Ep. 954: What Grant Woods Knows Now, That He Wishes He Knew When He Was Younger

This week on the show I'm joined by Dr. Grant Woods to discuss the deer hunting philosophies and tactics he wishes he'd understood sooner in his deer hunting journey.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
the white tail woods, presented by first Light, creating proven
versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host Mark Kenyon.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
the show, I'm joined by doctor Grant Woods. We are
discussing the greatest deer hunting lessons that Grant wished.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
He had learned when he was younger.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
All right, welcome back to the Wired Hunt podcast, brought
to you by First Light.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Today we have a terrific episode.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
With one of the pre eminent leaders within our white
tail hunting community, doctor Grant Woods.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
And this is is a I don't.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Know, like a I'm trying to think of what the
right word is to describe this. This is a reflective
This is a looking back episode for Grant to help
all of us look forward.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
By that, I mean we're going to be.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Asking Grant about the greatest lessons he has learned over
his many decades of deer hunting experience and success. He
is one of the leaders in the science of white tails,
in the management of white tails, and one of the
absolute best educators on all of those things and of
hunting white tails. If you're not familiar, Doctor Grant Woods

(01:31):
has been a longtime deer management specialist, researcher, consultant, and
more recently the last sixteen years or so, he's been
producing the Growing Deer TV series on YouTube, tremendous resource
for me and many other people over these last you know,
fifteen sixteen years to help you become a better deer

(01:51):
manager yourself, a better deer hunter yourself. And he recently
released a video a couple weeks ago exploring the things
the greatest deer hunting tips or lessons that he wished
he'd learned sooner, the things that he wished he knew
when he was younger that he does know now. And
they got me thinking, gosh, there's got to be a
lot of things like that for Grant, because he's seen

(02:13):
it all. He has seen this whole kind of trend
of deer hunting over these last you know, twenty thirty
forty fifty years. He's seen how things have changed, He's
seen how things have evolved. He's seen every different trend
and fad and idea that you know, the deer hunting
world has come up with, and he's kind of ground
truth that with the science, given his background as.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
A deer researcher.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
So what would those greatest lessons learned be for Grant?
What would be those things that maybe the rest of
us look at now it's like, oh, you got to
do it this way, but maybe it doesn't stand the
test of time. What does he wish he knew when
he was twenty five that he does know now? That's
what I wanted to ask doctor Grant Woods today. That

(02:57):
is the discussion we have. And I have to tell
you we'roughout the bat. You've probably noticed I've lost my voice.
I apologized, but you were going to have to bear
with me today, as Grant did on our.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
Chat this past weekend.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Friday night, we had a new store opening, The Meat
Eater store in Wisconsin opened up and we had it
must have been well over a thousand people. I don't
know how many, but a lot of people. There was
a line that strel kind of strung through the store,
stopping to talk to me and Spencer and Chester for
three hours.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
We talked to folks for three hours.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Straight in this very loud room, and you know, probably
an hour and a half into it, maybe two hours
into it, lost my voice. I think I've had a
little bit of a tickle to throw out something going on,
and then on top of that, trying to talk loudly
with all his people, completely lost the voice. Then the
next day we had a meat Eater tailgate tour stop
in Madison, Wisconsin, where again loud music, lots of loud talking,

(03:57):
and I'm trying to talk to people all morning. A
little bit voice I had left at that point completely disappeared.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
So I've tried not to.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Talk to anyone for the last three days, but now
for this podcast had to do it. I'm still not
fully recovered, so bear with me. Apologies for the lack
of clarity with my speaking tone, but hopefully the chat
with Grant makes up for it, because there's a lot
of substance to it.

Speaker 3 (04:21):
There's a lot to learn from here.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
Grant someone who I've respected and appreciated for many years. Now,
I'm so glad that he was willing to have this
chat with me and with all of us that I
think will be a particularly important one as many of
our deer hunting seasons kick off, either just kicked off,
or are about to. We discuss everything from you know,
the impacts of wind and thermals to you know, the

(04:45):
importance that Grant places on access and exit and you know,
not educating deer, different ways to do that, different ways
to think about that. We talk about how his thoughts
on trail cameras and patterning deer have evolved. We talk
about how his goals and expectations have changed over the years,
and what he wished he had thought about maybe differently
when he was younger. So lots to cover. I think

(05:07):
a lot's going to help you out. I hope you
enjoy this. Thanks for tuning in despite my little bit
of thrown issue here. So without any further ado, let's
get to my chat with doctor Grant Woods. All right
with me on the line now is doctor Grant Woods.

(05:28):
Welcome back to the show.

Speaker 4 (05:29):
Grant, Hey, Mark, thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
I really appreciate you taking the time to be here,
especially since we have tried to record this show two
different times now and have been thwarted by technology issues.
So thanks for your patience and flexibility as well.

Speaker 4 (05:47):
Yeah, no issues, no issues.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
So the inspiration for this chat, the reason why I
thought of you again as someone who would be perfect
to talk to it this time of year. Was because
you just released a video a few weeks ago exploring
some of the deer hunting ideas and tips that you
wish that you had known sooner. And you're someone who
has you know, as deep and as wide a breadth

(06:12):
of knowledge is just about anybody in our community. So
when I saw that I had, I got to thinking
like this is, these are some ideas that all of
us should be listening to and should be paying attention to,
whether we are new to this or whether we've been
doing this for twenty or forty or fifty years. So
this is a long winded way of saying, Grant that
I want us to kind of reflect today on what

(06:34):
those greatest lessons learned have been for you, what those
biggest aha moments have been, What some of those things
are that you wish you knew sooner or that you
wish you change sooner. And so jump right into a grant.
If we could imagine that you had a time machine
and you could go back to visit with your twenty
five year old self, what would be the single most

(06:55):
important lesson that you would like to impart with the
twenty five year old Grant Woods about deer hunting, Where
would you start?

Speaker 4 (07:04):
Yeah, I think that single lesson. There would be multiple,
but single lesson would be that independent of amount of
sign or weather conditions, the most important thing is for
the hunter to be able to approach, hunt and exit
without alerting deer. Alert deer are very difficult to tag,

(07:27):
So my number one priority is to be able to
again approach, hunt and exit. So we're thinking about thermos
and wind direction and visibility and sound and all these things,
and that shoves aside. Guys, there's more sign over here,
you know, whatever, it is that goal of being able

(07:51):
to get in without being detected and leave. You may
not harvest a deer you want, may not see deer
on that trip, but you don't want to leave a
bunch of signor alert deer coming and going and make
that area more difficult to hunt for several days.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
So, so are you saying that you would value a
stand site that maybe, let's say is a six out
of ten on deer sightings but a ten out of
ten on access. Would that be the better place to hunt?

Speaker 4 (08:23):
Absolutely? Absolutely? And we're you know, we can't that around
a little bit. When I was young, I tried to
scout scout scout and find the most sign, and then
you know, develop my stand or blind or my hunting
location there, and now I realize where there's the most sign,
usually find the most concentrated sign in betting areas and
feeding areas. Feeding at that level of tensity is probably

(08:46):
not during legal shooting light and betting areas are betting
areas because they offer deer protection uh protection primarily from
swirling winds, and we just can't get in there and
especially get with in bow range of deer while they're there.
So rather than hunt the most sign, I'd rather hunt

(09:07):
travel or a transition zone between that bedding and feeding,
or between two large groups of sign where they're just
passing by. They're just going by, So not hanging around
and leaving near as much sign will probably increase my
odds of successfully filling a tag much more be hunting
those areas.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
So this, this come the springs to mind, is something
I thought a lot about lately. For a lot of years,
I have tried many, many different ways of hunting deer,
and you know, I certainly did the thing you described there,
which is which is chasing where I think I'll see
the most deer or where the most sign is. I've
been really aggressive. I've I've punched into the best stuff

(09:47):
at times, because you know, especially in heavy hunting pressure areas,
sometimes there's there's a belief that that's the only way
you're gonna be able to kill these deers, to really
get in there with them. But at the same time,
I've also seen, of course, what we all know is
that that does make a big impact, and you do
see deer become educated and deer behavior change, and I've

(10:09):
started to wonder if the predictability of deer is much less.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
So than we like to think.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
And so because of that, sometimes I think to myself, well,
I want to be in these really good places because
I think I can predict when these deer are going
to be there, and I just need one hunt or
two hunts in this spot and I can kill them.
But more times than not, that doesn't pan out, and
it seems like maybe the smarter plan most of the
time would be to do what you're describing, which might

(10:38):
be not hunting the best place instead hunting the six
out of ten you know, deer activity location, but knowing
that you can hunt it more often because you won't
educate deer, and so you can you can negate the
fact that deer unpredictable in many ways, and you can say, well,
instead of doing one hunt here and you know, because

(10:59):
it's probably not going to work out, then I blow
it for the rest of the chances. Instead, I'm going
to hunt a place where deer won't know him there,
but I can hunt it five times and maybe one
out of those five times he finally does come through.

