Remy Warren (0:00)

Foreign I'm Remy Warren and I've lived my life in the wild as a professional guide and hunter. I've spent thousands of days perfecting my craft. I want to give that knowledge to you. In this podcast we relive some of my past adventures as I give you practical hunting tips to make you more successful. Whether you're just getting started or a lifelong hunter, this podcast will bring you along on the hunt and teach you how to Live Wild. This podcast is brought to you by Mountain Tough and Yeti. A lot of the tactics I talk about here require you to be in top physical shape, so I partnered with Mountain Tough to help get you ready for the mountain with their science based hunter specific training app. You'll get in shape and mentally tough able to tackle any hunt. Because we really believe this will help you be more successful as a listener to this podcast, we're giving you six free weeks to get you started. Just use code livewild. Well everyone, welcome back to Live Wild podcast. Now this week we're going to cover hunt tactics for organizing and executing a hunt plan while you're on the hunt. With a lot of applications going out, many of you may draw a tag or have some hunts planned. So we're going to go into some of the tips and tactics when you get on that hunt. Now I'm going to recap the full story of my Utah muzzleloader deer hunt from this past season. I had a late muzzleloader tag, I had help from friends and to hunt I went in with the hope of turning up a really good buck. Now the hunt came down to the wire and what happened on the last day, I never would have guessed. So let's head to Utah and dive into the muzzleloader hunt that went up in smoke. If you know me, you know that mule deer hunting is pretty high on my list when it comes to the type of hunts that I find difficult, challenging and awesome at the same time. A big mature mule deer in my opinion is the hardest animal in North America to take. I mean, or one of the hardest, you know, whether I mean, all things being equal, you know, there's cheap tags can be difficult because the tag portion, getting a tag can be hard or there's, you know, that back country aspect. But to take a big mule deer buck I think is one of the hardest things to do right now, especially when you do it with a bow. But honestly, anymore it's really any I'm not sure that a rifle season is any better than a archery might even be the better Time to find bigger bucks or a muzzleloader tag. You know, it could be a great option. I think no matter what it is, it can be a challenge. So anytime that I have a mule deer tag where there's a potential to take a good, mature buck, I'm pretty stoked. I also feel like you. Mule deer hunting is the ultimate game of hunting chess. Like, a lot of things have to go right, and there has to be, you know, the quality of bucks in the unit that you're hunting. So for this particular hunt, I had, I drew a tag in. In Utah. It was a late muzzleloader tag, Pretty much in a general unit, but it's a little bit later season. So in those general units, There's a lot of hunters early on. And then as the season gets later, Some of those bigger bucks come out of the woodwork, Is in an area where there's potential for really good deer. And that's one of the things that, you know, kind of interests me about a particular hunt is, is there even the potential for this next level buck? And there definitely is. This. This area had those. Those bucks. But, you know, coming off of a general season and having. Having never hunted this particular area myself, you, know, I was. I was in for, I think, you know, probably a difficult hunt. The other thing this season had kind of going for it was. Is kind of an unseasonably warm. Not a lot of snow. Well, there was some snow kind of early, but it had been pretty warm. The other seasons have been warm, so that was kind of a challenge. So my thought for this particular hunt was. And for a lot of hunts, I guess, I think that when it comes to finding and harvesting like, a good mule deer buck, it really boils down to time. And, you know, for me, unfortunately, sometimes the time aspect is. Is what I don't have these days. I used to have a lot more time to dedicate to one tag, so there'd be hunts that I would go on. And it's like, man, I had essentially the entire season to, like, months of scouting and just being able to put in time to find that one buck that I was looking for. And so on this particular hunt, you know, I had a. Essentially a week of hunting, but when it came down to it, to turn up the kind of buck that I was hoping for, that's not enough time. You know, one person, whether it's five, let's call it five days, seven days, you know, that's not a lot of time to get it done. You either need a really good area get really lucky, have really good intel, what have you. So my thought was to kind of create a time multiplier. And what I mean by a time multiplier is if. If one person on the mountain is one person on the mountain for one day. If you get five people each, one day is essentially five days of looking. You can get those people for five days. That's 25 days of man hours out there looking. And so I. I talked to my friends, and I had quite a few friends that were willing and able to show up, lend me a hand on this particular hunt. So for this hunt, I essentially assembled my team. I got some friends that come down. My buddy Josh, Joe and Nico came from Nevada, and then my buddies Chris and Dylan came down from Montana. Zach came up, friend of mine who's going to be filming. And then we had Ben, you might know him as Shed Crazy, our local intel from Utah. So that was our group. So I guess with all of us in total, that was eight of us. Now, everybody had a few days that they could, you know, be there. So I think for the most part, everybody could be there for, like, two or three days. And then there was a few days where it was just myself and Chris. And then I think the last day or maybe the last two days was just me and Zach, who was filming. So starting off, we had, you know, a big crew of people to help look. And so the plan was to just spread out. Let's find a good buck or spread out and at least get an idea of, like, here's a good concentration of rut activity. Here's a good concentration of deer. So this particular area, you know, we're getting toward the rut, but it's still a little bit early. It was kind of that end of October, beginning of November timeframe. And so the thought was to spread out, figure out where the deer are, what's going on, and then I can kind of hone in on that particular area, or if somebody turned up a good buck, then we could all kind of converge and glass that spot. But the real plan was to just figure out, okay, where. Where might we find a good deer and spread out from there. So we kind of broke off into teams. So it was like, you know, a couple. You know, I think it was probably three or four, three major groups. Myself, somebody jumped in with me. So that way, if we spotted something, someone could glass. And then Josh