The Blacktail Coach Podcast
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The Blacktail Coach Podcast
Eyes, Ears, and Nose: Mastering Undetected Entry to Your Hunting Set
Defeating a trophy blacktail's senses requires extraordinary dedication and methodical preparation. In this deep-dive conversation, Aaron and Dave explore the critical components of entering a hunting set without alerting deer through their incredibly sensitive ears, eyes, and nose.
The hosts begin by shattering a common misconception: "You're never as quiet as you think you are." Dave shares his philosophy on trail preparation, recommending gradual habitat modifications spread across multiple visits rather than dramatic one-time changes that make deer wary. For those who only visit their hunting areas occasionally before season, strategic pruning with hand shears creates just enough clearance for quiet passage without establishing obvious human trails.
Equipment selection proves equally crucial, with Aaron and Dave examining how expensive modern hunting gear can sometimes work against you. They discuss waterproof rain jackets that make unnatural sounds against vegetation, metal components that create alarming clanks, and practical solutions for each challenge. Visual concealment strategies follow, including the use of screen vegetation as artificial visual barriers and proper headlamp discipline when approaching sets in darkness.
Perhaps most vital is their comprehensive approach to scent control. The hosts outline their meticulous process: traveling to hunting locations in base layers, changing into scent-free hunting clothes stored in sealed bags, applying field spray, and reversing the process when departing. This level of dedication isn't necessary for harvesting average deer but becomes essential when pursuing record-book blacktails that simply won't tolerate human odor.
The conversation culminates with fascinating insights into extreme tactics like sleeping overnight in stands, hiking significant distances to approach from favorable wind directions, and studying thermal patterns to time entries perfectly. As Aaron notes approaching his third year of hunting, these might seem like extraordinary measures, but they represent the mindset difference between casual hunters and those consistently harvesting mature blacktail bucks.
Ready to take your blacktail hunting to the next level? Visit blacktailcoach.com to discover our upcoming boot camps and training opportunities designed to help you consistently pursue trophy-class blacktails.
Bootcamp & Coaching
Welcome back to the Blacktail Coach Podcast. I'm Aaron and I'm Dave, so this week we're talking about the best way in, so thinking about when we're going into our set, that whole process, and because I was kind of concerned with one of my sets, with the ears, eyes and the nose and different situations that I've been in in the last couple of years since I've started hunting, so I want to talk to you about, you know, what are some things that we should be doing, and then stuff you've already shared with me, but just to get some more ideas out there and some just things that we might not have been thinking about, that we should be considering, okay, so that we're not bumping deer out of our set permanently Right.
Speaker 1:So, understanding they might leave for a minute or an hour or so, but come back, which is fine, but not they're permanently gone, right? So, first thing, we're going to start off with ears. The deer are going to hear us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's kind of like the whole scent thing. I don't think that you're ever as quiet as you think you are. Yeah, you know the whole scent thing is you're never 100% scent free and as long as you're breathing and whatnot, you can never be 100% scent free. But the same I would think as far as the noise factor goes, is you're never as quiet, as quiet as you think you are, and sometimes it's actually beneficial to make noise as you're going in uh-huh so the you know, just depending on the situation, little tricks that I've developed over the years just to give them an idea that you're coming in.
Speaker 1:With this system that you put together, we're set hunting and we're generally most of the time we're right inside real thick areas. Well, I might have to walk through about 60 yards of real thick stuff, but I'm only about 20, 25 yards off a skidder road. But walking through three, four foot five foot tall salal is making a lot of racket right, and so you know we've we've talked about cutting in trails uh-huh so what's the idea behind doing that if we're set hunting?
Speaker 2:so when I, when I have a set and I and I boy this, I could go a couple different ways with this one here. Um, we'll go both ways. You know well, like today. I was out scouting today, uh, some places in in oregon, and I found one place and I thought, you know, and guys I see guys do this too they'll put out a camera in a spot where they think they're going to do a set throughout. You know, and they and they'll start at early spring or early summer and they want to watch it, monitor it throughout the summer. You know, and in Oregon you can bait, so guys will put out bait and they'll go in there every so often to replenish the bait.
