Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
the whitetail 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 am conducting a comprehensive review of the
many different tactics for killing mature bucks in October that
have been shared with me over the course of Wired
to Hunt's seventeen year history. Really all right, welcome back
(00:41):
to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by
First Life. Today in the show, we are kicking off
the month of October with a little bit of a
different kind of episode. Today, we are going to be
reviewing the entire month. We're going to be discussing ideas
and tactics and strategies that you can use from October first,
(01:01):
which if you're listening to this right now when I'm
releasing it, that would have been yesterday. But you can
you can use these tactics from early October all the
way through to Halloween. And these are going to be
ideas that are not coming from me. They're not coming
from just one expert guest. As we've done on many
different episodes, this is going to be a set of
ideas that is going to pull from hundreds of guests
(01:25):
and at least, you know, a handful of core people
who have significantly influenced myself and many of you, because
I have been running this thing Wired to Hunt or
somewhere around seventeen or eighteen years now, and I've talked
to hundreds and hundreds of different die hard, incredibly serious
and successful whitetail hunters from all across the country, and
(01:49):
over the course of that, I've gotten this very unique,
high level, kind of thirty thousand foot overview of the
many different ways to do this thing we call deer hunting.
Maybe if there's been any one takeaway for me over
the last almost twenty years, it's been that there are
many different ways to skin this cat. There's not just
one approach to killing deer, or one approach to successfully
(02:13):
tagging big bucks, or one single way you have to
go about things if you want to kill mature bucks.
There's a lot of different ideas out there and many
different of these processes and approaches that can work. So
I was recently struck by this realization that I've had
the very unique and fortunate opportunity to have talked to
(02:35):
so many of these different people, not just here on
the podcast, but also in real life. I've gotten to
read dozens of different books from these people. I've gotten
to consume hundreds and hundreds of different articles from these people.
And because of my job, I've had this unique chance
to just absorb so much of this, and I've tried
(02:55):
to share a lot of that over the years in
the podcast. But you know, in any one of our
episodes is we're usually just hearing from one person, and
that one person has their one unique set of ideas,
but it's it's kind of narrow. We're getting these little
narrow slices of how to do this. We're getting a
small window, as if you're looking through a straw at
what's really a very very big picture. So I got
(03:17):
to thinking, what if we could zoom out on occasion,
on specific issues, or on certain times of the year
and get that bigger picture, not just from one person's perspective,
but get a bunch of people's perspectives, get that high
level overview. There's there's a process. I guess there's an
example of this outside of the hunting world, but in
(03:39):
like the science world, and they call us a meta analysis,
which is which is a fancy term for basically taking
a bunch of different studies and combining the results and
looking at all of these different studies together to come
to conclusions. So rather than just one single scientific study
telling us, well, you know, the world is X, they
(04:00):
instead will go, let's go look at every single study
on this topic. Let's look at a hundred different studies
on this topic, and then use that aggregate to come
to hopefully a better conclusion or a more diverse set
of options to help us understand this topic. That's kind
of what a meta analysis is. There's also something called
a literature review that's kind of similar to this, where
(04:22):
like in the academic world, they'll take in twenty thirty
forty different published studies on an issue or a topic,
study all those and then publish kind of the high
level takeaways from that literature review of everything. That's kind
of what we're doing today. What I want to do
is talk about the month of October, how to kill
mature box in the month of October, And I'm going
(04:43):
to pull from all of these hundreds and hundreds of
conversations I've had with these different experts, the hundreds of
different articles I've read with these experts, the dozens of
different books you can see behind me. I've got a
lot of books. I've read a lot of different perspectives
on hunting deer. And then pulling also from these podcast conversations,
these videos, all the different content that I've been fortunate
(05:04):
enough to either create with these people or consume from
these people. So I want to walk through the month
of October. I want to share with you what I've
learned from these people, cite some specific examples from these people.
We're even going to look at very specific quotes and
excerpts from books, from podcasts, from videos, hearing from these
(05:25):
different folks who are consistently having success killing deer in October.
How they do it, when they do it, why they
do it the way they do. That's what we're covering
here today, and I'm going to try to synthesize all
of that into an hour hour and a half of
highly concentrated, highly relevant and useful information so you can
listen to this today and be armed with a set
(05:48):
of tools to help you throughout this next month of
hunting that are not provided just by you know, John Aberhart,
not just from Adam Hayes, not just from Dan Enfalt
or Andre Toquisto or whoever it might be, but from
all these folks. That's the goal with today's podcast, and
that's what we're going to do. So it's you and
me talking, but we're pulling from this wide array of
(06:10):
different ideas about how to kill deer in October. Now,
very quickly, before we get into that, I want to
give you one quick housekeeping item. If you are listening
to this the week it dropped, this is dropping on
October second, twenty twenty five. If you are listening right now,
it is Whitetail week over at met eat. That means
there's tons of new content and sales at the mediator's store.
(06:33):
First Light phelps Fachef across the whole suite of brands.
A couple very quick things that are probably most relevant
to you. Number one, the main First Light outerwear systems
for the white tail hunter. The first Light produces the phase,
the core, and the thermic. All of those are thirty
percent off until October fifth. That's a big one. Number Two,
(06:55):
the wired hunt hat here the Wired to Hunt t
shirts that have just recently launched. All those are twenty
five percent off this week. And then finally with Phelps,
we have launched the Wired to Hunt buck Grunt. This
is something that I'm very excited about. This is a
pretty darn cool product that I got to be involved
(07:16):
in years ago to begin with, when we helped Phelps
design their Beta Pro grunt tube. And then within the
last year they came back to me and said, hey,
how do we take this to the next level? How
do we make this really core to you and the
wired hunt community? What else? What other changes would you
like to be made? How do we make this even better?
How do we make this more unique to our community,
(07:37):
into our interest, into our look and feel and all that.
So that's what led to the Wired Hunt buck Grunt.
This is similar to the Beta Pro, but it is
customized in several ways. A couple core things. Number One,
it's got this wooden body. Now it's got the Wired
Hunt name and logo right there on the front, a
blaze orange lanyard, so you're never gonna lose this thing.
(08:00):
A core thing though, for me, is the tone and
the sound in this wood This is a teak wood,
and this is a custom chosen black rubber bellow tube.
This is gonna get you a customizable sound, so you
can squeeze this, bend this, do whatever you want with
that tube. That gets you the kind of sound you want.
This body gets you a mellow, buttery, smooth, deep sound
(08:21):
that I really like sounds like this. You know, there's
many different iterations, but check it out. It is not
a cheap grunt tube. I didn't have any say on
the pricing of this one, but in conversations with the
team there, it is a highly customized call. You know,
(08:42):
designed in the US. A lot of these parts put
together in the US, so it's something that's a premium piece. This,
you know, it's hopefully something's gonna last a very long time.
You can pass it down to your kids. Super stoked
on this. I hope that for those of you who
want to invest in a premium call, it's everything you've
ever wanted. That's the end of that kind of product
discussion for me. Thanks for dealing with that today. The
(09:04):
meta analysis, the literature review, the deep dive, the full
month comprehensive everything I've ever heard about Killing mature bux
in October begins now, So there are I would say
three brackets, three phases of the month of October that
(09:24):
many of us kind of break this month into. The
first being the early part of the year, the second
being you know, kind of the lull. We'll talk about that,
but folks kind of discuss the mid October as this
October low. And then finally there's that last phase of
the month, which which many people describe as the pre rut.
This is like that pre rut portion of October, at
least if you live, you know, on the upper two
(09:46):
thirds of the nation, that's going to be the case
for you. So I'm going to kind of organize this
discussion around this three part framework. Early seasons is the
beginning the early October months. You know, for some people,
if your season open to September, this is no longer
early season for you. So some of this will be
a little bit different for those of you who open
October first, as I do in Michigan, versus if you
(10:08):
opened in September first, as might be the case in
Nebraska or the Dakotas or these other states that open
either in early or mid September. All that said, when
it comes to the early part of October on average. Right,
if we look at what most deer are doing across
the country, these deer are still on a pretty steady
(10:29):
bed to feed pattern. So what that means is they
have a handful of places they are bedding, and they
have a handful of key food sources in early October,
and their life basically revolves around those two things, going
to feed in the evenings and overnight, and then going
back to a safe place to bed during the day.
It's relatively consistent. It is relatively small in scope of
(10:52):
space and scale of space. Right, most deer have a
relatively small home range at this time of year. You know,
for bucks, it's you know, likely going to be less
than a square mile six hundred and forty acres less.
Probably that core that the highest percentage, since like eighty
percent of the time they're probably spending in less than
two hundred acres. Many studies have shown give or take
somewhere in that ballpark. So in the early season, you
(11:15):
have a situation where you can, if you do the work,
if you have the scouting in the intel, if you
understand the area or your local deer herd, you can
go into a hunt having a pretty good idea of
where these deer might be and where they might be headed,
at least a handful of ideas that are that are
pretty sound. So because of that, there's a unique opportunity.
