The Blacktail Coach Podcast
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The Blacktail Coach Podcast
Stop Second Guessing Your Hunt
Ever feel that nagging urge to change everything mid‑sit? We’ve been there. This week, we dig into why second guessing wrecks hunts and how a simple, structured plan—paired with honest data—keeps you on track to tag mature blacktails. We lay out the season framework we teach our coaching groups: a calendar you actually follow, the intel you record each day, and the small, repeatable actions that compound into results. No fluff, no hype, just practical steps that build confidence when the woods go quiet.
We talk through the reality behind those giant summer trail‑cam bucks and why locating is the unromantic keystone of success. You’ll learn how to separate summer patterns from in‑season movement, where to position cameras as deer shift toward bedding and staging cover, and how to log direction of travel and timing so you can predict where a dominant buck will appear. We also map out a scent strategy that works with the rut instead of against it: less is more in pre‑rut, scale gradually as multiple does cycle, and keep entry and exits low‑impact so your best buck never knows he’s being hunted.
You’ll hear stories that prove patience is a strategy, not a slogan—multi‑year chases that turned “15 minutes after dark” into “broad daylight” with a 40‑yard move, early‑season records built on years of scouting, and how to decide when it’s actually smart to deviate from your plan. Whether you’re meat‑focused or targeting a single buck, we show how to set expectations, avoid FOMO, and measure success by decisions, not chance.
If this episode helps your mindset for the season, tap follow, share it with a hunting buddy, and drop us a rating on your podcast app. Tell us: what’s the one change you’ll commit to before your next sit?
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Welcome back to the Blacktail Coach Podcast. I'm Aaron. And I'm Dave. All right. So this week kind of had an inspiration for recording because of all the questions we've been getting recently. And it was something I went out for my first stand Monday to sit and stand. And so second guessing yourself and sticking to the plan basically how second guessing can mess up your hunt. Or maybe it's a good idea. And we'll talk about that as well. But for the most part, you just start second guessing yourself.
SPEAKER_02:Right. And it can do more than just wreck your hunt. It can ruin your season. Pull yourself out of where you really need to be.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Because you're just overthinking. You know, and that's a common problem that a lot of, I don't want to say beginners, but let's just say the newer hunters deal with. They're trying, we get this a lot because of the seminars and the classes and the boot camp and all that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, new to a system. Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And we we just flood them with a ton of information. And then throughout the summer, I don't think there's a day that goes by that I don't get text messages from the guys that either online or in person or one-day class, whatever. And they're they're wanting to take what they've learned and either double check it and or clarify or add on to it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And sometimes, and it's funny because I cover this in the seminars as well. We just we overthink things too much. We make it harder than it needs to be.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Just keep it simple.
SPEAKER_01:And one of the things, and so the guys who go through the coaching, we do this with them. And also the Patreon guys get the hunt planner and the gear guide. But the hunt planner is the main thing. And that's where you sit down and you put on the calendar what you're doing each particular day through season, through your particular season. And that's the whole idea. Whether you're doing set hunting, spot and stock, glassing clear cuts, it's create a plan that you're going to stick with.
SPEAKER_02:Right. And it it's not simply for the sake of a time filler in the course or anything like that. It's so that you have structure to your season. And even when things start going out, even when you start second guessing yourself, just stick to the plan. Because you do those basics and it's gonna pay off.
SPEAKER_01:And part of that with sticking to the plan is also we start documenting when and where we see the bucks come in or the deer come in. And that might be what we use next year to build off of this year. Right. Because I noticed just one of the simple things, which actually didn't occur to me until we did the field day this year. The dominant bucks that came into my set came in from about 10 o'clock. Uh-huh. If you're sitting there and me looking directly into my set is 12 o'clock. So 10 o'clock, that's where the dominant bucks came in. The non-dominant bucks came in from 3 o'clock. So that but it's just documenting what time of day they're coming in and what directions. Okay, I didn't get one of those dominant bucks last year, but now I know this is probably the direction they're gonna come from. And I now know the time that they're gonna come in. So that actually changes my plan for this year because I'm gonna do my drags a little bit differently. I realized I hinge cut a couple of viny maples so that it forced them to come in at a certain way so that I could get a better shot if I needed things like that. But one of the things, and I want wanted to address this because I think it throws because of social media and it's FOMO or that, you know, the perfect life that we see, the perfect hunt that we see on social media. We get guys, and you did this last year with Chris had Field of Dreams, you had the locker room, and these huge bucks all summer. And we get guys who will send in pictures with huge bucks. That's not the norm.
