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 back to Live Wild Podcast everyone. You know with a tag in your pocket and maybe some time before the season, right now's the time to start planning your hunt and whether it's your first western trip for maybe a new species like elk. Maybe you've got an elk hunt planned. This is your first time going out west, elk pronghorn, whatever it might be. Or maybe it's just an annual journey into the mountains near your home. Maybe it's a hunt that you've done multiple times and somewhere that's close by. E. Scouting on your onyx maps can be a really great way to help build out a hunt plan, explore new areas and maybe find that elk or deer honeyhole for this upcoming season. So last week we dove into the planning the hunt phase and steps for organizing just that well laid hunt plan. And I mentioned quite a bit in that past podcast about E Scouting as part of that process. So today we're going to dive into the E Scouting portion and where to start as far as creating that hunt plan. So we're going to work from the ground up and I'm just going to go over some of the ways that I e scout for myself when I'm looking at an area that I've hunted before or maybe a brand new area and we're going to just look at the ways that we can maximize our time in the field. So I've laid out I guess 11 of the steps that I take for that initial E Scouting and then we're going to dive into a few of the E. Scouting apps and tools that I Use to learn an area before that hunt. So let's dive in and look at some maps. So as I look at kind of my upcoming season tags that I have, you know, I spend a lot of time this time of year e Scouting and also doing some in the field scouting. And there's a couple hunts that I have this year, pretty much just general area hunts. So I decided I'm going to do a general area mule deer hunt just in a new unit that I haven't hunted before. I feel like I've been putting in a lot of time kind of some of the same places in the last few years, just not finding what I. I would like to find. So I'm switching it up this year, going into a completely new spot, completely new general unit, and hoping to turn up a good buck. I mean, I think that that's like one of the hardest things is. Is especially right now, is. Is finding good meal deer. And if you can get a kind of over the counter general area tag and. And you can get into some good deer, that's a feat in itself. So I'm just kind of branching out this year. You know, I'm gonna. I've been doing a lot of preliminary e. Scouting and just kind of learning the unit. And I. And I've got a buddy that's I'm going to be hunting with or. Or maybe be hunting with that I grew up with. And. And he's been hunting this area for a little bit and getting into some good deer. But I might even just whether I go with him and lean on some of his knowledge, I still want to have a plan in place. And. And there's probably some other parts of the unit that I might look into that he hasn't hunted that I'd really like to kind of. That I've been just, you know, checking off on the map going, oh, dude, this. This looks pretty good. This could be a pretty good spot to start as well. And then I've got a general kind of area elk hunt in a place that I've hunted before in the past. But I also am thinking about kind of looking into and scouting and trying to hunt a different part of the unit somewhere that I haven't hunted in there before. And not that where I've been hunting hasn't worked, but it just seems like there's been more and more people. And I think that there's some other areas in the unit where I can probably get into some spots where there might just be fewer people. I'm trying to look for Those overlooked areas. And so I've been spending a lot of times on the maps for that. You know, this year, like last year, by this time I'd drawn just some incredible hunts already, you know, some once in a lifetime tags and had a pretty crazy hunt schedule and plan. This year I haven't really. And part of it is my application strategy. I kind of decided, well, I might save some of these points because I was able to get, I drew a couple elk and deer general area tags and picked up over the counter tag. So I was like, well, I've got some tags in my pocket. I can concentrate on that I guess tomorrow. If you're listening to this podcast on Thursday, tomorrow, Nevada draw results should come out. So my home state, anything could happen there. Like I've got 20 shoot my most points. I've got, I think it's like 26 or 27 points for some species. That's a lot. That's a lifetime of applying. And so in there I just, you never know. Like, I could draw another sheep. I could draw a sheep tag. I got 20 some odd points for one of the species of sheep. I could draw an elk tag. I got quite a few points for elk. Again, I could draw a mule deer tag. Even though the areas I put in for it, like if I draw a mule deer tag, it'll be a good tag, maybe not likely, but you never know, like archery tag. So there's still hope for some of that. But for the most part, my hunt plans this year are primarily general area units, which is been my hunt plans for the majority of my life, to be honest. You know, I think we talk a lot about tag draws and application strategy and I cashed in a few points last year in some places and, and pulled some really good tags in some other places. But the majority of my hunts that I've done my entire life have been general area over the counter or easier draw tags. And I found some incredible success and had some great hunts. And a lot of those hunts have been in places that maybe I didn't get to step through foot into ahead of time, but I, I was able to get on in and get on animals fairly quickly. And on most hunts based off of really doing a lot of hunt planning and e scouting and then of course to maybe get, being able to get out and scout this year I'm going to get a little bit of time. I'm planning on hopefully utilizing a little bit of time off if I get some time like on a long weekend here or there to just make a quick trip and go check out some stuff or, you know, if I draw a tag where I can use trail cameras, go throw some trail cameras out and really kind of dive into that unit the best I can. But my initial planning always comes from E scouting and so I'm just kind of going to go through what I do. Like, I just tried to think about, okay, if I got a tag, whether it's a draw tag in an area, whether it's a over the counter tag, whether I'm. It's an area that I've hunted a million times. I'm constantly pouring over maps. And so I'm just going to go through. I've got my Onyx app here. I've made some notes and I'm just going to go through, kind of walk you guys through what I like to do when I sit down and I think about a hunt. And honestly, like, I mean, I've got. I'm going to go do a little bit of spring bear hunting and some new places, some old places, but places that I've even been. I'm constantly pouring over the maps when I'm not in the field. And it's a good habit to be in. If you're the type of person that's like, you know, you got a little bit of time. Maybe it's at the end of the day, you're unwinding after the end of the day, you know, open up your Onyx app and look into your unit and scroll around. If I were to probably look at my phone and