(01:23:28):
rut timeframe, everything starts getting haywire a little bit and
all the bucks are moving all over the property every
single day.

Speaker 2 (01:23:35):
And in terms of just killing a mature buck, yeah,
I would say in my.

Speaker 3 (01:23:38):
Opinion, I think be rut or the post rut is
the time frame if you're hunting with a bow, if
you're hunting with a rifle, wait until light late season
on a drought season, have a food plot of something
that's slightly green outside, Go sit in a tower, you know,
hide in the bottom of the tower until the last
thirty minutes of shooting light, pop up with a muzzleloader
and fling a bullet at the first thing you see.
I think that's the best way to kill mature buck

(01:23:58):
if you want to do it with that.

Speaker 2 (01:23:59):
That why that means.

Speaker 3 (01:24:00):
But as a bow hunter, I think pre ret and
post rets really the best time frame if you're just
trying to kill a mature back. But early season, if
you're targeting an individual one, I think it's I think
it's the best time.

Speaker 1 (01:24:12):
Did you see when watching these handful of individual mature
bucks last year in the early season, were they more
consistent with the food source they would choose? And I
guess by that, I mean sometimes we might say, well, man,
this is the best food plot in the area. I
really think this buck's bed in here, So I bet

(01:24:32):
you he's coming and hitting this food plot every night,
or something like that. Maybe we overgeneralize or we make
an assumption like that. Did that hold true in any case?
Or were these deer man one day it's here, one
day it's there. They weren't as locked in as we
maybe wish that they were.

Speaker 3 (01:24:47):
Yeah, and you were relating that to early season.

Speaker 1 (01:24:50):
Early season food. Yeah, but I'm curious if that applies
anywhere else.

Speaker 2 (01:24:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:24:55):
No, I mean for early season, especially whenever acorns start
dropping and they make that transition and they're going to
be hyper focused on it. And that's where the whole
ideology of finding the feed tree comes from if you
can find the feed tree, then you can hunt the
feed tree, et cetera, which is a really difficult thing
to do. In big timber settings where there's thousands of trees,
good luck finding the first one that's dropping acorns. So

(01:25:16):
in that scenario, I think it's going to be harder
this season for a lot of people to be able
to find the feed tree. But oftentimes, from my perspective
and what I've seen with the drone and what I've
seen in the past of the hunter is finding those
trees that are isolated outside of timber, kind of on
a field edge location. If you have that, and if
you do, then that isolated tree that's allowed being allowed
to get more sunlight and put on a higher amount

(01:25:39):
of acorn mass. Oftentimes, I believe they drop acorns sooner
from what I've seen, And in that case, that's why
I've seen a lot with the drone and in person
of mature bucks and in just deer in general moving
out into these field edges and browsing underneath these these
acorn trees. And I think another thing you can potentially
mix in whether you're in big timber or not big timber,

(01:25:59):
is areas where there's a tree positioned in a bit
of a depression. So if you have a field edge
and it's in a little bit of a depression, then
that area is going to naturally retain more moisture and
it's going to put on more acorns. So, especially in
a drought season like we are now, that particular tree
in a depression might be able to put on a
higher acorn mass. But in a scenario where you only

(01:26:21):
have big timber and you don't have pialle edges, try
to look for those natural types of drainages and in
types of depressions where there's oak trees in that particular location.
And oftentimes you can actually see it on topography where
if you look at the imagery from a top down
perspective and the leaves are on in your imagery, then
you can see the leaves are greener in that location

(01:26:44):
where there's depression, and that's because it's naturally retaining more moisture,
which allows the leaves to retain more floor fill. Acorns
are going to be bigger, potentially healthier, et cetera. And
I would like to think that you're going to funnel
those particular areas over anywhere else. But I don't know
about the big timber setting, but definitely field edges. That's
a that's a big thing. If you can find trees
just outside of the outside of timber, it seems to

(01:27:05):
be that they really like walking into those fields and
browsing on those larger mature oak trees.

Speaker 1 (01:27:12):
Makes sense. You bring up topography a lot, and at
some point in our conversation, I think you alluded to
the fact that you know that can sometimes be more
dependable for predicting or patterning deer than anything. In being
able to watch all of these deer over the course
of the season, I know that you have seen them
use a whole slew of different kinds of topographical features.