SPEAKER_02:No, not at all. And I kind of regretted doing that in the sense that it created in a lot of guys' minds an unrealistic expectation.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So I've been doing this for over 30 years now. The locating is, and I tell everybody this, it's the most unromantic part of it of the hunt, but it's the probably the most key part of the hunt, it's the most important part of the hunt because you can't kill what you can't find. And the field of dreams was a spot that I had that I let Chris have. And he ended up taking the number three all time out of there. So that's the last time I'm giving any spot away. But no, it was awesome. But point being is that I don't want to point, I stopped putting up trail cam pics for that reason. I don't want to create an unrealistic expectation for somebody who's just getting started using this system and thinking that it's gonna be that easy. You know what I mean? You still have to learn this locating process. And once you have it down, then you're gonna get picks like that. But it doesn't the person that comes along and gets it to work right away. Yeah, you know, not that it's hard, it's just a different concept, it's a different way of thinking. And guys have been trained by people that they're it's in their family or someone that took them out hunting for the first time, they've been taught a certain way, and it's hard for them to let it go.
SPEAKER_01:And just because it I mean, this is a big deal where you were getting them even into season, but just because you see them there in the summer doesn't mean they're gonna be there during season. That is summer pattern, that's where they're at, and you found that. And it might be that they're still in that area come right season, but but where I place my cameras in the summer, and where I place my cameras in the fall and winter, two different spots altogether.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and there's a reason why.
SPEAKER_01:And so, like mine, I've never seen and I've had cameras up the last two years. This year I didn't do it because I kind of went with I knew where my sets were going to be, and I didn't feel like I needed to put up cameras except for I wanted to see how they were hitting the minerals, and they did this year really well, but I didn't put out cameras, but the last two years I've never had a dominant buck come in on camera until season, right? Until I start doing the scent, so it's that switch flipping that we talk about that you start manipulating their behavior, but and I know there's just the excitement for the season, we get these unrealistic expectations that oh, I'm gonna go out there day one and kill something. And so as I'm sitting in my set on Monday, this particular set, I don't see bucks or I didn't see anything really until November start showing up on camera, which means I sat all modern, early modern, just sitting in my in my ground line, staring out the window. Cursing my name. But I knew it was going to happen. And I but again, I learned some things and I and I shifted this year with the way I'm doing it. And you've talked a lot about in the classes where it can take three years to get your buck.
SPEAKER_02:So that they did a study, and the average hunter. Now, this is just the average hunter who puts in the average amount of time every year. So I don't know how they come up with those hours or anything like that, but they did a study and found out that the average hunter, when he targets a buck, it takes him three years to kill that buck. Typically, what they're talking about is a mature buck.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:You know, and there's nothing wrong with shooting spikes and forking horns and three points if that's what you want. If that's your trophy, have at it. Good luck to you. I'm gonna cheer you on. But when a mature bucks, and there's a reason why they're doing mature bucks because they're smart, they're cagey, they're elusive, they're isolationists, you know what I mean? They just want to be solitaire. Yeah, and so it takes that hunter three years to learn the spot, to learn the escape routes, to learn the feeding areas, to learn the bedding areas, to learn the bedroom door, all of that stuff, you know. And that's not saying that you can't kill them the first year. I mean, we're looking at it this year, and we've already, yep, we've been in that first week of September. Well, September 1st, Cully killed yeah, Cully Scroggins killed that monster blacktail, what was it about 11 in the morning, 10 in the morning, something like that?
