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 welcome to Live Wild Podcast everyone. You know, when it comes to western big game hunting, the ones that really get talked about are elk, sheep, mule deer, even pronghorn. They really seem to be at the top of the mind or the conversation. But this week we're going to look at that often under looked at Western big game hunt, one that really flies under the radar and with tag draws in so many states opening up, this is often a hunt that has over the counter tags in a lot of western states. What I'm talking about is whitetails. Yes, the most widely hunted big game animal in North America. And while they are definitely the most hunted species in the us, the western United States really gets overlooked. Really. There's actually only two states in the lower 48 that I know of that don't have them. That's Nevada and California. Everywhere else there's a species of whitetail that can be hunted, whether it's coos, deer in the Southwest or your standard whitetail places like Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington. So this week we're going to look at western whitetail hunting opportunities, strategies and what makes it different. We're going to break down two categories over the next few weeks. So we're going to talk about big mountain whitetails and then cover river bottom bucks. This week we're going to dive into mountain whitetails, what makes them tick, and how to employ strategies for this species in mountain terrain. But before we do that, let's head into the high country and talk bucks. I think something that people probably don't know about me that much or maybe don't really realize is I actually do hunt whitetails quite often. Not as much as a lot of people, but I mean, honestly, I chase whitetails every year, most of the time in multiple states and mostly western states. You know, I, I think I've chased whitetails and I don't know, I don't know how many different western states, but most the ones you can, everything from coos deer down south to, you know, whitetails up along the Canada border in various states in, in the northern US as well, and kind of everywhere in between. And it is, it's a really fun hunt. And the cool thing that I like about it is the fact that you can hunt them so many different ways. Yes, you can definitely hunt them like you would anywhere else. You can hunt tree stands. You can, you know, do the whole that wherever you hunt whitetails, you can hunt them similar ways pretty much anywhere. But you can also in the west kind of hunt them a little bit different. You can do more spot and stock tactics. Sometimes they're in bigger country and more open terrain. I've chased whitetails everything from river bottoms to giant wilderness areas in backpack hunting in the mountains. And it's can be a very challenging and just a really fun hunt. It's one that I look forward to every year. And honestly, it's one that I've been getting even diving a little bit more into lately, trying to find, you know, better bucks or going to new areas, as it seems like in a lot of places, the mule deer populations and trop trophy quality have been hurting. But in some of these same places, the whitetail populations and trophy quality age class aren't hurting as bad. And so I've, especially in the last, I don't know, four or five years, kind of switched my focus on some of my hunts to be like, hey, I could hunt mule deer or whitetail, and I ended up going after whitetail. I've had three or four, I probably had four or five tags in the past few years that you could hunt either species, whitetail or mule deer. And, and I've primarily targeted whitetails on those tags because the relative trophy quality is almost better in some instances. And it can be just a really fun, challenging hunt. So one of my favorite ways to hunt whitetails is to hunt them in the mountains, like go into places where probably not as many people are looking for whitetails. It's a harder hunt, lower density, and trying to kind of figure them out in these, these kind of zones. And, and I've got a few different states that I do this in they're all kind of similar terrain types where it's big mountains, like low whitetail populations, but there's enough of them that you can get on them. And then I'm just trying to kind of hope that that lower density, you know, not really being looked at, allows me to maybe get some age class. And if there's decent genetics, hey, cool, I can, I can turn up a buck and sometimes these deer, you know, score wise, anything from like, I don't know, 125 to 150 plus. But for some of these deer, like you could get a really mature buck. And it just depends on the year. Like it's, it's harsh living. Like these deer have never seen agriculture. They have, like they summer up high elevation, they kind of move into these, I don't know, more timbered forest areas or burns and other things. And it can be a hard life for these deer. So, you know, the trophy quality is relative. Like, I know you could go to the Midwest or whatever and there's maybe those are where you live, there's deer that you don't even look at those deer. But where we're at, those are great bucks. And I think that honestly in a lot of places those would be great bucks either way. But the fun part is the challenge of the hunt. And you can choose a different hunt style that suits that, that big country. And one of the things that I really like to do is rattle and call. And I also like to kind of, with any species, just try to figure, like try to figure them out. I've put a lot more time into some of these whitetail hunts in the last, probably since 2020, so I guess the last five years really kind of figuring out scouting some places a little sooner and, and that kind of stuff. And I, I've talked about, I don't know what, what story. Sometimes I forget what stories I've shared and which ones I haven't. But last year you might remember I did a podcast on. I was whitetail hunting. I knew better. Go the best way, not the easy way. It's just like my mantra in life, in hunting. It was cold. I'm like going up the bottom. I wanted to get to this one spot. I wanted to kind of get there fast. I'd seen some does. I decided to just like go up the bottom. It wasn't ideal. If I would have just gone up the other side and glassed at first, I would have seen this big buck. And it was like, it was a good buck. It was a top end Mountain buck, and I'm going at the bottom and he was right there, but he saw me as I saw him. I couldn't get a shot. And it was just a heartbreaker