The Blacktail Coach Podcast
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The Blacktail Coach Podcast
The Invisible Game Changer: Mastering Wind Patterns for Successful Hunts
The invisible element that determines hunting success more than any other factor isn't your gear, your shooting skill, or even your stealth – it's your understanding of the wind. Aaron and Dave dive deep into this critical yet often misunderstood topic, breaking down the science and strategy behind hunting the wind effectively.
For hunters transitioning from flat Midwestern terrain to the challenging topography of the Pacific Northwest, understanding how wind behaves across hills, drainages, and various elevations becomes essential knowledge. The hosts clarify fundamental concepts like upwind versus downwind positioning, explaining why being downwind of your target animal (where their scent blows toward you) is always the goal. As Dave emphasizes, "You can fool their eyes, you can fool their ears, but you cannot fool their nose."
Particularly fascinating is the discussion of thermal patterns and their predictable yet complex behavior. Morning thermals rise as the sun warms the ground, while evening thermals fall as temperatures drop – but south-facing slopes will behave differently than north-facing ones within the same area. The hosts explore advanced concepts like "wind tunnels" that explain why dominant bucks often bed three-quarters of the way up hillsides, and "wind vacuums" in drainages that can pull your scent in unexpected directions.
Whether you're a veteran hunter or just getting started, this episode provides practical knowledge for immediate application. The recommendation to always carry and frequently use a wind checker (whether it's powder, yarn, or another tool) might seem basic, but as both hosts admit, it took them years to develop this disciplined habit. Their discussion of optimal wind speeds for hunting and the advantages of elevated positions like tree stands offers tactical advice for upcoming seasons.
Ready to take your hunting success to the next level? Understanding and respecting wind patterns isn't just about technique—it's about appreciating the remarkable sensory capabilities of the animals we pursue and the natural systems they navigate. Listen, learn, and transform your approach to the hunt.
https://blog.redmondhunt.com/how-to-hunt-with-wind
https://www.fieldandstream.com/hunting/downwind-vs-upwind/
https://soulseekersnation.com/2019/05/20/hunting-101-part-4-understanding-the-wind-thermals/
https://enviroliteracy.org/does-wind-hurt-deer-hunting/
https://www.camohuntnstuff.com/huntwind.html
Bootcamp & Coaching
Welcome back to the Blacktail Coach Podcast. I'm Aaron and I'm Dave. This week we're going to talk about hunting the wind, so I want to get back into some actual hunting specific content for when we're out in the field. I know we've taken a break here for a while and talked about other topics, but so first we want to start off with just some definitions. So we have a big mix of listeners. You know we have guys who are new to hunting, who've maybe only been hunting a couple, three years like me and we also have guys who have been hunting 40 years.
Speaker 1:So hopefully we have some information that everyone's going to learn something from. But we want to cover some definitions real first. So just so that people who are new to hunting or maybe new to even thinking about winds and they're going to be very different. So if you've moved from the Midwest or a Great Plains state where everything's really flat, the winds are going to act very different than they do here where it's hills everywhere.
Speaker 1:So first thing, why don't you tell us just definition for upwind and downwind? What are we talking about when we use those terms?
Speaker 3:So when we say upwind and downwind, typically that's in relation to where we think our target animal is. Okay, you know it's where we're thinking they're either going to be bedded or where they're feeding, or where the travel corridor is and how they traverse that. We want to always be downwind from them.
Speaker 1:Okay, but what does it mean to be downwind?
Speaker 3:Downwind means that you are in the direction. The wind is blowing from your target animal to you.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it's the relationship between the hunter and the animal. Correct, it's upwind and downwind are phrases that refer to that.
Speaker 3:Kind of like upstream and downstream. So if your fishing hole is above you and the current is going down past you, then you're downwind from that fishing or downstream from that fishing hole, excuse me. And the same is true of winds, in the sense that if your target animal is blowing its scent from that animal to you, then you are downwind from that animal. If it is your scent blowing to him, then he is downwind from it. Animal. If it is your scent blowing to him, then he is downwind from it.
Speaker 1:And you're upwind from your target animal, and that's not what we want, okay, okay. Next thing we want to define is thermals, because we see that term tossed around a lot.
