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October 9, 2025 77 mins

This week on the show I'm joined by Mark Drury to discuss all things related to how deer use wind and thermals and how we can use that knowledge to kill mature bucks.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
the show, I'm joined by Mark Drury, or a masterclass
on all things related to wind and its impact on
hunting mature bucks. All right, welcome back to the Wired

(00:23):
Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light and their
Camo for Conservation Initiative. Today we have an absolute gem
of an episode. I'm joined by the one and only
the mad Scientist himself, Mark Drury. Some of our very
best episodes of this podcast ever over the long history

(00:43):
of this show have been with Mark Drury. He is
a wealth of information. He's a terrific educator and communicator
about deer and deer hunting. If you haven't listened to
our past episodes with him, go ahead and do that.
If you want to have a true, deep, mind blowing
white tail experience leading up to your next hunt, go

(01:03):
and binge listen to some of our past episodes. Episode
sixty three, which was our first one with him about
predicting deer movement. I've listened to it so many times
and had so many people reference it that I can
just think of it off the top of my head.
Episode sixty three is one we have a follow up
to that about predicting deer movement. I think that's called
like a master class on predicting deer movement. That one's

(01:25):
maybe even better because it just gets right into the
meat and potatoes of that. We did an amazing episode
recently about patterning deer. We did another really good one
about everything he thinks about in the Moment of truth
and right after shots. So just go and google Wired
to Hunt Mark Dreury and listen to those past episodes
and then, or maybe right after what we're about to

(01:45):
do today, listen to this one, because this is on
that same level. Today is a masterclass with Mark Dreury
on win and there's maybe nothing more important to hunting
mature deer, hunting deer of any age or type than
win because their number one survival tool is their nose.
If you can't beat their nose, you can't kill them.

(02:07):
That's what it comes down to. Today we discuss exactly
how Mark Drury uses his understanding of wind and a
deer's nose to close the distance and fail tags. So
we are going to ask him, or or I do
ask him, so many ridiculously nitty gritty questions about the
impacts of thermals aerometric pressure, how that impacts wind and thermals.

(02:29):
How deer use thermals, how we as hunters can use thermals,
How terrain features impact thermals, How ditches and rivers and
creeks and ponds impact wind and thermals. We talk through
how deer use the wind to make decisions about where
they bed, how they approach their bed, how they decide
where they might go feed during the evening, where they
go feed in the evening, how they use wind during

(02:51):
the rut, how they use wind toscent check, how Mark
thinks about all of this when choosing where to hunt
on any given night, or how to account for the
risk of being winded when deciding where to hunt. This
is fascinating stuff. If you are a white tailed geek
like I am, this episode is gonna be right up
your alley. I'm just gonna get right into it. I

(03:12):
think we should jump into this episode as fast as
possible because it is a banger. It's full of information.
It will help you on your very next hunt, I
guarantee you so. Thanks for tuning in. Enjoy this chat
with Mark Drury. Make sure to go check out those
past episodes that we did with them. They are terrific
as well, and best of luck on your next hunt.

(03:38):
All right with me on the line now is the
one and only mad scientist, mister Mark Drury. Welcome back
to the show.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
Mark. I'm Mark. How are you doing.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
I'm great. I gotta tell you, I'm very appreciative of
the fact that you made time for this amidst the
first big cold front of the year, So thank you
for that.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
You know, there's some benefits to not hunting, a lot
of more warnings, and this is one of them. So
we had a late night, as I indicated via my
text last night, so we were not getting to stand
this morning no matter what.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah, So the first cold front it turned up pretty
well for you, it did.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
We went with three different crews last night, one in Iowa,
two in Missouri. I was filming Taylor in Missouri, Coon,
Dog and Wade were out together in Missouri, and then
Carson and Darren were in Iowa. And I really felt like,
you know, with running three crews, we would see some

(04:36):
mature deer on their feet. Taylor and I did not.
We had a good sit in terms of seeing deer,
but nothing with any age. Darren and Carson the same deer.
Numbers decent, but no age. And then Wade and Coon
Dog have a deer that we've never seen while hunting.
They were targeting him and we needed that win yesterday

(04:59):
and he walks out at six and Wade gets a
shot at twelve or thirteen yards and smokes this what
we estimate to be at least a seven and a
half year old deer. Because last year this was a
farm that I had purchased after selling a couple other farms,
and we put a lot of effort into the setup
of this farm and the production there in and we

(05:20):
featured it with the Dear Season twenty four quite a
bit and Wade ended up taking a really nice year
on that farm, but not this number one target. We
felt like he was the oldest year on the farm.
We never even saw him while we were hunting, and
we hunted him a good bit, and based on the
trail picture history I had with him, we really narrowed
down this is where he daylights the most. He's got

(05:40):
to be bedding out this one finger ridg there's a
bunch of oaks in there, and there's a lot of
acorns there. This year, I'm sure you have a good
mask crop as well, and we just needed a north
wind to get in there, which anybody listening, if you've
hunted from you know, mid September through early October, you
know that those have been rare. And finally we got
when last night and this guy walks out. He's just

(06:02):
a big, what we think is at least a seven
and a half year old deer, a main frame nine
point with a kicker and a giant body. I mean,
the neck on this deer. I have to show you
a picture. I don't know if you can be rule
this or not, but looking for sure at the neck
on that deer.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
Jeez, we didn't love and you can see those big
skin rolls even when he's not bent.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
That looks like a November deer, you know. Yeah, And
uh so, I'm pretty sure he's a he's at least
six and a half or seven and a half. Rather
we thought he was six and a half last year.
But there's a good shot with perspective of weigh behind him,
big big, big Missouri deer as far as Missouri dit
deer go body wise and neck, and I mean, that's
that's what you're after. They seldom get to that age.

(06:46):
But it was cool to go into a new farm
and make it happen on the second year on what
was the number one target.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
So well, it's especially sweet. I don't know if you
feel this way, but it does seem especially sweet to me,
at least when you have the hunts that you predict
being like extra special. I think that this is going
to be an extra special time because of X and Y,
and I'm gonna have the perfect spot because of you know, A,
B and C, and you have everything dialed up just right,

(07:13):
and then it actually goes that way, which it sounds like,
you know this one did. When that when the whole
script goes the way you write it, that doesn't happen
too often, but when it does, it is a very
good feeling.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
Case in point, we had three scripts last night, all
excellent spots. One script played out and the others didn't.
So there's still that that numbers game with white tailt hunting.
You know that that du factor or not so due
factor in a spot or a person or whatever it is,
so that it can be a numbers game at times.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
Yeah, that's the truth. So so many people have been
waiting for this cold front, which you know has just hit,
you know, earlier this week for a lot of people,
a lot of us have been dealing with warm weather.
You were dealing with warm we weather leading up to this,
and you still were able to find some success last week. Great.
Can you tell me about that one we did?

Speaker 2 (08:03):
The highs were in the upper eighties every single day,
and it was it was just really hot and lack
of wind. You know, it was just every day it
was three, four or five mile an hour winds, which
oftentimes are quite variable, as you know. And finally we
had a day where some clouds rolled in. I was
watching deer cast religiously and I saw that cloud back coming.

(08:26):
And clouds affect deer differently in the early season versus
late season, especially when it's a really hot period, and
all of a sudden, the clouds shield the sun and
cool things off, and I mean everything got up and moved.
They were as ready for the hot weather to be
over as we were. And we ended up seeing three
different shooters that night. And we'd been sitting there because
we had a good access in and out, and we'd

(08:47):
been sitting there five nights. This was the fourth night
in a row we had sat there, and all of
a sudden, everything moved in a field that we hadn't
hadn't seen a ton in. I mean we saw a movement,
but not the shooters. And it just worked out on
a buck that was again ancient, really big old buck
that Taylor and I saw him once last year, but

(09:08):
that was it, and he was actually I went in
there with a buck in mine based on trail pictures
that I considered to be the target in Missouri and
on that farm, and then he walks out, and this
year comes out. They kind of came out a different
ends of the field, and then this year immediately walks

(09:30):
him off. And when they got together, the deer that
I shot, his body was twenty five percent bigger roughly,
And I was like, I had this all wrong, Like
I think that dear's younger than I thought he was.
And this dear walks him off, and I quickly switched
my focus. You know. Kuddog was like that thing's a tank,

(09:51):
and he was. He walked everything off the field and
then eventually came by us. And it was an easy
choice when I saw his body, his head, his demeanor,
you know, but uh, he was clearly a shooter, you know,
a nine point main frame with a with a kicker
out the front.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
Yeah that was cool.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah, cool deer, beautiful deer, big deer. And again I
saw him once last year and this was the first
time I'd seen him this year, so it was it
was a fun huh.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
So you know you hunted that spot you said four
days in a row, is that right?

