Ep. 981: How the Experts Kill Mature Bucks in December and Beyond

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. This week in
the show, we are conducting a comprehensive review of the
many different approaches to hunting mature bucks during the late season.
And these are ideas that come from the many different
experts that have shared with me their approaches over the
course of the seventeen year history of Wired to Hunt.

(00:46):
All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast,
brought to you by First Light and their Camel for
Conservation initiative.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Today we are talking late season.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
We are breaking down the month of December and on
an to January, as we enter this final phase of.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
The white tail year.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
We're doing another one of these deep dive comprehensive reviews.
We did it for October, we did it for November.
The idea here is to kind of do you know,
what some people would call a literature review, where we
basically take a big picture look at the many different
perspectives and approaches to a certain topic. In this case,
it's hunting the late season for white tails. I'm going

(01:29):
to talk you through kind of a high level overview
of how many people think about this time of year,
the most important things to remember about deer behavior, about
how deer use the habitat, about how deer have now
you know, reacted to hunting pressure around them, and everything
else that kind of trickles down. After that, then we're

(01:49):
going to talk through several of the most common approaches
to hunting this time of year, and we are going
to look at some excerpts from books as well as
excerpts from previous podcasts and videos we've filmed from different
experts getting their take on these things. So in addition
to the summaries that I'm going to provide, we're also
going to get some insight in the words of and

(02:11):
from the minds of people like Jeff Sturgis, Don Higgins,
Mark Drury, John Eberhart, Tony Peterson in Hallblood, I believe,
are the folks we're going to hear from today. So
you're going to get a lot of different ideas here.
You're going to come away from this conversation with a
very clear understanding of what's to come here in December
and January, and what you can do as a deer

(02:32):
hunter to make sure you have the very best chance
possible to bill your tags, to have some success, and
to have some fun.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
So that's the plan. Before we get.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Into that very briefly, if you are listening to this
in real time when this episode's dropping, which would be
you know, Tuesday, November twenty seventh, twenty twenty five, the
met Eater and first Light Black Friday sales ongoing. This
goes into I think December first, you know, up to
forty or fifty percent off all sorts of stuff, you know,

(03:01):
the deal tons of huge sales on everything relevant to
you as a deer hunter. Three things, where maybe four
things worth noting. Number one the major cold weather kits
for whitetail hunting from First Light, the Core which is
kind of our mid season piece. That the thing I'd
recommend to most people for most white tail locations. The
Core kit, and then the Therma kit, so again it's

(03:23):
a jacket and bib kit. The thermic is for like
the total frigid Arctic, you know, far far north, cold, frigid,
snowy stuff. Both of those are forty percent off during
this sale, so it's a very good deal if you're
looking to really upgrade your outerwear. The furnace hoodie, which
is what I'm wearing right now, an absolute favorite of
mine all year round for just wearing around the house

(03:44):
or being outside scouting, shed hunting, or wearing as an
insulating mid layer during a cold weather hunt. Very comfortable
furnace hoodie. That's twenty percent off. And then the well, actually,
I was just going to tell you the Wired Hunt
hat is on sale, but it's actually sold out, but
the Wired Hunt shirt is still available and that's fifty
percent off, I believe.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
So check it all.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Out over at the Mediator store or first Light dot
com or wherever it is that you want to take
a look at our products. We've got the Phelps Gear,
FHF Gear, Dave Smith decoys. They all have their own websites.
You can check those out as well. So that's it
as far as sales and promotions. Onto late season deer hunting.

(04:25):
Let's first talk through the defining characteristics of the late season,
the core things to be thinking about when we reach
this point of the year. A number of different things
have happened that impact the lives of deer and the
lives of hunters. So first, let's talk about kind of
the situation that deer are in number one. Once you've

(04:47):
made it to the late season, once you've made it
to December, there has been a ton of hunting pressure. Right,
These deer that we are chasing now have been pursued, bothered,
shot at, and harassed by hunters for weeks and weeks
and weeks at a minimum, probably two months, if not
three months in some cases. That colors everything in a

(05:08):
white tails world. You know, the daily movements, the natural tendencies,
the patterns, their food.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
Desires, all of that stuff.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
All of that is kind of surpassed by the simple
desire to survive and the simple desire to avoid danger,
in our case from humans. So every decision you make
as a hunter has to think about that first and foremost.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
These deer have been pressured. How have they reacted? What
are they going to do?

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Because of the fact they've been hunted for months on end. Now,
of course, where you hunt, you know that could relate
or could could to lead to different degrees of hunting
pressure and different degrees of changes in behavior. Right, So
if you have a spot that you're hunting that's public land.
In a heavily pressured state like Pennsylvania, let's say, or Michigan,

(05:56):
you're going to very much. You're going to see a
very different level of impact. You're gonna see deer that
react to that pressure dramatically, that have maybe relocated in
dramatic ways, maybe have changed how much daylight activity have
in dramatic ways. This is also especially true if you
have a gun season that's already opened up. If your
gun season, like in Michigan, opened in mid November, by

(06:18):
the time December comes around, things are dramatically different. That said,
if you hunt in Iowa or Kansas or some other
state that has not had quite as much pressure, maybe
your gun seasons have not yet fully opened up. Maybe
you hunt in a place that simply just doesn't have
as many hunters. Maybe you're on private ground, a large
piece of private ground that you control, and you've kept

(06:40):
pressure really low. Well, in that case, deer might still
be doing the natural things they would normally want to
do at this time of year. Maybe the hunting pressure
impact will not be as significant. But you need to
think about that. You need to consider what's the reality
on the ground here for these deer, and is it
all hunting pressure impacted or are they in their natural

(07:01):
standard behaviors as they would be otherwise. Now, because of
the fact that the hunting season has been going on
for a very long time, because of the fact that
gun seasons maybe have been opened by now, you're also
going to have ever reduction in available bucks to hunt.
You know, you are trying to kill Let's say, for example,
a mature buck, and the hunting season started in September

(07:22):
or October, and let's say there was ten of them
in the couple square miles around where you hunt. You know,
by the time December rolls around, there's a good chance
that a lot of those deer are just simply not
alive anymore.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
I don't know what that's going to be.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
In Michigan, I would guess that, you know, more than
fifty percent of them are probably dead. Maybe more like
eighty percent of them are dead. Maybe if you're in
Iowa or Kansas or Illinois, maybe it's a lot less
than that. But either way, you're simply just by virtue
of the fact that there's been a lot of hunting
going on in gun pressure, especially in which the majority

(07:58):
of deer get killed, You're just going to have fewer targets,
and so you have to go into this phase of
the season with those expectations understanding that maybe I had
ten deer to hunt, or maybe I had two deer
to hunt, now it's down to one. Maybe I had ten,
now it's down to four. Go into it knowing that's
the case, and what that means for you as a
hunter means like, not only do your expectations need to

(08:18):
be adjusted a little bit, but then also you need
to know that everything has to be a little bit sharper.
Now you could get away with some mistakes where you
could get away with just a general idea when there's
ten of these deer running around, but when there's only one,
or there's only two, or whatever it is, you simply
have to be that much more dialed, that much more
attuned to what these deer are doing, why they're doing it,

(08:39):
and how they're doing it.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
So attention to detail.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
You know, it always matters, but it really matters in
the late season. Now, let's talk a little bit more
about how all of this or kind of how some
of the weather factors and behavior factors over recent weeks
are going to impact deer behavior as well, because not
only do you have all of this hunter pressure, not
only do you have fewer deer on the landscape, but
you also have deer that have been worn down and

(09:03):
that are dealing.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
With difficult conditions.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
So, first off, the rut just happened, right, We just
had these bucks go through an absolute marathon for weeks
and weeks and weeks. The most physical exertion they will
have the entire year just happened over the previous month
or so. Most bucks will lose a dramatic amount of weight,
they will utilize a massive amount of their energy reserves,

(09:27):
and they will be struggling now because of that.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
These are war down deer physically.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
I guess I can't speak for them mentally, but in
any way possible, these bucks are worn down there, just
beat down to a pulp. That's going to impact how
they act in the coming weeks. And then finally, layer
on top of that, they are also now going to
be getting very difficult, increasingly difficult week after week weather conditions. So,

(09:56):
of course, as we all know, temperatures are going down,
extreme winds and precipitation events like big snowstorms, blizzards, ice storms,
all of that stuff's going to start happening more regularly,
and so this is going to lead to bucks increasingly
focusing on the very first thing I mentioned, which was survival,
and that's really the moral of the store here. Survival

(10:18):
is number one for these deer at this point. I
mentioned earlier how hunting pressure impacts that in a big way.
Deer is simply trying to find safe places, but then
they are also simply trying to survive the difficulties they're enduring.

Speaker 3 (10:31):
Now.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
Having just used up all of their energy, all their
extra fat, all of their resources, these deer are trying
to get some food back on.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
They're trying to put the feedback on.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
They are trying to recover from this incredible physical exertion
they just went through, and then they are also trying
to survive the increasingly difficult elements. So because of that,
a deer's life, let's talk about a mature bux life.
A bux life now is going to revolve around a
few things. Number one is going to revolve around trying
to find the safest place, trying to find that sanctuary,

(11:03):
trying to find that pocket of safety where they're not
going to be impacted by hunters, all right, So that
is a key thing for a buck that will need
to be a key thing for you as a hunter,
finding these safe spots, finding these core sanctuaries, finding these
areas that bucks think they can survive. Secondly, they're going

(11:24):
to be looking to survive the elements and survive this
food issue that they've just been coming out of energy.

Speaker 3 (11:31):
I guess what's what I'm looking for here.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
Energy deficit, and that means they're going to be gravitating
towards high quality winter food and high quality cover. In
the case of winter food, that means like high carbohydrates
they are packing on energy carbs. That's a big thing
for deer right now. Then when it comes to cover,
they're looking for high stem count, thickness, stuff that makes

(11:56):
them feel safe. And they are also looking for thermal
cover stuff that protects them from above, that can shelter
them from the wind, shelter them from rain and snow,
something that will keep the heat down. That's gonna be
something they're gonna like. While also at times when the
weather's not as bad, they're gonna be looking for sun
so south facing hillsides that kind of thing might also

(12:18):
attract deer if you can find the best case where
there's like cedars or conifers and stuff scatter the little
openings on the south facing hillside and some grass and stuff. Wow,
that's a dynamite spot for about to spend some time
in the super late season. So think about that. Those
are the types of places they are looking for, right,
Those are the types of places they are going to

(12:38):
gravitate towards. Now, the second or third thing to consider
is the fact that once they find these places, they
are reducing their movements dramatically. Because of those safety issues
and because of those energy issues. Deer have been harassed.
They want to reduce their exposure to danger as much
as possible, which means they are probably going to be

(12:59):
moving less than they had earlier in the year.