SPEAKER_01:It was early, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, opening day. And it's like, well, no, that can happen. And then we had two other guys come in that same week, I believe, or the Mark was a few days later.
SPEAKER_01:But that actually goes back to your point about locating, right? And how important locating is because that if especially if you're gonna hunt the early archery, yeah, you gotta put yourself in a position to succeed. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02:You're not going out there just willy-nilly blindfolding yourself and throwing a dart at the wall on a map and say, Okay, I hope one shows up here. You know, it it all goes back to the locating, and yeah, it happens, it happens all the time. But again, realistic expectations. You know, there was a lot of scouting that went into that. Cully had several years invested in that particular scarface, yeah, in that particular area that particular buck. I know Mark Boone, yeah, he had watched that buck all summer and he had got intel from the season before, you know, just off of what his set was and where they were coming from, and he realized that he wasn't as close to the bedroom as he thought he was, yeah, and then moved and was able to kill another record book buck.
SPEAKER_01:And that was the same situation with Bud when he went and got Charlie. Uh, same thing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:He didn't get Charlie the first year, it was the second year. Yeah, and it was it took that leapfrogging with the cameras down the trail to get 40 yards.
SPEAKER_02:It was, and that's what was funny, and that's a testament to how you can interpret and read what these deer are doing. So the season prior, Charlie would always show up like 15 minutes after dark.
SPEAKER_00:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02:To Bud's credit, he never took any questionable shots. He always like, no, I'm gonna wait. And he ended up not getting Charlie that year, but he learned where Charlie was coming from. He kept using the same trail. And it only took the reason well, there's plenty of reasons why I moved him up 40 yards, but we moved him up 40 yards, and it made a three to four-hour swing in time as to when Charlie was gonna showing up. He was daylighting easily before the season even started.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, instead of right after it gets dark and you can't shoot.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but it was just a matter of him learning that season and being patient enough to not take a questionable shot where he could have lost him. Charlie comes in, there's plenty of daylight, he shoots him, he doesn't go 30 yards and piles up.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And that's so one of my sets, which provided I get one of the target bucks this year, I think even if I don't, I'm going to rethink where my sets are at for this year. So I'm thinking about the idea of bucks show up, so they have that the average range, and I believe the average for Washington, 51 acres. Yep. It can be a little bit like if your high cascade bucks have a bigger range because they're moving because of the snow and foothill bucks, that kind of stuff. And they've said, like sitka, I was reading that they have as little as a 20-acre range. Right. So thinking about that 50 acres, well, they're not in the full 50 acres every day. Right. They're not covering it every day. And I have a particular buck two times, and I've talked about him before. Last year or the first year I was hunting, he came in twice, which is why he got the name two times. Twice during early season, the October 17th and the 27th. He only came in at night. Last year I had cameras up, and we were still able to bait, and I had some apples down and maybe some bedding pheromone. And he came in. So the first year it was just him walking by. Second year, I had a reason for him to potentially stop, and he did, but he only came in at night about a half dozen times, but roughly those same ten days. But again, at he only comes through there at night. I haven't been able to get him to daylight. And so that but that just kind of tells me, okay, so this is his range, this is where he's at every year. So I can kind of count on him being down there every year, but it's not gonna work because I don't have that midnight tag to go hunt him. But also, like the set I'm in, I've last year I have a feeling I'm in kind of a November set.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Does that mean I'm not gonna go out every day? Oh, yeah, that I possibly can. No, I absolutely will because you never know. Yep. And I started my doing the sense a little bit earlier, lightly, but it's just one of those where it's that figuring it out.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Well, and so the intel that you gathered from last year on two times, you're able to look at that and say, okay, I'm not near the bedroom.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:He's not staging anywhere in daylight to come out. It's like, well, how far after daylight? You know, what is he one hour, two hours, 20 minutes? You know, and it it's just one of those things where just a little movement can change that. Or you sit there and you look at your onyx and you go, okay, it's thicker over here. That's got to be, that's the closest thick spot. He's got to be in there bed. Yeah, you know, and you move closer to that.
