The Blacktail Coach Podcast
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The Blacktail Coach Podcast
How Extreme Weather Changes Deer And Elk Behavior
When the sky flips, deer and elk rewrite their script—and we show you how to read it. From August scorchers to winter squalls, we map out what animals actually do in heat, wind, rain, snow, and sudden barometric swings so you can plan smarter sits and stay safe doing it. We start with early season strategy: water and wallows for elk, shady alder–conifer drainages for blacktail, and the way thermals carry cool air and scent through the places bucks already prefer. You’ll hear why rotating shade is a real tactic for deer, and how that scraggly summer coat changes where and when you’ll see them.
Then we tackle wind with two truths hunters often miss: moderate wind can be your ally, but big timber and big gusts introduce real danger. We compare open-country whitetail movement in high winds to how blacktail and elk tuck into leeward pockets, and we lay out practical setups that balance visibility, scent, and safety. Rain is where most folks misread sign; we explain why steady showers tend to bed deer down, how hard bursts push them to their feet, and why the best movement happens between showers and right at the edges of a front. Layer in pressure trends and you get a reliable forecast for daylight activity—rising numbers are great, but sharp drops can kickstart prefront feeding too.
Snow and extreme cold bring their own gifts. Fresh tracks make patterns obvious, post-squall movement can be fast and generous, and cold snaps elevate mid-day action as animals burn calories to stay warm. We also clear up rut confusion: day length sets timing, heat simply shifts the show into the night. Finally, we draw a hard line on thunderstorms and dangerous winds—lightning, falling timber, and overloaded senses make those windows not worth the risk.
Want more filled tags and fewer empty sits? Watch the radar, track pressure, and hunt the moment of change. If this breakdown helped sharpen your plan, follow the show, share it with a hunting buddy, and leave a quick review telling us your best “between showers” or “after the front” success story.
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Welcome back to the Blacktail Coach Podcast. I'm Aaron. And I'm Dave. Okay, so we're going to talk today about extreme weather. Hunting in extreme weather. So extreme heat, windstorms, rainfall, snow, sort of thunderstorms, if there's really any difference there. Just thinking about this because we have this as we're recording, although this won't come out for a couple of weeks, the atmospheric river, which dumping a bunch of rain and a bunch of wind that popped up, which as soon as I saw the wind, I bailed on my hunt for the day, just because last year windstorm blew through in one of my spots that I'd set up at, and three trees came down that would have come down on top of me. Right.
SPEAKER_03:There's a little element of danger added to the hunt that can significantly being crushed by a tree being one of.
SPEAKER_00:So let's start off early season, the extreme heat that you get into. Because I know with late uh August, California, if they're because their black tail starts either in late July or early August. Depending on the zone you're hunting in. And it's just hotter down there. So what and this can be deer or elk, but what are they doing differently when it starts getting really hot? You know?
SPEAKER_03:I would say at that time of season, late August, early September, and even throughout all of September, because we really don't get into fall till somewhere in the middle of October. We start seeing the change in weather patterns. A lot of guys are focusing on elk. There are some guys that are doing deer, but most guys are focusing on elk because that's the rut. Both species are going to stay relatively close to water, I would say. It's going to be in their daily routine somehow.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. So elk, it would be, you know, a place not only for the cows to drink, but a place for the bulls to wallow. And I've always done really good when it's really hot because I don't have any problems sitting on wallows and being patient for a bull to come use it. And he does that when that hormonal buildup it reaches a certain point and he's hot and he needs to exert some energy to bring those levels down.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:And so for me, early season as far as elk hunting, the hotter, the better I do.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_03:But I mean, we've been up in the blues and gone to bed, and it was 95 to 100 degrees that day. Wake up the next morning and there's 10 inches of snow on the ground. Yeah. You know, and the bulls are still talking. So, you know, I I've been in that situation. And that's always fun to boot bugle up bulls in the snow. It's not something that that everybody gets to do, uh, you know, as far as an opportunity. But typically speaking, always around a water source of some kind.
SPEAKER_00:How far do you think they wander from those water sources? I mean, are they like a couple miles? Can they go a couple miles away or 300 yards?