Speaker 2:If that is your scenario and you have an opportunity where you're going to go in multiple times throughout the summer, what I tell guys is this is that don't change everything at once. If you have the opportunity and this is how the scenario goes where you have multiple times, you're going to go in throughout the summer before season take the time to slowly transition that trail to being quiet. In other words, like when you did the Salau and stuff. Well, you decided you were going to do it one day.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:But you were not going to go back out there every other day or or every week throughout the summer. You just said I'm. I might come back four times throughout the summer before hunting season, you know. And it's like okay, so that's a minimal amount of times. No, take care of it then, but take care of it as early as you possibly can. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Get your trail cut so that you can slip in and out nice and quiet, because your entry and your exit are every bit as crucial and important to the hunt as the shot on the animal.
Speaker 2:You know, because you got to get in and out quietly. You've got to get in and out undetected. You got to get in and out quietly. You've got to get in and out undetected. You've got to get in and out without being seen, preferably. But if you're going in multiple times throughout the summer where you're going to put in you know 10, 12 trips, you think, throughout the summer take and do it in phases and do it such that you're not doing this big change all at once. What I found is, if you have the opportunity to do that, the reluctance of those deer to come into that set is a lot less. In other words, they'll rebound quicker on a set that is slowly getting changed over the summer versus one that automatically. He comes home and, man, all the furniture has been cleaned out of the living room. You know what I mean. And so if you've got the time and you know you're going to be in there multiple times throughout the summer, take and and do it methodically.
Speaker 2:Just, you know every time you go in and I've done this in new areas where I've gone and whatnot, and I've done this throughout season why I always carry a pair of little hand shears yeah, pruning, and I picked up that habit too yeah, and you just, it's not just for being in a tree, oh, I forgot that limb, or you know, the wind blew this over and now it's in my way and I can cut it down and or hinge, cut it and get it out of my way. It's as I'm going in little things. You know, this briar keeps going across the trail and it catches my pant leg or whatnot, and my pant leg or whatnot, and it's not a, it's not a normal sound that the deer hear as far as when briars pull on your clothes it's like velcro.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know what I mean and it tears your stuff and whatnot, so just cut it. I always just cut it, just enough for me to get by yeah, you know yeah and when, like for cutting trails, it's not.
Speaker 1:we're not cutting a four-foot-wide swath through there. It might be a couple feet wide. Right, right, just enough.
Speaker 2:Honestly, the first 30 yards I leave untouched, going into a set. Yeah. If I'm going in and it's a 100-yard walk in to where the set is, or maybe it's 200 yards, I don't even bother with the first, you know 80 yards, you know, depending on how far in it is, because I just I don't want that to be disturbed at all. I don't want to draw any more attention to it.
Speaker 2:We're not far past gates yeah you know, we're not going in miles and miles and miles. These big bucks are that wherever that habitat is. And and when we find that habitat, man, I just, I just want to leave it untouched by the road, because I worked hard to find it.
Speaker 2:I want to keep it, but there is that throughout the summer I pick it up and if I'm going to go in there multiple times, I'll just take the hand shears and I'll clean it out by the time season gets here, by the time the end of summer, because I don't start usually getting serious till November. But in the event that I've got a big buck, that's daily. I'm never going to turn that down. Yeah, yeah. So it's like well, no it's open and it's ready to go.
Speaker 1:And I'm just thinking of different sets that I have. I've always left that initial, but then I always follow either a current game trail so it's less change.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Or the path of least resistance.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:So that I'm not cutting a lot. So it's never a straight line at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's always, they just wind through and it's probably if it were a straight line it'd be half as long of a walk than for cutting the path through. But I know last. Well, two years ago, my first year hunting, I cut. Actually, I did it for Asha, it was after season, I just kind of walked in, but I cut in a trail a bit more of a trail for her, I believe, because she was going to come in and potentially hunt that spot, but it was a lot of that was to avoid and this is also getting an eyes and nose aspect of it that we'll talk about but it was so that I could walk in to be more scent free.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And where they wouldn't potentially see me. So it was kind of creating a back door into my set as opposed to walking through the front door Right and I gotta be honest, I'm more concerned about them seeing me than I am them hearing me. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, I always want to make a little bit of sound when I go in and I think that because I don't want anything on the set when I get in there and with cell cameras I can look in real time, see, okay, there's a buck on there. Well, if the buck is on there, my target buck or smaller. Sometimes I'll just leave them and wait for them to leave and then go on.
