Whitetail Vs. Blacktail

Ever passed a buck on the first morning and felt it echo all week? We did, and the story unpacks more than a near miss. We break down a Kansas whitetail hunt that swung from single-digit wind chill to warm afternoons, then connect each lesson to blacktail realities in the Pacific Northwest. Along the way, we dig into why food doesn’t force daylight, how wind and terrain shape movement, and what guided hunts can teach you if you ask the right questions.

We compare whitetail aggression and responsiveness to rattling and snort-wheeze with the quieter, tighter game of blacktail in thick timber. You’ll hear how travel corridors and pinch points trump bait in ag country, why 20-plus mph gusts can relax deer on open hills, and how entry and exit routes decide whether mature bucks ever show in shooting light. We also tackle the context most hunters miss: regional genetics, habitat density, and rainfall all skew body size, antler growth, and what a “good” buck really means.

If you’re building a smarter plan this season, use our three-part framework: e-scout for habitat edges, put boots on the ground to find the bedroom door, and pressure-test your access until it’s silent and scent-safe. For whitetail, layer in biologist intel on buck-to-doe ratios and rainfall to boost daylight odds. Whether you hunt pop-up blinds on greenbelts or hang-ons above finger ridges, the core holds: habitat first, wind always, corridors over hype. Your tag, your memory. Subscribe, share with a buddy who needs a wind check, and leave a review with your biggest “I should’ve shot” story.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Kansas Whitetail Trip Recap
• 1:49 Brutal Cold, Sudden Warm Front
• 4:09 Gear, Blinds, And Cold-Weather Bowhunting
• 6:59 Deer Counts, Minimums, And Passing A Shooter
• 10:39 Rut Timing Across Regions
• 13:29 Guided Hunts, Expectations, And Mindset
• 18:29 Learning From Outfitters And Set Strategy
• 21:49 Food Plots Vs. Travel Corridors
• 25:39 Wind, Terrain, And Movement Patterns
• 29:39 Predators, Pressure, And Recovery
• 33:29 Stands, Height, And Wind Layers
• 36:49 Habitat First: Reading Sign And Corridors

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:19

Welcome back to the Blacktail Coach Podcast. I'm Aaron.

SPEAKER_00: 0:22

And I'm Dave.

SPEAKER_02: 0:23

Okay, this week we're gonna talk Whittail versus Blacktail. So you just got back. Well, actually, it's is it close to a month now, or has it just been a couple weeks? A couple weeks. A couple weeks from your yearly Kansas Whitetail trip. And so just wanted a recap of the trip. What you saw, how many the good, the bad, the ugly.

SPEAKER_00: 0:44

The first two days really cold. Really, really cold. Like underdressed, cold. And then the last three days of the hunt were really warm. And so, yeah, it was still fun. We still had a great time and everything. But you, you know, that's the thing about guided hunts, you never know what you're gonna get as far as weather. So you're kind of at the mercy of Mother Nature, so to speak. But we saw a lot of rut activity. We both had opportunities. My son and I both had opportunities at shooters, and neither of us could uh seal the deal.

SPEAKER_02: 1:16

So the first couple of days it was in the 20s, and then it went up to it was less than twenty. Oh, less than twenty.

SPEAKER_00: 1:22

Less than twenty.

SPEAKER_02: 1:23

And then it went up to seventies. Did you say it?

SPEAKER_00: 1:26

We went from two days being down less than twenty, and then you throwing wind chill on top of that too.

SPEAKER_02: 1:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:32

And then from there we went up to 50s to 60s.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36

Okay. And this is this particular guide that you use, they have ground blinds and tree stands? Yes. Okay. And so the regular, like the tree stands that you would use, not those permanent, they're almost like actually, I wouldn't even say that they're a tree stand, but they're almost like an elevated blind.

SPEAKER_00: 1:58

These are hang-ons.

SPEAKER_02: 1:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 1:59

That we're going in. And uh the ground blinds obviously are they're not a a blind house of any co kind. It's the pop-up blinds.

SPEAKER_01: 2:08

Pop-up.

SPEAKER_00: 2:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 2:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 2:10

And so, yeah, it's an adventure.

SPEAKER_02: 2:12

So did you have your heaviest winter gear when you went?

SPEAKER_00: 2:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 2:16

It was still cold.

SPEAKER_00: 2:17

It was 19 degrees without the wind chill factor on the first morning. So it was single digits. Because we had 30 mile an hour gusts.

SPEAKER_01: 2:25

Oof.

SPEAKER_00: 2:26

And it was in our face the whole time. And so yeah, we got we both little David and I both got sun windburned. And uh at one point, it was so cold. I had a shooter in on the set, but I I I mean my hands hurt so bad. I don't know if I could have pulled my bow back had I been get given the shot opportunity. It was just so cold that it hurt to have my hands outside and holding on to the riser of the bow. I mean, it actually like stung.