Speaker 3 (11:11):
Is that?

Speaker 2 (11:11):
Is that the the idea here with hunting in these
places that are lower risk but maybe not as high reward,
because you can just hunt them over and over again
until finally he does show.

Speaker 4 (11:22):
I mean, there's there's always extremes and the edge just
to everything. So you know, if your low risk is
on the back of your truck and the stuff mark
parking lot, you're probably you know, you're not probably not
getting into game a much. Now, with that said, every
year hunts some hunter somewhere will harvest a great deer
in an area that the rest of us go. My gosh,

(11:43):
I would have never hunted there. My brother in law
as well as guys. You know, I can put the
guy in a garho I don't want him kill a deer,
and sure enough, you know on the back forty where
it hadn't been a deer in three years, here killed
that big old buck. That usually happens during the rut
when deer is certainly not predictable. Hunters all want to
hunt the rut. That's one of the worst times to
hunt if you're trying to pattern a deer, because there

(12:05):
is no pattern. The only patterns where Betty Lou has
that receptive perfume on, So the pre rut, early pre rut,
especially deer, I'm much more of a pattern. With that said,
let's be ever cautious using this word pattern. Now, if
you're in an extreme agg country, very limited cover, very limited cover,

(12:27):
it's easier to pattern deer because they're pretty much going
to be better than that small cover block. If you're
like the bulk of hunters, and I've done this, if
you add up the amount of white tail tag sold,
you know from Maine down to Florida over to East Texas,
you know, most of Tennessee, Kentucky, certainly where I am

(12:49):
in southern Missouri, not in northern Missouri. That's the bulk
of whitetail hunters. That's the bulk of licenmselves, not Southern Iowa.
That's the minority. More TV shows are made, but it's
a small part of hunters and those of us that
are hunting. Hill country, timber country, swamps, pine plantations very

(13:09):
difficult to pattern deer. So now you try to find
or create if you're a manager like I am, bating
areas and feeding areas and maybe even manage for pinch
points or travel corridors narrow places to travel in between.
Now your odds go way up. Feeding areas. Again, a

(13:31):
lot of that behavior can be before or after legal shooting.
Light Beating areas by definition protect deer. Therefore it's difficult
for a predator being there. That's why they choose to
bed there either visibility or slope or swirling winds, whatever
it is. And folks, I just want to share this
is not my only opinion. Only my opinion. I mean

(13:53):
great researchers like at Mississippi State and Penn State have
put bunches and bunches of GPS dollars on ye for
a long long time. Now there's huge data sets. We
know a lot about deer. We don't know everything, but
we know a lot and I'll tell a funny on me.
I'm sixty four. So back in izing grad school, GPS

(14:14):
scholars were not widely known. They're really really expensive. That
technology was new. Not many of them deployed, and I
had huge observation data sets from me and many other people, huge,
and I ran all kinds of stats and regressions on there.
And I thought I'd figured out deer movement related to
the moon and deer and deer. Honting partnered with me

(14:34):
based on research i'd published. We called it DAI Deer
Activity Index, you know, and there's like a two through ten.
And I was making this pretty good jingle at the
time for gratitude and I could buy a new gun
and bow in the same year, and that's I gotten
for graduate student. Yeah, and then GPS scholars got more affordable,
some technology change, and all of a sudden, there's a
bunch deployed. And I realized I had no idea what

(14:57):
I was talking about, and actually pulled that calender off
the market, which was the appropriate thing to do. And
since then we've learned if you study declination degrees north
and south of the moon of the equator, their secutor
the moon goes and for some amount of light coming
off the phase and all the distance to the Earth.
The moon has elliptical orbit, so it's not one full

(15:19):
moon's not always the same distance from the Earth as
another full moon. All that's been studied in great detail,
and there is zero relationship with anything the moon does
anything a deer does. Zero. I know you're going to
get some hate, noil mark, it's just the facts. So
through that process, what I've learned is it's not conditions

(15:40):
that make deer move more again, it's the conditions that
allow me to be a better predator. The obvious question
is one of those conditions, Well, one of them would
be high pressure. Right on high pressure, our scent is
more likely to rise up instead of spreading out. Low
pressure just wants to hover on the ground and almost
make a scent around us where deer can't get in

(16:01):
bowt range or maybe even firearm range. So high pressure,
I like wind. I like you know, ten to fifteen
miles an hour wind. I much rather have that than stilled.
I want to know where my scent cone is going.
I want wind, and so in hill country mountain country,
that usually means hunting the ridge top or close to
it because the more you get down on that ridge slope,

(16:24):
the more to wind's gonna swirl. That's why GPS collars
have shown that deer tend to bed on those side
hills in ridge country, not on the peak because winds
only go in one direction, but right over to side
about twenty degrees, that wind's going to go over to
the mountain and just swirl, just turn, and they can
sit there all day and detect predators from most of
the way around them.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
Back to your I want to talk a little bit
more about some of these things that help you and
give you an advantage as a hunter. But one last
question on the conditions that impact deer movement. You mentioned
that moon doesn't impact deer movement. You mentioned that something
like high barometric pressure doesn't necessarily impact deer movement, but
it impacts wind and your ability to hunt without getting winded.

(17:08):
Is there any condition, any atmospheric or you know, weather
related factor that you believe does make enough of an
impact that you pay attention to it as a hunter.
I know that the studies show that there's nothing statistically
significant enough to be called out, but is there anything

(17:28):
that you as a hunter know Like, yeah, but maybe
it's a little bit, it's enough that I think about,
or is there literally zero that you factor on that front?

Speaker 4 (17:36):
I mean, I still probably just from almost sentimental reasons.
I still like a high pressure moving in. I like
a front personally. I've seen one event in my entire
life or hunting career that just made deer move like crazy.
And I was in grad school. I was seventeen miles
off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina, when Hurricane Hugo

(17:59):
came in. I'm a Midwest boy, you know, so hurricanes
didn't mean thing to me. And where I was working,
the old plantation manager said, ah, feel like a bad thunderstorm.
That's the worst thunderstorm I ever spent the night here,
and I promise you that I will never spend a
night when a major hurricane comes in again. But the
day or two before that, I was going around doing

(18:20):
my research, and deer were just everywhere, just everywhere. And
of course before a hurricane, the brometer drops way abnormally
love and the manager said, Grant, you probably shouldn't harvest
any deer because we could lose power for a day
or two. By the way, we lost it for six weeks,
but probably lose power for a day or two. You see,
what have your way to you know, keep the meat cool.

(18:40):
So we didn't harvesting deer. But as I was running
my transacts, I was measuring rubs and scrapes and doing
some work like that for my dissertation, and they were
just deer everywhere. That's the only time I've ever seen
anything like that. And you don't want to go through
a level four class for a hurricane to see that, right,
You don't want to wish that one anyone. But I'm not.

