Ep. 972: Debating Aggressive VS Conservative Approaches to the Rut with Zach Ferenbaugh

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

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
This week in the show, Zach Bahrenbaugh and I are
debating and discussing the pros and cons of an aggressive
versus a conservative approach to hunting common whitetail rut scenarios.
All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast,

(00:43):
brought to you by First Light. Today, we've got a
great show for you, another unique one and one that
kind of came about totally by good luck. It's kind
of a funny story how it came together. So I
want to tell you how that story came together, but
very briefly here just so you know what you're getting
yourselves into. What you are about to hear is a

(01:04):
head to head discussion, debate kind of analysis of two
different ways of hunting deer, a conservative approach and a
aggressive approach. And Zach and I both put on the
hat of one of those teams and then kind of
make the argument for why this tact might be better

(01:27):
for such situation, or why this approach might be better
for the situation, and then we discuss back and forth.
Now this all came together though, because, as some of
you maybe remember, about a month ago, I released a
podcast about you know, how the Experts hunt October? And
in that podcast, I tried to point out incite the

(01:47):
many different ways you could hunt deer in October. One
of those ways was kind of the conservative approach, which
is kind of sitting back watching scouting from afar and
waiting until you adjust the right condition for a really
careful tactical strike.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
And I published a little short, like a little.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
Real from that on Instagram and YouTube that that had
just that little excerpt, and Zach heard that, and all
he heard was me saying the way to kill Bucks
in October is to not hunt too much and be
careful and wait for just the right moment and then strike.
And Zach heard that and thought to himself, Man, that's
not the only way to do it.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Why is Mark.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
Saying that he didn't hear the whole podcast. He didn't
hear me say, you know, this is just one of
many different approaches. But he heard that, and it kind
of stuck with him, and he decided to give me
a call about it, and he said, hey, man, I
heard this thing was curiously, do you really think that's
the only way to do it? Or you know, is
there you know what about this and this? And so
we start talking about it, and I explained the context

(02:44):
and explained, hey, this was just an excerpt of this
larger discussion. Me and Zach got to think and they're like, man,
there is a full conversation to have here that people
would probably really enjoy and benefit from hearing, because there are, like,
as me and Zach are going to discuss here, there's
millions of different ways to skin this cat. There are

(03:05):
so many different ways to have success hunting deer or
trying to kill a mature buck. There's no one single
way you have to do it. You can do it
in a conservative kind of tactical way where you wait
for those moments, or you you play your cards right
and try to make sure that deer don't know you're
around and then just ever once in a while slip
in for that strike. That's one way to do it.

(03:27):
And that's something that you know, guys like Mark and
Terry Drury or Bill Winky. Those folks Lee Lakowski, they've
really fine tuned and really mastered that. And then there's
a more aggressive approach, which is something that guys like
Zach and the hunting public and others have now really
mastered as well. I found myself kind of bouncing all

(03:48):
around in between there.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
So we got this.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
Idea though, to take There was a there was a
show a long time ago. This is gonna date me
back in the nineties. I think it was called, oh Gosh, Crossfire,
I think it was called. And the idea of this
show was to have one hard line Republican and one
hard line Democrat and then they'd throw an issue in
the middle and then the two of them would debate
it from those two perspectives. And so me and Zach

(04:13):
got the idea of what if we did that for
white tail hunting. What if we'd throw out a specific
deer hunting scenario during the rut, since it's November right now,
And what if Zach would argue for the aggressive approach
and I would put on my conservative hat and argue
for the conservative approach, and then talk through our mindset,
talk through what this type of person would do, what

(04:33):
we might personally do how we might actually meet in
the middle on a lot of these things, or maybe
even though I would have to argue for the conservative
approach because that's the team hat I was wearing in
this episode, why I personally might actually prefer the more
aggressive approach in certain scenarios or vice versa. How Zach
is actually more conservative than many people realize in certain scenarios.

(04:54):
So that's the plan, that is what we discuss. Of course,
Zach is a thin nominal deer hunter. You've hopefully seen
him on the hunting public. You know he has a
lot to share here. Hopefully my perspective here can be
valuable as well, So please tune in for Zach and
Mark putting on the conservative versus the Aggressive hats to
discuss and detail and debate and consider when an aggressive

(05:19):
approach might be right, and when a conservative approach might
be right, and who the right person might be or
what the right scenario might be or the right set
of circumstances to maybe flip flop and try the other thing.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
That is our podcast today.

Speaker 3 (05:33):
That's what I hope you will enjoy here in the
coming minutes, and without any further ado, let's listen all
right with me on the line now is mister Zach Fahrenbaugh.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
Zach, thanks for being here.

Speaker 4 (05:49):
Thank you, thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
Well, I also want to thank you. You know, I
just set it off air, but I want to thank
you again for coming to me with this idea, or
at least with the spark of this idea, because I
think it's a good one, and I'm glad that you were.
I don't know if it was peeved off, but triggered
enough by the social media clip yourself from me the
other day enough to call me with this really good idea.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
So it worked out great.

Speaker 4 (06:16):
Yeah, oh yeah. It's funny because I was I watched
it and I was just sitting there thinking about it.
Wait for like, I caught myself thinking about it for
like multiple days, and I had just come off of
like hut where I was extremely aggressive, and so what
I caught out of the clip at least, you know,
and admittedly it might have been out of context as

(06:36):
you kind of cleared up later, but it was like, man, like,
there's definitely more than one way to go about it,
and sometimes that is a little bit more aggressive, even
when I don't know there's there's a lot of folks
that are extremely successful with a more I guess conservative approach.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
They are telling you that maybe that's what you should
be doing, and I guess it's just fun to look
at it from both ways. Yeah, Well, you and I
when we were talking about this on the phone the
other day, you know, I think we both could relate
to the idea that we've been able to be around
so many people that are really good at this. We've
been able to hear from so many people that are
really good at this, or even like hunt with them
or watch them hunt, and you can't do that for

(07:19):
a long time and not realize that there's a lot
of ways to skin this cat. There's so many different
ways to do it. So that's that's you know, where
this idea came, you know, came from. And as you know,
after we chat it, I've kind of sat and thought
about a little bit more too, and in my thought
for what we could do today to kind of take
this idea of considering both the aggressive approach and the

(07:40):
conservative approach, the idea was, let's like put your aggressive
hat on and just consider like the most aggressive perspective,
and then I'm going to put the conservative hat on
and I will try to represent the most conservative perspective.
And then I'm gonna present nine different hunting scenarios. So

(08:03):
I've got nine scenarios I thought of, and if you
think of any more as we go, we can do more.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
But I've thought like nine scenarios that a lot.

Speaker 3 (08:09):
Of people will probably be able to relate to, and
most of them are relevant to stuff that might be happening,
you know, when people are listening to this or in
the coming weeks.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
So it should be helpful, you know, right now this season.

Speaker 3 (08:22):
But yeah, so my thought our I'll present a scenario
and then you tell me, Okay, if if I'm being
uber aggressive guy, this is what I would do, This
is why I would do it, this is how I
would do it. And then I'll jump in and I'll say,
if I'm wearing the super conservative white tail tactician approach,
this is what I would do and why and how,
And then you know, I think there's probably some like

(08:44):
discussion back and forth about you know, actually, even though
I told you the conservative approach, in my real life,
I would probably do the aggressive or vice versa, whichever.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
I think that'll be really interesting too. So does that
sound good.

Speaker 4 (08:56):
Yeah. The other thing too that I think will be
kind of a I want to try to accomplish as well.
When I've been thinking about this is talking about how
in the act of the hunt it might be super aggressive,
but then also in ways that I might try to
pull out of an area that way if I'm not successful.

(09:17):
For example, like let's say I'm making an aggressive move
but then okay, it didn't work out or it's not
working out. Talking about how, you know, I may go
about you know, switching in the last a little bit
of daylight or after it gets you know, after shooting
hours or over, how I then go into this still

(09:38):
ultra conservative or you know, careful approach to not mess
it up for the next time, which is something that's
the thing is maybe kind of like not always presented
in like our videos for example, because you know, it's
not really that interesting to watch, you know, me and
whoever I'm with walk out of the woods for you know,

(09:58):
an hour in the dark being super cool. I try
not to spook anything, you know, because we were aggressive earlier.
So I don't know, I think that'll be kind of
fun to touch on as well.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
Yeah, that's a really interesting point that you can be
both ultra aggressive and ultra conservative in the very same hunt.
That's really a really interesting idea. Okay, I'm excited about this.
This is gonna be good, Zach. Let's just jump into
this first one and see where it takes us. So
imagine you are hunting in late October or early November,

(10:29):
right in that time frame. You know, we're coming up
on that period of time here. So imagine you're doing
that and you're hunting a shared spot with a buddy.
Let's say, and I know you're not super hot to
trot on cell cameras, but let's say your buddy has
a cell camera and he gets daylight photos of a
big old shooter buck in daylight in the morning yesterday, Okay,

(10:52):
and so he comes to you today he's like, hey man,
this buck was in daylight yesterday.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
Great, dear.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
Is he can't hunt. He's got some other stuff going on.
So he's like, Zach, you should get after this deer
if you want. But the problem is, he tells you
it's a totally different wind direction today than yesterday, and
the weather kind of stinks.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yesterday was pretty nice and cold. Today it's it's hot.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
Tomorrow's hot the next day is hot kind of this
this kind of less exciting weather system. You hear that,
he says, see as that come off, Go do whatever
you want with that. I'm not gonna be around for
the next week. Have at it if you want or whatever.
What would your what would the aggressive take be with
that piece of information, given the kind of wrinkles there.