(11:36):
There's two things going for it. Number One, what I
just describe, these deer are relatively patternable because of that
bed to feed, bed to feed, bed to feed pattern
that has been going on all through the summer through
most of September. Things start to shift in September because
of velvet peeling as food sources and habitat starts changing,
but usually for that first portion of October, we're still
(11:57):
in that phase as long as you know, things haven't
been thrown totally out of whack by hunting pressure, which
if you open September that could be the case. But
if you're in Michigan or New York, or Iowa or Illinois,
are any of these states that open in October, or
you know, late late September, you should still have some
of that early season magic where these deer have not
(12:20):
been yet significantly pressured and are still on a bed
defeed pattern. That is a big thing in your favor.
Number Two, you have the fact that they are doing
that same thing over and over again. So consistency of
behavior with lack of hunting pressure means that you have
(12:41):
daylight activity that's somewhat consistent, so you can take advantage
of it. That's why I look at the early days
of October is one of your best chances to have
success throughout the whole season. Now, if you were opening
in September, those first couple of days of September were
probably the case. All that said, I look at this
first phase of October over as a chance for a
(13:01):
big swing, as a chance for you know, a couple
hunts that might be extra special. I'm willing to go
to better locations if the conditions are right, if the
timing is right. I'm willing to take a trip out
of state somewhere that I think could be pretty good
for those first couple days of their season. Because again,
this is a special opportunity. And I'm not unique in
saying that there's a lot of people to look at
(13:22):
this early October time periods as a real slam dunk.
You know, folks like Adam Hayes looks at early October
is one of your best chances. The druries talk about
this time period late September or early October, as deer
start changing into green food sources. They love this time
of year. John Eberhart here in Michigan has always looked
(13:43):
at the first couple days of this season as a
slam dunk opportunity. There are just you know, it's pretty
darn consistent. If you open in the beginning of October,
those first couple days are a high odds great chance.
So if you're listening to this on Thursday, October second,
this Friday, or Saturday or Sunday, you know, the third,
or fourth or fifth, you might still have some of that.
(14:06):
Being the first weekend days of the hunting season, you
might still have some deer that are on their bed
defeed patterns and have not yet been blown out of
there or impacted by hunting pressure. Keep that in mind
in these coming days. Now. There are also some major
habitat changes underway which are going to be something you
can take advantage of. Or if you aren't you in
(14:27):
the right places, or don't have the right food sources,
or aren't aware of these changes, it might be a
reason why you're not going to have success. So deer,
as we discussed their lives revolve around their stomach right now,
bed to food, bed to food. So understanding what the
key food sources in early October and really almost all
the way through this month is very important, maybe the
(14:49):
most important thing to understand as this month goes along,
at least until we get to that rut phase at
the end of the month. In early October, you've got
a few things going on an egg country, at least,
crops are changing. The green soybeans have defoliated, They've dried
down throughout the month of September, in many parts of
the country at least, so you probably have deer that
(15:11):
have moved off those bean fields. You maybe even in
some parts of the country are having those bean fields
being harvested already, especially in a year like this where
it's been very dry, across the large parts of the country,
beans are already being harvested. I've already seen, like right
outside my window there's a harvested bean field. It's not
even October yet. That's happening all across the country. So
that's changing things. Corn is drying down. You have corn
(15:33):
in your area, That drying of the corn is going
to make that more and more attractive deer as well. Finally,
you also have mass hidden ground. Depends again on the
part of the country you live in, but in many
parts many states, you know, acorns are dropping through parts
of September and definitely throughout October. That might be peaking
in some places very soon. So having a sound understanding
(15:56):
of what your acorn crop looks like. Understanding all those
things very key time of year. Finally, soft mast is
often starting to drop now or already has been dropping
for a little bit. Apple trees, per simmons, crab, apples, pears,
whatever that might be in your neck of the woods.
If you have soft mast, if you have fruit, understanding
(16:16):
when those are dropping and taking advantage of that window
very key. So I want to share with you two
different perspectives on food sources in early October. One is
going to be from Mark and Terry Drury with Drewy Outdoors.
We've had some very good conversations with them over the years.
My first podcast ever with Mark, Episode sixty three of
(16:38):
the podcast has a great review of really each phase
of October and each phase of the year. Highly suggest
going back to listen to that or my masterclass with
him about patterning deer. That was a really good one
lots to review there. Let me play for you a
very brief excerpt from one of their explanations about this
early October timeframe they call this green Pastures, is like
(17:01):
their kind of title for this phase of the season.
For them, it runs from late September through early October.
But I think this will be very relevant for many
folks when they're considering how to hunt and what deer
might be doing in agg country for that first maybe
ten or so days of the month of October. Play
list for here real quick.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
I love that phase. I also love the phase that
follows it, which is Greener Pasture September twenty fifth through
October to twelve. To me, greener pastors is one of
the best phases to kill a mature buck because there's
a defoliation that goes on during this phase throughout the Midwest.
And I'm only talking in terms of the hunting that
I've observed here in Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, and Kansas. Well,
(17:41):
those beans that were planted back in May and June
eventually turned from green to brown and defoliate. There is
a major switch within the herd to go to the
next green food source and if you've got that green
food source close to where you've seen the tur buck
all summer, you're going to go through what I call
green and green transfer. There's a good chance he's going
to transfer from that green beans field into your green plot.
(18:03):
That phase to me is want to the best, not
the whole year.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Okay, before we go too much further with that, the
key thing there being they're shifting from green to green.
They're shifting off those green beans, They're shifting off whatever
the crops are to supplemental food sources. So if you
have a food plot, or if there are other green
fields in your area, like maybe there's a cover crop,
or maybe there's an alfalfa field that still is is
green and hasn't been harvested, maybe there are clover pastures
(18:29):
in your area, if you can find that green that
these deer are shifting to, huge opportunity, great thing to
be keying in on. I'm fortunate that I have a
couple green food plots on a number of properties that
I hunt. That's something I'll certainly be keying on as well.
But even more attractive in some cases than green food
plots and green food sources at this time of year,
(18:50):
are acorns. It's really hard to beat the massed crop,
especially acorns or something very like a candy crop like apples.
Somebody who has talked a lot of about this, who
spends a lot of time planning for that is John Eberhart.
John Eberhart, of course, is a diehard deer hunter for Michigan,
an author, a frequent guest on this podcast and many others,
(19:13):
and one of his key approaches to early October is
to rotate through a series of food related tree stand
locations that are back in the cover. So this is
a key point if you are hunting or mature buck
in early October in a place with heavy hunting pressure,
the key thing is to find that attractive food source
(19:35):
back and cover back in a place where these deer
are feeling safe moving in daylight. The dreary situation is
they discussed it, you know, going onto these big green
food plots that works in the area of ad country
where you have sanctuaries like they have, where you have
managed locations that are not getting pounded by other people,
or maybe even in Michigan the first day or two
(19:57):
of the season before it gets pounded. But once you
get beyond that or if you're on public land or
something along those lines, you need to find this food
because they still want that food, but they want to
also feel safe, so they want to be away from
the road, they want to be away from other hunters,
they want to be in security cover. So I'll read
to you what John describes as the key things he
(20:17):
is considering for food sources at this time of year.
He says in his book The Ultimate Guide to diy Bucks,
Volume one, he says, much of our spring scouting is
focused on finding early season mass and fruit tree locations
in hopes that they'll offer food in the fall. What
he does to confirm that is he scouts in the
(20:38):
spring to find these food source locations, and then he
does a speed scout just before the hunting season to
check those spots out and confirm is that white oak
tree producing acorns, is that old apple tree producing apples,
et cetera. Then he'll know exactly where these places are.
He needs a long list of food source sites like this.
Then he will rotate through them, so he might have
(20:59):
ten or fIF fifteen different massed tree options. And then
based on the wind and based on as long as
they have not been hit by other people and if
they have food that is producing this year, then he
will rotate through those stands throughout early October he goes
on to set. Depending on the area of the country,
the most preferred mast and fruit trees are oaks for simon, chestnut, hickory, beechnut, choke, cherry, apple, crab, apple,
(21:24):
and pear. These natural foods are available for only a
short period of time and in instances where a few
trees are dropping food. Where only a few trees are
dropping food, deer will compete for their food on a
first come, first served basis from day to day, adding
a higher daytime value to them as hunting locations. Mast
and fruit trees dropping food are best hunted in the
(21:46):
evenings because if hunting them in the morning, you would
likely spook deer beating at them. With a prior to
daybreak entry. The tree is in an isolated, secure area.
There's always the chance of spooking a fawn or a
dough with fawns eating there in the early afternoon, but
the odds of that are much lower than the odds
of spooking a mature buck with a morning entry, and
it's all about hunting the highest percentage situations when pursuing
(22:09):
mature bucks. He also goes on to discuss how deer
have varying preference for types of acorns, like the case
(22:29):
the obvious comparison being white oaks versus red oaks. White
oaks seem to be preferable, more preferable than red oaks.