and Nico went off into an area. Chris, Dylan, and Ben went into an area, and then myself and Joe kind of would split up from there. And we'd be, you know, the first day we just went broad. Let's just cover the area and check places that we had on this. I had a kind of a list of places that I wanted to check based on talking to people, some e scouting, some research that I'd done. Ben is familiar with the area, so those guys kind of, you know, gave us some pointers as well as had places that they wanted to check. And then Josh and Nico kind of went to another spot. It was like, okay, well, these are places we should be checking and just to get a lay of the land. And after that first day, you, you know, we realized we. We were turning up a lot of deer, tons of does and very young bucks. Like, spikes, fork it, horns. I mean, like bucks that you. It's. You just don't even have to count them as bucks. It's just deer. And we also kind of realized that first day that, like, if we saw something, like a lot of these deer were moving or you'd see them and you wouldn't turn them back up again, you know, it probably wouldn't be very beneficial to be so far apart. Like, we're from the top end of the unit to the bottom end of the unit, just really spread out. So our plan kind of moving was going to be one kind of roving group and then a couple groups close enough to where we could join back up. And in Utah, it's legal to use communication, whether it's two way communication, radios, phones. So somebody could call and say, like, hey, I found a deer over here. Let's go check it out. But, you know, each going into our different areas so I could go hike in and concentrate on this spot while not thinking about, I wonder what's over here. Somebody else could be over there glassing. And so we did that and that, that was the plan to kind of increase our time in the field for the time that you're allotted. It was a short season. Most of the deer that we're going to be taking on the season are going to be kind of popping out of the woodwork. And that was the plan. So we did that. We split up. You know, nothing really crazy got spotted. There was a couple younger bucks, couple, you know, a lot of, like, back forked. Three points were some of the better bucks that were starting to turn up. Mostly just young deer. Lots of does, lots of deer, saw lots of deer, hundreds of deer. You know, it's one of those things, like at any given moment we're going to see the big buck. Then we kind of got this, I don't know, hot tip about a big buck that had, that had moved into an area that we could hunt. And so we decided my plan was just to kind of like, let's all converge on that and see if we can turn up this big buck. And we ended up cutting the track, you know, from the day prior, Did a lot of glassing and just never turned him up. But my, my plan going into this hunt was I really wanted to find a good deer. And so to me, it was worth spending a couple days in that area where a big buck had been seen and just, I don't know that that buck just disappeared. That's why it was a big deer. And in that time I actually a lot of us were concentrating on that area and I didn't even turn up a deer for a couple days. So low density area, kind of hoping to turn up that once in a lifetime type buck. And I burnt a lot of time on that where I didn't see any deer. And, and you know, time's ticking away as the season's going on. My thought was that, you know, it's only going to get better. There were some good bucks that got shot right off the bat, but those were ones that maybe people had been watching or had local knowledge on. I mean, I didn't have anything like that lined up. So, you know, we're going in there and just making the time available to hunt the time that we're going to have and knowing that as it gets later in the season, it's just going to get better. So the other, the only downside was as the season got later, I started losing some of my help. So somebody had to go away and go do this and these guys had to leave. And so now we're down to the last couple days of the season and it's actually starting to get a little bit better. Like starting to see maybe that next age class of buck start coming out of the woodwork. And that's the thing about mule deer is some of these big bucks can live and exist in these areas and they're just timbered up like they're in thick oak brush. They just, they're just essentially unfindable for the most part until they just pop out and decide, hey, we're here and I'm going to start chasing does. So we, we covered all kinds of country from near ag land to mountain country, like to desert stuff to covered flipping everything and saw a lot of deer, but just never turned up like good bucks. Not even I would say not even medium bucks. Like, and I'll just like for score wise, like didn't even really turn up many bucks over 150 or in that 160 class for sure. Just, you know, a lot of smaller immature deer. And so, you know, it's like the. I guess the. I don't know if it's the second to last day toward. Toward the end. Ended up spotting a. A big. Well, it was, it was running. I thought it was a pretty nice buck when I caught it through the glass. And I didn't know why it was running. Turned out there's. I think somebody had shot at it. And so I saw it running one way. So I moved around and got into position. It ended up being just this like big back fork, three point. And so, you know, didn't. Didn't want to go after that buck. And I still had two more days left to hunt. So um, the next day. Yeah, so that was the third to last day. So the next day now it's just myself and Chris. Everybody else had left by this point. And so we kind of split up, but we're in the same area kind of glassing around. Chris had seen a couple more mature bucks in one spot. And then I saw a buck that it was bedded. And I. It was a long ways away. The it as the sun was coming up. It was really cold in the mornings and really windy. So it was really hard to get a good look at things a long ways away. Which that wind I don't helped for the glassing or deer movement at all. Lot of really harsh winds. Like at night it was. I had my rooftop tent and everybody had the tents and everything like dust just blowing into everything, rattling. I don't know. It was probably like 40 plus mile an hour winds. I'm just getting rocked. So I ended up just sleeping in the bed of my truck. It was a little bit better like collapsing the tent because it was just so windy. Like hard to sleep and slept good that way. But you know, when it's windy like that, it's just tough for like good detailed glassing. And so I spotted this buck of like good frame. I could tell it had deep back forks. I didn't know what the fronts were because it was just too hard to see. I thought maybe had a little bit of extra on there. Like it's just like the way that it looks. I'm like. I think it has like a cheater on this one side. So. And then it. It moved off into the thicker timber. So I Hiked over there, it was like a couple miles away and crept in, started