Speaker 4 (11:43):
I think the first thing would just be how well
do I know the area? You know, that's obviously going
to play into probably all these scenarios to a degree.
I would say that going though to the point and
in the deer's movement where he was captured on that

(12:04):
camera in daylight, that's kind of like the starting point,
I would say, you know, if I were to go there,
and let's just say that was on a scrape that
was back in the timber on the way to a
known betting area where maybe wind direction isn't going to
be a factor, and where that deer beds. For example,

(12:24):
I think if it was like maybe a marsh betting
area where it's pretty flat and maybe not as as
much terrain based as like edge based, maybe we suspect
that deer's betting on the edge of that marsh and
the picture that we got of him is kind of

(12:45):
in the transition area between betting in the food source.
Maybe I would go to that transition area to start,
and let's just say that's like a midday scenario. You
kind of go in there and you're looking at that
area where he had come through, and then just looking
at the sign from there, like for example, if you're

(13:08):
standing there at the camera and from there you can
see a whole bunch of different trails kind of coming
from that point A, which would be the betting area
in this case, going to point B the food It's like, well,
there's a chance that he's just been coming through here
every day, and you know, even though yesterday he was
here in daylight and where confirming that he might have

(13:30):
just been passing just behind the camera or you know,
just out of range of the camera. And so in
a situation like that, I would say just starting looking
at that sign and what's right there around it, still
not necessarily pushing into the betting area yet or getting
to where you're I guess hitting that edge or screwing

(13:51):
around too much right on that edge, just kind of
making that first assessment there and then slowly starting to
work back if you want to get clar So for example,
let's say we're two hundred yards from an edge, It's like, okay,
there's pretty good sign here, but you know, assuming that
he's actually laying in that in March, that I can't

(14:12):
even see yet because the weather's not as good and
I don't have you know, maybe maybe you don't even
have good weather for the next week. It's like, I'm
gonna just keep sneaking my way in there and kind
of using the middle of the day where you got
some wind. Generally just I think, you know, you're a

(14:33):
little bit you have an easier time getting away with
stuff if you're kind of doing these things in the
middle of the day. What mostly just because wind, honestly,
like that makes so much more noise, and you know,
you start waiting around too long, you get other deer moving,
they might start busting you. So kind of utilizing that
middle part of the day to find the sign and
then just slowly working the way your way in is

(14:58):
generally the approach that I would take in a situation
like that. But you know, with that being said too,
like I think it's a fine line between like, Okay,
there's a ton of good sign here at a certain point,
you do just want to trust that, so you know,
maybe you push in a little bit closer and maybe
you get all the way to that edge, but essentially

(15:20):
looking for sign that's telling you that he's been kind
of using this route from that point A to point
B and just trying to get as close as possible.
And I think, let's say I decided that I do
want to go all the way to where it's like
I'm set up within twenty yards of that edge. I
think the things that would be important and kind of

(15:42):
like what we were talking about with how can you
be aggressive while still kind of having a conservative approach.
This isn't a situation where I'm just like, all right,
I'm going to get closer and it's just like two
hundred yards of just crashing through. It's more like painfully
slow moving in, taking a step, stop and listen glass,

(16:05):
looking for things out ahead of me that I don't
even put my grounds in on to where I'm still
getting closer and closer, but I'm doing it in this
way that's I guess, really slow and methodical, I guess
would be the word.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
You know, I feel like I feel like a lot
of people that are on the conservative side of white
tail hunting obsess over access and exit, right, Like, they
obsess over that, and I think a lot of people
would assume that you don't because of your style. But
I think, you know, the more I hear from you,
the more you really kind of do, just in a
slightly different way, right.

Speaker 4 (16:42):
Yeah, it's definitely just a different way. Because if there
was a situation too, where let's say, you know that
that starting point where that picture was taken is actually
pretty open timber and flat, you know, I might start
getting ultra paranoid that he's laying there on that edge
and it's eventually going to start to see me walk
through the open timber. Yeah, So if there's a situation where,

(17:05):
you know, I could find a little depression like an
old maybe like a dried up creek channel, where I
can put my feet on dirt rather than leaves, you know,
to draw less attention from the noise I'm making, or
ideally get in a situation where I'm walking on just dirt,
not making any leaf noise. But I'm also like under
a bank, so he can't just necessarily lay there and

(17:28):
see my whole body walk across the open timber. You know,
to your point, the access is still really important here
because it's not. I think the interesting thing with hunting
aggressive is when it works, it looks like it's just

(17:48):
super smooth, sound like, yeah, just go right to where
they are. But it's rarely that simple. I mean rarely.
I mean most of the time it's you're just I guess,
trying to find the best route kind of on the
fly to continue to move in. But like you're saying,
the access and in the route that you take and

(18:11):
the timing and everything with conditions is also really important.
And I mean there's a whole bunch of different variables
that could contribute to how you go about it, But
kind of trying to find that best time of the
day to move and kind of scout your way in
I think is really important in all this.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
Yeah, so true.

Speaker 3 (18:32):
Okay, that's really interesting, And something you said trigger to
something I'm going to bring up here because I'm curious
on your take on this too. But let me put
my like very conservative white tail tactician heat on here
and present the opposing view. I think I think that
if someone was of the mind like they've got to
managed property.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
They are very careful about how they hunt it.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
They are you know, very risk averse because they want
things to line up just right and then they take
that careful strike. I think in this scenario, if they
had this daylight picture but then they saw funky wind,
hot weather, I think that person might say, Okay, great
that he's there, but I'm not gonna get too overly
excited about it. I think that person would say that

(19:17):
just tells me that the buck is still around. Great,
but I'm not going to try to dive right to
that spot because maybe the conditions don't set up for
that spot to actually kill him given the wind change,
Given it's not that great a weather right now, that person,
i think might say, Okay, it's confirmation that this buck
I want to hunt is still in the area. I'm

(19:37):
guessing this person would say, all right, it is pre
rut or rut timeframe, so I'm going to go to
a low risk, still decent general rut area. I think
this type of person would be looking at the rut
as as a little of a roller coaster. With a
managed property, you can't pound the very best stuff over

(19:57):
and over and over and over and over every every
single time, right, you kind of have to say, Okay,
there's gonna be some days where I go to my
A plus stands, and there's some days I'm gonna hunt
my B minus stands, And you know, maybe there's other
days outside of the rut when you're hunting your D
R E stands. But I think this person would say,
all right, I'm gonna hunt my B level stands knowing
that he's there somewhere, but I'm not gonna plunge into

(20:20):
that very best spot because of the fact that, you know,
some of these other things aren't lining up just right
at a high level. I think that's you know, what
this person might do. And then he's gonna wait for
five days and then the or the fourth day, when
temperatures cool down a little bit and the wind is
just right, then he knows, okay, I can punch into
whatever my A level stand was nearest to that possibly,

(20:41):
or you know, during the rut, anything can happen, and
a trail camera picture five days ago doesn't tell you
a whole lot other than other.

Speaker 2 (20:49):
Than that he's there.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
But you know you mentioned this hot one. I mean,
there's two different takes on weather, right, and everyone loves
to debate how weather should impact your hunts and whatnot.
One take would be what I just described, which is
like the conservative approach, which would be, Okay, it's hot.
That means there's not going to be as much movement,
which means you should not be as aggressive because the
deer aren't going to move as much, so it's not

(21:12):
worth being aggressive. Right. But on the flip side, and
I think you kind of alluded to this, on the
flip side, let's believe that hot weather does reduce movement.
If that's the case, then that buck isn't going to
want to move as much. Therefore, if you do want
to see him, you've got to get closer to where
he's betted or where he's spending time to cover. Therefore,
you actually maybe should be more aggressive to get closer

(21:35):
to that smaller area of movement, right, m.

Speaker 4 (21:38):
Hmm, Yeah, I think that like the one down or
the major downside. And I guess when I when I
think of the more play it safe type approach, like
if him coming to that camera was already kind of
a result of a better weather day, like you got
the cold front day and he showed up on the

(22:00):
camera going back into bed late that morning, let's just
say eight o'clock in the morning. Yeah, and it was
obviously different weather, you know, different weather than what you're
going to have the day that we're talking about going
into hunt. It's like, if you're going to go to
a place that is a be level stand or setup, like,

(22:22):
to me, you're kind of just signing up to na
see him, Like you're kind of just going out there
to maybe observe from the distance, which may still be beneficial.
And I'd definitely like to do that in a lot
of situations. I would say that's a thing that I
really prefer to do if I don't know one exists.
So in a situation where I do know one exists,

(22:43):
I would always personally try to lean on the aggressive side,
just because I think that's one of the hardest parts
about hunting. Now, again, you mentioned I'm not a trail
camera guy, so I don't necessarily have like the same
type of inventory as some other hunters might have. So

(23:04):
I know that could be hurt or just is hurting
me to a degree as far as you know, knowing
where deer are. But the part that I spend the
most time on is finding one. Once I find one,
I want to be all in. I want all you know,
hunts from that point on in that area to be
more aggressive, because I don't want to necessarily just say well,

(23:29):
i'll get him later. A lot of times I don't
have time for that. I may be on a trip
that's just a small window anyway, so I may not
have time to wait for good weather. So I think
that's a big part of it. And not to say
though either, because this example is a situation where it
sounds like we probably do have the whole season. But

(23:54):
on that same note, it's like if I've only got
one day, like let's say that's on a Monday, I've
got Monday off, my buddy doesn't, but I'm not gonna
be able to hunt again until, you know, maybe the
next Monday or later. I think one aggressive hunt probably
isn't gonna mess anything up. I would say it's more
likely that the deer himself messes up his own pattern

(24:17):
that we've created in our mind. Like there's probably a
better chance that he's just like, man, we'll go over
to this food source, end up on the neighbors anyhow,
just because he wants the acorns there that he can't get.
You know in this property that we're talking about, So
it's like, I don't know. I guess I would say
leaning to that aggressive approach, especially when you have that

(24:38):
limited time, just feels like you're more likely to strike
and then you can reset for that week, you know,
go home to you know, go to work, and then
you know, kind of revamped your plan once you're ready
to hunt again.

Speaker 3 (25:04):
Anytime that I have a forced break, like where I
know I have to leave for a week or I'm
not gonna be able to hunt here again for two
weeks or whatever it is, anytime that's like a mandatory,
I am always like, all right, send it, Like if
you're going to swing, this is a great time to
do it.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
Yeah, because I think, you.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
Know, many of the things that I read early on,
and some of the voices that I listened to early on,
preached such a level of paranoia about ever making a
mistake that.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
It paralyzed me for a while.

Speaker 3 (25:37):
But you get enough time out there in the worst, Yeah, sure,
all of us, And no doubt about it. You can
screw things like we can screw things up like bucks
do catch on. But at the same time, you can
make a mistake here and there, and still get you know,
another chance down the road. You don't have to act like, man,
if you make one mistake, your season's done. I think

(25:58):
that is something that I, you know, thankfully learned this
is not the case.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
And once you get past that, it opens up so
many hunting onties.

Speaker 4 (26:08):
Yeah, well, I guess one one final thing on that
note is one thing that I think, no matter what
type of situation I was hunting in, whether it was
like private land that I was controlling a bunch of
factors on, or public land, at this point, I really

(26:29):
value being mobile, which is like something that's so it's
almost annoying to hear. I think if you're listening, you're like, oh, yeah,
we've all heard mobile hunting.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
You know, cool, pretty trendy these days.