SPEAKER_01:And it's I know with that spot as well. There's not an annual rub line by there. It's close to there's a dominance rub area that's close by. But like you've said, they only do that at night.
SPEAKER_02:Right, right. And they don't they don't come back to those rubs.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:They just happen to be where they were locking down a dough one evening or maybe doing a little bit of feeding.
SPEAKER_01:And he's come from that direction where the dominance rubs are. Uh-huh. He's, you know, from the direction he's walking in, it's one of two directions. But usually it's at night or early in the morning when it's dark, and he's coming from that direction. Gotcha. But he's heading basically uphill. Right. After that. But it's still, yeah, it that's why I like kind of like this system is you gather all this information and you know where to go next.
SPEAKER_02:Right, right. It's a fun chess match, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02:And it's like you're you're figuring out that deer's next move. And the more you know about the behavior of deer, the more you know about the habits of deer, the more you know about the process of thinking as far as survival, you're able to start picking movement apart as far as where they're going and understanding why. And that influences your next decision on where you need to be.
SPEAKER_01:And I've talked about, I know this putting it in terms of so in the education field and the mental health field, which is my professional background, is you you act on data. So when it comes to like our topic about second guessing, as I'm sitting in the blind on Monday, I'm like, well, should I have done this? Should I do this? And it's it's the third day of season. I try a little rattle, well, should I rattle more, or should I do this? No, it's stick to the plan of what I've got, don't second guess because I don't want to blow out that area. I don't want them to know that okay, there's something there that sounds like two bucks going at it, but I know that that's a dangerous area.
SPEAKER_00:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01:Like, so you don't want to do something that tips them off. Right. And I mean, you talked to you were just having a conversation with I think it was with Cully. So Cully's Scrogan's episode, his success story is coming up, I think in about three weeks, is when we'll release a great episode.
SPEAKER_02:It was probably our best interview so far. I'm going to springboard off of what you were saying there and say this that second guessing stems from previous seasons' frustration. That's what it is. And you have to be able to push that back and understand that you're trying something new. And I use the analogy of a fisherman with a new lure that they just bought. You got your favorite lure, and then you got this other one that you just bought it brand new, and you never caught a fish on it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And you can go out and beat the water with your favorite lure for 12 hours, not get so much as a bite, put on that new lure, and you fish that for an hour, maybe even 45 minutes. You get up the next day, hadn't caught anything the day before, you go out fishing. What do you do? Put your favorite lure back on, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Because you got no confidence in the new one. And so this is all new. So guys don't have confidence in it, but they've got all this history of frustration for previous seasons, not getting anything, or only shooting what they call small ones, or never, you know, wanting to get a record book and never even seeing one.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And so it's easy to jump ship early and say this isn't working. And there's just a lot of negativity that goes along with that, as far as you start getting down on yourself, you start getting down on hunting, and you get frustrated and a spike steps out or a forkhorn and you shoot that thinking I may not get another chance.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And that's fine. You know, you can do that. But I'm telling you, this system works. And if you just give it a season, you'll see the results.
SPEAKER_01:It's funny because now, like I would have taken, and I ended up last year. I got my spike. He was my first buck, though. And then the next day, which was the last day of modern, I had a giant three-point come in.
SPEAKER_02:What was it, one o'clock?
SPEAKER_01:One o'clock in the afternoon.
SPEAKER_02:That three point would have been record book.
SPEAKER_01:So it's one of those where it changes this year, my expectation. I know he's there. Right. So am I well, the spike's no longer there, so I can't shoot him, but there are smaller bucks that could come in, but it's like if I just wait for those last days, he could come walking by.
SPEAKER_02:And I don't even think it's about shooting a record book buck as much as it's shooting the buck that you're happy with.