just see, you know, like how it breaks out the, the time that you've used certain apps, I would say that my mapping software is probably the most used thing on my phone. Like, I spend more time on Onyx than probably anything on my phone because I'm constantly trying to learn areas and man, I'm even talking about, like, I scroll on areas of. I'd like to think about this area, right? Oh, I've heard of an area, man, I'm going to go and escalate that. I've looked at a lot of different mountains. I kind of thought about, you know, there's these, you'll see these guys. I guess I've. Somebody sent me a video clip of somebody like guessing areas based on pictures, right, from satellite imagery. And I'm like, if there was a game of that for western, western landscapes and like western hunting units, I could probably do pretty good because I've, I've literally spent, you know, a lot of time cruising through areas that maybe I've hunted. Maybe I'll never hunt, but just like cruising through areas, I mean, there's a tag in Wyoming for mule deer that I've been thinking about for years and trying to draw. And I've escouted that thing every year for the last seven years. Just like looking at different little places and kind of I'll have a few minutes here, there and look around and think about, oh, yeah, look at this little basin and continually marking little things. So but what we're going to talk about today is you've got a tag. Let's say it's a. Whatever kind of tag it is and we're going to start it. I laid it out in a way that I think is a pretty logical step for the kind of things that I do when I'm e scouting an area. So we're going to jump into step one here. And so let's say you're on your Onyx app. If you don't have Onyx maps, you absolutely have to get them. I mean, it's not. I don't really know if I've encountered anybody that doesn't have it in the field, but if you don't, you need to get it because not only is it a game changer for scouting an area, it's a game changer for being in the field knowing where you're at. Like, it increases your ability to hunt confidently in certain places where there might be property boundaries, access issues, or even just knowing where you are navigating into a new area or you're in the field and an animal does something, dropping a pin where it's at or oh, okay, I got a. You're in an area and maybe you aren't seeing anything. You got to go, oh, I got to go back to the drawing board and see what's another little basin that I could get into or. Or whatever incredible tool for hunting and is, I think one of. I've talked about this many times, but the advancement in the technology that they have in that app has kind of changed the game for hunting and changed success and changed the of people hunting in other places. Like, it's a really a revolutionary kind of thing in the world of hunting, especially mapping. You know, I think back to when I started hunting and it was old school compared to what we get to do now. Like, there was no e scouting. There was map scouting. And I talked about that and I read articles about that and I studied and poured over paper maps. And the thing that we do, like the map scouting or the pre scouting from Home hasn't changed, just the way that we're able to do it, the effectiveness of being able to do it, and what we can learn today is drastically different. So we're gonna go into step one. First thing I do, so I'm gonna kind of. I mean, I've even got my Onyx app open here, and I'm just thinking in my head, like, okay, I'm sitting down, I've got a tag. What am I doing? First thing that I do is I identify where my tag's at and look at that unit boundary. Okay. I'm obviously like, duh, right? You gotta. You're looking in the unit. But it makes a big deal of. The first thing I do is a real broad type look, because I'm trying to narrow down quite a few things. And so when you start E scouting, you look at it and you go, this is a big unit, or maybe it's a small unit, it doesn't matter. You look at it and you go, wow, there's a ton of country here. Where do I start? And you start by identifying your unit, because we're going to start real broad and then we're going to start narrowing it down and focusing in on quite a few things. So the specifics of what I'm looking for in the nitty gritty of finding animals E scouting depends on the species, the time of year and all that stuff. But when it comes to the hunt planning, I like to start broad. And like I said, this. This type of E scouting that we're doing right now is to identify things to create that hunt plan that we talked about last week. So step one, we're getting into that unit boundary. What. What's in this unit? Where is it? Okay, so now step two, what I'll always have, like the land type layer on. So I want to know public and private land layers. I'm looking for blm, Forest service, state lands, private lands. So I'm making sure that that's turned on for me. I don't. I'm not the type that generally, like most of the hunting that I do is on public land. I like to not have to ask permission or gain permission. Most of the tags. And this is probably for most people, you know, you're looking for public land. So I'm identifying where are the huntable portions within this unit. And then step three, here, the next thing that I do. So I've got my unit layer on. I've got my land, like, land type layer on. And then the next one is. And I'll just do this on the Onyx app. I'm gonna pull it up right now. So the third step that I like to turn on on my Onyx app is I go into the roads, trails and rec portion. So if you're on your phone, I mean, I'll just kind of walk you through it. Just I like hunt map layers. Click that. Then I scroll down to roads, trails and rec. And then at the very bottom of mine, it's motorized roads and trails. And I turn that on. And what that does is it actually highlights. It's, you know, primarily like forest service roads. So in areas that have, you know, a lot of forest service roads or even some BLM stuff, now, there will be roads that are not highlighted on this. For the most part. It really highlights like the main travel roads, roads that might even be named or numbered. And then you can actually click on those roads and it gives you the road name, maybe the length, and then the access type. So I just clicked on this one particular road on my map that popped up. First one, it says road length 4.6 miles, accessible by overland high clearance, 4x4, side by side ATV, dirt bike. So that's telling me that it's probably a fairly rough road. It's not. It's not like a super nice gravel road. And then it says open dates, it says January 1st through December 31st. So essentially it's open year round. And this one happens to be. And it says managed by. And this is a BLM road. It says blm. So that gives me a lot of information on the roads or the potential access in the area. And this is actually a feature that, I mean, it's one of those that I use constantly. And I think that it's one that I've hunted with some friends and other things, and they didn't even really have never utilized this layer. To me, it's like the first layer that I turn on, so. Or the third layer. I guess it's like the third step for me. So for that, I think if you don't use that, it's gonna be hugely beneficial to you. So now I've