Speaker 4 (26:42):
It's trendy. But it's like I think of that as
I rarely, rarely, rarely hunt the same exact setup two times. Rarely.
I mean, the only reason I might do it even
is just because it's easier. And then from you know,

(27:04):
to start the day, and then from there I'm going
to continue to advance deeper into the you know, into
the cover or the danger zone, I suppose, And so
even if the wind switches day to day, or or
maybe my access changes. I'm always thinking about it. Okay,

(27:27):
how do I mix this up? Because, like you said,
you can allow them to pattern new I think that's
one of the most overlooked things in all of hunting.
But I also think that you can kind of trick
them into thinking that you're doing something and you're really
just mixing it up every time, and they don't even

(27:48):
they can't predict that.

Speaker 3 (27:49):
You know, now now I got to run. Now we're
getting we're you know, this will just be whatever it's
going to be. Maybe we don't get through nine scenarios
because I've got a question for it. Because there's something
that's been that I've been thinking a lot about because
I have over the last decade, like every year more
and more I get more and more like that moving
around a lot, trying to make sure a deer can't
pattern me first sits the best sit and all of

(28:13):
that has proven successful in many cases and is a
great way to approach things. On the flip side, though,
I've also found some times where I'm trying to make
those decisions based on trying to predict where this deer
is going to be tomorrow and the next day, and
then I end up like kind of chasing my tail,
Like I think the buck's going to be in X place,

(28:34):
even though I was in A today. So then I
go to X and then he's at A. And then like, okay,
well I think he's going to be at X again
tomorrow because he was there yesterday. So then I go
to X and instead he's at B or whatever. And
so another approach which you hear about being done, And
this is harder to do on public and shared land.

(28:54):
This is easier to do where you have control. But
let's say you have like a solo permission, like I'm lucky,
I've got a spot that i have, Like I'm the
only one with permission on one.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Of these pieces.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
Now there's all sorts of pressure on the neighbors, but
at least I know on this lake, this twenty acres
or this forty acres here, it's me or me alone there.
And so in that situation, what do you think about
this scenario? If you have a spot that you have
really good access and really good exit so you can
get in and out and you can almost feel certain

(29:24):
that you're not gonna blow things up, you also have
like a dynamite wind situation where you're gonna blow your
wind over a lake, or you're gonna blow your wind
over a dirt field or something, so you can go
in there knowing with like ninety six percent certainty. Stuff
should not know you were there, right. If you have
a situation like that, does it ever make sense to

(29:46):
camp out in a spot? And if it's a really
good spot, like if you know, like, man, this is
a spot that if I give enough time and I
don't educate deer, he will cycle through here. Because I
could go chase my tail or, I could go to
A to to c D, and every time I'm at
A he might be the other one. And one of
the things I guess what I'm getting at here is

(30:06):
we might be not as good at predicting where deer
will be as we think we are because they're so random.
I think they're much more random than we sometimes like
to think. We like to try to say, you know, oh, well,
if it's a west wind and a rising barometer, he's
going to be here, right, And we're right maybe five
percent of the time. The best of us maybe are

(30:27):
right five percent of the time. So sometimes if you
had that scenario, should you just do something that sounds
kind of stupid when I say it out loud, but
should you hunt that spot four days in a row
because you know that twenty five percent of the time
he probably will cycle through there, and you just have
to be there that much time.

Speaker 4 (30:44):
I say, I, I mean, did I tell people this
all the time that I'm hunting with. It's like if
I had the personality in which I could just sit
in the spot, like I feel like every single trip
i'm on, I find multiple of those spots that I
believe if you camp out or black alli, you'd get
an opportunity. But I don't personally have that sort of

(31:07):
like discipline when it comes to Like I'm patient in
different ways, Like I can do the like walk slow
through the woods for two hours and make it one
hundred yards. I can do that all day. I enjoy that.
But you make me sit in one spot for even
a full day, and I'm gonna really struggle to be sharp.

(31:27):
I'll just start drifting off thinking about daydreaming about all
the things that I could be seeing on the ground.
So it's like, depending on who you are, I think
the answer is yes, you definitely I believe you should
do that. It's just really hard for me to do that.
And I think, like, for example, in our group, the

(31:50):
person that I think is the best at that is Greg.
Like Greg does a really good job of just finding
a spot and believing in it and just being patient.
And so there's been times where, you know, I'm on
a trip where Greg isn't there. He might be somewhere
else hunting, and I'm like, man, if you know a
guy like Greg was with us, we could do all

(32:13):
this moving around all we want and hunt in our style.
But then it's like I would love to be like, hey,
sit right here for you know, you know, we found
this spot moving around. You know, maybe you've been sitting
at this spot, but this is better, Like this has
got more signed, this is a better funnel, this has
got more deer around it, and just.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
Sit there because I couldn't do it right, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 (32:34):
I might be able to give it a morning or
you know, there are times where I sit in a
spot all day, even for a couple of days, but
it's usually about two or three days max that I
can be in an area. And and even in those
situations that I think back on, I've been bouncing within

(32:57):
an area. I may hunt it three days straight, but
I'm not just right in the same tree or in
the same set up on the ground. I'm kind of
maneuvering around just because I really just can't sit still
for that long. And that's something that I had to
learn about myself and just honest and be honest with
myself about It's like, all right, dude, you are not

(33:17):
that good at this, so you should like thing else
you make.

Speaker 3 (33:21):
You make a really good point though, for for anyone,
you know, choosing which of these sides of the spectrum
you want to take when hunting shouldn't just to be
out about what will kill the most deer. It should
also be about like what's the most fun for you,
which of these is actually a good fit and makes
the experience. Like for some people like you, like it's

(33:42):
just gonna be more fun to be out there again
about and for other people it's like, hey, that.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
Sounds like not my thing.

Speaker 3 (33:47):
But I love to sit and watch the and then
the morning kind of sun come up, and I just
like to watch and see what happens throughout the day.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
And they're happy campers.

Speaker 3 (33:54):
So yeah, you know, this is a little bit about
just figuring out what kind of experience you want.

Speaker 4 (33:59):
Yeah, I think that's a huge part of it.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
Yeah, Okay, here's another scenarios. Ach.

Speaker 3 (34:04):
This is one that I can point to so many places,
like over the years, I'm sure you can too, And
I'm always in the debate over what to do. And
I think this could be a this could be a
private land thing, this could be a public land thing.
I think we've both found it in both scenario. So
imagine this. Imagine this is a place that you have
hunted in the past. You know this area, and it's

(34:25):
one of those spots that you find that is just
the the hub of the wheel, the spot like let's
just say it's like a marsh grass or just kind
of a nasty little betting zone that's got some sightlines
through it.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
There's like some autumn.

Speaker 3 (34:41):
Olive in there and tall grass and so you can
see stuff, but it's it feels very safe to deer,
and there's betting all around.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
It's a pretty big betting area.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
And so over the years, this is un I should
let me should add one caveat here. This is on
a neighbor's property, So this is a property you can't hunt,
but you've been able to see for years. So so yeah,
all right, my scenario here will be a little bit
different because I want you to apply it to public too,
But I'll stop qualifying and just explain so amazing betting.

(35:12):
You've been able to watch it over the years. You
haven't hunted it in the past, but you've always thought,
whoa how would you ever hunt that? Because deer come
from every single direction. There's deer all around you, there's
betting and cover all around you. But that one tree
along the ditch is where like every buck eventually passes through.
So there's like an X where that's the spot. But

(35:33):
at the same time, it seems like there's deer everywhere,
So how would you ever hunt it without all sorts
of deer winding you or seeing you come in in
and out or spooking them in some kind of way.
So now, for whatever reason, either you get permission on
this private or you finally realize it's actually public land
or whatever, now you can actually hunt it.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
So here's the real question.

Speaker 3 (35:54):
What would the aggressive take be on a spot like
that where you know, man, the is an unbelievable spot.
There's all sorts of deer in bucks coming through here,
But how do you hunt it without getting busted? What
would the super aggressive uh swing at this situation be? Well,

(36:14):
I guess kind of picturing this is a spot that
you've observed kind of this time of the year, late
October into November, and you know that it's kind of
the hot spot that time of the year consistently. I personally,
I can actually think of a couple of examples specifically

(36:36):
where I have hunted these types of spots, and I
would say that for the most part, they are those
examples where I go in for these like three day
chunks and just hunt them right exactly where I think
that X is now. Depending on how the wind may
change in that three day timeframe, you know, I may

(36:58):
end up maybe, for example, I set up in that
tree one time, maybe the next day I set up
and I'm you know, it's a different wind.

Speaker 4 (37:08):
So now from that tree, your wind would be blown
right to that X where the main trails are. So
I may then go sit on the ground on the
other side and just kind of be a little bit
more risky putting sent on you know, that main trail.
But I suppose I'm kind of picturing an area too,
where you know it's bedding and there's a bunch of

(37:30):
does in there, and then the bucks are there as
a result of those does. Yeah, in those types of places,
it's hard to do. And I struggle to actually execute
this sometimes because I do get that little bit of
paranoia where I'm like, I'm gonna screw it up, and
I start worrying about that too much. But the times
that I think me and you know, buddies that I've

(37:52):
been hunting with have executed it well, is we just
go for it, and you know, if you're gonna if
you bump a few, it's probably fine because those bucks
have it so locked into their head. Well my whole life.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
I go right there and there's always does there. You know.

Speaker 4 (38:08):
It almost seems like they're inevitably just going through those
types of spots to check where they know dose are
likely going to be. And it may not even matter
that you spook them. I mean, I've been in some
hot spots before where it's like, all of a sudden,
it's nine am and we've already spooked three pretty nice bucks,
potentially even shooter bucks.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
As soon as you.

Speaker 4 (38:29):
Start moping about it, here comes number four. He's the
biggest and you mess that up. So it's like it's
almost like, you know, once you find those hot spots,
just believing in them because you know that it's always
been that good, or you've seen the highest concentration of
deer in general. It's like this time of the year

(38:50):
they know that is true as well. And there's this
certain point in the season where even the biggest, oldest
bucks just let their guard down just to get to
where those does are. And so I guess my approach there,
like I said, is just being smart enough to where
with it that you're not just reckless. Like I do

(39:10):
believe there's a difference between aggressive and reckless. Reckless would
be I'm sitting in that tree no matter which way
the wind's blowing. Well, if your only shots are right
where the wind's blowing, that's reckless, you know. But I
don't think it would be reckless to maybe one day
hunt that tree and then the next day just hop
twenty yards down, set up against one of those autom

(39:32):
olive bushes on the ground where your wind is better
for those particular trails that are that X. And so yeah,
I guess I just think that more than anything, it's
about believing that they're in there for a reason, and
just about no matter what, you're not going to completely

(39:54):
roun them out of there. And even if you do
run one out, if it's that hot of a spot,
there might be one that you know yesterday was three
miles away, and all of a sudden, now he's on
his way. And again, if you start I'm saying this
because I've been there, you start moping about the one
you messed up earlier that day or yesterday, Well then
all of a sudden, here's the bigger buck, and then

(40:15):
you mess that up too. So I think believing in
it is a big part of that. And when you
find that hot spot, they're usually pretty consistent. So that's
what I take.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
It's really interesting. Would you have any.