Speaker 3:So what do we mean by thermals? So thermals are basically everywhere you go, okay, and thermals are the winds in the morning and the afternoon and they're basically your low-lying winds that just kind of roll over the ground. I wouldn't say they're very high, they're not prevailing winds, they're just down 20 feet and lower. And basically what your thermals do is they react to the sun. So as the sun comes up and they get direct sunlight on an area, it heats up the air or the thermals in that area, and as the air heats up it starts to rise. So until it heats up it's going to fall. So if it's flat, then it's going to probably swirl and chase maybe your topography a little bit more. What you're saying about the Midwest is kind of poignant here. I went to school in North Dakota. There was very few hills and very few trees, so the wind was always blowing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know. So there was really no direction for a thermal there, because there was no up and down as far as topography.
Speaker 1:Well, and it also, as we both read a bunch of articles related to this thermals are controlled by the ground being heated by the sun. So in the morning, as this ground is being heated, that is going to cause the air over that ground to start rising, uh-huh and okay. So what fills that space? And that's where the thermals and that-.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great way of putting it.
Speaker 1:That short the light breeze gets going. That's what's causing all that. Okay, so now true or prevailing wind? What are we talking about there?
Speaker 3:So prevailing wind and guys will hear me say this, whether it's at the trainings or the field days or bootcamp or anything like that the prevailing wind.
Speaker 3:When I find an area I typically will check, I'll set a waypoint and I will check that area for the next week, two weeks, three weeks, sometimes even a month, where I will periodically pull up that waypoint. And Onyx and HuntStand and all of these apps that are on your phones now will have a wind direction tool that you can turn on and it will tell you the wind in your area that particular day. And what you do is you basically find a prevailing wind. After a while, you'll see that most of the time your wind will be out of the northeast or the northwest or the southwest or you know something to that effect, and that's when you're going to say, okay, that's the prevailing wind. The true wind is when you're out there and it's like, okay, here we are, my prevailing wind, which may be my upper, higher winds may be going, you know, coming out of the Northwest, blowing Southeast, but the wind I'm experiencing right now here in this area is blowing more easterly, northeast.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. So when you see the big weather report that's telling you what the prevailing winds are, right, right, but topography can-.
Speaker 3:Can dictate something altogether different.
Speaker 1:What the true wind is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you can get it swirling and all that stuff, and that's the thing is. Guys need to understand that wind travels in layers. It isn't just one wind everywhere all the time, although your prevailing wind will tend to dominate and get those winds going in that direction. But they can swirl and there's a whole bunch that can happen because of topography.
Speaker 1:And I just saw a random video talking about the jet stream. And those are winds that are it's a prevailing wind, but they're up 30,000 feet, yeah, but they're moving at 200 miles an hour. Right, which is why planes tend to fly along with the jet stream for saving fuel or whatever, but it's a different layer of wind. We don't experience those down at ground level. So the last thing, what's a wind check?
Speaker 3:A wind check is any tool, and I mean it can be anything from yarn I've seen yarn used as wind check, feathers powder any tool that you can use that will signify at any given point, when you either puff on it or you know it's hanging on some apparel or a weapon I know guys will tie stuff to their bows to see stuff or you can release like little tufts of yarn and it'll float and carry on the wind current that is in your immediate area. So whatever tool that you use that can signify to you which direction that wind is going is a wind check.
Speaker 1:Even as a kid, you know you get your finger wet, whichever side is cold. That's the wind, that's the direction and I would say, no matter what you think about what the winds are doing, always have a wind check on you. This is what I've learned Always have a wind check on you when you go out to your spot, if you're out scouting, when you're out going hunting, yeah, you just have that wind check with you, because it seems kind of basic, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:but honestly it that one took me a while to really remember that I needed to bring well and and okay.
Speaker 3:So you're two years into this, yeah, and you started doing. When would you say you started? You know, religiously relying on that wind check probably this, this last hunting.
Speaker 1:Well, I but see it was real hit and miss last year because I basically always had the wind kind of at my back but it would swirl a lot more where I was hunting the year before last. Last year, the wind it didn't matter what the prevailing wind did and it didn't matter the season. The wind was always blowing the same direction.
Speaker 1:Every time, every single time, because of where my hunting spot, my kill site, was. But that's when I really started depending on the wind check, bringing that out with me. In fact, when I went out and did some scouting, because one of the things and we'll talk about this in a little bit uh, I wanted to find out, since I'm on a drainage, on the edge of a drainage, and I, when we were talking last year, you suggested I back off that drainage a ways to create my set, which was a perfect place, because I was downwind of my set, you know, 12 yards and they never caught wind of me and I was constantly doing my wind checks while I was sitting in stand. I'd kind of put it out towards the edge of the stand or the blind to see where the wind was blowing. But there's a certain point and it's, I would say, 20 yards, 25 yards if I go closer to that, the edge of that drainage, and the wind shifts direction.