Speaker 2 (10:18):
Four in a row?

Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, four in a row, and you didn't have good conditions, right,
It was hot, it was other than the clouds awful.
So so you know, when it comes to stretches where
you have that poor weather, does it come down to
just finding a spot that you can hunt repeatedly because
of great access and entry, so that eventually you have

(10:40):
to count on that numbers game finally giving you a chance.
If we sit this five lousy days in a row,
but in a spot that we are not going to
be detected, we might finally get him coming through. Is
that the idea you summed it up.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
Had we been having poor luck with deer blowing and
getting out of there on our way in or out
or while we were hunting, I would not have continued
with that approach. But we weren't, so Kundog and I
just kept it's a it's this creek that winds through
the woods with a giant, warm seasoned grass field that

(11:14):
we come down through, sneak into the creek, and then
we go north along the creek up an embankment fifteen
feet on a wooden ladder we built, and then into
our stand. So in and out is quite easy, and
we just weren't getting caught. Our thermals were dumping into
that creek, and you know, we would wait till the

(11:37):
field would clear, and we got kind of got lucky
because they stayed in this area and then they often
will move move on out the north end of the
field and up into a bean field that's quite some
distance away. So every night, you know, the movement would
occur and the field would empty and we would we
would get on out. So we had a little luck
on our side. Would just with the way the movement

(11:58):
is there. It's not always that way, but this in
this scenario, it worked for us. And then on the fifth, ninth,
fourth in a row, I got the shot because clouds
moved in what was supposed to be a high of
eighty eight dropped like eighty one or eighty two, and
they did it that night and the pressure was high.
That was the other reason I continue to hunt it.
The pressure was bouncing between twenty nine point ninety five

(12:19):
and thirty point oh five, all five of those days,
specifically those four That's why I kept going back because
I was like, sooner or later they're going to show here,
because I had pictures of some good bucks in this area.
So it was a de factor.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
So you talked about something there that I would like
to circle back on. It is kind of the main
focus of what I was hoping to pick your brain about.
I selfishly, over the year's mark, have always come to
you with like a deep burning question. Usually for each
one of our chats. We've done some really good ones
about predicting deer movement. We've done some really good ones
about patterning deer about kind of moment in the kind

(12:57):
of moment of truth situations. We had a really good
chante about that a few years ago. But I thought
today something you just mentioned would be perfect to kind
of peel back some layers of the onion, which is
everything related to wind, Like this is like the name
of the game. With mature white tails, right, they use
their nose, that's their ultimate survival weapons. So as a hunter,
we need to have a master's understanding of wind to

(13:20):
combat that. And I don't know if we give it
enough thought, or maybe I just don't give it enough thought,
because there's the basics and then there's these thousands of
other little nuanced things. So if you would be so,
if you'd be patient enough to hear a few of
my questions on this, i'd love you for you to
first expand on the thermal question that you just brought

(13:40):
out there. You mentioned the fact that you had this
spot where you could drop your thermals back behind you,
And I think that sometimes people assume that thermals are
just something you need to worry about in really big hills.
But you're hunting in you know, moderate terrain. I think,
I know there's some topography, but it's not like moderate. Yeah,
it's not like Virginia or Western Mountains or something. Right, So,

(14:01):
how do you think about thermals with your hunts, both
with how deer are using thermals and then how you
think about thermals when you plan your sets.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
I think, first of all, understanding thermals as as the
Earth's temperature cools, thermals are going down to the lowest
part that's evening. In the morning, as the surface warms up,
sun comes out, those thermals start to go up and rise,
and barometric pressure also helps that accentuate them going up

(14:36):
higher and getting on out of there. Well, if it's
high pressure, if it's low pressure, think of it kind
of almost not having as much of a thermal effect.
It kind of squashes that top layer down and they
might move up a little bit and down a little bit,
but they don't have that drastic up and down that
they will on a high pressure day.

Speaker 1 (14:55):
No, sorry to interject, but is it on a does
it do the opposite though with a low pressure day?
So with a low pressure day, would that be pushing.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
That's high pressure high pressure, I think there is a
much greater thermal effect way up way down going low pressure.
I think it is much more condensed. Low pressure kind
of holds everything in. You're still going to have some
warming and it'll go up in the morning and down
of the evening. However, it's not nearly the distance that

(15:27):
you would experience. You know, it might be it might
be one hundred feet that it's doing it, or two
hundred feet that it's doing it. On a high pressure day,
thermals rising on up into the into the sky or
pushing all the way down to the bottom of the valley.
On a low pressure day, it might only be ten
to fifteen feet that it affects it, but it still
affects it. And I'm I could be off on those figures,
but it's just in my mind, I know that it

(15:49):
doesn't do what it does on a high pressure day.
It's not nearly as distinct either like low pressure day
as you just don't feel it as much at you yourself.

Speaker 1 (15:59):
So do you think is that part of why you
like high pressure days so much for hunting? Is I mean,
I understand there's like a there's a there's a factor
that impacts deer movement itself, but as part of it
also the fact that it's lifting your scent as well.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
I think it kind of goes hand in hand, you know.
I think it's just the two go go together. And
that's one of the things when we did deer Cast
and we worked on all those different weather variables, oftentimes
when variables would repeat themselves, it was because a similar
system was coming through, you know, like you get a
high pressure system northwest wind, you know it starts with

(16:36):
the low, the wind gets up, it ushers the low out,
the high pressure moves in. You get that one windy day,
then the wind calms down, and it's kind of repetitive.
So you often get things that work in concert with
one another, if you will. So, whether I like it
because of that reason, not necessarily. I like high pressure days.

(17:00):
Is the movement's better? It is probably a bonus that
the thermals act in such a way that they are
drastically going up in the morning and pouring downward in
the evening on a high pressure day, I mean drastic
evening cooling.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
So is there ever a time when you will set
up in a place with a given wind direction that
maybe is not perfect, but you are counting on the
pressure to help you accentuate a thermal to be able
to get rid of something where you say, like, hey,
I know this is going to be a little bit risky,
but because of the high barometric pressure, and I think

(17:37):
these bucks are coming late morning or something, when the
thermals start rising, I'm going to lift my air over
top of them. Is that something that you are confident
enough to set up on?

Speaker 2 (17:46):
Absolutely? If you're up in topography high on the ridge
and your wind is not anxiety. I really wish I
had a north northeast today, but it's north northwest. I
think I can cool these deer because of the fact
that after about seven thirty or eight o'clock, my thermals
are going to be, you know, chimneying up and out
of here. And you get by with murder on high

(18:08):
pressure days in terms of your scent. If you're high
in topography and you've got a reasonably favorable wind, you
get by with murder. I mean, you really do it?
Is it just it alleviates a lot of problems for
hunters because your stuff's going up and not necessarily in
the direction the wind is blowing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
So another kind of thermal factor that I'm always wondering
about is how the predominant, like the regular wind that
day and the thermals interact. How much wind or how
low of a wind do you need for the thermals
to be the main influence for your scent versus how
fast of a wind do you need to have for

(18:48):
thermals to not really matter anymore because the actual wind
is pushing your your scent somewhere else.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
I don't know that it matters a heck of a
lot in theory. In your mind, you think it matters
a lot. But those thermals and in many cases will
overpower wind speed because regardless of wind speed, you have
those ebbs and flows of a windy day. Right, if
you've got to call it a seventeen mile an hour
northwest wind will it's it's gonna gust to twenty three

(19:15):
and it's gonna subside down to ten. And so you
still get these ebbs and flows peaks and valleys where
that thermal is still still going to take over. I
think thermals in many many cases are as powerful or
more powerful in terms of what can help you get
away with fooling a deer or not fooling a deer
as the wind speed and direction.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
What do you think about like the thermal effect in
flat areas where there's not you know, really significant topography
and you're in relatively flat you know, ag land or
something like that.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
Same of the morning, when it's warming up, it's gonna
go up, and in an evening it's gonna cool down
and blanket things. If you don't have much of a
wind speed, I mean, it's gonna blanket probably in three
hundred and sixty degrees around your spot. Everybody can relate
to sitting there waiting all day for deer. Thirty. You
were warm, sitting in your stand. High that day was
fifty degrees. All of a sudden, the sun goes down,