got those layers on. Now the reason that I'm doing these layers and kind of the things that I'm looking for is we're looking for, okay, where are places that I can hunt and what are some of the options to getting in there? So I've got all these layers on, and now I can go, okay, well, even if you zoom it out a little bit. So I've got those layers on I've got my map open right now. I've got public and private lands on. I've got, you know, the unit boundaries, and I've got the roads on. And so I zoom into where all that stuff shows up. And I'm just kind of. I just randomly went into a unit in what. I don't even know what state I'm in. I just kind of randomly scrolled. I guess I'm in Idaho. So I random unit in Idaho. I've got all those layers on, and this particular place that I landed on, there's like. I can see. I've got the satellite imagery on, and I've got. I can see that there's. Okay, there's a big chunk of private. So, okay, well, I can't really hunt that. Okay, here's some public land. And then I zoom in a little bit, so there's road. So if you're zoomed out too far, you won't see the roads. So I zoom in enough to where I can see the roads, they're highlighted in purple. And I go, oh, okay, here's some access points. There's a highway, and now here's some access points into this public stuff. So, okay, now, now I've got. I went from having an entire unit to a couple places that I can start to dive into. At least now I'm learning the access, how to get into the area, places that I can potentially hunt and within my own unit. So then the next thing that I'm going to do here, and this is I like to do this on my computer. Right now I'm actually. I'm recording this podcast, pretty much getting ready to go hunting. So I've just got my phone with me. But the next thing that I do, and I'll do this on my phone as well, is I like to pull up the satellite imagery and go 3D. So you could do this. You know, I do this in my Onyx app, but it's like, you know, Google Earth or whatever. That 3D view is extremely easy to see what the mountains look like. And all we're doing right now is we're just previewing what the area looks like. We're just getting a feel for the unit. So this one that I'm doing, like a mock scouting on, it's got valleys on either side, some private, some public, and then these, like, couple. It's got like three mountain ranges in here. Okay. So, okay, for me, I like hunting the mountains. Maybe, let's say, let's call it an elk hunt. This is Intriguing. Now I can kind of utilize this and rotate around and go, oh, here's a nice basin. Oh, this is. This is actually. Actually, I'm just going to drop a pin on this while I'm here, because it looks. It looks slick. So, okay, here's a nice basin and maybe something that I might be interested in looking at in the future, kind of dropping a pin. And I'm making some notes here. I'm actually making a note that I'm not really. Like, I don't even. Because I'll. I'll leave a pin on here, and I'll be like, why the heck was this pin? I got 14,000 pins on my deal. But this is just. This looks good. Okay, so I've got this basin here. And. Okay, I'm. I'm. I'm looking. I think that's kind of cool. And I keep scrolling around and looking at other things. I'm just really just kind of flying through the unit. Honestly, like, think of it like this. Like you rented a plane for the day and you're doing a little bit of sightseeing. What you get to know and see on that one plane flight really opens your eyes to what the area looks like and how it's laid out. So as I'm scrolling around, I found a couple of things that just are kind of interesting to me here. I found this little low saddle of these two canyons that drops from one part of the range to the other. So there's like all these high kind of peaks, and, you know, above alpine. And now there's like this little saddle. Oh, that's kind of an interesting. It is a very interesting little topographical feature. Right. And then I'm just like. I'm not really trying to look for anything in particular. I'm just looking. I'm flying around like I'm sitting in a passenger plane looking out the window going, this is what it looks like. And this is kind of my initial step here because I really like to. I really like to get a feel for the area and what I'm looking for. Now, I might see something while I'm doing that and drop a few pins here, there. But this is. We're talking just first steps as we're going into this. Now. Step five, after I've kind of just started to look over, I just want to know what the ground looks like. And here's a couple of things that, once you're doing this flyover, let's. Let's think about the things that we're going to look for. Because we're going to relate it to this next step. So this next step is kind of species and hunt specific. So what kind of hunt am I doing? What animal is it like we talked about in the planning last week, what is the timing of this hunt? What are some of the strategies that I'm going to and use on this hunt now, as we fly around, what. One of the things that I'm really looking for is what does the ground look like in this particular area? So is it all timber? Is it mountains? Is it flats? Is it. Is there good elevation gain or is it more roly poly like breaks kind of foothill stuff? Is it open? Is it arid? Is it alpine? Is there an above timberline? Is there no above timberline? Is it fully covered? Is it semi covered? Is there a lot of water sources? Is there not very many water sources there, like creek markings everywhere or no creek markings. What does the ground look like? Okay, now we're going to take this species and hunt specific kind of steps and we're going to say, okay, what am I hunting? Let's say, let's just call it elk. Everybody loves elk and the things that they like can be very specific. So we're, we're going to say it's elk. Okay, well, here in this particular unit that I grabbed, there's valleys, foothills mountains and big mountains. Okay, so you've got a little bit everything. So now we're going to say, well, what time of year am I hunting? Well, maybe it's a early, like mid September hunt, rut hunt. And I, and I think, okay, well, what are some of the ways that I like to hunt elk? I like to call elk, I like to bugle elk, I like to call in elk. And for that I really like to oftentimes be in more timbered country. Oh, this is great because this area has a lot of timber. Okay, well, now I can start to, you know, hone in on maybe some of the topographical features that I think elk will find or maybe what's something in lease supply here. So in this particular area, it looks like a lot of timber. So here's some openings. Here's. This area is open, but it looks like it's clear cut. Here's like a. Some meadows and some other things. Well, there's some feeding areas for elk, so I can start to narrow down places to look for that specific hunt. Let's say it's. I'm going to move over to a completely different type of unit and this area is like more arid. And let's say we're hunting mule deer. Okay. It's more foothills and other things, but let's say it's a late season migration type hunt or late season rut hunt. What are some of the things for that hunt that I'm looking for? Well, I'm going to be wanting to do a lot of glassing. Okay, so where are some good vantages in this kind of