(01:27:35):
You've watched them use saddles, us benches, use thermal hubs,
use points, use ridge lines, whatever. Is there any one
particular topographic feature that was more important than you realize
or maybe the very most important? And was there anything
that ended up being a dud which you were like, Ah,

(01:27:58):
I would have thought that this would have been much
more important for how these deer use their world, and
they just didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:28:03):
Yeah, Yeah, I think I have good, pretty good answers
for those.

Speaker 3 (01:28:06):
Two one, saddles or saddles are really good. But in
my opinion, from what I've seen, if you can position
a saddle right up against a habitat transition where there's
maybe a clear cut and then maybe some mature timber,
like a thin stretch of mature timber, and then a
field edge, and they're all kind of up against or

(01:28:27):
next to a saddle, that little thin stretch of timber
or by thin stretch of timber. It could be two
hundred and fifty yards wide, or it can be fifty
yards wide, but that thin stretch of timber I think
is going to be heavily active by especially mature bucks
right up against the clear cut edge, and not especially
not up against the field edge, but right up against
the clear cut edge. I think they utilize those clear

(01:28:49):
cut edges kind of wrapping nearby saddles very very consistently
from what I've seen. And in terms of the dud,
I've seen some areas where I mentioned in a video
where there's a topographical feature where it from a map
it looks like an extremely amazing funnel for like a hunter.
You see it and it's just like, oh my gosh,

(01:29:09):
every single deer in the area that crosses this area,
I'm going to be undetected all the time, and there's
no way it's going to smell me. And it's such
a tight funnel thirty yards or something, and like you
just you're going to have a shot everything that walks
by you. And I had one of these, and I
don't know the exact term for this particular topographical feature.
It was more of like a if you had two

(01:29:29):
large sections of land on either side, and then there's
this thin thirty yards light thirty yard like bridge that
connects the two together. And in this case the one
that I had, it was a little over one hundred
yards wide. I think it was one hundred and twenty
to one hundred and fifty yards wide, this thin stretch.
Deer would not walk on that thin stretch, this bridge
that connected these two pieces of land.

Speaker 2 (01:29:50):
Versus walking on it.

Speaker 3 (01:29:51):
And I have seen them walk on it before, but
more often than not, they would take the travel route
that went down into a drainage over to a clearcut
edge and then on the other side, essentially four xing
the amount of distance that they were going to have
to travel to avoid the thin stretch of a bridge
that connected these two pieces of land and too tight.

Speaker 1 (01:30:10):
Too tight of a funnel.

Speaker 3 (01:30:12):
Yeah, it was too tight of a funnel. I think
in this scenario maybe it was too long as well.
Maybe if it was shorter and it was like twenty
or thirty yards, they'd be willing to take the risk.
But since it was such a long funnel and there's
a bluff on one side and there's a cliff on
the other side, it was pretty much like a suicide
mission where if you get on it and then you
have two I guess it's not good terminology to utilize.
But and you have two predators come on either side

(01:30:35):
of you in that scenario, then the only place that
you can go to is right off the cliff, and
then you know, good luck have fun with that. So
I think they avoided those scenarios more often than not
because of just how tight that they were.

Speaker 2 (01:30:46):
It was too good to be true type of situation.

Speaker 1 (01:30:49):
That's really interesting. You have put out five videos now,
I think, unveiling some of your findings. You have been
on for five different podcasts talking about all of these

(01:31:10):
different things you've seen. You've had ostensibly hundreds of comments
with people kind of looking at what you've shared from
your observations and giving them you know, they're sharing with
you their thoughts on it or their questions. I'm curious
when you take everything you've heard so far, all the
questions you've gotten, all the comments you've gotten, what is

(01:31:31):
the one thing that people are missing? So you've you've
shared all this information about your observations, about what you've seen,
about what you're learning about these trends that maybe you're identifying.
What are people getting wrong after they've consumed everything you've shared.
Either they're just not they're not understanding you correctly, or
they're just ignoring You've you've said this important thing, but

(01:31:53):
nobody seems to bring it up, or no one seems
to be remembering it. Does anything stand out as that
thing that you wish people we're paying more attention to
from the you know, this thing you've put out into
the world.