because it was. It was a really. It might have been one of my best mountain whitetails. Like, it was. It was a big buck in that, like, I mean, if I was just throwing out numbers in that, like over 150 type size, which you just don't see in the mountains that often. And so it was. It was just such a bummer. Kind of deflated me a little bit. And. And then the hunt ended and I end up not getting a deer. Last year, white tail buck. So that happened. And then this year, you know, I had. I. I drew a ton of good tags last year, and I had some phenomenal hunts and I actually did do. I hunted during archery season. I. I went to Wyoming and did a, like a spot and stock whitetail hunt. I don't even know if I shared this story, man. I can't remember which ones I've talked about either way. I'll probably talk about that on the river bottom when we talk about river bottom bucks. But I was hunting more that river bottom country. And then it was like one of my favorite times to hunt whitetails in the mountains is during the rut because, well, I've hunted them. You know, I've told stories in the past. I used to guide in an area just like pretty. It was like a high country whitetail hunt that I used to guide years ago for. I mean, this was like when I first started pretty far north. And we would. We would hunt these like mountain bucks and it was during archery season and we'd hunt them in the summer range and they were in velvet, like, and it was only really good while the bucks were still in velvet so early. Like, it was northern Montana. And like during the. During the velvet, you'd be like on years when they were still in their velvet during archery season, which wasn't all the time. And we did pretty good with that. But my favorite time to chase them probably is. Is during the rut because these areas are like kind of low density and it. It's easier if you have the rut going. You get cruising bucks and then you get the opportunity to like, find pockets of does and. And then maybe hunt those. So I had a rut hunt planned this this year, but I only had like everything kind of stacked upside an elk hunt. And then that went over and so I was gonna probably not have time to taunt the whitetail and ended up it was like Thanksgiving day. And so I didn't have a lot of time but because my wife and I, my, my father in law was coming out for Thanksgiving and we're gonna cook a turkey and he was camping and we had the kids and everything. And so I'm like, well let to combine a little Thanksgiving and hunting, which you know, I always try to combine hunting with like, hey, is there a holiday, a birthday? Let's throw in some hunting with it. What do you guys think? And I've got, I mean my wife's awesome about it. She, she loves it. And, and so a lot of these like, you know, holidays or whatever trips, even just like family vacations, we often combine hunting in with it. Like that's our life, that's our lifestyle. It's like what we love. And so anytime we can double dip a little bit. Yeah, we try. So, so the plan was, you know, we're gonna do Thanksgiving, but we're gonna, we're just gonna have a little bit of time to hunt too. And, and so yeah, and I'd had a pretty good season, so it wasn't like full on thinking about hunting, but I did want to get out for a little bit. And I really have like the evening before Thanksgiving and the, the morning of Thanksgiving to get out and get after deer. And so I'd been in the area earlier in the season and ended up I actually had spotted a good buck, which I, I thought, well man, let's see if I can go find that buck again. So I get on my glassing knob and I mean these, these deer at pretty high elevation. There's snow everywhere, like toward the top of the mountain and I'm glassing and nothing's coming out. And I spotted a bunch of does. And I'm like, man, this just. Gosh, everything's right. Like it's, it's late in the season. I mean there's pocketed does, there's not many deer. And I mean to even find a deer is. Is hard sometimes something. And there's no way, there's no bucks around here. So I keep looking. I see one like pushing and it's just a little buck. And then right about dark, I see a good frame buck pop out and I think I gotta give it a try. So I, I bomb over there. It was a long ways away. I've probably spotted it. I don't know. It was one of those where I really knew that I didn't have time to get over there, but I had to try. So I just tried sprinting. It was like a couple miles at least, and a lot of elevation gain. And I'm just going as fast as I can. And I thought, well, maybe if I get on this ridge and it moves down, whatever I get over there, it's about like, I set my alarm for when shooting diamonds, and it goes off, and I'm not. I'm with. I think if it, like, the buck was out where I could have seen him, I might have been close to being able to get a shot if he was, like, on the lower part of this opening. But I got there just before shooting time ended. Glass didn't see him, so he must have moved into the timber. So next day, I went back out in the morning. I was like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna go out. I'll be back. Because I really did want to. I did want to help with cooking Thanksgiving. I, I. I enjoy cooking for people, and I wanted to cook up, like, a. I got an elk, and we're gonna make some elk Wellingtons and stuff. So I wanted to do that, and. But I was like, I'll just go out in the morning. It'll be quick hunt, which never turns out like that, right? So I'm there. I'm glassing. I see the does again, and I see I saw quite a few bucks, like, pushing around, but little tiny forking horns and other bucks. So didn't. Didn't see what I was looking for. And I'm about to leave, and out on the edge of the timber pops, like, the good. The good buck from the night before. I'm like, all right, this has got. It's a good frame. He's got tall tines. I can tell. I mean, I'm a long ways away. And so I just. I'm glassing through the spotting scope, and I decided, time to get over there. Let's see if I can. If I can go over there. If he doesn't pop out, like, I just don't really have the time. Maybe, you know, the next day I could get out and get after it. But I had a buddy that was gonna. I was gonna meet up with and. And go elk hunting, too, so. So I was like, well, let's just get. I'll just get over there, see what happens. So I get over there, don't see the buck. He's gone. And I set up, and I just start rattling because I really think, like, it's a fun way to hunt. I like making noise. So I start rattling, doing