Speaker 3 (13:02):
Right.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
They know that when they move in daylight over long distances,
that exposes them to danger. So in many cases, by
the time you get to the late season, that is
reduced dramatically. And then I talked about the energy issue.
Deer are trying to survive, They are trying to conserve energy,
so they are going to be again moving less because
every time they make a large movement. Every time they

(13:24):
travel long ways from a betting air to a feeding area,
they exerting energy, they are creating a deficit. So what
deer would prefer to do is they want to find
the best area of safety that has the best available
thermal winter cover, that is closest to the best available
winter food source where they can add energy.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
Then they're going to.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
Move as little as possible between those two places, both
to preserve their safety and to preserve their energy. That,
in a nutshell, is what the late season deer activity is.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
That's what deer want to do.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
That's what deer are deally going to be doing. That's
what they're seeking out. They're trying to find a place
where that can be their reality. So us as deer hunters,
we need to go find those places. If we owned
land and we were able to plan for this, we
could try to create these scenarios. You can build this
type of scenario. You can preserve some type of sanctuary.

(14:20):
You can create or manage and foster quality late season
thermal cover and quality late season food, and you can
have these places that you leave alone so that when
it gets to this time of the year, these deer
can go in there and feel safe and spend their
time and start moving in daylight and doing this bed
to feed small movement and feel really comfortable and pack

(14:41):
on the energy again and then slip there and hunt them.
If you can build that perfect For many of us,
we don't have the ability to build that. We don't
have a big property where we can do this, and
we simply have to try to find that situation, search
it out, whether it be on public land or private
land by permission, or at least that we get to
hunt whatever it is. You might just need to find

(15:01):
the closest thing you can to that and then take
advantage of it. But that is a really key thing
to be thinking about this time of year, is is
what deer are doing, So what are these key circumstances
impacting them, and what are deer doing because of it.
Anytime you find yourself trying to decide where to hunt,
or why to hunt a spotter, or how to think
through your plan, go back to these core principles of

(15:27):
the situation that deer are in right now, and then
what they're trying to do to survive. They're trying to
survive hunters, They're trying to pack on energy, and they're
trying to conserve energy. They're trying to stay warm, they're
trying to stay and cover, they're trying to build up
those energy reserves. Again, that is a deer's life for
the next six seven, eight, several months, you know, six seven,

(15:48):
eight weeks, several months from now. This is what is
going on on a day to day basis for these deer.

Speaker 3 (15:55):
Now, don't just take my word for it.

Speaker 2 (15:57):
I want to read to you another person's take describing
some of the same things, but with some additional details.
This is Steve Bartilla, longtime whitetail writer and hunter, sharing
here his kind of overview of the late season situation
for deer and what that means for them and us.

Speaker 3 (16:17):
And this is from the book Advanced stand Hunting.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
Strategies, Real World Tactics for Today's Trophy Whitetails. In an
effort to minimize the effects of all of these detrimental factors,
deer of the upper Midwest Mountains and points farther north
employ behavioral and physiological adaptations. To begin with, they significantly
reduce their movement. Often they do little more than travel

(16:40):
back and forth between bedding and feeding locations. The less
they move, the less energy they burn. To take energy
conservation a step further. Yet, they even slow their metabolism
along with that. When the temperatures really plummet, the deer
combat this by shifting their feeding activities more to the
warmer late afternoon hours. Since the late night early morning
hours are typically the coldest portion of the day, this

(17:03):
modification allows them to remain bedded, conserving body heat during
these frigid periods. Next, they shift their now greatly reduced
home range to locations that best promote their survival in
the areas that consistently receive deep snow cover and brutal temperatures.
The destinations for these winter migrations are traditional yarding areas.
Most often, a thick stand of mature evergreens such as

(17:26):
white cedar or spruce is selected. Here, the dense canopy
of branches creates a ceiling effect. Not only does this
trap heat to keep the temperature at ground level a
degree or two warmer, it also captures some of the snow,
making travel easier. Furthermore, with so many deer packing into
these areas, the extra hoof traffic also results in more

(17:46):
easily traveled deer trails. In addition, to providing more noses,
eyes and ears to detect predators. In conjunction with that,
this is the period when those otherwise solitary bucks now
gladly utilize the same bedding areas, trails, and food sources
as the dough family groups. This intermingling allows them to
take advantage of the heat retention properties of the yarding

(18:06):
area and increase protection from predators as well as the
easier travel As mentioned in this setting. The food sources
are most often woody brows. White cedar is always preferred
when available. It's the only woody browse known to be
able to sustain a whitetail's life completely by itself. Areas
of recent logging activity are typically the next best alternative.
If the logging is conducted in early winter, the plethora

(18:28):
of tops scattered across the ground provides a bounty of buds.
Older activities can be good choices as well, until the
regrowth of saplings extend beyond the deer's reach. They also
offer a concentration of tender buds. If none of those
is available, it becomes a matter of finding whatever natural
browse is available. As we drift into areas that typically
provide warmer temperatures and less snow, a less traditional form

(18:51):
of yarning occurs. Instead of concentrating on thermal cover, deer
in these regions gravitate to the best available food sources
when they exist. Standing crops such as corn, soybeans, and
sorghum are almost always preferred. In areas where standing crops
are in short supply, it's not uncommon for a loan
field to draw deer from miles around when snow depths allow.

(19:13):
Waste left from harvesting crops is also a good option.
The same can hold true for hayfields that contain round
veils of hay. When agricultural options aren't available, the same
hierarchy of woody browse species polishes off the list of
preferred food sources. Interestingly, in areas where yarding commonly occurs,
mild winters often inspired deer to dismiss traditional yarding areas

(19:34):
for prime food sources as well. However, regardless of how
much better the food may be, they'll almost always choose
the thermal protection when snowflakes and temperatures fall. All right, now,
for a kind of one more high level take on
this late season set of behaviors, I want to share

(19:56):
with you a brief excerpt from a podcast that did
with Mark Drury, in which he will walk through the
way that him and his brother Terry have broken down
the phases of a deer's life. They do this on
a very granular level. They've got, you know, thirteen different
phases they've broken the year into.

Speaker 3 (20:10):
But I want to.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
Play for you here just a quick minute minute or
two of Mark walking through his late November all the
way through January phases and what he and Terry have
found deer tend to do in their experience.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
So let's listen that real quick too.

Speaker 4 (20:25):
I love like one to four o'clock or in that
particular phase. Then we get into Green revisited the latter
part of November, November twenty sixth through December. The fifth bucks,
the really really mature ones are start coming back to
the green fields looking for doos because that's where they're going.
And a lot of the bucks are stalking back to
those green fields because that's the period where you're having
saws morning and night and you're starting to break those

(20:48):
green fields down. The powell the builder goes through the
roofs and there's a lot of deer of editing those
green fields, which took a lot of big bucks during
that phase December sixth and December the eighth, there's another
little bit of a miniature. Well, it's tough during this
particular phase. We call it waiting on the front. If
you catch it front, it kicks them into their late
season seed patterns and we have a really good periment.

(21:10):
If you weren't the best overall movement in December December
ninth through the twenty first, it's called feedback. Awesome, awesome,
good bucks out early, make sure you're understanding the afternoon
and make sure you're very early. Then December twenty second
for January fifteenth, slowly but surely, the daylight activity starts
to slow down and you again need a front. But

(21:30):
that's when you get some of the most drastic weather
of the winter, and if you get back, you can
kill a big buck if you're on. And it's very
similar to the first phase because it's all about food,
they're not betted very far from it.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
Okay, So there's two different takes on how deer are
reacting now to this new world they're living in, this
late season world. Hunting pressure impacts, cold weather impacts, habitat changes,
food source changes. All of that leads to different behaviors.
One thing we haven't talked very much yet about, though,

(22:11):
is rut activity in December or beyond. There's two different
things here that are worth considering. One, if you hunt
or live in the South, there could be full blown
like the rut, the peak of the rut might be
happening for you in December or January.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
There's some funky things in the South.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
There's been you know, relocations, there's there's many different factors
that lead to the timing of the rut being different
in different pockets of Southern states. So I'm not going
to get into the specifics there, but because I couldn't
be like, well, if you live in northern Alabama, it's
this thing, and if you're in southwestern Mississippi it's souther thing.
I would just tell you to make sure if you

(22:49):
live in those southern states Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, some of
these other regions Texas, you know, make sure you talk
to other people in your location. I'm imagine most of
you already know this, but just in case you don't,
If you don't know when the timing of your rut
is in the South, Talk to buddies, talk to any
mentors you might have, Call the local dn R officer

(23:11):
and ask them, you know, when does this typically happen
in my area? Is this happening sometime in December? Is
this happening sometime in January? That is the case in
some spots down there by you if you fall into
this bucket, and if that's the case, what you want
to be doing is listening to the episode we did
about November hunting, which was our rut episode, and use
those tactics.

Speaker 3 (23:32):
Those are the tactics that will.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
Apply for you in December or January, if that's when
your rut is. So all that said, most of us
do not fall into that category. Most of us had
our majority of our running activity happening in November. But
there is this thing that folks sometimes referred to as
the second rut or the late rut or something like this.
And the idea is that if there's somehow a dough

(23:56):
that did not get bred the first time around in November,
you know, a month later, thirty days later, she could
come into heat again, and if that happens, you could
have running activity again, maybe in December, or beyond. This
is something that's pretty uncommon in many places, especially where
there's buck to dough ratios that are very skewed. But
what can happen more commonly is a dofont reaching sexual maturity,

(24:20):
not in time for that first round in November, but
by this early December time period, where you know, many
deer are now coming into heat and they are large
enough now to be at sexual maturity and so essentially
coming into heat for the first time. I have found
this to even happen in southern Michigan. I have seen
do fonds come into heat and there be a little

(24:41):
miniature flurry of running activity on December sixth or ninth,
or tenth or first, that's all possible. I've seen this
in southern Ohio too. I've heard people see this, you know,
just about anywhere in the white tail range. So it's
something that I don't plan my hunts around when it
comes to December or January. I'm not going into it saying,
all right, I'm going to do a second rut hunt.