country where I can get above and look into this stuff? Well, okay, on this particular place that I'm looking at, there's a lot of these foothills, which is perfect. It's like there's timber and then all this sage bench. Okay. But in that, if I was over there, like, looking at it on the map, I know this is for late season or like Rhett mule deer hunt. I'm looking at it and I'm going, okay, if I'm over here, I'm not. I can't see into every one of these pockets. I got to walk this pocket, walk this pocket, walk this pocket. But as I. As I look around on the map, I look, dude, right across the valley here is like this knob that's way higher than all that foothill stuff. And it looks like there's a road and a point that I could walk to. Fairly short. And there's this, like, epic glassing spot where I could cover all that foothill stuff from one place. Boom. I'm gonna. That's a. That's a spot that really intrigues me for that particular hunt, knowing that, you know, bucks are probably cruising. There's pockets of does. So I could sit there, I could find doe pockets in this open looks open enough. I'm looking below the timber in this, like, really great habitat. And now I've just highlighted a spot or looked at a place that's specific to that kind of hunt. So step six, is that identifying the hunt style based on the species. And now we're going to kind of really hone in on the map to those places that really work for that hunt style. So for this, right, I want to be glassing for mule deer. I want to. I want open country. I want to be looking over as much as I can. And. And so for that, I'm really going to kind of pinpoint and look for glass advantages. So step seven is like, now I'm in here and I'm really focusing in on. I'm thinking about the animal that I'm hunting. And one of the things that if you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you know that the biggest Thing to hunting successes is really understanding the animal and the habitat that they're in. Like, if you can understand elk and know a lot about elk, then you can find elk kind of anywhere. And maybe you're listening for the first time or you haven't listened, all passive, whatever. You really are going to want to invest in understanding the animal. You know, guys might say like, hey, I want to know how to escout. How do you escalate? What do I look for? Right, well, what are you hunting? When are you hunting? That all? Like, if you can't answer those questions and know what you should be looking for, then it's really hard to say, well, pull out your maps and do this and do that. And that's just the truth of it. So what you're going to want to do is figure out what you're hunting when you're hunting and what are some of the strategies that you're going to use and some of the things that you can exploit in those animals that particular time of year. Understanding that stuff is the basis of E Scouting. And I think that, like a lot of E Scouting tips and tactics don't necessarily emphasize the importance of knowing the animal. So what we're doing with E Scouting is we're looking at a map which tells a story. It's like it's. It's a book, okay. But in that book, we're looking for the pattern that lines up with what we know about the animal that we're hunting. And so once we identify those places, then we're going to actually have a higher chance of finding what we're looking for while we've got our maps. Out you go, Remy. I've never hunted elk before. We're talking about hunt planning for a species that I've never been for. I understand that, but you really have to, like, think about the map in terms of how am I going to hunt, how do I want to hunt and then what am I hunting? And start to. With that in your mind, you're going to start to see things that line up with that strategy, even just with like a slight knowledge of the animal or the species. So one of the things that I do and I utilize a lot is the layers within the Onyx app that really lend themselves to helping me understand some of this hunt strategy. So I'm going to actually flip on my a couple of things. Well, I'll just say this first, I'm going to, for those of you that are like, listening and then want have the app and you want to like Understand what I do. I think that's the easiest way to do it. But a couple of the things, whatever app you have or whatever, a couple of the things that. The layers that I'll utilize for my hunt style and species are looking at vegetation. Okay, that's. That's one of the layers that I like. Like to see is what kind of vegetation is there. And you can often see that with satellite imagery, but there's a couple of things that you can't see in satellite imagery that might pertain to vegetation. So that's burns is one of them. Clear cuts is another. Like, sometimes you can see them, sometimes they're more recent than the imagery itself. So that's another one. Now, a couple of the other things that I like to think about is maybe the elevations within the certain unit, so isolating kind of that elevation or a certain elevation. Another thing that I think about is wilderness areas where. Areas where there aren't any roads and there might be restrictions on travel. So which, you know, hey, you got to get in there by horse or on foot. And so that might limit the amount of hunters there. That might increase the amount of hunters there, depending on the unit. So that's another layer that I kind of look at within an area. Wildernesses, wilderness study areas, those kind of things. And then another cool layer that they have is, like, distance from roads, where it creates this little, like, heat map. I call it a heat map, where it just, like, has different colors based on the distance from roads. So you can kind of isolate within a unit little pockets that might not have roads through it. Now, there are always places where there's literally roads everywhere. And then there's those marked roads, those purple roads that I said were, like, drivable roads. And then you'll see, like, on the map, there's roads that people are just created that actually aren't roads. Some places that are actually illegal to drive on, some places they aren't. But there's. There's roads kind of all over that may or may not be on the map. But so, you know, I use that, like, distance from road thing, but then I'll look in there and make sure that there aren't actually roads going through that. But what that does is just helps me find areas, like, what are some pockets that maybe people aren't just driving through, but that you could. You can get in and hunt that maybe take a little bit more effort. And I'll. I'll look at that and I'll combine that with the elevation, maybe the way that I Want to hunt like if I'm an area. So let's go at it like this. Let's say I am new tail hunting and I'm like, I, I don't know. Let's say it's a October elk hunt. Rifle, elk hunt. Late October, November. Look, you aren't going to be calling Elkin then. So how are you going to find elk? Well, it's probably going to be a glassing game. Okay. And I've looked at the unit and it looks very timbered, right. And I go, well crap, it's timbered, but I need to be glassing. So I'll turn on the burn area and I'll look and go, ooh, here's a burn here. This is three years old, four years old. Oh, here's a burn last year, two years