my little call sequence, and I Didn't, I didn't see him. So I start to move up and then I do the same thing again. And as I'm calling I see a buck like chasing a doe across the hillside. So I don't know if you know, he was interested in that or maybe that noise got it or maybe there's just a hot dough there, Whatever. So I run up, get set up on this log, bucks moving. It's like no shot, no shot, no shot, boom shoot. And wasn't sure what it like sounded like a hit. That was the nice thing we talked about last week was the suppressors. Like I don't know if I would have even known that I was even in vicinity of that buck without that report come back and I actually I, I wasn't sure if I got it on camera because I threw the camera up real fast. I was just self filming. I've got the video on YouTube but sometimes with the video you don't see all the behind the scenes stuff that goes down. And so I, I go over there, you know, I, I tried to mark it the best I could. Just ranged it and got over there and it was super thick and super steep. There's some snow in there. And I cut his track, followed his track and then sure enough there was a bunch of blood and he just piled up right there. And it was a great buck, like awesome deer, you know, nice mature buck. And I, I left my pack, which I don't often do, I never do, I never leave my pack. But it was one of those things where the night before I made it over there and it took me didn't. I mean I was going fast, but I knew that I just kind of needed to be in position quick and I just stuck. I never do this, but I dropped my pack. It was probably like a mile away. I marked it and bombed over there and had my camera. I don't even know if I had a tripod, a camera. My orange, like my blaze orange vest and I put that in there in my call and, and so I get to the, to the buck and I realize I never do this. This is the behind the scenes because I just didn't make it to the video. I realized that I didn't have my knife with me. It was on my backpack. I'm so stupid. Like I always have my, I always have my knife on me and I, it was in my pack and I, it was probably one of those things too. Like I just thought like, oh yeah, well, it's just so much deadfall and crap. That I thought, well, and a lot of vertical climbing. So I thought, well, I'm just gonna try to, like, drag the buck down the best I can because there's snow, and you just pop him over some logs and other things. And then I can just get it down to, like, this old overgrown logging road and then hike down, grab my pack of the stuff, and then get him out. And, you know, it wasn't like, it wasn't far, but it wasn't close either. And there was a way that I could, like, drive to the. Like a trip, like a trail at the bottom and get to where, like, if I just got it down. But I didn't. I wasn't planning on getting it all the way down. I was planning on getting my stuff and getting back. So it's one of those where I'm like, I'm still wanting to get back in, like, a good time. So I'm dragging the. The buck down, and I get to the. That logging road, and I probably dropped, I don't know, 1500 vertical feet. And I. I've got my tripod, and I had my camera and my vest in my pocket, and I go to grab my camera to take some pictures or video or just say something I don't even know and realize my camera had fallen out of my pocket. So I walked the trail all the way back up to the buck and to where the buck was, where I'd shot him and didn't see my camera. And now I'm just sweating it, like, I cannot lose this camera. It'd just be such a bummer. Well, so I looked, and as I was dragging, it must have popped off and slid under log. I found it on the way back down. And then at the this point, I'm like, man, I'm. It's so late, but I think I can just bomb off this mountain. It's only like a half a mile more. And it was actually like a lot less deadfall at this point. So I thought I could get there and then. And then grab my stuff and take care of the buck. So I end up getting the buck down, getting it out, making it home or back to camp, and, you know, making it back to camp, being able to cook dinner and everything. And we had an incredible Thanksgiving and it was a lot of fun. But, you know, I think, like, it was just one of those where sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. The year before, I'd hunted an entire week, you know, looking for bucks. Saw, had a couple sightings, I would say, over the Week of hunting and it just didn't pan out and I blew it on a giant buck. And then the next day just did things the right way, like knew that I had to go the best way and got in there and it worked out and did it right and got a really good buck to show for it and, and got off the mountain and had a, had an incredible Thanksgiving and it was just like a lot of fun. So it was a fun hunt and, and those mountain bucks are just really fun to chase. So one of the reasons that I wanted to talk about whitetail hunting, especially this time of year, because even though I'm talking about tactics during the rut in that October, November time frame, honestly, like I could probably do, there's so many like, little intricacies to hunting mountain whitetails. I could probably talk about it for two months and have completely different topics every time. From early season deer, what they're doing all the way through late Ruth, different types of mountain terrains and areas, scouting. I mean, like, we could talk about so many things and maybe if you guys like this and you want more of this, maybe I can pepper in a few more tips and tactics. But what I really wanted to talk about over the next couple weeks was one mountain bucks and then this kind of opposite type of hunt, which would be river bottom bucks. And those are two main habitat types for whitetails out west. So you've got bucks that live in the big mountains. And these can be 7,000, like I've killed whitetails at over 7,8000ft late season. Most of the time I hunt around 6,000ft, something like that. And you might think like the, the valley in these areas would be 2,000ft, 3,000ft. And you know, you're up in the mountains sometimes in, you know, pretty remote country. And then the river bottom buck would be like something along that agriculture or river bottom type terrain. Sometimes can even be like breaks type country. You see that kind of stuff in a lot of places like Wyoming, Montana even. I would even consider like the Dakotas and Kansas, some of that kind of similar country, which may not be the west, but similar kind of hunting tactics in that