00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyon. This episode number one seventies seven and taking the show, Dan and I are debating the October low. We're talking late October hunting plans, we discuss analyzing specific buck tendencies, and we provide an overview of the latest on c w D. All Right, welcome back to another episode of the one. This isn't Wow, We're gonna starting. We're just starting. I've said the Wild Podcast so many times. Three. Welcome. That's the other show. This is the Weird Hunt Podcast, brought to you by Sik of Gear and thank goodness. Today it's just me and Dan because obviously I'm not on my a game. Um, but we are going to cover a lot of interesting topics I think and I hope. UM. My thoughts were that we try to cover as much as we can related to what's happening right now and what's coming up in the next week or two in our hunting seasons. Because the last really since the hunting season has started, we've had a guest on every week, so we really haven't got to spend a lot of time diving into our own stuff. You know, we kind of briefly touched on things in the beginning of each episode. So I thought, today, though, we're gonna have that time to dive into what we are doing and how that might be able to apply what you're doing in your own spots too. So I want to cover a lot of different topics. I want to talk about our mid October hunts and thoughts and plans. UM. I want to move forward into the coming weeks and think about the pre rut late October in the early November, what we're gonna be doing. While we're gonna be doing it. UM, I'll of course be talking about the latest of my hunt for Holy Field. UM. I want to talk to them about analyzing trail camera photos and passed encounters, planning surgical strikes, all that kind of good stuff. And then, of course, as we've promised for a few weeks now, UM, I also want to spend some time reviewing my learnings from the Michigan c w D symposium that we've been promising for a while though. So so I think it's gonna be a good one. It should be a fun one to given this just me and Dan, and we don't need to worry about going off the rails, you know, that's kind of what we do when it's just me and Dan. So I don't know, do you think that's that's gonna work out all right, buddy, I think it's gonna work out just fine. Perfect. Um. I want to tell you something I accidentally when texting with a couple of my buddies, couple my other hunting buddies. Um, for some reason, we mentioned your other your podcast, the Nine Finger Chronicles, and my phone auto corrected it, and it sent it before I realized the mistake. And now that the auto correction of your podcast is now what I will be only calling your podcast by because it's just perfect your podcast now. And as far as my buddies, you know, Ross and Peter and Corey and josh Uh and Andy, we all refer to your show as the nine Ginger Chronicles. That's really how it auto corrected. Oh wow, that's actually a decent name. That's pretty pretty appropriate, right right, right, So what do you think, man? Would you consider switching it? You know? Maybe, Um, I just got too much time into this one. I can't. It's like it's like my oldest daughter. Yeah, there's times I wish I could give her back, but I you know, I got too much money invested in her, so I got to write her out. Then. I just think there's a lot of upside. You're in a miss out on. There's so much potential. There's a whole untapped market of redheads out there who really want to connect with someone in that way. And I feel like the charts when they see the Nine Ginger Chronicles like you would you would capture the redhead market, no questions asked. But what happens if people like mistake it for hunting and it becomes about cooking like gingerbread, about pastries and and that kind of stuff. That's why that's what I don't want to happen. Do Do you have a skill set there? No? I don't. Okay, Yeah, you're right. I've heard you talk about how you cook venison for sure. That's funny. So nine Ginger Chronicles. That's my update for the Like, um, alright, what's new with you? Nothing? Man? Uh? You know, you know, uh, family and work basically uh for this Saturday rained the entire day um in in eastern Iowa and southern Iowa. So I was actually a photographer for a wedding. I do photography on the side and uh so the entire day Saturday, uh, I was gone from the family doing that. And then yesterday, right the best cold front to come through Iowa the entire you know, entire October um mid October. You know it's one of those still catching these deer from a kind of a somewhat consistent bed to feed pattern. Uh and uh I was at home for it. So you know, I was gone all day yesterday or on Saturday, and then I um my, like it's just frustrating, right, And I know there's so many guys out there that can feel this frustration when you know it is the one of the greatest days of the of the mid to early uh part of the season, and you just can't go out no matter what the conditions are, because the wife is stressed with the kids or you know, other stuff they're gonna be done, and and if you do go hunting, it will result in an argument and you just don't have the energy or want to deal with it. And you know, we always talked about picking in your battles and when it comes to our hunting addiction in relationships, and I decided to not even fight that battle yesterday and just hang out at home with the kids. So uh so, yeah, that that sucks missing that front. And I gotta tell you, yeah, as we're as you know, but for listeners, we are recording this Monday of this week. And um, this cold front that you just talked about, it hit yesterday and it and still today and I have heard from so many different people last night or this morning having killed bucks across the country. Um, Lee Lakowski just shot a giant um And Don Higgins, who was our guest on episode, did you see this, Dan? Oh? Yeah, I saw that. He one of the bucks that he called out. Yeah, he he He killed the buck that he said he was sure he was going to kill when we talked on the podcast. Well he got it done. Yeah, So that's crazy. The conditions were right for it, that's for sure. You get this cold front in October and high pressure and a little bit of rain or wind, and it's it's a good time to be in the woods. Like you said, I'll I'll tell you what that not only are if you have a deer on your property. Um, you know that are moving it. That would have been a great time to get out there and shoot something. However, a lot of deer are starting to pop up nocternally too. Um. If you had a buck that's let's say, you know, um m, I a for the first part of the season. You don't know where he's at. It's talking to my buddy Ben Harshein from hunter Maps. He had one of his target bucks that he's been chasing for like, oh three years come back to his farm and it's one of those things like it's automatic every year. This week he came back. I noticed the last time I checked my trail cameras there was a you know, an influx of three year old admit. So things are starting to slowly, you know, snowball to the best time of the year. Yeah. Man, it's that October ramp up period. I love it. I got a friend who same thing. He said, a buck he was keeping tabs on last year, hoping he'd make it this year, and he just showed up a couple of days ago. And I'm hoping that's gonna be the case. Uh, hoping that's gonna be the case. On some of my other spots. But you know what, I want to pause. Can we pause here? Let's pause because I want to talk about about all this stuff related to what's happening right now and what we're gonna be doing, what our buddies are doing. But absolutely, if we don't stop right now, we'll never get to the c w D conversation, right, that's right. So we have to talk about this because we've talked about it for two weeks in a row. We've like teased it. Um, So I just want to take like ten minutes because you know, it's just something I feel like we always need to make sure this top of mind, that everyone's informed of the right stuff. Um, So, chronic way seen disease all. Are you cool of making the shift here? When they do? We have to? Okay, we have to, all right, But I guess before we do that, this is probably a good place for us to pause for our sit gear story. So let's do that and then we'll get back to this conversation about c w D. For this week's sit Good Story, we're joined by Clay Forest, who tells us about a bird hunt that's about a little more than killing some doves. So I got a phone call from one of my good buddies who has a cornfield behind his house that was just cut and uh he invited me come up dove hunting. So I asked my three year old son if he would like to go with me, and uh, he was pretty ecstatic about it. So I got him up at four thirty in the morning. He beat me to the alarm. We got gas station donuts and chocolate milk, and uh we went to the to the field of hunts and dove and he uh had a great time. We got him a little Mickey mouse chair and we shot a few doves that morning and because the nice, cool, cool morning, and uh, we had a lot of fun. And uh he really enjoyed it. I mean he was picking up dove, hanging him out, smiling with him, taking pictures with him. Just uh he really seemed to uh to really get into what I was doing and wasn't scared of the shotgun blast or anything, and not scared of picking up a dead dove. And uh we had a lot of fun. He helped me clean them and put him in the put him in the ziplock bags, put him in the frazier, and really went through the full experience. So it's something I always remember because it was the first time that I took my son hunting, and uh, it's definitely something that's gonna stick with me for a long time. On Clay's hunt, he was wearing Sita's Core Lightweight hoodie. If you'd like to create a sikest story of your own, or to learn more about Sitka's technical hunting apparel, visit sitka gear dot com. So I went to this Chronic Wasting Disease symposium held in Michigan. This is a couple of weeks ago, and it was the first time an event like this has been held, like on a national level, even international. There was some people from Norway there as well. Um, the first time something this has been done. I believe it was two thousand and eight. They told me, Um, this is a really big deal. The top researchers from across the country were there. There representatives from many many of the different states that are being impacted by c w D right now, many other folks from UM state agencies and conservation organizations, and uh even the captive serving industry. There are people kind of from all all sides of this issue were there. To talk about number one, what's the lasts on the science, what do we know? What do we not know? And then on day two it was taking a look at Okay, how do we how are we all trying to combat this, what's our game plan to deal with to handle um, to try to live with or contain or try to do something about CWD. So that was what I went to and got to listen to with live really interesting conversations. So one of the big things coming out of that though, was just the fact that all these studies have been done. Um actually the social side of it, so surveys and things done two hunters in the general public to try to see how well people actually understand CWD, and there's a pretty good, um, there's a pretty good level of awareness, like if you don't remember all the specific numbers. But when they surveyed hunters, most hunters had heard of c w D. But after that, there was a ton of people didn't really know the details of it. People didn't really know if it mattered or not. People