ago. So I, I can start to identify some areas where now I can identify these areas and these are places that I'll be able to glass within this timbered. I could do the same thing in like very timbered stuff that hasn't burned and see some clear cuts, you know. Oh, okay, here's some clear cut areas where I might be able to glass or look into. So that right there is identifying my hunt style that I'm going to do. And some of the things that those animals or species might need, they're going to need feeding areas in that timber. And so by using those layers, I can actually really hone into a portion of the unit a lot faster. So. Oh, okay, this lines up with that and then within that maybe I can use that distance from road thing and go, oh, well, in a clear cuts there's a lot of roads, but maybe there's some roads that are closed. So I've got that road layer on and I go, here's a good clear cut. And I look and see that three miles away. The gates close seasonally during the hunting season. So it means that I cannot. It's a seasonal road, so there's no driving on that during the actual hunting season. Maybe it closes like beginning of October, I'm hunting. End of November, it's three miles to that. Okay. But I can access it by walking this road. Sweet. That that really gives me an area to look at and think about hunting or, or identify as a potential place that I might want to go look for elk. So I'm actually, I'll actually pull up the, the app right now. And for those that have it and want to know exactly which layers I'm talking about. So in this for the onyx App I just hit layers and then I scroll down and I've got. There's one that's like trees, crops and cover. If you see that, you can go to that and that's where you find timber cuts and historic wildfires. So the cool thing about historic wildfires, I really like this because it shows you the age of the burns and in some places you'll find old burns with new burns in it. So like the productive age of a really good burn is like around that four to seven year range, I think. But you know there, there could be a fire from last year. Depends on how it burned as well. So you can find like these small fires that just kind of cleared up and allow for some new growth that were from last year this year. That's all good stuff. Also you can even on the app, well this is in different sub but you can find active fires as well. So. So for like the COVID trees and cover you can use timber cuts. You can use historic wildfires. For other places in the country you actually use like this coniferous tree distribution layer or deciduous trees. I think that that would be super helpful for like white tail deer hunting where you go hey what, what are some like feed trees. And then there's this thermal deer cover which kind of shows like really thick areas which would highlight bedding areas in, in whitetail country. And actually I'm going to be doing a little bit of whitetail hunting in some other places, new places this year. That was one of the things I was like, well if I can't get a tag mule deer or elk, maybe I'll think about a late season whitetail hunt. So I got a couple of those planned and I'll pop that thermal deer cover layer on and can really find maybe like highlight some bedding areas in some good stuff. Now another layer. So within layers. So we looked at trees, crops and cover. We looked at roads and trails. Land and access is another one that I'll use. And so there is like that's where I'll turn on the wilderness areas and it shows those wilderness area boundaries. It also shows like those wilderness study areas. And within this as well you can choose the slope angle and aspect. So the one of the things or you can just go to like slope angle. So if I want to go, I want to find north facing slopes. Let's say I'm looking for elk late season I'm going to want those south facing slopes. But let's say I really like to. It's like the, I don't know, September and I'm calling elk, I'll probably actually focus more on north facing slopes where it's like thick, where they might push their cows into to bed for the day and maybe can get into some calling action that, so I can turn that on and it'll just shade the slope angle that I'm looking for. So the slope aspect or angle or maybe I'm looking for maybe it's super steep country and I'm trying to isolate some more flat spots where elk would lay. Right. They'll lay in some steep stuff. But if there's a little bench somewhere in within the steep, then that's something to hone in on. So I could turn that on and I can just see the different kinds of slope angles. So it shows me, okay, is it, you know, 30 degrees, 40 degrees, super steep and even just for, you know. So like I've got this particular area, I turn the slope angle on. It's super cool because it just highlights it in a way that draws your eye to something. So this area is very steep. Like it's probably 30% in a lot of places. And then there's these lines of 5 to 10%. That's where Elk are gonna lay. I mean, that's where they like to bed down. So, you know, you got in. There's even some 45° plus stuff in here. And I'm looking now I see like some 15 degree within that and I go, oh, this is a potential good bedding area, travel area. And I bet you if I went to some of this stuff like here's, here's a good zone across this. And I go, I bet you if I went in there, that's where the elk trails would be. That's where the beds would be. Now I can look at the, the, you know, the south or the north face of this and go, ooh, that's probably a bedding area for elk. And I mean, just without knowing, never stepping in this unit, I would almost guarantee that I found a couple of good bedding areas just based on color on this map. And, and honestly, like I've, I've showed up in areas and, and highlighted and found a lot of really good animals, really good hunting spots just by this little bit of knowledge of understanding the animal and really diving into the E scouting. So that's in the land and access tab there. And I'm sure that, you know, there's, every time there's like somebody will show me a feature on here that I didn't even know about, another one that people, which actually could be beneficial, might not. You can actually even turn on a layer for U.S. forest Service grazing entombments. And you can see where people might have cattle, because there are places where you go, oh, and sometimes those places there are cattle, but there aren't supposed to be, but you can go, oh, there's a lot of cat. Like, you find a good water hole, right? And you go, ooh, this will be perfect for elk. And then you get there and there's 900 cattle on it. You're like, nope, not perfect. But, you know, just over in another spot, there's no grazing. And those water holes, you know, hey, maybe there's nothing hitting those unless you're in Nevada and wild horses are just destroying them. But that's a. That's just a completely other topic. So now we're going to go into a few other layers, and I hope this guy. This is helping you guys, because the best way for me to describe some things is just kind of go into it and then you can kind of glean the things that, when I'm looking at something, what I might see that other people might not. Because by relating it to the animals and the species and the conditions, you can