SPEAKER_01:Your buck, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:You know what I mean? And not getting frustrated. This system will work and you will see bucks, but you've got to do the system. You can't cut it short. It's like any hunt. You gotta put in the time, you gotta put in the labor, you gotta put in an honest effort. Success, like we say, is no accident. You have to prepare for it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and it's doing doing things the right way is if you're with so thinking about if you're using sense or maybe bait, if like the the Oregon guys can still bait. But you can you gotta think through that and not I would say bait, like finding a bait that they'll eat. Because it might not be apples, right? Most deer will eat apples, but it might not be that. And I wrote this down about the less is more. So not overdo you can talk about a bit about this, but don't overdo things for your stage of the rut, for where you are in the rut. So we're right now on pre-rut. We've seen some where they're very much not fighting it out full blown for the dominance who's the top buck, but we got some pictures from Ryan the other day, just a little going at it, a couple of bucks that he got on camera.
SPEAKER_02:And bucks are nosing does right now. They're yeah, they're going in there and they're getting doing some chasing and stuff. So yeah, it's definitely pre-rut.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And so, but then here we in a couple of weeks, it'll full blown rut will be gone. Yeah. And so that changes how you're gonna do your scents, you know, how how much you're going to do them.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And that's a good point, Aaron, because I think uh a lot of guys run out ahead of themselves, if you know what I mean.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Where they want it to happen so bad that they're putting out, you know, just at the beginning of October, oh, I'm gonna pull in and September. And they're like, Well, can I start doing it in the summer? Washington State did that study where they were able to bring bucks into rut simply by providing a dough and esteris, and they brought them into rut in, I believe it was July.
SPEAKER_01:But was that done on a farmed animal?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that is in a controlled environment. That's not the wild, and it's not that it won't work, but let's do realistic expectations here. Let's play it smart, let's not do anything out of the ordinary, let's manipulate their behavior without them knowing it. Yeah, because the easiest buck to kill is the one that doesn't know he's being hunted. And so if you like you were saying, less is more. When I when I hit the middle of of October, I'm starting to put out, I just went out the other day, I'm starting to put out a little bit of doen estrus, not a lot, yeah. You know, you never want to go crazy about it and have it spell like a barnyard in there, but just a couple squirts, that's it. Yeah, and then come the end of October. If I were rifle hunting or if I had the multi-season in Washington or whatever, which I do, but I don't have a shooter to go after right now, so I'm just gonna continue to do that. And as we get deeper into October and the beginning of November, then that increases.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Because then I have multiple doughs cycling. I have multiple doughs traveling through the area that are in an ester cycle. So these bucks are looking for it, they're searching for it, they've been familiarized with it, you know. And then as we get into that second rut, man, I really start picking up lots of bucks for that second rut. For the guys using synthetics, it's never made a difference for me. It's never hurt me. I've used original, I've used 100% pure urine and synthetic urine, and it all works great.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But my expectation is how can I say saddled or paired with where we're at in the rut. If I have dose cycling, then I want to use that doe and s and I expect to have buck activity. Now, does it happen the same day? Not always. There's a lot of times where I start out and for a week to a week and a half, I don't see a single deer on my cameras.
SPEAKER_01:And I've noticed that for just even the last, I would say, my first two years of doing this system, it's like a week. You go a week and then all of a sudden the switch flips. Yeah. I went through early modern season, and then we you you have late modern, but there was those two weeks where I really went full blown with the system as far as doing the drags and everything else, and I would start dragging from like 300 yards into my set because there were so many game trails running across this skitter road that I'm walking along. And then you saw the result. After a week of doing this, all of a sudden, the rub line, and you know, I've got places where they're just battling it out. Right. A couple of dominant bucks out on this skitter road that did not happen until like a week into it. And it was the same thing on my set. Don't really see any bucks, don't see, don't really see any bucks. And then all of a sudden, I think I didn't actually start doing drags last year. I did I did Betting Pheromone and I had apples out, and I didn't really have anything come by. And as soon as I started the sense, I went from zero bucks on my set, and it took actually it was that night to five bucks coming in the season.