were unsure of what to do about it, what it meant for them, why it was such a big deal. There's a lot of questions there. So it seems that people have heard of this thing, but there's still a lot of misinformation or misunderstanding when it comes to what that actually means for us as hunters, etcetera, etcetera. So I wanted to like run through, like review a high level set of like facts about c w D UM and then touch on a few of the things I learned or that I was reminded of the symposium um and then Dan, I guess, as you have questions or thoughts on all this, you know, let me know or jump in and I'll see if I can recall anything from from the symposiums that I can share in that front. So sounds good. So c w D. C w D is an acronym for chronic wasting disease. It is a disease that's caused by misfolded protein in an animal, in a organism, and they call this a preon p R I O N. When you have this missfold the protein, when you have this disease is essentially an attack on the brain the neural um system within a deer or other species that might have this disease, and it is always fatal. C w D is transmitted both directly and indirectly via the environment. So what that means is a direct transmission of c w D is something that can happen between deer to deer, so by saliva, blood, feces, urine um, anything like that, when another infected animal, when an affected animal comes in contact with a noneth acted animal and those things transfer, there can be a transmission of the disease um indirectly, CWD can be passed on because these preons or prions can be shed from an animal that has cw D, and by that it means they can essentially go and get to any place that deer has been, so there can be infected prions. There can be these misfolded proteins leftover on plants or water holes or mineral licks or just the dirt um you know, where deer feeding or laying anything like that, and animals can pick it up by coming into contact with those external environmental things as well. So it's it's a disease that can be transmitted in a lot of different ways and you can't get rid of it. It's it's nearly it's almost impossible to get rid of these preons once they're on the ground or on a surface or in a you know, in a pile of mud or whatever it might be. So for those reasons, it's really concerning because if you get it where you're at, if you get in your property or your counting or your eight, it's it's nearly impossible to get rid of it. Um. There's a question asked to a panel that basically said, you know, are there any examples of an area you know up CWD getting established in an area and then seeing that, you know, the level of infection go down. And the researchers there said, no, there, it's it's never happened if CW gets an established in the spot right now, we've not found an example of it being eliminated or dealt with. It's it's been slowed. It's been um maybe what's the right word, stabilized in a in a way, so it's not so the infection right across an area or population isn't growing dramatically. There's been a few instance instances like that, like in Illinois. Um, but if it's there, if it gets established, you're just not going to get rid of it. At least we haven't figured out how to get rid of it yet. Um. There's been like some a couple rare cases where like one infected animal has been found and then if that animals like quickly killed one or two animals quickly killed. Like There was an example discussed in New York where this happened maybe eight or nine or ten years ago. They said they found an isolated case, they got rid of that animal, and it must have been a situation where that was the only animal that had been effecting so far, and they have not detected it anywhere else yet around there. But long story short, if you don't have c w D, you don't want to get it, and if you do get it, you need to take it seriously. UM. The issue, as we've talked in past episodes, is that it's easy for people to underestimate c w D because you don't see the impacts of it as noticeably as something like e h G epizoodic hemorrhagic disease, which is what many hunters have experienced, you know, back in twos and twelve or thirteen and even this year, UM, where these deer in a small localized area can get e s G and you can wipe out a significant number of the deer in an area. You know, fifties of all the deer in a little nook and cranny or a little nook you can get killed, you know, in a summer, in a late summer. That's not how CWD works. CBD incubates an animal for a relatively long time, and it moves somewhat slowly through hert as well. Um, but it is always fatal. So if a deer contracts c w D, if it doesn't die of some other cause, you know, by getting killed by hunter in its first year or getting hitting by a car or something, it will eventually be killed by c W It isn't always fatal disease. Now here's something that I did not know though. Um. There are three different genotypes in and this is as I as I understood, as I recall from from the speakers. There are three different genotypes seen in typical white tail populations, and a genotype effect essentially is just let's call it like a genetic um type. So there's three white tail within any set of white tailed deer like behind you know, your house, Dan, or my house in Michigan, wherever it is. When you look at all the deer behind your house, there's gonna be the kind of broke into three different categories. One category one genotype is about a d percent of most deer are going to be this genotype, and they're the most impacted by c w D. They contracted the easiest and the quickest, and they're the fastest to die from it. You've got a second genotype, which is you know, it's a much smaller proportion of your deer heard maybe it was something like ten percent of the deer out there are this of this type and that type. It takes a little bit longer for those deer to get c T b D and they live a little bit longer with it. And then finally there's this final genotype, this final category of deer out here, and that's a very miniscule number of deer have this, but they are the most resistant to CWD. So there are some of these deer that can live a much longer time without getting it, even if it's in the area, and if they do get it, they can survive a much longer time. That was interesting, but I never knew that there was these different genotypes that are impacted by c w D in different ways. So there's a lot of questions. There was a there was an expert there on the genetic side of things, and he was looking at what does this mean. Are we gonna see some type of short, sped up version of evolution at some point where that genotype that is more resistant, Um, nature selects for that more often because of CDD. There's a whole bunch of questions that there wasn't really any clear answers, but interesting um. The point being, c w D is going to impact a deer and kill it if it gets that disease. Another interesting thing I found is that the key thing to think about here that makes it different from e h D. Like I said, e h G can knock out a herd or knock out significant numbers of deer right away. C w D takes a much longer time to do so, but it can have and does have population level impacts. It just takes a while for that to happen. But once it happens, different than the h D, it's going to keep happening over and over and over and over again because it's something you're not getting rid of. So you know, when you get a bad outbreak for e h D in Iowa, you b lose a bunch of deer. This year, but the next year things come back. The year after that, things come back, the year after that, things come back. If you get c w D in your area, and you reach a high enough infection rate in your females, you're gonna start noticing declining deer populations that are almost irreversible as far as as far as we know so far. So we're seeing population impacts like that out in Wyoming. In Colorado, I believe, where they have been where they first discovered CWD, and they've been tracking for the longest, we're seeing deer herds declining now year after year because of that, And a researcher professor from Wisconsin said that there are parts of Wisconsin now that have had CWD long enough, the infection rates are getting high enough that probably within five years there will be parts of Wisconsin that are gonna be seeing a noticeably declining dear population. Pointed you know, specifically because of c w D and that infection rates about when of your female deer are infected, that's when this kind of thing starts happening. So that's a serious scare um obviously, that makes an impact to deer hunters. If your dear populations start going down, of course, but then there's always other concerning things when it comes to c w D. So number one potential risk is that if it gets infected, if your dearer gets infected enough for a long a period of time, you can start having a declining dear her. That's number one. Number two question, quick question before you get into number two. Can a dough with c w D get you know, get pregnant and does she pass c w D onto her newborn or is that something that the newborn has to pick up? Yeah, great question. It was something. It was something that I did not know before I went to the symposium, but we did hear all about this. Yes, there's several different ways that a new that that a doe can give c w D two its offspring. Number one, it can transmit c w D in utero, so while that faun is still in the dough, it can catch it can essentially be infective with c w D. Not always, but it can. And cw can be transferred to all sorts of different things within the the fetal ecosystem. I'm not sure what to call it, but um so, yes, it can, it can get it that way. Or number two, it can catch after being born, simply because of all that direct contact with an affected deer. And then also you see an increased um rate of infection within dope family groups simply because of that, because these deer are very close to each other all the time, touching each other, laying in the same area as etcetera, etcetera. UM, So that's a scary thing too. Um. Interestingly though, males have a three to four times higher infection rate than females. That was a note I took from one of the conversation or one of the speakers. Um. But yeah, definitely lots of ways these these deer can can transfer the disease. Unfortunately, now CW impacts deer populations or definitely will if given enough time without controlling them. The next question is can cb the impact humans. To this point, it has not been shown to jump from deer to humans. They have not been able to show anything like that happening, but there is They can't say it's impossible. There's there's a lot of questions still around it. It definitely has been shown to jump to other species. So there's been different lab tests and things done where they've shown the CWD has jumped to other ungulates that has been shown to jump to cats, and there's been a couple of recent studies with monkeys UM, one being spider monkeys, one being macaques. I believe it's how you pronounce it UM. And they had a number of different ways they were testing how this transfer could happen UM, and some of these tests. In some of these tests they would UM input some infected material directly into the brain of one of these animals and see if they could get it that way. And some of them they would feed an animal infected tissue and see if they would get it that way, and others they tried like cutting an animal and then putting infected material in that cut. UM. So there's some questions around whether or not the monkey studies UM