(20:14):
the earth cools, you get that little chill, and the
deer start moving, and then straight up wind of you,
you got a deer that catches you. That's a thermal issue.
You know, you might have a six seven eight mile
mile in our wind, but that that deer caught that thermal.
Those thermals are heavy. That's the one thing about a
thermal wind is light in terms of how much weight

(20:35):
it has, But when that cooling effect happens, there's nothing
stopping that downflow. Nothing's gonna stop it, so it's a
very heavy effect. Same in the morning when you get
into you know seven forty five eight eight thirty and
the rapid warm up, that stuff's bellowing up in the
air like a chimney and nothing's gonna catch you, especially
on high pressure days.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
So can you walk me through how you think about
that when you're setting up a place to hunt. You
know you mentioned something earlier, but i'd love for you
just to kind of explicitly explain how that factors into
when you're looking at a good hunting spot where you
pick your tree or your blind location. Given those two changes.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
As a general rule of thumb, of a morning, I
love to be higher intopography, I just absolutely love it.
I will hunt low intopography, but my preference is to
be somewhere on a ridge just out of my own
instinct and of an evening. I love hunting bottoms or
lower into pography. I dislike hunting a ridge of an
evening unless I have something for it to fall off too,

(21:39):
or if I have a great wind speed that I
have a confidence level that it's going to take it
and dump it somewhere else. So that's just general rule
of thumb. You know, there's no there, you know always
it never are not good words for white tol hunters.
You know, it's more about probabilities and trying to put
the odds in your favor. Last night was a great

(21:59):
example for Wade and Kuondog. That was a ridgetop because
that's where he would come out every evening, and we
put it for a north wind with a pretty good
slope going down, so that A we had the north wind.
B we had the thermal effect pushing it away from
this ridgetop where he was. He was walking based on
last year's trail pictures and it worked out quite well,

(22:22):
although the deer gave them a curveball and came out.
Was walking this long ridgetop that we had a green
field on, and then all of a sudden cold front.
He's been walking that ridge in the green warm weather.
Cold front, he did a yui and went straight into
this beanfield down the bottom. The colder weather green turned

(22:44):
the grain and luckily he was within range of the
blind when he made when he threw him that curveball,
and Wade was able to make a great shot on him. So,
and I was sitting there last night. I was in
a bottom field on a green field, and I told Taylor.
I was like, I just wonder if I didn't make
a mistake given the some verity of this coal front,
and I should have sat grain, which is another general

(23:04):
rule of thumb of mine. When it's cold, I sit
close to grain. When it's warm, I sit close to green.
And again it's not always or never, it's just something
I've seen tendencies where they'll do that, and luckily Wade
and Kundall got one. But you know, we sat that
greenfield and we saw a decent movement of no age.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
What do you think about setting up on small depressions,
counting on that thermal drop like a ditch or a creek.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
Love it.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
So that's something you sometimes will do.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
I do it a lot, But I will say this,
sometimes they'll fool you in what those thermals will do
once they get into that depression. They'll snake around and
come back out and whatnot. And it really can only
be proven or disproven through time. In other words, I
think this is going to work, but boy, until you

(23:58):
sit there through a ver i different temperatures, wind speeds,
leaves on, leaves off, time of the year, you really
don't know. I talk a lot about wind scouting, where
you're also thermal scouting. When you're out there, what exactly
is happening to my win? And I'm a wind checker
maniac man. I'm constantly checking it, constantly checking it, and
it freaks me out when I see it doing all

(24:19):
these weird different things. And I don't think you could
check your wind enough when you're in a hunting situation.
Whether you're on your way to the stand, whether you're
sitting in the stand, whether you're trying to get out
of the stand, know where it's going because oftentimes what
you feel isn't necessarily what it's doing. So through time
you find those little spots you're like, holy cow, this
worked on an east southeast wind at ten mile an

(24:41):
hour with a high of fifty degrees and pressure above thirty.
You might go there the next time leaves off pressure lower,
different wind speed, and all of a sudden, it doesn't
work for you. So you can only learn that through
time and taking good notes and remembering the conditions that
it that you had when it worked versus didn't work,

(25:03):
and avoid those in the future.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
He speaking of you just mentioned, oh, with such and
such barometric pressure, it worked back to what we were talking
about just a minute ago, which was the when high bear.
When bear metric pressure is high, it will accentuate thermals.
Have you found there's like a threshold, like how high
is high for that to be the case? Have you
seen anything we can make our well it's over thirty

(25:36):
point two, or if it's over thirty or anything.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
Barometric pressure is relative to the time of the year.
This time of the year, twenty nine point nine five
is pretty high, you know, you get to December twenty nine,
twenty nine point nine five is not overly high. You
know that winter air just brings in much higher pressure,
and I think they almost have an internal system that

(25:59):
reacts to the time of the year. I mean, clearly
their coats change from now till December, you know, and
pressure that's high now is like twenty nine point ninety
five to thirty point one, thirty point one five. You
get up thirty point two to thirty point three, you're
really high, whereas in December you might consistently get thirty

(26:19):
point one to thirty thirty point two five, you know,
and then all of a sudden you get this day
where it's thirty point six to thirty point seven and
it's like the deer walking around with their head about
to explode. But you do get those wild days. We're
really really high barometric pressure, So it's not the same
throughout the year this time of the year. I love

(26:41):
twenty talking about the early season year September and up
through mid October twenty nine point nine five, thirty point
five thirty point one right there is a real sweet
spot for optimization of deer movement. In my opinion, I
see a lot of deer on their feet in that
pressure range.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
So one last thermal ish related curiosity have I guess
I want to confirm some of my thoughts would be
the impacts of water, so standing water or moving water.
So one thing I've always thought is is if I'm
in a situation where I have low and variable winds,
I've always thought about trying to set up if there's

(27:21):
a creek or a river or something that if I
were set up close to that water, I could have
a thermal that might drop into that water or into
that creek or river, and that the movement of that water,
whatever the direction the river or creek is moving, would
likely suck my wind down along with that. Is there
any have you seen that? Have you experienced that? I've
seen that in some experiences.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
I've also seen it play the opposite effect that I
thought I wanted it to do, because with that river
comes aflow and almost a flow of thermalization and wind.
Have you ever noticed that along a river like you
can stand next to it without any wind, yet you
feel a flow that the water is pushing these thermals

(28:02):
one way or the other. So again it would only
come through time that you would you would learn whether
that works or doesn't work. The other thing that I
notice around water ponds or creeks, or especially if it's
it's reasonably deep, you have a much more accentuated change
in pressure, so that really cool cool water. Will look

(28:23):
at a pond in the morning that's warm on a
cool morning, there's fog coming up off of it, right,
and yet you don't see that fog anywhere else. So
the temperature of that water can perhaps help you, but
it could also hurt you because it's different thermal activity
in and around that that body of temperature versus the
grass or the ground or rocks or trees, if that

(28:47):
makes sense. So they can be trickier around water. They
may be tricky to the point that it helps you
more because it's doing something very consistently, taking your thermals
down into a creek and moving them on to your example.
But then again it may have a flow to it
that curls it back up on top, and a deer
gets you way up when that you didn't anticipate, you know, Yeah,

(29:08):
that's a tricky thermal pool in and around water, it's
different than land.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Is there any other terrain feature or habitat feature that
has a unique thermal effect I'm wondering, like a very sunny,
open hillside versus a dark, cool forest. Do you ever
have like a different strategy about how you're thinking about
winding thermals based on those two sets or something else
like that?