Speaker 3:Sucks it right down there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we'll talk about wind vacuums and that effect in a little bit.
Speaker 3:But yeah, that really taught me bring it every time, because I need to know where the wind's going yeah, yeah, and that's that's the point I'm making is, you're two years into this and you already realize the importance of needing to know where the wind. I've got some guys. I've met guys that have been doing hunting, you know, decades and they still don't believe the whole wind thing. They think it's just a big farce and and that you know deer and elk don't care and they can't smell you and anything like this. And it's like I go back to what I you know. Well, if you're not feeling tags, you know well then you got to start.
Speaker 3:You got to start looking at something you're doing. You know what I mean. You got to start knocking down some things and eliminating some factors as to why this is not working out for you.
Speaker 1:And I guess it would also depend on what you're hunting. Deer and elk, of course, Bear Great sense of smell. All of those, I imagine coyote. If you're hunting coyote, that they're going to win.
Speaker 3:I think weapon plays a huge role in it too. Weapon plays a huge role in it too. Some guys feel like, because they're shooting a modern firearm and their range is so much greater than that of of you know, like an archer or even a muzzle loader you know that they don't feel like they need to pay attention to it as much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I know one of the things like turkey hunters scent doesn't matter. Right, right. When you're turkey hunting. So if you were, if you'd grown up turkey hunting and not hunted anything else, you might be walking into a situation where this is a new thing that you actually have to consider that you didn't have to consider from before. And I don't know about cats they don't smell as well as Cats. Yeah, oh, yeah, oh, do they? Yeah, oh okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're really good nose.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, see. Oh yeah, oh, do they. Yeah, oh, okay, yeah, they're really good nose. Okay, yeah, see, I didn't know about that.
Speaker 3:I've never hunted cats and that's the thing. Most of your ungulates and most of your predators, that's the way it is Okay, you know, and they rely heavily on their nose. Anybody that runs hounds of any kind, whether it's beagles, you know, co bear hounds, whatever knows that. Yeah, those dogs don't operate on sight.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 3:It's all about scent you know, yeah, and so yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's dig into upwind and downwind hunting a little bit more here. So how do we hunt where it relates to upwind and downwind, just real basic here.
Speaker 3:Are you talking deer or are you talking elk?
Speaker 3:I would say there's a difference well, you know most guys want to run and gun for elk okay, and so they. You're constantly, constantly checking that wind because you know you want to keep the wind in your face. You want to hunt into the wind in the mornings, yeah, you know, and obviously in the evenings, but the mornings is generally your longer hunt if you're, if you're calling and bugling and all that stuff, and you're constantly checking that wind, trying to keep it in your favor. And then when you get a bull, that's hot and you're working him, you know that he's going to try and circle to get the wind on you. Okay.
Speaker 3:Every time. So you have to play that little chess match where you're riding that wave, where it's right on the edge of where you're safe, but you got to keep because he's going to try and circle you. So you know if you're the shooter, because he doesn't know where you're at, the caller's pulling him past you so you have to. You're between the caller and the herd bull.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:Or the bull period.
Speaker 1:So, and so these some things are going, and I know you've described a lot when you went to Eastern Oregon, and so the caller is always behind you for when the person doing the bugling or a cow called. Usually it's bugling.
Speaker 3:It's whatever that bull will respond to.
Speaker 1:Okay, so in those types of well actually and this is getting off- well, I suppose it's related to hunting the wind. Yeah, and this is getting off. Well, I suppose it's related to hunting the wind. But, why, and honestly I know this is a safety issue, but why wouldn't? If the bull is going to circle around you, why wouldn't the person calling be in front of you so that when it circles behind him, it then comes in front of the shooter?
Speaker 3:Because he's circling to get the wind in his favor. He wants to wind to make sure that that's another cow or bull that's calling to him.
Speaker 3:Okay, that it's not a hunter, you know. And then the guy, that's so if you're not the caller, you're the shooter. You're not going to make too much sound unless, for some reason, you know, you get busted or something happens and you start cow calling and he's responding to you now instead of the caller behind you. You still I mean, this has happened a half dozen times to me, you know and another bull comes in, quiet, you know. And so I've been the caller and had bulls come in on me there and I got my shooters out in front of me, you know. And so it's just like black tail, it's just like big bucks. The wind is everything. You can fool their eyes, you can fool their ears, but you cannot fool their nose, and they know that, and that's their number one line of defense. That's what they're going to fall back on every single time.