actually are legitimate, if they actually would simulate UM a real world situation, So that there's a lot of question marks around that still. But the long story short is that there has been some ability to jump species, so that is that is a possibility. It does happen. UM has not been shown to happen with humans yet, but you still don't necessarily want to risk it. It's still like a concern that someday maybe we'll be shown to happen UM. So for that reason, the Center for Disease Control does recommend that if you are in a CW deposit area potential positive area, you really need to get your dear tested. And they've now most recently, I think this just happened after these monkey studies came out. Even though they're kind of maybe on conclusive inconclusive UM, they've now said that they do not recommend eating CWD positive animals. UM. Now here's another thing to think about is that while CB has not been shown to transfer to humans yet, UM and suppose, but you know it's it's not happening over in the UK UM. When there was this whole outbreak of mad cow disease UM also scientifically known as and I'd just like to say this word because it's it rolls off the tongue nicely. The technical term is bovine sponge offm and cephalopathy. I had to write that one down. UM that was shown to jump to humans in a variant of christ Felt Yakub's disease, which is a human version of this type of UM disease. So if it was able to jump from cows to humans by eating beef, UM could something similar which CWD is somewhat similar to b SC be could something like that happened to So the point of the all being said is that while it hasn't been proven to happen yet, we should be taking it very seriously because it's certainly not um possibility. Another thing that should be concerning is that CWD has been shown these prions, these infected disease produs, have been shown to be able to be taken up into plants. So the prion falls onto or is input into wheat or some other kind of plant on the landscape. UM. I can't remember all the specifics here, so don't quote me on these specifics. But there are a number of studies done in laboratory environments that show that certain plant species can take these prans up into the root system or the branches or the stems. UM. So that has a bunch of very scary implications if this ever started happening in a real world environment too. I think you can you can just um look at that and strapolate that out and see, like there's some scary ideas there if that ever happened. Um, if all of a sudden, your corn could somehow transfer these prions to end users. UM. Now, none of these things are happening in the real world yet, but tests have shown like there's this possibility. Um. So all this is to say that even though c w D may be in your area and you're not seeing a bunch of dead deer because of it, um or CWD has been in Wisconsin for you know, fifteen years or whatever is now, and you're still killing good deer and stuff. Um it is something that you just can't ignore because there's all these possibilities that are concerning and there are some things that are coming in the sooner short term future as far as population level declines that are going to happen, that are happening. So I bring this all up because a couple of things need to be I think reaffirmed for the white tail hunting community. Number number one. CWD is a real thing. This isn't a government conspiracy. This isn't something about politics. This isn't something that's being pushed on you by your state agency or by the car insurance companies or something sailing like that. Is a real thing. There are real scientists who do not have political biases, who don't have any kind of agenda. People that are just doing real science that are showing this is a real issue. So we need to take that seriously as well. Number two, Since we need to take it seriously, there's a couple of things that we as hunters need to be serious about following. A couple of guidelines that we need to be serious about following. If you're in a CB depositive area, most state I think probably all state agencies now, but I uh, state agencies in those areas typically are telling hunters that you really need to get your dear tested. And I believe this is a number just for Michigan. UM, but in the CW deposit areas in Michigan, they showed UM a survey show the only forty seven percent of people that are killing deer in that area are actually bringing them in to get checked in and tested. That's a horrible UM what's the word I'm looking for. I don't know. It's a horrible number of people actually follow me through and what they're supposed to be doing there. So get your act together, guys, like we need to get these things tested. We need to help the state agencies monitor what's happening, and also for your own health, it's good to know whether these deer that are getting shot our CW depositis so get tested. Number Two, follow the local laws. If if baiting or minerals or whatever and feeding has been banned where you're at, you gotta take it seriously. It's not just the state agency trying to make your life a pain in the butt. They're doing this for a reason. Follow those rules. This is a serious issue. Number two. Probably one of the most important things right now is that most of the UM, most of the spread of chronic wasting disease across the country has been tied to the transfer of either live animals or animal parts. As a hunter, you probably have nothing to do with the transfer of live animals. That's a deal with the servant industry, the captive servant industry. That's a whole another conversation. UM, that stuff needs to be regulated, needs to be dealt with. But from a hunter standpoint, something we do probably UM have some culpability for is this transfer and transportation of dead animal parts. So this is killing a back in Iowa and driving into Michigan with that dead deer in the back of your truck. That is illegal now, UM in many states, doing that taking a deer body or portions of the body across state lines is something that you cannot do legally anymore because of the worry of transferring that CW deposit material um. So now in the state of Michigan, it used to be just that you couldn't do that if you kill a deer or an animal in a CW deposit state. So if that situation I said, like, if you're killing in in uh Missouri CW DEPOSITI state, bring it back to Michigan. You can't do that. Now it's any state. At least the Michigan law is that if you kill another deer, or if you kill a deer another state, any other state, regardless of whether they have CWD or not determined yet, you can only bring de boned meat um, a cleaned hide, um, a clean skull cap, and antlers. So basically you need to figure out how to keep out your dear, how to clean your deer, how to butcher your deer, where you're at where you kill that deer, or you need to get a tax of dermist or meat processor to help you with those things. You can't just throw that thing in the back of the truck. Come back home. If your state doesn't have that kind of guideline, if you still can bring deer across state Steve lanes, excuse me, state lines. The recommendation is simply to be smart about how you dispose of those parts. Don't just you know, butcher your deer and then throw the spine and skull and everything just back behind the house and a pile. And you know potentially that if that deer was cw deposit and you drop that stuff off behind the house, all of a sudden, you could have just introduced c w D to a totally new place. So talk to your state agency or someone to fire out what the right way is to dispose of those things. And maybe it's bearing it, maybe it's I don't I don't know what the proper way is, um, but figure that out for your area. Make sure you are not unknowingly, you know, proliferating something that can really seriously impact where you're at and the future of hunting in this country. UM So that's my my high level CWD reminder. I would just encourage you all to to learn more about it, to stay up on it, to you know, to not let um. Oh, I don't know what you call it kind of like, um, c w D fatigue impact you, right, because like when CWD first starts show up in white Tails in the early two thousands in Wisconsin, there's lots of articles, lots of people talking about it, people are taking it seriously. But then over the years people kind of kind of tired of it. We've heard people ranting about cwt for so long. Now it's not that big of a deal. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, but we have to listen, we have to take it seriously. Um. We can't just pretend it's not happening and try to live live our lives just you know, continue on without actually trying to do the right things to deal with this as best as possible. Um. So that's my my rant for the day. And I just want to add something real quick, be aware of where you're getting your information, because social media is probably not the best place to get educated on c w D. And the reason for that is is I'm going to chalk this up to a learning experience. Reading a headline and then assuming that hey, c w D is making the jump to humans, right, which it is not currently making the jump to humans, but this article, you know, it's one of these articles that it's worded so that you would click on it, basically click bait, and then you get in there and you start reading. But I didn't, you know, I felt victim to this, and it's honestly embarrassing to say, but I went, holy sh it, c w D made the jump to humans. And and then I, you know, I went back and I read the article. But if someone didn't read the article or didn't go that one step further than you, then we've created a rumor mill. And once that uh hits, then we know that non hunters may hear that, and then it's like whoa wait a second, all dear or bad or the wrong kind of people here at Like, let's say a rumor gets spread about how c w D can make the jump to livestock or two egg and when that happens, or if that happens, deer hunting goes bye bye, because obviously there's more value in egg and livestock than there is the white tail. Yeah. Yeah, we gotta pay attention to it. We need to, like you said, make sure we're educated on it, be aware of the right sources there. There's so much bologna. These days on Facebook that people believe and that people share around and like, did you look at the source of this material? Like I see the Facebook posts with like photoshop pictures of something going on, like people getting all outraged in the comments section. I'm like, this is bo ugus. There's so much bologna out there. So so take a second to think about that. Is this a reputable source, is this science based or is this you know, someone who just has an agenda who's ranting about their take on it but really can't point to the real stuff going on here. Um, I think it's it's very clear when you get the best people in the world on this issue talking about it, it's very clear. This is an issue. This is a real thing. This is a new disease. This isn't something that's been around forever that all of a sudden we just really realize it is around. So some people have made that claim, they said, well, this is this has been around forever, we just just recently noticed it. It's not a big deal because it's been around for so long. Everyone's just you know, making it up to be more than it is. Um. That question was asked and when the panel discussions, they said no, we don't believe that's the case because when we find c w D, when we first identify c w D in in an area, the way the disease moves through the herd and the way the animals UM react to