(25:03):
That's not typically what's going on, but I'm watching for it.
So if I see something that looks like November activity,
like one dough with five bucks chasinger or two bucks
sparring or standing, or a bunch of satellite bucks all
standing around one big buck and a dough. If I
see that, that's like a light bulb moment that says, Okay,
I have a second ruck kind of thing going on here.

(25:24):
I need to focus on that little zone here right
now and maybe apply some of those running tactics again.
Right If you see this now, the calling techniques that
you used in November might very well work again.

Speaker 3 (25:36):
Now.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
The idea of hunting all day in that dough bedding
area like you were doing during the rut, that might
be worth doing here for a day or two in
that zone. If you see a buck locked on a dough,
you know, hunting that buck on the dough just as
you would have on November fifteenth. You know, getting tight
to where they are, making sure you're as close and
in that small area that they're going to focus on
for the next forty eight hours. Same thing applies. All

(25:59):
that said, I want to share with you one more
take on this second rut idea. Tom Inderbau, a renowned
hunter and outfitter from Wisconsin, wrote pretty extensively about this
in his book Growing and hunting quality books.

Speaker 3 (26:13):
I'm going to read that for you.

Speaker 2 (26:15):
And there's a little bit here just in general when
it comes to his late season approach as well.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
But a big part of this is.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
Discussing his second rut ideas for bow hunting. Late season
action starts and stops with food, and in our region,
deer find food in nearly every valley that held or
holds agricultural crops, whether those fields were harvested earlier in
autumn or they still contain uncut standing crops. Deer group
up and find ways to scrounge up food. Does and

(26:42):
their fawns join others from the doe's bloodline to form
loose family groups, and they set up residents where terrain
and brush provides shelter and easy access to nearby foods. Invariably,
a dough that didn't get pregnant earlier will go into
heat once more twenty eight days after she entered Estris
in November.

Speaker 3 (26:59):
Between their need for food and the.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
Allure of these recycled doughs and female fawns entering Estris,
bucks emerge from protected sites where they've remained secure since
gun season. As these bucks approach early winter fields and
study the bunched up dough family groups, they feel some
familiar urges and a rekindling of their aggressive tendencies. It's
not uncommon for bucks to again spar and joust, but
they've lost much of their competitive edge from a month before.

(27:24):
It's more like paddy cake and shadow boxing as their
antlers click and clack at the wood's edge. Their testosterone
levels have been dropping for the past few weeks, and
although the urges to breed, doze, and intimidate foes remain,
the bucks are more mellow. Bowhunters shouldn't expect this so
called second rut to bring a repeat performance of November.
Bucks won't roam the ridges all night or half dropped

(27:45):
from field to field each morning in search of love.
Neither will they storm down a field's edge with fire
in their eyes, intent on destroying arrival. But if that
field contains corner soybeans and a dozen dos and fawns
are feeding there late in the afternoon, and one of
them is an estris, there's a good chance that bucks
will soon arrive to check her out. Such situations are
common in mid December, which is why I think it's

(28:07):
one of the best times of all to take a
huge buck. In fact, I don't think I'm exaggerating when
I say mid December can even be a better time
to hunt than November. Why again, it's that perfect storm scenario.
Deer tend to be more bunched up in December, which
makes it easier to predict where you might.

Speaker 3 (28:23):
Cross paths with a wall hanger.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
If most of the farm's female deer are congregated on
the snow dust at alfalfa field, the buck has a
target reached environment for locating a dough ready to breed.
In December, only a small percentage of doughs come into heat,
and a buck isn't inclined to trape through the countryside
for hours on low Odd's missions. He's hungry and worn down,
and testosterone isn't forcing him to ignore those physical discomforts.

(28:47):
He's looking for a more convenient, efficient way to romance
the dough, and a good food source provides those golden opportunities.
In addition, unlike a mature dough that chases off her
fawns when she's going into heat, a dough fun doesn't
shun her mother or sibling. She's still hanging out with
her maternal group. Following her elders wherever they go. Meanwhile,
the buck would like nothing better than to rob that cradle.

(29:10):
There might be only one dough in heat at any
given time, but when deer congregate on a good food source,
there's no easier place or time for a buck to
find a late season breeder. In my area, this scenario
usually unfolds from December ten to fifteen. After that, snow
is usually deepened and temperatures drop further, forcing hunters to
focus on food sources. Granted, a five day block and

(29:31):
a fickle month like December offers only a small window
of opportunity. And yes, you might only be dealing with
one estra's dough here or there, but almost everything else
leans in your favor. Bottom line, you want to be
in your tree as much as possible December ten through
fifteen if you know where an estra stough will likely
be the only question remaining is where to hang your
tree stands to ambush the bucks? She beckons, all right,

(29:53):
So second rut. In this case, Tom mentioned he really
seems to see that in his area of southwest Wisconsin
from December tenth through fifteen. I've seen it in southern
Michigan and southern Ohio from December one through ten, so
it's going to be a localized thing, but anywhere in
that first half ish of December, it's something just to
keep an eye out. It's something to be aware of.

(30:14):
It's something to take advantage of if it happens to
pop up in your zone. Now, all that kind of
in our back pocket. The biggest thing, the most common
thing to be thinking about the general approach to hunting
in December in January is is it's pretty standard across
the board. I've heard about this from Will Brantlee. I've

(30:36):
heard about this from Don Higgins, from Jeff Sturgis, from
Steve Bartilla, from Bill Wink, from Mark Dury to you know,
basically every down every person down the line. It's relatively
simple for most people. I'm going to share with you
a couple exceptions, but for most folks, the general approach is,

(30:56):
you know, understanding what we just talked about, that deer
are looking for safety, that deer are looking for late
Siason food, and that deer looking for latezias and cover.

Speaker 3 (31:04):
Understanding those things, you have.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
To find these smaller concentrations of deer, and then you
need to very carefully hunt them when the conditions are right.
Because of the fact that you know, with all of
this stuff being true, with all these things being the case,
deer are going to be on edge in a way
that they were not in the past. Deer are going

(31:27):
to be more spooky than they were in the past.
Deer going to be reacting to hunting pressure more aggressively
than they have in the past. Because of all that pressure,
they just aren't going to be giving you many second chances.
So that's why many people take a locate, wait and
then strike approach. They're typically not going to be hunting
a spot over and over and over, banging into the

(31:50):
very best spots and volume hunting it aggressively like maybe
they did in November. This is the time for a
wait and see approach. Usually, most people would tell you
this is a time generally to observe from afar, to
scout carefully, and then to strike when the iron is hot,
strike when that best moment and the best set of

(32:10):
conditions allows, because you're probably in many cases not going
to get a whole lot of second chances. Now, of course,
you might have an amazing setup where you have tremendous
entry and exit and you can get in and out
of the spot without deer knowing you, and maybe you
have a perfect place to blow your wind. And you know,
if all of those things are true, then maybe you
can get away with more hunts. Maybe you can do
this more frequently without educating deer, and you don't need

(32:32):
to take so much of that weight and see approach.
But for most people it's going to be that kind
of thing. So the key things that we need to understand,
the key things we need to be looking for, are,
you know, given there's this limited area for opportunity concentrated
deer areas, and then this limited sets of mistakes that
you can make, what are the conditions you're waiting for.

Speaker 3 (32:53):
I want to talk to you about what are the
ideal conditions?

Speaker 2 (32:56):
And then I want to talk to you about, you know,
how do you find where these deer are going to
be in a little bit more detail, But first let's
talk conditions and why the right set of conditions can
make this a really great time to hunt. We alluded
to this earlier that things are getting tough for deer,
But when things get really tough for deer, it can
get them on their feet in a more extreme manner.

(33:18):
Than maybe at any other time of year other than
the rut. I suppose we're talking extreme cold, and we're
talking precipitation events or coming off of major precipitation events.
So of course the colder it gets, the more arctic
tundra type situation you can possibly have, the more these
deer are going to want to be up on their
feet in daylight, as Bartilla mentioned, because it's warmer and

(33:42):
more comfortable for them to do so, and then they
can bed during those cold as times and just hold
it out and just try to conserve energy. So these deer,
if it's very cold, they're going to be on their
feet earlier and trying to consume as much resources as
they possibly can. They got to refuel the tank. They's
constantly consuming calories to try to stay alive and stay warm.

(34:02):
So if you have that big cold front, that mega
cold front, you know, the single digit temperatures or something
like that, that can be a very very good ten hunt.
And then also precipitation. If you get a big blizzard
moving through, if you have a bunch of snow on
the ground that covers up the typically easier to access food, again,
you've got something that will probably get deer moving on

(34:23):
their feet a little bit more, move a little bit further,
stay out there a little bit longer. That big old
buck might come out to the field edge sooner. All
of that is a good thing for you. So those
are two things maybe that will be, you know, particularly
helpful for you when you're trying to choose when to
make your move, when to go hunt that good spot,
when to take your out of state trip.

Speaker 3 (34:42):
Whatever. It is.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
A big storm passing through and finally calming down on
the backside, that's another good Maybe even without you big snow,
that's still a pretty great time of year. Let's say
you had a warm spell it was in the forties.
Let's say big cold front moves through with like forty
mon in our winds or thirty mile an hour winds
and rain and sleet and nasty stuff, and that lasts

(35:05):
for several days.

Speaker 3 (35:06):
If that's the case, that's probably.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
Going to put deer down a little bit. When that
passes through and all of a sudden, it's twenty degrees colder,
blue skies, hair, high barometric pressure, and winds have died
down to eight ten miles an hour. When that nasty
thing kind of moves through. All of a sudden, now
those deer are gonna.

Speaker 3 (35:23):
Be all right.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
I gotta get the food back on because I just
had to, you know, take a day off or a
day and a half of maybe the higher feeding that
they wanted to do. They weren't able to do that comfortably.
So now all of a sudden, you have that increased
feeding activity as well. Looking for those things. It's not
too terribly different than we talked about in October when
we were hoping for these same fronts, but now it

(35:44):
can be more extreme. And really the more extreme, the
more extreme.

Speaker 3 (35:48):
Activity you're going to see.

Speaker 2 (35:49):
You know, maybe a cold front in October might have
gotten deer moving ten fifteen minutes earlier in the evening.
Let's say a extreme cold front or twelve inches of
snow or something of that in December, that might get
a mature buck on his feet two hours before daylight.
If you're in a place where they feel safe, that's

(36:09):
really always the qualifier. Everything we're talking about is typically
only true if they feel safe in these places. If
they don't feel safe in a zone, they're just not
going to be there. And if they kind of feel
moderately safe in the place, they're probably not going to
move in daylight at all, if they feel relatively safe,
if they feel pretty comfortable, if you found that true sanctuary,

(36:30):
that true pocket, that's when you can then see these
deer moving in daylight when these circumstances, when these cold
fronts or snowstorms or whatever pass through.