Speaker 3 (40:35):
Let's imagine you've got just a seven day hunt that
you can hunt this area right you're you're you're on
a state trip. Let's say yep, and you knew of
this hot spot.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
Would you have any concern about weather?

Speaker 3 (40:50):
Would you be like, well, I'm gonna wait till the
best three days of weather, or would you just manage
the best spot.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
It's the rut I'm going in. I'm gonna I'm gonna
pound it no matter what.

Speaker 4 (40:59):
I would say that if if it's the Rut, I
probably wouldn't worry too much about the weather, just because,
like you know, I think, I think we're probably visualizing
it the same. It's like, this is that spot where
it's like, you know, maybe from a distance hunting on
the property that you could hunt before, before you were
able to get you know, on that X. It's like

(41:19):
every time I've been there before, it's like every few
hours here comes one and.

Speaker 3 (41:24):
Those spots and you sit there the whole day just like, oh,
if only I could hunt there.

Speaker 4 (41:29):
Yeah, exactly. And so now that you have that opportunity,
I think that if you probably does not matter too
much if the weather is maybe a little or even
way warmer than you know what you would hope. You know,
obviously everybody loves a really nice cold day. I mean,

(41:53):
if I could hunt every day and it be about
you know, forty eight degrees as high and you know
upper twenty says hello, that would be ideal. But there's
been a lot of days, you know, in the in
the rut where I'm hunting and it's seventy five degrees
as high and it's going to be that for the
next seven days. So you know, I would say for

(42:13):
the most part, just finding that hot spot and then
just trust in that time of year or two, you know,
it's sometimes hard, but if you've been seeing them do that,
they're probably not going to just up and stop, especially
if there's a ton of doz there. Like there's one
hunt in particular that keep There's several, but there's one
hunt in particular that comes to mind. It was actually

(42:35):
like the last few days of October. I can't remember
if I think I shot the buck finally, you know,
I ended up shooting above on the thirtieth. But we
had been hunting a whole bunch of different areas and
when we finally found this one, I guess it was
one specific area on the bigger piece of public we were hunting.

(42:58):
It was like, we've been to all these different places
through October and we have not even seen close to
this many deer. We're also now in here and seeing
mature bucks. We were seeing multiple of them, and so
basically for two days in a row we were really
close to two mature bucks. On the third day, we

(43:18):
saw one of those mature bucks in the morning and
he stayed out of range, and then that evening we
shifted our setup slightly, nothing crazy, but maybe a couple
hundred yards we shifted it and ended up shooting a
different mature buck that we hadn't even seen yet. So
that was an example where it's like we're in that

(43:39):
hot spot. It just felt like. And also I was
supposed to be meeting my buddy Ben for a different
hunt and I'm texting him. I'm like, dude, like we
can't leave here. This is on fire. Are you cool
with me being like a day or two late? And
He's like, yeah, man, just keep hunting and if you're
on him, And ultimately we got one doing that. So

(44:01):
that's a situation where it's like one, two, three days
in a row, we're just hitting that spot hard, and
I just think, you know, it almost felt like we
couldn't have done anything wrong, Like there was obviously something
going on, likely a hot no or two where everywhere
else was kind of still in the pre rut. We're

(44:23):
giving you pre rut vibes, but when we found that spot,
it's like, no, it's on here. I mean, you couldn't
have drugged me away from there. I don't think you know,
it's like we got here because we'll get a chance,
and we did so.

Speaker 3 (44:35):
And when I find when you find that, it's a
special thing, when you find yourself in the right place
and the right at the right moment, that kind of one, and.

Speaker 4 (44:42):
It's pretty rare, really yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:45):
Yeah, very true.

Speaker 3 (44:47):
Okay, So the alternative angle on this, though, the alternative
approach to that would be that if you were to
go into the X every time you sit there, every
hour you're sitting there and you're having a dough family
group blow, and then another dough family group blow, and

(45:08):
then a two year old buck comes by and wins you,
and then a three year old buck come. If you
are getting winded by deer, you know, all throughout the day,
the conservative tactician would say, well, yeah, you might get
lucky and have the big guy happen to come out
the right way and happen to not be there during
the fifteen minutes that dough is blowing, and then it's

(45:29):
happening every hour, so you got to hope he happens
to come on one of those gaps when there's not
some other deer getting biggered out by. The conservative person
would say that's just too high a risk, you're asking for.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
Too much luck.

Speaker 3 (45:42):
The better approach, they would say, would be to not
hunt the X at all. They'd say, Yeah, the X
might be a great spot for deer, but it's not
a great spot for deer hunting. And so I think
what they would say, what you know, I've got spots
like this that I've thought about, and I've asked people about,
and I've had this debate, and I've done both things.
I've dove right there and hunted the X, and I've

(46:04):
done the other thing. And the other thing would be
find somewhere adjacent that's close ish to that but sets
up actually to your advantage. So maybe you can't be
on the X, but you can be ninety yards off
the X, but something about that position protects you from
a wind perspective, or forces deer in front of you,

(46:25):
or has better access. Maybe there's a ditch you can
walk in, and the ditch gives you this great access
route into the middle of it, and then your wind
blows off to an area where there just isn't as
much deer. So you're not going to be on the X.
You're not going to get one hundred percent of the buck.

Speaker 4 (46:39):
Traffic.

Speaker 3 (46:40):
But maybe you get fifty percent of the buck traffic,
which is pretty good, but none of it. You're not
blowing up anything or you're you know, you're getting five
percent of the deer being spooked rather than ninety percent
of the deer being spooked. And so that approach would
hypothetically give you more time to hunt that area for
a good thing to happen before you know, things get

(47:01):
so blown up, or before every single buck that comes
through wins you and boogers. That would be the ankle
on that one. I think, like I said, I've tried both,
I've I don't know which one's better in all situations.
I do know that I like the situation I described
to you is actually one like an exact real life scenario.

Speaker 2 (47:21):
And the first year.

Speaker 3 (47:24):
I got access to this spot, I decided to go,
like try it, and I just know, like exactly what
you said, like you know, this.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
Is the spot.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
It's it could be a disaster, but also maybe it
would work. And the first time I tried it, there
was one buck in particular, I was hoping to get
a crack app and the very first time I want
and hunted the X like five minutes before shooting light.
I hear, and that buck walked right past my tree

(47:52):
fifteen yards but five minutes too early, and it even
came from the upwind side, So like if it had
been ten minutes later, it was perfec If he came
on the safe side, I would have smoked him, And
instead he came in a little bit too early.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
It walked from the.

Speaker 3 (48:05):
Upwind side to the down wind side, winded me booked
out of there. So you know, it was one of
the situations where I got to see both sides of
the coin. I saw how it could have worked, so
it did work almost so well. And then I also
experienced the downside possibility too, so well, no, no perfect.

Speaker 4 (48:24):
Answers, No, no, And I've had I've actually had the
same exact thing happened one time. We were in a
spot thought it was the X just based off of sign.
Had one come in six minutes before legal, and it
was like he's making he's hitting the scrape that we're
like on and all I can see, you know, I
can see his big ass frame, you know, head up

(48:44):
in the in the branches, and it's like, you know,
what are the odds of this six minutes? You know,
and then we never saw another deer the whole rest
of the time, the whole rest of the day. We
stayed there in there all day, thinking all he never
smelled us because he came in, hit a scrape, went
right back out, and it just, you know, one of
those situations where like, I can't believe that worked out

(49:06):
that way because you know, what are the odds that
he's six minutes early? But I didn't want to mention one.
Here's an idea where this kind of meets in between,
maybe in kind of a different look. So you were
talking about kind of finding that fifty percent movement spot,
the spot where you feel like you could kind of
back off and you know, still catch some of that movement.

(49:30):
Another way you could kind of play both sides of
it is you could sit back, especially if you've been
able to sit in a location where you've been able
to hunt previously and see that. So, like let's say
you had a stand where you've always been able to
see that area. You could just kind of play it
as an observation stand. And when the rut's really cranking,

(49:53):
that's when I like to do the majority of the
calling and you know, more on the ground aggressive approach
basically calling them in with your own sounds as you're
moving in, so you can almost let them. You can
hang back, wait for that type of buck that you're
after to come through. And if especially if you're seeing

(50:14):
this trend where they're getting in there and they're kind
of milling around really moving slow. Now ideally too, you'd
have some sort of route to get there quick that
you knew of already, but essentially let them get there,
especially if you can't predict like like for example, maybe
there's one hundred yard like rough edge. It's not a

(50:37):
hard edge. It's more of like a you know, you
know I'm thinking of, like you use the example of
automol of Now, those don't always have that like you know,
hard edge. They're sometimes kind of feathered out yep. So
maybe that deer or you're seeing deer typically kind of
meandering through that that might be a situation where it's like, okay,

(51:00):
he's there. Now I can kind of read that wind
that's going to work for me and just make an
aggressive stalk essentially to cut him off. And maybe you
utilize a little bit more calling as you start to
get close and you know conditions are going to play
a factor in that. You know, you might approach it
differently depending on how the conditions are. Like you got

(51:22):
a super windy day and he's got his nose on
the ground smelling for doze, and he's really moving slow
through there, and all you got to do is make
a fifty yard move. That might be the perfect situation
to get in there tight to him. On the other hand,
if you've got a really calm day, that might be
where you can sit back and just be like, you
know what, he's one hundred yards up there. I'm going

(51:44):
to hit the antlers together and see if he doesn't
just come over here. And I think that's kind of
like maybe in between where you're just kind of using
you're just playing it smart in some of the in
a situation like that, but still able to be a
great if if the situation starts to play out in
certain ways. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
Well, I think what you're describing is is exactly what
we talked about in the first scenario, which is that
even in one single hunt, you can do both of
these things. Yeah, totally, Okay, here's another one.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
This is fun. By the way, I enjoy this.

Speaker 3 (52:33):
It's got my mind racing, all right. So imagine you're
sitting in a dynamite rut spot. It's a kind of
place that, you know, let's just assume it's the perfect situation.
It's downwind of a dough betting era and it's a funnel, right,
So this is like, man, it should be a killer
rut spot. And on one side of you there's there's

(52:54):
some kind of opening. It could be a cut crop
field or a meadow or something, but it's open enough
that you can see several hundred yards away, and one
hundred and fifty is two.