Speaker 2 (29:34):
Absolutely, again, based on the temperature of the earth. If
it's cooler, as you start to have evening thermals dropping down,
it's not going to be as accentuated as if it
was a hot, open area and those thermals go down dustly.
You'll also see a touch of a delay in the
thermals cooling that area off. Do you ever notice if

(29:54):
you're hunting a bottom and you're walking out of it
and it's really cool down in that bottom and about
halfway up that hill, boom, it's like a ten degree
difference in temperature, Like it just takes much longer for
that stuff that was that was warmed by the sun
all day to cool off as opposed to the shaded
bottom where the tree tops were. That's just an example,

(30:16):
So again I keep going back to you only learn
those things through experience. As to whether something's going to
work or not. And I've had spots that I stopped
hunting because my thermals would get me on the way out,
like I would hunt a bottom and I'm trying to
get out of a steep hill. Yet this thermal's pouring
in and alerting the deer that I just escaped the

(30:37):
field from, because it's pushing my thermal down the hill
from the top that's still warm, whereas in the bottom
and it all equalized and my set was on the ground.
Then I started my ascent out of there, and boom,
a new set of thermals is pushing me down into
where they just came from. So I've had a few
stands like that that I just quit hunting, especially in

(30:58):
the early season.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
With all this in mind, like all these effects that
the that the thermals are having on where our scent goes,
there's a lot of theories that hunters have about how
deer might be using this. What do you think about
how deer are using thermals to their advantage? Have you
seen like, hey, they're oftentimes going to travel to this
area or in this way because of thermals. Are there
any kind of rules that.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
You've seen absolutely. I think when you see a deer
circling down wind to check out a calling position, or
perhaps they caught movement in the tree and like, what
is it, I'm going to go check that they may
have you ever had a deer catch you bicircling you
know what she's doing or he's doing. He's trying to
get my position. Yet they don't reach your downwind side,
but they still catch you.

Speaker 1 (31:43):
They went down Sure it's happened.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
They went down thermal as opposed to downwind. So yes,
they use it as a very powerful force for them.
If you catch them of an evening is when most
of this happens. Of a morning. If it's a decent,
you know, warm up day, that stuff's going up, and
they have a much tougher time catching you. When you've
got a nice day that's warming. Of a morning, they

(32:05):
can circle you and circle you because they saw a
movement in the tree, and yet they can't detect you
because everything's going straight up. But evening's a little trickier.
But they will down thermal you as quick as they
will downwind you, So yes, they use them to their advantage.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
What about this is kind of getting to some of
the other ways that deer are relating to wind in general.
But there's some you know, anecdotes around deer going to
low spots like what some people refer to the thermal
hubs these days. Imagine like a low bottom with a
bunch of points dropping down into it. The idea being
during the rut a buck and cruise down in some

(32:41):
place like this where all the scent pools from all
the ridges and points around it, and that's a place
to very quickly scent check larger areas or something like that.
Have you seen deer using that, you know, thermals in
that kind of way before.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
Yeah, certainly. I mean I don't get into the weeds
on it quite to that degree, you know, to where
sometimes I think, and I think the advent of all
the different mapping programs out there on X or deer
Cast or hunt Stand, whichever the once. Sometimes I think
that off season is a long period of time, and

(33:15):
we spend so much time creating theories in our mind
off of the three D topography and everything, but in
reality it might not necessarily be that way once you
get out there and watch the deer's activity. So I
don't know that I've ever witnessed that per se in
terms of where I processed it and thought, well, that

(33:36):
buck just went to the bottom where all these points
came together, because that was a thermal pool. You know,
perhaps he did right. But one thing's for sure. As
the earth cools down and he's low and topography, he's
gonna he's gonna get more scenting done than if he's
up on a ridge.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
All right, let's talk about some more wind theories. Then
there's some more theories, and there's a lot about wind.
You have some that I've heard you share over the years.
I'd like to review a few of those. Sure changes
in wind direction. We just had one that happened where
there was a bunch of south winds and we just
got a big north, a big shift. How have you
seen changes in wind direction impacted deer population in their movement?

Speaker 2 (34:13):
Well, again, it goes back to what I was talking about.
A lot of these things accompany other weather factors. So
it's cold front and we went from south to a north.
So was it the wind direction switch? Or was it
the ushering in of high pressure? Was it the wind
speed switch? A lot of these things work collectively. What
I do notice with regularity is where deer bed based

(34:36):
on wind direction, and especially with wind speed. I always
think back to a field I used to have on
this giant ridge in Iowa, and it was about the
size of I'm gonna say, three or four football fields together.
It was a big field, five acres. It ran north
to south as true as it could possibly run, and

(35:00):
I had a blind on one end and a blind
on the other with access in both ways. That worked
quite well. But when the wind was out of the
north and I was on the south end of the field,
all the deer were always on the north end of
the field. And then when the wind was opposite and
I was on the other end of the field, they
were where I was on the north wind. So I

(35:20):
never forgot that, and I was like, how do they
know where I'm at? It I was younger, right, It
wasn't that they knew where I was at. It was
that the wind direction switched where they were betting for
that day. Wind speed will also do that to them.
I always think in terms of how high is the
wind speed? How low do you think they'll bet in

(35:41):
topography to get out of that wind? How low is
the wind speed? The bed all of a sudden expands
in terms of the options for a buck, So it's
more about where they'll bed when it comes to a
wind switch, in my opinion, and that also differs early
season of late season, and it's food predominant activity versus

(36:03):
the rut, when the activity is throughout the day, so
bedrooms could pop up literally anywhere during the rut. This
time of the year, they're much more defined. Early season.
Late season, they're much more defined. They're much more much
more opportunities for a deer to bed with security this
time of the year than late season, when all the

(36:24):
leaves are off the trees. They're seeking thermal units. So
it changes as the leaves come off the trees, it
changes with temperature, it changes with what phased the deer
in at the time of the year. So some of
the scouting that you do, it's always great, I think
for anyone to take lots of notes and any little
thing they learned that day, keep track of it because

(36:47):
I can, as I'm sitting here today, bet you one
hundred dollars that same occurrence is going to happen to
you in future years. And that's how you end up
eliminating a lot of mistakes and things that you did
that did not succeed, and start doing more of the
things where you had success based on those notes and learning.
It's it's so nuanced it's impossible to remember it all,

(37:10):
but it is possible to note it all and then
read through those notes in the off season.

Speaker 1 (37:16):
I want to unpack a little bit a few things
you said there in a little bit more detail. One
was wind speed impacts on betting, and I want to
repeat what you said and make sure I got this right.
Higher wind speeds you typically see bucks betting or deer
in general betting lower intopography to get out of that
high wind speed.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
Is that correct or at least in a fold within
topography to relieve themselves of that wind speed? I see.
I see that a lot when it's heavy, heavy winds,
I'm going to go bottom somewhere that that afternoon and
oftentimes that morning.

Speaker 1 (37:50):
Okay, but a low wind speed they'll bed wherever.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
Yeah, that's a little more expanded if you will, And
again it's not always. These are tendencies I've seen with deer.

Speaker 1 (38:04):
Now to direction. You mentioned that on that one big
north south field you described there, you saw them bet
on one side of it with a certain wind direction
and the other side of it with the other direction.
What do you what do you attribute that to? I
know you mentioned it's like where they're betting, but why
are they betting on one side or the other? Do

(38:24):
you think it was because or did you Is it
your assumption that's because of the way they wanted to
approach the feeding, Like did they say, well, I'm going
to bet on this side because for me to use
this wind to go out and feed, I need to
come wet this way or is it no? Because when
I want to go into my betting aar, I want
to smell my betting ear as I move into it,
so I bet here.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
It's about when they bet it, you know, it's about
the morning. What was the wind doing this morning and
where might they have betted? You know, So it's more
about using the wind of a morning when they're going
and approaching their secure area than it is where the
wind's at when you go win. You know, yes, you
know if you thick back, well, why is he in
that bed? When did he get there? Wait a minute,

(39:05):
what were the conditions? Win he went there? And then
that'll help you pan through that.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
So how do you think a buck moves into his
betting eear? What have you seen? I know you've watched
bucks go into their bedrooms before, and maybe even seen
them bed down. How have you seen them use win?
Because there's a lot of theories, there's a lot of
beliefs that all they always do this, they always do that.
What have you seen?

Speaker 2 (39:26):
I've I've noticed a couple of different things. One thing's
for sure. As a buck ages, he moves much more,
much more slowly through the topography, and much more careful,
and he doesn't move as far. From a linear standpoint,
you take a buck that's five, six, seven, eight years old,
chances are he's not moving very far. His bedrooms are

(39:48):
very distinct. And if you can get lucky enough to
get a pattern on a deer in previous seasons, that's
putting some age on Chances are you can make plans
the following year to take advantage of that buck's weaknesses.
And by that, I mean he's not going to move
very far. His home core to me, just shrinks right
up when they get to six, seven, eight years old.