Speaker 3 (36:39):
So that's what we're looking for. I want to share
with you. Don Higgins take on this.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
He describes why, because of these conditions, because of these
things that just described, why this can be such a
good time of year to hunt, Why this can be,
in his opinion, one of the best possible times to
kill a mature buck.

Speaker 3 (36:56):
So here's what Don has to say.

Speaker 5 (36:58):
Well, you know, it's ironic. I wrote my first book
ten years ago after I had shot that buck, the
two hundred and fourteen inch buck we was just talking about.
A short time later, I wrote my first book, and
when I talk about the late season in that first book,
I kind of downplayed it as one of the worst
times of the season to shoot a mature buck. But

(37:19):
in the years of the past, I've totally changed my
mind one hundred and eighty degrees. Now I believe that
the late season is the very best time of the
year to kill a mature buck on purpose. But the
key is you've got to you've got to have a
good food source, and you've got to have an undisturbed
betting location. If you got those two together, and then

(37:42):
you've got made because they're very likely to be a
mature buck there. And then you just got to wait
for the It's about timing. You need the worst weather possible.
The worst the weather gets, the better your odds. So
you know, I've got a couple of different farms that
I manage and where I'm allowed to plant food plots

(38:03):
and things like that. And on both those farms, you know,
I've got my stands in place, i got the food
plots in place. I've stayed out of the betting cover
all fall, and I'm just waiting. I'm just biding my time,
waiting on the perfect opportunity. And whenever the temperature you know,
gets down around zero at night or single digits during
the day is a high. When it does that for

(38:25):
a few days, you can just you can count on
the bucks, on every deer in the woods. Really, it
doesn't matter if he's a mature buck or yearling buck
or a dough. Under those conditions, they're going to be
on their feet in the afternoon headed to that food,
and they're more than likely going to get there way
before dark. And you know, I kind of set the
table throughout the entire year by planting those food plots,

(38:46):
by staying out of those betting areas. But then when
the time's right, I get into those stands, and you
can you can kill, you know, the biggest buck in
the woods on purpose, year after year after year.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
That way, all right, And to give you another I'm
going to give you a couple different thoughts here. Here's
another take from Steve Bartilla, and what he's going to
share here is why all of this can lead to
good hunting and stuff that you can take advantage of
as a deer hunter. So, now that we understand how

(39:19):
whitetails cope with winter stress, we can explore how to
most efficiently use these traits to our advantage. At first glance,
it may appear that drastically reduced movement is a disadvantage. However,
finding where a mature buck resides swiftly transforms us into
a significant advantage. Investing several late afternoons observing the listed
food sources is a good way.

Speaker 3 (39:40):
To find him.

Speaker 2 (39:41):
Because there's no other time during the season that a
mature buck more rigidly clings to a pattern, this is
well worth the effort. With that accomplished, the next step
is to backtrack his trail just far enough into the
woods to allow the hunter a route to and from
the stand. On the rare occasion when a safe rout
exists to a field edge stand, such as in the
Hunt the again this chapter, this is also acceptable, in

(40:03):
fact is preferred, owing to the increased odds of catching
the minimal second roud activity that might occur. This also
provides a firearms hunter with the chance of a longer shot. Moreover,
because the concentration effect often means that more than one
mature buck is using the same food source, sitting the
edge often provides opportunities that inwood's trails don't. Still, without

(40:23):
a good route, more harm than good is the most
common result. The deer's tendency to shift feeding times up
is also an advantage. Frankly, deep snows and cold tempts
are the late season hunter's best friends. The worse it gets,
the more inspiration the bruiser has to hit the food
source before dark. This is so pronounced that these conditions
can make an otherwise nearly exclusively nocturnal buck feed during

(40:45):
daylight in an open field. Many of my best hunts
have occurred on the coldest day of the season. On
the flip side, unseasonably mild conditions tend to shut down
a mature buck's daylight movement if a high risk stand
site is the only option, saving it for an afternoon
brutally low temperatures is the best.

Speaker 3 (41:02):
Option, all right.

Speaker 2 (41:04):
So to give us one more perspective on this and
kind of shifting gears a little bit, I want to
talk through this next stage, which is, you know, we've
kind of explored why late season hunting can be so
good if you're able to find these pockets, if you're
able to find where these deer feels safe, if you
can find the quality food and the quality thermal cover.
That is a big set of qualifiers, that last part,

(41:26):
especially finding that quality food, finding that quality betting, finding
where these deer want to be. And I want to
share with you John Eberheart's approach to that, as well
as several others, because this is pretty key to the
whole topic, right safety first, then food and bedding, and
so John Eberhart is somebody who you know different than
Don Higgins or Steve Bartila or Tom Injerbau. He's typically

(41:49):
not hunting land he owns or manages. He's hunting public
land or knock on door permission stuff, and so he
has a very different perspective on the late season than
these guys, and that you know in some spots like Michigan,
he won't hunt the late season there hardly at all,
because he simply can't find doesn't have access to these
safe places. So what he does instead is he packs

(42:09):
up and travels to a lower pressure state where he
can find these pockets, and then he takes advantage of
some of the same things that Don and Steve mentioned.
So here's John on his late season approach how he
finds deer in these situations. The most consistently productive method
of hunting during the late season is to concentrate your

(42:31):
efforts on hunting transition corridors between known betting areas and
feeding locations such as masts or fruit trees that still
have food in the ground, or crop fields if in
an agricultural area. These are also the same areas where
does will be so they double as searching areas for
late estrius does as well. Just as during any other
time of the season, the transition corridor between betting and

(42:52):
feeding must have adequate security cover for mature buck to
feel comfortable transitioning through. During daylight hours when there are
several inches or more or snow on the ground, locust
trees that dropped bean pods and cedars become major feeding areas,
and the deeper the snow, the greater the odds of
mature buck encounter in large cedar swamps, Hunting at any
time of day can be productive because these swamps become

(43:14):
deer bedding areas and winter deer yards prior to snow.
There are other more preferred and accessible masts and vegetation
than cedar boughs and locust beans, But when there's deep snow,
cedar boughs are an easily accessible food source, and one
post scrape of the ground under a locust tree will
uncover several bean pods. The colder it is, the greater
the need is for deer to feed. We have found

(43:36):
in pressured areas that to some extent, the more severe
the weather conditions, the better mature bucks move during daylight
This is likely because while growing up they have had
less encounters with hunters during foul weather conditions. General deer
activity might be less than normal, but mature buck activity
will spike during many inclement weather conditions. All right, let's

(43:56):
continue down this line of thinking. How to kind of
focus in on the best late season food sources. I
want to share with you some of this from Mark
and Terry.

Speaker 3 (44:06):
Drury in their book.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
Giant White Tails A Lifetime of Lessons. This is an
old school book, but there's a nice simple excert here
in which they explain their take on late season food
on finding the spots to focus for deer at this
time of year. Our plantings for late season hunting are
based around three different food sources. The two most important

(44:30):
are corn and soybeans, with beans probably being number one.
Deer prefer the beans to anything else in December, particularly
when it's snowy and seasonably cold. Not every December is
created equal from.

Speaker 3 (44:42):
Region to region and year to year.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
You don't always have those cold temperatures and heavy snowfalls.
When that's the case, deer hardly hit the beans at all.
That's why we also plant some green food sources like
they give you some examples here winter weed, buck foord
j o its biologic cover maximum YadA, YadA. When the
first ponds, creeks, and puddles freeze over in early December,
there's little natural green forage around. Even though there might

(45:05):
not be any snowcover, green plants attract deer and provide
them with a good source of moisture. Over the past
few years, we've discovered the water content of green plants
can be a huge drawing cards for white tails in December.
In short, we plant beans and corn predominantly, probably eighty
percent on the farms we hunt late in the season. However,
we don't turn a blind eye towards green food, which

(45:28):
comprises about twenty percent of our plantings. A major point
I need to make is we see more mature bucks
in December and January than we do in October and November.
During the rut, big deer burn a lot of fuel
and eventually run out of gas in December, staring down
the barrel of a long tough winter. They go back
to filling the station and hammer high energy foods like
beans and corn. We take advantage of that weakness. White

(45:51):
tails truly are slaves to their stomachs, and it's never
more obvious than in December. What's more, if you put
out enough seed and planet right, you'll not only see
most of the deer that live on your farm, you
will also draw bucks from all around. Late in the season,
when all the natural forge is gone and gun pressure
hits adjoining lands, your land suddenly becomes a safe haven.
The big deer come there for one reason food. The

(46:14):
colder and snowier it is in December, the more whopper
bucks you'll see. Terry and I will take two inches
of snow, but we prefer five or six inches, which
thoroughly covers all the leftover acorns and other woodland food
stuffs that causes deer to pour into our fields. Deer
movement is usually magical ahead of, during, and after a
fresh snowfall here in the Midwest. Terry I prefer daytime

(46:38):
highs not to exceed twenty or twenty five degrees. When
you have forty or fifty degree tempts, late season hunting
is not nearly as good. The more threatening the conditions
with snow and highs and the teens and twenties, the
better your chances, because more deer get on their feet
and move towards food sources. Finally, I ought to mention
that white tails prefer cut fields as opposed to standing crops.

(47:00):
When you are a farmer harvested field, all the residue
be it beans or corn, sits on the ground, absorbs
a little moisture, softens up and often becomes more palatable
to deer. Also, it's much easier for dozen bucks to
move and feed in a low cut field of.

Speaker 3 (47:14):
Corn or beans.

Speaker 2 (47:16):
All Right, there is the dreary take on their key
food sources and why that works for them so well.
Moving on to another set of ideas here, I want

(47:37):
to get Jeff Sturgis's thoughts on this as he breaks
down some of the key food sources and habitats that
he looks for both on public land and on private land.

Speaker 6 (47:48):
So, like, you know, even going back to Pennsylvania, in
that public land, I don't want to be out in
the big open hardwoods unless I ask some indication that
there's still acorns and that's where they're feeding, you know,
tore up ground snow. I really want to be in
the high stem count areas where you have lots of regeneration,
lots of habitat coming in think upland cover. If you
can find it on public land, it's hard. But where

(48:10):
you have shrubs, bushes, briars, hardward region, maybe on the
edge of a swamp, it's all coming together. Where there's
a lot of different habitat groups coming in together. That
means there's a lot of brows. And to me, as
opposed to a wide open oak flat where deer been pressured,
hunters have been out too, they might feed there more

(48:32):
at night. It's safe, it's social, they can see predators
for a long distance. I'd rather be tucked up against
that high high stem count, diversity and brows of public land.
And then when you go on to private if you're
managing your own property, you want to definitely have a
lot of younger timber coming in and diversity of habitat.