SPEAKER_03:I would say elk, because their strides are so much. I mean, when an elk walks, it's like a jog for you and I. Yeah, that's true. And it doesn't matter to them if it's a half mile or three quarters of a mile or even a mile away, if it's in the pattern of where they want to be to spend that evening, because that bull will push those cows to an area where he can watch them overnight. It doesn't seem to, you know, I wouldn't say more than a mile.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:At least in my personal experience, and that's what it's limited to, is my personal experience. But as far as deer, I don't think they go more. I've always felt like they were within three or four hundred yards.
SPEAKER_00:Which was without water source, you know. Makes sense with blacktail, right? At least because the ranges are so small. Right.
SPEAKER_03:And they most of them you know, they'll visit that throughout the day. But obviously, morning and evenings are the most popular time for that time of year for animals to get up and start moving around, especially evening, because they're typically we're gonna have some high pressure systems moving in and sitting on us, and so there'll be a lot of cloudless nights, and those animals will feed throughout the night because obviously it's cooler, but it's nothing for them to see, and then they're not really bad weather that's gonna cause them to hunker down.
SPEAKER_00:So, as far as staying cool, are they using thermals to stay cool?
SPEAKER_03:They're using the drafts, the updrafts and the downdrafts in drainages that have cover. You know, on West Side here, a real popular scenario that I see a lot of times are obviously for black tail, I you know, like you guys have heard me say it a thousand times. I like it where we have two habitats that come together, hardwoods and conifers, but I I really like it when I have an alder patch that butts up against a conifer edge, and it is in a drainage, so there's a crick there.
SPEAKER_00:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_03:And there'll always be cooler air running there. And that's typically where I find in the early season a lot of my deer activity.
SPEAKER_00:Running along those. Are they avoiding the direct being out in direct sunlight too? Yeah. So they'll be hanging out. Well, how does that work? As far as so thinking they're coming out of their velvet, uh-huh, and then within a week of them shedding their velvet, uh-huh. So they want to be out more in the open so they're not rubbing that.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_00:But it's really hot. Is it just a high canopy area?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Just like meal deer hunting, as the sun goes around, you know, those meal deer get up and they'll just move, you know, rotate around a bush or a small tree and stay in the shade. It's the same with white tail, it's the same with black tail. They're gonna do the same thing, you know, as the sun rotates around the earth and and that shade rotates around whatever they're sitting, they're gonna rotate around it to stay in that shade.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. You know, just moving their sun umbrella. Right, right. Their patio umbrella.
SPEAKER_03:They got a whole fur coat on, yeah, all the time. And if anybody who's killed an early season buck, I mean, you you look at it and then you see them transitioning from that summer coat to the winter coat, and that summer coat always looks scraggly and it's a brighter orange, yellowish orange kind of thing, and it just and I love blacktail, I'll I'll kill a big buck early season or late season, doesn't matter, but I prefer the late season just because I like that winter coat better. It looks so much prettier to me.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I really noticed that when we went to pick up your cat from that taxidermist, and he had some bucks that he was doing some mounts, and the way he brushed the fur to where they look fluffy, yeah, almost.
SPEAKER_03:But you see how thick that fur is, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and you don't really notice it because typically on most mounts they just brush it all the same way, and he was making it look phenomenal.
SPEAKER_03:I love his work, and he was a really good guy. And guys are gonna ask now, now who are you talking about? Retired. He just retired, yeah. It's a Bear Mountain taxidermist out of Woodland, and the guy is phenomenal.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So now everything's gone to trap line, which hopefully we'll have him on sometime coming up. It's just never worked out as far as busy schedules and stuff, having him on. And I just want to have a taxidermist on to talk about taxidermy.
SPEAKER_03:It's a good subject because a lot of guys don't know how to prepare their capes.
SPEAKER_00:I wouldn't have a clue.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, uh, to get mounted, or if they want it tanned, or whatever they want to do, Elder. You got to cape that animal correctly.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So now moving along to windstorms. Now, I first brought the windstorm, these wind speeds up during when we talked about wind and hunting the wind back, I think it was early spring, or sometimes at some point I did. Right. We did an episode. And so one of the articles that I read, it was it had broken it down to as far as wind speed, zero to four deer movement is usually highest since senses are not significantly disrupted. Five to fourteen miles an hour, good for hunters as it can mask sounds and sense without limiting deer movement. Fifteen and up wind begins to be disruptive to deer senses and movement, and movement will decline or stop. Can be good for spot and stock, and deer are more stationary. Higher winds can also bring down trees, so deer would avoid areas with falling branches or trees falling.