Speaker 2:But if it's like, well, I need to get in there because I know my target buck has been showing up here in the land you know, I got to get in there and let everything settle down. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, that's when I'll snap a branch or something like that, out of sight, where they can't see me, and just kind of bump them off of it nice and easy. I don't want to scare them. And for anybody that's bear hunted over bait knows that when a bear comes into a bait he'll snap a branch or a twig or something long before he gets there.
Speaker 2:And it's to warn the other bears that are there so that they're not surprised. Deer do the same thing on a set, whether there's bait there or not when they come through, because they've smelled the other deer. They don't want to startle the other deer so they'll make noise to keep that other deer. So yeah, I've just kind of picked that up and that's what I do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was really interesting. So last year at one point and I believe it was two or three days in a row, as I'm sitting and set at about 2 to 2.30, it was the same time every day a deer and I never could see it because it would come up behind me, somewhere behind me and off to the right, but I'm in the ground, blind, I can't see, and I'm not going to go rip and open a window hey, what's up, looking around, what's out there? But it would have to come up and it has to move through that really thick salow so it would move and then it would stop and I think kind of check things out, check things out.
Speaker 1:And then it would move maybe another 10 feet, stop, check things out, and then it would get to the point where it got into a more open or onto a trail and then it stopped making noise and then I couldn't hear it at all. But it kind of changed the way of how I made noise coming in, where I would walk in and I would stop. I might do 10 feet If I was brushing up against something, then I would stop.
Speaker 1:And then I would walk maybe 10 or 15 feet, and then I'd stop Because I wanted to mimic as best I could.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:What they were hearing. But then do the you know, because you taught me about the snapping a twig To do that, because often I was bumping something off of my set. Usually it was a doe, or a doe and a yearling.
Speaker 2:And it's okay if they get bumped off the set. If they don't run off, if they're not greyhounding out of there, if they just walk off for a few minutes out of sight, they'll come back.
Speaker 1:And they always came back.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I never worried about that. So let's talk about the gear, like what kind of gear and things related to us personally making unnatural noises, I would say Well, what kind of gear Expensive.
Speaker 2:There's no such thing as cheap camo anymore. But you've got to be educated in two areas. Number one educate yourself on what you want your camo to do. That's number one. Number one educate yourself on what you want, your camo to do. That's number one. Number two educate yourself in what the camo was designed to do, and I say that because, with all of the microfibers and all the synthetic fibers that are on the market right now, we pay high dollar for this camouflage right. Yeah.
Speaker 2:For these outfits and I say outfits because basically they're sold as a a layering system yeah well, you know, like uh sitka has a cloudburst. Well, that cloudburst is designed as a rain jacket to keep you dry. It is 100 windproof, 100 waterproof. It is not designed to be worn as you're going through, saulo yeah or brushing up against hemlock or furs or cedars, because it's going to sound like a rain jacket brushing up against that stuff, which is totally not natural.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's avoiding the unnatural sounds. So, if you're wearing, because a lot of it, like I have, is soft if you feel it Right. Well, as you're walking through salal it make.
Speaker 2:The salal is making noise being brushed up against, but my clothing isn't right whereas that would be the clothing's making noise absolutely absolutely, and it's like well, should you not buy that? Well, no, you should buy that. But you need to know when, what it was intended for, and then wear it at appropriate times yeah so if you're trying to get in during a rainstorm, get in stand and then put that cloudburst on you know, what I mean.
Speaker 2:Or there's other stuff on the market. You've got First Light and Kuyu and Sitka, and all of these make stuff that are 100% waterproof, and some have a synthetic fiber cover over it.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh you know, and it just maybe it doesn't breathe very well, but it keeps you dry. Yeah, you know, and and granted, you don't want to sweat, especially late season, but you have to understand what, what it was designed for, for what situation, for what scenario, kind of thing yeah, and then the last of this, avoiding the clanking noise especially, and I think I'm laughing about this.
Speaker 1:So one of the things like with weapon I have my rifle that I went in uh last year and you suggested walking in with it with a round in the chamber in case.