it is spot on exactly with what you see with all new diseases popping up in an area, Like this is what happens when a disease, when a new disease comes into an area, This is not what it looks like if a disease is in an area forever. So so this is just something we gotta we have to look at as um as as realists and look at the practical implications of it and make sure we're doing what we count as hunters to move in the right attraction right. Absolutely. And then for me it's also I don't want to I don't want to like stand on a stoapbox box and preach, but I don't think that the hunting industry itself and the people who are in quote unquote leadership roles within the hunter hunting industry UM are are literally doing enough UM. And there are people in the hunting industry who are part of that group who think that c w D is a joke or it's not to be taken serious, and that is a that's a bad thing because those they're telling their followers, you know, I don't worry about c w D. It's gonna you know that it's been around forever, or it's not it's not serious. Then we have these people spreading negative, a bad, bad information, and that pisces me off. Yeah. Man, there's a lot of that is disappointing, But I think you know it, just take a second when you hear something about c w D or anything really in the world today, take a look at that person who you're hearing this from that resource. Again, look at your source. Is this a real source that's looking at you know, real data, real research, real science, or is this uh Joe blow crazy guy who's just saying stuff or someone who has an agenda or who has you know, there's some behind the scenes motivation for him not to want you to think cw CWD matters. So I I certainly do not claim in any way to be an expert on this topic. I'm not a scientist, I'm not a researcher. But all I'm trying to do here is is relay the information I got from those people who really really do know that they spend their entire lives looking into this stuff. And um, it's no joke. So real quick, we're did they say how this disease came to be? I mean, is it is it part of an evolutionary process or is it actually you know, just like pop it came up? And because didn't it start in mule deer they first they first found it? Yeah, and mule deer populations in in Wyoming or Colorado, one of those two states. And and no, there did not seem to be an answer as to how how it first comes about. Um, it's likely from if I remember right, I think there are some hypotheses around it likely being like a freak mutation of a of a protein, and that you know, once that happens, then it can be transmitted. It's just gone from there. And then you see, you know, it's not like something that has just started in one place and slowly spread into a massive mebook crossing the country. It goes in one spot. And then you can see how when we're transferring an animal excuse me, transferring animal parts, you just see these random spots popping up all over different parts of the country where you've got, you know, a shipment of deer, or someone brought a dead deer carcuss across or different things like that. Many times it's centered around these captive servit locations. I don't think that's the case pent of them, but I know that many times that's been what's happened. UM, Or at least that's what I remember hearing. Was there anybody from the servit industry that spoke. There was someone there from the industry, but they were there the second day and I was not there for that discussion, So I was there for the first day of the whole research day. I didn't hear what he had to say. UM. I did hear from them a couple of years ago at the National North the North American Deer some a couple of years ago, and the same guy was there at that time, UM, and in his angle was, yeah, we think it's a serious thing to UM. That's why you know, animals are getting tested in our facilities, etcetera, etcetera. UM, But you know, wild animals are just as much as a problem as well. UM. The interesting thing about CWD tests right now is there is no such thing as a negative result. So if we're testing an animal, whether it be a dead animal or live animal. Um, so what does that? I think it's called postmortem or prewartum or I don't know what they called it. But um, you can get a positive results, so you can say, yes, this dear is positive for CWD or you get a UM. I can't remember how they particularly phrase. It was like unconclusive or not. It was either positive or not positive. But that doesn't mean that it's negative. It just means we couldn't detective being positive. But it's not a guaranteed negative. UM. So that's a whole another concerning thing too. So you can get you can get false positives or you can not detect it, but that doesn't mean that deer doesn't have it. It's just simply we haven't been able to get on positive or negative test. It's it's positive or not detected, which okay, hopefully it's not positive, but we're not sure. Right. So that's that's the scary thing because let's say they find out a new way of doing it and then they realize, uh, now there's way more dear that have it right than what we think. Right, So there's lots of question marks, still lots of um. You know, just there's just we need to pay attention. To the point of me saying all these things that we just need to take it seriously. We need to pay attention, We need to stay educated, and we need to support our state agencies when they try to make the right decisions to help us manage to manage the issue in an area. So I don't have all the answers. I don't know if anyone does, but but if nothing else, we just need to be supportive. We need to pay attention, and we need to not um, I don't know, not bury our heads in the sand. Let's talk about fun stuff they do. I'm down for that because we we had a good ten fifteen minutes here of of a downer on c w D. But um, there's good there's good news in the world too. There's good news in the world too. It's deer hunting season. First cold front. First good cold front at least for a lot of areas of the country just passed through here yesterday and today. So that's exciting. Um, you were saying that Ben got his big buck on camera or that pork? Is that that one? Yep? Yep? Then got his He sent me, Oh, I don't know if I'm supposed to share that information or not, but I just did so. So uh yeah, a buckets he's been hunting for a while. Uh, showed back up on the farm, um that he actually hit last year and it ended up surviving. And then um uh, just like many of us, you know, you think about that deer the entire rest of the year, and finally he showed back up on trail camera basically on an annual pattern. So, so you haven't hunted since the last time. You had that like really good sit last weekend right where you saw that nice buck right right. What's what's your game plan moving forward? Though? Do you have Do you have plans? It's like coming with Well, here's the thing, like I'm debating with myself on how I want to handle this, Like you ever have have you ever done something because you've been pressured into it and it ended up being maybe like a negative like hey man, you should drink one more beer and then you puke all over Been there, okay? Or something like that. I saw along those lines. Um, so you know this whole talk about this October lull, right, like we kind of have different views on it. I do not. I don't believe in the October lull. I think it's it's dumb, and I mean in a way, there's just a little bit of a different, different thought on that. It comes down to an issue of semantics. I think it's like how we're talking about it. But let's let's argue this one out a little bit though, because I do take issue, not take issue, but I disagree with you maybe a little bit, even though I think we really do agree. But when you say the October law is is BS, it is in a way BS, but it is also not in a way BS. Because let me give you my perspective at least, and then you can tell me if you agree to disagree. The October law is not a biological reality. Research has shown that buck activity steadily increases throughout the month of October. So there is not an actual October law that is happening because of biology. But many hunters experience in October law. And I'm saying that this is this is a this is a reality that many people experience. But it doesn't have to be that way. Doesn't You don't have to experience in October law. But many hunters do. So my point is, Okay, yeah, if you're experiencing in October lull, here's why that might be happening. Here's what you can do to change that. Um And here's why I think you may be experiencing a lull at this time of year. Number one, because maybe the hunting pressure in your area has increased, which many cases is many times is the case, as hunting seasons opened in early October late September. Now these deer are changing their behavior because of that that hunting pressure or food sources have changed. So beings of matured and are getting harvested. Corns turn and brown acorns are dropping all their soft mass, trees are dropping, so there's all this influx of different types of food sources that might change dear behavior. Leaves are falling, the available cover is changing. So you've got these three changes in the white tailed woods that are causing dear to change where they spend their time, how they spend their time, and maybe how much time they spend during daylight. Those things are all changing in and around early to mid October. So for the guy that doesn't know those things, the guy girl who doesn't know those things, or the guy girl who doesn't know to properly adjust to those things, he's probably experiencing October law. He's hunting a spot, he hasn't adjusted properly, he's not seen dear, and he's just making things worse for himself later in the year. For that guy or girl, the October law is real and we need to either say, hey, here's here's why and how to change it. Or if you don't know those things, if you're not able to adjust, then yeah, you might want to follow the usual October law advice, which is to stay out, be careful, because if you can't properly adjust for those shifts, you are making things worse. Um. That is my take on the quote unquote October lull. I think you agree with all that, don't you. Yeah, yeah, I agree with it, except you know, back to the semantics part of it. I agree with it. But just like the lull, just stop calling it that. I mean. I don't want to. I don't like every time I even say that word, I get a little cringe in my stomach because it's like it's calling something something that it's not what I mean, I do know what It pisces me off because because then there's other guys who will sit out there and defend it, like, hey man, I only have twenty acres, so I definitely see a lull. No, you don't, that's not a lull. Right, Just because you have only twenty acres to hunt, that doesn't mean there's deer. It probably means that you went in there too hot and heavy and bumped them out, or like we like we've already discussed, there's a change in in something. Deer are out there, deer are moving, Go find them and then set up on them. Boom done. Next topic. But what if um is that the right? Is that the right recommendation? Because if if um, if such and such person who is who has historically experienced a lull, So whether you like it or not, people call it that. So I simply I simply say, okay, let's if if people are going to continue to stay out ober law, which it's just it's entrenched in dear culture. It's a word that's out there. My at least my thought has been, yes, I will use that word