SPEAKER_02: 2:58

Are there any gloves? I and we're kind of getting off gloves. Oh, and that's with gloves. Oh, okay. Because I was wondering if typically do you have to, when you're bow hunting, do you have to do it without gloves?

SPEAKER_00: 3:12

No, you can do it with gloves. And the thing is that you want to practice with those gloves because it's gonna come out of the riser a little different because you you can't feel like you normally would. Yeah, it's the difference between wearing soft sole tenor shoes and a hard sole, stiff ankle hiking boot. You're gonna feel the ground a lot more with the soft sole. You're gonna feel what's under your feet, twigs and whatnot. But with a boot, you're just gonna you're gonna put your foot down, you're not gonna feel a thing. Yeah, you're just gonna hear the limbs snapping under your feet.

SPEAKER_02: 3:41

So how many deer did you see this year?

SPEAKER_00: 3:43

So it wasn't the year before, not this year, but the year before I went and I saw I had 143 deer walk in front of me.

SPEAKER_02: 3:54

Yeah. And uh I remember that.

SPEAKER_00: 3:56

And that was probably the best time uh as far as deer numbers in Kansas that I've experienced, and I still didn't have a shooter walk in front of me. This year I had a shooter walk in front of me. It was the very first buck that I saw on the very first morning, and I let him walk thinking it's Kansas. That's a big buck, but uh it's first morning, I could see something bigger, and it was the old if it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen to me kind of scenario. Yeah, and I didn't see a bigger buck the rest of the week. The rest of the week. And so I wish I would have shot him, but you know, I still had a great time, and I had about I'd say 50 to 60 deer.

SPEAKER_02: 4:34

Okay. Walking up. And it's a 140 minimum, right?

SPEAKER_00: 4:37

It is a 140 minimum. Both little David and myself, like I said, we both had shooters in front of us.

SPEAKER_02: 4:43

We just didn't didn't pan out.

SPEAKER_00: 4:45

Didn't pan out, or we just didn't take the opportunity. Okay, and that's fine. Uh we had a great time and we enjoy going down there. We shared deer camp with Ralph from Ralph and Vicky, Archer's Choice.

SPEAKER_02: 4:58

And uh TV personalities.

SPEAKER_00: 5:01

Great guy, got to know him. Usually they're in camp the week before us.

SPEAKER_01: 5:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 5:07

But this year he was in camp with us, and so we got to spend some evenings together and so they do archery earlier. Yeah. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 5:17

Is that pretty common in the Midwest to do archery earlier?

SPEAKER_00: 5:20

Yeah, the rut is sooner down there than it is here.

SPEAKER_02: 5:24

Okay, and I was gonna ask that later on when we get to talking more about the differences, whether there's a difference in the timing of the rut.

SPEAKER_00: 5:31

Absolutely. And typically the second week of November is when we're going. And uh usually the first and second week is when you want to go in the Midwest. You get down farther south, and some of them they don't rut till January.

SPEAKER_02: 5:44

Really?

SPEAKER_00: 5:45

Yeah, like you know, Florida and getting a little Bible belt area down there, like a really late rut. I wonder Texas can and Mexico.

SPEAKER_02: 5:56

Yeah. I wonder if that has to do, like if you were to go to the upper Midwest, maybe the Upper Peninsula in Michigan or Minnesota, Wisconsin, and hunting whitetail, if they're rutting earlier. Because if it has to do with the amount of light hitting the retina, right, there's not a lot of variance.

SPEAKER_00: 6:17

And ours is a little later because we're so close to the ocean. So we get some light refraction off the ocean, it bounces off the clouds, and so Oh, okay. We get it a little later than we probably would have. But as far as you know, days lasting longer, yeah, it's fun.

SPEAKER_02: 6:33

Yeah, yeah. So let me ask you that. And me not being one who's ever I've never done a guided hunt or anything like that. Or and technically, the only way you could say I've hunted out of state is when I went grouse hunting when you were out cutting. Oh, that's the closest I've hunted out of state. So as far as and I think about this because a large a big selling point of the black tail coach with taking our classes being your own guide. Right, right. So then the where you kind of give that up to go on a guided hunt, as far as the personal satisfaction, where does that factor in it?

SPEAKER_00: 7:14

Well, I think you have to go into this with eyes wide open. And there's pros and cons to both. There are people that are like, well, it's a canned hunt, or you know, they view it like that, and because they're not doing all the work, but it seems less to them.

SPEAKER_03: 7:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 7:27

I, on the other hand, do not feel that way at all. And it's funny because being down there in Kansas, and like I said, I spent a lot of evenings with Ralph and talking with him at supper and whatnot, we both kind of agreed on the fact that hunting has taken on a new facet that I don't know is good. I'm not saying it's bad, but I just don't know that it's good anymore. Because when we were kids growing up, hunting was about making memories.