Speaker 1:I walked up and saw something standing in the trail as I'm walking into my set. Then, when I got to the bottom of the ladder stand, unload it and then so you got to pull it up separately by the string and all that to go up in the ladder stand. Well, I would walk in with it around chambered, but then you got to unload it, but pulling it up against a metal ladder I brought in a gun sock and I put it back in that. It's quite a while going through this whole process, slowly, quietly, and then go up into the stand and then you know you got to reload it and it's a lever action. So you know you got to cock it and everything. And one of the times it was fairly early in the season as I'm trying to load and lesson learned don't hold all. I would load it with five rounds, but don't hold all five rounds in your hand as you're loading because one slipped out.
Speaker 2:It just started clanking down the ladder.
Speaker 1:Every step of that ladder. I swear all the way down clank clank, clank clank all the way down and I'm like, yeah, okay, that's about right, yeah and it doesn't sound natural. You know no raindrop or anything like that makes that kind of noise nothing, yeah, but it made me kind of wonder. With a bow there's a lot of hard material, so right, and if you're going up into, say, a tree stand, it seems like there's a lot of chance of that banging up against it or something.
Speaker 2:There's that and there's drawing the bow, taking it from static position as far as the cam system goes and bringing it to full draw and having a load on that, I mean on the pulleys and all that stuff. There's a lot of creaking that can happen there. There's the arrow falling off the rest hitting the riser, which is some kind of machined metal, but when you're going in, when you're going in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got. Well, there's a number, you get your quiver. Some guys will take a hip quiver. Some guys have a quiver that's attached to their bow and stuff and they're pulling it through the salalau or they got you know hidden branches and whatnot and it sounds, you know, like a little untuned guitar, sometimes on the arrows in the quiver. I don't know, maybe that's a bad description of it, something like that. You know where. It's just that.
Speaker 1:But they don't make something like a gun sock.
Speaker 2:They do make a quiver sock for the end to hide and that's mostly to hide the veins, the color of the veins, you know. But it does serve a dual purpose in that way. But yeah, you just got to be careful, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that is the most unnatural noise in the woods.
Speaker 2:For me, what it was was the binos.
Speaker 1:Oh really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I'm not a big guy, you know, and all the bino harnesses on the market were always too big for me, you know. So if I was climbing the stand, it would climbing the climbing sticks to get into the stand. It would kind of thump against the climbing sticks every now and then, or the one thing that I do now that I didn't do for the longest time. I couldn't figure it out. It was just, it was something that was so simple. As I take my release, I have a trigger release.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And I spin it so that it's not in the palm of my hand but on the back of my hand, because I would reach up and grab the rung and that release, which is metal, would clang on the metal climbing stick. Yeah. And so it was like and my hands are cold and everything, it's like, how do I hold on to this? And it was just as simple as rotating it to the back of my hand and it was no worries.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. So now let's move on to eyes. A couple of things. Here is when you're going into your blind or into your stand. You don't want them spotting you in those situations, so how do you adjust so that they don't actually see you?
Speaker 2:so this is really big in the midwest and back east because they don't have the ground cover that we have as far as the foliage and whatnot, and we are typically hunting in very, very, very thick stuff, and so this is not as much a problem very seldom is it as a big problem for guys over here as it is back there. But Jimmy, our pro staffer, was running into it this year and he asked me you know how do I address that? And, guys, if you go online any of the food plot companies, they will all have a screen vegetation, and a screen vegetation is a vegetation that grows very fast and very tall and very thick, and that vegetation is sold with the sole purpose of giving you an easement into your spot. And what it is is exactly what it sounds like a screen vegetation. It's just something that grows, like I said, fast, thick and tall and allows you a cover. You plant it in the spring. You can plant it in the middle of summer. It takes very little maintenance, very, very low maintenance.
Speaker 2:You may only have to scratch the ground and it grows up so fast and it will create basically a wall that you can walk behind to get into your set, okay, and so it's really really easy, really low maintenance, and I told Jimmy about it, you know, and it's like no, you can buy a bag of that and run a strip of it 80 to 100 yards and there you go, that's your ticket into your set. You can walk on the backside of that out of your target buck's view and it grows so fast by the time. If you planted it now, by the time season gets here, it's going to be well over your head.