(19:01):
And again, the research is clear, and you use to
write word statistically significant. Is there some hundred that's figured
out how to get a one or two minute advantage
the deer get to your stand, you know, two minutes
before dark or something. I don't know, maybe maybe not.
I have personal friends with people to have some of
the deer apps out there, but most of us are
an ad country. And again that country is very stark

(19:23):
cover food, cover food. That that's not where the vast
majority of white tail hunters hunt. That's the vast minority.
And in timer country, you know, acorns on the ground
they can feed bed in the same area. No I've
not found anything that makes the significant difference, and my
research and many others that have certainly deployed way way

(19:45):
more GPS callers. Deer move every day, and they moved
on in dust. They're prepuscular. They moved sunrise and sunset.
And I have a hypothesis of why that is. If
I can share that, please don't. So sun's rising, of course,
airs warming up in some places, open field, logging deck, whatever.

(20:07):
That Sun's getting down the ground and warming up, and
that air is rising under the shade of trees or
tall grass or on the west slope, that air is
still cool. It's gonna stay cool up to an hour
longer whatever. And on the aspect of the sun. So
you have hot air and coat air right beside each other,
and that starts turning. That's on a much larger scale.

(20:31):
When you see that big front coming through that spawns tornadoes,
that's the same thing. You've got hot air on one side,
cooler on the other. On a micro scale, that happens
in the timber and that churning their again allows dear
to detect predators most of the way around them very efficiently.
So I believe that's why it's not light. You know

(20:54):
a lot of hunters think it's light. We've all spooked
here during the dead and night or you know it's
dark going our And I've yet to hear one run
into a tree. I mean, I've just never, oh man,
broke my right hand or off hitting that tree. I've never.
You know, it just doesn't happen. And we know why.
Of course, you have a covering on the back of
the eyes called take the lucidium. Light goes in and

(21:14):
triggers Rod and Cones hits that almost like aluminum foil,
bounces back out and they get another use of that light.
Not one hundred percent, but a high percent. So the
big pupils and they're getting like coming and going to
trigger Roger and Cones. They can see in that extremely
low light, no problem. So yeah, thermals I've I've learned

(21:36):
and wind direction thermals since is number one for me,
and that first fifteen minutes, last fifteen minutes, those are
the money times to be out there. And I'll take
this one step further. I have a friend, it's not
a scientist, he's probably the best hunter I know. I
won't mention any names, I will share it. Their multiple

(21:59):
multiple world record typicals on his wall. Literally, look me
right here, folks.

Speaker 3 (22:06):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (22:06):
Man's a predator and he hunts as what I've learned
to call like a bobcat hunts. He wants to arrive
no more than three to four minutes at the spot
that he thinks he's going to see this year. He's
not sitting there for five hours, three hours, two hours.

(22:26):
He didn't want his scent to build up at all.
I call that hunting like a bobcat. If you've ever hunted,
you ever watched bobcats or looked at their GPS collar studies.
They move differently when they get in their hunting zone.
They slow down, then they're barely moving. They know when
they're close to gain. And that's what my friend does.

(22:48):
He will take hours getting to the location to spend
three minutes there, last three minutes, first three minutes whatever.
He's just super super eccentric about not alerting any deer,
those fonds or bucks. He doesn't want to alert any deer.
And hunting on his farms is like no other place

(23:12):
you're going to hunt.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
What other ways does that manifest when it comes to
how he sets up his farm or how he you know,
accesses or exits these places. Other than the timing you
just mentioned, is there anything else you could point out?

Speaker 4 (23:25):
Yeah, I mean he's all about that access. So he's
going to have mode really short trails to go to,
you know, the food plots or betting airs or whatever.
So he's not leaving a lot of sin if you
think about it, if you're walking on a spongy layer
of dead grass or leaves, that's just a scent sponge.
You want to get in clean. And as I've said

(23:46):
several times, there's a lot of people want I don't
think care about. You want to get out clean. So
when you hunt tomorrow or the next week, those deer
are alerted. My great friend, doctor Carl Miller, just somewhere
years ago, and I'm not going to quote all Carl's work,
I don't remember all the detailed did some work to
kind of learn about deer memory and how long they
could remember certain events or maybe certain colors associated with

(24:08):
treats and the captive deer pen And yeah, deer have memory.
But I had a local friend here, a hunter that
the wind is right, everything's right, good buck for deer.
It comes in under white oak tree, he shoots shoots
sort of back misses the deer. Next day, the deer
comes back. Well, remember, deer don't know death. They've never

(24:30):
been to grandpa's funeral. They don't know death literally. And
the most important thing I want to if I could
share with anyone, is start thinking like a deer. Put
yourself in their world. Stop thinking like a human. Deer
do not know death. They don't know gunshots. It's what
they learned to associate with danger. Both my daughters shot

(24:53):
high school trap at a very high level. One of
them was national champion. That's not boasting because I'm like
a three box dove hunter. Shooting a shotgut is not genetic,
I could promise you. But and at nationals, which is
always in Sparta, Illinois, it's a big old strip pick
coal mine that's been reclaimed. There's nady grass and forbes everywhere.

(25:13):
Every afternoon there'll be deer feeding. If you shoot trap,
you know the biggest shot, you can shoot the seven.
Most people shoot eighth or nine, so only travels so
far and hits the dirt. And deer have learned that
pattern and they're be feeding about five yards password to
average shot can go at that trap range and It
buggers up kids on the line because you're shooting towards deer.

(25:34):
You're shooting towards deer. At the Nationals High School Nationals
there will be over one million shotgun shells fired in
four days, over one million, and deer feeding out there
right down line or the shooting range because they know
there's no danger. You see deer on golf courses all time.
You see them below, you know, right beside the inner

(25:55):
state or whatever. Deer learn what's a threat to them
and what's not on any given area, and that may change.
Like we've done some work on Dodal Department offense properties
from a conservation point of view, and we're seeing one
hundred and fifty of America's best shooting aw to make
weapons downrange. Of course, they will never see the deer.

(26:15):
I'm sure they'd get in great trouble for doing that.
And there's a real lesson here, folks. And on the
predominant down wind side, on the predominant down wind side,
there will be deer feeding while they're shooting. You know,
automake weapons downrange. Why predominant down wind side because a
big part of gunpowder is nitrogen, and where the wind blows.

(26:37):
That residue is going to be highly fertilized. So think
like a deer. And when we keep some records here
in about twenty five percent of the mature bucks we harvest,

(26:58):
I had it happened last year. Happens almost every year
for one of our hunters here. Well, will happened when
we've harvested a dough with a firearm. So hope you
made a double shoulder shot and it drops right there,
and the bucks are coming in to smell that dough,
try to hook up, the horns, get to stand up.
They don't know death, they have no idea about death,

(27:20):
and for the first few hours that dough just smells normal.
It's the best big bucket tracks that you can have
when you're gun hunting. The first thing I want to
do you talk about when I jump boy. If you
harvest a dough, you get down, you leave your scent
all over, you drag it out a way. Now, I
want to shoot a dough through both shoulders, want to

(27:41):
meet a course and drop it right there in my
shooting light. And if I do that, I'm going to
hunt a long time there, because I know a buck's
coming to that dough. Last year, we filmed five different
bucks coming to that dough before the bucks showed up
that I wanted.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
Wow, So I want to ask a follow related to
you know, what you described happening there in the shooting
range or on golf courses. You know, this is something
I've seen too, like in suburban areas where deer become
very accustomed to humans are being around and so they
become you know, conditioned. Right, Have you in any ways

(28:18):
used that to your advantage as a hunter, in how
you operate on your property in ways you access and
in ways you set up a place or hunt in
other places, knowing that there's certain things that deer seem
to get used to and feel it safe, and other
things that they recognize as danger, and then using that.

Speaker 4 (28:36):
Yes and no. So I'm in a CWD zone. No bait,
no feed, anything like that, which is great. But we
work on our property every day. There's youtvs, there's people
checking cameras, doing habitat work. We do habitat work right
during deer season. We were running a bunch of chainsaws
the other day. So deer used to us being on here.