Speaker 3 (01:32:05):
Yeah, I'm it might not be a perfect answer for it,
But the person that comes to my mind is kind
of people that are a little more woodsmanship, kind of
you know, outdoorsy mentality. They really like hunting like it
used to be type situation, a little bit borderline anti technology,
and they see what I'm doing, and they immediately dive

(01:32:25):
in on it like he's utilizing technology. This is unethical, unethical, unethical,
like this needs to be banned across the board and
for hunters and everything like that. And I think that
they're missing the fact that this is scientific research for one,
but two, really the main one of the main goals
for what I'm doing and the way that I'm pitching

(01:32:47):
it and showing it to people is that you don't
need to be heavily reliant on technology. It's actually a
disadvantage in most cases to become heavily reliant on technology
and to be able to kill mature but consistently year
after year, you have to become a woodsmanship type hunter.
You have to be able to go out and apply
yourself on the property and do a lot of research

(01:33:09):
and study topography prior to going in and map all
these certain variables, and then go in person and verify
all these variables, and then take all the infield activity
and scouting and everything that you've been able to apply
and apply it at a whole picture setting to be
able to hunt property as a hunter should and especially
how hunters used to hunt, so literally exactly what they're

(01:33:30):
wanting to be able to do. My work is showing
why you have to do that. If you want to
be able to consistently kill mature buck barring, you know
in states where you can pour out corn piles, et cetera, etc.
Stuff like that, you need to become this woodsmanship time
intell They literally exactly what these people are wanting if
they see the technology and they initially just jump on

(01:33:51):
it in the fact that like, oh, how dare he
in this unethical setting? And I understand it from like
a hunter's perspective. If you're buying a thermal drone and
you're going out and you're attempting to utilize one to
hunt with in that situation, then that is the most
unethical thing that I think you can do in the
hunting community right now. I think that that is a terrible,

(01:34:13):
terrible thing because you can go out and you can
locate exactly where a deer is betting, and then you
can position yourself directly off of that location, and yeah,
you're going to increase your odds dramatically In terms of
patterning one, I think it's difficult, But in terms of
going out and locating one and hunting directly off of
that intel. Oh that's one hundred percenter, Like, yeah, you're
going to have a much higher odds of getting a
shot on them. I still think it's difficult. A mature

(01:34:35):
buck is still mature buck. It's not going to be easy,
especially if you're using a bow. In fact, most people
are probably still going to fail if they're using a bow,
But if you're hunting with a rifle or etc. You're
probably going to start succeeding. And I know I've heard
things of people already attempting to use them in hunting situations,
and it's really I like to get my opinion out
there on how I feel about it. And in my opinion,

(01:34:56):
if you're willing to go and spend ten thousand dollars
on a thermal drone to go out and locate mature
bucks and hunt them directly based off of what you're
seeing and field, then I would highly highly recommend you
to go and find a high fence property. And I
don't mean a high fence property that's where the animals
are still wild on it and they're actually like still
difficult toun.

Speaker 2 (01:35:13):
I highly recommend finding the ones.

Speaker 3 (01:35:15):
Where they release one out of a pin around fifty
yards in front of you, and they pour kind of
like a corn pile, or they have some type of
food source within twenty yards of your stand location, and
that deer walks. You can see the fence still, you
know where you're sitting. That deer walks a straight line
to the food source and you take a shot on it.
I would highly recommend you utilize that style of hunting
versus buying a thermal drone and going and ruining everything

(01:35:36):
for everybody else on public lands or even your private land.

Speaker 2 (01:35:39):
So yeah, that's my feeling. It's a pretty strong opinion, but.

Speaker 1 (01:35:42):
I appreciate you sharing that. I have had similar concerns
when I have started to see how these tools can
be used. Scare the heck out of me, honestly to
see it and to imagine how somebody could use this
during the hunting season. And so the first thing I
started wondering was, Okay, how do we put guardrails on this?

(01:36:02):
How do we reckon with this? Because it's it's not
like this is just going to go away. These tools
are only going to become more affordable and more widespread,
and so how do we as a hunting community figure
out where this lives within our world. We've kind of
figured out where trail cameras lived within the fair chase world,
although technology keeps on changing there. But I'm curious if

(01:36:26):
you were to sit with the Missouri State Game Commission
and they would say, Hey, Derek, you've been using these
thermal drones. You know what they can do. You know
how incredibly effective they are at finding deer so quickly
and zooming right in on them and seeing everything they
do all day. If you or us, how would you
recommend managing this, regulating it in some way to preserve

(01:36:51):
fair chase hunting in the future of our tradition here?
What would you tell them?