Speaker 1:I'm sitting here smiling because in my mind I'm imagining someone would do that with bamboo. It grows really fast and it kind of creates a wall. But just the thought of you're walking through the woods and all of a sudden you see this 20-foot-long line of bamboo in the middle of Pacific Northwest. It's a lot like CRP.
Speaker 2:It grows thick like a CRP, which is really CRP, is really big on east of the mountains and the government, like in North Dakota and South Dakota, actually pays farmers not to grow in those CRP fields, and so the whitetail would always hide in those because it's so incredibly thick, and so the whitetail would always hide in those sea urchins, because it's so incredibly thick. It's just like that, where it grows up just thick like that and tall, and so, yeah, it's really easy to cover your entrance and your exit.
Speaker 1:Okay, and so I know you like doing afternoon hunts to avoid bumping anything early in the morning. But sometimes you don't have a choice. You've got to go in early for whatever reason, and I have a set that it actually lends itself to or a couple of sets. It might have to be early morning.
Speaker 2:Right, right, they're just a morning set.
Speaker 1:So I was thinking about headlamp and last year I know that I went in and I would have the headlamp on just as not full brightness but enough where I could safely walk until I got to the end of the trail that I used cut in the last 80 yards, and then I would switch my headlamp from the main white light to one of the green lights. So they always have a lot. Of them will have a red light and a green light on.
Speaker 2:Right right.
Speaker 1:And I couldn't see anything with the red light or see enough of anything. But I would switch to the green light and walk to the back of my ground blind with that green light and when I got behind the ground, blind, you know again, stopping every 10 feet or so and listening here to see what I could hear or to kind of give them an idea of just a bump off my set. But then I turned it off completely before opening up my ground blind. Because once you open that up, if you've got light behind it now, whether it's green light or you know- right right they can still see this all of a sudden they'll see a shade change.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it won't. It won't be like what you and I see, but they will see a shade change, yeah, yeah, you know, like you said, some sets are just morning sets. That buck just decides that that's the only time he's going to visit that.
Speaker 1:So any other thoughts? As far as headlamp, of what I mean, if you're going in the morning, should you shut it off and climb up. If you're doing from ladder stand, tree stand in the dark, I think when I did a ladder stand I kept the light on or I turned it to red light because, it was up close when I climbed up into the ladder stand.
Speaker 2:Right, and I would say that everything that you said is great. As far as a tree stand goes, I want to have light, whether it's green light or red light. I mean, back when I started, they didn't have any such thing.
Speaker 2:Everybody was just, you know, was all white and I would turn it down to the lowest power and go in that way. But the green and red is great. I'm never going to tell you to climb up a tree, stand in the dark as far as without any kind of light. You want light there, but typically, if that's the case and I know that that buck's coming in, I'm going to get in there three hours before he shows up. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean, because I just don't want that chance of bumping him. And for me, my biggest fear is that they're going to see me in the stand versus walking in. I'm not so concerned about on the ground walking in. I feel like, if they see you in the stand and this has been my experience that if I get caught in the stand, whether it's by that buck or maybe it's the dominant doe that catches me in that stand one time, that's it. I'm done, because every time they come into the set after that, the first thing they're going to check is that stand. And if they see me in it and I may be camoed out and everything, but I haven't been there for two or three days and then all of a sudden I show up in there. Even though they can't put a solid pattern to me, a solid silhouette, there's still something there that wasn't there before and it makes them real leery.
Speaker 1:But it's just going to put them on high alert.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:So bumping them off in some way? And I was going to ask you about that because there were a lot of times I would bump deer walking in, and I mean not even remotely close to my set. And I and I never quite. I never really worried about that right now.
Speaker 2:If I saw one, sometimes they would just stand there and keep looking at me, because all they see is basically a white light right so deer in the headlights yeah and they would just stand there and I'd wait till they actually got bored and walked off, which could take a few minutes yep, and that's the best thing to do, though, yeah, is let them walk off, instead of getting you know this closer and closer and closer, and eventually you know you're like 15, 20 feet from them. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And they bound off. Well, you just let them walk off, you know, and the same like I've been trapped in stand at the end of the day I don't know how many times day, I don't know how many times. Here it is 10, 11 at night, and it's like I'm sure that if any game warden came, he'd probably think I was poaching, you know. But the reality is no. I just got a deer on set.