calling and these does came out. I did see some does in there too and these does came out and that was about it. So I figured that buck was still in there. Like I could see all around it and I just assumed that that buck hadn't left. So I also didn't want to spend the entire day waiting for a buck that probably might be a shooter, might not. You know, you just don't know. So I made the executive decision. I'm just going to sneak in to where I think he's bedded. Go real slow. Glass. So I'm moving in, just glassing, glassing one step, glassing, glassing another step and I spot him and he's like, I don't know, 50 yards or less away, 45 yards away. So I get down and it's like more mahogany, mahogany type trees, like juniper or whatever. So there's some thick cover in there. And I get down, I can see him and I have a clear shot on him. His antlers are in the timber and I look and he's just like, unfortunately like it was a mature buck. Heavy. Good back forks, no front forks. Like just short main beamed, you know, three by with a little cheater on one side. Great looking deer, but not what I was hoping, not even close to what I was hoping to get out of the hunt. And I figured I have one more day left, you know. Chris had seen like a better four by four, which was probably the best buck of the trip so far. And I thought maybe I could talk myself into, you know, like a, a good decent buck if we end up turning one on the last day. And it was like, you know, got me excited. Sure, I'll go after it. Like it'd be awesome to be successful with my muzzleloader after the year prior I was, went unsuccessful with it. It's like it'd be cool to be successful on a nice buck. But I, I went into that thinking, you know, I was going to see a lot of those mid to okay sized bucks and hadn't really turned any up. So of course there was like, you know, a few other okay deer, borderline deer, you know, like oh, let's look at this baka. It's a, you know, we saw one that was maybe like a. I don't know how to for you know, decent four point. So a couple okay, okay deer but nothing I was too crazy about going after. So. So it's the last day, last morning, last day. We go into this area where Chris had seen probably one of the better bucks the day before. And we're like, all right, we've done it on the last day. And every day is just getting better. It's like the last two days, something kind of shifted. We started seeing more mature deer turn up that they were rutting a little bit more. There's more interest in the does. Like, it was just a different. Different ball game. And I think if the hunted started on the second, like, on the last day, would have just been a completely different hunt. Like, absolutely, hands down, would have been a Been an awesome hunt. And of course, the whole time, we're getting pictures of other people's deer in the area that were, like, awesome bucks. So there were good deer getting taken. We just never happened to be the ones encountering them. Some of them were in areas that we were the day before or whatever. Right. Like, I think a lot of luck and a lot of. A lot of other things, like, whatever it was. So. So it's the last day everybody had to leave. So it's just myself and Zach filming and glassing and turn up quite a few bucks that are, like, nice bucks. Like, we've seen probably more good bucks this day than any other, all the other days combined. And then we kind of shift our gaze over to the spot where Chris had seen a good buck the day before and looking. And there's a lone buck that's like, a good deer. A shooter at this point. He's got good front forks. His back forks seem. He's, like, super tall. Not great back forks, but on the one side, he's got, like, this extra point in his back fork that made it look like a turkey foot. So we called him. Turkey foot is like, that's a cool buck. And let's go get him. Like, he's by himself. We've got good wind. This could be awesome. So move in and stock on the stock, there's a giant fork and horn kind of popped up in between. Luckily, it went the other way. And the buck's feeding up this mountain and going to the top. So we get to the top, and the wind's good. And we're looking over, expecting him to be feeding. And he fed out into this little burn. And he was just out feeding maybe 300 yards away. And so we're starting to move in, like, on the edge. Cause we'd just be able to pop back up and shoot straight across. And the wind just starts to shift. So you go, okay. The wind's getting weird. We're Gonna back out. So he's like, go the best way, not the easy way. We back out, we drop down the mountain. We go all the way around the mountain, practically running to get to this rock outcropping that's across from him that he's moving towards. Cause we'll be complet unseen, pop over the rock, have aunder 100 yard or less shot and should be awesome. And so we, as we're moving around, we, I. We creep up to the. The spot. You know, we made. Made it there quick, like practically out of breath, pouring sweat. Everything looks good. Pop over and the buck isn't there. Like where the heck is this guy? And then we see him like on the ridge away. And this helicopter is like flying over at the exact same time. So I don't know if he winded us, if like the wind swirled and somewhere along the stock he just got antsy because he wasn't. He like didn't blow out till that helicopter came by. But I don't know, like the helicopter was pretty low and right in there. But he ran, he took off. And so it was like, okay, it was last day, last morning. Here's a. Here's finally the best buck I've seen in the entire time there be stoked to. To get a shot on him and just gets blown out. So that sucked. So now we regroup, we try, we go around and start glassing into where he went, try to pick him back up, and nothing. Bought a bunch of other deer, you know, some other bucks decide, okay, let's go try to look for another deer. But I'm like, I, you know, I think that he's still in there. I just don't know where. And there was. Does it bedded in there? It was like real thick, tall sage and stuff. I'm like, there's deer in there that we can't see. Maybe he's in there. So we went on a couple other stocks off some deer that I'd seen just to see what they look like smaller bucks. And then we went back to where that turkey foot was and moved into where we suspected he'd be and bumped up the another buck that was in there earlier that we didn't see come out either. That was with him earlier. So like, okay, this was one that we'd seen in the morning, glassed up, must have moved to the same kind of area to bed. It was good shade and he popped up real close so like he could be in here. So we stocked in and he wasn't in there. So you back out and like, all right, we're just gonna. We're just gonna. I don't know, give it till the evening. This is our last attempt. It's the best buck we've seen. Let's see if we can find him. So we're there, we're glassing, and we turn up some other deer as it's. It's like, evening time now, and a deer gets up, and so we're like, oh, is