(40:10):
They know where they've been safe in the past, and
they eliminate problems just like we try to eliminate problems
while we're hunting them. They're eliminating problems of coyotes and
tractors and cars, and they know where security is. So
that's one thing I've noticed. Younger deer seem to be
a little bit more random a two year old or

(40:32):
three year old buck. You watch them, watch their actions
when they come out into a field or when they're
walking through the topography. They're a little bit more careless
than an older buck, and they move at a much
faster speed because it's kind of like a I think
a pet lab or a pet dog. If you watch

(40:52):
them through their life. By the time they're old, they're
not moving a whole heck of a lot. They're spending
a lot more time in their bed laying down than
they are run and after ball that you're throwing off
the porch, you know. So it I think whitetails do
the same thing as they age. They just don't move
as far or as fast. But if you can find
where they're at and have an access point in and

(41:12):
out with the right weather conditions, you can kill there.
It's exactly what we did last night. We've killed that
dear for that exact reason.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
Yeah, have you seen them, you know, mature bucks in particular.
Have you seen them use the wind when going into
their bedroom in a particular way, like some folks will
say they'll always win check their bed before heading in,
or that they will j hook into their bedroom. Have
you seen anything like that? That's that's somewhat consistent.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
Certainly, And I see them do it more frequently later
in the year. When you take this time in the year,
they're not quite as spooped up, but all of a
sudden you put you know, coyote pressure, hunter, pressure gun seasons,
all these things occur. They get much more skiddage skiddish,
and they're much more alert throughout the day than they

(41:59):
are right now. Summer patterns leading into early fall are
a little bit more laxadaisical. They haven't been pressured very
heavily yet in terms of the hunting pressure. But by
the time you get to the end of the year,
they're wary and all alert and checking every wind and
their noses up in the air, and they'll go way
out of their way to check a bedroom or check
another buck, check other does. So they don't have to

(42:24):
do that quite as much right now because their interest
is different now, it's just more about food. Of course,
they're always interested in staying safe. But once they get
through the rut, and they've been using that sniffer each
and every day, you see them use it more often
than you do right now.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
Yeah, what about when things switch up midday? So they
choose where they're going to bed for the day based
on what the wind and thermals are doing at that time,
as they go in there and make sure they're safe.
But then if there's like a midday significant wind switch,
like this cold front coming through, like for me it's
hitting late morning, it's actually hitting today as we're talking.
It was southerly winds this morning, and then around like

(43:03):
nine ten o'clock, all of a sudden the storm pushed through,
the temperature start following, and it switched to a north.
So is that gonna do something funky to the deer
today where they bedded with the south, but for this evening,
all of a sudden they have a north. How have
you seen that impact things?

Speaker 2 (43:19):
I don't think so. I think in certain situations like
that the weather ticks over, their urge to go feed
is still going to be there. And they used the
wind as they navigate through the terrain more so than
they follow, you know, go you know, into the wind
all day long. You know. So I think they might
circle a little bit to catch a wind favor, or

(43:41):
they might enter slightly different than they would have if
the wind had stayed the same. But it's not it's
not a huge, huge difference. I think they're still going
to enter in their entry trails and exit those you know,
exit trails.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
Have you ever seen bucks shift midday where they bed
with a wind change. I've heard some anecdotes of peace
people seeing bucks that bet it on one side of
a ridge with X wind and then the wind switched,
and then you know, soon after that wind switch, the
bucks stood up and moved fifty yards over and revetted
in a better wind positions.

Speaker 2 (44:12):
That certainly, when wind can do that, some sort of
interference like a kyot can do that, or a dog.
And I more often than not, when you see that
buck on your trail cameras that's up and walking at
twelve thirty and nothing else is walking, I think it's
oftentimes something scurried around got him up, or the sun
aspect changed and therefore he's like, I'm going to rebt

(44:34):
so of course they'll rebt based on wind speedwind direction, sun,
other things that get them up and cause them to rebt.
Are they going to bet a lot further away? Might
be fifty yards, might be two hundred yards, It might
not be that far, but yeah, they certainly. They certainly
switched beds throughout the day. I think sun does it
as much as anything.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
Movement. You just start talking about how they kind of
use the wind partially throughout their day as there moving.
And I know this is different from it's they use
wind in one way during the rut and then maybe
it's a little bit differently pre and post. But let's
first talk about this time, either early season or late season,
when it is basically a bed to food existence for

(45:16):
these deer. How do you see them using the wind
as they move in the evening to go feed? Because again,
there's like all of these Oftentimes people try to put
a rule on a deer like, hey, they're always going
to travel with the wind in the to their nose
or quartering to their face. But then I've seen bucks
head out into a food source with the wind at

(45:36):
their tail on occasion. But I'm curious, are there any
trends that you've seen enough that impact how you hunt
them in the evenings. Given like, hey, x wind, that
means they're probably going to come from this direction or
something like that.

Speaker 2 (45:51):
In the fact that I'm very disciplined with where I'll
go on what wind speed and wind direction. When I'm
at a spot that i've I've had for a long time,
I often see them doing the same things, if that
makes sense, because I'm in there on the same conditions.
Otherwise I wouldn't be going to that spot. So I
don't frequent spots very often in conditions that don't favor

(46:17):
my access in and out. And then while I'm sitting there,
so I've already honed through that Otherwise I wouldn't be
going there. So I think as you sit and watch
a spot, if you can hunt it on a variety
of different wind directions, you might start to see, oh,
that's the direction I need to be here in because
they're betting one hundred yards off the field, not fifty

(46:39):
off the field, because that betting area is a little
bit more secure in this wind speed. I also think
the weather that morning plays a huge part in how
far off the food they bed, So it's more about
weather conditions in general? How well did they move the morning?

(47:00):
I think through that all the time. So are they
up because it's great weather, beautiful, high pressure, They're meandering,
going all over the place, and suddenly they've betted three
hundred yards off the field as opposed to just a
scenario where you're hunting a feet field of an evening,
as opposed to it's hot, they're not moving very far

(47:21):
and they PLoP down fifty yards off the field. So
I think through what what did he experience this morning?
You know, is he betted quite a ways off? Or
do I feel like he betted just off this field?
Based on the weather conditions for us here this morning
we had a high pressure brning deer on their feet
all morning. There's no telling where they ended up betting.

(47:43):
It's not going to be nearly as defined as what
we've seen the previous two weeks when it was hot,
movement was at a minimum and they weren't moving very
far between bed and feed. I think that as weather
improves and we see more deer movement, you also see
a scattering approach of the of the betting because they're
they're just lingering longer, they're acorning they're you know, hitting masks,

(48:06):
they're checking dose, they're starting to check scrapes, and suddenly
they're starting to move a little bit more. So I
see that as much as I do. You know, wind
speed of affecting it.

Speaker 1 (48:19):
You hear a lot about people, you know, I was
I was just reading a book for another podcast I'm
working on by Roger Rothar, and he described it was
Whitetail Magic, and it was either that or in pursuit
of trophy whitetails one of the two. But he described

(48:39):
in that book, and I've heard many people echo this
that the best setup to kill mature book is one
where the wind is almost wrong for you and almost
right the deer right. So how do you try to
do do you try to do that? And what does
that look like? Because I'm what I'm what I'm trying

(49:00):
to get at here is how you go about determining
how the wind is right for that buck?

Speaker 2 (49:05):
You know. I read that book in nineteen eighty six
or eighty seven, and Roger Rar, Roger roth Are and
Gene Winsel really had a huge influence on myself and
Terry when we first started we first started Dree Outdoors
in nineteen eighty nine, and I was. I read through
those books and I had yellow markers right where I

(49:29):
was going through and making you know, comments in there
and highlighting certain things that I wanted to remember, and
they were huge influences to Terry and I. But the
one thing that I read in Roger's book, and I
don't know if you've gotten to that point about how
he would only go into a stand after like eight
a m. Have you gotten that?