SPEAKER_03:So your thoughts on all of I agree with all of that and disagree with all of that at this same time.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:I used to think that wind would make deer hunker down, you know. But the first year that I hunted Kansas, we had a a windstorm come through, and we were gonna get 35 to 40 mile an hour gusts, and our guides were so ecstatic and so excited about that. And you know, I thought, well, we're gonna lose a day of hunting. Uh-huh. And that wasn't the case at all. They came in, uh, we need to get out there. You guys are gonna see a ton of deer today. You're gonna and I'm like, seriously, are you are you kidding me? You know, and I thought I'm thinking these guys are just doing it because, well, they feel obligated because we paid, you know, money and everything. And I'll be doggone. I mean, I saw more deer that day than I have seen in a long time in one sitting. Just the movement was awesome. And the reason was is because and this was whitetail, and whitetail are skittish, you know, and and it overloaded their senses in the sense that everything was moving, so nothing spooked them.
SPEAKER_00:So nothing spooked them, yeah. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. And they're smelling everything because the wind is blowing, and they have no idea where it's coming from, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:You know, so instead of hitting vapor lock and just settling down, the whitetail just got up and we're just moving like crazy. Well, I came back here that season, and just so happens we had another windstorm. And uh, it was just one of those days where I thought, you know, I'm gonna go out and try this. And like I said, I was surprised, but yeah, I saw black tail moving, you know. Okay. Now I don't know that I would do it in a 40 mile an hour wind gust. For me, it it it turns away from deer movement as much as it's dangerous to be out there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Kansas doesn't have the trees, the size of trees that we have. There's times where I've come back after a windstorm to my stand, maybe I didn't hunt it that day or whatever, and I walk in, and there's been I remember one time I had an alder and a younger fir blown over, and the big alder had just missed my platform on my tree stand and was wedged between two trees so that when I put my feet out past the platform, it was resting on the alder. It was resting on the alder. And then the fir fell right on, but it wasn't super big, but it just engulfed my tree stand. And there was like 15 other and that's the thing is we got such big trees, and they don't rot from the outside in, they rot from the inside out, so you really don't know. And so there's an element of danger there that that keeps me out of the woods during those storms.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:The black tail tend to move to the edges and bed down there, is what I've noticed.
SPEAKER_00:I'm just trying to think of the other day when I went in and it sounded like something jumped up while at the last 30 yards of walking into my set. Uh-huh. And I'm trying to think if it was windy that day. But we also have very different topography than so. I mean, it's just ridges after ridges after ridge line.
SPEAKER_03:Kansas is kind of rolling, shallow rolling hills and whatnot. The topography doesn't have a whole lot of hard edges, ridges or anything like that where we do.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:You know, like elk during a windstorm. They'll go someplace where they're out of the wind, tucked in a little uh, you know, in a little corner where a ridge is a wind check and things are relatively calm around there, and they can just sit there and do their thing and nobody knows they're there.
SPEAKER_00:So now thinking about the moving on to rainfall. What are they doing? So the I'm sure there's a difference between like heavy showers versus a steady rain or a heavy steady rain. What's going on with those?
SPEAKER_03:Okay, so uh this is a great question, and it's appropriately timed given that we do have this big atmospheric river coming through. So I took a guy out yesterday, never been hunting, first year deer hunting, and he got a buck as his rifle. And I've been watching the weather report and the radar and all of that stuff because this is a big weather event, and I wanted to be just in front of it. I felt like we were gonna get the best opportunity just in front of that. And so it wasn't supposed to happen in our area till around noon, and it turned out it moved in three hours early. So it started a steady rain at nine o'clock in the morning. And uh we were out there at daylight.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So we had less than two hours before that front came in.
SPEAKER_00:And you might have only had like an hour and a half, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I was doing a little bit of rattling, and we heard one come in to about 30 yards, and we could hear it on the other side of this group of jack fur. He was in there rubbing, and we were waiting and waiting. Finally, it calmed down, and things just kind of sat there 20-30 minutes, and we walked up to where we heard the sound, and there was a fresh rub right there. So we did rattle in a buck there, but we just wasn't the opportunity that was gonna give us a shot. So we ended up hunting our way back to the rig. Well, by the time we got back to the rig, it was really coming down.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And so I knew, and I tell guys this all the time, everybody's like, well, the rain is the best time to go out. My experience, and again, that's all it is, guys, is my experience. I feel like when it's raining, they bed down.