that him? But it ended up being that. That other good buck that we kind of bumped out when we were looking for him. So we're like, well, it's not him, but maybe he's in there. So we start glassing around that same area, and sure enough, we spot him bedded. And so we sit there and watch him. He gets up and moves off and starts feeding back toward where he was in the morning. So now we know the area, and we know the way in. It's like, this should be good. So we get the wind right? We move in. We make haste. He's like a couple miles away. So we start to circle around. We get the wind right, and we're. We're creeping up over the ledge to where he was. And just to get a good vantage of, like, okay, where. Where's he at? And then we can make another play as we get closer. So we're doing all the right moves. So get to the edge, and he's, like, feeding below this. This area. That would. It would be super easy to sneak in and get a shot. Everything's right. And then all of a sudden, these does, like, I'm. He's. Let's say, whatever direction I'm looking south or whatever. These does bust out. And there's like this big rim below us, like rim rock, kind of high deserty kind of stuff. And so these does are, like, running toward. Sort of toward us, over into the other side. And then all of a sudden, the bucks just running that way, too. And I'm thinking, like, maybe. Maybe he's chasing those does. I don't know what's going on, but they are. They are hauling butt. But we didn't scare them. They're there, and they're kind of coming toward us. So I just make the decision. We're going to sprint to the edge because I think that they'll pop up below us and we'll get a shot. So we're running to the edge to get set up on these deer, and I see one of the does, and they're just, like, in this Pocket of of trees below, and I'm going to have, like, a good close shot. Like, everything is actually going to work out. It's the last evening, the last day. The sun's starting to go down. Like, this is it. Hunted our butts off. This is it. We're about to fill this tag. We know that the deer is probably in this thing. And over to the left, here comes these two just random hikers. And I don't know, like, so clearly now we know. And the wind was blowing at their backs at these deer, and that's why the deer were running. They weren't chasing these does. It was blown out from these hikers. So, like, well, shit. Okay, well, let them calm down. I just need this buck to move out, and I can get a shot. Well, the hikers are now walking to the rim, and I don't know if they, like, saw the deer or that's just the way they're trying to go down. Like, just whatever it is. It's like, now they're on top of the rim, the buck is, like, right below them. I'm not gonna shoot a deer out from underneath these people. And, like, the wind is just blowing right at these deer, and my heart is just, like, sinking. Like, this sucks. It's like the last hour of the last day, and now I've just got these random hikers, and they're like, you know, you clearly not hunters. Like, I can tell by their attire. I mean, maybe they hunt in a previous life, but their attire was, we're up here to just walk around. And now those deer are, like, clustered up. They don't know where to go, and they blow out the other direction, like, damn it. So I, like, I can see where they're kind of heading, and I just. We just decide we're just gonna sprint. We drop down, circle around. The hikers, like, run across flat and, like, try to cut off to where the deer are going. And so we get there, and I'm kind of hoping that maybe they just go and slow down. So get over there looking. There's like, a bunch of COVID and other stuff. The sun's going down. Like, it's not ideal. And now I was going, like, I had a good shot. If they would have just stepped out where they were before. With the sun at my back. Now I'm, like, looking into the sun down lower, and I catch the antler of the buck. And, like, I mean, it's freaking hard to see. I can see him down there. He's, like, right at what would be My maximum range for this muzzle loader. Not that I hadn't practiced. I mean, I practiced that far and felt confident in it, but, like, the way the lighting was, it was like dark shadow, sun in your eyes, really hard to see. And I can see him there, and I don't have a shot. So I'm like, okay, we're gonna get set up. We're gonna line up, and if he gives us a little opening here, going to take a shot. So I get set up, and I actually, you could use. This was. They changed this year. You can use a unmagnified scope. And I thought, oh, maybe I've never used it. I always have a. Like, a peep sight on my muzzleloader. And so I've only used open sights. And before this hunt, I switched to an unmagnified rifle scope, which was fine. Like, I shot it well, but in that it actually made everything look smaller, honestly, than with the naked eye. So at distance, with the light hitting it, like, it was really hard to see, but I could see well enough that I felt confident in the shot. So I'm lined up. He stops. I've got, like, this one little opportunity. I shoot. Boom. It's like the buck jumps. I'm like, we got him. We hit him. This is great. You know, I think I reloaded just as precaution. And Zach, who's also filming, he's like, dude, you hammered that buck. And I was like, yes, that. I can't believe that worked out. How insane is that? That, like, we're here? What are the odds that it's like, the last day, there's people, like, they're walking this one random place. Like, no trail, nothing. Just walking through the mountains, I guess. Spook this deer, like, almost get it, don't get it. They blow it out again. Like, we run around. It ends up stopping. We end up getting a shot. And then Zach's, like, going. Because it's just kind of really hard to see with her eyes, like, down to where he was. That goes through the video, and he's like. And just as he starts to say it, I think he was, like, reviewing make sure he got it on film. He's like, I think you. I think. I think he's like, I think you shot low. And at the same time, I saw the buck, like, running away, and my heart just sank. And it's like, so we, like, what had looked like we'd hit it. Because the way they're reacting from what we saw, I think it either. I think it shot over but at the time, maybe we just thought it shot under whatever. Doesn't matter. I missed it. Not by a lot, but I did miss it. And I think, too, that, like, from my line, I had, like, I did put it a little high and probably shouldn't have put it so high on him, but either way, I missed. And the buck was like, ran up and around thing completely unscathed. We run around to try to cut him off again, and that was it. Never saw the buck again. So it's like the last evening, you know, just buck got blown out by some hikers, which I don't know the odds of that. That'll never happen. I mean, that kind of stuff happens, but, like, what are the odds that those people are in that exact spot at that exact time? Like, 15 minutes either way would have been completely different