because it's a trigger word gets people's attention. But then once they click into it, or they hear you say it or whatever, then you can educate them on the reality of it. Um. But that said, let's say there's someone who has experienced a law and you say to them, no, there's not a law, go in there and find them, right? Is that good advice for someone who hasn't already prepared for this, who doesn't know how the deer react, who doesn't know how they're shifting, to just go in and walk around blindly to find this at this time of year, I'm gonna say, in a way, you have to. And the reason because of that is, how do you know what you're actually hunting, right, unless you're just going out there to hunt? And like for me, I'm after a certain uh category of animal right. Um, my goal is to harvest a four year old. So in order for me to do that, I have to know where some of these deer are at. And one way to do that is to go in and set up observation stands and locate where these animals are, or run trail cameras and locate, you know, locate them that way. I guess, I guess the I guess there's a negative connotation with the lull and here, you know, I mightna get crucified for saying this is people who have not been successful. I think there is a lull. Does that make sense like they're using this as an excuse excuse, Yeah, well not necessarily. I mean for this time of year. So hey, there's a law. It's the lull. I gotta stay out. Well, if you don't know what you're deer doing anyway, you know, what's what's the point? You know, we all know that saying you can't kill him if you're sitting on the couch. So if you've never tried to hunt this time of year and you use that as the excuse, then that that's what. That's bad practice in general for anything, you have to experience failure in order to be better. And if you've failed so much this time of year by going in and locating them or or hunting, you know, doing you know, going in, then that's fine. You've learned, just like I've learned that next weekend it's supposed to be seventy five degrees. I know that you're going to be moving nocturnal and unless there's a reason for me to go out there and hunt, I'm not going to jump into my best spots. It's not because there's a lull. It's because the information provided to me is telling me what I should or should not do. So you don't think, well, would you disagree though, that the average amount of buck activity is better on November second than it is on October typically? Yep? Absolutely? And then would see And then you also just said that you would rather you know that buck activity on average might be better on a day of a coal front versus a day of seventy degrees? Would you agree with that that one more time? Would you? Would you rather hunt a big coal front day, a day or two after coal front versus hunted random day when it's seventy or seventy grees or something like that where it's been hot for a while. Right. So, so simply, what I'm trying to establish is that there are certain days that are better to hunt, and you would you would usually try to plan your best hunts. You're going to your better spots on the days that are better, right, And that could be either a weather factor or it could be a date of the calendar factor. Right, right? So would it not the necessarily bad advice for people that if you don't have a cold front in mid October, if you don't have something that's really going to get deer movement exceptionally well, and you don't have the intel if you don't know how the shift is happening, and you don't think that you can in some type of low impact way discover that maybe in those situations, it is better to hold off until the date on the calendar tells you that your odds are higher. Um, then they might be right now, even though yes, if you go you can find there are you're moving right now. But if you don't know where they're moving, if you don't have good conditions that might tip the odds in your favorite little bit, you might be making things worse for yourself. Um. Otherwise, right, yep, I agree, I I agree with everything you've said. However, when when it comes time to locate a deer, right, you're not going to locate a deer sitting on a field edge in you know when this when this shift is happening, right, Um, you're not gonna So I guess what I'm saying is, don't be afraid to fail. I mean, unless you know your property, unless you've been hunting a proper certain properties for like, um, I don't know, you know, ten fifteen years and you know, or even a year right and you you've really found out what these deer are doing. It's definitely okay. But what I'm saying is you're gaining nothing sitting on the couch this time of year if you don't know what your dear hurt is doing, if you don't know what the deer you're chasing or doing, because then you're going in what I feel is one step behind in the rut, and then you're playing. Then you're playing catch up on the other side of things. You might be going in there and educating deer right now, and then you're not enjoying the full impacts, the positive impacts of the rut, because you've bumbled around telling every deer the hey, I'm in the area. Right There's there's that chance, But I don't think the guy who I guess I'm a little bit more aggressive than most when it comes to I guess it's stylistic than at this point right where I feel. And again, I you know, this all comes back down to how much property you have, man, I have I have a couple of thousand acres, but I don't own it, I don't lease it, So in a way I'm kind of in the same boat as some of the other guys that are out there. I just I don't like excuses, and I don't like someone saying, hey, all I have is twenty acres Well, you can have twenty acres um, But who I mean is that because every other person and has told you know that you know to hunt, you know whether the drive I mean it kind of from this point it goes on to a bigger you know, those topics that we have for almost every episode, right it can it can spend spent off to that. I'm just I'm just saying, don't be passed. Don't be afraid to be aggressive this time of year too, because they're they're still out there. Yes, the value may maybe a little the value of that hunt maybe a little different. But if I get the opportunity to go out and hunt next weekend, and I'm debating going out and doing this just because I want to prove a point. I want to have an encounter so bad because I've I've had encounters in the past with mature deer this time of year, whether it's seventy five degrees or a cold fronts come through, I want to you know, it's okay to be It's okay to be aggressive this time of year, and the deer are out there and they are moving. You can't you can't. You can't locate a deer if you're not in the timber. Yeah, that's true. I think. I think though, a really important point you made there was what I'm on the ground you're working with. If I had thousands of acres of land, heck yeah, I'd be out there hunting all the time because who cares. I mean, like you've got other places to go. Um, But like the Spottom hunting holy Field, there's ninety acres, there's forty acres cover that I'm hunting basically, And if I'm hunting that all the time, trying fare out where he is, I'm never going to see him. So in this kind of situation, like you have to be very very careful about when you do go in those spots. So what I choose to do during this time of year, um, because I don't have the I don't as much as I know this area, I'm not able to get on that buck in daylight. Based on all the scout I've done the past, the historical observations trail cameras, etcetera, etcetera. So in that kind of situation, in my opinion, it's better to wait until the timing is better. But to your point, it is still worth hunting. It is still work because anything can happen. There are still good days, deer are still out there, deer moving. So I'm just spending my hunting time on areas they are lower risk where I'm not as worried about messing up my number one goal. Um some I'm hunting a bunch of public lan. I'm going to other states to do some different things. Um So, if you've got other spots to hunt, I highly recommend it them all about dig in there, find new spots to be aggressive. But if you, for whatever reason, if you do, only have twenty acres to hunt, and that's at this point, that's all you've gotten. Let's say, for that guy at this point, with the cards he has in his hand right now, maybe it is better to be safe and wait a little bit longer. Like you said earlier, that's not a great situation. Ideally, you would already have found other places you can hunt, or you know, public lan, or you get permission somewhere else. So you're not in that position. But if you are and you don't know how the shift happened, then yes, my recommendation would be okay if you have an accounted for the shift. If you don't have other places to go have a good time, you probably we will screw things up more than help. If you go blundering around right now, Wait until the cold front or an observation or a little bit later in the month, until things pick up even more. That's that's my personal take. I think we've basically just gone around circles on it, but we could. We could. I mean, I'm if I go out this weekend, and the only reason I don't go out this weekend is simply too and I want to go out really bad, But I also don't want to piss my wife off, right, and that technically that is the only reason why I wouldn't go out. If if I go hunting, I'm going to set up in an observation stand uh where I can see relatively good movement or find myself in a really tight little area with great access to you know, where I know the wind's going to be good. So if something does come by, um, it will you know within shooting light. I'll be there for it, um, But I'm not I'm not careless. I'm not gonna go hammering through the woods, you know, or or going into a place where the winds wrong or that has shitty access. You know. I'm gonna play it as smart as humanly possible, but I'm I'm not going to not hunt all right. So before we get too far into this new topic of talking about our upcoming plans, let's take a quick break to think. Our partners at White Tail Properties and Spencer new Hearth will take it from here. This week with White Tailed Properties, we were joined by Adam Hayden, a land specialist out of Ohio, and Edam is going to be telling us about how to develop a checklist as a property buyer. One thing that I would suggest whenever I you know, if I was going in to look at a property, I would sit down and I would just ask myself several questions, A, you know, how big of a property do I want? Be? Obviously what is my budget? And then you know I would go in to see like that, just detail else specifics, um, you know, and am I wanting to big open woods? Am I wanting crop fields around? Just depending on where you're at in the country. Um, you know, am I wanting water on the property? And if water is not there, do I have capabilities of putting upon the myself? Um? You know, there's just so many things that you can think about, um and write actually on paper and make a list that will help you being you know, help a buyer whenever they're looking at properties physically or filtering through them online. They can actually go through and eliminate properties or check off properties. Um. But then also just kind of keep a list. I mean, if you if you narrow what you want to look at down to three or four or five properties, and you have a checklist, even in an Excel file or something else, so easy to go in there and then check off and look at the