Red Oaks are a little bit more acidic, higher tanning
content in those acorns. So, all things being equal, if
you have a white oak tree and a red oak
tree both producing acorns, the deer will prefer to eat
the whites. But what he points out in his book
(22:50):
is that if there is a difference in security cover,
they will prefer whichever one is safer. So if the
red oak is back in cover, but the white oak
is out in the open in kind of a place
that feels dangerous to deer, they're probably going to eat
those red oaks during daylight more often than the white
So consider that same thing goes for an apple tree
or a pear tree, or whatever it might be. Big
(23:11):
considerations throughout the month of October is that overlap. Imagine
this Venn diagram of safe places and food sources. Whenever
you can get that to overlap that place in the
middle where you have the safe and the food that's
palatable and attractive right now. That is really going to
be key for your early October hunts right on through
much of the month. So those are a couple of
(23:33):
things to be thinking about for the first part of
this month. Scouting in early October can look like many
different things. Of course, running trail cameras this time of
year is an obvious tool to be determining where deer are,
what they're doing, what bucks are in the area. Probably
the best foods or excuse me, the best locations or
(23:55):
cameras in early October are similar to what they'll be
through much of this month, which is going to be
scrapes in and around the edges of bedding years and
or the edges of quality foods. So same thing what
we just talked about. These deer want to be near
the attractive food source. They're living by their stomachs right now,
and they want to feel safe if you can put
(24:15):
a cell camera somewhere like that, And for me, I
really like no matter what it is, if it's next
to a food plot, if it's inside corner of a cornfield,
if it's a creek, crossing leading into a cornfield or
a you know, any kind of food source. I always
like to have a licking branch in front of that
camera because that is just a little sweetener that will
stop a deer right in front of your camera, or
(24:37):
that maybe will attract that deer the five yards that
you know they need to come off of their normal
path to get to where your camera is. So if
there's not already a scrape in a place I want
to be, ninety nine percent of the time, I will
build a mock scrape to have that in front of
the camera. So if this is like in a field,
I'll cut down a tree and put a tree in
the field and make a fake scrape tree. If this
(24:59):
is in the woods, I'll you know, break a branch
down if I need to, or use a piece of
rope to pull down a branch, whatever it needs to
be to get a licking branch at deer eye height
and then kick out the dirt underneath it to make
that mock scrape. I'll pee in that scrape to kind
of give it that urinecent that will kickstart use of it.
(25:19):
If you use any kind of send product like preorbital
gland scent. Put that in the licking branch. That can
work too, But again this is just too sweeten the
deal in front of your cameras to give you a
better idea of what's in that zone. Because something to
really think about throughout the entire month of October when
you're scouting for deer with cameras is that cameras show
(25:40):
a narrow slice of what's actually happening. You have a
very small view of the terrain around you, and there's
you know, almost always much more happening around your cameras
than they actually show. So do not fall for, you know,
the cameras being everything. Do not assume they're telling you
the full story. They're just giving you a small glimpse.
(26:03):
So cameras are part of the scouting strategy. If you
live in a place where you can get eyes on
your hunting area from afar, if you can sit at
the road with binoculars, or get up on a hill
with binoculars, or hunt a tree, stand in a fence
row that's far away from the core of your property
that still gives you a view to core places. Having
(26:24):
long distance glassing opportunities is huge, because again, deer are
still on patterns at this time of year. So the
name of the game is identifying the pattern, identifying the
key food, identifying the bed, identifying the travel between the two.
If you can identify that, they're one of these ways
we've talked about, scouting with cameras, scouting with your binoculars,
(26:48):
or maybe just being there on the ground and scouting
sign you can uncover that kind of line in the sand.
If you can uncover that those clues, you all of
a sudden have an opportunity to go in and enter.
That is the name of the game for hunting October
first through the early twenties at least, that's it. That's
what we're trying to do in a nutshell, So don't
(27:10):
forget that sometimes scouting is more important than hunting. This
is something that I've heard from so many different people.
Andy May is a perfect example of this. He's a
guy who on his lunch break before work, after work,
any spare moment of time he gets, he's out there
walking the edge of a cornfield looking for tracks, or
sitting in his truck and glassing a field from afar
(27:31):
to see where the deer are coming out into an opening,
or moving a camera somewhere else. He is a scouting fiend,
as are many of the other best deer hunters we've
talked to over the years. Scout scout, scout. You know,
sometimes more days of scouting in less actual days. Hunting
is a recipe for success, because you know, one well planned,
(27:56):
well informed hunt is worth much more than three or
four or willy nilly hunts where you're just sitting somewhere
to sit. That's something that has been, you know, brought
up time after time after time, whether it be someone
on managed properties like Mark Drury and Terry Drury, or
whether it's someone who's doing DIY public land hunting, or
you know, buy permission stuff like Andy may or John Eberhart,
(28:19):
or the guys from the hunting public. You know, they're
they're either figuring this stuff out in the moment and
puzzling those pieces together, or they are spending weeks and
weeks and weeks ahead of time to figure out what
is going on in October, so then when they show
up to hunt, they know where to be and they
can do it quickly and effectively without educating. Deer calling
(28:41):
in early October is something I want to touch on
very briefly. This is not a major focus, I think
for most people for the first ten month or first
ten days of the month, but you can have some success.
There are people that have called in deer in October
in early October. Excuse me. There's a few ways to
do that that keep on coming time and time again
(29:01):
from other people, and that I've found in my own
experience as well. Number One, if I'm doing a grunt
call of any kind, it's a contact grunt. It's a
very lit here. I've got one right here. It's a
very simple light just bop like this. You don't need
to be aggressive, you don't need to be overly repetitive,
you don't need to go overboard with it. You're simply
(29:22):
saying to another deer, hey, I'm here. That's it. At
this time of the year, deer are curious, deer are social.
They're beginning the bucks are beginning to start sorting out
the hierarchy of the herd in the area. So when
they know, oh, there's another buck over there, just behind
those trees, sometimes they might be curious enough just to
come and check it out. Who's here, what are they doing,
(29:42):
what's going on over there? A contact grunt like that
can work. Similarly, very light rattling can work. It just
posted something on my Instagram account about the fact that
I have seen a ton of pictures and videos on
my trial cameras over the last handful of days of
bucks just lightly sparring. I mean, like lots, like many, many,
(30:03):
many examples on different properties, different places of bucks, just
clacking the antlers together, lightly tickling the times, kind of
pushing each other back and forth. They're not fighting in
any kind of way. It's not aggressive. It's just kind
of like just kind of feeling feeling things out. That's
something you can take advantage of with some light tickling
of the times or just lightly bumping together your rattling
(30:24):
bag whatever is you're using. That is something that again
could trigger a little bit of curiosity that could get
a deer to come, you know, fifty yards out of
the brush to come peek into the field, or peek
into the opening, or come check out this little scrape
area you're hunting. That is an option to consider at
this time of year as well. Finally, if you're trying
to fill an antler list, tag a great option anytime
(30:48):
of October, but especially now if you're trying to kill
a dough is a fawn in distress bleat. That's like
a high pitched kind of whining sound that a fawn
might make kind of sounds like I don't know, i'll
describe it, but something like that can bring a dough
in closer to see what's going on. If you need
(31:09):
to get a shot in antlerless deer in early October.
Those are some calling things to consider. The final thing
I will note is if you're looking at like how
aggressive you want to be with your hunts in early October.
This is kind of a phase where, like the first
couple of days of the season, if you're opening in October,
as we discussed at the beginning, that is a high
(31:30):
odds chance to catch deer unaware. So I'm willing to
be a little bit more aggressive for the first couple
of hunts. If we're going to rank my aggressiveness on
like a one to ten scale, maybe a ten would
be something I would do during the peak of the
rut when stuff's crazy, I'm going to go right into
the core of a property for the first couple days
(31:51):
of October. I think the general consensus for most people
I've talked over the years is that the first couple
of days of any season could be worth a relative
high risk spot because those odds are especially high because
of them being unaware no hunting pressure up to this point.
So that might be worth like a seven or eight
on the aggressiveness scale. But then quickly after that most
(32:13):
people pull back a little bit. And in that case,
this might be different if you're on a traveling hunt,
but if you're hunting a place that you're going to
hunt throughout the rest of the year, now you need
to think about how your hunts are going to impact
the rest of the month of October, the rest of
your hunting season throughout the fall. So i might hunt
the first day or two in a seven or eight
ten aggressiveness stand and then I'm going to pull back
(32:36):
and be slightly more conservative to make sure that I'm
not blowing up this property before the next wave of
increased dear activity comes along. That's going to bring us
into the middle of October. The middle of October is
when many people pull back completely and become uber conservative,
(32:57):
and this is because of the much ballyhooed, much discussed
October lull. Now there's two sides to this coin. We
need to discuss. I'll keep it kind of brief because
this has been discussed ad nausm over the years in
the podcast and many other places, but I do want
to present them in case you're not you know fully
(33:17):
in the know on this. So the October lull is
this idea that come mid October, bucks kind of go
nocturnal and don't move as much and activity is slower,
and so because of that, you should pull back in
the middle of October, be very conservative, maybe don't hunt
at all, and wait till the pre rut gets deer
(33:37):
moving in daylight again, especially mature bucks moving in daylight again,
and that rutting activity starts getting things going, and that's
when it's worth hunting, because in the middle of October
they're just not going to be in places you can
get a shot of them, So you're ruining your hunting
spots while not having a good chance of success. Anyways,
that is the kind of the frame of mind or
(33:57):
the overview of like the October lull approach. On the
flip side, the science, all of the studies that have
collared deer and observed how they move and where they
move and when they move, they have all shown that
buck activity actually does not go down through the month
of October. There's no lull in the middle of October.
(34:18):
When it comes to deer movement, there's actually a slow,
steady progression. There's an increase in deer movement and buck
movement too throughout this month, So there's no October lull.