game. And then, like, maybe they just decided to walk a different way. Like, I don't know why they walked to that particular spot to take in the view. I mean, they were literally standing on top of the buck, the wind blowing right over his back. The wind was probably swirling, blew him out. The buck was probably getting wind from every direction. Holed up in this little thing, we get our chance for a shot. I missed the shot and buckets away. And that whole hunt just went up in smoke right there. Like, just crushed. I don't know. We hunted hard. We looked hard. You know, it was a. It was actually, to be 100 honest, it was a tough hunt. Like, I don't know if I would, you know, now having, like, more intel, more info, knowing the area kind of. I think I would change some things about the way I did that hunt in a way, like where I would go, but not really. Like, I felt like we just did everything right and didn't turn up the bucks. And then the last day, got a good deer and a decent opportunity and then just out the window with some stuff you can't control. And that was, you know, out of my run of extremely successful hunts this year, that was the only one tag that I didn't fill and one that I really did want to find a good buck and be successful on, but it didn't work out. And that was just how that hunt unfolded. And I think we've got. I've got the hunt film. The hunt film will be out this coming, I think, Monday. So it's an awesome hunt. Like, it's a great. It's a great video. I mean, a little bit of a spoiler alert. So if you like to watch the film and not listen to the story, you know, or whatever you like the story and film it. Just, it'll just put a lot of it back into context to see it. But it's a fun hunt to watch and to see how it all went down. And just the chaos of that last evening, it's like, here we go. We, we messed it up in the morning, it didn't work out. Now we've got our second chance. Like every. The stars are lining up. This is epic. And then the ultimate defeat. And then I just got in my vehicle, we broke down camp and drove all night home. Like, just with that disappointment looming. Like, it was, oh man, what a, what a, what a hunt. What an experience. And honestly, like, you know, it's hunts like that that you remember those instances of those things. Like, you could. Can't script that. You can't make that stuff up. Like, it's just wild how things work out sometimes. And unfortunately, you know, it was a, it was a bad beat, but, you know, you just like, wasn't meant to be. Like, there's nothing. I don't know if there's anything that I would have or could have done different. And like, just the way it played out, just so wild. So fun hunt, fun video to watch. And yeah, it was a, it was a. One of the things I just. That's probably one of the reasons that I am so addicted to hunting mule deer is like, it just is so freaking hard. And then even when everything seems right, anything can go wrong. So one of the things I want to kind of go over as far as the tips and tactics today is that once you, once you've got a tag. This is something I like to try to talk about every year, especially as we get into that season of prep and planning, because the execution on the hunt and sometimes what goes down, you know, obviously I told the story of like, things you can't control. But the organizing and executing a hunt plan is extremely important in this planning phase. So we're gonna talk about the, you know, six things here that I think are imperative to kind of going from tag and pocket. Whether it's a draw tag, whether it's a limited entry tag, whether it's a general tag, whether it's an over the counter tag, doesn't matter the kind of tag. This is all the same stuff. So we're going to talk about research, e scout pin plan, execute, and then the get out kind of portion. And so let's first dive into the research. So on a tag, you know, I had however many hunts That I was doing this for last, last season a lot. The research portion is the first, first portion and sometimes that is in combination with the E Scout. Some of these areas I've kind of pre scouted or whatever. But you might draw a tag and go, I have no clue where this is or like man, a couple years ago, hard to get over the counter tags. One popped up, grabbed it and like cool. Season starts in a week. What, what next? Right, so the research portion is a lot of things. It can be online research, it can be talking to people. And I think talking to people is probably some of the best, you know, information. I mean honestly, like I, so I, I called people that I know and, and I know I knew people that didn't hunt in the area. The struggle with this area was and I didn't even want people to tell me like I don't want to know where you're hunting, but I just kind of want to get a vibe of this, this, you know, what should I expect, what should I be looking for? What like what's reasonable for this area? Because it was, you know, it's a general tag that people could go hunt. So for most of the season. So you know, they probably got their spots and I'm not expecting them to tell me where to go or like blow up their spot. So you know, where. What do the deer do traditionally during my season and do you know anybody that's had this tag? What kind of deer should I expect? Like age, class, score wise, what's possible, what's average? Where are some traditional areas where people concentrate this time of year? Talking to people. Also read a lot on forums and other things like just like information that was freely available. I read a lot of hunt stories from people that you know, I could, you know, found online of other hunters in the past. You know, stories from like it was a great hunt. Killed this giant buck to struggled like really difficult. Didn't see much. Lots of young deer like saw it all. Oh, I looked in this area, I looked in that area and I, and I start to kind of get an idea and a feel and a sense for it. You know there's plenty of other ways to research as well. I mean talking to people, reading those online things. I searched videos and other stuff, tried to watch some videos that I could kind of maybe were in that same area just to kind of get an idea of some of the other stuff. I mean I even looked on like off roading forums and other things like see if anybody's mentioned any deer. Just a lot of research from different places. You know, you could talk to biologists and other things. It's something I used to do in the past, but kind of haven't a lot recently, only because they probably just get hammered. It's like, the same thing. And a lot of their studies and other stuff is online. Like, you can find a ton of information from units and just saying, like, okay, not only that kind of research, but what was the harvest success like last year? What kind of deer? You know, just. Just building out a picture in my mind of where. What to expect. And some places start looking, Then pull out my onyx maps, and it's just e scouting and dropping pins. And also, you know, if I talk to people, like, hey, do you