The WHTL Podcast - Whitetail Deer Hunting Tactics, Stories & Expert Guests

Welcome to the WHTL Podcast, your source for Whitetail Deer Hunting Tactics, Stories & Expert Guests. In this episode, we're live from Michigan with Tony LaPratt.

We Discuss:

* Tony leaves his produce business to build a career in deer management and boot camps.
* Getting down in a buck's bed reveals the escape routes and sightlines that matter.
* A 4½-year-old buck requires a different approach than the young deer on a...

Every November, the rut turns into chaos. Deer are running everywhere, cameras stop making sense, and it's easy to bounce from stand to stand on a guess. Joe Miles has a system for that, and he's run it for the last five years.

Joe is the founder of ASIO Gear, the host of the Mission Whitetail podcast, and has been bowhunting whitetails for more than 30 years. In this episode of the MDRN Whitetail podcast, presented by Hawke Optics...

Welcome to the WHTL Podcast, your source for Whitetail Deer Hunting Tactics, Stories & Expert Guests. In this episode, we're back in the studio with Bill and Tyler Jordan.

We Discuss:

• Bill Jordan's hand-drawn camo pattern became Realtree at the 1986 SHOT Show.
• A Walmart buyer's request for 100,000 pairs of pants pushed Bill toward licensing.
• Realtree's NASCAR relationships helped a small company g...

Last week Scott Buckley made the case that October is wide open for hunters who pay attention to the weather. In this Recovery, Cameron and Trey Kerns go back through that conversation and pull out the parts you can use this week.

They break down how the timing of an October cold front changes deer movement for the days that follow, and what size temperature drop actually counts as a front. They get into w...

Welcome to the WHTL Podcast, your source for Whitetail Deer Hunting Tactics, Stories & Expert Guests. In this episode, we're back in the studio with Skip Sligh and Jack Huston.

We Discuss:

• Poor regulations not based on science and biology do more damage to hunting than technology.
• The North American Model of Conservation is why big game rebounded acros...

Scott Buckley left Michigan for southern Iowa chasing bigger deer, and the move paid off. He's arrowed a public-land buck at 170 inches at 8:20 in the morning on October 3rd, taken a wide 160-inch 12-point by catching him off guard on a rare east wind, and this season got his 10-year-old grandson Carson onto three bucks and eight or nine does. Scott hunts a mix of public land and his own farm in southern Iowa, and he's...

Welcome to the WHTL Podcast, your source for Whitetail Deer Hunting Tactics, Stories & Expert Guests. In this episode, we're back in the studio with Jason Michael.

We Discuss:

• The 2026 rut calendar: key October and November dates based on solunar movement charts.
• Southern hunters can add roughly one lunar month to every November rut date.
• For mature bucks, the wind should be almost perfect for him and almost wrong for you.
...

Steve Pinkston hunts for the wind every other bowhunter is taught to avoid — and he's killed his last ten bucks doing it. Cameron and Tre Kerns go back through last week's conversation to pull out what's actually usable: whether Steve's "light and variable" wind theory holds up the same way in hill country as it does on his flat Ohio ag ground, why food source changes don't move Steve's deer off their bedding, th...

Welcome to the WHTL Podcast, your source for Whitetail Deer Hunting Tactics, Stories & Expert Guests. In this episode, we're back in the studio with Johnny Stewart.

We Discuss:

* Early October is food-driven, so look for pockets of acorns, not a whole forest of mast.
* Probe into a new area a little at a time instead of hiking every inch and burning it out.
* Start e-scouting with the historic wind and focus on leeward,...

Steve Pinkston has killed three bucks over 200 inches — and never entered a single one in the record books. Owner of Hardcore E-Cycles and a member of the Whitetail Addiction team, Steve has spent over 45 years chasing whitetails with a bow, and since 2011 he's hunted the Ohio rut just twice. Since 2019, he hasn't carried a tag past October 13th — five of those kills came on the first sit, three on opening ...

Cameron sits down with Tre Kerns to break down their sixth early season trip to North Dakota: two target bucks, tricky winds, and hunting mature deer from the ground at 15 yards. It's an honest recap of what went right and what didn't. One buck ended up on the tailgate, one got away clean, and one shot didn't go the way anyone wants. Along the way they cover the lessons that will carry into the rest of the season and b...

Welcome to the WHTL Podcast, your source for Whitetail Deer Hunting Tactics, Stories & Expert Guests. In this episode, we're back in the studio with Brian Tanner.

We Discuss:

* Overcast mid-October days can create longer, more productive deer movement windows.
* Topography funnels cruising bucks when a setup accounts for wind and thermals.
* The Green Mile uses cover and barriers to guide deer across wide-open ground.

Aaron Olsen took 13 years to kill his first buck with a bow. Since then, he's hunted 10 states and filled tags in 7 of them. In this Recovery, Cameron sits down in person with Trey Kearns — on location in North Dakota — to break down the 5 things from last week's conversation that you can actually take into the woods this season: getting mobile, treating private and public land as two different tools, using trail camera...

Welcome to the WHTL Podcast, your source for Whitetail Deer Hunting Tactics, Stories & Expert Guests. In this episode, we're back in the studio with Adam Hays.

We Discuss:

• Hunt the wind that makes a mature buck feel safe, not the wind that's perfect for you.
• The best time to hunt a stand is the first time you hunt it, so save it for your best night.
• Let other hunters pressure deer on bad...

Aaron Warbritton of The Hunting Public joins the WHTL Podcast to break down the top 5 rules he lives by every season to consistently kill mature bucks — plus how he balances scouting pressure against the information he needs, how he finds the best stand on any property (public or private), and why he thinks trail cameras are one of the most overcomplicated tools in modern whitetail hunting.

This epis...

Aaron Olsen (Next Step Outdoors) took seven years to kill his first deer with a bow, and thirteen years to kill his first buck. Then something changed — in the last five or six seasons he's hunted ten states, filled tags in seven of them, and built a mobile, saddle-based system from scratch.

In this episode, Cameron sits down with Aaron to break down:

• Why getting mobile was the single ...

Welcome to the WHTL Podcast, your source for Whitetail Deer Hunting Tactics, Stories & Expert Guests. In this episode, we're back in the studio with K.C. Smith and Tyler Jones.

We Discuss:

• Hunt the calendar first and let the weather be the tiebreaker.
• The warm-up day on the backside of a cold front can out-hunt the front itself.
• A stable wind matters more to a deer's comfort than a dropp...

Don Higgins has been bowhunting for 49 years — and today he hunts fewer hours than at any point in his career. In this Recovery, we go back through the biggest, most usable takeaways from the full conversation: the discovery that changed how he reads wind and bedding forever, the ethics behind walking away from 19 out of 20 hunting tips, the patience it took to sit on a buck for three full seasons, and the mistake that took h...

Welcome to the WHTL Podcast, your source for Whitetail Deer Hunting Tactics, Stories & Expert Guests. In this episode, we're back in the studio with Brandon Barlow of The 70 Rule.

We Discuss:

• Up to 80% of daytime deer behavior repeats in the same areas year to year.
• Cameras over corn and field edges produce deer photos, not repeatable data.
• Browse damage at nipple height marks the beddin...