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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. Foreign welcome back to Live Wild podcast, everyone. You know, this time of year I, I start to get excited because I think about the tags in my pocket and the potential hunts that I can go on. And now is when I really start to dive in, dig into the maps, think about scouting, think about building out that hunt plan. Where am I going to go? What am I going to be looking at? We did cover some stuff on mapping and tools, but over the next few weeks what we want to look at is we're going to dive in and kind of do a short series on E scouting and we're going to be looking at the way that animals use the landscape. So we're going to identify specific terrain features that just have a higher likelihood to be used. The goal here is just to going to be able to get you to identify areas where it really narrows down that potential movement so you can capitalize that and find places to look while you're in the field or scouting to help you find sign and just get into animals and into their zones faster. So over the next few weeks we're going to consider a few things like hill pitch travel routes and identifying that preferred habitat. And we're going to take this almost surgical or mathematical approach and we're kind of going to grade these areas as we identify them on the map because what you might find is I talk about a terrain feature and you go, they're everywhere. Well, what I'm going to do is help you pick the best place out of numerous spots that's going to have the highest likelihood of being used for whatever those Animals are using it for. So this week, we're going to be thinking about travel routes, and our train feature that we're going to focus on today is going to be saddles and benches. We're going to identify those on the map, and then we're going to analyze how to distinguish high percentage traffic areas. Then we're going to look at what that might look like as you take that into the field. How can we use this knowledge that we found on a map in a digital form from the comfort of our home or on our onyx map on our phone, whatever, and how can we utilize that in the field? But before we do that, I'm just going to recap some of my early spring elk scouting from last week and how terrain can be king. One thing that I always enjoy, you know, outside of the actual season, is getting out into the field and just continually learning more about the animals, the environment, the terrain, and really trying to hone in and kind of figure out, okay, well, what's my hunt plan going to look like? I know that currently the elk and mule deer have not fully grown out. They actually aren't even really that close. But what I've been doing is I got out in the field and just tried to identify and scout a few. A few areas. I just like to have that knowledge of animal movements and the way that animals kind of utilize a particular area. And so I went out scouting for elk. I just couldn't. You know, it's like one of those things. I just can't help myself. I just got to get out, see what I can find, see what I can learn. I actually glassed up a pretty good bowl already. You know, growing out, looking pretty good. This is just a general elk area. I've got an archery tag. And so, you know, thinking about it, I'm not really looking for thinking about, oh, I'm going to go find where the bulls are right now, and that's where I'm going to hunt. It's not that I'm actually looking for the way that elk are currently utilizing the landscape. So I'm looking at what are the cows doing right now? Because often the cows get into this pattern and they use familiarity in that kind of herd mentality to use an area. And they kind of often have this little home range where this is how they use this, and they're kind of always there in certain places. And I know that when the rut comes, what happens? The bulls are attracted to those areas that the cows are holding in, and that becomes my zone. For September. So I went into a particular spot and started looking and scouting, going like, okay, this is going to be a great spot for archery, elk hunting. Okay. I found. I identified some water sources and these other things. And, you know, in this, like, so there's like this draw, there's these two big canyons, There's a ridge in between, and then on one side, there's like a creek and plenty of water, plenty of food. You know, it's got feeding areas, has got really just great habitat on both sides. In my initial thought was, oh, I should drop a trail cam on one of these water hose wallows, which the elk are definitely using. But as I go down the hill, there's countless numbers of them. Okay, well, I don't have enough cameras or the bandwidth or whatever to just go cam up all these. These waters on both sides of the mountain. It's just not. It's just not feasible. It's just not possible. There's plenty of water. But I do want to understand, well, are elk using this? What. What are they doing right now? How are they using this? And so, you know, I pull out my maps, I started looking and I realized that there's this really great