(48:53):
But then you're looking at either high volume greens like
braska if it's towards the north, or corn beans that
are standing late if you can get that. But and
then adjacent to that same type of cover where you
have really thick cover. So if I'm hunting in the morning,
i want to be by that thick cover, high stem count,
and then I might flip stands and go hunt a

(49:13):
more food source stand related for the afternoon on private land,
but on public land that might be all in the same.
It might be your hunting on the edge of a
very thick area that deer might transfer out of to
go to an open food source like a big oak
flat during the afternoon.

Speaker 2 (49:31):
If you had to rank order late season food sources from,
like what your very best would be down the list,
how would you do that? Because I'm imagining, like I've
been in this situation where I've hunted ad country and
I've got some grain food plots, and then there's a
neighboring cornfield, and then there's another field next to this beans,

(49:52):
and then there's you know, some cuttings on the neighbors
and I know there's like some thick natural brows in there,
and I'm trying to think where should I hunt tonight?
And I've got all these different food sources to choose from,
and I'm trying to think, Okay, what's going to be
the absolute most attractive for this time of the year.
If you're in if you have the luxury of that situation,
how would you rank order what would potentially be most attractive?

(50:14):
And then as a follow up, and I'm giving you
making this even more tricky.

Speaker 3 (50:19):
But as a follow up.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
Would conditions change that order? So if I told you
it was a forty degree December day versus a ten
degree December day, how would you reorder things as well?

Speaker 6 (50:31):
You know, kind of it to back up just a
little bit, you know, like you mentioned, it's you have
all these available, what choice would you make? But a
lot of times, especially if people are building it or planting,
and on private land, you're not looking at what's the
beast You're looking at what's the best that would be available.
And so a lot of times someone could say ten

(50:52):
degrees late December standing beans, pretty hard to be forty
degree late December standing beans. I'd rather shift to corner
or greens. But then at the same time, even beans
that ten degrees late December, someone has to have either

(51:15):
fences or a large amount of acreage of beans to
make them last all that time. So I see people
beat themselves like I love beans late like that, But
if they're not there, then it doesn't really matter what
your scale one to ten would be. And then also
you have to look at what's the most unpressured. So

(51:35):
let's say just someone could say, okay, mid December hunt
let's just say December twelfth. There's a little bit of
the rot left last, you know, upper midwest, upper third
of the country. And you have a choice of a
bean field in a cornfield, but the beanfield's been pressured
and hunted heavily, then I'm gonna go pick the corn

(51:56):
and you might even find there's a lot of dozen
falls in the bean field because they can take a
lot more hunting pressure, human pressure. I'd rather cheat over
towards that corner the Braska that deer are still coming
to and there's still does come into it, obviously, if
dose aren't going to it, I would a buck. I mean,
he wants some good food too, but unpressured should be
the first, uh, you know, the first requirement of a

(52:19):
late season food source. And then you start looking at
what's best, and you know, if it's forty degrees, it
seems like they really like greens if it's warmer, so
if they have high volume greens, even if they have
stainy wheed to rye mixed with various greens clover down
in Kentucky, West Virginia, southern Illinois, southern Indiana, where you
might even get a little growth of clover in November

(52:41):
because it hit sixty seven degrees a few days. So
that's a little bit different too, versus something you might
want to do in central Michigan or focus on so
heavy greens of some kind when it's a little warmer
later and then certainly those grains. But again it has
to be unpressured.

Speaker 3 (52:57):
All right. So I think you know something worth mentioning here.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
Something that's very important is in identifying these places, right,
identifying you know, I guess everything, trying to find where
these safe places are for deer, trying to find where
these best late season food sources are, trying to find
these pockets of bedding cover that's still available. You have
to do some scouting to figure that out.

Speaker 5 (53:21):
Now.

Speaker 2 (53:21):
Hopefully, in a best case scenario, you have been, you know,
doing this for years in a particular area and you
know from history where these key late season hangouts are.
But if you're not, or if you are still trying
to figure it out as you go, you are going
to have to do some scouting.

Speaker 3 (53:38):
Now.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
There's you know, the same forms of scouting as we
talked about in October, they applied now in December.

Speaker 3 (53:44):
You simply have.

Speaker 2 (53:44):
To do it with an even greater degree of concern
and care because, as mentioned, these deer are very touchy.
These deer have been pressured, they have been hunted, they
have been harassed. They're not going to tell erate much.
So on the ground scouting, if you have to do it,
you've got to be very tactical about when you do
it and how you do it because these deer, you know,

(54:06):
they could blow out from a long ways away. I
think a very important thing to be thinking about, A
special consideration this time of year is how open the
habitat is right where maybe you could have walked through
a forest and nothing could see you unless they were
within thirty yards of you.

Speaker 3 (54:20):
Now it might be.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
Two hundred yards away they can see you. So when
you're scouting, be aware of that. And I would suggest,
i think many other people would suggest taking a much
lighter touch when it comes to on the ground scouting.
This is when long distance observation is huge. Driving back
roads and looking at these fields, getting up on a
hill and watching from afar in a place that you're

(54:43):
not going to spook a bunch of deer, but you
can see into an important area. Of course, trail cameras
play a part in this as well, you know, going
out there midday once on your bike or your truck
or your UTV, and moving cameras to late season food
sources in places that you think they might be using,
using those trail cameras to confirm for you which is
the hot food source.

Speaker 3 (55:03):
At the moment.

Speaker 2 (55:04):
All of that can be really helpful. But using a
light touch, I can't emphasize that enough. I can't tell
you how many different people have kind of mentioned this
over and over and over again. In the late season,
you have to wear white satin gloves. You have to
be so careful. This is like a very fragile situation

(55:24):
you're dealing with. If you happen to be so lucky
to have that sanctuary where deer have felt safe, and
if you are so lucky to have quality late season
food and to have that quality late season betting cover,
if you have this special thing that many people don't have.

Speaker 3 (55:39):
You have a gift.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
You have a fragile, fragile gift, and you do not
want to waste that and throw it away because you're
not being careful. So that all said, sometimes you do
still need to get on the ground and scout things
out in person. John Eberhart advocates for that sometimes I
want to read for you. Another excerpt from his book
The Ultimate Guide to DIY Books, as he discusses a

(56:01):
couple quick things when it comes to scouting in the
late season. He says, if you need to scout if
there's snow in the forecast, we recommend waiting until it
falls and then scout twenty four hours after it has
quit snowing. By late season, routines are somewhat consistent from
betting to preferred feeding areas, and if you scout an
area twenty four hours after a fresh snow, you will

(56:23):
be able to identify exactly where the deer betting by
the freshly used runways leading to them, and where they
are feeding by the kicked up snow to access the
food on the ground.

Speaker 3 (56:32):
The point is that a day or so after a fresh.

Speaker 2 (56:35):
Snow, you know exactly where the deer feeding, and while
it's not advised to intrude into their betting areas during
late season, you can backtrack to see the area they're
betting in. You'll also be able to decipher if the
transition corridor has adequate security cover for mature buck movements
during daylight. In short, if you wait for this fresh snow,

(56:56):
you can take one big swing with your scouting, which
will make an impact. But if you do it just once,
with this specific set of circumstances, you can learn a
ton in one trip and then use that hopefully for
the next week or two or three or whatever it
is you need. So something to keep in mind there now,
something we've alluded to which I haven't given you a

(57:17):
whole lot of detail, is what makes for late season
betting cover, What makes for that security cover, thermal cover
the deer. Like I share a little bit, I want
Don Higgins to give you just a little.

Speaker 3 (57:27):
Bit more insight.

Speaker 2 (57:28):
So here's an excerpt from a previous podcast I did
with Don as he discusses late season cover.

Speaker 5 (57:35):
Well, it's extremely thick. It's also got some thermal cover.
Seeds fines a lot of the oak species and not
a lot of them. But some oaks species will hold
their leaves in the winner pano oaks, saltyeth oaks, shingle oaks,
those species will hold their leaves all winter along and
provide you know, some wind and thermal cover for the deer.

(57:55):
But the main thing is you want it thick, but
you know you want it free of human intrusion, and
that goes for the entire year. You don't want to
be stomping in your late season bedding area in October
and ruin it months before you're planning to hunt it.
That freedom of human intrusion is probably the most important thing,
even more so than the type of plants and the

(58:18):
little way of the terrain and everything. I like to
say that every mature buck has a sanctuary, and if
he didn't need to never make it to mature status,
he'd been killed before that. The thing about sanctuaries is
you can create them or you can find them on
the properties that we have control over. The best thing
to do is go out and create them because you

(58:39):
can make the best cover possible, you can control the
human intrusion within that area and everything else, and you
can make an excellent sanctuary. But sometimes that's not possible,
like you mentioned, other hunters have access to the property
or whatever. Well, then you let the deer find the
sanctuary and created it, really create it. But he just

(59:01):
finds those pockets, you know, where the human intrusion is
not there, where he feels safe, and you can either
create it or you can find it, and the bus's
gonna be there either way.

Speaker 3 (59:13):
All right.

Speaker 2 (59:14):
So we have discussed the importance of security. We've discussed
how do identify quality late season food sources and what
some of those are. We have now discussed the betting
and cover needs that deer have during the late season.
I want to tie a bow a little bit on
this general approach to hunting white tails in the late season,

(59:35):
which is the find them, learn them, wait until the
right conditions, and then strike kind of approach. I want
to talk through just a couple special considerations when trying
to execute those hunts, or when you know anytime you're
in the woods. I allude to this first one a
second ago when I talked about how the cover has changed,
the habitat has changed in the woods. What used to

(59:56):
be a spot where maybe you would only be seen
from thirty yards away, maybe now you're seeing from two
hundred yards away. This also applies not just to scouting,
but to hunting. The woods are open, the grassy fields
are knocked down by snow or cold weather.

Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
Everything is more open.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
So when you go into hunt, maybe an afternoon hunt
or whatever it is, you can be seen from much
further away. This is even more so if there's snow
in the ground and you just kind of stand out
as this big, dark silhouette against a perfectly white background.
So access an entry or being up in the tree,
all of that is so much more difficult. You really

(01:00:32):
need to think about cover. Visual cover is very very
important for late season hunts, So walking in, really be
aware of what kind of cover you can take advantage
of to sneak in without dear seeing you. When you
choose a tree to hunt from, really be thinking about
what's the cover up in the tree without leaves up there,
are you still hidden or do you stand out as
this huge object in a little tiny bean poul tree.

(01:00:53):
That can really impact the success of your hunt. Another
thing to think about here is sound. Sound travel so
much further in the late season. You know, for one thing,
all of the leaves are down, the grass is down,
as we just mentioned, that just allows for sound to
travel further. I feel like, for whatever reason, everything just
seems like echo more. I can't say this with one

(01:01:14):
hundred percent certainty, but it just seems like in the
late season. I've had many more hunts where the wind
is kind of down, and it just seems like any
little thing will just be heard from a mile away.
Every piece of metal seems to make more noise, like
your your ladder steps, your trees stand. It just seems
like things want to creak and pop and it just

(01:01:36):
cause trouble.

Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
So you need to be aware of that. You need
to be extra careful to stay quiet.

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
If there's anything you can do ahead of a hunt
to dampen sound, to tape things up a little bit,
better do that because sound can really get you in
trouble at this time of year.

Speaker 3 (01:01:50):
Again, deer are very.

Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
Averse two hunters right now, So any little extra sound,
any little extra sout, you know, sight of movement, those
things can really be big problem. All of that brings
us to making decisions about when to hunt. We've talked
earlier about you know, waiting for the right conditions, right
waiting for that cold front, waiting for that precipitation, waiting
for that you know, dire arctic tundra event. And that's

(01:02:16):
what a lot of these people do, right because they
find where this little special pocket of deer is and
they don't want to go and hunt it over and
over and over again and educate these deer right, So
instead they wait for the right conditions, They wait for
that cold front or for that you know, snowstorm, and
then they go take their big strike and they do
it very very carefully. For many deer hunters, this also

(01:02:37):
means evening hunts. Morning hunts are more difficult to pull
off at this time of year for all the reasons
we just discussed. Right, deer are traveling back to their
bedrooms in the morning, they might already be back there early.
If you are trudging through the woods when it's very
loud out and it's wide open out and maybe you're
crunching through ice or snow, it's just very risky to

(01:03:01):
get there without educating deer. And you simply can't get
away with educating deer now as much as you maybe
could have in October or definitely in November. So because
of that, a lot of folks prefer just to hunt
the evenings. They have to be smart about how they
get out after the hunt. But getting in, you know
where deer are right there in their bedroom, so you
can walk in being confident that as long as you

(01:03:22):
avoid wherever that core betting area is, and as long
as you're smart about where your wind's blowing, you should
be able to get in there safely and then have
a good hunt. All that said, morning hunts, of course,
there's never you know, never say never. Things are never
black and white. There are certainly people who hunt mornings
in the late season. I know Jeff Sturgis is one.
I know my buddy Tony Peterson is one. I know

(01:03:44):
there's plenty of others. You just have to be very
careful about how you do this. So I want to
play for you an excerpt from a video that we
produce for Wired to Hunt, Tony talking through his take
on hunting late season mornings.

Speaker 7 (01:03:58):
When you're talking about late season bowing, we kind of
default back to a mindset that we have during September
and early October, where they say, don't hunt the mornings.
There's no way to get in. All you do is
damage your spots. Anyone who knows me knows that. I
think that's total bunk. I look at it almost exactly
the same way I look at it early season. There's
probably a way to figure out a spot to have

(01:04:21):
really good morning hunts, But you got to think about
a couple different things. Where do I go to catch
them staging, or how do I get close to their bedding.
You're probably not going to get in on a food
source in the morning and be able to hunt it
very well. You're going to blow everything out of there.
You don't want to do that. So you want to think, Okay, well,
I know they feed in this field, where do they
go back to bed? How do they travel? How do

(01:04:41):
they get there? The main part of finding a spot
to bowhunt a late season deer in the morning is
all about your access. You got to figure out a
way to drop in there. You got to figure out
a way to use a creek, you got to figure
out some way to come in from a direction where
you're not going to alert the deer. And then you're
talking more open woods than you've had all season. You're

(01:05:04):
talking deer that are cagey after the gun season, after
a bunch of weeks of bow hunting. You're talking about
deer that are not gonna put up with a bunch
of mistakes. So your access is really important. With any access,
you're thinking about the wind, of course, but late season
you're also really thinking about the sounds you make. It
might be dead calm, you might have a little frost

(01:05:25):
you might have a little snow, little ice, you might
have just frozen leaves. You know, how far away can
you park so they don't go, Oh, there's a truck
park right up here. Now I heard him get out.
Now I hear him walking through the woods. You got
to think about how good their hearing is and how
calm the conditions are. Really, pay attention to the forecast.
If it's gonna be dead calm, I'm probably not gonna hunt.

(01:05:47):
Even if I just summon my inner ninja and I'm
sneaking through there, really well, I'm gonna make more noise
than I want. Am I gonna get a little bit
of rain? Am I gonna get a little bit of
wind like I have here right now? Am I gonna
get something to help me out to utilize that spot?
Don't give up on mornings in the late season. If
you have a chance to hunt, it just takes a
little detective work to make sure you have that situation

(01:06:08):
and you know how to hunt it.

Speaker 3 (01:06:09):
All right.

Speaker 2 (01:06:10):
There's Tony's take on the morning hunts in the late season.
I want to circle back to this kind of wait
and see approach one last time and explore what to
do if you don't get that weather, because for many
people the late season is find them wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
strike when it's right. But what happens if you wait, wait, wait,

(01:06:32):
wait and you never get the right moment. What if
you never get that big call from What if you
never get that big snowstorm.

Speaker 3 (01:06:38):
Here's what Don Higgins does. Here's his thoughts on what
to do when you don't get the cold weather that
you want during the late season.

Speaker 5 (01:06:46):
Well, I don't hunt very often, that's for sure, because
I'm hunting the biggest bucks I can find, and a
lot of times that means that I'm not looking at
things from just a one season perspective. I'm looking to
kill that beer and if it happens this season, great,

(01:07:08):
But I don't want to go in and tip him
off when the conditions aren't right. Next year, he could
be twenty inches bigger, and if you've educated him, you've
just made him. You know, three times it's hard to kill.
So a lot of times, you know, if the weather
isn't perfect, I'll hunt secondary locations. I will stay out

(01:07:28):
of my prime locations, and you know, I might watch
a feeding area from a distance just to see if
there happens to be a buck coming out before dark
and one that i'd want to target, which is very
very rare for that to happen. But I'm not one
just to sit home either. I've got to be out
there to them something. So I just as soon sit

(01:07:50):
back and watch from a distance and see if maybe
there's a buck coming out that I wouldn't expect, you know,
under those conditions. But you know much your bucks are unpredictable.

Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
All right, And I would just add to that that
you know, you always have to think about timing available
right in the implications of you know, how you might
educate deer. So if you are waiting and waiting for
the right moment but you never get it and then
you just don't hunt that deer at all, well then
you had zero percent chance to kill it. Here anyways,

(01:08:22):
the whole idea here is that you're trying to not
hunt so much on days when your odds were low
that it impacts your chances some day later when the
odds are high. But if you never get that some
day later, what was the point of avoiding all of
those lesser hunts. In the end, you have to eventually hunt.

(01:08:42):
You have to get out there and try. So it's
just a matter of finding that the best available.

Speaker 3 (01:08:47):
So maybe the best available is not the mega cold front.

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
Maybe the best available is like, hey, you know, all
I have left is this week or these next two weeks,
and I'm not.

Speaker 3 (01:08:55):
Going to get that front.

Speaker 2 (01:08:56):
But I do have four or five days here this
coming weekend when it's like Okay, it's not great, but
it's not horribly warm.

Speaker 3 (01:09:02):
That's when you go.

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
Then you just look for what's your best chance, what
are your lowest odds for this being a swing and
a miss, and then go take your chances. And I
think maybe Jeff alluded to this or someone did earlier.
But you know, if you can set yourself up in
such a place that the odds of educating deer are
really low, you know, if you have that amazing access,

(01:09:23):
if you have that smart exit plan, if you can
sit in a place that you've got a very safe
place for your wind to blow. If you can do that,
then you might have a situation where you could hunt
over and over and over again. I know that Jeff
Sturgis has talked about doing this in gun season. He
sets up in late season locations for gun hunts quite
a bit away from where the deer is gonna come
out quite a bit away from that best stuff, just

(01:09:46):
within gun range, so that he can actually hunt a
larger number of days in the late season and give
kind of the roll of the dice, enough rolls for
that big buck to finally show up. So not just
hunting the single best weather day, but instead maybe hunting
seven of those days when some of them those days
are great, some those days are okay, but you're giving
yourself a chance to be there when the magic finally happens.

Speaker 3 (01:10:09):
But that only can work if you.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
Have that really really safe, bulletproof location that's well prepared,
that's well planned out, that's not going to get you
burned over and over and over again, because if you
get burned several times, these deer are going to catch
on very quick, quicker than any other time of the year,
and you're simply not going to get any more chances.
So that's kind of the key thing to be thinking
about this time of year.

Speaker 3 (01:10:41):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
Not everybody has this situation. Not everybody is going to
have some private land where they could build a sanctuary
or plant food plots and have crops up for deer.

Speaker 3 (01:10:51):
Not everyone is going to have a lease where there's
limited pressure, there's going.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
To be some folks out there. I've been in this boat.
My buddy Tony's been in this boat. I know many
of you have been in this boat where you just
don't add that and then you're just searching and searching
and hoping to find a gem out there. And that
doesn't mean it's gonna, you know, be impossible. That doesn't
mean that you can't have late season success during you know,
or on public land or on by permission stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:11:18):
You definitely can.

Speaker 2 (01:11:19):
It just requires a little bit more work and trying
to find these things out in the real world. So
I want to play for you a couple more quick
takes from Tony as he breaks down number one, why
hunting public land in the late season isn't as bad
always as some people think. And then finally, what to
do when you don't have one of these dynamite built
in food sources that we've been talking about so much.

(01:11:40):
So two quick takes here from Tony on public land
and hunting in the areas that aren't you know, carefully
managed and manicured for late season.

Speaker 7 (01:11:49):
Probably ninety nine point seven percent of the late season
bull hunting advice has come from people who have awesome
properties to hunt. If you're a public land hunt or
it might make you feel like you don't really have
a chance in a late season, a lot of people
just won't do it. But I'm here to tell you
some of the best late season hunting I've found in
my life has been on public land.