which can kind of span over a large variety of terrain. But today I wanted to talk about, well, this time of year I really wanted to talk about whitetail hunting because it's, in some ways people see it as a fallback tag in the west where it's like, hey, I didn't get my mule deer tag, but I can go hunt whitetails. It's also one that you could really plan for and probably pick up a tag, especially as tags get harder and harder to get and can be a really fun adventure and a great hunt as well. There's a lot of places out west that have kind of overlooked hunting. I think that there's places that are even heavily hunted where there's some good whitetail hunting off the beaten path, because people don't really think about trying to get off the beaten path and chasing them. And so for that reason, it's a good time to think about it. In, in your hunt plan, or maybe you're even planning on an elk hunt. You go, hey, I got an elk hunt in whatever state. What else could I do? And, oh, maybe there's a, a whitetail tag that you could pick up or a hunt along the way that you could do within that same kind of time frame. And that's actually all that story I told. I mean, it was like in between. I was kind of headed between two hunts. I had a late season hunt and like an elk hunt, and I was going to help a buddy on an elk hunt. And it was like, let's just go somewhere that's kind of in between those two hunts, do Thanksgiving, and maybe to be able to pick up a whitetail tag and go chase some bucks. And it worked and it was awesome. For that reason, I wanted to cover whitetail hunting now. And I think, you know, the thing about mountain whitetails, I think first we'll kind of describe a mountain whitetail and what it is, because everybody knows, or most hunters, that's what most hunters have hunted everywhere outside of the West. Right. Growing up, I grew up in the state of Nevada, one of the few states that does not have whitetails. And so for me, like, the idea of hunting whitetails as I got older was, was really appealing. And I'd go to different states hunting elk or whatever and get a tag and chase whitetails. And I was like, man, this is, this is a lot of fun. But it was completely different than hunting or like, completely different than the whitetail hunting that I saw on TV or in magazines or other things. Because the whitetails that I was hunting lived in the mountains. And a mountain whitetail, I would consider it. I mean, it's not a different species or anything, but they do act different. And so there's, there's whitetails that live, essentially live their whole life in the mountains and they will hit those kind of riparian creek areas in the valleys, and then they'll probably summer up higher, like almost like mule deer would I would say not always in the alpine, but in that like top third of the mountain, they'll find that they, they need terrain where there's, you know, they can be in some pretty steep terrain, some pretty thick country and then that like, thicker kind of country. Sometimes I'll find them on those like north facing slopes, the kind of the sides that overgrown and dark and have a lot of brush and other things and, and there will be whitetails living in that part of the mountain. There'll be creeks and other things on there. And they're kind of around that mountain riparian habitat, I guess, if that's, if that makes sense. But the, these deer, they live and die in the mountains. They, there's does there, there's bucks there. The bucks will cruise and find the does. And they kind of in some ways feel like their own little species. Like the way that they work and the way that they do things seems very different than other whitetails other places. So a mountain white tail clearly living in the mountains. Now I think that the one thing that I've kind of discovered with mountain whitetails is they do nearly the same thing that whitetails everywhere do. Let's say you're in, I don't even know, let's pick a place Midwest or even, let's say, let's call it Wisconsin. Okay. What's, what's a white tail's life look like in Wisconsin? Well, he's generally in a smaller localized area. Okay. Compared to what we're going to be talking about. But let's see, this is in an area let's call, let's say you've got a farm, right. And you've got all kinds of little parts of habitat. You've got an area where you've got some food plots, there's some agriculture over here. I don't know what they plant. Maybe let's call it corn for whatever, just example. Okay, they've got some corn. There's a creek that runs down maybe some hilly country too, some ridges. And you've got this little piece of property and on that there's a bunch of does, lots of does, lots of deer and bucks. And so the bucks, they, and deer, they kind of have these patterns that they run where it's like they go to food, they move through food, through travel corridors, through those travel corridors. They hit some bedding areas and they make their rounds between food and water and bedding. And mostly they don't have to go anywhere for water. It's just en route. You know, there might be some Places where, hey, on this particular portion of the property there's a water hole because there's not a lot of creeks or whatever. But for the most part their, their life revolves around food and bedding. Food and bedding in mountain whitetail is really the same, but the food sources are more spread out, they aren't concentrated. So they have these paths and things that they do. And sometimes the food source can be very seasonal, just like it can be for other animals that live in the mountains. There's no particular like field that has really consistent food. So there might be an open meadow that they hit. Then there might also be some good browse in this particular canyon that pops up in the springtime or that's why they go up in the summertime a little bit higher because there's, there's better browse there and more nutrient dense things and there's not a lot of it. So they kind of move around and then they move into this other area and as it gets toward wintertime, they move toward those, let's say south facing slopes that maybe have some new green up and other types of browse on the edges of the COVID or whatever. And then middle fall or whatever October time frame, maybe they're on those north faces where there's good browse in that because it's wet and it's dense and they've got good cover in there. Or maybe they live in there because the COVID and the good bedding. So they've got all the same stuff, but it's just in this way