mind sharing a pin on some places to look from friends and other things? So it was like, some of my friends that were even coming on the hunt knew people that were hunting, so they had, you know, friends that were like, oh, here, check this spotter we went to here. Here's where we camped. And then having been that, you know, knew the area, he's like, okay, here's. That was, like, a lot of local intel as well, saying, like, I'll be with you guys, and we'll camp here, and we'll start to base out of this. So it gave us, like, help to build that hunt plan. But I still love to just get on and. And start to e scout, get on my onyx, like, look for areas where they might rut and, like, for this particular hunt, and start, you know, dissecting those areas. Where's some vantage points, where some popular spots, where's some roads and some other things, like, get a feel for the unit before ever setting foot in it. And I also. So we went go e scout. So research e Scout and taking what we know from the research and then doing some e scouting and then maybe even some e scouting of areas that maybe no one was talking about and thinking, this looks pretty dang good. I wonder what the deal is with this in this particular area. One of the things that I was looking for is, like, maybe some areas with fewer roads, and then there's, like, areas with roads everywhere and kind of trying to, like, navigate that of being like, well, maybe, maybe is there some spots where, you know, it's a little harder to get into? Or are all the deer just congregating in these other places and then going like, oh, here's some ag. Okay, here's some places around that. Here's some public around that. Like, just a lot of different options in Marking these things. And then what I like to do is I, I kind of have a little color coordinated system when I'm E scouting. So we're gonna go, you know, from E Scout to then pin. And that's kind of part of the E scouting is I, I start to drop pins. And when I do that, I like to go, you know, I'm on my phone a lot on the Onyx Hunt app, but I'm also on the computer as well. Just kind of like a different view and a way of looking at like, okay, I can be at my desktop, but I, I honestly like sit and scroll on my phone a lot. I think, like, that's one thing people do. Whatever your, you know, technology thing is that distracts you from the real world. Mine is just sitting on, on X and dropping pins and looking and scouting. Like, I spend a lot of time throughout the year just cruising around and I would start to drop pins of certain colors. Like, whatever it is, maybe it was like a purple color, like, oh, this is a place that I should check out. And then I use a different color for places that I've been. And then I would separate out. You know, yellow means this something that somebody talked to me about or something that I think is like a traditional good spot. And here's something that I found on my own. And then the thing that I do is I just keep notes on all the pins, like, try to really use the note feature of it because you really do forget. So changing the naming of the pin or just dropping in some notes there makes a big difference. And. And I would just start to mark up places, things that I was generally looking for. This is what on any hunt, I start to look for advantages for glassing certain habitat types. I'll pin water, I'll pin potential bedding areas, I'll pin and then access points. And access is a big one because it allows me to say like, okay, I can get into this particular area or I can, you know, maybe it's hard to get into that. One of the things that I use a lot, like the tool that I probably use, maybe like the layer that I use a lot, I'm gonna pull it up right now. I use the private and public lands feature a lot. And then obviously the boundary descriptions or boundary units, I use a lot. And then outside of that, outside of that, I use the roads, trails and recreation a lot. And then I toggle on that. Motorized roads and trails as well as trails. And then, I don't know, recreation sites, like sometimes show you campgrounds and other stuff, like trail heads, things like that. Yeah, if you. So I do I turn on recreation sites as well, because it shows you where the trailhead is in areas where you haven't been. That's super important. But the thing that I like about the roads and trails and rec is it'll highlight those, like, forest service roads. Because sometimes you don't know in areas where there's a lot of roads you don't know well, what's kind of like the main pathway? What's the main road? And to be 100% honest, even with some of these, on this last hunt, I ended up on some jeep trails that like, dude, we were stacked. I forgot about that. We were stacking rocks and, you know, to get to where I wanted to go, it looked like the most direct route. And it took hours of, like, stacking rocks, having people go out and like, guide. I was in a jeep and thankfully I was because, like, it was freaking gnarly. But I guess if I had a truck, I would have turned around way before where I got. I think it was like, somehow I ended up on some, like, popular, gnarly jeep things where I'm like, riding the walls down canyons and crap. I'm like, this is not how I want to be spending this this morning, getting from one glassing vantage to another. But I use those features a lot on any hunt. And that's like kind of where I start my hunt from. And then once I have that, then I start to build the plan. The plan for that. How are we going to get there? Who's going? Where do we want to start looking? Where are we going to originally base off of? Am I going to go full backcountry? Like, is it backpack on, hike in, or are we going to stay mobile, do a lot of glassing day hunt, hiking? Where's a good centralized place for that? Okay. And then I start to build out the plan that way. I'm already looking at some of the hunts that I have coming up for this year. I've got an over the counter mule deer tag that I Deer deer tag that I picked up in an elk tag. So I've got, you know, some plans. And for that I'm like, look, it's a general area. There's gonna be lots of dudes around. I'm gonna find a spot. I'm gonna be scouting, e scouting, researching, planning for backcountry. Like, it's gonna be on my back. I've got six or seven days. I'm going to hunt this canyon and that's where I'm going. I'm going to look at that. Maybe you'll even get some time to scout it. And that's another thing in this plan. What time frame do you have? When are the season dates? When are we going to go? How much time do you have to dedicate to it? Is there time to be able to scout? Are you going to find some time to scout or are you just going to commit all your time to during the season? And that's that planning phase. So what kind of hunt does it look like? And then, you know, even as far down as like building out, okay, well, what am I bringing for food? Base camp meals or are we gonna, you know, dehydrated meals, whatever. I start to build that plan of like, what's this hunt gonna look like? And then I