Speaker 2 (53:03):
Hundred yards away.

Speaker 3 (53:04):
In the late morning, you see a dough kind of
run across the corner of that field and off into
the timber again.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
She's running, you know.

Speaker 3 (53:12):
Tail flapping a little bit funky, and then behind her
you see a shooter buck, and then five minutes later
you see another like.

Speaker 2 (53:20):
Two year old buck.

Speaker 3 (53:21):
Okay, so you've seen two bucks chasing a dough that's
obviously feeling it about two hundred yards away from you.
But over there, you know, there's never been anything in
that zone that's ever been like too terribly attractive to you,
at least not compared to the spot you are hanging
out right now. You could be sitting on the ground
or in a tree stand whatever. So what would the

(53:43):
aggressive person do in that scenario where you're sitting in
an awesome spot but you see this hot dough and.

Speaker 2 (53:49):
A couple bucks go running off two hundred yards away?
What would you do?

Speaker 4 (53:54):
I think in a situation like that, I like that
there's bucks on their feet distracted. That's gonna work to
the aggressive hunter's advantage in this case. I think two reasons. One,
let's say that, so you've got two non target beer

(54:15):
the dough and the younger buck, and then you've got
the sugar buck. So there's a bunch of noise on
the ground as is, So that's going to kind of
help confuse them to you know, being able to say, oh,
that's definitely a hunter. Like, for example, if you're dealing
with an early season buck bettered by himself and he
starts hearing something, he's more likely to be like what

(54:37):
is that? And I'm going to pay super close attention
to that. Where if he's been trailed by this punk
two year old satellite buff all day, he's already kind
of just got that mentality of like, dude, get the
hell out of here, Like I've been telling you all
day get out of here. So I think that works
to your advantage. And then you know, if it's a
rut type spot and they kind of go out into

(54:58):
an oddball location depending on how the wind is, I
think you can kind of predict like why they may
or may not be doing this. So when we worked
at Midwest Whitetail, I met Justin Sime who was a
pro staff guy in Wisconsin and he owned property in
Iowa close to where we lived, and I was hunting

(55:19):
with him one time out there in November when he
had had a tag, and he told me one of
the things that kind of changed the way I look
at like lockdown time frame. We were sitting in this
stand and it I'll be honest, it didn't totally make
sense to me while we were there. It was kind
of like close to the road, it was in a corner,

(55:40):
and the wind was blowing kind of generally to that corner,
which kind of made sense. But then all of a sudden,
he throws me this total curve ball. That was what
changed my perspective on this. He's like, you know, I
like hunting this spot this time of the year because
bucks tend to push does into this corner of the woods,
and I think they're doing it because their wind goes

(56:00):
to the road where no other deer are going to be,
And I'm like, like, damn, that's that's pretty deep. And
I mean it wasn't you know. A couple hours later,
here comes a buck going right to that spot with
a dough, exactly like he talked about. And so ever
since then, I've been paying close attention to where a

(56:21):
buck locks down the dough, even if it's on a
place like I'm driving down the road and I just
randomly see any old buck with a dough, I always
try to take note of where they are and how
the wind's blowing. And one thing that seems to be
pretty dang consistent is they go to these oddball locations
where they're blowing their wind in a spot where other

(56:45):
bucks aren't going to necessarily easily get down one of
them and start harassing them. So, in this case that
we're talking about here, if they are going to this
oddball location, even though I know that this spot that
I'm in is the cruising spot, if they're with that dough,
there's probably a good chance that they're kind of going
up and away from where the majority of the deer are,

(57:06):
and that shooter buck may not come through there until
he loses that dough, which may be in two hours,
it may be in three days. And that's where this
is tricky and there's not necessarily a right or wrong.

Speaker 2 (57:18):
Yeah, So I.

Speaker 4 (57:19):
Think my approach, if I was taking the aggressive one here,
would be pick up, get the win in my favor,
and start moving to where I think the likely spot
that he may try to lock down with that dough
is going to be, and try to do it swiftly
enough to where I can still catch them on their feet.
You know, maybe that bigger bucks still making a bunch

(57:43):
of noise because he's shown off trying to get the
smaller buck intimidated. Maybe he's making rubs, Maybe he's you know,
chasing that other buck off, and they're making a bunch
of ground noise that will tip me off but also
cover my own noise and make it a little bit
easier for me to get in and just get tight

(58:03):
to him, because then I do believe once you're in
tight to him. There's certain situations where me and other
guys in our you know, friend group in general, it's
like had these hunts where there is a satellite buck,
the bigger bucks so focused on running him off that

(58:23):
he does at once. You slip in there with the
perfect time grunt one time, and here he comes right back,
you know, wanting to fight. And that's happened to a
bunch of us a bunch of different times, specifically during
that time where they're lockdown with does. So I would
be trying to hopefully execute that, But obviously there's risk

(58:44):
in that as well, because what if all of a sudden,
that big shooter Buck was actually just chasing some random
do and he pulls off of her and he's like, hash,
he's not hot. I'm gonna move on now. I'm moving
towards him with my grunt call, and I'm thinking, oh,
this is a done deal. Well, then he goes right
through where I just was. Yeah, and I would have
been better off to set up there. I think that

(59:05):
happens too.

Speaker 3 (59:06):
So yeah, and so that's a perfect segue then to
the conservative approach, which that person would say, uh, I'm
guessing probably they there's a high chance that that chasing
over there was random, and that that dough could lead
him anywhere, and either they could be you know, running off,
Lord knows where next way out of here, or you know,

(59:26):
maybe they'd do what you used to said, which is
that buck breaks off the dough because she actually wasn't
ready and then he comes right back through. And so
the conservative hunter would say, I'm going to trust my spot.
I'm going to trust that this really is the cruising
spot down one of the dough betting your head.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
That is the funnel.

Speaker 3 (59:42):
It's well prepared, and I just need to put my
time in here, and there's maybe a ten percent chance
that I could catch up with that deer over there,
but maybe there's a thirty percent chance that him or
another buck will eventually come through here, because this is
the rut X and that you know, puts your faith
in your prior work, would be I think that approach
and and there I mean, like you said, it's six

(01:00:05):
to one way half dozen another, because I've done this
where I've sat in the spot, where I've sat and
debated and I thought to myself, Okay, I know a
hot dough is just there, and I know that she
has that ground scent, and so I will sit there
and be like, okay, man, there's gonna be other bucks
that walk that trail and I should move over there
and be within shooting range of that trail, because there's

(01:00:27):
gonna be another deer.

Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
It could be the one I'm after.

Speaker 3 (01:00:29):
But of course if I do that, then I'm gonna
leave this amazing spot that I know has been historically good.

Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
And so I'll go about.

Speaker 3 (01:00:36):
I'll just pull all my hair out and then I'll
go and I'll sit this. I'll stay where I'm at
because eventually I'll say, Okay, you know what, I'm gonna
trust my spot. I'm you know, believe in that and
let the rut play out the way you know it's
gone on and they'll come through. And then of course
an hour later, another deer comes cruise in that hot trail,
and then you should have been there. So you know,

(01:00:57):
there's no right answer, either one to work. And that's
why we like the deer hunt, I guess is because
it's a complete mental disaster at times trying to figure
out what the right choice is.

Speaker 4 (01:01:11):
Yeah, and I think, you know, it would be easy
to assume, like I don't know, I guess, like you
could be listening to anyone talk about this and it's like, oh,
they're sitting there saying they got all this confidence in this.
But it's like, even though I like to be aggressive,
and I think, you know, I think that I tend

(01:01:34):
to lean on the aggressive side. I go through the
same exact thing where it's like pulling my hair out
just sitting there. I mean, ask anybody that I hunt with.
I mean, I probably go through the scenarios and pros
and cons list about as much as anyone where it's like, well,
on one hand, we could be doing this, on the
other hand, you know, and end up being pissed off
if we don't do this. And then he goes right
through there, and I you know, it's like you're always

(01:01:57):
playing that. Yeah, you're just kind of making that pros
and cons list and then trying to guess, even though
usually you can come up with just as many pros
as you can cons for any scenario. And I think
the one thing though about that that I try to
or why I try to avoid it even though I don't.

(01:02:20):
I try to avoid it because it starts to make
it not fun at a certain point. And that is
the biggest regret is when you get done and you're like, man,
I was just worrying about that too much, and then
nothing happened no matter what decision I made. So I
should just have fun first, enjoy the situation no matter
what it is, and then you know, the outcome is whatever.

(01:02:44):
But if I'm sitting here stress and you know, I've
even had times where I've had to just like take
a like it could all be going down and I'm
so stressed that I have to like bail and like
just go reset my brain because it's like stressing, I'm
starting to not have fun. And if that's the case,
then you probably should take a little breather, you know, probably,

(01:03:05):
I think your mental health.

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
And it's so true.

Speaker 3 (01:03:09):
So so I had a hunt that was kind of
you know, it wasn't exactly like this, but I had
this mental anguish, like you're describing where I've got a
piece of property that I can hunt, where there's one
buck that's probably four or five this year, like there's
only one mature buck. Yeah, So I was really helping me, man,
that's that's the day I'm after, and was getting pictures
of him over the course of the end of September

(01:03:29):
and into early October. My typical kind of if I'm
hunting this his own, I usually like take a swing
the first hunt of the year maybe, but then after
that I'll be relatively careful and then I'll start getting
more aggressive later in October. But this year it usually
remember like October six, seven, eight, somewhere around there, we
got that cold front right and I thought to myself, Okay,

(01:03:51):
we've got this big cold front moving through. I've been
getting daylight pictures of him, and I had this rain
and wind one day where we had rain and wind,
and I thought to myself, there's no other day in
the next two and a half weeks that I could
push in there close to his bedroom except for this
one day because of the rain the wind. Otherwise it'd
be you know, really hard to get in there without

(01:04:12):
spooking deer because there's a lot of deer. But I
saw this window, I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna
take a swing. I'm going to punch in right to
his doorstep in the rain. The rain was supposed to
die off, it was gonna be perfect. It was a
situation where it's like that wind that the deer likely
if these bucks were gonna get this buck and other
deer were gonna come out, they were likely going to
you know, hit this timber that I was going to be,

(01:04:33):
and where there should be acorns dropping, and then they
could continue on and hit either a green field or
a cornfield. So he had like all sorts of great
food options out going up wind of me. Ahead of me,
there was a cornfield to the south of me. So
if for some reason they were gonna head just straight
to the corn I had a straight north wind that
should blow like straight behind me, and based on where

(01:04:54):
they'd be, they should either walk across in front, or
they should walk parallel to me, parallel to my wind
on the right. So I thought, man, it's aggressive, I'm
gonna punch in there, but it's it's just barely gonna work.
So I convince myself I should try it. I sneak
in there, get right on the doorstep, hang my saddle
like right on the edge of his bedroom the whole time,

(01:05:14):
you know, all my tippy toes, just like on pins
and needles. But also in my head thinking like you're
kind of the man mark, like you waited for the
perfect You waited for the perfect day. They're not gonna
hear you with this wind. The rain's perfect, Like man,
they have no idea that you are gonna be sitting
right here and he's gonna come walking by. So I'm
feeling all cocky, feeling.