larger scale. And what they do is they kind of run similar circuits. They've got their travel corridors, they've got all their stuff, but it's just way spread out. It's taking that, say, is a 300 acre farm that has these deer that just kind of live in that zone because they don't have to go anywhere. And taking all like the resources that a deer needs to survive and live and just scattering it out over thousands of acres, miles and miles of country. There's not real great habitat, honestly, like it's not, it's not ever gonna have the same population densities as those other places. It's not gonna have the same thing. But it has enough that can survive, they can reproduce, and with that big movement pattern, they can grow and flourish and, and be there in, in smaller numbers. And so what you get is you get these groups of deer that do that and they can be very difficult to hunt because they can be sometimes hard to find. Sometimes you'll see quite A few of them, it just depends on where you are and. And how the hunt's going and the time of year. And so they've got what they need. They've got the habitat, the COVID the food source. And it's just extrapolated out over a larger area. And so it makes it, you know, can be, like, difficult to find them. And that's why I think the timing of this particular hunt is good, because I often try to time it with the rut. And the reason for that is because the bucks are cruising more, they're moving more, maybe earlier in the season, just like other animals in the mountains. They've got their little. Little spots where they were. They've got food and cover real close. And as the rut picks up now, they start to move more because they're interested in not necessarily that feed and bedding pattern, but they're interested in finding does. And the thing about these mountain whitetails is the pockets of does are more and more spread out than other places. So the deer have to move more. So they're continually moving, and I like to target them during that time. That timing of the rut, and mostly the cruising phase of the rut, where the bucks are moving. Now, for me, what I found over the years, like, there's a lot of these hunts where I show up sight unseen and kind of have to figure it out. Now, the thing that I'm hoping for late season, if I'm hunting an area with, like, low densities of deer, I know there's whitetails there. And you go, well, how do you know there's whitetails? Sometimes you don't, to be honest. Like, some of the spots I've actually found, because I was hunting mule deer and didn't see any mule deer and started seeing whitetails, you're like, oh, you should probably focus on whitetails here. Other places, like, you can do some research, too. A lot of places that I've hunted, Some places I've hunted one time or a couple times. Other places I've hunted year after year. Some places I'll go like, I'll hunt a couple places probably this year that I've never been into or don't know, like, exploratory. But within the range of their. Within their range, you can find whitetails in various habitats. I kind of look for that more covered habitat. It makes it harder to spot the stock. But if I'm hunting the timing of the rut, often the whitetail hunts in the west, like Mueller seasons, might shut down, and the whitetail Hunts will go through that rut, and I'm really hoping for snow. And I utilize tracking a lot in these big areas to get on deer. I guess I could share the story of a hunt a couple. I guess it was two years ago, three years ago. Big, like, just. I was way back there. I don't know how far, long ways. I. I was day hunting, and I wasn't overnighting in this particular spot, but I was probably. I was deep snow and just cruising areas where I know that deer kind of go through Until I cut tracks and I get on the track. I'd analyze the track. Oh, it's a buck track. And then just follow that track. Walking, glassing, walking, glassing. And you can kind of tell, too, because the. There's places where, you know, okay, I know that I've bumped bedded deer in this particular spot before as a place that I've hunted before. So once I got on the track, once I got to that kind of bedding area, slow down, sure enough, start glassing, and boom, spot, spot a good buck. I ended up. I had a buddy with me, and he was. I was walking quite a bit faster, and I. I wanted to try to get him up there to get the buck, which, I don't know. Like, I swear, all the real big whitetails, I always try to have somebody else shoot. I don't know why. I just. I'm like. I'm always like, oh, yeah, you can go. And. And then it just doesn't work out. I probably should have gone slower. I had my rifle, but I was just trying to get him a good buck because I thought it'd be fun. And I could have shot the deer, but by the time he got up there, just didn't work out. Like, we couldn't get on him. But either way, the thing was, you know, following the tracks, getting on the tracks, and then there. I knew their habits and habitats a little bit. I'd only hunted in there on this particular hunt. I'd hunted in there, like, twice before. But, you know, just. Just finding their tracks tells you, like, okay, they're. This is an area that deer cruise. Or this is a. This is a spot that deer encounter. And that's more like. I almost consider that scouting while hunting. One thing that I found is. And this isn't always possible, but if you can scout these areas and figure out where the pockets of does are, then during the rut, you'll have these particular spots where you don't see deer in a large portion of it. And then once you Find the deer, it's like, there's the deer, and then you continue to find deer in those places. And that does ring true a lot with these big mountain whitetails, because those bucks know where those pockets of does are, and the does tend to not move as much, especially during the rut. Like, they've got their areas, They've got their little zones, and the does kind of have their feed bed, feed bed, feed bend, and they're. And they're real comfortable with that. The bucks, on the other hand, are trying to go from dough pocket to doe pocket to doe pocket, and they've got their trails, They've got their travel routes, and then they, you know, one buck hits that, and then another buck kind of follows that same route, and then they go to where the does are, and then they go check those does and then move on. It might be a mile or two or whatever away. I started to really realize the. The patterns that these bucks did because I. I did a lot of scouting in one particular