(28:57):
They're not used to people being twenty feet up a tree.
So we can get around our property. We don't even
think about it. We don't think about it. It's no
concern to me to write a UTV on the property
because they hear them so frequently. It's that last little
bit getting into the tree stand or the blind. When
I'm going to a blind, and I'm not lazy. I

(29:17):
walk all the time, but I like to drive absolutely
as clothes. I would rather the deer see my UTV
then smell me walking a quarter mile. You know, parking
to bottom of the blind has nothing to do about
being lazy or anything like that. It's just extremely efficient
from a hundred point of view. If I'm in a blind,
you know, maybe gun hunting deer sees a UTV at

(29:38):
one hundred yards away, it's a non issue. So we've
all heard the story about the old farmer that goes
into pasture and sees the giant buck every day and
can't understand why the hunter can't see a deer because
he sees it every day and he's feeding his cows. Well,
the buck's tole the condition that farmers pickup. And you know,
we come out there from the city and our e
bike or UTV or whatever, our walk and place as

(30:00):
a farmer never walks, so of course the buck goes. Man,
this is weird. Man, I don't know what they're thinking.
They're thinking something like this is weird. I need to
be cautious here. So hunting camps all across America, they said,
idle all year long and then the day for opening season. Man,
it's a flurry of activity. That's the worst thing you
can do.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
How long do you think it takes for that conditioning
to occur? You know, if I went out to my
deer hunting property and start driving my UTV or bike
around for a couple of weeks before the season, or
does it have to be a couple of months before
the season.

Speaker 3 (30:36):
Does it need to be the entire year?

Speaker 2 (30:38):
How long do you think it will take for a
deer to become used to a certain activity.

Speaker 4 (30:45):
Back into this with what we call the ice cream truck.
I think it started in Texas. People use it all
over now. I think maybe we come up term ice
cream truck. So, you know in Texas, a drive around
a paddock or a pasture and dunk corn out. Then
they redrive it deer on the road everywhere. Ye I
call that the ice cream truck. Right. The deer is

(31:05):
so conditioned to hearing that old ram truck, they associate
it with food and they just step right out there.
When people first start that ice cream truck, let's call it.
Seems to me it takes about a month. That's just
a round number private prop owners. You know, they got
a UTV. They sing a bag of corn or the
left arms do it the right and they just trickle

(31:27):
a little bit. They're not painting the road yellow. They're
just trickling a little bit. After about a month, the deer, turkey, quail,
whatever will literally be standing in the road waiting for
that buggy to get there. Now, you can't violate their trush.
You can't be shooting a fifty cow off the buggy
or something like that. But yeah, we see people all
across America using the ice cream truck. It's called various saying.

(31:48):
It's been on the geography you live in in South
Texas called feeding us and darrows. Again, we don't do that.
That's not my thing, not how I like to hunt.
But I see a lot of people doing it, and
I all say about the same number. Yeah, you do it.
For about months, they'll be standing in the road waiting
on you. The other side of that coin is you
bust a deer man. You go to draw, you get

(32:10):
busted by dough off the side whatever. They all blow
and tail up and snort and out of Dallas. How
long does it take for that to calm down? I
think about seven days is what some good researchers have said.
That's not my number, that's what other researchers have said.
Some really great data again for my friend doctor Duffinball.

(32:31):
He heads to Penn State Big Deer Project where for
many many years now they've had a bunch of deer GPS.
Call great thing about Dwayne. I went to University of
Georgia when Dwayne was there. He finished a year or
two before I did. Great researcher. Dwayne is more of
a burden duck guy. He's not a deer guy, so
he's not really biased by deer work. And so he's

(32:52):
a great deer scientist because he didn't have a lot
of preconceived notions or he's not trying to prove so
and so's theory. He's just doing good signs. I really
appreciate Dwayne's work, and Dwayne has got some great data
where for Pennsylvania opening the weekend and gun season is
World War three, a lot of activity in the timber
and Dwayne's all Dwayne's works on public land. Penn State

(33:15):
has a huge number of hunters. The last data I
saw the average to hunter for seventeen acres. That includes
all the acres in state, so Philly and you know
all those places. That's just a huge hunter data. That
may have changed now, but anyway, and right after opening day,
if you look at that morning movement, it's a real tall,

(33:36):
skinny spike. They barely moved. They shut it down. They're
just you know, they're scared to move, stay in the
bed all day long. Itty bitty movement right at dark.
By Thursday, that movement ban because you know, the most
people hunt the weekend. By Thursday, that movement band gets broader,

(33:57):
and Penn State has a great graph on that. By Thursday,
the deer obviously not as many hunters into which during
the week we're going back to work whatever. By thursdays,
those deer spending more time on your feet, a little
bit more time on the week. So in that case,
three four days they start letting up a little bit.

Speaker 2 (34:21):
So Grant, is there any situation in which you think
that we overvalue or over index on how much of
an impact we can make on deer, because a lot
of what you've talked about here is how much we
do impact deer behavior, how much they will react to

(34:42):
our pressure. How important is to make sure not being detected.
Is there any place or is there any time in
your history when you could point to the conventional wisdom
or your approach as actually being overboard on that front,
and actually you should have you should have recognized that
they're more we're giving in this way, or that you
could have gotten away with more in this other way.

Speaker 3 (35:03):
Is there anything like that that comes to mind?

Speaker 4 (35:05):
Yeah? Oh, one thing is remember, hunting pressure is not
how many days you hunt a location, how many times
you alerted deer there, so you've got that great setup
and the wind man it just stays out of north
for twenty days in a row. Whatever you're coming in
from the south, whatever it is, you don't alert deer

(35:27):
you hunt there every day a season doesn't matter. It's
not how many days you hunt a location, it's how
many times you alert deer. And then there are a
lot of people that jump and dump. I think that's
a hunting published statement or you know they use busting deer,
man drives all that stuff. That's not my style of hunting,
and there was really popular here in the Thozarts. We're

(35:49):
mountain hilly, not fields. There's no way to really pinch
deer in you try to a man drive to run everywhere.
But there's certainly a bunch of hunters around America that
push deer to standards or through a gap or something,
and the other people harvest deer. And that whole hunting
technique is dependent upon a controlled disturbance. And again that's

(36:13):
not how the majority hunters hunt, not how I hunt,
so I really can't speak to it. My strategy rather
is to slide in undisturbed and let the deer come
to me. I'm not trying to push the deer somewhere.
I want the deer to come to me. And in
that case, the more natural the deer on their own
behavior not all alert. And we noticed from everything like

(36:36):
we've done some I think pretty cool work where we
set up a quickly a computer with the microphone and
a magnet that dropped the water balloon and a balloon
full of water so it dropped it. The speed of
gravity and tested. How you know a two or three
hundred to four under foot bow could we get there

(36:56):
in time if the deer reacted. We use the a
lip sprinter as a deer's reaction time. I think deer
probably faster and Olympic sprinter and in those situations, deer
going to react faster than any bow on the market
can respond. At forty yards for sure, And at twenty
yards you're shooting a crossboard something, you probably get them.

(37:20):
And that goes into telling me how sensitive deer are.
We've got to remember, deer make a living. They stay
alive by being able to avoid danger because everything out
there wants a deer sandwich. Kyotes, bears, bobcats, was everything
wants a deer sandwich. And so when they have the

(37:44):
capacity to learn something is dangerous, they avoid it. They
have not had the capacity yet in most places to
learn vehicles are dangerous. However, Tasea and I sold part
of our land. We're living in a little rental house
town now, which is killing me. While our house on
the property ear is being built. And I've never seen

(38:05):
a roadkilled deer in that little development. I see deer
every day, you know, twenty thirty deer come and go
under you know, urban fleas all over the place, and
you see those deer their herey car coming, they just
stop alone most highways, that doesn't happen obviously. Deer in
that area where they see cars all day long, every day,
they have learned to avoid cars, and they teach their

(38:26):
fonds to learn to avoid cars. And you see it.
I assuming that we know what a deer say. You
see them coming through a yard or a little undeveloped
lot and you're coming and they just stop and look
at you, and you go buy everyone else in America
most places they run out and every now and then
you whack one. So deer can learn with repetitive, non

(38:50):
lethal disturbances want to avoid. They don't learn to avoid
gunshots because most of them that get shot at die
right and they there's no way of communicating. Boy, next
time you hear a thunder, real loud, you need to
get out of Dallas because you know you don't pass
that on.