SPEAKER_03: 7:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 7:54

Hunting was about spending time with family and friends and getting out there and making memories. And the hunting industry has kind of shifted to less of that and more about record book.

SPEAKER_02: 8:09

And the tr the trophy and the antlers and right, right.

SPEAKER_00: 8:12

And I'm not saying that's bad. I hear me when I say this. I don't think it's bad to an extent. Like we just had somebody on Facebook the other day say, Well, I wouldn't be posting anything that's 110 or less, 110 inches or less. And I just thought that is just about the dumbest, most ignorant thing I've heard people say. Because it's not your tag.

SPEAKER_03: 8:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 8:36

If you're happy putting your tag on that, by all means, shoot it. It's the memories you're making. If you want to hold out for something bigger, by all means, hold out for something bigger. It's your tag.

SPEAKER_02: 8:46

Yeah. It's that there's been created a competitiveness.

SPEAKER_00: 8:51

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02: 8:53

Where it and it's I would say, you know, there's friendly competition, which you might experience like if you were to have gone out when you were younger with your brothers and your dad, and you have a friendly competition between the four of you. Now it's a competition with strangers on the internet.

SPEAKER_00: 9:10

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 9:10

And that probably a social media and a lot of that has to play into that of the competition of it.

SPEAKER_00: 9:16

And it's I think it's the alpha male in many of us that says I want to be the best.

SPEAKER_03: 9:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 9:22

And so, yeah, the ego steps in and whatnot. So when I do guided hunt, I have to go into it with keeping things in perspective in the sense that this is not your regular hunt. Okay. What's the difficult side of it? The difficult side of it is this is I've got five days to make it happen.

SPEAKER_03: 9:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 9:39

I don't have an entire season. I've got five days to make it happen. I've also got a lot of faith in that outfitter that he's done everything he can to locate and get, you know, whatever it is I'm hunting, whether it's elk, whether it's bear, or whether it's bucks, to daylight in front of me.

SPEAKER_03: 9:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 9:58

So that I can get a shot opportunity. What I do with that opportunity is entirely up to me.

SPEAKER_02: 10:03

And whether it's because there's a lot of food plots there, so making sure that those are uh baiting, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 10:10

If it's a pinch point or a travel corridor, you know, it it's gotta be, and that's the thing. You still have to realize it's hunting, but guys will go and they'll sit there for a week and they don't see very much and they get upset. Yeah, that's hunting.

SPEAKER_03: 10:24

That yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 10:25

And I understand that I understand that they put down a lot of money. I get that, I get that frustration, but you have to recognize when you put down that money, hey, this is hunting. Yeah, you could hit it. We could have gone down there and it could have been 70s the entire time. Deer activity, rud activity would have been just minimal. It would have been all at night, you know. Well, that doesn't do me any good. No, you know what I mean? So you take that chance when you sign up for it. And it's like, I don't care if it's November, I don't care if it's December, you know? It happens. There's seasons, it's just it's like, boy, it just stunk this year. Yeah. But, you know, for me, I'm going with my son or I'm going with a buddy, I'm gonna have fun.

SPEAKER_03: 11:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 11:08

So that's kind of how I view it. Some guys are like, well, I'm going to a place, and this place had a minimum, 140 minimum, and it's like, well, no, that's awesome. Uh they give you that minimum because they have bucks that reach that minimum. So you're gonna do it.

SPEAKER_02: 11:21

And plenty of them, yeah. Not just one or two, and you've got 50 guys fighting over them.

SPEAKER_00: 11:27

Yeah, you're hoping that one of those walks in front of you and everything. But in the sense that, you know, it it's it is hunting and stuff. And if hunting is slow, I don't waste any opportunity. I want to talk to the outfitter. I want to figure out, and this is what guys need to do. If you're going and the hunting isn't that good, whether it's weather, because weather trumps all, or the rut just, you know, seems to be all at night and you're not getting any daylight picks or anything like that. Take that opportunity to sit down with that outfitter and talk to him, get to know him, find out why he's doing what he's doing, in the sense that why did you put that set there? How are you keeping him coming back? What do you do to get him to daylight? And honestly, that's how you learn, you know. He doesn't owe you anything outside of the trespass fee that you paid access to that set. But if you can befriend him and you can glean information off of him, it's always applicable to another hunt.

SPEAKER_02: 12:26

Now, how far apart are the sets that you're hunting?

SPEAKER_00: 12:31

So this particular outfitter that we go to down there, he has over like 13,000 acres.

SPEAKER_01: 12:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 12:40

So we're gonna hunt this ranch, and this ranch may be 2,000 acres.