area, and I did a lot of early season scouting. This was even last year. I mentioned it, I think, in the video. He did. But I mentioned that I knew that I wasn't gonna have a crazy amount of time to hunt, and I really wanted to kind of just learn the doe pockets. So I went out in the spring and summertime and just started to figure out where deer were on the mountain and just got, like. Started marking different pockets and different pockets. And then during the hunt, I went back and checked it, and, oh, there's still. Yep, the does are still in kind of this zone. And then bucks would start to show up, and it became. It really opened my eyes in a lot of ways to understanding the patterns that these mountain bucks do. And then in one particular instance, I guess this would have been a different spot, But I spotted a buck, you know, checking does, and then I was miles away in this area, and it's just like a real unique buck. And saw the same buck in another doe pocket that I was watching very. I mean, the odds of that happening are real low. Right. But it did tell me, like, these deer move a lot, and they're continually moving, and you know that. You know that they're. They're hiking and walking, and, I mean, there's been times where it's. I've had fresh snow, followed tracks for miles, six, seven miles, and they were probably not that far in front of me, and never caught up to them or at least never saw where they'd run or whatever. Just they got dark, and that was it. But they do cover a lot of ground. So having that knowledge of where some pockets of does are and then that knowledge as well of potential types of travel routes and the type of country that these deer might want to be in. So I guess we could kind of look at it. If we're looking at hunting during the rut, we're picking that mountainous terrain within whitetail habitat. And then we go, okay, well what are some of the key topography and other features that these whitetails like? A couple of the things that I tend to gravitate toward is the, the mixture of terrain types. So I like that, that real thick, that north face, thick overgrown kind of forest and that's like security and bedding. Then I like that fringe habitat where there's some kind of opening. And I don't know if the opening is more just the way that I see them or the fact that they do utilize some of that, especially later in the season as feed. But I think it's a combination of both things. Right. So I look for. In some places it's logged country. There's a lot of places that I've hunted and I, I just invest heavily in like clear cut, older cuts and things like that. In some places it could be burn scars. So combination of where it's burned close to where the live timber is in that kind of mix of habitat. Other places it might be like south facing slopes, meadows or even little valleys up in the mountains where it's like, it's a valley, it's got a little bit of that moosey looking habitat. I mean that like moose habitat. Something you go, I'm in the mountains and that's a moose country, that's also whitetail country. And so I look for those kind of areas and I've done that, you know, e scouting and looking at satellite imagery and finding a few places. The other thing I look for is those natural travel areas that you would you think of as animals moving through? Could be all kinds of animals, but whitetails really do like those, as whitetail hunters call them pinch points like saddles. Like where you've got a ridge that drops into maybe a couple different habitat types. It's like they can, they can cruise up this valley. This valley's got a little creek and that cover and then pop over into this area where it's got a little bit of a log dairy or a burn and it's got a little bit that they need and I focus on those. And then there's places where I can sit and glass like the story that I told where I was just glassing essentially south facing openings in the timber, they weren't big, the openings like real small little pockets. There's a couple of them and the does were coming out into that probably just to warm up because it was cold and feed a little bit. And then the bucks would do the same because hey, it's the rut and that's, that's the move. So looking for those kind of habitat types and in those large areas like there is this, this thought of like you can, you can definitely. There's places where I've found like that I know that I've hunted and I see tracks and in sign and everything and I know if I put a tree stand up here, sooner or later deer would move through here. Right. It would be like no different than hunting a trail, going to feeder bed in on that place in wherever we call the Wisconsin. But for me, I, I, you know, there's, it's big country and so I do move around a lot. One of the strategies that I use quite often in areas where the densities are low, right the, the struggle is finding the animal. And so I'm moving around until I find the animal. And sometimes that might even mean like bumping them. But it was like, let's say we bumped a bedded buck or what have you. Especially if this is like pre rut or does or what have you. Like sometimes it means you have to like move and, and potentially spook something just to figure out where the animals are. Because it's when we're talking about some of this country, like I might hike 5, 7, 8 miles and see nothing. But then one pocket or one little draw or drainage has 10, 12 deer in it, you know, okay. There's something they like about this spot. I don't know what it is, but it doesn't really matter if I know exactly why they like it. Everything else might even looked exactly like that. But this is the pocket that the does are in. This is the pocket that the deer are in. Now I can strategically watch and hunt this particular spot. And so I'll cover a lot of country on foot, figure out where the deer are. Once I find the deer, then I focus in and hunt the deer. Now like I said, we could probably add a 100 different, more podcasts about different hunting strategies and little tips and tactics. But I do like to call and that's one of the reasons like I like to hunt during the rut. I like to rattle, I like to call, I'll sit down I'll do a sequence of rattle, grunt and dough bleat. So I'll just rattle, rattle something that's loud, noisy. The thought is like, it's big country, and I'm just hoping to draw an animal out to maybe it's like they investigate. I've had deer running, mostly younger deer running real close. Sometimes I have them across the canyon just moving or even like the buck