SPEAKER_00:Like hard rain or just rain period?
SPEAKER_03:When it's just rain, period, they bed down. When it's hard rain, they get up because they don't like laying in the puddles.
SPEAKER_01:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_03:But I'm talking a gully wash when it just absolutely dumps.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And then they'll stand up and shake it off and everything. They don't like laying in the puddles, and that's when you see them in a hard rain. But when it's just a steady rain, they'll bed down. But as soon as it stops, they get up and start feeding. So it's like little micro weather systems that we have here. So the buck that he ended up shooting yesterday was between two between two showers. Between two showers is basically what we're looking at here. As soon as it stopped raining, we started seeing deer stand up. And we're moving to another spot. And on and while we were moving to another spot, I'd already spotted four other deer. They were all does. There was no bucks with them. And we're moving and moving. And then I look over and here's a doe. And right behind her is this buck. He ended up killing that buck. But my point is, it was between weather systems, between showers.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And I've told the story about my wife killing her first archery deer. And how that was, you know, I'm looking on the radar on my phone, and I looked at her and I said, We got about 10 minutes, and this rain is going to stop, and we're going to have a little 15-minute break. And I says, and then it's going to be too dark to do anything. But I says, You need to get ready because as soon as it stops raining, we're probably going to see the deer. And boy, like it read the script, it stopped raining, and it wasn't two, three minutes later that deer stepped out and she ended up shooting him with her bow. And so rain will make them generally bed down. Heavy rain will get them up. And as soon as the rain starts, or just before the rain begins, those deer are gonna feed up.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Because they know that I mean it's the Pacific Northwest. It's gonna rain again real soon.
SPEAKER_00:So hearing you say that, I'm thinking back of the first year I was hunting, I was up on hilltop, and I ended up moving to where I was just sitting in a ground blind chair. And it was the last day of late modern and showers, not real heavy showers, but showers all day. It rained for 15, 20 minutes, and then it would stop, and then it would rain for 30 minutes, and then it would stop for 15, 20 minutes. And when it would stop, and I've got my game ears on, so everything's amplified, and I'm sitting right on the edge of the swamp, and on the other side of the swamp is a big jack fur patch that was uh I knew it was a bedding area because I had lots of camera pics of them going into that area. Every time the rain stopped, five minutes, ten minutes later, I would hear animals getting up and moving around over in that jackfur patch, and then the rain had come, and granted, it wasn't real hard rain, but I couldn't really hear anything on top of or along with that rain coming down with the with the game ears. But as soon as it stopped, I'd hear stuff moving around again.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and they don't waste any time. No, because like I said, they know that they're in between showers, they know the next one's gonna start. So it's almost like they snack all day long, you know. As soon as the rain stops, they're up and moving again. And as soon as it starts, they go right back down. A lot of guys say, well, it's best in the rain. And I understand what they're saying. They see it, but if they were to, I think if a lot of guys would stop and analyze what's going on, you're in between showers, yeah. When you're seeing these animals and stuff, that's not to say that you can't kill a buck when it's raining. Of course you can, but we're just saying that on the whole, as a normal practice by deer, they move more in front of and behind systems, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So thinking about kind of expanding on this, and this was something I was thinking about the other day, and I didn't ask you about it, but the when we talk about the five factors, so Adam Hayes talks about the barometric pressure being over 29.9, you talk about it 30.2 that you like 30.2. Right. Generally, it drops pretty dramatically. When so today it dropped, it was like 29.8 or nine to start the day, and it just plummeted down to 29.5 be when the bulk of the storm came through today. Right, right. Usually it trails off, it doesn't have dramatic up or down, not that it can't, but right, right, most of the time it's gradually going up or down. Now, is that triggering them to get up and feed, even though it's dropping? Because you talk about it rising, but if it's dropping, will that trigger them because then they know that bad weather's coming? It's time to get up and go do a little extra feeding because I might not be eating for a while because I don't want to be out in it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I feel like it is, Aaron. Okay, and there may be guys that have other opinions on that, but I feel like it is, given my experience with this. I just think that most guys, when they think about it, you know, oh well, and we shot them on this day and it was storming like crazy. They don't they just look at the day as a whole, they don't look at the exact moment when that buck was taken.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And this goes back to when, you know, as far as the barometric pressure, when we started talking about barometric pressure, we were saying right up for the start, well, it's like, well, that doesn't mean you can't kill on a day that has 28.1 or yeah. We're just simply saying that the it uh on the whole, there's more deer activity when it's you know 29.9 and rising.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and then when they're picking up on it that it's rising, uh that it's kind of a trigger to let them know it's okay to go out and start eating again.