Speaker 2 (01:36:55):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:36:55):
Recommending Yeah, I would think that from a hunter's perspective,
they need to be tamped down completely, pretty much banned
across the board from a hunter hunter's perspective, And I
know you start getting into a kind of iffy error
whenever you apply that private land. It's like to my
private land, and I can do what I want to
on it. So that would be something that maybe they're
going to have to figure that one out, because I
don't know the answer in relation to public and private.

(01:37:16):
But one hundred percenter for public land, absolutely no use,
no use case policy. I do think that they are
extremely effective and should remain used for deer recovery activities.
I think that that is a very good way to
utilize one, and and I think dogs are equally effective
and in some cases they're even more effective in a

(01:37:36):
situation where you have extremely dense foliage on trees. But
I think that especially going to the late season where
if you've got a you know, a single lung or
a or a gut shot on one and they're going
to be living for a long time, a dog could
potentially bump that deer up in some situations, and thermal
drone you're not having any impact on that particular deer.
So it's actually a very very ethical way to go

(01:37:58):
about tracking one. I know that my state in particular,
if you track one and you locate it, you're not
allowed to go in and finish it off at the moment.
And I don't know what, you know, what application you
could do for that. I've previously thought the idea of
like being able to contact a conservation agent as a
pilot and then kind of narrow out the fact that
like this deer really is shot, this deer really is
wounded and we should be able to go out and

(01:38:19):
finish it, and then they accept that. But at the
same time, most conservation agencies are underemployed, and like the
idea of that is just not something that's applicable. So
I don't know where that falls in line. But as
someone who has tracked a deer before, and I've seen
one wounded laying there in a position that you could
go and finish it off, but legally you're not allowed to.
You have to sit back and wait. That kind of

(01:38:40):
hurts me mentally from an ethical standpoint. And the reason
that's put in place is because somebody could hire a
pilot to go out and locate a buck that they
just shot, and then they never actually shot them, and
then you give them that pin location and then they
go and hunt based off of that. So that's why
it's in place, which makes complete sense. So I don't
know where you know that that needs to be fixed,

(01:39:01):
but I do think it's unethical to locate one that's
clearly wounded and more mortally wounded and just watch him
die over the course of six eight hours. I think
it'd be cool if you could go finish one off
but I just don't know the application for that.

Speaker 2 (01:39:14):
Yeah, from the what I'm doing perspective, I think.

Speaker 3 (01:39:17):
It needs to be heavily regulated, especially on public land,
and in a similar way like think about how you
can't buy a GPS color and go out and trank
your deer and track them with a GPS CARR.

Speaker 2 (01:39:28):
So it needs to be sanctioned to the point that
it's it's really utilized by groups.

Speaker 3 (01:39:33):
And organizations in a controlled fashion for scientific research purposes,
and it's not really something that's publicly available at that level.
And that's once again where you get into the public
land versus private land, and you know, people, if there's
still something that you can buy and you want to
utilize it on your on your private land to go
and do dota buck I think that's a great application
as well, dota buck analysis and whatnot for private land

(01:39:56):
properties where they're potentially overpopulated but they really don't know
how how much overpopulated they are.

Speaker 2 (01:40:01):
Thermal drones an extremely.

Speaker 3 (01:40:02):
Effective way to go out and locate how many deer
you have on a property at that exact moment in time,
and then you can kind of manage your dough population
based off of that. In most situations, people are highly
overpopulated and they don't realize that. So I think that's
a that's a really good use case. And I know
a lot of conservation agencies are trying to get people
to kill more does because they just don't realize how

(01:40:24):
many are actually out there, and a lot of people
just kind of they don't really want to and they
want to focus on antlers, but they just don't realize
the implications that they're having. So maybe there's a way
to still be able to apply that at a at
a private level. But yeah, no, in the end, it's
a it's a tough question to be able to ask
and to really narrow down on what to do. But
from a from a hunting perspective, especially a public land

(01:40:46):
hunting perspective, I think it needs to be harped on
and really narrowed down and tightened as to the capabilities
of these things and people's availability to go out and
do them, and and actually the ramifications if someone's caught
doing one, utilizing a thermal drone hunting on public land,
et cetera.