Speaker 3 (39:07):
Is there is there ever a situation?

Speaker 2 (39:10):
I guess one kind of final question on this overarching
topic of not alerting deer. I think that's kind of
the theme of much of what we talked about. Is
there ever a situation or a location that warrants you
take a different approach where you're willing to hunt in
a place that you know you will alert deer on

(39:31):
your way out or at some point or you know, Man,
there's a high chance this could blow up for me,
but there's also a high chance it will work.

Speaker 3 (39:40):
Will you ever take that risk?

Speaker 2 (39:42):
Will you ever say, Okay, it's worth it this one time,
even though I know I'm breaking my usual rules.

Speaker 4 (39:48):
Yeah, of course. I think that goes with the stewardship
you have of that location or that property. So you're
a guest, You and I are hunting together on public
land and it's the last day of hunt, hunt, and man,
we just we just can't quite get to deer. Say, man,
we're going into the you know, swamp vetting area or whatever,
because if we blow it, it doesn't impact our hunting

(40:11):
that year, and we have no stewardship over what the
next hunter is going to experience on our private land.
We're going to get to hunt another day, and we
don't want to disturb that vetting area or that scrape
or whatever it is. So I think it depends upon
your scenario. Again, public land, private land, last day to hunt,
first day to hunt. A lot of those factors. During

(40:34):
the rut, when deer not on a pattern, I will
certainly go in areas I normally don't go in. I'm
not a big fan of the rut. Well, I'm a
fan of the rut when I'm a travel hunter and
I just need deer walking. The most steps of day
are gonna walk. That's when I like the rut. At home,
the deer aren't on a pattern, and I love, I
love trying to figure out whatever level of pattern there is.

(40:58):
I want to think that my main work of creating
feed here and betting neary's ears paying off, But that
doesn't pay off there in the rut. It's wherever those
receptive dos are. So yes, it's as most things biologists are.
We get a lot of a lot of uh you know,
duff though that it's because of this. There's a lot
of what ifs in the world in biology, dear biology

(41:22):
or other biology, and everyone wants that solid ten point answer.
But it's always what I like to say, the context
of the situation, and I tend to speak of the
context of you've got some stewardship and the property. It's
your land, your grandfather's land. You're going to get to
hunt there again next week, next month, next year. So
you take stuff a little differently. If you're chasing five

(41:45):
state circle of public land, you find, dear, you're going
to the sign, You're going to whatever, because you have
a limited time to make this work.

Speaker 3 (41:55):
Yep.

Speaker 4 (41:55):
And to me again, I think it just circles back
to the context of the hunting situation.

Speaker 2 (42:01):
Yeah, So speaking of context and what ifs and butts,
and it depends.

Speaker 3 (42:08):
Patterning.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
You've mentioned several times the ability to pattern, or to
whatever degree you can pattern. You said something like that,
how is your understanding of patterning deer change over the
course of your hunting journey? Where does it stand now
as far as what you believe you can actually pattern
and how valuable that may or may not be, into

(42:30):
what degree you can actually execute on that.

Speaker 4 (42:33):
Yeah, I think I mentioned earlier. I'm an old man.
I'm sixty four, so I grew up reading Roger Rothhauer
and Miles Keller and those guys. There weren't videos really
to watch at that time. M hmm. And those guys
were an agur is. Mister Rothawer was in Ohio and
Miles Course was up in Minnesota, Wisconsin area, and there
were big, big ag areas with small blocks of timber

(42:56):
and it was and I'm down here in the Ozark
Mountains in Markan National Forest public land, thinking I'm going
to use those techniques to pattern deer here, and spend
a lot of years frustrated. And then I went to
school in the South University of Georgia and Plimpson trying
to pattern deer on big old blocks of timberland and
it just does not work that way. And finally the

(43:18):
GPS collars come out, and people have you know, great
scientists have said, we're not seeing a pattern. We see
general use areas in general use areas, and you find
where two or three general use areas this is very
general overlap and deer spend more time there. But that's
not within thirty yards of any tree they're cutting through there.

(43:39):
So that's where management comes in. You make that thirty
yards better, You make the betting area here, You make
the best betting in a mile square area here, and
you assume if you don't disturb it, deer going to
use it. Or you make the preferred food source or
one of my favorite tricks is we have some food
plots that we may not hunt all year long, or

(44:00):
we don't hunt till the late season, so we get
the late season, we haven't punched our tags, and now
we have a place that deer can feed not experiencing
it disturbance that year. Man, those are dynamite and it
takes some you know, it depends on how much land
you have access to and some discipline. Who my troil

(44:21):
camera's blowing up a deer there, but I said I
wouldn't hunt that till this season late season. So again,
what you're willing to put into it. But those people
that punch tags repeatedly on mature deer, if you will
have some kind of strategy like that. And for the
bulk of American hunts, the acorn driven deer heer, that's
the bulk of licensees. All bets are off when the

(44:44):
acorns hit the ground right right, that's a whole different game.
And the techniques you see because people to make you
know what I call the big stud hunting shows. I'm
an educator. I'm friends with all these people, and I've
had a really easy career because I'm not really competing
with them. We're of an educator and they make you
live in killing great big deer. But those people are

(45:05):
not chasing acorns. They're they're inaugurate is where it is
easier to pattern, and there's a lot of sun hitting
the ground. Deer get bigger, the hokey, the big Antler's
this photosynthesis. No one ever talks about that age. First grocery,
second groceries means photosynthesis with the zero to five feet
of the ground, That's what it means.

Speaker 2 (45:25):
Is there any way to pattern if you are solely
hunting an acorn driven deer?

Speaker 3 (45:31):
Heerd?

Speaker 4 (45:32):
You know last week I didn't get tone much. Missouri's
post season open September fifteenth, and we've been in a
wicked drought. August was the driest August on record. I
think we got records here in this part of Missouri
about eighty some odd years in this county dryest on
the record. Sad, horrible, sad. And there was one pond

(45:53):
on a ridge that held water and man choke cammers
glipping off, but the wind was just not in the
right direction. I was going to alert deer and every
day it's a trade off. On my guys, I never
see a pattern like that here, but I probably won't
see it if I go there because I'm gonna get busted.
And then today it rained two inches. There's water in
every little hole, rock whatever around the oozren's right now,

(46:16):
So that pattern's over now. And I did not, personally,
my witness is I did not quote unquote take advantage
that pattern because the wind was never right for how
I need to access that pond, and I only really,
you know, I just can't get to the other side
of it without going all the way around and biggering
up a lot of other deers. So patterns become This

(46:40):
is true anywhere we talked about limited cover and ad country.
Patterns are where there's a limited resource. That's what a
pattern is. Where there's a limited resource. If it's homogeneous
ten acres, food ten acres cover, ten acres, food ten
acres cover, ten acres, food ten acres cover, there's no pattern.

(47:00):
It's a checkerboard. Well, that's what you get in solid
oak forest when the acorns are dropping right, food cover,
food cover, food cover everywhere. So a pattern is developed
by a limited resource. In West Texas, that's water, man.
You got a cow tank with a windmill pumping water
in it. There's gonna be deer coming there almost every
single day. Listen, Mountain Lion just really starts something at

(47:23):
stock tank. So I think the takeaway there, And again
this is not the specific answer most hosts want, but
a patterns where there's a limited resource in that country
that tends to be covered because there's food everywhere except
after the crops are harvested. In acorn country, the pattern
is where I have great patterns is before the acorn drop,

(47:45):
little heidio food plots, and we kill a pile of deer.
Doing this, we make a little quarter acor food plot,
and seventy five yards away we make a baiting area.
We kill a ton of deer in those. This year
we did not We're not going to because we can't
get the rain. Our crops have noted yet. We did
not have green fields or food plots. And then all

(48:06):
this rain I'm sure knocks and make corns down. And
again in context this year, that pattern building technique we've
used of having food right next to cover designed in
a way where the predominant wins are in our favor,
and we've tagged so many bucks doing that for years.
That did not hold true this year.