Speaker 1:They've bedded down and I don't want them to see me climbing out yeah I don't have a spotlight, so it's all cool so yeah, and I mean yeah, best way in is also best way out right, right.
Speaker 2:So anymore I'll. I'll take like a pocket of pebbles, little rocks and whatnot, and once it's past shooting light, if I got a deer in on the, I start tossing those pebbles over by it yeah get them nervous enough that they walk off, and then I climb down on a stand as quickly as I can and get out of there yeah okay, so last part, and we talk about this ad nauseum, but we that's just because of how important it is, but their nose.
Speaker 1:So best way in, you're trying to beat their ears, their eyes and now their nose. So products in the process to reduce your scent.
Speaker 2:I think, man, there's so much products on the market now.
Speaker 1:Well, let's just actually just talk about what you use specifically. So you know, and there are a lot so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there are, and they all carry weight. I should say. Our sponsor is dead down wind and we use all of their products, from the camel wash to the scent free bags to the field spray, constantly using the wind check to check our wind and whatnot, and then we have ozonics in our all of those and use them to the absolute 150th degree. You need to do everything you can. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to deal with the nose, and whenever, if I take somebody out and they don't want to address that issue, it's like okay, this is going to be a one and done.
Speaker 2:You know I take you out one time because I'm beating my head against the wall trying to accomplish something for you.
Speaker 1:if you're not willing to address this, if you don't take this part seriously, but it's always the same kind of the same process and, from what you taught me, last year we went out and it's so. First thing is we're driving out basically in our underwear, you know our long underwear, yeah, or sweats or something or sweats over those.
Speaker 1:But then we get out and in our scent free bags all of our clothes in the trunk right right and or the bed of the truck or wherever, and then it's get out on the side of the road by the gate and then get dressed right so that none of those clothes have any odor to them. But then it's taking the field spray and kind of spraying ourselves down with that, which is a kind of a it's like Febreze and unscented Febreze.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:It gets rid of the odor and then going in from there and we might do drags or what was the other one, the nose jammer once we get in, or something like that. But that is the whole process. And then, when we leave, it's this reverse process where open the trunk, open up the scent-free bag get undressed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it changed back at the car, back into what we wore out there initially and I need to preface all of this to say that this is not for killing a spike or a forked horn or a three point, because I hear guys well, I get my deer every year.
Speaker 2:Well, that's fine, that's not the caliber of deer I'm chasing. The caliber deer I'm chasing is going to make the record books, you know, and it's like every year we're on them, Every year we've got five or six or whatever that we're going after. It's not these little bucks, and I don't want to sound judgmental or critical of anyone. If that's what you want to shoot, then, man, have at it. It's your tag, enjoy yourself. But the deer that I'm going after is not a deer that's going to tolerate much of my scent at all, if any at all. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's a different animal.
Speaker 1:And it's putting together a lot of things to up those odds.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of. Maybe this is only 2% of the equation or 5%, but if you do enough of those, you've increased your odds to and it might be the most important 2% to 5% of the whole equation.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, when you really stop and think about it, I mean we're dealing, we're trying to beat a magician, magician yeah, you know what I mean. Yeah, it's really, it's tough but it's that same phrase.
Speaker 1:It just be methodical and everything. And when you walk into your set, you're walking in the exact same way, the exact same times and the exact everything is the exact same, so that the deer it becomes familiar.
Speaker 2:Right right, there's nothing unusual. He's patterning you as much as you're patterning him. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And so the last one, and I got to thinking about this and I've talked about my Riverside set quite often and where I do or I did the minerals the last three years.
Speaker 1:It's a place where you would do minerals but you wouldn't necessarily. It's not a good hunting spot. It's not the bedroom door. Okay, now, where the bedroom door, I'm thinking more about kind of and we're wrapping up with this as far as thinking of when I go in and thinking about like thermals and not necessarily winds. I mean, you'll want to know which way the wind is blowing, but let's talk about just kind of real quick here, the thermals. Now, if you're going in at, say, sun up is 6 am and so you want to come in a couple hours before that, well, it's still dark out, it's cold, not a lot of wind, not a lot of thermals at that point. So everything's very still. Now, let's say, 10 o'clock, the thermals are going and that might blow you out.