But what I do think there is, in which many
people have talked about, is that there is an October shift.
There is a change going on that does change where
(34:42):
bucks spend time, where bucks feed, and travel, how much
they travel all that. So if you are hunting the
same place as you hunted on October first, on October fifteenth,
you probably will experience a lull because the deer changed
and you haven't. So what hunting the middle of October
(35:02):
requires is that you would just alongside that shift. So
because of that, there are two I would say camps
of hunting the middle of October. You're going to have
the generally conservative let's wait for the right moments crowd.
I would put people like Marc and Terry Drury. I
would put Bobby Kendall, I would put Jeff Sturgis. I
(35:23):
would probably put John Eberhart in this camp. Folks like
that would be in the camp of let's kind of
look at our timing and time our hunts carefully in
the middle of October and not blow up things too
much at this time because we're still waiting for it
to get better. And then you've got another camp, which
we'll look at the middle of October, in all of
October as like, hey, it's getting better and better every day.
(35:44):
Let's keep punching in their punching, and they're punching in there,
and they simply will adjust to that October shift. So
they shift with the bucks, go to where the bucks
are now, and if that requires being really aggressive, they
will do that. Many of these folks I'm talking to,
people like Dan Infult. I'm talking about the guys at
(36:04):
the hunting public. You know, I think the Daquistos have
done some of this. I think some of the Daquisto
disciples do some of this. Justin Hollinsworth. Folks within that
world are going to be aggressively getting in after deer
closer to their betting years as the month of October progresses,
(36:25):
because that's that's a big thing here. I mentioned there's
some changes happening. Number One, hunting pressure is changing throughout
the month of October. Right, Let's say you hunt in
Iowa or Michigan or Ohio. The season has just opened,
either the last couple of days of September or early October.
Within a couple days of hunts, there are a lot
of people in the woods, there's a lot of human
(36:46):
scent in the woods, and pretty quickly the deer herd
realizes that. So by October fifth, they're sixth, they're seventh.
These deer realize they're being hunted. They're being they're realizing
the places that used to be safe no longer seem
so safe. So all of a sudden movement they were
doing out in the edge of the field in daylight
maybe is now going to happen after dark. They are
(37:06):
still moving though, they are still there, but they're going
to be doing much more of that back in that
security cover. John Eberhart hammers us over and over and
over again. If you hunt in a place with heavy
hunting pressure, you constantly need to be thinking about security cover.
Where do these deer feel safe during daylight? And for
most folks, that's deep in the cover, that's close to
(37:28):
the betting areas. You know where I live in southern Michigan.
This is near swampy, thick nasty cover, tall grass, water,
tons of cedars or cat tails, just anything that makes
it hard for you to move through there. That's where
these deer feels safe because people don't want to move
(37:50):
through there. If you're in hill country, this might be
really thick nasty stuff or clearcuts or down you know,
tornado blowdown stuff like that. But it might also just
simply be topography that will make deer feel safe because
of the advantages that topography can give them. Many times
in hill country, these bucks will like to bed down
(38:11):
off of a ridge, let's say about a third of
the way down the ridge, where they can, you know,
have thermals coming up to them. They can have wind
coming from behind them and rolling over. They can catch
these swirling winds. They can see down the valley around them,
they can smell behind them, they can hear everything around them.
They're going to have these different topographic features in their
favor so that they feel safe. That is how mature
(38:33):
buck gets mature. It's because he did things. He placed
himself in an area where he could stay safe and
out of range of hunters for most of the daylight hours.
So if you are going to shift with bucks in October,
it's going to require you get back in security cover
most of the time. If you're trying to kill mature
buck at this time of the year, it's going to
(38:55):
require you get closer to those bedding areas. And in
many cases there's the two ways that people go about
doing this. There would be let's say the dan Infalt Way,
which would be scouting all winter in early spring to
find all these betting years. He spends a lot of
time in swampy spots where you know you're gonna find
a little bit of high ground out in that cattail
(39:16):
swamp and you're gonna find a big bed there and
some hair in it and some rubs around it, and
you can say, okay, this is where a buck has
been bedded. They'll mark that in the map, and he
knows he can come back there in the fall for
a hunter or two and have a decent chance that
there could be a buck in that zone. He'll try
to hunt around it, get closer to it, and make
a move. The other approach would be if you were
(39:36):
hunting in new place where you've not been able to
do that kind of scouting. And this is something that
you know, Zach and Aaron and Jake and Ted and
the rest of the hunting Public crew do a lot.
They show up to an area in public land, they
look at maps, and they think about where they think
the betting is going to be. But then they're going
to hunt their way into those spots. They're gonna work
(39:57):
their way in. They're gonna go in thinking, Okay, I
think there's betting here, so let's push our way in there.
Let's get into that cover. But then they're going to
let the sign on the ground or let the deer
they see tell them when they need to stop. And
so I just talked to Ted a couple of weeks
ago about this and he described, you know, going into
an oak ridge that he thought, man, they're probably betting
off of these points. I bet you there's acorns dropping
(40:19):
off of this ridge. Let's work our way in there.
Once they started bumping does out of their betting ere,
they decide, Okay, yep, we've got to this layer of
dough betting. There's probably buck betting beyond it. Let's hold
up here, hunt here, observe, and then either stick with
this or pushing deeper based on what we saw. So
you could kind of think of this as like a
(40:40):
layer by layer approach where you use sign on the
ground or previous scout and to tell you, okay, this
should get me into the general zone and then see
what happens on your hunt and then make the next
move based on that. Again, October is very much trying
to identify the betting and the feeding and the travel
between the two. So sometimes that's from long tosay since
(41:00):
glassing from the road. Sometimes that's from actually hunting, seeing
that you're not quite on the X and then adjusting
to it. That's something that can work very well during
the month of October. I will say this, if you
are going to take this aggressive approach where you are
pushing in hunting, in security cover, trying to get something
killed in the middle of October, it's kind of a
(41:22):
you know, swing for the fences or strikeout kind of deal.
It is going to make an impact. You can do
it a time or two and it very well could
pan out. You could kill a deer on the flip side,
you might not kill any deer, and you might blow
up the whole place. You might blow up this whole
betting area and make these deer feel much less safe
in that zone for future hunts. So, if you're on
(41:44):
a traveling hunt and you're just hunting for a week
and a piece, this is a great approach. Make the
most of your time. If you are hunting public land
and you have a lot of different public land locations,
you can hunt here, there, you know, anywhere within a
two hour radius, and you have a bunch of different
places you've scouted or the earth that you want to hunt,
this is a great approach. This is what Dan Infholt does.
(42:04):
This is what the hunting public does. These are people
who have a bunch of options. They might totally blow
up a swamp, but that's okay because they have another
swamp and another swamp, and another ridge and another spot.
If you only have one place that you're trying to hunt,
you've got a small twenty acre property or a seventy
acre property that your gramm and grampa's farm, whatever it is.
(42:25):
If you are stuck hunting one spot, you want to
be much more careful because if you go go in
and blow things up on October thirteenth, by doing this,
it could really hurt your chances come October twenty fifth
or twenty ninth or November second. So this is something
that you need to really think about what your circumstances
(42:46):
are compared to the people you watch on TV or
the people you hear on this podcast. And remember that
each of these different approaches is appropriate for a different
set of circumstances. So if you are in the have
a small property to hunt, or I have a care
fully managed farm that I've been trying to make really
good over the years, you might want to take a
different approach. And the different approach is more of the juries.
(43:06):
It's more of the Jeff Sturgis approach, it's more of
the Bobby Kendall approach. I would say Don Higgins has
a little bit more of this kind of approach where
you have a carefully protected sanctuary of some sort. You
have your property or a portion of your property, or
a food plot on your property, or a betting area
in your property, someplace that you know deer like to
(43:27):
spend daylight hours, and you keep that feeling safe for
those deer if you have control over it with a
lease or permission for just yourself or you own it,
whatever it is. Throughout the month of October, you absolutely
can kill mature bucks in places like that. You certainly
can kill them later in the month. The big question
(43:48):
is what are the days where it makes sense to
go into that sanctuary or to the edge of that sanctuary,
or to that good spot. What are the days that
give you the highest odds for success versus the and
the lowest odds of risk Because every time you hunt,
there is risk of deer smelling you, seeing you, hearing you.
So every single one of your hunts throughout the month
of October, you have to constantly weigh this risk. We
(44:11):
talked about this with doctor Grant Woods the other day.
You need to think about, Okay, how high are my
odds of killing a deer here versus how high are
the odds of me educating deer? And every day is
going to be a little bit different. There's gonna be
some days, like let's say, the first day of October,
as we discussed, where your odds for success are a
little bit higher because they haven't been hunted yet. And
so even if you go to somewhere where there's a
(44:32):
little bit of risk, it might be worth it because
those odds for success are extra high today. But now
let's fast forward to October fifteenth. Let's say, and let's
say it's a hot, muggy day. It's still your area
(44:56):
has been hunted heavily, and you don't really know where
these deer are. You haven't figured out how they've shifted. Well,
it sounds like my odds for success on that day
are pretty low. If I want to go deep into
a betting year now, my risk is very high. So
I'm hunting a high risk location when the conditions and
my information intel is telling me, well, not a great
(45:17):
chance for success anyways. So you're just blowing somewhere up
for very little reason. Those are the kinds of hunts
you want to avoid in this situation. You want the reverse.