Speaker 2 (01:05:33):
Good about it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:34):
As I get set up, and within like fifteen minutes
of sitting there, it's still early.

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
I see it. Deer start moving early. So I'm like,
all right, like this is it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:42):
Here comes a dough, Here comes a doll, Here comes
a little buck, And every single one of them comes
within shooting range of me. They come walking right by.
I'm like, oh, man, problem is as they come they come,
they're all coming from upwind. They all pass by within
shooting range. I could have smoked every one of them.
But for whatever reason, what was supposed to be a
north wind blowing like straight behind me that should have

(01:06:04):
been parallel to where all these deer went, something.

Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
With the.

Speaker 3 (01:06:09):
Cover or something made the wind hook a little bit northwest.
So as soon as those deer got past me, like
ten yards past me, that wind curled just enough that
they caught my wind as soon as they got ten
yards past, So that first dough family group comes through

(01:06:29):
wins me. When they get past me, they just kind
of trot off quietly, and I'm like, oh, And then
another doll family group comes in and gets downwind of
me boogers this time of doll blows.

Speaker 2 (01:06:40):
I'm like, oh no, this is not good.

Speaker 3 (01:06:42):
And then a group of two bucks comes by again,
comes right within shooting range. Awesome, but they go curl
down where the wind is they bugger out, and now
I'm thinking, like more and more of the ops like,
oh man.

Speaker 2 (01:06:54):
You stupid idiot.

Speaker 3 (01:06:55):
You took this aggressive swing too early. You know you're
gonna there's no way this is going to work out.
Every single deer has come through and winded you. And
so then I spent I don't know how long half
hour then debating what do I do? And my two
options were you could just sit it out here in
this way. I had three options I was considered.

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):
I was like, I could.

Speaker 3 (01:07:15):
Stay here, knowing that likely more deer gonna come through
and they're gonna wind you, and you're just gonna have
to cross your fingers and hope and pray that that
doesn't happen when this buck maybe miraculously does come through.
And if miraculously there's no other deer around and this
buck does come through, I can kill him before he
gets my wind, so I can hope for that. I

(01:07:36):
can stay where I'm at take like the conservative approach
at that point would be to like to stay where
you're at and hope, or I could take the ultra
conservative approach, which was to yank down my set and
just get out completely, just like bail on the whole thing.
And then the third approach was to basically say, well,
I went for it, I might as well send it

(01:07:57):
even more, which was to yank down my set and
then move forty yards closer to the cover, which would
get me on the correct side of the wind curl,
and then I would be able to not get winded
by deer and maybe have something work out the rest
of the night. So I spent thirty minutes pull my
hair out on that twenty minute whatever it was, debating

(01:08:19):
and making my head hurt, and then I finally decided
at like five point thirty in the evening to yank
down my set and then move the forty yards and
rehang my set on the other side of where the
wind curl was, because at that point I realized why
I came in here. I made you know, I did
the damage. I screwed it up probably one way or
the other. I might as well try to maybe get

(01:08:40):
lucky and have the rest of the hunt work out.
So I did that, and I did have more deer
come through that did not win me.

Speaker 2 (01:08:49):
That was great.

Speaker 3 (01:08:50):
I had a couple like nice at at least one
nice up and comer buck come through and not win me.

Speaker 2 (01:08:54):
That was fun to see.

Speaker 3 (01:08:56):
And then after dark the wind completely died, so as
I was just about rightists next slip out, the wind
completely died, and then I hear a deer blow on
the upwind side and I pull my bios.

Speaker 2 (01:09:08):
It's a big frame deer running away.

Speaker 3 (01:09:10):
So that's my story of the mental anguish that can
go through your mind as you try to figure out
what's the right move, when to be aggressive, when not
to be aggressive. All in one hunt that did not
work out for me, but but you know it could have.

Speaker 2 (01:09:25):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:09:26):
Yeah, yeah, well, and that's there is this element too, where,
like I think you said earlier, like we predict where
they're going to be, and sometimes we think that we're
like on a roll with that, and we're just not,
you know, we're just not We're not ever going to
be super consistent at guessing the randomness of a wild animal.

(01:09:50):
There's so much luck still involved, and I think that
we can all go through these runs too where we're
doing really well, you know, like hunt after hunt, every
decision we're making, then decisions get way easier. It's when
you're not on a very good run when these decisions
make start getting really hard, where it's like, damn, it's
been you know, I haven't seen a buck that I

(01:10:11):
want to shoot, or or every time I do, you know,
I'm messing something up in the last minute, or you
know I can't quite you know, I'm spooking them when
I'm drawn, or whatever it may be. I mean, there's
all these different factors that could be what kind of
screw you up? But it's like every situation still like
you can have a smidge more luck and it just

(01:10:34):
all works out perfect. Like for example, what if he
would have been with that nice you know, up and
comer buck slam dunk and you're like, dude, I made
the best decision I've ever made, And I think then
the next time you're more likely to do that with confidence.
Where on the flip side, having what happened happened now
you're going to be thinking about that. Where I think

(01:10:56):
the reality is is what we should do, and I'm
definitely not always good at this. I mean, hell, I
get in some bad runs of just being like spinning out,
you know, same same, I'm sure the same thing you
and tons of other people do, like we almost should do,
is just clear your mind and be like that it
almost didn't even happen. I mean, I don't want to

(01:11:18):
say I don't want to say every single single situation
you can totally erase it. But for example, if that
was you know, you said that was like that first
cold front like sometime early as October, like two weeks ago, hunt, Yeah,
it's like, if you're not going to go back to
that particular spot for a while, it probably doesn't matter

(01:11:41):
that much, especially if he really likes that area. Because
that's that's another take that like I feel that I've
seen enough to believe in. It's like if one really
likes anario, you know, you can mess it up, like
we've said, but you can also run into deer that

(01:12:02):
like you kind of can't mess him up. Like they're
going to be in there. They love the area, whether
it's the does or the food source or the security
of the betting that they're utilizing. It's like, how do
we keep getting away with this. I mean I've asked
myself that many at times, because just like everybody, we've
all been fed a lot of the same media over

(01:12:23):
the years where it's like, don't ever spook one. If
you spook one, he's going to the next county, or
he's going to run to the neighboring property, or you're
never going to see him there again. And I mean,
there's just been so many examples where I've seen that
not to be true that I guess nowadays I try
not to let it get in my head too much

(01:12:44):
because you know, if there's something that he likes there,
he's probably coming back. And if you start getting into
the rut, man, it's like it seems like all that
stuff kind of can just get tossed out the window.
I mean, I've seen us bump a deer and then
get right back on him, and it's like he it's
it's a race from his mind. Might as well be

(01:13:06):
a race from our mind, you know. So anyway, it's
just a little way to look at it.

Speaker 3 (01:13:11):
It's it's a it's a really valid way and something
I don't remember who told me this or where I
picked this up, but it stuck with me. Similar to
what you were saying. It's just basically like a buck
is he has a core area or a betting area
for a reason. Like they don't do things randomly. So
if he really likes this betting area or this little
zone that he's in, he's there for a reason. And

(01:13:34):
you going in there and boogering up one time and
he catches you, that is actually confirmation for him that
he picked the right spot. Because he smelled you or
he picked you off when you were walking in, he's
he won. Yeah, So he was like, all right, yeah,
my setup here worked. I know there was someone around here.
I picked him off or I smelled him and said,
you know, confirmation that I survived, and this is a

(01:13:56):
safe spot.

Speaker 2 (01:13:56):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:13:57):
If I were to go and walk in there every
single day, then eventually he'd be like, Okay, my safe
spot not so safe anymore. But I think if it's
you know, if it's you know, on, if it's still
surprising him every once in a while and he's feeling
like he's got the upper hand, I think that we can.
You can get away with more than more than sometimes
we think you can. But one thing that I always

(01:14:18):
I you know, I think is worth pointing out is
everything we've talked about and trying to decide like where
on this spectrum you should plant your flag on any
given day or on any given hunt. I think a
lot of it depends on you know, what are your alternatives.
So if if all you have is access to the
ten acres behind your house and that is where the

(01:14:39):
entirety of your hunting season is going to be, you
might want to think about, well, if this goes wrong
five times, then it really might might impact the rest
of my season. So in that case, maybe you want
to be a little bit more on that conservative side,
not always, but maybe more often on the flip side.
You know, if you're hunting public land, or if you've
got tons of spots where it's like, man, let's say

(01:14:59):
I go aggressive and a ghost sour. Whatever my alternatives, Well,
I have twenty seven other places that I can go.
Try this again. In that case, pretty low risk. I
think that's like a really key thing is to keep
in mind through all of this.

Speaker 4 (01:15:12):
I completely agree. I think a lot of what you
know plays into whether or not you're going to be
aggressive kind of depends on like one, how much you
how much time you even have to go and then,
like you said saying, like how many options do you have?
Because if you've got a whole bunch of options, then

(01:15:35):
like I'm going to always be aggressive if I got
a bunch of options, because I'm just not going to
hunt the same area really for more than like two
or three days. And that's if it's like on fire,
because at a certain point I do start to even
be like okay, I mean to just break from hearing it,
go do something else. And I think that that's like
another side of it that's it's so hard to explain.

(01:15:58):
And I think if you're somebody that's listening to this
and you're trying to kind of figure out your style,
like just keep in mind that No, I've thought about
this for a lot of years now. It's like there's
literally not two hunting situations that are exactly the same,
Like nobody, it doesn't look exactly the same for any

(01:16:19):
two people. Every single situation is different. Every single person's
ability to go time they can get off work, time
they can you know, be away from their family, time
that they can travel to hunt or whatever. It all
looks different. I mean, even like within THHP, right, it's
like we all have the same job. It's like hit done,

(01:16:41):
look the same at all for one person of the
deck next like not even close. It's crazy when you
just compare like people that are doing the same thing
and they don't even have situations that look alike. That's
when it's pretty telling that you really have to just
kind of make your own style and make that work
for you because nobody's going to be able to tell

(01:17:04):
you the right or wrong answer for your situation because
they're never going to fully understand it.