Speaker 2 (01:41:03):
I think that needs to be hype dramatic.

Speaker 3 (01:41:05):
You need to be getting held accountable at a very
high level or if you're going to be doing that
in my opinion, yeah, well, like.

Speaker 1 (01:41:12):
You said, you can't be tranking deer and putting collars
on them and tracking them, So why should you be
able to track them even more closely with video camera
all day throughout the year and then hunt them right then?
I think that's raises incredible red flags. I would love
to see the use of them in season banned, with

(01:41:34):
the exception of recovery. It seems like in season use
of this tool is just full of really, really dangerous implications.
I have a friend who has one of these, who
has said that he is going to lock his thermal
drone in a safe and give the code to his
wife so he is not tempted to get it out
in season and look at deer because it's it seems

(01:41:54):
like so fascinating to do it and so tempting. And
then honestly, he said, it's like addicting, just like every
day you want to go and see where they are,
see what they're doing, watch them, and we love deer.
We love watching deer. It's so interesting, so it's very tempting.
I would imagine if you had this power that you
would want to use it, but I think that I
think we have to be really, really, really careful about it.

(01:42:16):
And I'm glad that you are, that you proactively chose
to not hunt while using this tool, and that you
are speaking out so firmly on the concerns sitch. I
think that's that's that's very admirable and I appreciate that,
so thank you. Derek.

Speaker 3 (01:42:29):
Yeah, and I definitely have had scenarios where like I'm
human as well, right, So, like I've had situations where,
in particular, I see some of the bucks that I
love hunting are like a like one hundred and twenty
to one hundred and forty inch kind of gnarly mainframe
seven or eight, just like a disgustingly massive, mature dominant fact.

Speaker 2 (01:42:45):
I love.

Speaker 3 (01:42:45):
I love those deer, and I would see one with
drone and it's like, man, you'd be fun to hunt.
Like if I could go out and like actually just
sling an er at you, I would I would really
enjoy that. But then at the same timeframe, I kind
of recollect myself and it's like, you don't be really
fun to research and observe and see how you behave
versus this one hundred and seventy inch mainframe ten that
I've been observing as well, and because he had a

(01:43:08):
lot more aggressive and dominant tendencies to just be.

Speaker 2 (01:43:10):
Able to analyze that.

Speaker 3 (01:43:11):
So you kind of had to reel yourself in whenever
you'd see stuff like that and realize, you know what
you're doing. And I think that one thing that started
hitting me as well was a couple of months into
the research, it became a normal thing for me, like
analyzing deal with this thermal drone because no one knew
about it. It was just me, and analyzing deer with thermal
drone became a very normal event for me.

Speaker 2 (01:43:32):
It was just it was what I did.

Speaker 3 (01:43:33):
Every day, and I had to like re realize what
I'm doing and how important and how amazing it actually was,
and how this was like the first time anyone's done
this at this level, and just continue to remind myself that, like,
this is why you're doing this, this is why you're
focusing on research and in an extremely ethical way, and
don't go beyond that boundary, like stay within your realm

(01:43:54):
of possibility.

Speaker 2 (01:43:55):
And that's that's exactly what I did. So, yeah, it's fun.

Speaker 1 (01:43:58):
So how do you plan on navigating this in the future,
like are you are you going to hunt this year?
Are you going to set aside the drone so you
can hunt again? Are you going to do something different
in the future, Like what does that? What does your
future look like?

Speaker 2 (01:44:12):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:44:12):
No, I've been asked as well, like if I had
to have the drone or bow hunt, which one would
I do? And at the moment, for me personally, I
would I would throw the drone away and I would
just focus.

Speaker 2 (01:44:20):
On bow hunting for the rest of my life.