SPEAKER_01: 12:45

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00: 12:45

And there's three of us that are gonna hunt this ranch. Well, the ranch may be 45 minutes from where the outfitter's cabin is.

SPEAKER_01: 12:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 12:53

And then, you know, you're not all sitting in the same blind or over the same field or anything like that. He's on that side, he's gonna be over here. Okay, and that's it.

SPEAKER_02: 13:02

Like at least are they at least like a mile apart? Oh, yeah, easily. Okay, easily. Because I think about it, and this is a difference between potentially whitetail and black tail. In the class, we talk about your set should be at least a mile apart, so you're not competing against yourself. And once you learn nuance, you that's a a workable number, but to begin with, it's a mile apart. Right now, but black tail have small ranges, and whitetail having a bigger range, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 13:33

So that becomes a little bit trickier, so you you're not so dependent. Food sources are gonna be everywhere in the Midwest. That's the thing that people don't understand. And when I say that, I mean people from the Northwest, because on our side, you know, we're not an egg society over here. We do have farms and we do people grow corn and stuff, but you go to the Midwest and it's everywhere. That's all you see. So food sources, you know, and I've said this during my seminars that food does not make big bucks daylight. It just doesn't. If you think that's the the trick to it, you know, putting out food and big bucks are gonna come running in and all this, you're sadly mistaken. And I encourage you to go and do just that put out food and see how many come at the day during the daylight. Because it is so e-oriented out there. I mean, it's just miles and miles and miles of egg fields, corn, sunflower, soybean, all these other crops that they're growing out there and whatnot. You focus more on pinch points and travel corridors.

SPEAKER_01: 14:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 14:39

And this is I recommend anybody that wants to figure out blacktail, go on a guided whitale hunt in the Midwest and talk to your guide and see how he again ask him why he put that stand there. It's easier to read the terrain because of the way that they have green belts and egg fields, and green belt and the egg, the way that it is out there and stuff. You start reading the contour and just how the land is laid out, and you understand why the deer are using this ridge or that ridge, and then it'll open your eyes to that. Then you come back here and you're able to look at it differently. Oh, I see why they're using that ridge to get here. Granted, it's not ag, but they're still moving to a food source.

SPEAKER_02: 15:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 15:26

Or a bedding area.

SPEAKER_02: 15:28

Now, would it be more of a shrunken down version with black tail?

SPEAKER_00: 15:32

With black tail, yes. And it would be more of a rugged terrain.

SPEAKER_01: 15:37

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 15:38

You know, Oklahoma, Kansas, from North Dakota all the way down into Texas, it's more rolling hills and whatnot, except for the black hills up in South Dakota. But most of it is rolling hills and ravines and little drainages and whatnot, at least from our point of view, that's what it would be. And so when you look at out there and you're looking at it, it seems to be on a smaller scale, and you learn how to read it. It seems a lot easier to read. Once you figure that out, and it don't take long, you can look at the terrain and oh my gosh, okay, I see all this, I see the habitat. And you're watching, okay, so he put it here because this is the green belt here, and this is the ridge here. Oh, okay, that makes total sense. And then you come back, like I said, here, even though evergreen trees hide a lot of finger raises, you're still able to look at it and go, okay, this is where the deer want to run. It's the path of least resistance, and you can see how they want to move. It makes it a lot easier out here to decipher hunting areas and figure out where the deer travel.

SPEAKER_02: 16:39

So would it be, and this is making this pop into my head, is it so wind is important to know the wind because you're absolutely you're gonna get they they busted.

SPEAKER_00: 16:52

Yeah, they want the wind religiously. If the wind is bad, they don't put you on that set.

SPEAKER_02: 16:56

Okay. But there, the wind being bad, there's not it seems like it wouldn't get broken up quite as much as it does. Like here, walking to my set that I hunted this year, when I'm first walking up the first skitter road, it's and I mean this is winding and it's blowing in my face because it creates that wind tunnel. Because I have I'm walking in 40, 50 foot tall first in between on this skitter road. So it's always blowing in my face. Then I drop down through a drainage, it creates a vacuum, and it blows down into that drainage. Pop up on another skitter road that's 90 degree angle from the first skitter road, the last part, and it's blowing in my face again.

SPEAKER_01: 17:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 17:47

So it's blowing from the west to east, and then it's blowing north to south, and then I go sit in my set, and it's back blowing from west to east again. Or yeah, it so our top topography and being taller ridges, things like that. Right. Is that making black tail? Is that one of the things that can make black tail a little more difficult or less difficult?

SPEAKER_00: 18:12

Absolutely. I mean, everybody has gone. So there are obstacles here in the northwest are much larger. And so they direct the wind or block the wind or divert the wind a lot easier than it does out there. With the rolling hills, it's just gonna blow over, you know.