Speaker 3 (01:17:08):
Yeah, so true, And I think tagging onto that, that's
another great reminder for all of us about why we
should not compare our success to anybody else's right, just
hunt your own hunt and don't worry about anybody else.

Speaker 4 (01:17:36):
Do you do you have any scenario? I'm sure you
got more scenarios right.

Speaker 2 (01:17:41):
Well, I do have more.

Speaker 3 (01:17:42):
Of the question is how much more time do we
have to go through this? Because we've spent a lot
of time talking through just a few of them. But
I feel like really good stuff. So do you want
to try to do one more? Do you want to
do one more?

Speaker 2 (01:17:50):
Should we wrap it up?

Speaker 1 (01:17:51):
What's it?

Speaker 4 (01:17:52):
Let's do? Can we do two more? We'll do one
more that you got, and then I maybe have one too,
just depending on depending on what you or I can
go first too if you want, If you want, let's
let's do yours. Okay. So the scenario that I'm thinking
of would be like you just flat out like bumped

(01:18:14):
the buck, like the one you know, whether that be
one you you knew before the season you were going after,
or it's like, oh, that's a that's a big buck,
like that's something that I'm willing to dedicate you know,
the rest of this trip or time or season two.
Even So you're kind of moving into an area and

(01:18:35):
let's just say this is like a public land or
like a big private land piece where you kind of
assume that you know that he's not going to leave
that area that you can hunt, and so you bump one.
And that initial feeling I feel like, is that, oh, no,
I've just messed it up. But you're also now in

(01:19:00):
a situation where you know he was there, you know
which direction he went. So within today and then the
following days that you're going to hunt, assuming that's all
within let's just say a four day span, what would
what would be the approach be moving forward, if you know,

(01:19:21):
you just bumped him, like I got that confirmation visually
that he's he's out of there, and you can if
you if you want it to be something specific as
far as how he bumped, you could make it that.
But I guess I'm just thinking almost like he just
heard and then saw you. The wind was always good.
You know, some people have an opinion that that matters.

(01:19:43):
I don't know that I do. But you know, he's
he's definitely run out of there, but you know which direction?
So how do you play that from there?

Speaker 2 (01:19:50):
And what time of year is it? In your mind?

Speaker 4 (01:19:52):
I was thinking maybe like October. You know, twenty third
is today, So let's just say, like nackle twenty third.

Speaker 3 (01:19:59):
Yeah, all right, so pre rut ish time period. Okay,
So do you want me to present like the conservative
approach first.

Speaker 2 (01:20:06):
Or do you want to run with your thoughts.

Speaker 4 (01:20:09):
Maybe the Yeah, I want I want you to. I
want you to go with either the concern either the
conservative or what you would do yourself, or maybe kind
of a combination of those two things.

Speaker 2 (01:20:22):
Okay, yeah, all right.

Speaker 3 (01:20:23):
So so I'll present like the super conservative approach I think,
and then I would and then I'll share my own thoughts,
I guess, which are kind of in between. So I
think that if your typical, you know, private land management,
conservative hunter had that situation happened, I think that that
perspective would be Okay, I just educated this buck.

Speaker 2 (01:20:46):
I just crossed this spot off the map. I just
spooker that deer.

Speaker 3 (01:20:51):
My next move is I'm going to back out of
here and think about how that deer is going to
act differently because of what I just did. So if
you maybe you were talking into the edge of where
he thought his betting was, and you bumped him out
of his betting area and you came from the south,
that guy might think to himself, Okay, well I just
what I just presented danger from the south to that deer.

(01:21:11):
So that deer is definitely not going to come back
this way and head south to go feed where I
was hoping he's gonna. So now I'm thinking about what
is he going to do differently based on that. Maybe
I would say, I think this guy would go and
hunt somewhere else, anticipating that this buck would either avoid
that that whole next day, or maybe he would still

(01:21:33):
move that day but go in this different direction.

Speaker 2 (01:21:36):
So I think at a high level, that's what that
approach would be.

Speaker 3 (01:21:40):
It would be the leave this place alone, assuming it's
screwed up, and it would be what's the safe place
now that this buck's going to redirect too? For me specifically,
it would depend on what that deer was doing in
the moment. So like if that deer was coming back

(01:22:01):
in and or I if I bumped that deer off
of bed and I thought that he was betted there,
I just boogered him out of that spot, you know,
I would definitely in that case try the try something
similar to the bump and type scenari. I mean, I
if it happens, you might as well roll with it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:18):
So if I.

Speaker 3 (01:22:18):
Bumped that deer out of his bedding area, and if
I think I just pushed him off with site and sound,
and if I have a mobile set with me or
something I can do it, I would try to think,
okay that if it's you know, morning time, and he's
gonna probably come back and bet again, he very well
might circle back through the general area, So I would
set up somewhere like that and try that. But if
it was a different kind of bump, which I had

(01:22:40):
this exact thing happened two years ago where I bumped
a deer that was cruising, And so what happened was
that I was actually it's kind of funny. It's similar
to the scenario that I just told you the other
day where I set up for a morning hunt and
then the wind started getting a little wiggy on me
and was not doing what I was supposed to do.
Like an hour and a half into the morning, I realized, Man,

(01:23:02):
my wind is shifting worse and worse and worse. If
I stay here, I'm gonna really ruin this thing. And
so I decided to pull down my set mid morning
and go reposition. And as I was like starting to
climb out of the tree, the big shooter buck came
out and comes down winded me.

Speaker 2 (01:23:20):
Spooks.

Speaker 3 (01:23:21):
So now I know, Okay, I bumped the deer. He
winded me, but he was cruising, so I knew he was.

Speaker 2 (01:23:25):
He was on the move.

Speaker 3 (01:23:26):
It was right around this It was like October twenty
seventh or something, and so because of that, I thought
to myself, Okay, what's that deer gonna do.

Speaker 2 (01:23:35):
Well.

Speaker 3 (01:23:35):
I think he's you know, he winded me. He's not
gonna like this zone, but he's definitely on the move. Still,
he's definitely still gonna be cruising. He's not going to
leave the neighborhood. So I just thought to myself, if
he's in general cruising through this set of betting areas
in this area, where can I get that's just far
enough away from this that you know, I'm not, you know,

(01:23:56):
too worried about him thinking about like that X was
a danger zone, but you know, still in the same
general region. So I just yanked on my set and
circled about one hundred and fifty two hundred yards away
to get on the right side of the wind, to
the other side of this betting area. And six hours
later he came cruise and throw on that side and
I got shot him. That's so that those are the

(01:24:19):
two different approaches. I guess I would take, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:24:21):
No, that's that's good stuff, and I I think that
they're both. I do think they're both good approaches, depending
on on the situation. Right. The one other thing that
kind of came to my mind then if I were
looking at something like that is in kind of to

(01:24:42):
elaborate a little bit on what he was doing and
maybe throw a different I guess activity that he might
have been doing in that area. Into the mix is like,
let's say you bump him and you can tell he
was laying there, but he was laying there in the
edge of some thick where he was actually feeding on

(01:25:02):
something specific, Like we'll just use a specific oak stand
at the time. It doesn't really matter what type of
oaks that he's feeding on, but he's feeding on the
acorns that are dropping there, So maybe you identify whatever
type of tree that is. You're like, Okay, these are
definitely the only ones that I've been seeing dropping in
this area. It kind of seems like he's here for

(01:25:24):
a reason. One other I guess a conservative approach could
be I'm going to bail for now. I'm want to
know that this is where he was. Then I'm going
to look ahead in that three or four day timeframe
that I've got to hunt to try to find a
similar condition, and then I'm just going to go in
there and let's say I think we said that we

(01:25:45):
bumped him in the morning. Maybe I'm just going to
go in there super early two three days from now
and just hope that he's going to come back and
do that same thing. And that's kind of like it's
a less quick bumping dump act, but it's still kind
of a long, long play of the bump and dumb
dump while still kind of playing it conservative because you're

(01:26:08):
not necessarily at risk of bumping him again if you
know that he went that way and you're going to
bail that way, and you know, kind of keep things
pretty safe. There has been times where we've done something
like that and it's been really effective. And I guess,
you know, that may sound aggressive to some folks, like, well,

(01:26:30):
you already bumped him once, Like what if you bump
him again? I guess that's that is maybe where it
does get aggressive. But I almost see that as conservative
because you're not going right for him right now, because
on the flip side, we've had a lot of luck
going right for him. Kind of thinking of it like,
you know, yeah, it sucks, and it sure doesn't. It
still makes your heart saying, but it's like we actually

(01:26:52):
saw him right here at exactly this time going that way.
You know. I do think that especially white tail hunters
more than any other, like big game species, white tail
hunters tend to forget that like just because he bumped
them doesn't mean he doesn't exist. Anymore. I mean, he
literally went that way. You know, it's like he's he's

(01:27:13):
over there somewhere. No, Yeah, they can circle, they can
you know, be pretty crafty as well. But if you
know the area really well, maybe you can predict that
next location that he's going to go to. Maybe there's
a similar ridge that has you, like, you know what,
he's under these white oaks right now, betted on this edge.

(01:27:33):
I know there's another edge that has white oaks up
against it, just a couple hundred yards over there. Maybe
for that evening, you kind of swing around, get the
win in your favor, and you get tighter to him
and set up maybe you maybe you just straight follow
the thing. I mean, there are situations, depending on what

(01:27:54):
the cover looks like, where you can do that too,
and just you know, try to get a read on
his tracks or you know whatever that I guess ground
type is, like that might be enough to kind of
help you confirm or advance, like the location in which
you know he's been or has crossed through. So like

(01:28:15):
you know, if he left this white oak ridge and
then he crossed a creek, he might be able to
work that creek and try to kind of intercept where
he may have ran down, and if you cut big
fresh tracks on that same line then he was running,
he might be able to say, Okay, well he's at
least gone this far, and so that might help you

(01:28:35):
kind of make that educated yes as to where he's
going next. And I think that's that's actually ended up
becoming one of my favorite things to do. Is just
I mean, it sucks in the moment, but there's a
whole bunch of examples that I can think of, you know,
within you know, my friend group of like guys having

(01:29:00):
something like that happen and then staying on it and
all of a sudden it's like, well, right there is
whether that be that day, the next day, or you know,
in that two or three day timeframe, and it's it's
kind of wild, you know, like when they have those
comfortable those areas that they feel comfortable, they may come
right back to the same spot, or they might just

(01:29:20):
barely move and be two, three, four hundred yards away,
maybe a thousand yards away. But if you know the
area well and you know those areas that they already use,
you know, there's probably a dang good chance that that's
just where it went, Like like literally that simple. So
I don't know, I find that to be a just

(01:29:40):
a kind of a unique thing that I didn't anticipate
feeling confident in doing when I was you know, not
really that long ago. But in the last like five
six years, it's like, man, there's a lot of examples
where you know, we've done this and we've like actually
got the buck that same day or within you know,

(01:30:01):
a few days. So I don't know, I think it's
all fun.