Speaker 1:So if you're hunting, when you have a caller, someone calling for you, and you're hunting elk are. Do you ever do you take wind in consideration as far as where you each of you place?
Speaker 3:yourselves.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely, okay, absolutely and I know there's times where you're doing like the run and gun uh-huh thing with elk, but I know you've also done created sets for elk, you know, for a long time when you were hunting outside of starkey there, and so I mean that would be potentially a little easier maybe to have your where.
Speaker 3:Well and it's funny that we're talking about this, because thermals play such a huge role, especially when you're doing so I would run and gun in the morning and I would sit and stand at night.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:In the evenings rather, and the evening hunt was always really quick because those bulls don't get those cows up and moving until the thermals have shifted most of the time. Okay, until they're really, really hot and then they'll scream all day long Okay, push them around. But so the evening hunt typically is like 20, 30 minutes just before dark.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:But so you're constantly and the thing is, is that where you're wanting to pull these elk into, it's great at three, four o'clock in the afternoon, because then you know the wind is blowing up and it's not going toward them or anything, at least where you know where I would set up and it was fine. But then when the evening come, you know, and the thermal shifted, well, now it's blowing down where I don't want it to go. So it was always. It was a real fine line. It was really hard at times and at times, you know, it just seemed like it always worked out. But yeah, thermals played a bigger role in that than just the afternoon regular prevailing wind, simply because I was waiting for that thermal to shift. Okay, and that's what got those elk up and moving.
Speaker 1:So next question is how should I be entering my spot or my set? Or how should I be entering my set or spot and stock related to upwind or downwind? I mean, is it where you always want to keep it when you're coming in? Where you're downwind of your set? I mean, what happens? And I'm thinking about this. I hunted my spot my first year where if I wanted to be upwind of my kill site, I would have had to cross over the transition zone Right.
Speaker 1:The game trail that I was hunting off of. So I'm spreading my scent through that trail to get to the optimal spot, right, right, so yeah, how are we supposed to figure out those situations?
Speaker 3:So that's a good question by an Ozonics.
Speaker 1:Honestly, that's what saved me last year.
Speaker 3:Right, right, but you're still walking in and most guys don't have the Ozonics going while they're walking in.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But I tell the guys that come to the classes and whatnot that that dominant buck is going to tolerate so much of your scent. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Okay, and he's patterning you just as much as you're patterning him. Okay, and it would be the same, like back when we used to be able to bait bears. It was the same thing, they're patterning you. So you would do the same thing again and again and again. It would just be ritualistic, you know, and you wanted like, okay, I'm going to ride my four-wheeler in and I'm going to be whistling. Once you did it, once you did it the same every single time. That way that bear got used to the routine. He'd hear you come in, he would hear you leave. You know he would hear the four-wheeler come in, he would hear the four-wheeler leave, hear you whistling or whatever you know. And you would spend the same amount of time every time you would do the exact same thing, whether it's check your camera at this point. Do you know your scents? Whatever, it's the same with bucks they're patterning you and they're going to allow so much of that scent. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I'm not too worried about my scent blowing into the core area when I'm going in to do my scents. You know what I mean? Yeah, like I do and then do my sense, check my cameras, check my dripper, all that stuff, and then walk out. That's different than if I want to go hunt. So on the days that I want to go hunt, I want to slip in there as quickly and as quietly as I can and I want that wind to be in my favor because I want to get in stand or in the blind or whatever before.
Speaker 1:Okay, so would you potentially have two, if it's?
Speaker 3:possible, two setups, two ways to get into your set. Okay, yep, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Okay, and I know that that, and eventually I'll go back to that first place that I was hunting Although I'm probably going to move around at my hilltop set, but where I hunted last year my halfway set the wind was just perfect. I mean, every time I walked in, the wind was always blowing in my face the whole time, the whole way in, and I'm like, okay, this is a great spot because of that. So, yeah, but eventually I'm going to go back because I want to hunt Anakin. I'm going to go back to that spot, and I will deal with winds that shift a lot more right, swirl, uh things like that, and I. One of the things I did learn, though, is in the morning, they were usually moving uh, I'm trying to think, I think they were moving more east to west, and it might have been more thermals, and then in the afternoon, they shifted in west east, so they would come out on one side.
Speaker 1:There was a bedding area above this swamp, and so in the morning they would come in on one side of the swamp and in the evening they would go back in on the other side of the swamp because they would be catching the wind of the swamp.