SPEAKER_02: 18:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 18:29

And I mean, their trees are smaller, you know, their cedar trees, they only average about 20 feet. Okay. Yeah, and they it's not as you know, what they call thick is is what we would call a park.

SPEAKER_02: 18:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 18:40

And that's okay.

SPEAKER_02: 18:41

I mean Well, it's just different.

SPEAKER_00: 18:42

That's all it is. But you know, over there, you're more apt to get the 20 to 30 mile an hour gusts on days, and deer don't hunker down when the wind blows out there in the Midwest. They're up and moving, and they seem more relaxed on a very strong windy day than they do on days when it's like a five mile an hour, seven mile an hour constant breeze. They come in on pins and needles, and you get that that those windy days where it's 20 plus, they just seem relaxed. And I think it's because everything is moving, they can't decipher what's danger and what isn't. And so they just kind of like throw up their hands and like, okay, yeah, it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_02: 19:25

Now, are the predators much of an issue? White tail?

SPEAKER_00: 19:28

Coyotes and bobcats are huge in the Midwest. Huge. And you'll, you know, you talk to a lot of guys, they get an arrow in a deer or whatnot, and it's like they really want to go out and get it that night because coyotes find it and eat the whole thing. You'll only get the antlers.

SPEAKER_02: 19:44

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00: 19:44

They'll polish off a whole deer in in a night. It's incredible.

SPEAKER_02: 19:48

Okay, but there's not the big predators that there's well and I imagine there's bears and cougars.

SPEAKER_00: 19:54

Yeah, but not the numbers like we have up here. Yeah. Not at not even close. And most of those are a draw anyway. Uh because there's so few.

SPEAKER_02: 20:04

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00: 20:04

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 20:05

So it's uh Oh, so draw for a bear hunt or draw for cougar hunt. Yep. Okay. So which, although Texas, I don't think there is.

SPEAKER_00: 20:14

I don't believe there is.

SPEAKER_02: 20:15

So I remember because we were looking into doing, and we're still looking to do a Pig hunt down in Texas, and the one of the guide services was just like just head out there and kill some stuff, and they gave you a limit of like five pigs each or whatever. But they said, if you see a cougar, shoot it. So it sounded like it was just kind of fair game, but they just wanted the cougars all gone.

SPEAKER_00: 20:39

So they were talking that they did have a cougar sighting there in Kansas, but it's almost like a Bigfoot sighting. It's such a rarity. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03: 20:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 20:47

You're gonna see a lot of bobcats and and coyotes and armadillos, you know, but you're not gonna see the chance that you've seen a cougar is like winning the lottery.

SPEAKER_02: 20:57

Now, can you take a fling an arrow at an armadillo if he's walking by? Or is that bad etiquette?

SPEAKER_00: 21:04

You can if you want. Yeah, they're like our possums up there.

SPEAKER_02: 21:07

Yes, with armor.

SPEAKER_00: 21:08

Yeah. Well, I mean the numbers. Oh, they're everywhere down there.

SPEAKER_02: 21:13

Okay. So we kind of talked a bit about habitat and climate affecting. Oh, that was something before we move on, like with the wind. Are you because I know when I've read articles and studied articles about, and I think Scott Halligan talked about it too, about wind traveling in layers. Uh-huh. So you want to get up above that layer.

SPEAKER_00: 21:33

So is it when you're there, are you hunting up pretty high in in tree stands or well, I mean, because the trees don't get very tall, you're probably averaging 15, okay, uh, 12, 15 feet.

SPEAKER_02: 21:47

So not real.

SPEAKER_00: 21:50

Yeah, just because, like I said, we were in seat, their cedars average about 20 feet. They and their our cedars go up 75 foot cedars, nothing around here. Yeah. It's got just this massive base and everything. Theirs are just kind of short and stubby.

SPEAKER_03: 22:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 22:03

You know what I mean? And the boughs go out real wide, but the tree doesn't go up very high at all in comparison to ours. And here they deal with drought just every year, though.

SPEAKER_02: 22:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 22:16

So I mean, that's gotta have something to do with it.

SPEAKER_02: 22:18

So and here you're more like 25 feet up or oh yeah. Yeah. But but then again, terrain plays a lot into that, how high up you're going, because if you're on the hillside, you want to be higher. You need to be up even higher.

SPEAKER_00: 22:31

If the deer is approaching from uphill, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 22:33

Okay, so thinking about the difference between white tail and black tail, the signs that you're seeing, if you were to go out on your own, not necessarily relying on the guide to do this, but what are you so here? We're looking for rubs. That's kind of a bigger thing. But here, and you talk about that in the class, we look for habitat. We don't actually look for the deer. Are they with white tail? Are you looking for deer? You're looking for habitat first or certain types of sign first?