Speaker 3 (01:30:05):
No, Yeah, What's what's so frustrating though, sometimes with white
tails is that because of the habitats that we often
hunt them in, you know, they're just typically not as
visible as you know, maybe elk where you can watch
them for thousands of yards off in the distance. And
so on the flip side of what you're saying, you

(01:30:25):
could do something like this and screw it up and
that buck bumps, or you walk through a spot and
you a deer smells your ground scent or something, or
a deer wins you whatever, and then you might not
see him again the rest of the day or the
next week. And you know, as you know, you might
have all sorts of cameras up all over the place,
and that buck might be all around and you never

(01:30:46):
get pictures, so you could have this kind of thing
happen where you truly just don't see that buck again
for two weeks and then you're sitting there thinking, holy crap,
did I just destroy.

Speaker 2 (01:30:57):
My hunting spot because of this?

Speaker 3 (01:30:59):
And on one hand, maybe it did, because sometimes these
bucks do get really wiggy, or sometimes you do something
three times the wrong way and that buck's the act
and not loving it, and he shifts over just just
even one hundred yards shift and where he likes to
bed maybe could keep you from seeing him out or
like I just said, maybe he is still around and you.

Speaker 2 (01:31:18):
Just don't happen to see it.

Speaker 3 (01:31:20):
So it's so hard to get that confirmation, you know,
to understand like is this right?

Speaker 2 (01:31:24):
Is this wrong? Like what were the repercussions.

Speaker 4 (01:31:27):
It's that's a tough game, I think, where you know
you could like you could do one of those things
and like like the aggressive approaches that we've talked about,
where it's like you bump him then maybe you know,
kind of make a move and you guess his next spot.
You set up on there and you don't see him,
and it might have literally been the difference between you know,

(01:31:49):
him being on the top of the ridge or him
just being on the back side of the ridge. He
might have been, i mean, within one hundred yards of you,
and if you don't see him, like you're saying, yeah,
you might just lose complete confidence. And I think though
that's why, you know again, just kind of staying which
is hard, is the hard part of it. It's like

(01:32:11):
staying positive and continuing to believe in like the stuff.
You know, like if you know that they like using
an area and you're going in there and you're seeing
just blown up sign telling you, well, there's a mature
buck or multiple using this area. Like trust in that
gut too. It's like I think sometimes we you know,

(01:32:34):
I mean, I know I do this where it's like, okay,
there's there's like three huge scrapes here. Well it's probably
at night. It's like, I mean maybe, and maybe up
to that point it has been the majority, but like
all of a sudden, now you know it would be
silly not to sit there and they're coming, but you
just go right on by because you're thinking, well, you know,

(01:32:56):
you start doubting it. And I think one of my
one of my favorite terms is like the hundred out,
you know, where you start convincing yourself that something's true
and it like may just not even be close to true.
You're just letting the hundred out get the best of you.
Now you're just overthinking it. It's like I kind of
think at all costs you should avoid the hundred out.

(01:33:20):
I don't always do that, but I think if you
can avoid it and just believe in the fact that,
like I guess, let's put it this way, it's like
you are good enough. And I said, I'm saying that
to every year hunter out there. It's like, if you
get something in your mind that you want to do,
you're good enough to pull it off. You may have

(01:33:41):
to really slow yourself down and check yourself a few
times throughout that plan as you're executing it, but like
you can do it. Everybody can, you know, take the
aggressive approach if they want to. It's just a matter
of like believing in it and not letting the hundred
out get the best of you and then make you
not believe all of a sudden, because like I see

(01:34:01):
sometimes people be like leave a comment and they're like, man,
I don't know how, Like how you guys, do you
know this and go after these bucks and stop them,
or you know, be aggressive and move in on one,
knockdown with a dough and try to call them in.
I could never It's like, well yeah, yeah, absolutely, Cay,
And I mean, it just takes a different type of

(01:34:21):
like you just have to believe in it, and then
you're gonna have to probably change your pace and everything.
Like obviously you can't just go crashing in there every
time and it's going to just work out perfect. But
depending on the conditions, as long as you believe in it,
I think anybody can pull these types of aggressive strategies off.
It just I guess isn't as simple as just walking

(01:34:45):
to you from the truck to your stand. Like that's
really the difference.

Speaker 3 (01:34:49):
You know well, and you know, I think a funny
way that all this kind of comes together is that
whether you are taking the aggressive approach, in which you
are like going out there and getting it, or you
take the conservative approach, which requires you pre plan and
then wait and believe and wait and believe and wait
and believe.

Speaker 2 (01:35:09):
Both of those.

Speaker 3 (01:35:11):
Right, Like the essence of it just requires confidence. Yeah,
you just need to have confidence. And more important than anything,
it's confidence in your decision making, right, right, because like
because the results you know, are to a degree outside
of our hands, right, and.

Speaker 4 (01:35:28):
The results are almost always going to be super low
percent that it works, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:35:35):
So it almost is like we have to force ourselves
to only judge ourselves by virtue of our decision making. Like,
can I sit here today and I let's say I
choose to do the aggressive thing today? And I think
if you could, this is easier said than done. But
if you choose to do the aggressive thing and then
that day say to yourself, Okay, I'm gonna do this,

(01:35:56):
and we're gonna do it because of this reason and
this reason, and I'm gonna do it this way in
this way, because of this situation, and you know, results
be damned. My idea here, my plan here, my decision
making is sound, and let's just see what happens and
be confident in the approach and then stop worrying from
that point.

Speaker 2 (01:36:16):
And then the same thing for the conservative.

Speaker 3 (01:36:18):
I'm going to say, Okay, you know what, I know
that my access and exit is bulletproof here. I know
this is a good spot. I know that if I
just believe in it and give it some time and
be smart. This can work. I know my decision making
is sound, the strategy is sound. I'm going to trust
and stop stressing. Then you also have that confidence. I
think both of those hunters will be more successful, regardless

(01:36:41):
of the actual tactic, just because of that belief and
focus on the actual decision making process.

Speaker 4 (01:36:48):
Yeah. Yeah, I think that. That's one of the things
I've tried to remember in something I've tried to kind
of like it's actually very much a thing I've been
thinking about the last cupule of seasons is no matter
what I do, make a damn decision and believe in it,
and then if it didn't work out, then go again tomorrow. Like, yeah,

(01:37:11):
it's never worked out one hundred percent of the time,
So like quit expecting that, you know, or not even
expecting that, but even hoping for that, Like you should
almost be expecting. Well, I think about this. I think
of it this way. It's like, when it starts to
play out, expect that you're going to execute the plan,
you're going to draw at the right time, You're going
to settle the ten, you're going to make the shot

(01:37:32):
where you know where your best opportunity is. But you
almost have to expect that you're not even going to
see the buck that you're after, or the caliber buck
or whatever, because you probably aren't. You know, Like I
think if you're hunting and you know, it was like
if one out of every ten hunts you're you get

(01:37:55):
a crack at a buck that you're after, like that's
pretty insane success, actually crazy good success. So you know,
that's pretty telling them how like it doesn't usually work out.
So just being confident in the decision you made and

(01:38:16):
then being okay with that and then just playing the
game again tomorrow, I think is the best thing you
can do. But it's really hard, and I think sometimes
you get in the loop where you're just like, I
don't every decision I make is wrong. But you know,
as the season progresses, and even if it gets past
the rut, it's still like anything could happen, you know,

(01:38:37):
Like I've been out on hunts and it's into December
and all of a sudden, here comes a hot now
in all the bucks. You know, it's like, well that
didn't that didn't meet the criteria typical rut timeframe. But
I just saw what I saw and it was, you know,
pretty wild. So I just think. Yeah, it's it's a
hard thing to do, but it's definitely some keep in

(01:39:00):
mind and no matter what you do, be confident.

Speaker 3 (01:39:04):
I think that's a good place to uh, to wrap
it up, Zech, I Uh, I appreciate this chat. This
is fun, this was This is a good thing to
set my mind up properly for the RUT too. So
I think I needed this just as much as anybody else.

Speaker 4 (01:39:19):
Oh yeah, well, I appreciate you having me, and I
think it was a good time. And I'm sure we
could go on about a million different you know, tangents
through different examples, but hopefully what we did cover will
help somebody be confident in whatever decision they make at
some point.

Speaker 2 (01:39:35):
Yeah, one hundred.

Speaker 3 (01:39:37):
Uh anything anything we should be keeping tabs on watching
four over on the TSP YouTube channel or anything anything else, Well, I.

Speaker 4 (01:39:47):
Would say that we got a couple. We got a
couple of awesome hunts that we just filmed last week
coming up on the channel that I'm working on. I'm
working on one, Jake's working on one, Brett's working on one,
and then Ted is out el coming, so he's on
ELK as of today. You just got there yesterday, So

(01:40:10):
that's exciting. And then this time of the year, WARP
generally starts getting pretty he starts going from more of
his scouting type moves to his more aggressive sets. So
I'm feeling pretty confident coming up here that things are
going to be pretty fun. So I mean in the
videos that we got like that we're working on right now,
should be some good ones, so cool, It'll be a

(01:40:30):
good time.

Speaker 2 (01:40:31):
It's a great time of year.

Speaker 3 (01:40:33):
I'll be crossing on my fingers and toasts for zech
good luck out there and looking forward to hearing some
stories again soon.

Speaker 4 (01:40:40):
Yeah, man, stop to you later.

Speaker 2 (01:40:45):
And that's gonna be a wrap.

Speaker 3 (01:40:47):
Thank you for tuning in, appreciate you being a part
of this community or listening to this podcast. I hope
your white Tail rut Extravaganza, your rut cation, whatever it
is you've been able to pull off so far, I
hope it's been great. I hope you've had some success,
had some fun, been safe out there, and let's meet
in the freezer.

Speaker 2 (01:41:05):
So until next week, best of luck in the field
and stay wired to hunt.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 972: Debating Aggressive VS Conservative Approaches to the Rut with Zach Ferenbaugh