ones that has hit more criteria than the others, and it would help you choose the property that's best for you. If you'd like to learn more and to see the properties that Adam currently has listed for sale, visit whitetail properties dot com backslash Hayden that's h A Y D E N. Yeah, And I think that's all. I think that's all important, that's all smart like, that's that's that's something I think everyone should be keeping in mind. So if you do get to go in this weekend, if if you get the blessing from from the powers to be UM, what's your game plan? Where are you hunting? What's uh used the observations stand? You have a specific area already picked out based on do you have some kind of rationale what you're gonna do? Yeah? Yeah, I I have what I feel is a really good area. So they're betting on these ridges, They're coming off these ridges, they're following kind of the terrain as a creek flows through and all the all the ridges come down and end in kind of this general area. Really good creek access, right, I can I can get in the creek and walk to the stand location. And this all is dependent on what the wind direction is. Right, So if it's like a straight north wind, I probably can't hunt it because my wind would blow too hard into where that betting area is. UM. I doubt we get the weather says that there's not gonna be any participitation for a while, So I doubt there's gonna be any type of UM wind with an east type of wind in it. So I really like this time of year off the betting areas just aways before the staging areas where the deer aren't congregated around you. If they do show up, they they're walking by you, so there. Then they go into this staging area, they're hanging out in there, they're already past you. And then they go into the the their food source. So wherever that food sources, it doesn't necessarily have to be an egg field, but um that betting travel corridor staging area, um uh food source that we kind of talked about. However, on this scenario, that food source is a is a either a clover field or a cornfield. And man, that's that staging area when I went and hunted it last time was packed, right, I mean the deer were coming off these ridges left and right. You know, I saw a really good buck there last time. And you know, I may need to adjust my stand location a bit, but I just feel I have really good cover to get into this this little area that's before the staging area and in between. It's like that travel corridor, a little area between betting and staging. And man, I think that that's it could be good any time of year, no matter what the weather is or what the temperature is It's just you're you're really close to the betting area. You can get in there and not disturb anything. I already have a stand hung for it, so I don't know. It's just if they're gonna move, they're gonna move type deal. It sounds pretty good. Yeah, I'm really good. Yeah. And then and it also depends on if the crops are up, because if the crops are up in another field, I think I might sit an observation stand and watch what is happening on the high part of this field, and I'm gonna look down this buffer strip and see if there's anything crossing, And if there is, then the next night I'll be in there with a running gun stand wherever that dear crossed if the winds are consistent. I love those kinds of areas. I love an observation stand type setup like that where you can just see a long ways and see what's going on and observe and adjust. That is a fun way to hunt. I'll tell you what. But here's the problem. Those are good. But what I and I'll tell this to people as a learning experience, don't sit. If you see something and it and you see something good, move in on that the very next opportunity you get. Because I used to be in the habit of thinking, okay, two times is a pattern, right, I needed something to happen two times to be a pattern, so I'll sit it. I would sit an observation area two times in a row. Well, typically, unless it's a south wind, winds don't hold true for forty eight hours. Right, There's gonna be some kind of play in them, So that deer could potentially use a different you know, trail or you know pattern to get from his betting to his food source if that's the hot food source at this time. So don't wait and hunt that second uh, that second night and do an observation stand If you see something you want to kill, you better be in there the next night. But then don't you hate it when you go and move to the other spot, and then that day you see him walk by where your standing was. Hey, the buck I killed in in two thousand and twelve. Um, I bet me and my buddy Ryan, he was the camera guy for me at that time. We tore down and set up within a five acre area probably twelve different times before I killed killed it that I didn't not that buck but before I killed a mature buck. Yeah, that's a lot. So you gotta I mean, you gotta be willing to work for it. But if you're looking for like a one to knockout punch, that that can happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's always the rub. And that's something I've struggled with. Two is it's known when to move and when to wait. And you know, you just never know that when you when you see something happen, did that is that an anomaly? Or is that happening for a reason? Or everything happens for a reason, But does that an anomaly that's not going to repeat itself or is there something that's going to repeat itself. I don't know the answer for me, but I definitely do know that's it's better to to sometimes make that move than sit and wait and regret it, that's for sure. So I will tell you this, okay, on the days that I sit in observation stand and witness a mature buck or what I'm going to call a shooter in my book, the days that I witness or from an observation stand witnessed a mature buck moving, and the days that I move in that next day. I bet you that the success rate of at least seeing him at a closer distance not necessarily harvesting him and killing him and getting him or getting him to come down the right trail, the success rate for me to just see that buck the next possible day is higher positive than it is negative, even if it's only like fifty five to We're getting to that time of year. Well, that kind of stuff is gonna happen a lot for a lot of us. Uh, the ramp up is happening. So you are possibly gonnahunt this weekend and that's like the like the twenty second or twenty one and twenty seconds this coming weekend, and then the next weekend is what it's a wedding in Minnesota. I haven't hunted that last weekend in October for like four years and now that because it's either been trick or treating, gotta go with the kids, or it's been um weddings or something has happened and I don't get to get into that. And that's like one of my favorite times of year. It's when I start seeing the big boys on their feet, right, That's when that's when you can do that one rap and you see antlers, you know, turn on a dime and start walking your way where you rattle at something and they turn around and come to inspect. Right, they're not full blown rut crazy, but they're curious. And that's like one of my favorite times a year. Oh yeah, that's when the magic starts happening a little bit, right, that's uh. And and not only does the magic start picking up at that time of year, but also I just looked at the extended forecast and finally we got some cold weather coming in right with the beginning of that phase. At least for me in southern Michigan, it's been like in the set other than today, Today is actually pretty nice. It's like in the fifties. Um, but then it gets hot again for the next week and a half into the seventies all the way until next Tuesday and Wednesday, and next Tuesday and Wednesday's is dropping down like the fifties and even maybe like the forties. Finally, like a legitimate cold front coinciding with that last week of October. So I'm really excited about that because, as you know, as we've talked about, I've been holding off on hunting Holy Field until that time. Frame and hoping that a cold front would coincide with that time frame. And it looks like if the if the weather forecast stays true, which you never know if it will, but if it does, I'm going to be super super duper pumped for like of next week. Um so I'm jacked. I need to ask you some questions about this approach to holy Field. If you don't mind, please do Okay, So right now, when was the last time you trick your trail cameras with holy Field? I had picture of Woli fill one. I checked matrail cameras, um this past Friday, I think so Friday the Friday checked the trail camera. Okay, any any close to daylight activity? No? No, okay? Uh so he's all He's coming in in the middle of the night, right the only because I've had two daylight pictures of him in September. Everything else has been the middle of the night. Okay. So last couple of years, when has he started coming? Is he? Is he A? Is he out of there for morning hunts? I mean our morning hunts? A A no brainer because it sounds to me like where he's coming is a destination. Right, So if you were to drive a four wheeler or something in there in the morning, you'd probably bump them out absolutely. Okay, So this is an evening hunt scenario right until the rut, until the rut, and then I just I couldn't hunt this front area in the mornings in the ruck, but I can hunt other portions of the property in the rut and hope that I could catch him cruising around off of his you know, just look checking out different betting areas. But the two and again this farm just like where he lives, and then how I can hunt it. It's just a very very much so and We've talked about it at length in past years. I'm really really limited. I can hunt like all I can hunt the field that like, there's there's no I can't get into any of the stuff that he transitions through. I can't get to where he beds. I can't get into any of that stuff. UM. So, all I've been able to do is try to make the areas that he might come out to feed a little bit more appealing. Um And in past years I've hunted him in mid October, early in mid October, hoping I would catch him out there in daylight. And I never did, and so my hypothesis has been that I'm just wasting Maybe I've just been wasting my time and making it less likely that will ever come out there in late October when he does move in daylight more often. So my my plan this year has been unless I get something that tells me I need to change his plan, like unless I see him in daylight when I'm scouting, or get daylight pictures of him. If nothing like that happens, I'm just gonna be really really patient until his historical pattern tells me this is when he typically moves more in daylight, and if you hadn't been in there all up until that point, he should move in daylight closer to you even more than you've seen him in the past couple of years. Rights building. Okay, so then have you have you kind of mapped out or had like an internal conversation with yourself about his his travel patterns throughout the day when he does hit, like where he's coming in, out, where he's going, and hypothetically what he's doing when he's excuse me, not on your property a little. I mean, there's only so much I can figure because of you know, there's only so much that's happening on property. I can run cameras that I can observe, but I have to a degree I know some stuff, um, and I have some theories of of what he's doing, um, but obviously lots of unknown because I'm just I'm working with a very very tiny sliver of where he's hanging out. Okay, but I did I did this, I, UM, you