SPEAKER_00: 23:02

I'm looking for I'm looking for habitat. When I find the habitat, the sign will be there with white tails. Okay. Especially with white tails with because I mean you're looking, there's scrapes all over. There's rubs all over. There are just a much more aggressive species of deer than black tail and mule deer. And what I mean by that is that they fight more, they respond to vocals more, you're rattling and grunts, and they're just really an aggressive deer. And because they're so plentiful, finding their travel corridors isn't that hard. As far as when you hit a game trail that's well used, it's obvious.

SPEAKER_03: 23:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 23:39

Because they just reproduce so much and there's so much deer traffic that when they travel those game trails, it just gets beat down because there's so much activity on it.

SPEAKER_02: 23:49

And if they're herding up.

SPEAKER_00: 23:51

In the wintertime, they'll move out to the open and herd up.

SPEAKER_02: 23:56

But even moving through those corridors, there might be maybe what uh say there if there's a hundred deer w working a certain trail or corridor in the Midwest, here there might be a lot of people. It just the Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 24:13

When I was in North Dakota, I spent three winters there. And uh, it was nothing in the wintertime to drive down the highway, look over, and there'd be a herd of 200 whitetail out in the middle of a field all huddled together.

SPEAKER_03: 24:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 24:25

And that's the deer from that area. They'd come in there and they're just doing it to stay warm, you know. I mean, because North Dakota, it gets negative 20, 40 degrees.

SPEAKER_03: 24:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 24:34

But yeah, you would see that quite common. And like you said, we go around here and they're maybe in a deer's range 12 to 24.

SPEAKER_02: 24:44

Yeah. So as I drove down for Thanksgiving, I drove down to California and I was in the Siskiws driving along I-5, and I looked off to the right, and there were six, seven does all standing together in a 20 by 40 yard patch of open grass. And I was like, oh my gosh, yeah, it's one of the biggest herds of blacktail I've ever seen. And it literally was. I think there's been twice where I've seen more than like five together. Yeah. Yeah. It just doesn't really happen.

SPEAKER_00: 25:15

We don't get the extreme winters like they do, so there's no reason for them to hang out close.

SPEAKER_02: 25:19

So is there what are the differences or similarities in their rut behavior between black tail and white tail?

SPEAKER_00: 25:26

Like I said, white tail are much more vocal, they're more aggressive. That's not to say that black tail aren't aggressive, but on average, white tail are gonna be more aggressive, they're gonna respond to calls more aggressively, whereas a black you're rattling. Sometimes the black tail will run in and sometimes they'll sneak in. Yeah, you rattle for white tail, and more often than not, you're gonna hear him coming. Or if you rattle, you're you're looking out there and you see him and you rattle, he's just gonna come. I don't know how many times I've done this. Let's let's use this as an example. I've done the snort wheeze, I've seen a buck walking without a dough, and I've done the snort wheeze, and 99% of the time he'll stop, he'll look back at me, and once he does that, I know he's coming in. He may go left or right, get in the cover, and I don't see him, and then the next thing I know, he's popped out next to either my left or right, like within 10 yards of where I'm sitting.

SPEAKER_02: 26:28

Yeah, he's sneaking in.

SPEAKER_00: 26:30

He's coming around to get the win and stuff, but if they stop and look back, 99% of the time they're coming in. And they're just a really aggressive deer, and they're fun, they're fun to hunt, they get bigger quicker than blacktail do. So it's nothing to see a year and a half old buck, and he's a three-point. Okay, you know what I mean? And you're just like going, oh my gosh, that's as big as a fork and horn as far as high and whatnot. Yeah, but he's a three-point and he's only a year and a half, and or maybe he's three and a half and he is a ten-point, and he's just heavy and great mass, and he's running 130s to 140s, and you're just like, oh my gosh, and that's a three and a half-year-old buck. And we're looking at for a black tail in our part of the northwest. Now, this is southwest Washington. This is not southwest Oregon, but in our part, because the habitat is thicker, there's more underbrush and whatnot, for a buck to get to the 120s, that's the equivalent of a buck in the 140s down south.

SPEAKER_01: 27:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 27:43

Okay. And that's the thing. A lot of guys they make a mistake on on thinking, well, it's this way where I live, it should be that way everywhere. You look at you look at uh deer in Kansas and Oklahoma, uh-huh. Giants, body-wise giants, absolute monsters.

SPEAKER_03: 28:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 28:01

Go down to Texas. They're tiny, they're half the size.

SPEAKER_02: 28:05

Do they have bigger racks?

SPEAKER_00: 28:06

They got the racks equivalent. The racks look big because the body is but so you're looking at them going, okay, they're gonna shoot the 130s and 140s, and that's gonna look that's gonna be a great buck there. Yeah, but Kansas, Oklahoma, Illinois, I mean, you're gonna get 150s, 60s, 170s, 180s. Yeah, you know, and they're gonna be big bodied.