Speaker 3 (01:44:22):
But being that I still can't have the drone and
I can fly it, I'm going to focus on really
individualistic kind of scientific research and I'm going to use
that research from this season in coordination with some other
people and some other names in the industry, and be
able to pitch larger scale, privately funded research projects moving

(01:44:43):
into the future. And as for me hunting, I've already
mentioned that I don't believe it's ethical for me to hunt,
especially the property that I researched probably seventy percent of
the time, which makes me sad from the perspective that,
like I grew up on that farm, That's where I
did a lot of my hunting growing up, and now
I'm I'm I don't think, especially until a massive habitat

(01:45:03):
change happens, like say we go in and do some
big per cuts, et cetera. In the next ten years.
I think at that point it might become viable for
me again. But even then, in my heart of hearts,
like I know some terrain driven locations where there's it's
just a what, like, there's no way I wouldn't kill
mat your buck no matter what the habitat changes. We're like,
they are just that good of a location. And then

(01:45:25):
that's another thing, you know, moving beyond me, Like I
have a son and a daughter, but especially my oldest
son whenever he hits age to start hunting, and I
want him to be able to go and enjoy that
property at the same level that I did whenever I
grew up. It's like, how do I how do I
feel that do it? Definitely can't give him the you
know these locations that I know, so in my brain

(01:45:45):
it's kind of as if I'm just going to have
to let him figure it out and we're going to
go in, We're going to rifle hunt in the middle
of a food plot in a field and a tower
in the beginning, and then we're going to kind of
start expanding beyond that if he's interested, and start you know,
maybe helping him position himself and learn those locations. But
I can't just give the keys to the kingdom and
be like, go sit in this spot everything like that,
because you're going to kill a big buck. So you

(01:46:06):
have to kind of like feel that for not only myself,
but future people as well. And there's also other people
that watch the channel that still hunt that property and
kind of safeguarding how de youer actually utilizing it, but
still making it extremely accurate for the video and not
giving away those locations that, in my opinion are those
like top three locations across the property, so that way

(01:46:27):
people aren't able to take advantage of it. So, ye know,
it's a very interesting err And that's one thing I've
thought about going to the future as well with research
is researching a property and then finding a similar property
in terms of terrain features, and then mimicking the types
of travel routes that the buck was doing on the
property that I was researching, especially if it's private land,
and displaying it on YouTube in a different format on

(01:46:49):
a different property, so that way, the people that hunt
that property aren't able to gain any extra edge for
their hunting strategy. Thankfully, the main properties I've been researching,
the guys hunt like two to three days during rifle
season in their food plots, over a tower and in
a tower, and that's that's also it's not going to
have that big of an effect for them. They're not
going to go out of their way. They're they're kind

(01:47:09):
of old men and they just got they.

Speaker 2 (01:47:11):
Go sit in a tower.

Speaker 3 (01:47:13):
But still there's just a lot of things to kind
of keep in the back of your brain as you're
giving out this information. That's especially in a private land
setting where people can go out and access it, that
that might have access to hunt property.

Speaker 2 (01:47:24):
Yeah, I know, I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:47:25):
I don't know, But for me as a hunter, I
think that I'll start focusing more on public land and
then there might be some other private land, you know,
situations where I haven't I haven't done research before or
hunted in the past, where it'd be fun to go
out and hunt those maybe least properties or hunting clubs
or something. But definitely kind of leaning more towards public land,
and in terms of my personal hunting that I do.

(01:47:47):
And then still on the private lands that I've hunted,
you know, my whole life. I think I'm fine to
go out and manage those on those properties, like going
out and shooting them with my bow or a rifle
in that setting. But yeah, positioning myself in a location
and where I know mature buck is going to be
forced to travel on that area, I just don't think
that's I don't think that's acceptable.

Speaker 1 (01:48:05):
Yeah, So on this these future places you hunt, public
land or other private what is the single biggest change
you and vision making to your hunting strategy based on
what you've learned so far?

Speaker 3 (01:48:20):
Yeah, Well, the number one thing that I'm going to
look for is habitat diversity. If I can find habitat
diversity on any public land or new private land that
I'm going to be hunting, then I will start immediately
hyper focusing on that area. And then if I can
put that habitat diversity in correlation with potentially a small
micro thermal hub or a large thermal hub or saddles,

(01:48:42):
et cetera, in these locations where deer are going to
be more likely than to travel, then I'll continue to
hyper focus on that more than anything, and where those
habitat diversity areas are. And then on top of that,
that's whenever you start getting into the train driven type features,
especially if I'm still hunting a train I'm not hunting
in like hill country terrain, I think I become like

