Okay, now how do I hunt? How do I hunt it if it has bad access or if it is way back in the back of the property and that's why we don't go there?" Like, what's the next step to point them in the right direction?

Um, if they haven't been having success doing whatever program they've been using, I'm always a big fan of just kinda throwing spaghetti at a wall to see what sticks.

Just try a bunch of different stuff.

If you've been coming in to this property...

Like if, for example, if you have a gate and a road, you know, on the 40 acres that you're hunting, and you pull into that gate, and you walk in from that gate every time, I would do everything in my power to try to access that property a bunch of different ways.

You know, maybe you can only come in from it from one road, uh, but you can, you can park there and swoop way around a fence line and cut all the way up your boundary, you know, of your property and hook in from the back.

But just something different, a different way to get in and out of there.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

You can burn through an area and find the best spot ever and set up there and have the greatest hunt of your life a day later, two days later, after you just blew right through it.

I, I don't worry about that so much anymore.

I try to get in there a week or two before, and then leave it, have some time to leave it alone, you know? But so much is changing in a, in a deer's world, especially a buck's, throughout the fall.

If you're talking about September, I mean, basically from now until Christmas, every week something is changing in their world.

Mm-hmm.

Whether it's food sources or does coming in and out of heat or weather or whatever it is, they're just, they are constantly- ... constantly changing and switching.

So the spots that you're scouting for in late September, you need to be anticipating where they're gonna be moving in mid-October or late October or early November, or whatever timeframe you're scouting for.

You get, you get to three or four, you're like, "Oh, my gosh, I've had enough for a while."

Yeah, and, um, I took 10 days off, and I was on the ninth day, I think, so I'm running out of time, and I've let some bucks walk that I probably shouldn't have.

Uh, and I climbed in the tree that day, and I rattled in a big buck, and he comes in underneath me, snort-wheezes under the stand, makes a scrape, does everything.

Seven yards, broadside, dead to rights, and I'm sitting there measuring his points and thinking about which deer he is, and I let him walk off.

And I...

Right before he left the field and jetted into the woods about 100 yards out, I said, "Well, let me have one more look." I pull up my binoculars and I look, and I said, "Are you kidding me? That's the deer that I've been hunting all fall." I literally...

I'd s- I'd had one picture of him, so I'd never seen him, you know, on the hoof.

Mm.

I don't know that that's a thing, but I've recorded it multiple times now, enough times to where it like it's a question that's propped up in my mind as to whether or not these deer strategically position themselves around coyotes and maybe they're potentially protecting them.

Yeah, I don't know.

That's an interesting observation, and I suppose it could be true.

I just don't know enough about how they can even smell.

I know that a coyote has an incredible sense of smell, but as to what's going on down there at ground level, especially in the middle of the night, like what the moisture conditions are and all of that, I don't know if that has anything to do with it.

Um, that's interesting though, that I'm not surprised.

I see coyotes all the time in close proximity to deer.

Post a free job today at linkedin.com slash quality.

Mm-hmm.

So the only time when I've, when I've really felt like I learned a lot from cameras is when it was, I was using it to aid in my woodsmanship.

So when I set them up in a s- particular area, not to get pictures solely of just a big buck that I wanted to hunt, but when I put them in an area so that I could use it to learn how the deer use that particular spot all year.

Maybe I, I run a camera over a crossing, a creek crossing- For six months, and for two weeks out of that six months, that creek crossing was really hot with action.

Then I'm backtracking in there, and I'm trying to understand why those deer were there at that time, how I could have hunted it during that time, and how to capitalize it, on it in the future.

That's been the best way I've found to use them.

I'm not saying that's how anybody's got to use them.

Mm-hmm.

Do you, do you think that, uh, you know, there's a problem with that?

Yes, and I definitely think that as...

Uh, and I don't fault necessarily hunting media entirely for this because people watch the videos and have the freedom to choose and decide how they wanna hunt.

But overall, hunting culture was going that direction.

I mean, I was there at one time.

I mean, I, [chuckles] I'll tell you a quick story.

When I was working at the appliance store, I was so obsessed with killing 150-inch buck in Missouri for, like, a full seasonI had pictures of a, of a buck that was close at the farm, and I was like, "That's it.

Yeah

Mm-hmm.

And I remember, I, I mean, eventually they would take me and my cousin, um, but when I finally killed my first long beard, I think I was 12 or 13.

I killed him on the last day of the season.Me and dad had hunted all season.

I, I killed a jake in the youth season that year.

It was the first year they had...

No, that's not right.

I killed a, I killed a jake early in the season, then hunted the rest of it.

[laughs]