SPEAKER_02: 28:29

DJ a few years ago on that trip got fat Elvis, which was a 300-plus pound white tail.

SPEAKER_00: 28:36

That was the biggest bodied white tail ever taken off that ranch. And then you go up north into Saskatchewan and whatnot, and is it varies as you go into different types of habitat.

SPEAKER_02: 28:48

Well, it was interesting because I just interviewed some guys down in Northern California, Mendocino County, and they were huge. I was talking to a guy who had a 172 black tail with a 30-inch spread. So they have these monster racks.

SPEAKER_03: 29:10

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02: 29:10

But then they were talking about, yeah, we can get some big bucks down here, big body bucks. They'll go like 150, 170 pounds.

SPEAKER_00: 29:17

And I'm thinking that's not a bad buck.

SPEAKER_02: 29:20

That's not a bad buck, but it's that's not a huge you know, for them, that's a huge bodied buck in down in California. But for up here, that's not.

SPEAKER_00: 29:31

Okay, but we have to clarify, because the average guy shoots up a fork horn or a spike around here, and like a spike will be a good spike is 90 pounds.

SPEAKER_03: 29:40

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 29:41

And there are some fork and horns that'll go 130 to 140, and guys think, well, that's a huge buck if 150, 175. But when you see a mature buck, a mature black tail up here, yeah, you realize that they're pushing 200.

SPEAKER_02: 29:53

Yeah. And so, and that was the thing. That's their big mature black tail down there, they max out like a big maxed out body is 150 to 170. Up here, it's 200 to 250, potentially.

SPEAKER_00: 30:09

Potentially. And our racks typically will be smaller. They take why they take longer to get to the size that you like Southern Oregon. You can go on Facebook this time of year and you look at that buck, and I see these big as I I can almost before I even read anything about that's a middle to southern Oregon buck, you know, looking at it and seeing how big that the rack is and whatnot. And then versus a big one up here, you know, like six and a half, seven and a half, eight and a half years old. You're looking at him going, okay, now he's getting the bigger rack. Yeah, where he's pushing the 140s and whatnot. And and it just takes it's different, it takes a while. That's why that comment the other day, well, it was 110 and whatnot. A 110 up here is probably a five and a half year old.

SPEAKER_02: 30:58

Well, I mean Lucky was 111.

SPEAKER_00: 31:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 31:03

And he's uh he was a five and a half year old.

SPEAKER_00: 31:05

Five and a half, six and a half years old. Yeah. I watched him for for four years. Three years. I didn't hunt him until the fourth year.

SPEAKER_02: 31:12

Okay, fourth year. Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 31:13

Yeah. He'd always been really wide and everything. And so you're looking at it's just it's different location. That's not to say that we don't get big rack bucks. We do.

SPEAKER_02: 31:22

And we do, like uh thinking of an outlier is Charlie that Bud got, won it after 129 and some change. Net and then or gross.

SPEAKER_00: 31:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 31:35

And then net was 122. Yeah. But it was a three and a half year old buck.

SPEAKER_00: 31:39

Yeah, a three and a half for a round here that's unheard of.

SPEAKER_02: 31:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 31:44

Unheard of.

SPEAKER_02: 31:45

So always definitely an outlier. Right, right. Thinking of that little one that I've got Anakin, and like you said, the one and a half year old that's a three-point.

SPEAKER_00: 31:56

Yeah, yeah. And guys jump the gun too much and think, well, because it's that way where I live, it should be that way all the way away. And it just isn't, you know. Valley Bucks versus Cascade Bucks versus Southern Oregon Bucks versus British Columbia Bucks. I mean, they're all gonna be Sitka black tail. It's all gonna be different. It just it's gonna be what that gene strain in that area.

SPEAKER_02: 32:20

And whitetail are just the same as far as the exact same. Different areas have different just different genetics, and they're gonna look and be different.

SPEAKER_00: 32:29

Their genetics have adapted to the area in which they live.

SPEAKER_02: 32:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 32:32

You know, we get a lot of what we call brush buck racks, where there might a lot more basket rack. And it takes a long time.

unknown: 32:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 32:41

Eight and a half, nine and a half. And by then they're almost they're almost impossible to kill because they're just not interested in the rut.

SPEAKER_02: 32:48

How old was Bambino, do you think?

SPEAKER_00: 32:51

Oh my gosh. Bambino was probably an eight and a half to a nine and a half year old buck.

SPEAKER_02: 32:56

Yeah, he was an old guy.

SPEAKER_00: 32:58

He was really old. The fact that Chris got him is I mean, it just that's the hand of God because I don't think that buck was interested, like I said, in the rut anymore. You know, they just they lose that drive after a while. It's like bulls. They just want to eat and yeah, they don't, they're just not driven by the rut anymore, and so they just don't make many mistakes, they don't screw up.