Speaker 3 (01:12:11):
I usually do.

Speaker 7 (01:12:12):
Sort of a quick turn and burn scouting trip. I
just want to find fresh tracks. I want to find
those trails that are pounded. I'm not looking for a
big buck sign right now. I just want to see
evidence that deer living there. The second thing you got
to think about with this is what's going on out
there right now. We always kind of think that public
land is worse than private land, But there are a
lot of areas where some of the best wintering cover

(01:12:37):
is on public land because it can't be farmed. Even
though those properties might be okay for most of the season,
they really become something special when the deer opportunities are
so limited to get into good cover to survive in,
and so in some ways public land can be even
better than you would expect in a late season. One
thing that I know about public land in a late

(01:12:59):
season is everybody's thinking the same thing. This is gonna suck,
This is not going to be fun to hunt. I
don't want to go do it when I know all
the deer been blown out of there or shot out
of there. I've found that I can have so many
of these places almost to myself. It's almost like having
your own private spot to hunt. At least ninety five
percent of the hunters have given up. That's a big advantage.

(01:13:21):
If you're sitting there and you're looking at the clock,
kind of wine down on your hunting season and you
only have public land, or you might want to go
check out some public land do it like.

Speaker 3 (01:13:29):
You can have.

Speaker 7 (01:13:29):
Amazing late season bow hunts if you go in with
the right mindset and you spend a little time trying
to find those deer concentrations. The traditional late season hunting
advice is to find that food source, sit on it,
and wait for the deer to come out. Most people
don't have that, and not every food source is created equal.
When you're thinking about a late season bow hunt and
you don't have that perfect food source, it doesn't mean

(01:13:52):
you're out of the game. Deers still have to walk
from the food to their betting areas. They're still going
to mill around, they still might browse. There's still a
lot of opportunities. You might be hunting thousands of acres
of timber and not have a destination food source within
three miles of you. Does that mean you're out of
the game. Absolutely not. The first thing you gotta do

(01:14:12):
is you've got to analyze your situation.

Speaker 3 (01:14:14):
What do you have to work with. Do you have.

Speaker 7 (01:14:17):
Access to a property that they might be betting in.
Do you have access to a transitional property if you're
in that big wood situation. Do you have some mast
they might be on. Do you have some brows they
might be on. A lot of times with hunting, we
kind of focus on the negatives. What are the positives, like,
what are you working with? The second thing you got
to do is figure out where deer like to walk.

(01:14:38):
When I'm sitting there and I don't have that destination
food source for whatever reason, I kind of go back
to this mobile strategy.

Speaker 3 (01:14:45):
Of observe, move, observe move.

Speaker 7 (01:14:49):
Those deer in the late season, even if they've been
really pressured, they'll start to mill around, they'll browse, they'll stage,
they'll stay in the cover, But if you've got good
buy ando and you've got a good vantage point, you'll
probably pick them up. I know these deer have to
walk to get to food. I know they have to
walk to get to where they're going to bed. Maybe
in the right situation, they're gonna have to walk somewhere

(01:15:10):
to get water. Depending on where you hunt. If you're
down south, they're going to give you something to work with.
You got to go in with the idea that the
food source stuff that's for the people who have a
thousand acres in southern I would to manage. You don't
have that, And so you can get into the woods
start watching them. They'll give you something to work with.
Then the next step is to figure out how to
get in on them a little bit closer. The other
thing that you can do here, and I do this

(01:15:32):
a lot in the late season, is I start running
cameras a lot more. I'll mount them high up in
a tree with a camera, mount angle them down on trails,
and I can couple that with what I actually observe
when I'm in there, and I play it safe, and
you can start to pin down where those deer are
killable when they're not on that food source that you
can't hunt or that you don't have, So don't give

(01:15:54):
up on your late season hunts. If you don't have
that food source, figure out a way to get dialed
into the current deer move then work your way in
for the right setup. This can totally be accomplished if
you're really careful about it. You will get on those
deer and you will be successful just by figuring out
where they like to walk.

Speaker 2 (01:16:12):
All right, now, I want to share one final alternative
set of ideas for the late season, because I think
much of what we talked here is kind of your
standard late season December January hunting style.

Speaker 3 (01:16:26):
Right. You don't have to do it this way.

Speaker 2 (01:16:29):
There is another way that I have dabbled in, I
have tried, I've learned from some folks on and is
very fun, very interesting, and very compelling if you have
the right set of circumstances, and that is tracking deer
in the snow. Tracking deer in the snow. Typically this
is something done in the big woods. This is you know,
Maine is famous for this. I know people do this

(01:16:51):
in northern Minnesota, northern Wisconsin, northern Michigan. I know people
can do this in Pennsylvania, but really anywhere you have
snow in some space to roam, some space to follow deer.
So if you have some either big parcels of land
you own or public land that stretches a decent bit,
if you have snow, you can follow deer tracks in
the snow during gun season, if you have that late

(01:17:13):
firearm season, or maybe your gun season doesn't open untill December,
and you can actually follow deer right to where they
are and get a shot them, or you know, some
of the things from hell I'm going to share with
these excerpts from hell Blood, who's kind of the modern
day og when it comes to tracking deer in the snow.
There are things you can learn from tracking deer in

(01:17:34):
the snow that even if you are bow hunting, you
can use that to your advantage to set up in
some of the ways we talked about. So you can
go in and let's say you just don't know where
these deer are right now, you have not found a pocket,
you don't have that amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:17:48):
Spot like we've talked about.

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):
But maybe you can backtrack a deer in the snow
and find where they're moving, find where they're betting, find
where they're heading to feed, and yeah, you just made
this aggressive scouting move today, probably going to blow things up.
But again back to John Eberheart's take a couple of
minutes ago, maybe doing that just once you can learn
enough to then make some smart hunts later in the
late season. All that said, I mentioned hell Blood. Hell

(01:18:13):
Blood is the author of a number of books. He's
done a lot of films. He's an outfitter up in Maine,
tremendous deer hunter and deer tracker.

Speaker 3 (01:18:21):
I had the great privilege.

Speaker 2 (01:18:23):
Of getting to spend some time with him a few
years ago and actually get to go to his camp
and go out in the woods with him and have
him teach me how he did this. And I got
to watch him for a full twenty four hours, not
full twenty four but a full day of hunting to
see exactly how he tracks deer and kind of learn
his style and approach to that. So what I want
to do here is play for you a quick kind

(01:18:43):
of overview of some of Hal's high level thoughts on
tracking deer in the snow. This is a short video
that we produced when I was there.

Speaker 3 (01:18:51):
Visiting with him.

Speaker 2 (01:18:52):
And then I'm going to kind of give you a
very short rundown of some of the key lessons I
learned from him, and then I would suggest if any
of this is interesting to you, to go and listen
to the two full podcasts that I did with this
or did with him on this topic, or check out
the episode that I filmed with him of our show
called Deer Country. So just in advance, I'll tell you

(01:19:13):
podcast episode two oh three and episode four ninety seven
are the ones that you want to listen to if
the idea of tracking deer in the snow is something
you want to learn more about. But first, a really
quick rundown of hell of three of his best pieces
of advice for people trying to learn to track deer
in the snow.

Speaker 8 (01:19:31):
I'm how Blood, and these are the three things that
I think are the most important tips. The track in
white tailed bucks. The first thing is is you got
to keep moving. I've had days I've gone all day
and not even pick up the big track.

Speaker 3 (01:19:45):
I want got to be.

Speaker 8 (01:19:46):
Willing to walk, maybe it's ten miles a day, whatever
it is. You're not willing to do that, you're probably
not going to be a tracker. You got to pick
up that track. The goal is to catch up to
the buck. Get where you can jump them, see him,
shoot them, whatever it is. The quicker you can do that,
the more time you have in the day to hunt
for that buck. Second tip, if you jump the buck

(01:20:06):
way to half an hour, sit down and have a sandwich,
do whatever you want, but way to half an hour,
let him settle down. If you go right after him,
he's thinks something's chasing him, and you're gonna run after
him all day. If you wait a half an hour,
he might lay down again. He might keep on his circuit,
go check, goes, do whatever he's doing in life. That's
the best time to kill a buck. The third tip

(01:20:28):
would be get in the mindset of the buck right
from the beginning. When I first get on the buck,
I'm trying to figure out what he's up to, what
he's doing, what's going on is life. It's written in
the snow for me. I gotta interpret it and react
to it. He might have some little quirk idiosyncrasy that
tells you he's going to do a certain thing before

(01:20:48):
he lays down. A lot of times it's feeding, but
sometimes it's other things. Try to learn that buck, and
as you're learning the buck get that track, you imprint
the track size and shape, and his feet made drag
in the snow. You internalize that in your memory, and
then when you get into all the tracks, you should
always remember which one is your buck that you're on.

(01:21:11):
It'll make it easier for you.

Speaker 2 (01:21:12):
Okay, so good stuff there from Hale. I'm gonna walk
you through at a very high level. The key things
that I learned when I walked out there with Hale,
walked in his footsteps and tried to learn how to
track deer. Number one was this idea of speed and
needing to cover a lot of ground because you simply
have to find a buck track, and once you find

(01:21:34):
a buck track, then you're in the hunt. Then you're
actually doing the thing. But because of that, there's two
things that he does. A ton of drives, a lot
of roads, drives a lot of backcountry forest roads, dirt roads.

Speaker 3 (01:21:44):
Two tracks.