know, I've been running his the trail cameras with Deer Lab and looking at patterns through that, and then I've also been keeping a journal entry of every single sighting I have of him. Well, today I went and I combined those two things together into an Excel spreadsheet. And so what I did is I took every single daylight data point, so either in the field observation of him during daylight or daylight trail camera photo, and I and put that into a spreadsheet. And then I mapped out the location, whether it was M or PM, what the temperature was, if this was a cold front sighting, so if this if this came after a temperature drop of more than ten degrees um, what the wind direction was, what the wind speed was, what the pressure was. Was this on a red moon day or was this on a moon on the edges day? So the two theories that some people talk about is that there's this moon overhead or underfoot. That's the red moon time frame that guys like Adam Hayes talk about. And then there's some guys who like to see the moon rising or setting um during the last hour of daylight the first hour of daylight. So I wanted to see if any of those things correlated with the daylight observations I have of him. So I have fifty four daylight data points to work with from two thousand fifteen. So there's yeah, there's it's the two other fifteen through now there's been fifty four times either I've seen him or I've gotten a picture of him. And I'm not counting like you know, if you get it, you know, if you get a burst of three photos during daylight and then he stays there for another two minutes. I'm only counting one picture from like every day, So fifty four different days that I've either had him seen or photographed um, and then I like tried to match it against any one of these things. So is there any of these factors that correlate with him being daylight active, because again, I'm just trying to see is there anyway I can better fine tune when to start going after him or which days to to go to the best spots, just because I think you know last year, right, I saw him a ton, but only a couple of times was he ever actually on the property I could shoot him on. Very often he was just back in the cover and stuff. So I'm just trying to be really careful about those times I strike so that there's a little bit better chance that he is in my side. UM. So I found that there wasn't a really strong correlation to the moon at all. UM. Thirteen out of the fifty four daylight data points happened with a red moon. UM. Twelve of the fifty four happened with the moon on the edges. UM. But if you combine those, so nearly fifty of all of my daily pictures or sightings happened when there was something moon related that supposedly is supposed to help you. UM. But what I didn't figure out is how many days of the month would have one of those two factors. So if it's so, if that, do you know what I'm trying to say? So you're Basically, what you're looking for is to narrow down all your UM data point to try to find the highest possibility of an encounter with with him based off daylight intel. Yeah. Yeah, and maybe maybe there's like something glaringly obvious that I haven't noticed before, Like I would love to see something like if I had never looked at this in this level of detail, it would be awesome to see. Oh man, if of all my daylight encounters with him happened when you had this red moon thing going on, like whoa, that's an eye opener. But that I did not find that. But I was hoping to find something like that with something with wind or cold weather or the moon or pressure or something that was the hope or like the maybe if I find that, that will just help me better inform when to strike in the best spots. Um. So it does he favor a wind, So that is the biggest thing that he does have a correlation with. Seventy of my sightings or daylight photos of him happened with a westerly wind of some time. Now. That is, we do get more westerly winds than anything. Um So maybe that's just because that's what got But um, but it's used to say, very few pictures or sightings when there was something easterly or straight north or straight south. So that again tells me when I've got those southwest or northwest winds, you know I shouldn't be trying to wait for something better. I should I should know that those are the days when he's seventy five percent the time almost that's when he's moving. UM. I was surprised to see that only thirty seven percent of these sightings happened with the cold front, So that means seventy or sixty three percent of the time I was seeing or observing him UM on a on just a regular day, a non CULD friend day, So that was a little surprising. Although a lot of that I need to I need to do some further digging in. A ton of those have been in December. Um. He just becomes disproportionately daylight active in my spots in December. UM. I don't know exactly why that is. Maybe it's just because I've got the best late season food. But man, if I don't if he, if he someone makes it through October and November into December, he's just ridiculously killable in my in my area, Like I mean, day after day after day after day and daylight active. Um, but I would really like to kill him before then. So so I'm just gonna I was just gonna say. So there weren't any really big aha moments out of the analysis. It's interesting to see. I'm gonna continue to kind of pass through it and see if there's any you know, as I filtered by different variables a little bit differently. Um, and you know, it might be interesting to see. Okay, at this one front food plot area in October and November, how do these things then look? So that might maybe there'll be different factors there. Maybe in October and November at this one location. Maybe he only moves up there when there's a certain wind direction or a certain moon or something like that. Um. I don't know, but I'm just trying to it's interesting if nothing else, um, and maybe it would maybe it could help me. Okay, the property that he lives on that you do not have access to. Are these people other active bow hunters? Um? Not very active? No, they don't hunt very often. I don't Yeah, Okay, I hope they don't become active, right, So selfish is there? I mean do you ever play the game, like if I could hunt where, if you could hunt this little air you know, the next property over where you would put a tree stand in. I've thought about all the time. Okay, I said there all the time, and the only could be over there. So have you when you talk with this landowner? What do they say to you? What? What? What are they? I mean, are you in constant communication with him? Do you talk with them? Do they know that the story of this buck? Um? Do they know anything? Uh? No, I kind of keep it, you know, we keep relatively private. We talked every once in a while. Um, really really nice people. Um. But they they're not in the area, so they don't they're not around very often. Um. But you know, I don't know, have you ever have you ever thought about just saying, hey, UM, do you mind if I hunt your property just this weekend and kind of correlate that with a cold front or you know, do a running gun in there or something and just ask for one day? Yeah, you know, I thought about it, um, but ultimately I decided that, um, that it's not the right thing to do. I don't want to push things too far. Like they're really nice people, um. Uh they've allowed me to do something that let me shed hunt out there. Um. They've been okay with me tracking deer out there, things like that. UM. But I've always worried I don't want to push it too far. UM. And I felt like that might be no, not say that I never will. And maybe if it comes up in conversation um, or if they were to say we're not gonna be around at all in November, um, and then it might be what would you care if I've every went in there? But I've just um, I've been the type too always in this kind of situation, like there's a line somewhere, and I've kind of drawn that line there, maybe falsely, um, but but that's where things are right now of the relationship. Got you, got you? So I don't know. Well, the good The good thing is it doesn't sound like anybody else's is over there hunting that property, which is why he's still alive. Yeah, there there are some other guys that hunt like on the edges of it around it, um, that know about the deer, so that he he certainly could get killed because there's there are this person like isn't this this area or this specific little spot isn't getting hunted a lot. But there's a bunch of people around the periphery that are that do know about the deer um that I think probably are after him or in that area, So he's certainly not safe. Do you think that any of the people are hunting this deer because you've put this story out there? Yes, okay, I do know that there are some people who know of this dear because of my because of word hunt. Um, so that makes things interesting to you know, Oh yeah, yeah it is. Yeah, So you know, what can you do. Everyone's got a right to hunt these deer everyone. I hope everyone is a good time. And you know I would if someone else kills him, good for them. I'll be you know, I'll be I'll be personally bummed but happy for that person to Um. But you know two things. Number One, I'm running late because I I'm supposed to be heading into hunts in public land tonight. Again, that's right, so I don't want to go too much longer. But um, but I did check those TROLD cameras like I told you, and did finally get some pictures of him where you can see him face first, like head on. I don't know if you saw the pictures I posted online, I don't remember if I sent it to you or not. Um, but he kind of just looks like he always has. He has not grown very much. Um, he's maybe a little bit wider, got a big old body of him, but his body, his body is noticeably bigger man I think, Yep, he's definitely, definitely a nice, big old mature warrior. He's got you know, his his telltale chunk missing out of his one ear, and then I know it's on close ups his other ear. He's got two notches out of his other ear too, smaller ones. But when you see a couple of the pictures that are up close, you can see these little knocks out of there. So you know, between that, between the three chunks out of his ears and he lost part of his main beam last year, he seems to be a fighter of a sort. So, um, you know, he's a buck that I wonder what he I wonder what kind of impact he has in the general area, because I'm not getting like any other mature bucks at all on camera, um or even seeing other mature bucks in past years. In the last three years, really, um, you know, saw something like maybe a three year old. But um, but that's it, And so it makes you wonder, is he like one of those bully bucks who's just like really dominant, keeps other air side of the area. And I wonder if, if ever I do kill him, if if the dynamic in the area will change because of that. Um, So that would be interesting to see. Two. Yeah, I've I've had that experience happened firsthand, and have talked with other guys. Where a buck like that gets killed, he's been dominant in that area for years. Your area becomes a vacuum and it just sucks all the other deer into it. There's a there's a jostling for position again for for dominance, and then there's an increase in buck activity. Yeah, that's that's what I think might happen too. So I hope that I can see what that looks like because I was the one to have killed holy Field and close it out. But yeah, the game plan as far as now, since I'm not getting any daylight photos, since I'm not seeing him