You want a place where things are looking really good
and you have low risk. That's the ideal. So for
many people throughout the month of October, especially mid October,
they are being conservative on most days, maybe hunting you know,
(45:40):
the periphery of a property, or hunting some public land
that they're not depending on fully, or they're trying to
kill does on a part of a property that won't
impact where they think their main you know, buck betting is,
or where their target buckets or whatever it might be.
And then on certain key days, when conditions or intel
tell them, hey, it's a special day, then they are
(46:00):
going to one of these killing stands and taking advantage
of it. There's a few different things that could be
indicative of a killing day. One of these special days
in mid October, one would be the weather. Cold fronts, especially,
I think, are something that a lot of us, a
lot of hunters put a lot of weight on. An
important thing to note about cold fronts, about the moon,
(46:24):
about barometric pressure, about any outside factor impacting deer movement.
Key thing to take note here is that no study,
no science, no research has yet to back this up.
So none of the GPS color studies have shown a
statistically significant impact for precipitation, or temperatures, or moon phase,
(46:49):
timing pressure, anything like that changing how much bucks move
or when they move. All that said, there's a bunch
of hunters who feel otherwise. So I want to share
with you a few different exits and examples of these
different perspectives. The first one is going to be the
impact of cold fronts. I'm going to read to you
from Jeff Sturgis's book Mature Buck Success by design. All right,
(47:10):
So Jeff discussing cold fronts, he spends a lot of
time analyzing the weather waiting for these key cold fronts
to move through, and when they do in mid October
or really all through the month, that is when he
will dive into his best locations. So here in the
book he says, in simple terms, if the weather is
(47:31):
unseasonably hot, mild, or boring, it pays to seek other activities.
On the other hand, if the weather is unseasonably cool,
make sure to hit the woods. By focusing on high
quality days both inside and outside of the rut, you
can discover a season full of exceptional days for you
to take advantage of. In fact, you may find that
some of the days outside of the rut, which might
(47:52):
be triggered by wind snow, rain, or temperatures, will rival
or even beat some of the best days that the
rut has to offer. Best of all, if you will
allow the fluctuation of weather patterns to define your hunting opportunities,
your land will not become burned out by hunting too
many days in a row. Now, there's three parts to
a cold front. According to Jeff Sturgis, there is the setup.
(48:14):
There's the drop, and then there's the calm afterwards. So
a quick extra here discussing the setup for a cold front.
Without the actual setup for the best days to be
in the woods, there would not actually be any high
value days to predict. The extremity of the front plays
a major role in the quality of the CITs that follow.
The higher the winds and the more unstable the front,
(48:36):
including rain, ice, or snow, the more attractive the calm
and cold days are that follow. Warm weather, stormy weather,
and any set of consistently poor conditions all serve to
set up an incredible date to be in the woods afterwards.
So what he's saying here is that, you know, the
impact of a cold front is all relative to how
(48:57):
bad things were beforehand. So stuff was really bad beforehand,
Maybe that was like a long stretch of very kind
of hot temperature, you know, a lot of stability. If
you have a long stretch of the same undesirable condition,
then when that cold front finally comes, that's going to
make it a dramatic change. Or if you had a
very long stretch of like super severe wind and rain
(49:20):
and nastiness something else, that would put deer down a
little bit when it finally cools down and calms down
after that. Again, it's a significant change that, in Jeff's purview,
will get you a little bit better of a bump
in activity. Now when he talks about the drop, here
we go, folks. It doesn't matter if it's September, October,
or November. If you see a ten degree temperature drop
or more, make sure you head to the woods. Although
(49:42):
I really start to take notice of at least a
five degree temp drop, I prefer at least eight to
ten degrees of change in the forecast. The more extreme
the conditions during the front, along with the larger the
temperature change, the higher the value of the potential sits
to come afterwards when conditions calm. So kind of the
same thing we discussed there a second ago. Finally, the
calm the first high pressure, cool and clear day that
(50:05):
you can recognize following that front, make sure to hit
the woods. Keep in mind that predicting a high value
sit goes well beyond focusing merely on high pressure conditions.
Well out of quality set up and drop. A good
high pressure day is just another day in the woods.
So to review, Jeff wants a long stable setup, so
(50:28):
this might be a long period of hot days or
a long period of just like the same old, same old,
over and over over again. Then he wants a big drop,
he wants a ten degree temperature drop or more, and
then he wants those days immediately following that being you know,
the days where it gets cold and the days where
the high pressure comes in and then things calm down. Those,
(50:48):
you know, one, two, three days afterwards can be particularly
good days in October. When you have something like that
happened on October twelfth, or October sixteenth, or October twenty second,
or whatever it might be, Many many folks key in
on that those can be some of the best days
of the month of October. That is one perspective on
(51:09):
conditions and it can impact deer. Someone who has a
relatively similar perspective but slightly different particulars is Bobby Kendall.
Bobby Kendall from the White Tail Group. He's been some
great episodes. I should have mentioned. Jeff Sturgis has been
on a number of great episodes with us where he's
talked in detail about how he predicts deer movement, about
how he sets up his hunts. I highly recommend checking
(51:32):
out those as well. As some more recent episodes we've
done with Bobby Kendall, who I think as a really
interesting perspective on this. He calls the best days a
magic X day, and I want to play you an
excerpt here from a podcast chat we had where he
discusses exactly what he calls a magic X day, how
he tracks these, and how that helps him pick the
(51:54):
right days in October, especially mid October, late October, to
go in and hunt his best spot. Here's what Bobby
says about that.
Speaker 4 (52:02):
So, yeah, in October, so magic X day. So I
use the Weather Underground. I'll show you here real quick,
maybe on the phone so people can understand.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
It a little bit better.
Speaker 4 (52:17):
But I use the Weather Underground, not the app, but
I use the the website on the phone, and then
I anchor it to my homepage and I'm trying to
pull it up here. But it just shows a really
big display and any app that shows the pressure line
will work, but it just shows it really really nice
(52:39):
and big and clear.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
But essentially what the magic X is.
Speaker 4 (52:45):
And it's more pronounced that time of year than it
is in the summer. But when you have a high
pressure front come in, you'll see the black line on
that app particularly, but that's the that's the high pressure,
and it'll look like that. And then at the same
time you have temperatures dropping, so the temperature line is dropping,
you know, humidity is usually dropping, cloud covers dropping, so
(53:10):
it literally kind of makes an X on the graph
and you can see it instantly. And those days in
October they trump everything. I mean, you know, if you
have a big deer on camera, and it's not just
late October, it becomes more powerful in late October. But
whenever it whenever it happens.
Speaker 2 (53:31):
Is really good. Like I think two years ago it
was a really good.
Speaker 4 (53:34):
Stretch like October sixteenth to the nineteenth, and then within
the last couple of years there was a really good
stretch like the sixth to the tenth or something like that.
Speaker 2 (53:43):
It doesn't really matter.
Speaker 4 (53:45):
But you know, there's all these different things that affect
deer movement, and when you line them all up, like
their mindset in the end of October, they're just so
much more rambunctious and rammy. So if you get a
magic X day in the end of October, yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:57):
It's better, all right. So that is Bobby Kendall's take
on how he times his hunt in October looking for
those magic X days that that rising barometric pressure, the
declining cloud cover and temperatures dropping. The third perspective or
theory I want to share with you is around the moon.
(54:20):
This is a big one. A lot of people believe
that the moon can impact your movement in one way
or another. This is one that again, the science has
not backed up. The research has not backed up, but
folks like Mark and terror Jury, like Adam Hayes, like
dan Ienfhalt, like Andre Dequisto, countless others have pointed to
(54:40):
there being something there. I've described myself as moon curious.
I don't really do anything like I don't plan any
of my hunts around the moon. I don't have it.
You have too much of a bearing on my approach
to things. But I'm curious about it. I observe it.
I keep on waiting and wanting for something to pop up.
This show correlation. But there are some people that live
(55:03):
and die by it, and one of those people is
Adam Hayes. Adam Hayes is a bowhunter from Ohio. He's
had success all over the country. He's killed multiple two
hundred inch plus bucks, many many many other matured deer.
He's fully ascribed to the red Moon theory. He also
(55:23):
sells a product related to it. But he seems to
really truly believe in it and has a lot of
success with it. So I want to play for you
an excerpt from episode two ninety nine of this podcast,
where Adam described his take on the red moon theory,
what that means, how he uses that to plan his
hunts during this month. Just for those that aren't familiar.
Speaker 5 (55:44):
Yeah, so I've been using the moon guy for twenty
years and it's just really about it has nothing to
do with the phases of the moon. It's about the
position of the moon in the sky and the gravitational
pool and how that affects maturitier to move because you
only have a handful of the each month. When that
moon is peaking at prime time in the evenings, you know,
(56:05):
and it's just another thing added to the wind and
the weather to push that deer to get up and
move during daylight when he's normally not going to do that.
So those are the evenings I focus on. And like
I said, anytime you have multiple factors like the wind
in the moon, the weather in the moon, or all three.
You know, it's about stacking the deck in your favor.