SPEAKER_03:And and if it's been at 28 point something for two or three days, yeah, you know, and then it finally makes a jump up to 29, say, point five.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Well, yeah, you're gonna see because we've been it's like being at 90 degrees for a week, and then all of a sudden we get a 65 degree day. That's a change in the barometric pressure, but it's also a change in the temperature.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And that big a jump will always get animals up and moving in the summertime. That's a relief.
SPEAKER_00:Well, yeah, they don't have to if it's 90, 95. And I think that that's what happened when Chris got bambino. Right. And there doesn't have a drop.
SPEAKER_03:There was a big drop, and he did have a little bit of rain come in, but there doesn't have to be any rain, just that drop in temperature.
SPEAKER_00:But if you're no longer if the animal's no longer hiding from the sun, exactly. Yeah, that's exactly time to start moving out because it might be that there's better feed out more in the open or something like that, that time of year, or or along the edges that they might not be hitting that. That makes sense.
SPEAKER_03:It's kind of their day of air conditioning.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:You know what I mean? It's like coming in from the outside, it's 98 degrees outside, and you come into an air conditioned room. Yeah. Is the relief from the heat, and you feel like you can be more active. Yeah, I mean, whereas the heat tends to drain, especially you know, at my age, 56, it tends to drain a lot of the motivation out of me sometimes.
SPEAKER_00:Well, this is true. I mean, so I'm a fan of Disneyland, and I used to live down in LA and I'd go a lot. If it got over like 95 degrees, all the locals wouldn't go. So it would be a quote unquote empty park, and that's when I would go because I could deal with the heat. But when it cools off, you want to be outside when it cools off a little bit. You know, not everybody wants to be outside when it's 100 or 105. Or there are those people who are those people, yes. Yeah, and that's one of the things to remember. And Heather brought this up, that there are generalities about animals that, you know, if you do this, this is generally true.
SPEAKER_03:Correct.
SPEAKER_00:But each animal has its own preferences. That's exactly the thing it likes to eat, the things it'll do, you know, and you're learning, especially with the system, you're learning a particular animal. Right. So it might not follow these rules.
SPEAKER_03:So if you're a literal person, yeah, you're gonna have a hard time having fun and enjoying hunting because you hear all this advice and you just take it and it's like that's how it's gonna be every single time. You know, Dave said you can't kill out in a clear cut. That's not what I said, you know. Yeah, I said, on the average, you don't see a lot of big bucks out there. I myself have never killed a big buck out in a clear cut.
SPEAKER_00:Now people do.
SPEAKER_03:Every year, people do. Yeah, we've seen the pictures on that. Yeah, they do, but I'm talking about I want to be the guy that doesn't do that, just kills a big buck not just once. I want to be able to do that every single year, uh-huh. You know, and it's possible.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so thinking now about snow, and you you're more likely to hunt the late season, so you're more likely to see snow. And I know you've shot a buck in the snow, which can be helpful for blood trailing. Red stands out real great in the in the snow. But what is that like snow on the ground versus during a snowstorm?
SPEAKER_03:Right, right.
SPEAKER_00:What's going on with that with their behavior? Have you seen any differences?
SPEAKER_03:So I see a lot more activity in the snow.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:And activity, not just deer movement and deer in front of me, but because of the snow, you're able to spot, like you were saying, more tracks and and find out. It's actually a really good way of scouting.