also start to think about, well, okay, if that doesn't work out, what are some other options? You know, I got a planning like a, like I said, a backcountry, you know, living out of the backpack, bivouac style hunt. Go light, go fast, go into some places nobody else wants to get into. Should be an awesome hunt. What if I don't see any deer there? Which has happened to me in on numerous hunts like that. We're like, man, I'm miles in here and nothing. Okay, we'll just keep hiking. Maybe that's the plan. Or maybe I'll pull out and go to this other, this other zone, which I've done as well. So have that plan and also have that backup plan and then, you know, utilizing that research that e scouting, you know, that plethora of pins for when I get into the field and then we're going to go into the kind of into the season. That execute factor for me on this last hunt, I thought that, you know, we had a plan. The plan was we're going to utilize other people that could make it on the hunt to spread out in glass. And now we're in there. Okay, now we gotta figure out where's everyone gonna go each day, how are we gonna communicate, when are we gonna check in? Because there's not a lot of, I mean, like, even if it's legal to communicate with two way communication, radios probably don't work for whatever distance, Phones don't work everywhere. Where are we gonna meet back up at what times? And just building out that, that execution of what our plan was. Our plan going into this hunt was spread out, cover country, utilize each essentially man hour of looking to try to turn up a buck didn't work. Right. That's not saying it was like a bad plan. It's just like that that strategy didn't work on this particular hunt, and I thought it would, but we executed it. You know, our divide and conquer strategy. What are the best options? And as the hunt goes on, what are some other options that maybe, you know, maybe to alter or change? And, you know, as that, you know, hunt plan started to unfold, like, I still think we had a great strategy. It just didn't pan out this year. I could go do the same exact thing next year, and maybe it would work out just right, you know, you just don't know. And then the get out and the get out and glass and cover that country is like, after you've got your plan in place, you're now like, here's how. Here's how we're going to execute it. And figuring out how you're going to execute it, too. I think that's kind of in the planning phase and kind of in that going into the hunting season phase. And then you get your boots on the ground, you go, okay, we're going to. We're going to cover country. We're going to start looking. We're going to see what we see, and then adjust our plan from there. And that getting out and covering the country and doing the actual hunting portion is where all those other tips and tactics come in. It's where all the other strategy comes into play. And, you know, even myself, who's done this forever, and, you know, like, feel fairly confident when it's like, okay, we've got the plan. We're gonna get out, we're gonna do it. You know, you run into roadblocks, you run into struggles, and then every once in a while, a random hiker just blows it all up. On the last evening, there was no. No more chance for a redo. But that then getting out and glassing and covering that country, whether it's in the field during the season or. Or scouting, you know, and then you can kind of continually go back to that research. E Scout. There's so many times where all of us were on our maps, like, here's what I saw here. And then we're sharing. That's like, I guess one of the big things about if you got other people in camp is being able to share that kind of info of like, here's some pins on where we saw a good deer. And then we would go back to that area and look, oh, yeah, there's different deer in there now. Or, okay, we saw some good bucks over here. Let's go check that spot. Maybe even just, like, sharing of information, I think, is also a big portion of that whole hunt strategy and execution. There's so many cool tools as well, because, like, there's somewhere is like, I would take pictures of a deer, drop a pin on it, and then you've got it. The picture of the buck with that pin that you could share with your friends or put it in a file of, like, we all had one file where we could just drop, like, pins in that we'd share. So. Okay. Oh, that's one that Chris dropped yesterday. Okay, that's good. We know that looking at the map, our plan was to cover a lot of country. And then in real time, we could see, you know, on our Onyx app that, dude, this plan is being executed. Look at here's all the places that we've hit. Here's some other place. Here's some gaps in where we haven't looked. Let's go check that out. And I do really feel like, you know, it would be awesome. Be like, yes. And we were. We were successful and it worked out, right? That's the dream. And unfortunately, I feel like we hunted that hunt. Right? I mean, now knowing maybe there's areas that I would just, like, stayed in, I don't know. It's so hard to say. Or maybe I wouldn't have gone and spent so much time on one buck that I never saw and never turned up any more deer. But also, you know, it was the gamble that I was willing to take. So I think in the long run, like, it worked out. You know, I put a lot of the research and just talking to people to use, you know, that e. Scouting was pretty imperative. Even though we had somebody that had been there before in that local intel, it was nice to kind of understand the lay of the land and have some of our own ideas of places to look. And then so many, you know, being able to share those pins in the field and, like, work that plan and execute it, it all went right. It's just that the bucks didn't play, and then the one buck they were like, all right, you know, just got blown out by unforeseen circumstances. So sometimes that's hunting. I hope you guys enjoyed that podcast. You know, this time of year is that time of year when it's. It's all about planning and prep. It's about that research. It's that scouting. It's that building out that hunt plan, you know, whether you're somebody that Listens. And you're like, yeah, I go on these hunts every year. It's like in my backyard, I live in elk country, I live in mule deer country. This is what I do. Or you're somebody that listens to this podcast and you're like, this is something that I want to do. I want to go on an elk hunt. I'm just gathering all the information and all this stuff, you know, really, if it's something that you want to do, the, the, the pre season stuff, so much goes into it that allows for that success later. Yes, you can just get a tag and show up and go hunting and wander around and, and hope to run into something. And some of those people do. But statistically, the odds are not in your favor for that. The odds are in your favor for, you know, putting in some time, doing some research, e scouting, you know, dropping those pins and having a plan in place. And then sometimes you get