terrain feature of this kind of bench, like, saddle on the ridge. Not at the top, not at the bottom, kind of top third of the mountain. And it just seems like a natural travel corridor. So instead of focusing on the water on either side or the feeding, how do I narrow down where these elk might be moving? So I set up two cameras, two trail cameras on this. It wasn't a very, like, let's say it's probably where this train feature hits maybe, I don't know, 100 yards wide. Set up two cameras, kind of one on, facing each direction and let it soak just to see what happens. Because my goal here is to just identify and analyze the movement of these animals. And sure enough, you know, I'm getting, from the time I put it in, essentially every, pretty much every evening and morning, a herd of elk, cow elk moving through. And then there'd be the occasional, like, spike or whatever. But this area was clearly a spot that was concentrating movement between two good habitat types. Okay, so it's narrowing down kind of within this giant terrain where I know that there's elk, it's got great elk habitat, what have you. I was able to see, okay, they are moving through from here to here, from there to there. And we're going to look at why they might be moving between these places and why this was a good, essentially Pinch point where I could use. I mean, it was effective enough that I'm consistently, every morning and evening, getting pictures of elk going from this one spot. I could go put those cameras in. I mean, I don't even know how big this area would be, like multiple square miles. Right. And I could put them a lot of places and never get an elk, or I could put them maybe even on that water source and get one or two pictures every however many days. But instead, I'm getting continual pictures and movement. Because this is a designated travel route, It's a place in the mountain where they are continually using. And I was able to identify that really just by having my offline maps on my phone. I was in the field, like, identifying this, and I had already identified it to when I, you know, as before I even left. But, you know, when I got into the field, knowing, okay, this is a place where I can actually, instead of trying to target this particular water that goes forever, which I know that they're using, how do I concentrate it to be able to get pictures of the elk that are moving through? And this, this travel route and this saddle on this bench was the way that I could do it. So just by knowing the terrain, being able to read that map, and going and finding that spot, going, wow, this is actually a perfect. What I'm going to use is a term that whitetail hunters probably know a lot, A pinch point that narrowed down a lot of great habitat into one particular area that allows me to kind of concentrate my hunt and find even being potentially a great starting point for when I go into the field during the season. So the terrain feature that we're going to be talking about today is kind of two terrain features that I think are similar and different. So what we're going to be looking at is saddles and benches. And now, when we think about terrain features, every kind of terrain feature could be used in a different way. What we're capitalizing on here is travel routes. So we're trying to take a large area and narrow down the places that animals will move through. Now, they could be anywhere in that large area for the most part, but we're trying to identify, and whitetail hunters can associate with this on a smaller scale, a pinch point, a place where it kind of funnels them or narrows them, where it makes it easier to identify a single spot in a large amount of terrain that the animals might be moving through. So the one that we're going to be looking at today is a saddle, so, Or a bench. And they are different, but they can kind of be used within travel routes in the same way because they have similar features. So I'll kind of define what a saddle and a bench is and how they're different. So you can think about a saddle as that kind of natural pass between. So you could think of it like a dip between two peaks. So it acts as this low point that connects maybe the two peaks or maybe connects two different habitat types. Right. Could be like one canyon on this side goes down bigger. You kind of think of a saddle is connecting two bigger in some ways, like pieces of habitat. Where there's good habitat over here, good habitat over here. They're separated by this big ridge. And to get to it, there's this high, like this high ridge, and then there's this one low point. So you can see this on a topo map based on the contour lines. And it forms this, like, hourglass shape with rising on either side. And then this low spot in the middle that's going to indicate this elevation change or this dip of the saddle. Think about it like a horse saddle, where there's the horn and then the back part comes up and you sit in the middle. Saddles are important because if you think about a ridge and let's say an elk or deer want to get from one area to another, okay, draw a line. And there's this mountain in the middle. Well, wouldn't