that I shot last year, you know, whether it. It got that doe up and then that buck started to move and chase her. Whatever, whatever the reason. I was calling and then saw the deer. And that happens a lot where it's like, okay, maybe he's chasing a doe, but that calling and rattling in the area gets the doe interested. Or maybe she decided, what's that noise? I'm gonna go check it out. And that buck's tending that doe and decides, no, you aren't. I'm gonna run you around whatever it is. In that big country where deer fewer and far between, they use a lot of cues to find each other, and sound is one of them. So I'll throw out grunts. I'll throw out, you know, like, I'll sit there, I'll grunt, grunt, grunt, rattle, rattle, rattle. Make it sound like, you know, two big bucks fighting and then give it like a dough bleed. Like I'm just doing this with my voice, but something like that. I don't know. You know, I do it with a call, but. And, And I'll sit there and I'll watch. And there's a lot of places where I'll. I've. I've identified that. Maybe it's even on a hunt where I haven't been before. But, hey, this is a good area. There's. There's tracks and sign here. I'm thinking of a spot that I went to. This is years ago, but more that logging type country. It's like you couldn't drive in there. You just had to hike in old logging cuts. And I would just hike in like four or five miles, get to a good vantage where I could just see the whole thing. And I sit there and while I'm glassing, call. And sure enough, you know, bucks would pop out of the timber 3, 400 yards away and kind of be looking. And then they put their nose down and get back on trail. Someone would come in, someone would just do that and then move across. But I was kind of doing a combination of getting into those areas. Okay, now I found sign. I know this is a good spot for deer. Then I'll Call. Sometimes I go into places and just blind call, see what I can find. It's like, oh, this looks good. This looks like a good spot. Can't see it real well. I could sit here for days and maybe not see anything, or I can throw out some calls, maybe draw something to my location. It's just a really fun way for me to hunt. Now. You don't have to call. You can. You can definitely hunt a lot of different ways. You can still hunt, which is what I do a lot. I can glide, you can glass, which is also what I do a lot. I employ a lot of tactics. Because it's big country, the densities are often low, and you need to. The game is like, find the deer. And so whatever you can do to. To enhance your opportunity to find those deer, it's worth a try. So cover a lot of country, look into that preferred habitat, identify and potentially scout or find pockets of deer, look for habitat and travel routes, and then kind of pinpoint those. And then from there, utilize a combination of patience, glassing, looking, calling, moving, glassing, looking, calling. And honestly, like, with that combination, you know, found some. Some good deer over the years and had some real fun hunts. I've also had some frustrating hunts, too. But for the most part, you know, there's a lot of places that. And I'm not saying, like, this is. It's. It's not a hunt for everyone, because it can be one of those hunts where you feel like you're beating your head against the wall for a long time, but then other times that you can get into them, and, man, it's like, you're in deer, you're in deer, you're in deer. And it. It's a great hunt. And sometimes it's fun just to go into a place where it's not even for me. I like to go to places where, man, this is, like, the density of them is low enough that other hunters aren't in there. And, yeah, I'm not seeing a lot of deer sometimes, but that's not the point, because when I do find a deer, hey, it's probably got some age when I start finding these pockets and start learning the area. Okay, I've got a little bit of a. An advantage in there, and I start turning up deer and. And I've taken some really. I've had some really great hunts and also taking some good bucks along the way. But there are a lot of places out west and even Midwest, whatever, where you can. Where you can get in, get a hunt and have some Pretty good hunting. You know, you can cover some country, see some awesome stuff and, and find some action. And sometimes, you know, I've had weeks where I'll go out and man, we've seen a lot of good bucks and called in a lot of deer and, and had a heck of a hunt, right? Like a better hunt than, than a lot of other hunts that maybe I've hunted and, and seen like less quality and less quantity of deer when it comes to maybe a mule deer hunt or something like that. Especially recently. Like, I feel like over the last few years, I've had probably higher quality whitetail hunts out west than I have meal their hunts in a lot of places. And that's. That's just the truth of it, you know, I mean, you can, you can get on some good whitetail bucks in Colorado. And I mean, there's Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, like, even just places you don't even think about as far as whitetail country. And then, not to mention, I mean, some phenomenal mountain whitetail hunts down south, like Arizona, New Mexico, places like that in the mountains where there's some really good coos deer. Whitetail hunting, which is a lot of the same tactics, just more arid environment, to be honest. Hunting coos deer in the mountains, they. Their home ranges are a lot smaller is the only difference. So I hunt mountain whitetails in the Rockies kind of the same way that I hunt coos, like in a similar way that I hunt coos deer. The coos deer is a little bit different because they don't have as big of travel routes. So once you find those pockets, often those bucks are staying in there, and it's more of like a hard glassing game in different type of terrain. But, you know, they, they kind of gravitate toward those mountain areas. Those travel routes and other things are similar. And then finding those pockets of deer, especially if you're hunting the rut, makes a big difference. And the thing about whitetails, they can be very patternable between, between years and over the course of the season. Right. Like some other species aren't as patternable. I feel like, like whitetails, they have a way that they function and they like to function like that. And then something kicks on like the rut. And I think that it might seem like they disappear, but maybe they actually just are going through a different pattern in a different place. And I found that with