Speaker 3:Right, right, and that's the main thing that we need to realize as hunters is that these deer elk, whatever the animal is, they don't just meander. There is a purpose to everything they do, because it's always about survival. And when you stop and think of it like that, then you realize that it's not by chance that they're on this trail. They know exactly what they're doing. It's all about staying alive, it's all about avoiding predators, so they're using that wind all the time.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you mentioned earlier about wind moving in layers, so why would it be important to get into a different layer of wind?
Speaker 3:Well, so that's a good question, because I feel like that's the main reason why I enjoy tree stand or tree saddle hunting so much Because of the confidence that I have. Once I get, say, 20 to 24 feet up, I feel like I'm in another wind layer and I feel like my scent is being carried over them 99.9% of the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, I mean I still use an Ozonics and all and that kind of stuff, but for years before I even had that, you know, I would still get up high and it just brings a feeling of confidence over me Like I'm in another wind layer. That's above and I feel like it's about 15 feet. 12 to 15 feet down to the ground is about where I feel like that's about 15 feet. 12 to 15 feet down to down to the ground is about where I feel like that's the first layer that's the first layer, okay and I feel like if you're, if you're in that layer, then you've really really gotta, you know, be on top.
Speaker 3:Not that you don't have to anyway, but you, I mean you just gotta be on your game all the time scent control and big time movement and yeah there's a lot affected.
Speaker 1:And, and I know, when I was reading these articles, the image came to my mind that and this is I do a rafting trip every year with my family and if, say, there's a big rock in the middle of this river, if there's two feet of water over this rock, you'll see the effects of it and it'll bump up and it'll drop down, but it won't churn. That you'll see up near the top. Now if there's only six inches of water going over that rock, when it goes down on the back side, the water starts churning. So it's that different. It's the same thing with the water versus the air. You have to get higher than the churn of that water. And when we talk about thermals, one of the things that we saw are the kind of the wind tunnels that can be created from that. But getting above that where the air churns, and then they can pick up your scent, Right. So, yeah, you getting up high, kind of fits in. That's when you were telling me about that. That's what, how it made sense to me Right.
Speaker 3:And what's funny is so I go to Kansas every year, or at least every year that I draw and I tree stand hunt down there, but I mean the trees are so much smaller and it's just like you know and there's white tail running everywhere, but I mean it's just that much more difficult. I come back home and it's like we got these big fir trees and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:So I get up there and I'm like, yeah, this is so much easier than Kansas, so but yeah, Okay, so let's move into thermals and talking about those, this was interesting, so we read these articles and it kind of of it didn't jibe with what you knew about thermals yeah, well, and I the way they worded it made it really confuse it, because it made it sound like they were saying that morning up, evening down is the basic that I took away from it
Speaker 3:right, which is right, yeah, which which is right. But the way that that they worded it, it was like okay, so what they're saying, and and the way that it came across to me that they were saying that you know that cold thermals rise and that warm thermals fall, and that's the exact opposite of of the hillsides or anything like that. It's daybreak, so you can see and everything but the thermals. Until that sun comes up, they're still going down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's whatever, and one of the things that just popped into my head is a lot of those articles were talking about whitetail, which means they're talking about different areas of hunting that aren't the Pacific Northwest. There's a few spots that are flat around here, but for the most part we're a very hilly country, absolutely. And so it's just very different.
Speaker 3:Yeah, these are mountains, these are mountains compared to what people in the Midwest are used to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Slopes, small slopes over there, yeah. So whatever ground warms up first, that air is going to rise, correct. So something has to fill that void.
Speaker 3:That space, yep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so that's going to start pulling in. So if it's, say, a south-facing slope, tell me if I'm wrong here. A south-facing slope that's going to warm up first, correct, so the thermals might be moving up there, but on the north-facing slope, on the other side of that drainage, where there's no sun hitting it, that's cold, it's still going to be moving down Right Potentially.
Speaker 3:Right, okay, and the evidence in that is your south-facing slopes green up first. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Because they get the most sunlight, especially this time of year Springtime. We've got turkey season coming up, we've got spring season coming up, we got spring bear coming up. You want to focus on south-facing slopes because they get the most sunlight, so they get the first sunlight, they get the most sunlight, and so they're going to green up quicker, they're going to warm up quicker. The animals are going to come out there. They're going to sit there in the sun and warm up a little bit, versus a north-facing slope, which is going to get very little sunlight, especially this time of year, and so the thermals are going to be that wind is going to be cold. It's going to want to go down all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. So one of the things as we were reading and I will actually, in the description I will type out all these articles that I read there's one in particular, and I can't remember the website, but it had information talking about vacuum effect, talked about a corkscrew, so those wind tunnels and what brought this on. So we have a listener and he was actually at our woodland class. His name's Race, hi Race, how are you?