SPEAKER_02: 33:20

So going back to thinking about the differences between whitale and black tail, are there differences in the way you scout for those?

SPEAKER_00: 33:29

So for me, no.

SPEAKER_02: 33:31

Okay. Again, you're always looking habitat first.

SPEAKER_00: 33:34

That's exactly it. You know, I'm always looking for habitat. If you find the habitat, the bucks are gonna be there. It just it I've just found that to be true.

SPEAKER_02: 33:45

But is it different habitat?

SPEAKER_00: 33:46

It's different habitat in the sense that it's not so much the conifers they have there. We're looking at cedars, and that's pretty much it. Maybe a few pines, but mostly cedars and pines. But those aren't common. Yeah. They're not uncommon, but they're it's not like here where everywhere you look, it's all hardwood. It's some kind of evergreen or a hardwood, period.

SPEAKER_02: 34:10

There it's um almost all hardwoods.

SPEAKER_00: 34:12

Yeah, it's gonna be a lot of scrub oak, a lot of a lot of oak, period. Yeah, a lot of acorns and whatnot, and which can make it really difficult as far as patterning because that food source is so plentiful everywhere. It would be the equivalent of blackberries up here.

SPEAKER_01: 34:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 34:28

You know what I mean? Where there's oak running everywhere. Every draw, there's gonna be a bunch of oak in there, and so it makes it really it can be really difficult to pattern a deer at times.

SPEAKER_02: 34:40

Okay. So if you're thinking about blacktail, what are like the top three things to consider, I would say, for black tail?

SPEAKER_00: 34:48

As far as locating them?

SPEAKER_02: 34:50

As far as just hunting them. If you're going to hunt, and like it's very different because a lot of guys will glass or something like that, but just thinking from your point of view and the way you hunt.

SPEAKER_00: 35:03

Oh, okay. The first thing I I uh I do is I get on either onyx or hunt stand or whatever, and I start looking for edges. That's the very first thing I do, is I look for edges created by habitat changes. Once I find those edges, then I want to put boots on the ground. And it usually doesn't take very long after that to decide. And it sounds easy. And once you start doing it and you realize what you're looking for, it really isn't that hard. You you just wash, rinse, repeat. So the first thing I want to look for is edges, and I'm solely going to concentrate on edges.

SPEAKER_02: 35:39

So it's first you're doing e-scouting, second is boots on the ground, looking for, as you would say, maybe the bedroom door, finding that to dialing it in. So e-scouting, dialing it in, and then the third thing.

SPEAKER_00: 35:53

Yeah, the edges of thick stuff.

SPEAKER_02: 35:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 35:55

To locate that bedroom door, and then the third thing is accessibility. And that's gonna be different for everybody.

SPEAKER_02: 36:02

So how easy you can get in and out?

SPEAKER_00: 36:04

Right. Entrances and exits are every bit as important as the hunt itself.

SPEAKER_02: 36:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 36:09

If I can't get in and out without being seen and heard or smelled, then I'm gonna really have a hard time getting that big buck to daylight.

SPEAKER_02: 36:18

Yeah. Okay, so if you were gonna do whitetail, would it be the same three? Or would you be considering something else?

SPEAKER_00: 36:26

I might with whitetail, I would throw in there uh talking to my game biologist and finding out where the highest concentration of dough and rainfall.

SPEAKER_01: 36:36

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00: 36:37

Would be the two because dose would determine what the buck to dough ratio is and where I can find that where it seems to be one to two or one to one. When it gets to be too big, then the bucks spend so much time breeding does that they're not visible near as much. I mean, they just don't move very much, they don't have to.

SPEAKER_03: 36:57

No.

SPEAKER_00: 36:57

And if the ratio is closer to one to two or one to one, then I'm gonna see more daylighting, I'm gonna see more deer or more buck activity because those are gonna get gobbled up fast in that sense. Rain always equals antler growth. If there is a poor county where it had very poor rain seasonally, it's gonna be very poor antler growth because without rain, stuff doesn't grow, they don't get the nutrients they need, the minerals they need to reach their maximum potential. If there is a high or high counties with higher rain amounts, those are the counties I want to stick to, or or that's where I want to be concentrating my efforts as far as locating travel corridors and checking for the game biologists as far as the deer population.

SPEAKER_02: 37:46

Okay. So I think this could be an exhaustive. We could probably go on talking about those differences, yeah, on this. So, kind of a brief overview, but we're at our time limit. I'm sure everybody's commute is almost done. So, and that's what we're aiming for. So that you can listen to this on one way of your commute, maybe two. So, anyway, thanks for joining us, and we'll talk to you all next week.