mountain whitetails, with coos deer, you know, in a lot of different places, which is fun to kind of learn once you kind of start to figure out what Makes them tick. You actually can start to turn them up in a lot of places. I think the hardest part or the thing people are new to something is like, dude, how do you know what to look for? And I say, I've said this countless times on the podcast, but once I start to find something, let's say, you know, sometimes you just got to put in some lake, like, you just got to cover country, figure out where something is, and then once you find it, what, like, what does it look like? Look at a couple of things. The vegetation, the topography, the. The time of year, what's going on. Like, look at everything. And then pull out your. Your onyx maps and find a place that looks like that somewhere else within the area and go check. And nine times out of ten, it's like, there's. There's. There's deer there too. Maybe it's an elevation band or like, like, I'm not seeing anything. Not seeing anything. You're covering mountain high to low, high to low, and boom, you start to run into deer. Okay, like, make note of what it looks like, and then start to focus on, there's so much country. Start to focus on as many places you can find that are very similar and see if you start finding deer there. Is there a pattern that, like, sometimes we don't know what that pattern is. From week to week, you just have to be out there, figure out what it like is in the field, and you go, okay, they like this elevation. They like these kind of terrain pockets. Maybe this is kind of a. A type of terrain pocket, like that moosey type of country that I was talking about. And, you know, there's not a lot of that around in this particular spot. And every time I get into that country, start to see whitetails, go find more of that. And just finding that kind of habitat type can help you hone in on the particular species that you're looking for, whether it be. Honestly, whether it be mule deer, elk, pronghorn, whatever. But with these mountain whitetails, it works really well as well because you can kind of hone in on the habitat that they're at for that time of year and then try to find more places like that and find, you know, just really increase your opportunity to running into what you're looking for. I hope you guys enjoyed that podcast. It's one of the things I think is, is a western big game hunter. You don't really hear a lot about it, but there's just some fun and awesome hunts to be had when it comes to chasing whitetails there's like a lot of opportunities and some really cool hunts that you can get on, whether it be mountain type terrain or as we're going to talk about here coming up that river bottom terrain. And there's also a lot of other types of habitat types that they'll get into, but those are the two primary ones we find out west. And so I think it'll be good to next week dive into some strategies of what to look for in that river bottom type terrain and maybe some things to think about as far as on the hunt. One of the other things that I wanted to mention, you know, an awesome supporter of this podcast, Montana Knife Company, actually I've been cruising through their website. They've got a little bit of some of their culinary stuff on there right now. You know, they're always continually trying to, to have some knives in stock and other things. If you aren't familiar with the way that they do their, their knife sales, they'll do like drops. So if you aren't on their email list, get on their email list. It notifies you of the drops and then you can get on there. Be sure you're on there and be sure you're on there and then that way, you know, you have a better chance of getting the knife you want. And oftentimes they've been doing a lot of the drops on Thursdays, which is great for our podcast listeners because it's kind of like a little bit of a reminder that hey, there's some, there's a drop going on one that they did. I just think, you know, I, I really like their knives, but I also just really like the company as well. And some of the stuff that they do, you know, they did a drop for that Blackfoot 2.0, I guess it was, was March 23rd and it was pretty cool because on that one they did a year, you got a year membership to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. They paid for your membership. And just a way that they kind of gave back to conservation. It's a, it's a really cool idea and I'm, you know, I thank you Montana Knife Company for doing that because, you know, it's awesome to see these. I, I think that that's what I love about hunting industry and a lot of these hunting brands is what they do give back. You know, we've talked with companies and a lot of the companies that I use and, and support, you know, the thing that I love about them is they support conservation and habitat projects. You know, all these hunting organizations and conservation organizations. It makes such a big difference. I don't know if there's really, like, other industries out there that do as much as the hunting community does for wildlife and for habitat and even just for hunters. So that was super cool. I hope they do some more of those in the future. And if you guys missed that, hey, think about getting a Rocky Mountain Elk foundation membership yourself because, you know, it's an awesome way to stay informed on the things of habitat and conservation. It's awesome to kind of join in as a group and, and be able to. To promote and support hunting. And a lot of the projects that they're doing, they've always got some awesome projects that. A lot of it, too. One of the things that I really like about RMEF is the land access kind of stuff that they do. They'll find these, like, little pieces that pop up for sale and like, a lot of checkerboarded, landlocked stuff. They're able to kind of go in there and be that middleman of, like, purchase it and then convey it over to public land for the most part, or even create access easements with other landowners and other things like that. So they do a ton of awesome stuff for adding access to hunters. You know, everything's based on that American model of North American model wildlife conservation, which includes hunting as a cornerstone of protecting and keeping these places and animals thriving. So thanks, Montana Knife Company. If you guys are interested in some of their products, check out their website, montanaknifecompany. Com. And I'm just going to say, until next week, whitetail it up. Catch you guys later.