Speaker 3:doing? How are you doing Race?
Speaker 1:So he had asked me about a hunting spot and so this is kind of because of that. But he was showing me his spot, that he was hunting, and he was talking about ridgelines and where should I hunt? And that's actually what spurred this episode, because I was thinking the winds and the time of day affected a lot of where he might hunt, because he pointed out where he'd seen a big buck. Okay and so. But it's figuring out where he's going to be in the morning, where he's going to be in the evening, all of that, or for those afternoon hunts. But one of the things that we came across is the thermal tunnels. So this was a combined effect of prevailing wind. So maybe a sharper hillside on one side, bigger angle of slope, degree of slope versus more of a flatter, gentler slope on the other side.
Speaker 1:And maybe the prevailing winds are blowing up over the top of that and if you have, as it goes over and there might be, you know the thermals when they're coming up, but there's a prevailing wind that's blowing, but thermals coming up it creates a corkscrew. Right. So the wind thermals coming up hits that wind coming up over the top of that ridge and it creates a wind tunnel effect. And you have talked about during locating that. They love benches, they love hanging out at that three quarter of the way up the hillside.
Speaker 3:Right Dominant buck. Typically, when they bed in the open, especially during early season and whatnot, or if they find a thick spot on the hillside, they will bed three quarters of the way up a hill or up a ridge Because of that wind tunnel that you're referring to. It brings the scent over the top, brings it right down to them. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And it seems counterintuitive to say that it brings it down to them. But, like you're describing here the way the wind comes over the top and then combines with the air that's on the other side, hot and cold hot and cold.
Speaker 3:It causes that wind tunnel and so it starts pulling that air down and around and it brings it right down to them. So they're watching their back. Without having to watch their back, they can tell what's coming from above them and they can focus on what's below them as far as the visual side of it. But you know, because it's's a wind tunnel, because it's up and down, the wind is being brought up to them as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah so there is that sweet spot on that ridge that those bucks will bed. So the way to approach them is not from the top or the bottom, but to side hill them.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But it's exactly why they bed down right there.
Speaker 1:So, and yeah, if, if, and they can, if they're three quarters of the way up, and that way they can smell everything below them. They can smell everything above them and if they catch wind of a predator, whether that's a human or some other, a cat or a bear or something, they could step just down below that wind tunnel. If they don't smell it, they know that it's up above them, or they could just step up to the top of that ridge. If they don't smell, they know, they know that it's up above them, or they could just step up to the top of that ridge If they don't smell it.
Speaker 1:They know that the smell was coming from below them. One of the things.
Speaker 3:And it's a very minimal amount of effort to get the answer. They're trying and that's what guys need to understand is that they're there again because of survival, but it's very little effort for them to determine where it's coming from and escape right away.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so one of the things and I tried to research this and I don't know what you think about this, but so thinking of, and when we say it creates a wind tunnel, but I was wondering about like a corkscrew, so thinking of a tornado you know it sucks things up from the ground to the top of the tornado, from the ground to the top of the tornado.
Speaker 1:So I was wondering if those tunnels work from, maybe, say, one edge to the other. Is it like if there's a bottom and a top of that tunnel Right right, and so if they catch any smell from the bottom of it, if that's a thing? So you said you want to side-hunt them, side-heal them?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, but if you're walking in, their tunnel and it want to side-hunt them, side-heal them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, but if you're walking in their tunnel and it's corkscrewing to them, it would seem like it might pull your scent towards them and see.
Speaker 3:I honestly I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean I can honestly say I don't know. On that one I'd be guessing, Because I guess I always thought of it like the eye of a storm, where it's calm inside the eye of the storm.
Speaker 1:Okay, and that makes sense.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean, when it's like well, okay, so yeah, I don't know yeah.
Speaker 1:But thinking about that, like if you, let's say, you were spot and stalking and if you kept blowing them out, that might be something to consider. Oh, absolutely, and I wondered that because I think so. That description I just described is one of my sets, my Riverside set. Okay, so I've created a and I've never really gone beyond just setting up some cameras, maybe throwing out some minerals and things like that. But I've got a couple of really nice bucks on there and they show up the same week each year, but that's it. I've never seen them except for that week, 10 days. Okay.