(56:26):
It's you know, putting everything in your favor that you
can do. And you know, after using the moon guy
for twenty years, I've just seen it happen and have
killed too many big deer that just normally don't move
during daylight. But you killed them right when that moon
peaked in the evening.
Speaker 3 (56:45):
You know, it's it's not a dick.
Speaker 5 (56:46):
I mean, it's Mother Nature. I didn't invent the moon.
The moon the moon and the gravitational pull is strong
enough to move the oceans, the biggest mass on this planet.
You cannot tell me that that does not affect animals
and fish to feed.
Speaker 2 (57:06):
So obviously he has a strong opinion on this. But
to paraphrase this a little bit and to make sure
that folks understand, he's using a tool called the Moon Guide.
That's the product that he now sells. But what it
shows you is the times when the moon is either
directly overhead or directly underfoot, when that coincides with the
(57:28):
kind of typical primetime hours of daylight or sorry of
deer movement, which are the you know, the beginning of
the day and the end of the day, when that
moon is directly overhead or underfoot during those typical peak windows,
the belief is that you have an especially good chance
for deer activity. The druries believe that it's a little
(57:48):
bit different. They they are looking at like the moon
on the edges. So when the moon is rising during
one of those peak morning or evening hours, or if
the moon is still out in setting during that early
morning or late evening hours, that's what they believe is
a particularly good time. So again, there's a lot of
different angles to this. There's a lot of different perspectives.
(58:09):
I think the key thing all these different people might
disagree on what's the very most important factor. Is it temperature,
is it wind speed, is it bearometric pressure, is it
the moon? Or maybe you're one of those people who
think that you know, none of it really matters because
the science hasn't backed it up. The key thing for
most of October, but especially the middle of October, is
(58:31):
that you do not want to just mindlessly pound your
best hunting places. Goes back to what we talked about earlier.
Every time you hunt, you were educating deer. You are
making your next chance, your next hunt harder. You are
going to make these deer smarter every time you go
in there unless you are really really careful about how
(58:52):
you do so. So the two things you want to
do are number one, be very very careful about how
you hunt to reduce your impact, to reduce your chain
instead of educating deer. And then number two, don't hunt
too much or in too aggressive of a manner, or
in too many times in the same single place. So
one way to do that is to time your hunts,
(59:13):
to be selective about the days that you choose to
call in sick or the nights that you choose to
you know, use the good ad jail free card with
your spouse and say, hey, I got I gotta bounce
away from this family thing and instead go hunting tonight
because it's one of these special days. That's what these
folks are talking about. That's when the fronts the pressure,
the magic X day, is the red mode, anything like
that, that might be the indicator that these could be special days.
(59:37):
Of course, scouting intel can also be that. So if
you have found, you know, through trail camera pictures, maybe
that you have multiple days of daily activity from a buck,
that might be the sign like, hey, it's time to go,
or maybe you were out glassing on an evening and
you were able to see a buck doing that kind
of thing right now in the spot you can hunt. Well,
then there's the sign you need to go in there
(59:58):
and hunt. Another important piece of scouting information that a
lot of people put a lot of weight behind folks
we've talked about already, folks like Don Haiggens, folks like Bobby,
folks like Mark Drury. This would be historical patterns, annual patterns.
If I didn't mention Don Higgins. Don Haggens was one
(01:00:18):
of the guys that really I think brought a lot
of attention to this early on, this idea that mature
bucks especially seemed to do something similar year after year.
If they kind of shift to their fall range at
the end of September as a two year old, is
a pretty good chance that they'll do kind of the
same thing as a three year old, and as a
four year old and as a five year old. You know,
(01:00:40):
these things are always different, but it's weird. It's eerie
with mature bucks, especially how often they do things kind
of on a cyclical nature. I had a buck, for
whatever reason, three different years in a row would disappear
at the beginning of November, and he seemed to rut
somewhere else for almost the entire month of November. And
then every year early December he showed back up. He
(01:01:03):
did that three years in a row, and the third
year he was five and a half. I kind of
knew this was a thing he had done. I'd noticed
this pattern from previous years, and I said, I wonder
if he's going to do the same darn thing this year.
And so I was keeping an eye on things. And
then early December, the first good condition day I had
in early December, I was going in there after him
and I did, and lo and behold, I saw him
(01:01:23):
for the first time in five weeks. I think, and
kill them. This is something that time and time again,
these guys are pointing out, these guys are taking advantage of.
So it's not just what your most recent scouting intel
tells you, but it's also what years in the past
have told you. So try to identify trends like that.
Try to take note of when your target deer or
(01:01:45):
when amature buck or whatever dear it is that you're
targeting this year, What do they do last year? If
you hunted there in the past, if you have pictures,
if you have notes, what have the general trends on
this property been from previous years, and then plan for
that this year so that you are hunting there and
waiting for them and they are at the right time
when they show back up or when that peak of
(01:02:05):
activity arrives, whatever it might be. That's another important thing
to be thinking about throughout this month of October as
we go throughout it. I want to share one other
opinion here on how to approach this month, and this
is from Steve Bartilla, another great hunter writer. In his
book Big Buck Secrets, he discusses having a hunt plan
for the month of October and how you can shift
(01:02:28):
that throughout the month. So he says here, I'm going
to read an excerpt. When a hunter believes they can
safely pull off multiple sits, they're most often best served
by following the pattern of trying to get it done
by nipping at the edges of cover and slowly moving
deeper on an as needed basis. At the same time,
their stand choices should come from a pool the best
(01:02:48):
fits what mister big That's like a buck, what the
buck is driven by during each particular phase of the season.
For example, it doesn't make much sense to be sitting
at your best rut funnel or on the downwind side
of a dough betting year during the first week of October.
Save those rut stands for during the rut. Instead, look
at all the food and water related stands you have.
(01:03:09):
Hopefully you have the scouting information that determines which one
to sit. If not, begin with your lowest impact stand
that works best for the wind, then slowly climb the
rankings of impact with each new day. Doing so will
keep your property fresh for the longest time. If you'll
be hunting the property all season, it may be best
to save your highest impact food related stands until the rut,
(01:03:30):
or until mister Big tells you to hunt them.
Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
There.
Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
Many hunters choose to wait until the rut to begin hunting,
but I enjoy chasing deer way too much to do
that and have no desire to waste early season opportunities. However,
I often won't hunt the high impact food related stands,
and by avoiding them and nipping at the edges and
low impact stands, the property stays fresh as if you'd
waited until the rut, only you've been able to enjoy
(01:03:53):
some hunting time and had the potential to tag in
early season buck. So this again comes back to I
think what we've spent the last fifteen minutes discussing, which
is weighing risk and reward and knowing that it's a
long season and just looking at the month of October,
it's a long month. So knowing when to be aggressive,
when to hunt high impact stand versus knowing when to
lay back and hunt those low impact stands, that is
(01:04:16):
that's absolutely critical for the month of October. So taking
your big swings when the conditions are right, when you
get the cold front, the magic acts, the moon, whatever
it is you like, whichever belief you ascribe to, or
when the wind is just right, or when you're intel
and scouting tells you it's just right, otherwise being a
little bit more conservative and waiting, or take the infault
(01:04:37):
and hunting public approach, which is like pound pound pound,
But you are going to all these different places, so
making a high impact doesn't matter because you're just going
to go to a new property the next day or
the next weekend. Those are two different schools of thought
for mid October. Really the whole month of October, but
especially in the middle. As we move towards late October,
(01:04:58):
we're going to move here into the final phase of
the month, things again start shifting. And what's shifting here
more than anything is dear behavior. We get the first
big curveball in dear behavior because we are shifting away
from the bed defeed pattern and we're moving into a
rut pattern. But this is like that intermingling, Zoe. This
is like talking about ven diagrams. This is where those
(01:05:20):
two things intermingle. We're getting the beginnings of the rut
mixing with the bed defeed pattern. And so because of that,
this is another extra special window of the season. I
look at the first couple days of the season as
one of these extra specials, and then I look at
the end of October as another one of these extra
special moments. And again many many folks echo this. I
(01:05:41):
know Ben Rising puts a huge priority on late October.
Adam Hayes, I think he's killed many of his biggest
bucks during what he calls Red October. Like the last
ten days or so of October. This is this time
period where you still have bucks living relatively along the
same lines of their uneral bed defeed pattern that hopefully
(01:06:01):
you've been learning about over the last few weeks. They're
still betting in the same general handful of places. Probably
they're still feeding in the same general handful of places. Now.
Of course, food sources are evolving, so you have to
constantly be monitoring that. You know, are my deer on
corn now or are they mostly on acorns? Is that
apple tree still dropping fruit or is it all eating up?
(01:06:24):
This is something that throughout the month we need to
keep watching. John Aberhart talks about doing this. He's constantly
rotating through these different food sources and figuring out what's
actually working, what's not, what's actually here, what's not. In
an adjusting course based on that one. When we get
(01:06:49):
to this time period, you are getting deer still on
that kind of betting sorry feeding rotation. But now bucks
are feeling extra excited because they are having these rising
testosterone levels that have been rising all throughout the month,
but they're nearing their peak now towards the end of October.