Speaker 1:And I'm thinking about this for my Riverside set because of where I have to go in. I think that might end up becoming an issue where, even if it's an afternoon hunt, the way that and I'm not as worried about once I'm inset because I can turn on the ozonics and have that adjusted to cover my scent and block it, but when I go in I can't be going in if thermals or wind is going to push my scent in a direction that I can't control and I can't adjust for Like I can cover for my scent. So is I mean, have you been in that situation where you might have to adjust, or what do you think about like having to adjust to that point?
Speaker 2:So I had a set that we called the barnyard.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And we called it the barnyard because there was so much activity on that set that it smelled like a barnyard just everything that was going on there, and the bedroom was exactly east of where my tree stand was, and the wind the prevailing wind was always blowing from west to east, right into the bedroom. And boy I used to. It was really, really difficult. It was near impossible for me to get a shot opportunity on anything because they would always come with the wind in their face. And then I got an Ozonics and that set right. There is the one set that made me a believer.
Speaker 2:Not only did I get shots after that, but there was one occasion where I spent 45 minutes with animals all around me and the wind swirling everywhere and I never once got winded and they just kind of fed on by up into this meadow above me and everything and everything was really cool and that was an elk situation there. But yeah, prior to that, prior to getting an Ozonics, if you don't have that man, it's such a game changer. Your thought process has to be totally different. If the wind is bad, the wind is bad. You don't hunt it, yeah, you just don't. You don't hunt it yeah, you just don't. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, I don't know how you overcome that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's my.
Speaker 2:And I was in a. I was at a tree stand. We've talked about wind being in layers and stuff and I was still getting blown out. I'd take it up as high as I could. Little tree you were in, but it was another one off to. If you're standing there looking at the barnyard, there was another big, taller red fur off to the left that was. There was three of them clumped together and it had great backdrop and I was able to get up 25 30 feet in that and it didn't make a difference.
Speaker 1:I remember that little clump. Maybe that's some reason I thought you weren't up that high.
Speaker 2:I remember the one you're thinking about? I wasn't. Oh okay, that one was about 15 and that was another little clump. Yes, that you were yeah, because it was.
Speaker 1:I think that was the first time I'd seen a tree stand and I was kind of impressed like wow, you're on just this little cubby of branches and I killed I don't know how many bulls out of that at 15 feet with that Ozonics.
Speaker 2:I don't know how many bulls I killed coming into the barnyard there over the years.
Speaker 1:But as you're walking in, I mean the Ozonics is great once you're in set.
Speaker 2:Once you're in set, as I was walking in, I mean, there's times where I have gone literally hundreds of yards out of the way, quarter mile, half mile out of the way to get the wind in my favor to walk in.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's just you know. It also applies to how you hunt that set. If your wind isn't allowing you, your prevailing wind isn't allowing, it's always going to give you away. I mean, maybe you just maybe you don't like ground blinds, but the only places you can go is a ground blind. Yeah, that doesn't get you blown out. Yeah, or you know you don't like heights. Well, you and I yesterday set up a stand for boot camp. That was how far off the ground.
Speaker 1:Maybe seven feet six and a half to seven.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was just over the top of my head and there's no way anybody could see that. No, and I mean you could stand 10 feet from it and not know that. That is there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were prepping for boot camp and it's kind of this little an excitement on both our parts Like how well did we hide both a ground blind and a tree stand, and they're both right off the skidder road and we don't think anybody will see them.
Speaker 2:What did it take us 30 minutes?
Speaker 1:oh, probably an hour to do both, to do both, yeah, yeah it doesn't.
Speaker 2:If the wind, if you, that's what you got to do to get the wind in your favor. Yeah, you do what you got to do. But yeah you got to hunt out of something you're not particularly fond of, or hunt away that you're fond of. You know if you want that buck.
Speaker 1:That's what you got to do or go in like I was thinking like before, before the thermals, thermals and before you can get in there and get your ozonics going, and when they switch you're just totally undetected and that's what I'm thinking is when I finally get to the point where I'm going to hunt that set and I believe I'm going to hunt halfway this year, so I think I'm a couple years off from hunting Riverside, which gives me some more time to explore and everything like that but I think I wanted to. Well, I know I need it for my backup in case we come across like we might have an opportunity to host a hunt for someone and so that we have a spot for them. But it's that and one of your catchphrases if you want what you've never had, you have to do the things that you've never done yeah.