Speaker 1:So I know that the bedding area is up somewhere else, but fairly close by there. They have a small range, but the way that the wind is always blowing it's coming down from I'm at the kind of the end sort of the hillside, but it's always blowing like downhill out away from that hillside and, like I said, steep on one side and flat up at the top or a real gradual slope up at the top.
Speaker 1:And so I thought, well, the way the wind is moving where I'm at being at one end, that just I kind of wondered if that was sucking the air over to me.
Speaker 3:Right, it makes sense. I mean, it could be very easily.
Speaker 1:And so. But the thing is is to get to the area that I think he's at. That means I have to go to the end where the air and the the scent is being sucked from right, you know. So it's made me wonder about, like boy, how would I?
Speaker 3:right, because I could get in there from my side, but it's not as practical stuff like that makes me think that these animals are a lot more intelligent than people give them credit for you know what I mean, yeah I mean because it's like when you, when they get, when you're busted by them hardly ever is it because of what they hear or see. They typically it's it's the scent. They've smelled you long before you ever showed up. They knew you were there. They just thought if they stayed still, you know it would be fine, but you proved that wrong and yeah, so now they bust out of there you know they smell the Doritos on your breath.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the Little Debbies, as the memes all say.
Speaker 3:The Zingers or the Little Debbies.
Speaker 1:But thinking about all of things that you know we put together to do a hunt, that's just another part of the puzzle. Oh, absolutely. How do I get in there? And, like you said, they could tolerate a little bit of my scent. Well, if I go in in the morning and the air is real still and that the thermals haven't kicked in, I could potentially get in there and get up above the wind in a tree stand or ladder stand or something, but that'd have to be a morning Like.
Speaker 1:By afternoon I potentially that could make my hunt that much harder.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you have to figure out another way.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean it just, and that's what makes you know that they're really smart. Yeah. He's there for a reason. So, it wasn't by accident that he picked that spot.
Speaker 1:Anyway, but that was kind of a real thing that it talked about on those hillsides and so I wondered about that corkscrew effect. But it also talked about wind vacuums. So as you have a drainage or some sort of valley headed down with fingers coming into that drainage, right, so other, maybe creeks, feeding into that. Well, as wind travels down that drainage it sucks the air in from those other side drainages or those fingers coming off of it.
Speaker 3:It pulls air that you normally wouldn't think down in there and it pulls it right to them.
Speaker 1:And wherever that wind goes, that's where your scent is going. Right.
Speaker 1:And that was one of the things. Going back to my halfway set that I hunted last year and I talked about that, the difference was 20 yards between the wind blowing directly into my set. So according to the drainage it was probably blowing. If that was midnight, six o'clock on a clock, I was probably about eight o'clock at an angle and from the drainage. So I was at an angle to the drainage and we actually didn't even talk about angles to the wind, but then it was blowing directly in my face. Now if I move 20 yards to my right, that vacuum effect kicked in, the wind blew, was sucking right down into that drainage. So when I put out actually I put out some scents or some minerals, I put it right on the edge so that all that smell would go into there and go down into that drainage in that big swamp area down below Right, because that made sense. You know I wanted that scent to carry, but I don't want that during my hunting season.
Speaker 3:And it's funny because it don't matter what time of year.
Speaker 3:Yeah what time of year? Yeah, with the, whether it's fall, winter, spring, summer, there's a line you know that that that is on like these ridges, these little finger ridges, where it doesn't matter how warm or cold it is, that wind is getting it sucked down into that valley and I've had, like logging roads do the same thing, old skidder roads, yeah, uh, I've. I can think of one right now that I used to bear hunt on, and it didn't matter what time of year, whether it was hot in middle of August, 95 to 100 degrees out, that wind always blew downhill. I could never approach that from uphill because the gate was uphill. The old skidder road went downhill and every single time it's just something about the topography that made that wind. It didn't matter how hot it was, warm outside, it would always suck it downhill and I was always getting busted.
Speaker 1:And that's that halfway set. It doesn't matter how the wind is blowing, it's always blowing in the same direction in that particular spot. It's always blowing in the same direction in that particular spot Right. It's always traveling downhill. It's always traveling down that drainage and I can be standing in. Now it can be blowing a little stronger at times, or up above the ridgetops it's blowing in a completely different direction, but down where I'm at it always behaves the same and it might be that down that swamp it's a lot more open up there.