really kind of hone in on some places to start checking out. So the next layer thing that we're going to look at turning on here, there is this wildlife layers. I have not really utilized that, but it shows, like, elk distribution, other things. I don't know. But the. The cool thing about that, too, if you're like, this would be for more hunt planning is you could kind of turn on Boone and Crocket trophy records or Pope and Young or. No, sorry, just Boone and Crockett. But you could see over the last 10 years where maybe some animals have been coming from, which is kind of cool. All right, the next one, the last one that I'll look at is the current conditions. So I actually have that one on kind of all the time, and it shows active wildfires. But there's another one that I look at quite a bit. This is probably stuff that I would talk about more in the field type stuff, like smoke forecast for glassing. But one of the ones. A couple of the things that I do for the hunt planning portion is I'll turn on the drought data. So I can kind of see if in particular, sometimes, honestly, like, there's a. I have it on. In. In a particular area and I was looking and go, okay, this one range, like something that you might not understand from, like, let's say you live In Michigan and you're scouting an elk area, and you look at it and you'll look at this drought data and you go, here's the mountain range within my unit. One side of the range has hardly any water, and another side has like quite a bit more water. Well, you get these rain, I guess they call it a rain shadow effect, where as the clouds move, they gather, they skip certain areas and then they hammer others. So the way that kind of like this drought data will show you is like, where within the unit is there more water? So if it's an area that there's a lot of drought, some of these units, like in some areas, they, they're the size of small states. You go, geez, I've got millions of acres. But yet there's maybe two or three mountain ranges in there. And this one particular mountain range might get more water. So as everything else is a little bit drier, this particular range or this particular portion of the range might have more water, better habitat for, for whatever reason, maybe that's something to focus on for, for your particular hunt. It's not always the case. Like, it's not like an elk's gonna move, particularly from one mountain range all the way across a bunch of valleys to go to this one where it's getting more wet. But maybe you might get like better antler growth in arid areas in that particular area. Like I hunted a place in New Mexico quite a few years ago and this like everything was kind of in a drought. But this one particular part, this one particular range is just getting like way more water than everywhere else. And like the antler growth in there was probably 20, at least 20% better. So it's like, hey, you call in an elk and if you called him in in the more arid portion of the unit, he probably like a six point bull, he might have been like a 280 type bull. But these ones, you know, we're in that 303, 20 class of the same age and kind of similar genetics. So within that you're just like, hey, we might as well hunt where we have like more bang for our buck. So something to look at. And then there's one more layer that I think is pretty useful and it's this, it's a cell coverage, so you can actually turn that on. And this is for hunt planning because you can turn that on and see where you might get service. Now I think I kind of talk about this a little bit later, but I think that that's pretty helpful because depending on where you want to camp and other things. It just allows you to know, hey, where I might be able to get a phone call out. Like I often, if I have the option, I'll camp where I can have some kind of comms or communication especially too, if I'm hunting with other people, it's like, hey, maybe they're going to a different part of the unit, but we can kind of link back up and just make sure everybody's all right or just, you know, sending a message home. Like, hey, they went however, whatever back at camp. So that helps, like if it's, if it's sixes, like it doesn't really matter where you're staying. You're staying a mile here or 800 yards there. Just knowing where you might have service or knowing, hey, I don't have any service part of the hunt plan. I'll bring some kind of form of secondary communication, Garmin inreach or something like that. So those are some of the layers that I like. And I was going to talk about layers later, but we dove into them now. So step eight, now I'm identifying those key points of the habitat. Food, water, cover. Think about, like, for habitat in animals, you need that food, water, cover. So I found some places that align with my hunt style. Now I'm really looking within there and saying what are some of these habitat features that I can find and isolate in here? In order to find animals, you have to find good habitat. So I'm actually scouting for habitat based on knowing what habitat those animals like. And then the one thing that I talk about a lot is like, if there's certain things that are everywhere in that unit, find one of those key habitat features that's in lease supply in very timbered areas. For elk, often feed is in lease supply in open areas, covers in least supply. In area areas, waters in least supply. So if there's, if all things are equal in within that habitat, what's in the least supply? And then start focusing on that now step nine, we're going to identify those like hunt specific targets now. So within the hunt, we know how we're going to hunt, we know what we want to hunt. We're looking at certain areas. Now I'm going to start to identify like things such as potential bedding areas. I'm also going to identify glassing vantages or if I'm calling, oh, here's a spot where I might like a, a good ridge to call into a basin from, like similar to, to glassing. So I'm starting to identify and mark those hunt Specific targets. One of the things that you guys should think about is when I'm e scouting, I use a certain color of pin because it lets me know, like, this is a theoretical. And then when I'm out there, it's like, this is an actual. So often when I'm e scouting, I kind of. It just kind of defaults to red in some ways. And sometimes I just like, don't follow this and it always bites me. But I try to have a make a note on your phone like, what colors identify what for you. But I like to utilize the colors so at glance I can kind of understand what something is. So I often use blue for when I identify water. I'll use like a green one for when I identify, like a good feeding area. I try to identify like, certain. Certain colors for certain things. And then there's some hunts where like, I'll. I'll change the pin color. So, like, if I've got now maybe we'll talk about. Yeah, this is a good time to talk about this. So, like, let's say I've got. I'm e scouting and I've got all these pins that I've haven't verified. It's just part of the e scouting. So I'll use a certain color for the scouting. And then when I'm in the field, I can either change the color of it, like I verified it. It looks good. Then I know. And I like to try to keep notes on. On my pins as well. So from the time that I start