Speaker 3 (48:28):
On patterning.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
Another follow up, I think the tool that most hunters
now rely on to try to pattern deer is trail
cameras sell cameras, especially today. You've been using them as
long as anyone I know, you were doing studies with them.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
Very very early.

Speaker 2 (48:45):
What do you wish that you knew about cameras in
the effectiveness or lack of effectiveness about them? What do
you wish you knew twenty years ago when you started
maybe getting when everyone got really serious with them, twenty
years ago, fifteen years ago? If you could tell yourself
back then what you know now? What would that most

(49:05):
important thing be?

Speaker 4 (49:08):
Look a year in advance. So I'm a huge troil
camera fan. But what trail cameras tell us? Even the
cell cam you're sitting there on your app, Oh my gosh.
You know some states worry that that's gonna help hunters
too much. I don't know, but the vast majority hunters
is certainly including me, are not going to see a
picture go off and be able to walk out in

(49:29):
that area without learning the deer. That's just not going
to happen. And tomorrow's a new day. Coyotes, other hunters,
weather changes, food, source changes. So again in Agura is
where that food is a constant until the combine rolls through,
that's probably more effective. Where I live, we don't see pattern.

(49:50):
We don't see the same buck on a troil camera
three days in a row. That just almost never happens here.
So but you will see it next year. And so
I marked on my calendar. Everyone's got a calendar on
their phone or computer. And we have a day of
great activity, whether I see it when I'm hunting or
my Troe cameras going off like popcorn all day. Ion't

(50:12):
make a note. September twenty fourth had tremendous morning activity,
and I'll be watching for that the next year. That
may encourage me to hunt that day the next year.
Even on the moon phases different and all that stuff's different,
the weather's different, and we've used that to our advantage.
And actually November fourth for several years in a row.
Now I've killed a good buck, which is bo season

(50:34):
here in Missouri on November third, November fourth, and that
is about the peak of our pre rut. Okay, so
let's define pre rut up until about twenty five percent
of the dozer receptive there's tremendous competition for those few
dozes that are receptive, and the bucks are moving a lot.
They're literally taking a lot of steps per day. It

(50:56):
does not mean they're covering a bigger area, but they're
actually under feet more per day trying to find out
limited resource again, a limited resource, a receptive dough. Once

(51:17):
we get past that twenty five, twenty six, thirty forty
fifty receptive, Uh, there's so many dos receptive. The bucks
don't need to be searching. They're they're they're with they're
tending a dough. Mature bucks are tending a dough, and
then you're just sitting there hoping. Man, I sure hope
I'm a place where receptive dough goes by, because that's

(51:38):
what I'm going to see. A mature buck where I
hope I'm somewhere that a dough will a buck will
ten a dough twenty four to thirty six hours, and
I hope I'm where he's going to go looking for
the next dough after he finishes ten.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
And that.

Speaker 4 (51:52):
So November fourth where I am, and probably a lot
of places. November third, number fourth, you hear a lot
of people talk about Halloween and general who a lot
of deer killing Halloween. There's been so much talk about Halloween.
I think there's more people hunting on Halloween. Are we
measuring hunter effort for the effectiveness of that date? And

(52:13):
I was just in South Carolina assistant landowner. Actually where
the process or the process is meat, that is the processors.
Why in bordered de land I was working on. So
we went out that gate, stopped in, say hi, you know,
shake some mans, meet people, and that processor for twenty
plus years in the upstate of South Carolina have like

(52:34):
a big desk calendar and every day they would write down,
you know, we processed nine here in the morning, fourteen
in the afternoon. And they had that for many years.
And the guy said, oh man, look at all this data.
And I said, this is a great source of data
for hunter effort. It means nothing on the wind deer moving.
And you could see that clearly because every Saturday morning

(52:56):
be a bunch of deer out there. They're cleaning deer.
Every Saturday morning, Opening day they clean up pile of deer.
Weekdays they didn't clean many deer.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
So speaking of the rut, yeah, I want to continue
a little bit more. There is there anything that you
have gotten wrong over the years on that front. Is
there anything now that you understand differently about how deer
react and act during the rut, or anything about how
you've hunted during the rut that now you wish you

(53:29):
had done differently, or that now you understand differently.

Speaker 4 (53:33):
Yeah, a couple things drought off the bat. Me always
thought the rut what everyone wants to hunt the rut?
Man schedule a vacation on the rut, whatever on the rut. Again,
I'd rather hunt the pre rut than the rut unless
I'm travel hunting and I just need a lot of
luck on my side. The second thing is I used
to set up, you know, on a field or food
plot or whatever thing. Boy, I just want to be

(53:53):
worders of most dotes, and research strongly indicates, I won't
say shown, but strongly indicates that when that dough becomes receptive,
she tends to drop her fawnds or not keep her
fawnds with her, and go to a different portion of
her home range, which makes perfect sense, right. She didn't
want to drag in that old ruddy up buck by

(54:13):
her fawns. They could get injured, so instead of sitting
there where you see twenty dos pouring into a field
every afternoon, thinking what that's going to be great buck bait.
The only buck bait that time year is a receptive dough.
What I've learned to do in the hiels, it's easier.
I want to sit on this hill and shoot into

(54:34):
this hill where there's brushy covered, really good, high quality
betting area. And what I've learned from my observations and
what i think the GPS callers are showing, is those
dos once they start getting receptive, if they bump off
that maternal group they've been hanging with and go getting
real thick covered, that just keeps all this. It's brutal
being a buck. A lot of bucks get injured during

(54:56):
the rut, four or five bucks trying to tend her,
they get gored. They want to get to where they
can get some cover, some timber, some brush between them
and the bucks that are not being dammaged so much so,
I've harvested several deer with our Missouri's rudd is during
firearm season. You know, I sit on this ridge, it's

(55:16):
only two or thirundred yards. Our ridges aren't like the
rocky mountains. Shoot into this ridge where I can see.
If you're on that ridge, you can't see through the brush,
but if you're on this ridge, you can see into
the brush. And that is an extremely effective technique for
the rut. I'm not hunting a deer, I'm hunting an
area where receptive does want to go escape. And that's

(55:39):
my number one technique now for hunting during the rut
with the gun or bow, I one hunt where receptive
dos are going, not where the bulk of the dozes are.

Speaker 3 (55:51):
That makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 2 (55:52):
And you know, there's so many different there's so many
different kind of side trails we could take here. There's
so many different fascinations and fads and favorite you know,
pet theories when it comes to deer and how to
kill more of them. And there's been I've done nine
hundred and so many podcasts about this, most of them

(56:16):
all focused on how do I kill more deer, or
how do I kill a bigger deer, or how do
I kill the biggest deer or the oldest deer. But
you and I were talking the other day and you
brought up the fact that maybe there's a discussion to
be had here and maybe you've learned some things over
the years about not just how to kill you know,
the biggest deer, the most deer, but maybe about other

(56:39):
aspects of this whole hunting thing. So when it comes
to setting goals or setting expectations for your hunts, grant,
what what do you wish you knew on that front?
What would you tell your twenty five year old self
about that?