Speaker 1:So a lot more sunlight's going to hit that and if that air is rising because it's warmer, something's got to fill that void and it's going to path of least resistance. So that's why it gets sucked down, that drainage, okay. So last thing we want to talk about here is the wind speed for the hunts, because one of the articles talked about what's good wind speed for deer, and I'll just read these off real quick Zero to four, deer movement is usually highest and senses are not significantly disrupted. Zero to four miles an hour. Five to fourteen good for hunters as it can mask sounds and sense without limiting deer movement. 15 and up winds begin to be disruptive to deer senses and movement will decline or stop can be good for spot and stock and deer are more stationary. So and I think.
Speaker 3:What do you think about that? So as as here, as far as here goes, I agree 100%. Okay. But like I've hunted, like I said, North Dakota, Kansas, a lot of high winds there and it's something that's just a part of the everyday occurrence there. You know, especially North Dakota, there's always a 10 to 15 mile an hour wind minimum out there, you know, because there's nothing to stop it.
Speaker 1:Nothing to stop it, nothing to stop it yeah, you know.
Speaker 3:And kansas, I mean, I remember the first year I hunted kansas good friend of mine, steven freeze, j&m outfitters and we got up one morning and it was, you know, 25 to 30 mile an hour gusts and everything. And I was thinking, well, we're losing a day of hunting. And they looked at me like, oh, you're crazy. No, today's the day. And I'm like, what are you talking about, you know? And they're like, oh, you're gonna see a ton of deer today with this wind, they're gonna be moving. And and, uh, man, they were right.
Speaker 3:I went out and I saw buck after buck after buck and uh, it was, it was crazy. They were so not nervous, they were so relaxed and just, man, they were, it was the calmest I'd ever seen, whitetail, you know. And they were like, yeah, because of the wind, they just kind of it's kind of sensory overload, and so they just they're more dependent on their eyes than anything and and they just, yeah, they can't smell anything and so they just kind of, I don't know, vapor lock on stuff yeah, it overloads them yeah, and, and so I've sat out here in windstorms and I've and I've, I've seen deer movement, you know, and I've actually killed big, uh, big buck in in a windstorm and stuff.
Speaker 3:But it gets a little scarier out here. Yeah, you know where the 15 foot tree going over versus the 40 foot tree going over, I've had, I can think of one set that I didn't go out on the windstorm and I'm glad I didn't. I came in the next day and the fir tree next to the one that I was sitting in went over and it was leaning partially against the platform of my stand and against the tree across the way and I was like like, oh my gosh, you know.
Speaker 1:That would be freaky yeah.
Speaker 3:So it's a little different here as far as that goes, you know.
Speaker 1:Well, in one of my spots that I created a kind of a throw together, I put one of those little it wasn't a full ground, blind, it was just one of those little camouflage shields, blind things that you sit behind and I put out a little like a turkey chair, 15 yards off my set by a tree. And you know, I created this in case I was going to hunt their set and I didn't. And when I went back out a couple of weeks later we'd had a big windstorm and one of the things is there's always branches falling there, big alders, big giant alders, which those just fall over.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah yeah you push on them and they fall over. So I went out. There were three, probably 60 foot. It was a clump of fir trees, but three of them had fallen, two in front, right in front of the tree I was next to one right behind. I actually had to climb over all this stuff to get to dig my stuff out and yeah, and there were like branches everywhere and I'm like I would have gotten killed if I had not.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the wife has been upset with me a couple of times and stuff, and it's gotten a little hairy out there.
Speaker 1:So okay, so, but overall for those wind speeds, yeah, overall I agree.
Speaker 3:Yeah, especially the 5 to 14. Uh-huh, that's a great time to go out, because it does. You know, it just carries your scent gone. Yeah, you know which is ideal. Yeah, you know, real calm days are really difficult, real difficult. Okay.
Speaker 1:Well, that's all the stuff. I had Any other thoughts about hunting the wind, thinking about the wind.
Speaker 3:Just yeah, it's key, it's critical. You know we see it on TV all the time with the whitetail hunters and stuff. And well, you know, I didn't go in because the wind was bad, I didn't hunt this spot because the wind was bad or whatnot, and you know, you said it. We use Ozonics a lot, a lot, yeah, and there are other products on the market, you know, from Nose Jammer to other ozone generators and stuff like that. But point being is you have to account for the wind, you just have to.
Speaker 1:It's foolish not to yeah, so anyway, but always when you're going out, bring your wind check and check it often, like if you walk 20 yards, check it again.
Speaker 3:You can never do it too much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because, like I said, 20 yards it can completely shift on you and that can help decide where you're going to go and where you're going to set up. But anyway, that's all we got for this week, and so we will see you all next week.