Speaker 2 (01:21:45):
Anywhere he might be able to cut a track and
find a relatively fresh track in the snow, he's doing that,
or and I think he prefers this actually goes off
in the woods and walks, loops, walks areas that he
knows historically have been good for deer movement and kind
of walks through funnels or deer concentrating topography where there's
a good chance that a buck might have cruised through

(01:22:07):
covers lots and lots of ground until he finds that
track he is looking for. And I'm going to read
you an excerpt of how he thinks about tracks. But
he's looking for a big track that indicates to him
it's a mature buck. And then he's looking for a
relatively fresh track. Best case is that he wants to
find a track from the night before. So he's out
there looking for a track that happened in the dark

(01:22:29):
the previous evening or early that morning. What that looks
like for him. The thing that's stuck with me is
that he's looking for a crispy track. So he's looking
for the edges of this track still having crisp, sharp
lines and edges to them. If you touch it with
your fingers, some of the snow might actually still just
like kind of fall down. You can just see like

(01:22:50):
a fresh track in the snow. It's it's really hard
to describe with words, but if you were standing out
there in the snow, and if you took your hand
just like flick some snow. You would see crisp lines
where your fingers went into the snow. But then you
would actually see crisp little snowflakes, some bunches of snow
and stuff scattered on top of the snow. And it's

(01:23:10):
very clearly defined. Versus an old track where you're gonna
see very rounded edges, things just start to deteriorate, they
start to round out, they start I mean, it's kind
of like they're melting, right, melting or freezing, but everything
gets rounded more so it's not as crisp. So if
you find that very crisp track, that's going to tell
you this probably happened the night before, This probably happened

(01:23:33):
sometime relatively recently, and Hal's mind, that was enough to
get after now here. Again, it's fast moving once you
get on that track. He recommended covering ground fast. You
don't need to be too careful. If that deer is
on the move in a relatively straight line, you should
be in a move fast covering ground because he might be,
you know, hours and hours and hours ahead of you

(01:23:54):
or miles ahead of you. You've got to catch up.
You're looking at two things to slow you down, one
if you see in his movements that he is circling,
that he is feeding, that he is zigzagging, that he's
heading up into an area of really thick cover, and
all of a sudden his straight line turned into this zigzag, slow,
circle around, stand around kind of thing that would be

(01:24:16):
indicative of this deer as getting ready to bed, then
you should slow down. Or if you have a situation
where you see that you bump to the deer, then
you should slow down. Two different forms of slowing down
Hell talked about to me. One would be if you
get in there and you see this sign of slowing
down and getting ready to bed, but you haven't yet

(01:24:38):
spooked him. This is when he recommends going into what
I think he called like the death creep. This is
when you really slow down. This is when you are
very careful not to make noise, not to make big movements.
This is when you're scanning ahead of you and trying
to pick apart the terrain and trying to see that
little flicker of a tail or that gleam of an antler.
You do the death creep to hopefully not spook that

(01:24:59):
deer and hopefully lucky enough that you happen to see
it before it sees you, then you can pull up
and get a shot. In many cases that doesn't happen,
though you do spook the deer, and you're gonna come
up and you're gonna find a bed, or you're gonna
find where the deer kicked up and ran off, and
you're gonna see mud and dirt and snow kicked out
behind and then tracks changing from walking tracks to now
bounding tracks when you see that. Another key thing, and

(01:25:22):
Hall mentioned this in that YouTube clip, this is when
you take the sandwich break, his kind of famous sandwich break.

Speaker 3 (01:25:27):
Take thirty minutes, sit.

Speaker 2 (01:25:29):
Down, relax, give that deer time to run off and
slow down and look behind him and not see something
coming after him, and then feel safe again and resume
what he was gonna do. As Hell discussed, if you
don't give it that thirty minute break, you're probably just
gonna push that deer further and further, and he's gonna
bound and.

Speaker 3 (01:25:47):
Just kind of leave your life. But if you give.

Speaker 2 (01:25:49):
Him that time, he'll slow back down and you can
hopefully catch back up and get that second chance. So
those were the key things that I took away from
Hell's approach to tracking deer in the snow. Again, this
is obviously not comprehensive. Go and listen to episodes two
oh three and episodes four ninety seven of the Wired

(01:26:10):
Hunt podcast. Look up My Dear Country episode in Maine
with Hal. There's so much to learn from him and
others like him.

Speaker 3 (01:26:18):
They've got a.

Speaker 2 (01:26:19):
Podcast, they've got all sorts of great resources. So if
you want to learn about tracking deer in the snow,
which is a really fun thing to consider in the
late season, go and check those out.

Speaker 3 (01:26:28):
I've gotten a kick out of it.

Speaker 2 (01:26:29):
I want to do more of it in the future,
and I think there's something that all of us can
learn from when it comes to studying tracks, learning about
deer tracks and really getting to not only following their
footsteps and try to shoot a deer like that, but
also just like learning how to interpret tracks in general.
So that mind, I do want to read you a
little excert here from Hale's book Hunting Big Woods Bucks.

(01:26:53):
He's got a lot here about tracking deer in the snow.
I'm just going to pick out a couple little bits
here about what he looks for in to help them
determine if it's one worth following. So he says, when
I look at a deer track, there's three things. I
want to determine the size of the deer, if it's
a buck or dough, and when the track was made.
The first thing I look at is the size and

(01:27:14):
shape of the track itself. Keep in mind that when
a deer is walking, the rear foot is placed directly
into the front footprint, so the track you see is
the rear foot. Keep in mind also that the rear
foot is smaller than the front. If the track is
two and a half inches wide and three inches long,
and the dew claws are half inch outside of the
hoofs is most likely a mature buck. I personally like

(01:27:36):
tracks that are three inches wide, as they are usually
made by the old monster bucks. I don't recommend that
all hunters hold out for what I call a three
by three track, as in most places these tracks are
few and far between. As I noted earlier, bucks from
different areas have different size feet. The sizes that I'm
referring to are the northern boreal forest bucks of northern Maine.

(01:27:56):
Make sure you know what's realistic for the size of
foot on the bucks in the area you're hunting. The
shape of a track can also help you determine whether
or not it was made by a mature deer. As
a buck gets older, his feet will tend to flatten out.
This will cause the dew claws to show more. Even
in a minimal amount of snow. A mature buck will
have dew claws that show one to two inches behind

(01:28:17):
his hoofs, and they'll be noticeably.

Speaker 3 (01:28:18):
Wider than them.

Speaker 2 (01:28:20):
A mature buck's toes will often be rounded or blunt
in the front from where of the years. The print
of an older buck will appear to be square. This
is because they get older their feet splay, causing the
toes to be spread. This square shape will be apparent
no matter how deep the snow may be. The next
thing I look at is the length of the stride.
I like to see the distance between prints to be

(01:28:40):
twenty four to thirty six inches. This measurement can vary, though,
depending on how fast the buck is walking. Generally speaking,
the longer buck stride is the longer his body is,
which is a good indication of how much the buck
might weigh. Long bodied bucks will typically weigh much more
than a short bodied buck. The other thing I look
for is the stagger. This is the distance side to

(01:29:01):
side between the tracks on a mature buck body. Excuse me,
on a mature buck, this distance will be eight inches.
This measurement is an indication of how wide a buck's
body is and another indication of how much he might weigh.
As a buck mature is, his body and chest get wider.
If you find a truck a track with a twelve
inch stagger, you are looking at an old mossy horned

(01:29:21):
bucks track. The last thing I look for is that
the buck is dragging his feet in the snow. Mature
bucks have a tendency to drag their feet, and the
older they get, the more they drag them. I call
these old bucks cross country skiers. These bucks drag their
feet so much, even in an inch of snow. That
is when you see the tracks, it looks like someone
was skiing through the woods. I can assure you I'll

(01:29:42):
never walk past one of those tracks.

Speaker 3 (01:29:45):
All right. So much more you can take from Hale.

Speaker 2 (01:29:47):
On these books or the other resources I meant I mentioned,
but hopefully there's something to get you started and intrigued
in what you can take from studying the snow.

Speaker 3 (01:29:57):
So there is what.

Speaker 2 (01:29:59):
Is hopefully a helpful high level overview of the late
season conditions to expect how all these things impact deer,
the general approach to the learn, wait and then strike
approach to late season hunting, and then a couple alternative
ideas to consider as these weeks go on. And I

(01:30:21):
guess I'll leave you just one final thing, and this
is similar to what I mentioned in November, and I
think it is especially important here at the end of
the year, which is remembering what makes this whole thing fun.
And the late season is a perfect time to lean
into that, because if you're like me, once you get
to December or January, you have been grinding at this

(01:30:43):
thing for many, many weeks and months. You're probably exhausted.
You've probably been beaten down. You've probably been on the
wrong side of the equation many many more times than none. Right,
even the very best hunters in the world still, you know,
they come out on the losing end nine percent of
the time. So when it comes to this part of
the season, it's very easy to be disheartened.

Speaker 3 (01:31:07):
It's very easy to want to give up. It's very
easy to not enjoy.

Speaker 2 (01:31:10):
Those cold, nasty days out there in the tree. So
because of that, my suggestion to you is double down
on the things that do bring you joy as a
deer hunter. For me, that means taking my kids out more.
The late season is when I get my kids, my
two sons out and hunt a lot. This is when

(01:31:31):
I really focus on dough hunts. It's a great time
to kill those before the season ends. We got to
do We've got to do our part as managers. But
it's also you know, when the mature bucks have been
seriously you know, limited, and how many are left, all
of a sudden, you can create a target rich environment
that you wouldn't have had otherwise by setting your sights

(01:31:52):
on dos. So it just makes every hunt more exciting
and more you know, raises your expectations for every hunt.
It's easier to deal with meat and processing and all
that because you've got the colder whether you need, you
can hang a deer up and leave it for a
while where you can wait until you get several deer
and then process them all at one time. So from
that perspective, it's a great time to shoot does. I

(01:32:14):
also highly recommend doing whatever you can to include your
family and friends during your late season hunts. This is
a great time to not only bring your kids out,
but plan to hunt with your dad or your grandpa,
or go to the family deer camper, invite your buddies
to your hunting property. That usually you just focus on
trying to kill a big deer, but maybe now is
the time to have everybody over for a big group

(01:32:35):
dough hunt. That's the thing I do every year in
the late season, kind of around Christmas or New Year's.
It's become a very fun tradition. It's a great way
again to be a good manager, but also to you know,
just enjoy the camaraderie and the community that hunting builds
for us. That sometimes we get a little bit too
focused on the deer to take advantage of so don't

(01:32:56):
do that. Make sure to enjoy these special days here
as deer season wraps up, with your friends, with your family,
with your kids, get out there, enjoy the heck out
of it. We have planned for, dreamed about, obsessed over
hunting season for all of these months, and then all
of a sudden it came, and then just like that,

(01:33:18):
it's almost done. So soak it up, really, really squeeze
the marrow out of the bone that is these last
few weeks of the year.

Speaker 3 (01:33:27):
I'm wishing you well. I hope this sets you.

Speaker 2 (01:33:29):
Up for a great last act or a great final
part of the year. Hopeing there's something here that's given
you a new idea or inspired you to get out
there and tried just a little bit more, to bring
some friends or bring your family out, because the late
season can be great, and I'm hoping it is for you.
So thank you for tuning in, and until next time,
stay wired to Hunt.

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Mark Kenyon

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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. 981: How the Experts Kill Mature Bucks in December and Beyond