SPEAKER_02:And it can turn like that.
SPEAKER_01:And three were mature, two were dominant just shooters. One was just a giant fork and horn, and then I had a couple of younger bucks coming in, but I knew where I was in that stage of the rut.
SPEAKER_02:Right. And that's key.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:That's key. That's why we tell guys trail cameras are used for a lot of things, but most guys use them for entertainment.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:You got to get past that and you got to use them for data collecting. You've got to be able to sit there and look at it and go, okay, see this increase in buck activity? That tells me that I'm right now, and you'll see it. It'll increase, it'll taper off, and then it'll increase again. You mark those weeks down because that's the rut. That's your heart of your rut right there. That first increase that you got to know, okay, there's a lot of dose cycling. This is the week I need to be out.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:This is the week that you mark it on your counter because next year that cycle is gonna happen the same time. It's gonna be that same week.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:You know, and that rut intensity, whether it's on your camera, whether it's at night, or whether it's during the day, is going to happen.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Every year, it's got to do with the amount of sunlight hitting their eyes, their retina.
SPEAKER_01:So let's wrap up here and let's talk about when is it okay to I would say deviate from your plan. And I've got a couple of examples of when I did. My I think it was just my first year.
SPEAKER_02:And so So for me, I would say if I'm talking to a new, a new person that that's trying to learn the system, I would say don't.
SPEAKER_00:Don't.
SPEAKER_02:I would I would say it, and I'm not trying to make it so that you're not filling a tag. That's the last thing I want to do. But what I do want you to do is learn, just learn that area, learn those deer, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Be willing to eat that tag for a season so that you know, okay, so I'm not in the right spot to keep using this trail, yada yada, yada. And the time to go and and do the exploring and everything is after season.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So you can walk that trail back. Oh, here's the bedding area, here's the bedroom, you know, it's much thicker here, or this is why they're using this travel corridor is because of the wind or because of this. And you can start planning for the next season. We talk about that, building on one season from the next. And so for a beginner, I would say don't. And it's just for the reason that take the time to learn, take the time to read the sign, take the time to collect the data. Because the better you become at that stuff, the easier it is for you to fill a tag in coming years because you're able to read it right away and go. Now, for the experienced person, uh for me, I don't like doing a whole lot of changing. I gotta know that I know that I know. Yeah, okay, I need to be over there. And then when I do it, it's in the middle of the afternoon. It's as quickly and as quietly as I can with the least amount of impact going on. Oh, I get in, I get out, okay.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And this was so my first year, and I didn't do anything without running it by you first. Should I try this? So we had set up, and this is the kind of the pain of a ladder stand because it takes three people to go put that thing up.
SPEAKER_02:Well, you got a double.
SPEAKER_01:A double.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I think it would take at least two guys to go put up a little bit.
SPEAKER_02:I think you called them and said, I'll take the biggest you guys make.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, which was great, it was comfortable, real sturdy. If you're not real keen on heights, a ladder stand is actually a really great thing because you're also going up and you got the three points of contact.
SPEAKER_02:All the it's more stable.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So I'm up in this, and I'm because I'm rifle hunting, I'm wearing my game ears. And so it amplifies the sound that I hear. And all day I hear grunts going behind me, I hear animals moving down this ridge behind me, but they're probably not more than 50 yards from me. But I could also hear them coming up, and I knew there was a big game trail to my left. And so the idea was hopefully I could get them because I ran my drags coming back from the left back into my set. Well, I could never get them to come into my set, and I could hear them walking by on my left, following this game trail, heading up to from kind of a lower bedding area to an upper bedding area. And I was checking with you. I'm like, if I just grabbed the ground blind chair and plopped it down and tied myself into a couple of bushes, should I move over to this other to where I'm monitoring that that game trail? And I put out cameras and I had mature bucks walking through during daylight hours on there. And so for late modern, I had actually moved over there, but a big key was of that was I had actually gone over and put up a camera to see what was walking by. Right. I had evidence, I had data to back up my decision. Exactly. And I knew going over there as well. So you have like two weeks in between those two seasons where I could go immediately after Modern ended on October 31st, where I could go in and cut in another trail. To get into that, the backside of that without having to walk through their game trail. And I wasn't going to blow up my hunt by moving over there. I had the data to say, hey, you got the shooter bucks coming over here during the daylight hours, 40 yards away, again, like with Charlie. So go move over there. And now I realize I actually walked too far from the gate. Instead of walking, what that was maybe 100, 200 yards down to that set.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah, I'd say pretty easily.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, about 200 yards. Really, I only needed to walk about 50 yards from the gate. Because that was a bigger travel corridor.