Speaker 4 (56:56):
Well? Uh so my journey backwards goes through two transplants.
I had my first kidney transplant thirty three years ago
and my second seven years ago. Super blessed. I'm still healthy,
super super blessed. But through those journeys, and I think
a lot of hunters, we all start, and this is

(57:17):
well published, we just want to see a deer. Stage two,
we want to harvest a deer. Stage three, we don't
want to harvest a lot of deer. Stage four, we
want to harvest a big deer. If you mature enough
to get to stage five, you want to enjoy the
whole experience of deer hunting. I wish I could have
got to stage five. I'm not sure I'm there yet,

(57:38):
but I wish I could have got to stage five.
A whole lot quicker. Big antlers are awesome, right, And
I reflect on this sure maybe different than a lot
of people do. I worked out in Nevada for the
BLM drive land management wise in college. I've seen out
there found a lot of highro griphics, so I'm sure
someone had seen them before, but they're not on any
mapped There weren't any like billim signs. Hey go look

(58:01):
at the K paintings over here. They were you know,
if you're not familiar, state of Nevada is eighty seven
percent government land, eighty seven percent public land, thirteen percent private.
There's a lot of acres that people don't walk very
often in Nevada. And I've yet to see a hieroglyphic
or a you know, a cliff painting, a cliff etching,
a K painting of a deer that did not have

(58:23):
big antlers. I've never seen one of a spike. That
big answer point. I think prehistoric man before history was
recorded during the big antlers too. I think that's very natural.
We all want the best, right, I mean, go getters, doers, hunters,
getting out of bed, going out there in the code.
We're thinking big, we're thinking the best. I wonder if

(58:46):
we've lost our pattern a little bit, because those prehistoric
hunters were definitely thinking about meat and tools and hide
and surviving, and I think we've lost our way. There's
a good zillion things that X y Z S door
that will help you quote unquote tag a big buck right.

(59:06):
And there's a few things about meat prep and saving
the meat and what makes it taste better. And then
to take that further, just again a blessing. I was
able to be introduced to doctor Stefan van Bleet. He's
one of the world's leading human nutritions from a point
of view of what we put in our body, what
does that do to our nutrition? And I won't dive

(59:29):
into this in great detail. We have an episode on
it if you want to alays check it out. But uh,
doctor van Bleed had figured out that wildcott salmon some
of the healthiest meat we put in our body. We
can live on wildcott salmon. There's there's you know, tribes
and nadies that own almost only eat wildcott salmon and
are very healthy, have no cavities. No body fad all
that kind stuff. And he was in Ha Whi giving

(59:52):
a you know, a presentation of a scientific conference, and someone said,
have you ever test asks us deer there. Of course
they were brought in by you know, European settlers or
no mammals on Hawaii except the species of bat. That's
like God made Awaii and New Zealand someone's Polynesian islands
of bird paradis. All those elk and mammals down there,
rodents or whatever, they were all brought in. They were

(01:00:13):
not there, And so Hawaii of course extremely diverse plant community.
And someone gave them some wine and liver of an
access deer and it takes it back to the lab.
But lo and behold, oh my guy, it's just like
better than the best pat you know, virginity vag raised beef.
It's super super high quality. And I'm thinking about that.
And scientists know that we have this chart views and

(01:00:36):
feeding strategies like a buffalo or an ox or down
at the bottom right and big old square rectangle mouth.
Just give me grass, I'll turn it into protein. Just
give me grass. That's all I want. Well up at
the very opposite corner to chart is a white tailed
deer and they're considered to be the most concentrate selector.
If you think about the amount of a moose or

(01:00:58):
an elk, and you see that they got a pretty
square muzzle. White tail, little long, skinny muzzle, really really
low tongue. They're very selective in what they feed. They
will literally starve to death. And this research has been
done in Texas where access deer and other species of
exotic thrive. Whitetails really starved to death. Were the deer
in same size captivity I think it was thirty six

(01:01:21):
acres I remember right, not only stayed alive, but reproduced
and thrived on plants that white tails starved on. So
I said, if they're that picky about what they eat,
is their meat better? And it turned out it was.
Bottom line is we sent samples from seventeen deer loing
that'd hurt to give up loin loing and liver samples

(01:01:42):
to doctor van Biet's lab. And they don't just look
at protein and fat. They're looking at omega three versus
omega six acci omegas, and they're looking at flavonoids and
phido nutrients, which are nutrients that the sun's interaction with
plants developed that's not developed any other way. But a

(01:02:04):
deer can eat that plant and actually preserve those fatal nutrients.
So if you have really good habitat turned out that
venison some of the best meat he's ever tested period.
Now you think about us a role as a hunter.
We can provide some of the best meat known on
the planet by providing high quality white tail venison to

(01:02:26):
our family. And I think there's a real, you know,
badge of honor that hunters can wear by being that provider. First,
we want to be a good conservation so we want
to perpetuate the species and the resource. But I think
the second badge even more than antlers. And I mean
I like antlers. I got antlers around here. I think

(01:02:49):
the second badge is being a provider and providing that
super high quality meat maybe certainly better than you're going
to buy at the grocery store to come out of
a feedlock unequivocally better and are better than most better.
And those cows are walking around and poop, you know,
knee deep all day long. Who wants to do that?

(01:03:12):
But yeah, this research with doctor van Bleet, we're not finished.
We're taking a step further to expenseve research. We're kind
of moving through it. But I think being a provider
is a badge that we need to place more respect
by if you wear that badge of being a provider,
I think that deserves a huge amount of respect.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
Has that has that idea changed how you view or
or judge your own success? Has that changed things at all?
When you go into a year and you're thinking about
what would warrant is you know you grading yourself as
having a successful season, this this idea of being a provider,
of feeling the freezer. Has that become a larger priority

(01:03:58):
now or is there still like, man, I got to
kill that one buck where I need to kill a
six year old buck or that side of things is
that's still a big part for you.

Speaker 4 (01:04:09):
I really enjoy interacting the bucks, hunting bucks. I enjoy
harvesting bucks. I haven't had a buck mounted years. I'd
rather take that money and go on the next adventure
if you will. And you have to know for me,
so I've been a manager for Sloan and most deer
herds need some dough harvests, not all. You know, a

(01:04:30):
huge eh EHD outbreak right now September in parts of Ohio,
those deer harvests need to be reduced for that to
recover for a year two it will bounce back quickly
oys does. We've been studying EHD for others people have
for many, many decades, so we know EHD will, but

(01:04:50):
they need to back off the dough harvest a little bit.
EHD hit my place here in Missouri in twenty twelve
we lost somewhere around seventy five percent of deer herd
and just a short amount of time. We backed off
the dough harvest for two years and had phenomenal honeying
after that. And that always happens here. Mark Jury and
others talk about that because what happens is you get
the harvest you should have been having, and now there's

(01:05:11):
plenty of groceries for all the deer and the ones
that survive it express way more to potential.

Speaker 3 (01:05:17):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:05:17):
This has happened over and over and over and over,
no doubt about it. So I've always been harvesting dose.
We tend to harvest five dose for every buck and
been doing that for almost three decades, now decades. But
the reason I do that is changing from a manager
to a provider. And again there's a transplant patient. Every

(01:05:40):
year I go to the Mayo Clinic Rochester, Minnesota, have
very detailed physical about my kidney health and all my health,
and I'll meet with the nutrition us, the dietitian if
you will, and there's hey, Grant, you know you're doing good.
Let us go away eating and say, well, you know
I'm a while if i'll just I eat primarily venison.
There's very little poultry in our house, no store bocked beef,

(01:06:02):
primarily venison, elk every now and then when I'm lucky.
I'm not a very skilled elk hunter. And they said, man, Grant,
whatever you're doing, keep doing it, because you know, I've
been blessed. When you're a thirty three year transplant patient,
you've been blessed to beat the odds. And I love
of us survive thirty three years. And the Mayo puts

(01:06:24):
pretty big stock in my diet on doing that. So
venison has been very good to me. Started as a
poor gradual student, where venison was just a source of protein.
You know, we're harvesting deer for various projects. And just
kept going through that and I like it. My wife
prepares it well and I prepare it well, and so

(01:06:47):
we just kept doing it. And now we know why
and we have this data from doctor van Vleet, and
it's natural there's no feed on our operators, nor hormones
or anything going into the deer. I can't think of
a better way to really benefit your family from a

(01:07:08):
provider point of view.

Speaker 2 (01:07:10):
Yeah, how lucky are we that the thing we love,
the pursuit, the recreation, the lifestyle that we enjoy so
much being out there in nature, studying these animals, observing, following,
going through all the ups and downs. How lucky are
we that that incredible pursuit also leads to incredible nutrition

(01:07:34):
for our families. It's pretty special, no doubt about that.