in the field and you're like, this plan is not going as planned. Right. But at least you have, you know, a basis of like, well, here's where they aren't. Now we can go try to find where they are. And having that knowledge and all that stuff ahead of time really starts to swing the odds in your favor. And that's the thing I, you know, I kind of do this podcast for is we're looking to be consistently successful. So if you're going on that, that one trip that, you know, saved up for and been planning for forever, or that yearly trip where you're going out and hoping to find success, or you draw a tag and you just want to make the most of it, it's like, this is a good opportunity. These are the ways that I utilize to find that consistent success. And when I look back at like the last season, whatever, you know, it's like out of all the hunts that I went on, most of them in areas that I'd never been, you know, came out successful with really good animals, with a bow, with rifle, with whatever, because of this kind of work that got put into it ahead of time. And sometimes it's that unseen work that not in the field work that really kind of drives that difference maker in success. And, you know, I talk about, like onyx a lot and utilizing that tool, I really believe, and I've said this before, like, it. It probably is the most beneficial tool hunters have now and definitely game changer, right? Like when I was growing up hunting, to know it was on the other side of the mountain, you had to climb over the other side of the mountain, you had to get these paper maps that were hard to navigate off of and learn access points. And it was like you. It was hard to show up to an area that you'd never been and feel super confident. And now that that's completely changed, man, like you could have never been anywhere and know what somebody that's lived there their whole life knows sort of in a way like you can. It's all there. The information's in at your fingertips. It shows the boundaries, like, it shows the access areas. You've got, you know, so many different tools in there, like burn layers and navigation and, you know, all kinds of stuff. Measuring distance of like, okay, what's it going to look like? It builds a really good picture and it really is super beneficial, especially in this kind of off season or hunt planning. And then the other thing that Onyx does is they've got, you know, ways to kind of research hunts. Like, I think with an elite membership you get Hunt and Fool. I think you also get like top rut and some hunt reminder stuff. They do have a lot of stuff for like hunt research. So if you have that, like the elite membership, you get all 50 states plus Canada and you know that research aspect of it as well. So it's a really, it's a really cool resource. But even just having that E Scouting ability, that right there is game changing and then having that in the field is game changing as well. And so it's something, it's like, I can't imagine. There's gotta be like, there can't be that many people that would even go into the field without it these days. But if you don't, you should get it. You can, you guys. And as like, they support this podcast in awesome ways. You know, you guys can always use code LIVEWILD, 20% off membership. Or if you're like, oh, I don't have the elite membership, I might want to start looking into other states and also get that ability to use Hunt and Fool and some of the other stuff and gear deals. You can upgrade your membership. You got to do it on the website, not the app, because I don't think the app allows discount codes. So this is just kind of the, the deal that, you know, I've worked out with them for you guys because I think that it's just, it's awesome to be able to give back to our listeners. So if you guys are interested in that or you want to upgrade your membership or you don't have a membership, definitely look into that. You guys can always use that code for. For a discount on things of that nature. Another thing I wanted to mention was I will be at the Hunt Expo. I will be exhibiting there. So if you are going to the Utah Hunt Expo, come find me. I'll be at booth 5470. Kind of in that back corner. Ish. But got a big floor space there. Can have lots of awesome gear. So I'll have some. Some like gear wise we'll have. We've got some Schnee's Boots there. We've got some of our Live Wild products, some of our yonder bottles, some new stuff. I got some cool new kids stuff for those who've been asking for it. For all of you that have asked. When are you gonna have some kids stuff? We're. We dipped our toe into it. Don't leave us hanging. All right, 5470, that's for you guys. So swing by one of the cool things that I'm going to be doing every day, 2 to 3pm so starting at 2 to 3pm we're going to do a free giveaway. How do you enter? You just show up. I'm passing out raffle tickets. Then I draw for things. I love giving stuff away. We've got stuff from Yeti, Montana Knife Co. MKC. If you missed the drop for my Elkhorn knife, you're going to have a chance to win 12 to 3pm Vortex. We got some stuff from Vortex, Stone, Glacier, Snaze. Day six arrows. Oh, get this, I've got. I just. I'm finishing. We're finishing building a. We're going to be having a bunch of the day six arrows and broadheads and stuff there. And then we'll have like a little arrow cutting station. Somebody cutting arrows. I'm pretty sure if everything. If we get it built in time. So ton of great stuff in our booth. Come check it out. Show up for the free stuff. I don't care. Whatever you guys want to do. That's why we're doing it to give back. So 2 to 3pm I've got a seminar. Thursday the 13th is like who's taking notes? Everybody's driving. 5:30 to 6:30. Salt palace, room 150G. As of right now. Thursday the 13th, 5:30 live Q A will be part of the podcast. I always have cool stuff to give away at those for those that show up. You know, I just like doing that. And then a couple other appearances Thursday I think 1 to 2. I'll be in the Mag View booth Saturday, 1:30 to 2:30. I'll be at the Howl for Wildlife booth. If you guys aren't members. I mean, it's an incredible resource that, you know, has protected a lot of our hunting across the west and across the United States. Things that, you know, people are going after, you know, predator bands in certain states, stupid things that commissions are doing in seasons that they're shutting down. It allows us to all jump in and communicate with some of these policy makers and say, like, look, Art, this isn't okay. We aren't okay with this. And, you know, kind of change the course of some of these initiatives that are. They're trying to shut down hunting. So I'll be there 1:30 to 2:30. Then we'll jump back over to my booth and do that free giveaway. And I'll try to be in my booth as much as possible. So swing by. I'm sure I'll see you guys there. Say, hey, appreciate everyone that listens and all of you guys that are planning to attend. So until next week, I'm just gonna say don't let your hunt go up in smoke. Catch you guys later.