Speaker 1:And so that might mean going in at midnight. I've actually, because I'll probably do ground blind. I was thinking about this when you told me that how you went and you slept in your tree stand and kind of roped or tied yourself into it one night, tied yourself into it one night. But I was like, okay, but if I had the chance to get two times that really nice buck who could be even better this year like would I be willing to go in at 11 o'clock at night the night before and just go to sleep on the floor of this tree on this ground, blind, to wake up and not worry about the scent. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, is he worth that, and I'm like that might be what has to happen.
Speaker 2:Okay, so this is huge because this is only year three for Aaron Year three and I'm actually contemplating he's already Doing these crazy things of like okay, maybe I'm going to go just sleep in the woods.
Speaker 2:But that's just it. And see, that's what I love. That's what makes it exciting for me is the fact that somebody can get so passionate about it that that's what they're willing to do. I've done that. I told you about that. My wife wasn't too excited. I've done it three or four times where I've slept in the stand all night to be there for that. But I've also gone in before daylight, like you're saying, to beat the thermals, get in there and then when they switch I'm already in there and I'm in undetected. They have no idea. I've done that several times. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But yeah, that passion to and you start weighing that Do I really want. Is this buck worth going after? That.
Speaker 1:Or this bull that was also why I and I mentioned this with you I was contemplating just grabbing a camp chair or a ground blind chair and walking up and looking for the bedroom door, plopping that chair down sometime this summer and go in it. Like you know, once I find the bedroom door, but go in before daybreak, plop this chair down and sit in it all day, checking wind non-stop to find out when did the thermal switch?
Speaker 1:right right and going to that extreme to just figure out okay, do I need to come in at four o'clock in the morning to hunt? This spot right or can I come in at 10 o'clock in the morning if it's an afternoon hunt, and it could be that the deer are coming out at eight in the morning, so it doesn't matter, I still have to come in at 4.
Speaker 2:What's funny is that you start talking this way about elk, and it's totally normal. Yeah. Well, we got a two-mile pack in or a six-mile hike in. We got to get on the trail by 11 or 11.30 or something like that. Get in there well before daylight. But when you start talking this way about deer, people start thinking you're nuts.
Speaker 1:Just, but when you start talking this way about deer people start thinking you're nuts.
Speaker 2:Just drive out to the clear cut and look.
Speaker 1:They're all standing there. But you know and I know a lot of our listeners because I've shared the picture of two times when I first discovered him last year, he was a four by three and I couldn't tell if he had eye guards. But he came back this year. Now he's a really nice four by four with eye guards. Next year he'll be five and a half years old. You know, aging him. He could be even bigger, he could be an even more impressive four by four. And then there's another up-and-coming one that's like a year younger than him that I discovered this year.
Speaker 1:But okay, so how many people get a shot at that buck or a shot of that quality of a buck? Right, right, that's what's driving this. This is why and our listeners and the guys who've gone to our class, I think, can relate to this they want that buck and I know a lot of you guys are like we're. I'm presenting this, these scenarios, especially as a new hunter, so that maybe you guys are considering this. Should I be doing something like this and now you're okay?
Speaker 2:I, is this normal? Yeah, do other guys think like well let me just tell you right now, that's not normal, but that's for the general population. It's not normal but that's what separates us from the general population.
Speaker 1:Yeah, trophy blacktail hunters.
Speaker 2:It is normal yes, it's exactly right. So it's a sickness that gets in you.
Speaker 1:But that passion is in a lot of the guys.
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 1:Our last locating field day. You could just tell it. Well, all of our classes, all of our field days, you can just tell that from all of the guys. And thank you for coming to those classes. But it's very apparent, you are all invested in.
Speaker 2:They're very serious.
Speaker 1:In this, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:This is not just a hobby. This is something that they're driven by.
Speaker 1:So it's fun to talk about these crazy situations with all of you because, yeah, we found a good audience for talking about our crazy Group therapy. Yeah, you know my newfound crazy Dave's long-term crazy. Yeah, there you go. So anyway, so I think that kind of covers it about ears and eyes and nose and getting in and getting out of your set. So until next week.