(01:49:03):
a seventy five percent worse hunter automatically. But if I'm
like in my hill country type stuff, I think that
I'm pretty stink and lethal right now. But yeah, no,
I would be focusing on habitat diversity and in relation
to terrain features and kind of you know, thermal hubs, saddles,
et cetera. These really high hot areas. And also it's
highly dependent upon season. You know in early season that

(01:49:24):
where I'm going to be hunting is not where I'm
going to be focusing on during the post rut, et cetera.
So kind of finding that that balances to where I'd be.
But really, the main thing that I would be focusing on,
especially where mature bucks are going to be moving, is
areas with habitat diversity, especially if you can find a
clear cut for an edge, because it seems like when
they're moving through the timber and heading into location, if

(01:49:46):
say he walks through a funnel that's two hundred yards wide,
and he walks up this ridge, which in my opinion,
a two hundred wide section where he's forced to travel.
That's still funnel. It doesn't have to be thirty yards wide.
Anywhere where he is forced to travel, in my opinion,
is a fumbel is a funnel. And in this in
this case, let's say's two hundred yards wide, and he
walks up that ridge anywhere within that two hundred wide section.

(01:50:07):
But every single time when he makes it to this
habitat edge, it's as if he just like walked into
a brick wall and he made it to his destination
and then he moves based off of that. So he's
kind of using these habitat features and edges as kind
of key like things to focus on and be able
to kind of re engineer his brain as to where
he's located and then move based off of that.

Speaker 2 (01:50:29):
If that makes sense. So that's why I would be
looking for habitat adversity.

Speaker 1 (01:50:33):
Very interesting. Well, there where can folks go to see
these videos you've shared so far and everything else is
to come?

Speaker 3 (01:50:41):
Yeah, White toil research across the board. Actually, if you
google mam. I'm at the top now, so I made it.
I'm at the top for white Tail Research gradulations, So yeah,
I feel great about that. I bragged to my wife
every day about that topic. But so yeah, white Tail
Research across the board. My main platform is going to
continue to be YouTube. I might start posting for talk
because I am a wild life phtographer, might start posting

(01:51:02):
photography and stuff to Instagram and whatnot in the future.
And then I also have a website, white Tail Research
dot net. It's actually going to be changing here soon
because I've made a new one that might have merchandising
and I might be able to sell drones, et cetera.
And then I have a Patreon coming out soon white
Tail Research as well, where I'll kind of give because
as you've seen, I haven't put many videos out across

(01:51:22):
the time. Permit's because I'm really particular about the style
of videos that get put on white Tail Research. They
have to kind of be a little bit of research oriented,
and if they're not, I don't want to put them
in that application. So the Patreon ideas, it's going to
kind of focus on things in the background that I'm
doing and actively so that way the people that are
wondering where I've been for the last month, it's like, well,
you can go there and that's where that's what I've

(01:51:43):
been doing. So it's going to and there's going to
be more stuff like live poals for research ideas and
all sorts of randomness. But yeah, white tail research across
the board though, for everything that I've got, and in
terms of socials, I think I have every one of them.

Speaker 2 (01:51:55):
I don't really like social.

Speaker 3 (01:51:56):
Media, so like TikTok and all that type of stuff,
I'm not very active on.

Speaker 2 (01:52:00):
But maybe someday I will be. I don't know, we'll see.

Speaker 1 (01:52:02):
So you're not missing out, yeah, I think so. Well, Derek,
I appreciate you sharing all this. I appreciate the work
you've done so far, really really interesting stuff, and we're
looking forward to seeing what else you'll be sharing in
the coming weeks and months, and whatever new research projects
you and Bronson get into this year or next year

(01:52:23):
we will be particularly excited about. So thank you and
best of luck this year with the next version of
the research.

Speaker 2 (01:52:29):
Yeah, thanks for having me on, man. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:52:34):
All right, And that's a wrap. Thank you for tuning in.
I appreciate you listening to this episode, joining me for
this conversation. Really really wild stuff. It's going to be
interesting to see how further studies expand on our understanding
of deer another game. I love the fact that Derek
is going to be working with you know, respected well

(01:52:55):
trained researchers such as Bronson Strickland. I think that's going
to really give us further depth of understanding of what
we're dealing with here, and I can't wait to see
what they uncover. So until next time, thank you, and
stay Wired to Hunt.

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