They are ready to breed. They are just dying for
(01:07:09):
those first females to come into heat and to be
ready to breed. So the bucks are rammy as Bobby
Kendall describes it. But the does, most of them are
not quite yet ready. So you have bucks that are
still doing something that hopefully you understand. You know some
of their patterns, you know some of their behaviors and hotspots,
but they're doing it more often, and they're doing it
in daylight more often. So this is where you get
(01:07:31):
some bucks making mistakes. This is where if you have
a specific buck you've been after, this might be your
very best time to kill that deer because they're moving
more in daylight. They're taking a few more risks, but
they're doing it in places that you understand. When you
get into November, some of that gets thrown out the window.
Some of this starts getting kind of subsumed by chaos
when you get bucks chasing does all over the place
(01:07:53):
and bucks making big trips to new areas seeking out
doors or following doughs into new areas, and it just
gets a little bit crazy. We have this special window,
you know, it might be seven days, it might be
ten days, give or take, where you have this ven
diagram that really lines up well for hunters who know
their area. Again, this might not be the very best
(01:08:14):
time to just see a ton of deer or a
bunch of bucks. That might be in November. But if
you know a spot, if you know a buck and
you've been trying to figure him out, this is probably
your best opportunity to do that. I want to read you,
speaking of Adam Hayes, I want to read you a
little segment here from a book called Real World White
Tail Icons, and Adam contributed to this. Don Higgins edited it,
(01:08:36):
but Adam contributed a bit here. I'm going to read
this and kind of echoes some of the things I
just said, but from the perspective of somebody who has
done this consistently with a lot of success. So he says,
when I'm after a specific buck, I want to know
he's a homebody doing the same basic thing every day.
A mature buck is going to be the most predictable
and the most patentable before the rot influences him, and
(01:08:58):
that's in October. There's a short window of opportunity in
the early season. He discussed the following weeks, which are
referred to as the October Law, can be a difficult
time to hunt. The weather can be warm, acorns are falling, YadA, YadA, YadA, YadA.
But then he says, towards the end of October, things
begin to change, especially a buck's attitude. He's established his
(01:09:18):
dominance and won't tolerate subordinate bucks in this area. Along
with this testosterone levels, something else is changing inside him,
his urge to breed. The problem for him, though, is
that there are not yet any does in heat, and
that's where our opportunity lies. During these last ten days
of October, our adversary has all this frustration building inside
of him, but nowhere to go with it. He's primed,
(01:09:39):
but he's still doing the same thing every day. He's
not chasing does in the next county, as he's still
on a predictable pattern and very vulnerable. This is when
our mature buck is most likely to make a mistake
by responding to calling or getting up before dark to
head for food. If you've done your homework and you
know where this buck will most likely be during this
time frame, this is a very deadly window of opportunity.
(01:10:01):
I've managed to put three two hundred inch white tails
on the ground during the last ten days of October.
So red October, as he describes, it, is an absolute
dynamite time of year. To pull this out. As I mentioned,
these bucks that are still basically doing the same thing.
(01:10:22):
They're still going bedding to feeding. So hopefully the knowledge
you've accrued to this point of where these bucks are
spending most of their daylight hours those bedding years, that's
still going to be, you know, core to where you
want to be. The food source still core to where
you want to be. The only change might be that
there's going to be some of bucks not heading to
(01:10:42):
food sources to feed only in the evenings, but also
to check for does. So thinking about where the absolute
most does are right now, that's going to start getting
more and more important as we get later into October.
Thinking about how buck might scent check a food source
at this time of year. He might not just walk
right into feed he did on October first. He might
want to kind of circle the downwind edge and scent
(01:11:04):
check the trails or scent check the field before because
he's hoping one of those dos is coming into heat.
That's a consideration at this time of year. As Adam
eluded in his expert there in the book, calling becomes
more effective of this time of year. I would say
as the month of October progresses more and more people
are picking up the calls more often, and they're going
(01:11:26):
to be more aggressive with them. So, you know, in
the first couple of days of the season, I'm doing
just a contact grunt. As we get into later October,
this is when I'm going to be a little bit
more aggressive. This is when you're going to hear, you know,
your diehard deer hunter start using their grunt tubes a
whole lot more. They might do something that's more of
like a buck roar. They might do a snort, wheeze.
(01:11:47):
And I look at calling, and this is my approach,
but it's pretty much echoed by most others. You should
look at your calling as being like a ladder, and
you slowly work your way up that ladder, getting more
aggressive as needed. You don't want to start typically at
the top of that ladder. You kind of want to
work your way there and then read a buck's body
(01:12:07):
language and how he reacts to your call to determine
whether or not you should take a step up the
next rung. So, if I see a buck, you know,
out of shooting range it's October twenty fifth, I'm first
going to see if I can get his attention with
a simple contact grunt as I showed you earlier, just right.
If that does not catch his attention, or if he
(01:12:28):
hears that looks my way, but just you know, keeps
doing this thing like slowly walking along or working a
scrape or whatever, then I might just give him a
louder contact grunt or move into something that it might
be described as like a buck roar or a growl.
That's going to be deeper, louder, just more of like, hey,
look at me, something like this, So again just ramping
(01:12:50):
up my volume a little more punched to it. And
then finally, you know, you can get really loud with that.
If you are seeing that this buck is interested but
still not committing, maybe he's ripping up a scrape now
or something, but he's not coming to you, then you
might take the final step up the ladder, which is
a snort wheeze, which is basically equivalent to like pushing
(01:13:13):
another guy at the bar. This is trying to pick
a fight, and this is something you can just make
with your mouth. It sounds like this you make that
that is, you know, say they're going to really piss
off a buck and he's going to come into you
or he's gonna make nope, I don't want to fight,
and he's gonna get out of there, so you can
step up that ladder. If the buck is not committing
(01:13:35):
to you but still showing like, you know, vague interest
or disinterest. If a buck is showing the opposite, which
is getting nervous or scared, then just stop going up
the ladder. Just give up at that point, because you're
only gonna make things worse if you do that. Let's
say you do the buck roar and that buck tucks
his tail and starts walking away. Don't keep sending him calls.
Don't start ripping out, snort wheezes at him. He's telling you, hey,
(01:13:56):
I'm not interested in this. If you do that contact
run and he jumps a few steps away and then
starts walking away, just stop. You know, whatever it is,
read that language. If he shows aggression, if he puffs up,
if his ears pin back, if he starts ripping up
a rubber or a scrape or slowly you know, kind
of hanging in your zone, take those steps. If he
starts coming to you, like on a bee line, that's
(01:14:19):
another reason to stop. Don't keep calling. If he's already
doing the thing you want him to do. So that
I would say is that is a pretty good synthesis
of calling advice as October moves forward, and as a
kind of encounter on wines rattling, same kind of thing
in early October, as we discussed, you know that a
little bit of time tickling can be okay. John Eberhart
(01:14:41):
has been talking about this more recently that early and
mid October. You know, light rattling has been very successful
for him. When you get too late October, this is
when you can start getting more aggressive because bucks aren't
just like kind of tickling times and pushing each other.
Now as we get to the last days of October,
we're getting to real fights. We're getting to really trying
to aablished dominance. You know, there might be a hot dough,
(01:15:03):
the first hot dough, or very close to being ready
to breed where bucks are all out really wanting to
get after it. In that case, you can have real
rut rattling sequences. You can really smash these things together,
simulate that in pulling some deer, you know, to check
out what's going on. My experience, and I think this
has been echoed by many others, is that those kinds
(01:15:24):
of aggressive, especially rattling sequences, tend to work better in
areas where there's lower hunting pressure and higher mature buck presence.
So if you have a really good aide structure, rattling
seems to work better if you're in a place where
there's not many mature bucks and there's not that serious knockdown,
drag out fight going on very often, and whenever there
is rattling, it's usually other hunters those GISTs. Does not
(01:15:48):
seem to be that effective, So keep that in mind.
I'm pretty conservative with rattling in Michigan. I'm much more
aggressive if I'm in Iowa or Ohio or something like that.
So we've talked calling, We've talked about, you know, how
our hunting setups are going to shift a little bit
more towards ruddy stuff. But we're not yet hunting, you know,
funnels and locations like that. What I will say, though,
(01:16:12):
and what is a key difference from early October to
late October, is the effectiveness of scrapes within your hunting repertoire. Now,
this is something you can look at all year. Kind
of going back, I mentioned John quite a few times.
John has been very influential on myself and many others,
and he's been a great guest on the podcast. He
uses scrapes all throughout the month of October. He's looking
(01:16:33):
for primary scrape areas, is what he calls him, where
you're back in security cover and have a zone where
there are multiple scrapes all kind of clustered in a
small area. He likes to key in and on that
all throughout the season. Many others prefer to not spend
much time on scrapes until late October, but late October
is the peak of scraping activity. Multiple studies have shown
(01:16:57):
that you know, somewhere in that like October twenty third
of the twenty seventh, give or take, in that window
is when studies have shown the absolute peak of checking
scrapes occurs. That's when you have the best chance of
daylight activity on scrapes. These bucks are trying to collect
important information because as we talked about the testostroones rising,
(01:17:18):
the running excitement is rising to a near frenzy. So
bucks are just constantly trying to figure out where are
these doughs, when are they gonna be ready to breed?