SPEAKER_04:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_03:The unfortunate thing is sometimes those are the paths that they only use during the snow.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:You know what I mean? I love hunting in the snow. I've done it for decades. Whenever we get snow, I always want to be there when it stops.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:As soon as the snow stops, I'd love to I want to be in stand. I feel like I need to be because uh the probability of me getting a tremendous amount of activity is great, and I'm always hopeful that my target buck will show up and has happened a number of times right after the snow. But again, that's a weather system.
SPEAKER_00:But that's the weather, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I can think of one big buck in particular that we had a really good snowstorm, and I'll be doggone if he wasn't on my camera in and out all the time, even during the snow, even the heavy part of the snow, you know. I got all these trail cam photos of him, and it was just coming down, you know.
SPEAKER_04:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_03:And he was just cycling through over and over again.
SPEAKER_00:He didn't care.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So what about like extreme cold weather? And we don't get extreme cold weather, at least the west side of Washington, east side will. And so I know you've hit some really cold weather hunting Mulies up Okanagan area, right?
SPEAKER_03:Okanagan.
SPEAKER_00:And in Kansas, you've hit really cold weather.
SPEAKER_03:Yep. And I've killed on both those days. So up north in the Okanagan area, kind of cl I know I'm gonna butcher that name, but up there I was on a hunt and it was nine degrees without the wind chill, but I killed a dandy mule deer that day, and that whole week was just freezing. But I mean, it was deer movement all day long. We didn't get a hole. There was already snow on the ground, and it didn't really snow much while we were there. But man, it was so cold, and the deer they reach a point where they're moving to stay warm and they're trying to replenish calories that they're burning.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Just like just like just like us, you know.
SPEAKER_00:I was wondering if they move to stay warm or because when it gets really bad, and you talking about your days at college in North Dakota, they would just huddle up.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, we would see herds of one to two hundred deer, they would herd up into those big herds, and they would just kind of cycle from the middle out.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:And it was just to stay warm. That was like 20 below or 20, 30, 40 below, and I mean it's brutal.
SPEAKER_00:That's real extreme.
SPEAKER_03:That is really extreme. But so in Kansas, the day that I the first time I went down there, the day that I killed my buck, it was 11 degrees. We first had that was weird because the first two days were like 60s, and I was wearing summer gear, and then it dropped to 11, and it was that sudden of a change, that sharp, that drastic change is hard for the human body to acclimate to it that fast, you know. Yeah, and I got my heavy winter gear on, and I'm just trying to tough it out, and found out later all the other guys that were at the camp, they all went back. Oh they only stayed out till about just before noon.
SPEAKER_00:Or when you stayed out and 11 in your summer gear?
SPEAKER_03:I had my winter gear, my heavy winter gear, and but I mean it was still really tough. Oh, yeah. But yeah, I killed my buck that day and I saw a ton of deer activity. Weather fronts always get deer going. Always. I think that we as black tail hunters kind of underestimate the in front of and the behind of weather fronts and stuff like that. So it's something that we really need to take advantage of because it does get deer up and moving.
SPEAKER_00:And we have a lot of those. We have a ton. And I mean, we'll have those steady rain all day, but a lot of times, and even today it rained hard, but it would I thought it was it was going to rain all day. It was gonna be that steady, hard rain, and it didn't, it was just rain showers, right?
SPEAKER_03:Heavy rain showers. A lot of bucks killed this weekend, yeah. A lot of bucks, and congratulations to everybody. And honestly, just take and reflect on that. Was it between a weather event?
SPEAKER_00:And that's why I asked about if Deer could pick up on the barometric pressure dropping, and that got them up moving around ahead of time because that was Friday. That's when you went out, right? Correct. And so we're recording today on Saturday, but there was a lot of people on Thursday and Friday that went out and a lot of pictures.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That people were they were getting the these bucks and some really nice ones. And a lot of it was edgy clear cuts because it was pushing them, but it seemed like they were moving. Yeah, that's why I started to wonder about that. If these weather fronts, these big weather systems as they're coming in, which is more than just it's raining, okay, it stopped raining, I can get up and go feed. But this is more of a biological response of oh, you just sense that this is coming, or the deer sense that this is coming, and they get up and start absolutely parametric pressure absolutely affects deer movement.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:But you know, and we've said this all along on the five factors, weather trumps everything.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Everything heat, cold, wind, no wind, rain, no rain, heavy rain, snow. Weather trumps everything. And this time of year, man, you know, we were stopping and thinking about it. The five factors. Well, we had four out of the five yesterday.