looking at it, if I've got a note, I'll just like, drop the pin and I'll. And I'll put a. Don't. I'll say escouted. This looks good. Think it's cool for elk. Whatever. What? Because sometimes you're in your head and you're like. Or maybe I'm like, talk to a guy at a gas. Like, this has happened multiple times. They're like, talk to a random rancher at a gas station just filling up. And he's like, yeah, you know, we. We move our cattle out of there. I don't hunt, but we always see elk up in this one little basin as we're going up. Yeah, good luck to you. You know what I mean? Drop a pin. Like, I don't know whether that means anything or not, but it's sometimes nice to know like a couple years later why. Why do I have that pin there? So making good notes. One of the cool things in the Onyx app too, is you can actually, like, if you're in the field, you can actually take a picture of something and assign it to a pin, which has been super helpful lately just to kind of remember things. Like I've even been doing that when I find a shed antler, I'll take a picture of the shed antler and then drop it onto a pin or something like that. Because it's kind of a cool way to organize and catalog things. But when we're talking about hunt, planning, prep, whatever, I like to have a certain color for the scouting just to kind of identify those things. And then as I'm, you know, dropping pins, like let's say I find a good feeding area, I might make it green so it's easy for me to identify. That was a scouting, that was a feeding area. There's a glass advantage. And then I'll just make a note like it was while e scouting, while e scouting. And then when I get into the unit then I can kind of start to verify those. So the next step is at this point, like I've identified areas that I'm going to hunt or, or that look good. I'm going to start dropping pins on all those things that I think about. The water, the COVID the feed and honestly maybe just start getting pins like you get an area you've flown around, you know what kind of hunt you want to do, you've looked at some burns and some other things you've identified this particular part of the range looks good. So now you're just going to drop a pin on all the little water spots that look nice, maybe some good bedding potential areas based on, based on the slope and the COVID And then you've also got some open feeding areas. And now you've got your glassing vantages, you've got all that stuff. Now we're going to look at ways, good ways to access those good looking areas. So we're going to look at it. We're going to have those trails turned on the roads and you go, okay, look, there's, there's not many roads here. Or maybe there's a road right through this area that looks good. Where's a part on the road that I can glass into this from? Where's a part on another road that I can glass into this from? Where can I hike to to get into this? If I were to hunt this, what's the best way to get in? Is it this trail in the bottom or is it kind of going up this ridge and getting into here? Is there a ridge that I could walk or a creek bottom that I could follow. Probably better to walk a ridge than a creek bottom. I think it's pretty brushy. But what are some ways that I can access this? Is there a road on the other side of the mountain that actually makes it easier? So I'll actually use that measured tool distance and like, okay, here's a trailhead and I want to hunt this area. But, oh, I use that measure tool or that hunt route planner, and I realize that if I come in a different way or from a different side, it's actually a better way to get in there. So I look at those access areas and I start to identify those. I often just change the symbol like an A. So when I know it's like, oh, that's access. And then the last step that I do. So I've got that hunt plan and this is going to tie back to that. So I've like scouted and looked up those other areas. Now I'm going to go back to kind of that last week's podcast where we're talking about prep and planning and we're going to like locate potential camping areas based on where we might want to hunt. So if it's an area where, hey, we're going to kind of day hunt multiple areas, where's a good central place based on all these pins and places that I've identified in the unit. Now when I'm e scouting, like, I might my initial, I might pick three, four, five, maybe multiple areas. Maybe they're a long ways apart. Like you couldn't even effectively hunt all of it in one hunt. Maybe you got to pick one canyon. But I try to identify multiple places because one is like, it's good to have backup places. You go somewhere and, hey, that wasn't great. But I don't want to always pigeon my whole pigeonhole myself into one particular portion of the unit. I like to look at everything and then as I kind of continue to pour over stuff, really decide. But one of the things that I'll start to look for at this kind of last step is what are some potential camping areas? Like, same day hunting, where's a good maintenance artery to access? Maybe multiple places that I've identified? Or hey, maybe I'm. Maybe I'm going to backpack hunt this wilderness kind of area. Where's a potential place that I could kind of camp where I'm out of the zone, like below where I want to hunt, and then I can hike up to this vantage or ridge every day. Or maybe I look and go, here's a Good vantage, a little bit of a flat spot on the back side of this knob. I could just camp there, hike up every morning and be glassing right away. So I'll start to identify some of those camping areas and tag some potential camping spots. Because by doing that now, I've started to build out that hunt plan that ties back to last week of where am I going to go, how am I going to kind of think about it and really build out, like that extensive hunt plan. Now, I guess there's just a couple of other tools that I utilize a lot. We talked a little bit about some of the tools, like the different layers. The measure tool is the one that I use like constantly. It surprises me how much I use that, but I always like to know, okay, how far is something? Like I'll look at a glassing vantage and then tag a few places. Like measure the distance between the glassing manage and where I want to look into. Gives me an idea of like, is that too far to look? Is it too close to look? Is that, you know, it kind of helps me gauge my view. Also utilize it a lot for looking at between areas. How far is it from here to there? How far is it across this valley, how far is it whatever? Or how far is it from the trail or how far up the trailhead? So I utilize that a lot. Now. Another feature like, at least on the Onyx that I use is this. I'll create folders and so let's say for your hunt, like, just to keep it organized, I'll create a folder and oftentimes I. I use it for sharing and just keeping organized. But I can turn that folder on and just see like the pins in that folder. So it might help me like get through some of the fluff. So I could get like, I talked about maybe marking some of them as different colors. You can also just be like, here's a scouting folder for this particular area, here's a whatever. And then you can kind of put it in that folder and show that folder. So you go, okay, these are my scouting ones. And I can hide that when I'm