Who else is here, what's going on? It's like the
tailgate before a football game or something. There's a lot
of excitement, a lot of optimism and anxiety and all
those things. They're continuing to go back to this hot
(01:17:39):
spot checking, checking, smelling, smelling, sniffing, leaving their own sign
as well. So scrapes. If you can be in cover
near those scrapes, that's a great place to be. Obviously,
a great place for cameras to get an idea of
what deer are in your area at this time of
the year. And of course, if you can have many
of these different things coming together, it's your best case scenario.
(01:18:02):
So if you can have like an active scrape right
you know, on the way to a great late October
food source where you know there's been a lot of doze,
and you're right in between that great food source and
a bedding area that you know has been frequented by
a target buck. If you can line all that up,
then you have a great setup. Combine that with what's
(01:18:22):
hopefully a good conditioned day, maybe one of those cold
fronts or Magic X day or whatever it is, then
you have a really terrific hunting opportunity. Those are the
kinds of days where magic happens. That's what we're dreaming
of in the hunting season. When you can, you know,
use your information, use your scouting intel, use your week's
worth of learning to take advantage of something you know,
(01:18:45):
making a predictable mistake that you predict put yourself in
the right place on the right day, and voila, it
finally comes together for you. So that is a high
level review of October took you from the early October
days to the late October days. I will tell you
that I kind of look at it as a as
(01:19:07):
a I guess I don't know how to describe it.
If you imagine like a roller coaster October. First, I'm
gonna start hiring that roller coaster with excitement and you know,
taking some swings. I'm gonna drop down after that as
hunting pressure impacts my property. And then it's a slow
rise throughout the month for me at least and for
many other hunters. As you're slowly getting more aggressive, bucks
testosterone slowly rising, and then you're reaching that next peak
(01:19:30):
as you get to late October. I spend a lot
of time that lasts five to seven days of the
month aggressively hunting near the core areas of bucks that
I'm interested in putting a tag on. I put a
lot of priority on those days. Adam Hayes, as we discussed,
he does too. Almost everyone on the podcast we've talked
to over the years, they are keying in on those
(01:19:51):
days as being absolutely peak opportunity. So as you progress
through the month of October, don't forget that the best
is probably yet to come. So don't, you know, push
all your chips into the pot unless you have things
lining up just right throughout this entire month. I want
to go back to this final thought to leave you
with is that you're constantly like, imagine like an old
(01:20:13):
school scale, right, There's like these two metal trays, and
you put stuff on either side of the tray. One
side is our risk, one side is our reward, And
you're constantly thinking every day you're going to hunt, or
when you're choosing a hunting location, you're constantly thinking, Okay,
how are the scales going to going to move on
this particular day, with this set of information, with this
(01:20:35):
set of conditions, at this time of year, Knowing that
deer behavior is changing through the month, Knowing that deer
do seem to at least hunters. We surely have seen
anecdotal evidence that certain conditions can change behavior a little bit.
Knowing that hunter pressure does impact what these do deer
do throughout the month, all of that is going to
(01:20:56):
shift the scales and hopefully will be in your mind
as you make your decisions every weekend or every night
when you get out to hunt. Whatever it is speaking
of this, something I did not mention, but something that
is a major topic to consider in October is hunting
mornings versus hunting evenings, and this is the exact same
(01:21:16):
set of issues is relevant here. It's always the scale.
There are some people like Don Higgins, who has advocated
in the past to not hunt mornings too terribly often
because they are harder, and John Eberhart said that in
the ex the book I read earlier in this episode,
talked about how many parts of October, especially early to
(01:21:38):
mid October, many times mature bucks will be back in
their bedding years quite early in the morning. So if
you are trying to slip in to hunt at the
same time that these bucks are either already in their
beds or approaching their beds, there's a very high chance
of you spooking that deer and educating him in the
dark before we ever got to hunt him on the side.
(01:22:00):
For an evening hunt, you can get in there while
he's betted down, and you can slip up to whatever
location you want to hunt while knowing he's bedded somewhere,
and you can avoid you know, sending your wind there.
You can avoid walking so close that'll hear or see you,
and you can get an undetected So it's easier to
have an undetected safe hunt in the evenings, easier sell
(01:22:22):
than it would be for a morning hunt in most situations.
So that's why I would say, on average, for most
of October, evening hunts seem to be a safer bet,
and many die hard deer hunters prefer to hunt evenings
and do not hunt mornings as much. There are, of course, exceptions,
if you're on a short trip, if you are hunting
(01:22:43):
public land, if you are you know, trying to take
advantage of a special set of conditions like a big
cold front or something. Morning hunts. You know, A, if
you're on a short trip, make the most of your time,
get out there and hunt, give it a try. B.
If you have that big cold front come through or
if you believe in the moon and the moon phase
is a little bit better on a certain morning, you
give it a shot. The biggest thing here is just recognizing,
(01:23:07):
like what's the high risk that we're looking at and
how do you work around that. So if we're worried
about spooking deer on the way to hunt in the morning,
but you want to hunt the morning, you just really
need to think about how do I get to a
spot without educating deer. So you need to make sure
that you're hunting a location that's not going to require
you walk through a food source, or that's not going
to require you blow out a bedding area when you leave,
(01:23:29):
or whatever it might be. So access and entry is
really really important anytime of year. It's really important morning
or evening, but it's especially important or entry on morning
hunts in early October when those bucks can be going
back earlier in the day. That said, as you move
through the month of October, I mean get into late October,
(01:23:50):
you're going to find that bucks do stay on their
feet later into the morning. And once you get to
that last week or ten days of October, all of
a sudden, mornings start getting better, better and better. Until
they get like very good and might be the best
once you get to that phase. And so at that
point you want to shift and you want to make
sure you're hunting those mornings in late October and definitely November.
(01:24:11):
And and you know, some studies are starting to show
that there might be a little bit more morning movement
in October than we have given deer credit for. We
just did a podcast with with a gentleman who's been
doing with Derek Dixon, who's been doing drone research using
a thermal drone. Hopefully you guys heard this episode, but
he found when he was actually watching this deer with
(01:24:33):
his drone, watching them all day every day, that they
were moving a lot more in the mornings than we
give them credit for. Now, it is back in security cover,
it's in hard places to hunt. So can you hunt
it without educating them and without spooking them that's still
a question. But they are moving more in those morning hours.
Maybe then we have sometimes given them credit for. So
ken mornings work in October. Yes, but you need to
(01:24:57):
be very aware of the challenges and have a plan
for your entry and exit that accounts for that same
thing goes for the whole season. You know, if you're
gonna hunt evenings in October, that's great, and it's great
getting in for those hunts, but you better have a
good way to get out, because if you have to
walk through the food plot, or if you have to
walk through the cut cornfield, or if you have to walk,
(01:25:18):
you know, past all the apple trees or something after dark,
after the hunt, and that's where all the deer are
right now, you are going to educate those deer and
you are going to have worst hunts in the coming
days because of it. So always thinking about that, always
thinking about the scales risk and reward, Always thinking about
how your hunts are going to educate deer in the future,
(01:25:39):
and making sure you're making smart hunting decisions every day
of October as the months go on, or as the
days go on, because in October, these deer are still
survivable machines. They have not quite gotten to the point
where they throw caution to the wind and chase ladies
without thinking that will happen for most of us, it
happens in Novemberber. They still kind of had their head
(01:26:02):
screwed on straight, So you too need to keep your
head screwed on straight. Make good decisions. Work your way
through the month, take those stabs when the timing is right,
when your intel tells you what's right, when the conditions
seem right, or when the time of yours right. At
a high level, that is my meta analysis, my literature review,
(01:26:24):
my comprehensive analysis of how to Hunt Mature Bucks in October,
based on the perspectives that I have come to from
so many, so many different podcasts, so many different conversations
with these guys. You've heard me mentioned number of folks.
I've mentioned Adam Hayes, I've mentioned Don Higgins, I've mentioned
Ben Rising, I've mentioned Jeff Sturgist, John Eberhart, Mark Drury,
(01:26:47):
Terry Jury, Bobby Kendall, Andre Toquisto, Dan Infalt, the guys
from the hunting public. All of these folks we have
had very deep, concerted, comprehensive conversation with on these topics,
and would highly encourage you to go back search those
names and Wired to Hunt find our episodes, listen to
(01:27:08):
those full episodes for more. But I hope that with
this kind of overview, giving you insights from a bunch
of different people all about this one month, it will
be helpful to kind of hear it all in one
place and to give you a starting point as we
kick off what is one of the very most exciting
months of the entire year. So thanks for tuning in,
(01:27:28):
Thanks for being with me for this one. Let me
know in the comments. I would love to hear from you,
whether it be on social media or YouTube or an
email whatever. I'm curious what you think about this format show.
Is this helpful? Is this something that I should do
for November and December. I've considered doing this more topically too,
so maybe doing like a comprehensive review about approaches to scrapes,
(01:27:50):
or an episode like this all about trail cameras and
getting all these different perspectives on cameras and stuff like that.
Let me know if you think this is helpful or
if you think this is junk, let me know that too.
So thanks for listening, thanks for your feedback, thanks for
being a part of this community. And if you are
kicking off hunting season as i am, here best a lout,
have fun out there. It's a beautiful time of year.
(01:28:13):
It's a wonderful time of year. Make sure you are
sharing it with your friends and family. Get some meat
in the freezer, get some great memories, and be safe
doing it. So until next time, thank you, and stay
wired to hunt.