SPEAKER_00:So Monday is I have four out of the five. Yeah. Again. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So deer movement is gonna stay really good.
SPEAKER_00:Because I have rut. It's a pre rut, and and actually it's getting into the rut now, but the barometric pressure is gonna be thirty point two to thirty point. All day. Yeah. That's going to be really good. Post weather front coming through. Post weather front, yep. Trying to think of bare met yeah, bare metric pressure weather.
SPEAKER_03:And then moon front.
SPEAKER_00:Phase of the run. And then I, yeah, it's a red moon up through Wednesday. And I was looking Wednesday looked really good too. So I might have to postpone recording my other podcast because I'm like, yeah, that might be a bad idea to give up that day, even though I haven't really seen any action on my set yet. I don't want it not be there when it could potentially happen.
SPEAKER_03:And guys that have come to the seminar, this is what I'm talking about. When you heard me talk about the five factors, this is what watching them gets you. We went out yesterday, we had four out of the five. And I'm telling you, you guys, you watch those five factors. If you don't remember it, go back and listen to that episode. It's important this time of year. And it's the difference between seeing no deer and seeing a lot of deer.
SPEAKER_00:So that's why that was one we did for the five factors last year. And then we re-released it at the start of August as we re-released some of the older episodes that we thought would be most beneficial for hundreds of.
SPEAKER_03:It's one of our most popular.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_03:It's so much so that I did seminars just the five factors last year at the shows. Because it was so requested.
SPEAKER_00:And so it gets colder, they're gonna start doing more feeding during those times because they need them energy, so they they would be up just moving around because I gotta think that it's also harder for them to find food when it is getting colder. Right. So they gotta get it.
SPEAKER_03:Food sources are becoming more scarce. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So early season when it's really hot, that's when the elk are in their rut. But any of these extreme weather events, do they have any effect on will they shut down the rut?
SPEAKER_03:Uh this time of year it would be heat. Heat. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And we noticed that with my first year, and a lot of guys were having it, it was El Nino year. Right.
SPEAKER_03:And yeah, so a warm they got that winter coat on, and it just made them lethargic. Yeah, it really does. And then when it cools off at night, they get up and they do their thing, you know. Yeah. So is the rut still happening? Yes, it's still happening because we haven't changed, we haven't taken enough sunlight out of the day to make a difference as far as the rut goes, because it's all triggered by the amount of sunlight that hits the retina. So unless somebody in here can make an eclipse happen at will multiple days in a row, that rut is not gonna change because the amount of sunlight is going to be the same, barring cloud cover.
SPEAKER_00:And it just affects it as far as like when it got warm, it didn't really shut down the rut, it just moved it tonight.
SPEAKER_03:That's exactly right. That's exactly right.
SPEAKER_00:And so have you ever noticed, and I brought this up because unfortunately, from the Midwest, I've seen stories this week of guys being up in tree stands during thunderstorms. Yeah. Again, don't do that.
SPEAKER_03:Don't go out in heavy windstorms and don't go out in thunderstorms because the I don't care if you're rifle or muzzle loader or archery, being out in a thunderstorm is not there's been seven people killed this year being struck by lightning. And then uh seven hunters killed this year being struck by lightning. We have everybody knows about the two in Colorado, and this gentleman now, this business Oklahoma in a tree stand. Guys, he you know, I don't what what a bow is metal? Rifles metal, a rifle's metal, a muzzle loader's metal, standing out in the open or up in a tree. It's just not a good idea.
SPEAKER_00:But will do deer react any differently from you what you've seen?
SPEAKER_03:Thunderstorms, I see them hunker down. Deer and elk will hunker down.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:There's not gonna be it's not gonna be movement. I mean, the big booms and the flashes and everything. That's where I see vapor lock. That's where I see them just hunker down. Okay. During high windstorms and thunderstorms, thunderstorms tend to hang to the timber. High windstorms, they tend to move out to the open.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Because it's so loud and everything, it's hard for them to hear anything. So they move out where they can see more.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_03:And with the windstorms, it really affects their ability to sense where the dangers come from with their nose. Yeah. So they turn to more of their vision at that time.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. All right. Well, I think we've covered all the extremes, so Yeah. Be safe. We'll see you next week.
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