in the field if I wanted to, or pop it back up or whatever. So that, that's a really useful feature. And also sometimes, like, I' I'll share certain folders. So I got one like with my brother. Actually, when I share a pin with my brother, I make them all purple so I know which ones I've shared with him. I don't know why that's when I look at my. I'm like, oh, yep, shared that with my brother. So I can immediately identify who else might know about that bin. But, you know, and then I'll. I'll put those into a folder, and then I can share that folder with someone else, like a hunting buddy. And then they can, like, let's say I'm hunting with a friend in a. In a particular spot, I'll share a folder and then we'll both like, like, put pins in there and. And make notes. And maybe I'll use one color and they'll use another color. And that way, like, even if we're apart or like, different. Different days, whatever, we. We've got kind of the similar information going of, like, the plan and what we've identified while E Scouting. This is something that I utilize a lot because a lot of hunts where I'm going with someone else, like from the planning phase, everybody's involved. And so we share those pins in those folders and be like, okay, here's some spots that I've looked at. Oh, yeah, that's cool. I didn't see that. Or. Or whatever. When we talk about it just kind of helps us remind us what we were kind of seeing when we were E Scouting. But I think that there's a lot to escouting. And there it is, like, such an effective tool. I probably. I wouldn't do this, but I was like, I zoom out of my, like, Onyx maps here, and, dude, there's just pins. It looks like the western part of the United States is just shocked full of pins. I even got pins. I'm looking at this. I've even got pins in, like, the Midwest for whitetail. I got like, a tree stand pin on a place in Missouri and Oklahoma. I don't even know what I was thinking there, but places in Texas, whatever. I got pins all over the place. But honestly, like, E Scouting is. Is an extremely effective tool, and the people that can utilize it well really stand an advantage when it comes to planning and prepping for the hunt, finding animals while they're on their hunt, and utilizing their time during the hunt to maximize their success. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed that podcast. I mean, you know, it's. It's one of those things where E Scouting digital mapping, mapping software is just a part of the landscape, and it. It helps and aids the hunter so much that, like, it's foolish not to have it or utilize it, to be honest. You know, I talked a lot about Onyx maps in there. And I mean, the reason that I work with Onyx, they're just. They have the best mapping software integration for hunters and hunting and it's pretty standard among hunters. So, like you could even be out there. I mean, I don't know how many times I've been out there. And it's like, might. I mean, there's, there's other mapping software, right? But like you could be in the field and let's say you have a bull elk tag and there's other people that have a lot of like multiple people have cow elk tags, or you've got a mule deer tag, which is limited, or whatever. You run into a cow elk hunter, it doesn't matter what it is. And they'll be like, yeah, I saw this over in this spot. Let me send you a pin. It's so easy to share the pins within the app system that make it super beneficial as well. But, you know, I think like, the tools and other things on it are just so easy, so thought out, so well developed, especially in the hunting game. Like, I remember the first Onyx product I got. It was, it was only in Montana, actually. I worked for this magazine at the time, it's called Real Hunting Magazine. And we got somewhere, we were testing, like some of the initial ones. It was a chip that you put into a GPS unit. And at the time I owned a GPS that had nothing on it. It was a blank screen. Like, there was no maps, there was nothing. It was a GPS and it showed you your Latin longitude and you would correlate that to a map and like a paper map. And then so, you know, we got these chips and the chip showed like land and all this stuff, all this GIS information and it was just, it was insane. You're like, this is game changing. Like, literally that, like once that app, I had that app on a gps. Like the chip, I'm just like going back in the day now. But it's fun to talk about, like the progression of things because now it's on your phone and you can see like satellite imagery and all this. It was just, I think the first chip that I had. I don't even know if there's topo lines. I think there probably was, but it really was just like property ownership. And dude, that app, that chip killed more pronghorn for us than any, like our prong learning. Because we could just go down a road and be like, oh, we can access this entire block of chunk. Because now we would know exactly where we could access it from. That wasn't available back in the day. Like, you'd have to, you Just wouldn't know. Like you would, you would have it on a paper map but it was not detailed enough to actually utilize a lot of that. So you'd be like, oh, look at this. Somewhere on this highway there's a like a hundred foot section that you could get through, but you'd have to go find like a marker and half the time they were buried or whatever. Like it was just difficult. And man, there was so like, like after I got that chip, my pronghorn hunting success from where I like to hunt, I was just, it was uncanny how it changed. I don't know, it's just fun to think about those like back in the day. But they've been, they've been doing it for a long time and you know, have had the time on their side to like really develop the product and, and what it does for hunters for, I mean, shoot, that was, that was back in like 2004, something like that. I don't know, I could be wrong. Seems like probably right around then 2007, something like that. So long time, man. But yeah, I don't know, I think it's, it's an awesome, awesome resource for hunters. You know, I work with them and one of the things that I've, I've been able to do is kind of get you guys a discount code. So if you guys don't have the Onyx app system, you know, you should get it. And one of the things like, so you can use code LIVEWILD, you can get 20% off on all of their memberships. You just put code livewild. But so you can either get like a premium which is with the one state, I think it's like $27 a year with the discount. And then you could get a 2 state which is 39.99 or the elite, which has Canada hunting maps, nationwide land ownership maps, unlimited offline maps, all of them have unlimited offline maps. And then, and then you'll also get like some pro deals if you do the Elite one. So and if you, if you do it through your app, you can get the deal. You just gotta like not if you just renew through like Apple or whatever. You have to go to their site to do the discount. So you can't do it like in the Apple app, you just go to onyxmaps.com and you can get your 20% off if you're so inclined. If you're in that position where you're like I need to renew or I haven't, I don't have the app. Something to think about. But until next week, I'm just gonna say map on. We'll catch you guys later.