Speaker 1 (49:50):
Yes, yes, I read them all the way through, so yes,
I remember that.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
Okay, So that always you know, I got the premise,
but I didn't get the premise like, man, I'm of
a different school and not saying Roger's wrong, because he is.
He was killing deer, giant deer in Ohio and Illinois
back before anybody else got to making this popular. He

(50:15):
and Jean were way ahead of the time and their
theories and the things they wrote about and much of
it is golden standard, right, But that one I was
always like, Man, I want to see the woods wake up,
and I want to have a position where I'm safe
that first hour or two. And how many giants have
you seen walking through the first fifteen to twenty minutes?

(50:36):
You know, as opposed to walking in when many of
the deer start to get up and be on their feet.
So I always I always felt like that didn't detail
the way I wanted to hunt, especially of a morning.
So in terms of the winds, you know, just kind

(50:58):
of right for me and kind of for the deer
and that type of stuff. I'm so disciplined. And it
goes back to the answer I gave just a little
bit ago. I want the wind perfect for me. I
want the winds and the thermals perfect for me as
I go in and go out, because there's such a
variance with wind cones, because if you look at it
and you go, Okay, I'm gonna hount this on a

(51:20):
northwest wind, when in reality you can spread that out
to ninety degrees or greater because everything on the south
side and everything on the east side is probably out
that day. Dependent on the speed. There's certain speeds that
are optimal for us, and there's certain speeds that are
optimal for the deer in terms of when they'll actually
move the most. So I want the wind perfect for me,

(51:40):
and I'll take my chances on what the deer are doing,
you know, because they'll move through the topography and they'll
they'll switch course over one cent that they catch, you know,
So it puts it puts white tails into the always
a never category. And I just like to protect myself
because I know this. If I'm not getting detected, I

(52:02):
have a much greater chance of success that day.

Speaker 1 (52:15):
Yeah, it brings to mind another quote from Roger's book,
which I loved, and I'm gonna paraphrase the quote. The
quote was so good, I'm gonna I wish I could
perfectly quote it. But he said something along the lines
of the mature whitetail buck will always do exactly whatever
he damn well pleases. Basically, it was coming down to
we always try to put always and never on a

(52:37):
white tail buck. He's always going to do this, I'll
always do that, but there is no there's no way
to actually do that. He's just gonna do whatever he
feels like doing in that moment, and oftentimes it will
surprise us. And you have to have a certain amount
of respect for that randomness. To a degree you do.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
And it's it's why I always talk about having the
access in and out and the condition's perfect for me,
like I want it to where I don't get detected,
because if you could go without letting deer detect you,
you're you're going to be a very successful white to honor.
I mean, that's probably the takeaway from from today's episode.

(53:11):
Do everything you can to never let them know you're there.
If you can do that, you're going to succeed a
lot more than you're going to fail.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
Yeah, a little uh, and then.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
Let the deer damn. We'll do what they want right
and sooner or later you're going to get your shot.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
I was gonna say a little teaser. Next week's episode
for Wired to Hunt is going to be basically a
book report on Rogers books. I'm going to do a
deep dive into the lessons of Roger Roth are that
you know, today's generation of Hunters doesn't know anything about
him except for the fact that people like you or
Don Higgins or Bill Winki mentioned his name, and all
of us of my generation are like, who's this guy?

(53:51):
Why do they keep bringing him up? So I went
and found old copies of his books from used booksellers,
got the books, have tried to get everything I can
from them, and I'm going to try to share all
that with today's generation. So that's next week.

Speaker 2 (54:04):
On this point, we should do one on Jeen Winzil's
stuff too. From back in that Setuarajen and Roger were
both cranking out incredible, incredible information. I always loved the
chapter of Jean's book. I think it was One Man's
White Tail, and he talked about the power of thinking
so positively that he was able to make the deer

(54:29):
get up and move because he would think about a
buck coming through at eight thirty, and that's all he
would think about the entire morning, and then boom, a
buck would walk by at eight thirty. Like that chapter
fascinated me. But in reality, I think the moral that
story was just the power of a positive attitude and
being ready for something to happen in any second.

Speaker 1 (54:47):
Man.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
That's another thing I think happens to guys so often,
whether they're on their cell phone, whether they got other
thoughts in their mind, Like if you get home from
a hunt and you're not fairly mentally fatigue, you probably
weren't quite focused as much as you should be, especially
during the rut where the sits are longer. Like that,
mental focus and mental preparedness, being ready for the moment

(55:10):
at any second, because they are fleeting. When a big
bucks on his feet and comes by. I think about
the times you've seen them. They don't linger, they don't
You don't give you many shots. You better be ready
for the one chance you're gonna get, or you're gonna
blow it every single time.

Speaker 1 (55:25):
Man, They're tough, is the truth.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
You're gonna blow it every time. So that mental preparation
is we talked about that in that podcast you mentioned earlier.
So yep, you got to make sure you're a little
fatigued when you get done hunting.

Speaker 1 (55:38):
So so a couple more quick questions on these on
these little win questions I have. I think that based
on everything you've said so far, that you would say
mostly no to the question I'm about to ask you,
But I want to confirm because I'm always thinking to myself,
I'm always trying to predict where this buck's gonna go
on a given day or hunt. We'll say for an evening,

(56:00):
and if I have like a best guess of where
I think he's probably better like, I will tell you
exactly my scenario for tonight's hunt. My target buck has
got a little zone that I think is probably the
zone he beds in the most handful of acres, a
couple of acres, two, three acres. I know he's not
there all the time, but if I had to say,
you know, my best guess that he might be on

(56:21):
most days, I'd say he's probably bedded somewhere around here.
But then he has food sources to the north, to
the south, and to the west, and I'm trying to think, Okay,
where do I think he's going to go tonight? And
I'm oftentimes trying to think, you know, in some cases
it's the same food source. He could go north to
a cornfield, he goes south to a cornfielder, or he'd
go west to a cornfield. There's acorns in between, and

(56:42):
then there's green food plot in two different directions too,
So he's got a lot of options in any different direction.
And I'm trying to sit here and think, well, how
do I predict which one of those directions he's going
to go today? And I oftentimes find myself trying to
use wind to help me predict that, or I wonder,
can wind help me predict that? Have you ever found
the wind direction be able to help you predict whether

(57:04):
he will go north, southwest, east, etc. And we've talked
about We've kind of talked around this a lot, but
I guess I'm wondering explicitly, does the wind direction ever
help you predict if a buck will go to food
source A or food source B or anything like that.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
I think it does, but not every day or all
the time. But I think it can be one of
those factors that helps you tilt the odds in your favor.
There's a lot of factors that equal success. If you
look back on your successful hunts and you break down
everything you did, you go what all went right? Boo
boom boom boom boom, and anticipating where a buck might

(57:44):
move to a source. I think it's kind of like blackjack,
if you always stay on sixteen or always hit on
sixteen right. It depends how you play the game. Uh, Like,
I'm pretty consistent in the fact that if I go
the theory, I'm going to go with it over and
over and over and over again and stack the odds

(58:05):
in my favor to where it succeeds. So, in other words,
if you think on the north wind, I'm assuming you're
win switched out of the north that he's going to
use that win and come out the you know, one
side or the other. And my guess is he's probably
not going to use He'll squirt out the side. If
I had a guess, because I think they often sent
check stuff on their way as opposed to set checking
the same thing all the time. Yeah, you know so, uh,

(58:28):
I would my anticipation would be he's going to squirt
out the side as opposed to squirting going north right
into the wind. That would be my guest, because I
think he's gonna set check as he's combining that with
his ears and his eyes. We talk about their nose
a lot, but they're good at seeing and hearing, and
they depend on those two senses as much as they

(58:50):
do their nose. And I think that's why when you
when you try to bottle all this up and go
what's he doing in certain wins? Well, what can he
see in that terrain? And what can't you see? How
high is the wind speed? How low is the wind speed?
In other words, how well is he able to hear
or how much might he not here based on the
wind speed. So those other two senses, it's really a

(59:13):
trifecta in terms of what he's using to live on
a day and a doubt basis, and he has to
use all three of those every single second of the
of the day, year round. So it's not just wind.
But if I had to guess partially, he's going to
use the wind and go out, go out one side
of that block or now that'd be my guess. Just

(59:34):
I hope you're right, just for a cent. That's that's
the way you're playing. Good, that's the.