when I'm scouting from my little hill, is um that I'm gonna wait till that cold front comes and you know, sex somewhere around that time frame, and then I'm gonna be hunting him pretty hard from that point through the first week of November. UM. And we've talked about throughout the year. I put up a bunch of different stands up this year to try to take advantage of some running activity that I didn't in the past. I didn't have stands back in this one chunk of timber that I can hunt, and so I never really knew maybe he was going back in there during the rut. So I've got stands for that. I've been much more careful about these front kind of food areas I've been staying out, so hopefully you know, when I do start hunting, they're gonna be full of dos and he's gonna come in and check those doughs instead of last year, where by the time he started moving in daylight, the doughs weren't coming to the food. Plus because I hunted three weekends in a row. UM, so some hoping for all those kinds of things. And in between now and then, I'm gonna hunt, keep hunting this public land and hunt some other private parcels I have permission on around the state. UM. I never told you about my public land hunt last week. That was just a debacle and a half. Yeah, I mean like it was awesome set up, Like I was really happy when I got in there. It looked really good, you know. I think I told you this is that buck bed I'd found in the summer and got set up in between it coming off this little island and a swamp, and I thought I could catch something transitioning out to these ridges covering oak trees. I was right about everything as far as like what was going on in there, like literally just like a floor of acorns, so many acorns is nuts, so tons and tons of food in there. Um. And it was raining and wet, and I got in there really good and quiet set up. I felt really good, um, but didn't end up seen a single deer, so I was disappointing. It could have been because the rain and the wind was supposed to taper off into the evening hours and by the last hour or two was supposed to calm down and and kind of chill out, and I thought they'd be up and moving then, but it kept on, like the wind kept howling and the rain kept prn So I wonder if maybe that just kept him down a little bit longer I don't know. Um. But the debacle was trying to get out of there, because to get back into this spot, like it is a long walk, it is really hilly, is really thick. Um. So getting in there I found like an old deer trail kind of deal that I was able to follow through some of these brush and briers and different things. Um, and you're growing up and down and through all sorts of crap. But at times I was like crawling on all fours for long portions of time to get through stuff. Um. But I was able to get there, okay. But when I was trying to get out after dark, you know, when you can't see anything other than what it's right in front of your face and the headlamp, you can't see where the openings are, or where a path might be, or the best way to get through an area. So all I had was like my phone with Google Maps up, trying to like, okay, I know I need to have that direction, and I just kind of would go on a straight line and I couldn't get out of the place. Like I walked in circles for like over an hour hour and a half, probably like running into just walls, like impenetrable walls of crap everywhere, and I was falling over dead falls. I rolled down a hill once. I've got these huge bruises on my leg from taking a tumble. Um again, I was like crawling through stuff. Um, And I got to the point, like people talk about when you get lost in people panic and start like just running around like a crazy person. I was getting so frustrated that I was just like just I would just put my head down and just like plow through stuff. And it was raining and had scratches all over my face. My phone fell out in my pocket at one point when I was crawling, and and literally, if I did lose my phone, I would have been stuck up there overnight. Like literally, I was just walking in circles without the phone, There's no way I would have got out. So I had to just crawl around for several minutes, like just looking through all the brush and picking up all the leaves, trying to find my stupid phone. I finally did find it, but oh my gosh, it was so bad. So tonight I'm going back in there, um, but I'm gonna mark my tracks, like with my phone. I'm gonna measure the actual path I take it, or like you know, GPS track the actual path so then I can follow the actual path all the way back out and hopefully have a better walk back to the truck. And it was it was so so bad. I got back bruise and bloody and soaking wet and piste off and it wasn't good. So well, good luck, man. I'm I just I don't know, it's in our blood, you know, you just want to be out there all the time. Now this year, I mean it's we wait for it and we wait for it and wait for it. Man. I just I just want to be in a tree stand period. Um, I'm right there with you. It's feeling like it like yesterday and today feels like good hunt weather. Um, it's that time year, the time of years coming up quick, So I got one last question for you know then the ruts up coming up, the grind is about to start. Do you feel like have you ever hit a point of almost like complete exhaustion or um, you know, like mentally fatigued, maybe thinking about giving up or taking a day off when the weather's good or or something like that. Have you ever hit that point of just like I don't know, so we'll like it. It's playing a game with your head. Oh yeah, I've had that happen during the rut. For sure. You don't want it to happen, but it does. It does happen. And I think every year I'm always challenging myself to do a better job of pushing through those those periods. Um but it's I think that's pretty human. I gotta believe, especially if you're if you're if you're the type that does marathon it and you push and you hunt a ton during that time period, it's natural, I think, to to get fatigued, to get worn out, and I don't know, some guys say, I've heard some people say, you know what, when you get to that point and you're feeling totally worn down and you're losing like the edge and the fun in it, and you're just whooped, sometimes it is good to take a morning or day off and just like let yourself recoup, because then when you get back to it, then you recharge, re energize, and you're more effective for the remaining days. Or then the other side, some guys say, no, you gotta push through because that day you take off, that could be the only day that you would have had the opportunity. Um So, I don't know what the right answer is, but um, I try to push as hard as I can. Yeah. So I'm I'm excited the marathon. The grind for me is going to start the middle of next week and it's just gonna be game time for for three weeks. So are you are you going to? Uh? When are you hit in Ohio? Man? I don't know. I maybe maybe would do that in between now and then. Um just there's been no good weather down there. I've just been waiting on that. Um But I don't know, I just have we we don't have as much going on down there's in past years. Like there's not a deer that I've been hunting for multiple years. There isn't like something that I'm like overly like stoked about. It's um so, it's just when we get down there, we'll get down there. I'm sure it'll be great. I hope it'll be great. Um. I've just been kind of probably overly focused on Holy Field and everything, so I haven't spent as much time like internally in my head thinking about what's going on down there. But I need to get down there and figure it out and get after it. So and then North Dakota at some point again, right, yeah, that's that's the whole other things. I gotta figure out when to fit in that trip. So in a in a perfect world, if in a off it world, if next week I get the cold Front conditions line up, I go into one of these spots kill holy Field. You know, if that could happen, then I've got like two and a half three weeks where all I need to do or that, you know, I could do hunt Ohio or and go to North Dakota. So I would probably go ahead and take a week long trip to North Dakota during that time period, hunts in public land, and then come back and do a week in Ohio. But the holy Field thing is just gonna take up take precedence over all those things until that comes to some kind of conclusion. So right right, But yeah, to your point, I'm ready getting a tree and like really get after it. So I suppose on that front, I should we should shut this down so I can go get in a tree. That's right. Well, good luck, man, and keep me posted. Thanks dude, you too, Hope you're able to get out in the woods. This weekend, your pregnant wife gonna be able to drag a deer? Help you drag a deer? You know, she probably would if I really wanted to, but I'll call one of my buddies instead. She's been a trooper, though she's been a real trooper. She's doing she's handled really well. And um, I told her the story that he's told me the other day about how Mac is waking up at four thirty every morning and just pressing on your face over and over till you wake up. I'm like, that's that's gonna be our future, honey. So we're gonna enjoy these few more months of quiet while we got it. And then the SHI phone, all right, man, let's shut this one down. I'm gonna go hunting, and then hopefully it's a good story until next time. And that is a rap for episode number one seventies seven. Um, a couple quick reminders. Number one, if you haven't been listening to our radio episodes, which are you know, a regular episode of Wired Hunts coming out every week, but we're now doing two episodes a week, so you get your episode that you just heard now plus a RUT radio episode. And let's come out every Wednesday. Make sure you're listening to those because in those episodes, we are getting real time updates from different hunters across the country in different states about what's happening right now in the woods, what kind of dear behavior is seeing, what kind of dear activity, what kind of running activity might be picking up, and then what kinds of tactics are actually working right now in these different places. So it's really helpful information, it's real time. It can help you in your hunt's right now. So don't miss those episodes, and i'd probably recommend listen those first. As soon as those come out, listen to them because it can help you now. UM number two haven't mentioned this in a little while, but if you haven't yet left or rating or review on iTunes for the Wired Hunt podcast, we would really appreciate that it does make a difference. It is helpful. Thank you for that. Um. Speaking of ways you can show your support if you would like to, we do have a lot of merchandise available Wired Hunt hats and shirts and stickers. That's awesome if you can pick up some of those things, that really helps us out. It supports the podcast and you know, it's great. You can rep your you're being a part of the Wired Hunt Nation, so thanks in advance if you do that. Um and finally, I just want to thank our partners who helped make this podcast possible as well. So big thanks to sit Gear, Yetdie Cooler's, Matthew's Archery, Maven Optics, the White Tailed Institute of North America, Trophy Ridge and Hunt Terra Maps, and finally, big things to all of you out there listening. I appreciate you tuning in, appreciate your time. Good things coming ahead here in the hunting season, so I hope you're all gonna be able to spend some time in the woods. I wish you luck out there, and I hope you'll stay wired to Hunt.