SPEAKER_02:Again, that's learning the area.
SPEAKER_01:Learning the area and stuff. But I'll go back. Because that's where Anakin's at. And next year I'm going after him. And also, like from deviating from your previous years, I would say. And you've just talked about that. It's you've learned, okay, they did this last year, so now I need to adjust. Right. Going into this year.
SPEAKER_02:I think uh our pro staffer Jimmy Rose and what he's dealing with with the Buck he calls the Frenchman. Now this will be year number three that he's after him. And this is a very large Golly, I'd say he's in the 130s. He's huge. He is a very, very beautiful buck, but he always seems to show up. Well, last year it was Jimmy would leave his set, and by the time he got back to his rig, he was getting pictures from his trail camera, and it was the Frenchman on there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And uh he's actually had the Frenchman come in right at dark, and he just didn't take the shot, and that's fine. I absolutely respect that. But it it's a cat and mouse game. You learn these animals, you learn them, you learn why they're doing what they're doing, and when they want to do certain things, and it you just compile all that information together and you do your best to make it happen.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you know, and he is daylighting in that spot because he lobbed what a quiver full of arrows at him the first year and a little buck fever.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but I mean he he did end up filling his tag. There were three shooters there, and he ended up taking one, and now he's just got his heart set on the Frenchman. You know, that's part of the fun for me, you know what I mean? Is I think that's why I single out a certain buck. I didn't fill my tag last year, and it wasn't for a lack of opportunities as far as bucks go, but I was after a certain buck, which I am every year, yeah. And it doesn't bother me. If you want to do it like that, where you have a target buck and you feel like, yeah, that's what I'm gonna hold out for, go ahead. Yeah, but if you're saying, you know what, I just need to put meat in the freezer, great, go ahead.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you know, but have that plan in place for either one.
SPEAKER_02:So when the season's over, I'm not disappointed with how it transpired.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:On my end. No, I could have, but I chose not to, and that's fine.
SPEAKER_01:Because at the end of the season, if you second guessed yourself and ended up with nothing, you're gonna start second guessing your second guessing. Right. Which will then cause more second guessing.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and then it then it turns into frustration, and that's not what we're doing this for.
SPEAKER_01:It's to you know go harvest something. So yeah, you gotta stick with that that plan and just figure out how to get in there. And so if you have any questions, always feel free to reach out to us, leave us a comment. And if you are liking the podcast, please go in and give us a rating on on your app that you're using, whether it's iTunes or Apple Podcasts, Spotify, whichever one, Amazon Music, please go leave us a rating. We'd really appreciate it. It helps push this out to even more, lets us do more with the podcast and everything. And things have really blown up. We've gotten lots of great comments, and I wanted to thank everybody for you know the comments and the the listening you guys have been doing. We got great fans. It's great getting to meet all of you at the shows. So when the sportsman show up in Puallop in Portland come up here, please stop by the booth.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, please.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, act like you know us.
SPEAKER_02:Yep, bring pictures of your deer.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, absolutely. So, anyway, we hope that we help the mindset for this year. Stay focused, and we're looking forward to seeing those buck picks, those harvest picks that you guys send your grip and grins. Always appreciate those. But until next week.
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