Speaker 1 (59:38):
Way I'm playing. I'm hoping that you're right because I
can hunt just west of his betting area where my
win I'll be just just a little bit on the
southern side of it, and just west of it there's
a big scrape that he's been already coming out and
hitting pretty frequently right off the edge of that betting
area is on his way to basically this spot I
can hunt, he will pass through an open oak stand

(01:00:01):
with a bunch of acorns in the ground. He could
then hit a green food plot just past that or
a cornfield right next to it. So I think there's
a strong chance of him wanting to use that crossing
wind as you described it, and hopefully either the acorns,
the green or the corn will be something he's interested
in and he'll be pinching by in a little standard

(01:00:22):
timber back there that I can get into uniquely because
of the rain and the wind, today is the only
day I think I could safely get this close to him,
and so I'm going to take a little bit of
an aggressive swing to get in there, because every other
day coming up is going to be crunchy and loud anyways,
So it's a kind of a one time shot. I
think I have here for a while with this cold front.
So I think it's.

Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
Very wise and something you might do or consider is
looking at previous I assume you have a little history
with this deer from last year. Ye look at some
of those nights he went that way. Go into deer
Cast Past, which is a new feature for us on
deer Cast, and go I love it. What were the
conditions the days he did that? You know, because dear
cast pass well, you go in and enter the date

(01:01:04):
that you're looking for. You can enter any date going
back three years and it'll tell you the conditions that day,
and then all of a sudden you match up where
he's going and with a condition and when that repeats,
trust me, they'll they'll do the same thing. They're very
repetitive and redundant from that standpoint if nothing else affects them.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
Yeah. Yeah, I love the fact that you guys added that.
That's been something that I've wanted for years for you
guys to have since since you know, in particular, you
and Terry have been such advocates for looking back in
the past and that you know, so I've had to
always use the Weather Underground website to find the stuff.
Now that you guys have it there in the app,
I'm I'm a happy camp. So thanks for adding that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
You put the data and it spits out all the
factors for that day. It's it's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
Yeah, that's terrific. Real quick wind use by deer during
the rut, either using wind to check dobetting and feeding
area and or scrapes. Those are three different things that
you oftentimes hear people saying, well, deer will use the
wind to check one of those three things, doze on food,

(01:02:09):
doze in the bed, or a scrape. How important has
that been for you when setting up and what are
the specifics of what you've actually seen.

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
It's it's very important because I think they probably use
that sniffer a little bit more then than they do
any other time. It's like a dog trying to find
a rabbit, or a blood tracking deer trying to or
butt blood tracking dog trying to find a deer. And
I learned so much about deer by hunting and tracking
with tracker John and his bloodhounds and just watching how

(01:02:40):
they work the terrain and figure out the scent not
necessarily in the wind or the thermos, but set that's
on a twig or a branch. And I see deer
doing a lot of the same things that I've witnessed
those dogs doing as they're trying to track a deer.
So when it comes down to them this time of
the year, they're a little bit lazier, a little bit slower.
They're going one of the food source. Then they're coming

(01:03:01):
back as we get into late October and their mind switches,
their attention span switches, they start using that nose owes
so much more. It's a totally different ballgame. It's like
hunting a different species, if you will, than the one
you're hunting now. It's one of the reasons we did
thirteen because there's so many different light switch events where
the deer just changed drastically their demeanor and what they're

(01:03:23):
doing and how they're interacting. And I think as you
get into the rut, it's all about that nose and
all about set checking and covering ground and trying to
jump that rabbit, if you will. A couple of things
I've watched dear do consistently. Number One, you get into
the rut and you see all that movement at seven
thirty five to about or seven thirty to about eight

(01:03:44):
forty five or so nine o'clock and the rest of
the herd beds down. It gets a little slow, and
then boom, the mature bucks are up on their feet,
and then there's zig zag and all those betting areas,
they're checking all those trails. They wait for all the
other deer to bed down, and then they go those
betting areas and check what just occurred. If they're without
a dough, they're looking for a dough and they're gonna

(01:04:05):
go find one, and they're smart enough to wait until
the does are all down and then they go check them.
I've watched them do that. The other thing, they are
creatures of edge, and if you I love hunting edge,
whether it's a thick cover inside of a big block
of timber, or it's the hardwood edge on the on
the downside of a betting area. The same place we

(01:04:28):
want to be is often where they want to be.
But you got to be a little further down wind
than they are. And just watch through time, where do
these deer downwind this betting area? How far are they?
Are they just inside and the transitional zone or are
they out here on this field edge? Can I mow
a path that perhaps incentivizes them to use the edge?

(01:04:49):
Could I put a path just inside the woods to incentifie,
incentivize movement there? And through time you'll catch how they're
using the terrain and the wind during certain phases of
the rut, and then you it could be just a
little further downwind than they are. Same thing with scrape lines,
same thing with just about everything. They'll downwind everything throughout

(01:05:10):
the rut, So you want to be on that same
down wind side. So it does work, but you can't
be so far down when you're out of the game.
Like I always felt like during the rut, if I
could fool seventy five percent of the noses and get
caught by about twenty five percent, I was pretty close
to where I need to be within the terrain to

(01:05:30):
take advantage of it and kill a big buck. Sometimes
that guy's going to be in the twenty five percent,
but oftentimes he's in that seventy five percent. Because one
thing about being caught by a deer this time of
the year, I think it is far more detrimental to
your overall hunt right now to get caught by a
dough Domino's everything back. It's it's really bad in December, man,

(01:05:52):
there's so many deer. It doesn't take much to convince
the whole herd to get up and domino back. But
during the rut, can spook a deer, and ten minutes later,
because they're covering more ground, a new deer comes along,
especially if there's wind speed where it's covering a lot
of what's going on. So I always relied on that
seventy five twenty five rule when I'm when I'm run hunting,

(01:06:13):
you know, if I have a few deer get down
on to me, I'm not that tore up about it
because it tells me I'm right on the edge of
where I want to be.

Speaker 1 (01:06:21):
That's that's really helpful. I found myself many a time
standing in the woods, debating exactly which tree to pick
and thinking, oh, geez, this is the right spot to be,
but you know, there's a twenty percent chance that one
of them might slip back on that one spot there,
And then back and forth between like do I need
to be absolutely wind proof but off the ax a
little bit, or right on the ax but be a

(01:06:43):
little bit exposed. And it sounds like you're willing to
take a little exposure to make sure you're on the X.

Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
During the rut type setups this time of the year,
I want I want zero percent because it's going to
ruin the whole hunt. Yeah, during November, call it October
twenty fifth or Thanksgiving that month, I'm a little bit
it more. I'm getting in their face a little bit more.
I've had I've had pretty good success getting getting in
there a little tighter now. I don't want to be
right dead center in the middle of all the activity

(01:07:09):
or there's deer blowing you all day. But if I have,
you know, if you see five deer and one of
them catches in the other the other four dome, I
think you're probably in a pretty good, pretty good spot.

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
All right, last wind question of the day talk a
bunch about deer getting down wind you, and you alluded
to this earlier, but one of the risks of calling
is that you might cause a deer to downwind you, because,
as you mentioned, oftentimes that's what they do. They hear
something they're interested in and then they want to circle
down wind of it. Given that, how do you think

(01:07:43):
about wind and that tendency to downwind you when you're
trying to call out a buck? How do you come
for that?

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
The older I get, the less I call, but the
more success I have when I'm calling. So I'm I'm
choosing my darts right. I won't throw a dart at
him until I know that he's in the right place, mood,
the right position, and I've got the right area for
him to come and approach my stand. Oftentimes it's on
a day where the weather is ideal. They're in a

(01:08:11):
better mood those days, and they're more likely to respond
to a call, and the lighter I call. I used
to get out there and bang those antlers in every
thirty minutes I try to get them. You know, is
there a buck that's come within your range? And boom?
Then circle way down when because they're trying to figure
out who's fighting. And then I don't rattle a terrible
amount anymore. I do a lot of soft grunts. Snort

(01:08:31):
weeze is probably my go to. I've called more deer
in with a snort weez than any of the call.
It's kind of that that little warning shop. You could
give a deer and kind of play on his ego
a little bit and see if he comes over there
and check you out. You know. Decoying is kind of
the same theory. But I just don't. I don't call
a lot. But if I see the right buck in

(01:08:51):
the right position, I will try them, and I generally
have pretty good success.