Speaker 4 (01:07:38):
You know. And I heard a different person say this,
So I'm stealing this actually from Gabe Brown, probably maybe
the most famous Virginia vag farmer ever, brilliant man. And
Gabe was given a semar somewhere and someone asking, well,
you know, if I this salad that had I don't
remember number six eight different vegetables on there, isn't that

(01:07:59):
better than your regenerative ag raised beef? And Gabe says,
I don't know. We've identified about one hundred and fifty
different planted or navy species on our ranch, and our
cal have access to that, and those fidal nutrients are
getting into the cows. So when I eat a steak,
I'm eating seventy the benefits of seventy eighty ninety different

(01:08:21):
plants and you're eating six interest. I think there's a
huge amount of truth to that. There's research ongoing about that. Actually,
Gabe Brown and that whole group understanding AG also use
doctor Van Biet. I mean, he's literally, you know, one
of the world's leading guys on this. So we're all
kind of pulling the same way. I'm going to wildlife way,

(01:08:43):
they're going to the beef or agricultural way. But I
promise you I would rather eat a deer from Gabe's
ranch where they don't use herbicide, they don't use synthetic
fertilizer fertilizers made out patroleum products, folks, than I would
in heavy rope drop iwould that the sprayers passed over
the field every twenty days or something like that. Yeah,

(01:09:06):
And so wherever you are, you're you're hunting Granny's back
forty or wherever you are, you're on public land and
they've done a clear cut or they've done whatever, and
there's some young vegetation out there that's going to be
really high quality meat for you. And your family.

Speaker 3 (01:09:23):
Grant.

Speaker 2 (01:09:23):
We've spent about an hour now looking back at your
life and your experiences and your lessons learned, and what
you would have told yourself way back then. But now
you know all of this, You've lived this life, you've
had these experiences, You've taught so many of us so much.
I'm curious what you would tell somebody who has that

(01:09:45):
much runway ahead of them. So I've got a seven
year old son who has been going out in the
woods with me since he you know, since he gets
right on my chest, was on his first hunt when
he was three, has been going with me every year since.
He's expressed a lot of interest in you know, continuing it,
you know, wanting to do it himself, and he's really

(01:10:06):
into it. So if you were to sit down with
my seven year old son, what would be the single
most important thing you would want to leave with him?

Speaker 4 (01:10:17):
M First off, your son's one life's lottery, right, There's
so many lessons through hunting, life, death, preparation, stewardship. Your
son is blessed to have a dad pours into him.
And I congratulate you, Mark for doing that. You're leading
by jail. I think my number one thing would not
be some hunting tip or based on GPS, it would be.

(01:10:40):
And I wish I hadn't have been you know, I'm
type A. I want to get it done. I'm a doer.
I still have callouses to slow down and enjoy it.
To take it in. That sounds really wish you was she,
But I'm being so sincere. I wish you know, I

(01:11:01):
was pushing through school and grad school and started a
business as a wildlife consultant when that was unheard of.
We've been incorporated thirty five years. This year, Mark's our
thirty fifth year. That was not hurd up thirty five
years ago. Actually got made fun of a lot. And
that's the old biblical prophecy, right he who laughs first

(01:11:23):
seldom laughs last. I wouldn't trade my career for anything. Yeah,
I would slow down and enjoy it. And I wish
I hadn't been so stressed about that next buck or
is my buck bigger than mars buck? Or you know,
I wish I would have focused more on the pure
enjoyment of this tremendous gift we have. No other country

(01:11:47):
has this gift. There's while I followed a plan of it,
no country has free access in the amount of public
land and the quantity of game animals that we have,
and I wish I had focused more on the enjoyment
of that. And I took my daughter's hunting mark. I
have two daughters to follow on that trend. But my

(01:12:09):
daughters grew up hunting with a camera because we were
filming growing dear God to make a new episode every week.
And I wish I'd have shoved the camera aside more
and just say, hey, let's just go, honey, helpe shoot
the bigs buck on the property. Let's go, honey. And
my girls still come home to hunt. One works for
SpaceX now, one works for a major drone company, military
drone company, and in all that high tech hustle bus

(01:12:32):
holders there already got plans to be here this gun
season in Missourier's still coming home to hunt. They're here
this Turkey season.

Speaker 3 (01:12:38):
Man.

Speaker 4 (01:12:38):
We had a great time, and folks, I left the
camera home and took my hotest daughter, Raleigh hunting, and
it was a blast. And I'm sorry I missed some
of those days. No, honey, I don't have it on camera,
don't take the shot. I'm sorry I missed some of
those days.

Speaker 3 (01:12:54):
Yeah, that's great advice for me as a father too.
Hearing that, yes, well great.

Speaker 2 (01:13:03):
I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed this, how
much I appreciate it. I want to give you an opportunity, though,
to tell folks where they can go for more of this,
because I know you have an incredible archive, an incredible
library of lessons learned like this that other folks can
watch from you.

Speaker 3 (01:13:18):
Can you tell folks where they can go? And is there.

Speaker 2 (01:13:21):
Anything that we should be keeping an eye out for
in the coming weeks or months from Growing Deer.

Speaker 4 (01:13:27):
You can just search on Growing Deer on YouTube or
whatever your favorite social platform is, either grant Woods or
Growing Deer or get you there. And you know, we
film I like other people, we've been doing this. We're
going our sixteenth year. Every week, whatever we did last
week is going to be on the air next week,
so you know, we think maybe it's relative. So yeah,

(01:13:48):
whatever we're doing, we're doing. We will be releasing round
two as more fundings come in of our research on
the quality of venison. I'm going to say three or
four months from now. And I myself, I mean, I
don't know the results yet. I'm super excited about this.
This is more focused on something called flavonoids, which is

(01:14:08):
was not it. I don't even know if that was
a term five years ago. This is not only what
gives meat or plants flavor, but those are extremely complex
chemical compounds that turns out impacts our health in many ways.
And I'm so excited to I've been getting to benefit
from it as a primary venison diet. But what does

(01:14:30):
that really mean? And one thing I'll share in Mark.
I know we need to wrap up here, but we
found that deer harvest diod earlier in season before they
started acorns. We're higher quality, significantly higher quality meat than
deer that we're feeding late season on acorns. And the
same is to be true for deer dead are eating
vegetation versus corn. Oh kernel corn. Deer not built to

(01:14:54):
be corn. It can cause acidosis, certainly not the quantity
to eat now, and and corns pretty closer related to
acorns nutritionally speaking. So those you know, don't wait till well.
I got to get my buck and I'm going to
harvest my dough field that freezer from day one. We
tried to start harvesting does day one, and that will
be better quality meet and help you meet your management objectives. Awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:15:19):
That is very interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing the
rest of those results. So please, please, I know you
will keep us all posted and continue the great work
You've been doing now for so many years.

Speaker 3 (01:15:31):
And it's been fun to watch the growing deer journey.

Speaker 2 (01:15:34):
I've been, you know, doing this wired hunting thing right
around that same time length and since you start growing deer,
and you've been a model for me to watch and
to learn from. So I appreciate all that, Grant and
everything you've done to help me over the years.

Speaker 3 (01:15:48):
Thank you, Mark.

Speaker 4 (01:15:50):
Thank you for all the information you've shared and the friendship.
I remember you came here many many years ago, one
of the first DISSL cameras I saw. We did some
most stuff in a So thank you for your friendship
and staying true to your mission. Mark, I appreciate you.

Speaker 3 (01:16:06):
Let's uh, let's chat against sotogram.

Speaker 4 (01:16:09):
Take care mar.

Speaker 3 (01:16:13):
All right, and.

Speaker 2 (01:16:14):
That's gonna do it. Thank you for joining me today.
I appreciate you being a part of this community. I
appreciate you listening to me and Grant here rad along
for an hour or so, and I hope you've had
a wonderful start to your hunting season. If it has begun,
and if you are just about to begin, I'm pulling
for you.

Speaker 3 (01:16:30):
You know, my fingers crossed for you.

Speaker 2 (01:16:32):
Good luck out there, have a lot of fun, and
stay wired to hunt.