Speaker 1 (01:08:55):
So what's the right position to make sure that they
don't win? You? Does it have to be.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
Nearby the state up wind with a decent path for
him to get to me. If he's if he's at
my ninety, I'm not even I ain't even considering it,
you know, unless he's really in a good food you know,
if he looks like he's ready to fight at that second,
I'll hit him a little bit and hope that he
comes straight to my tree. Or if it's a really
mature deer, that is the difference, Like if it's a

(01:09:25):
you know, it depends on the population dynamics in the area.
But if you know there's two or three monsters in
the area are really matured deer, uh, and then there's
a three or four year old that you'd still shoot.
Chances are the three or four year old, if he
hears a call, he's got that other big bully deer
or those other big shooters on his mind. He's not
coming straight to you, you know, Whereas if you see

(01:09:46):
the big bully deer, he might come straight to you
because he's the king in the area. So it depends
on the population dynamics in the area as well. You know.
I've seen herds where there are no big mature deer,
best deer in the herds of three year old, and
he'll come straight to you, you know. But if there's
some big ones out there that's on the back of
his mind, because chances are he's already run into him,

(01:10:06):
and chances are he already knows his his level in
the pecking order.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
Yeah. Well, Mark, I feel like you've armed me, as
always with a few new ideas, a lot of new
ideas and things to just continue to stew on which
I will be doing today after slipping in during this
reign and setting up right next to a big Bucks
bedroom for an early October strike, taking a taking an
early swing given this cold front. So we'll see, if

(01:10:33):
we'll see if I've got a good story to share
with the time.

Speaker 2 (01:10:35):
It sounds like you're in the right place. I hope,
I hope you're killing Do you have self cams in
that area? Do you know he's in that bedroom?

Speaker 1 (01:10:41):
I do, he's been. I have daylight or like just
off the edge of daylight photos of him five days
in October already, So five out of the last seven days,
I have a daylight of him in this zone, not
not like all of them. I think two or three
of those were on the edge of that bedroom, and
then two of them were in food sources, just you know,
off out of it. So he's definitely in that zone.

Speaker 2 (01:11:01):
He's right there somewhere. I mean, if he's not on
the walk about, he should be close this evening. You know,
whether you're daylight or not. You do have a late
rising moon. Last night was the last rising moon that
I felt like was optimum. The later it rises as
we go into the full moon, I find the later
that they the later that they move, So it won't
surprise me if he's a touch late for you this evening.
I hope he's not. But last night was the last

(01:11:24):
really good night. Tonight, it's not bad. It rises I
think close to about seven pm, so it's not terrible.

Speaker 1 (01:11:29):
Yeah, you know, I would have typically hunted him not
as close to his bedroom as I'm going to get tonight.
I've had hunted him closer to the food source he's
been hitting the most. But I just got to thinking, man,
with his cold weather and the fact that I have
this one rainy, windy day, this is the only day
I could try to get closer to him. Otherwise there's

(01:11:49):
no way I could do it. I'd be so loud
to be impossible. So my thought was, why don't we
try one time to get a little bit closer in there,
right where it's happening, where these pictures have been that
I that I wouldn't have been able to get any
other day in October so far, and looking at the forecast,
I don't see any other days I could try that.
So maybe take advantage of this unique set of circumstances.

(01:12:10):
And you know, as it does, probably doesn't work out
because they're dear and they're gonna do what they damn
well please.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
But maybe I hope you kill him. Send me a
picture what you do.

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
I will try mark before I let you go. There
are a number of cool new things with the deer
Cast app that you guys have been working on. You
touched on deer Cast past, which I was so excited
about I had to just text you, like in pure
Joy the other day, I'm so happy when it's not that,
But can you tell us about anything else new with
the app or anything else with One of the other.

Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
Cool things I think is it lays out the information.
Just from an organizational standpoint. We now have the list
view where you can see all fourteen days boom ba boom,
and you can like this prediction, uh last night. We've
been waiting for two weeks for it because we could
see it out there at the tail end, and day
by day it would get closer and you know, it
said slow all the way up to yesterday, and what

(01:13:00):
do you know, you know, Wade kills this giant. So
that list view I think helps you play in your
schedule a little bit better, like, oh, there's there's my
green out there in about you know, ten days. I've
got to make sure I'm available right then as opposed
to paging through it. So I do like that. The
three D you know, topography that we put into our
maps is fantastic. I'm still a huge fan of the

(01:13:23):
rain stations. I want to know how much rain I got.
The wind checker, I think is the best one out
there in the industry. You know, put it on your
spot and it'll show you what the wind's doing, and
the wind cones, how they change with the wind speed.
You know, all the other little bells and whistles. It's
it's amazing. Deer cast is as accurate as it's ever been.
It's as useful as it's ever been. And now with

(01:13:43):
deer cast past, I mean, and and of course the
you know, the ability to help you when you need
it the most, the tracking, you know, deer cast track,
I mean, there's just nothing else like it. Like Terry
and I sat down and we were like, what do
we want to solve for hunters, Like we're deer hunters.
How do we solve these problems? And that's what dear
cast is just a bunch of problems solving from our

(01:14:03):
minds to put it all together. So it's a very
rich app right now in terms of white tone knowledge.

Speaker 1 (01:14:11):
Yeah, this is not blowing smoke up your tail. I
am a real paying user who has benefited from it
a lot ever since you guys launched it. So thanks
for putting that together because it is a great tool.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
I appreciate that mark. That's high praise. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:14:27):
Of course, anything else from Drew Outdoors we should know
about right now as far as content, YouTube channel, anything
else or should we just keep on following the YouTube
channel and Socialist absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:14:36):
I mean, of course, our television shows are all airing
right now, Bow Madness and Critical Mass and thirteen, and
we're cranking out content right now. The semi live stuff
on Deer season twenty five is just awesome. Jeff Propes
just kill a giant moose up of the Yukon. They're
working on our Catcher dream episode that we had with Will,

(01:14:57):
They're working on My Missouri Buck. They will start on
Wade's Missouri Buck, and all that stuff will come out
here in the next few days. So all of it's
in my live. It hits dear cast first, and I'm
very abbreviated version and then it'll be a full story
on on YouTube and dear cast here within generally within
a week of when when the animal hits the ground.
So our views are very good. I want to thank

(01:15:18):
everybody that takes the time to watch them, or if
you've downloaded dear cast, thank you so much. And of
course you can always follow us on Instagram and Facebook
and Twitter as well or x well.

Speaker 1 (01:15:28):
Yeah it's always changing. But hey, Mark, thank you so
much for taking the time to do this, to have
this chat after a late night last night, and I'm
sure I'm guessing you're probably off to another spot tonight
with this weather continuing to be pretty good. So thank you,
Thank you for everything.

Speaker 2 (01:15:42):
Mark. Absolutely, I got my mom in camp and I'm
taking mom out tonight, so that's going to be a blast.
We will through this whole, this whole podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:15:52):
She did, ye, there's Lucille all.

Speaker 2 (01:15:57):
Thank you for very educational. It was I am interesting.
I hope for the best, but.

Speaker 1 (01:16:05):
Whatever it will be, this is true. That is that's amazing,
that's the best.

Speaker 2 (01:16:11):
She's ninety two and a half. So I mentioned she
was ninety two the other day. She said and a half.
So she's ninety two and a half and we're climbing
up into a box lind this evening. You know, ten foot,
she's gonna climb that ladder, get up there. She goes
through physical therapy daily where she lives. She's an independent
living there in Saint Louis, and she makes us also proud.

Speaker 1 (01:16:32):
That's amazing. Well, I wish you and Lucille amazing luck tonight.
I'm so glad you guys are able to do this.
I'm glad that the whole family's in town, so have
a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (01:16:40):
Absolutely, Thanks Mark, I appreciate your own.

Speaker 1 (01:16:42):
Yeah, yep, you're welcome. A great evening, all right, and
that's going to wrap it up. I hope you enjoyed
this one. I found it fascinating. As I mentioned at
the top, go listen to the rest of those Marjory episodes.
The patterning dear one and the predicting movement based on
factors like wind, weather, bear, metric pressure, moon all that.

(01:17:04):
Those are a couple of my absolute favorites. Truly fascinating.
Check them out. Thanks for being here, Good luck on
your next hunts. Until next time, stay Wired to Hunt.
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Host

Mark Kenyon

Mark Kenyon

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