it make more sense for them to go across the lowest point? Which it does. And so what it does is it funnels them to this smaller area. Now, these saddles can be small. They can be miles across sometimes, but it's often an indicator of an area that would allow for a good travel route. Now, a bench is a little bit different because you think of a saddle maybe going between two areas. Now, a bench I think of is it's just this relatively flat spot or a gentle sloping area, often at the base of steeper terrain. So it kind of creates this shelf feature on the landscape. So it's an area of flat between steeper terrain. So this could be on the face of a mountain. Can even have a bench where it drops down, benches out, drops down again. This can be in a draw, like in the middle of a creek, where it goes down steep, benches out, drops back down in. It could be on a ridge where the ridge is coming down. It kind of benches out, makes a stair step. So if you're thinking of it in a flat, I guess 2D line. So you start at the top, and it's steep down, and Then kind of flattens out, goes to the right. Let's say we're at the top, left corner, draw our finger down, and then you just kind of level it off a bit and then drop back down. Now, on a ridge, the thing about that is the bench can kind of often act similar to a saddle, where it creates an easier way of getting through maybe some potentially difficult terrain, or maybe it's just a, a feature that happens to happen be different than what's around it. Now, a saddle, oftentimes you think of it as like at the top between two mountains, but there can be a main ridge and then what I identify as things as finger ridges. So think about the way a mountain lays out. There's a main ridge. It's like the highest ridge on the whole thing. Maybe the mountain runs, I don't know. We'll just pick a direction. North, south, doesn't really matter. For this example, mountains running north, south, that's the main range. You look on a map, it says mountain range. Okay, the direction of the main mountain, that would be the main ridge. Now off of that, there's all these other ridges going east, west on either side, boom, boom, dropping down toward the bottom. And even within those ridges, then there's even more ridges going the opposite direction. So there's ridges, ridges, ridges, ridges upon ridges. Okay, now sometimes you could get these saddles, not necessarily at the top between the peaks. On the main ridge, there could be the spot where another ridge drops down and maybe comes back up for a little bit and drops back down. That could create, you know, natural saddle. Or it'd probably be more considered a bench. But sometimes, you know, depending on how the, the hill and mountains laid out, you can have like a saddle, but on a ridge that's one of those finger ridges. So we're going to think about terrain in that way. And now I think it would be good to kind of dip in and see. Okay, well, what do these look like? Or like, how would I identify these on a map? The easiest way to identify. So I'm actually, as I do this, it's just so much more useful for me to explain it while I'm looking at it in a way. So I'm just, I'm pulling up my onnx mapping software because that's what I like to use on my computer. You can use whatever you like. But, you know, some of the features and things might be what I'm talking about on Onyx. But I will also say that this, like e scouting technique that I'm using to Identify these travel routes is the same technique that I used on paper maps. Maybe you're old school, you're pulling out a paper map. You can still do this. I just like the onyx tools because I can take it into the field, I can drop the pins. It creates, like, this really good way of scouting and looking at these train features. So this is just. I'm going to go through it and we're going to identify these terrain features, and then what we're going to do, the kind of, the fun part of it, I guess, is we're going to look at kind of a way of grading these terrain features. Not all saddles are equal, not all benches are equal. Not all of them are going to be preferred travel routes. You could look at a map and no joke, you could, you could be in your hunt area, maybe you pick three canyons, and there could be 50, 100 spots that maybe, if you could identify as this terrain feature, well, which one's the one that they like to use? Which one can help us narrow it down? Which one is the zone where elk are going to be in that area, and maybe not the other ones. And what's the difference between them? Because you can have a habitat or terrain and maybe it won't be used a certain time of year, or maybe the one gets used and the others really don't, but there's a reason for it. So we're going to look at kind of grading that. So first we're going to identify it so you can just, boom, look at a map and figure out what I'm talking about. And then the next, once we've identified it, now we're going to start analyzing it. And that's the fun part for me. I, I like to, you know, really analyze the things that animals are doing. And when I have hunt tactics, it's often based on knowledge of the animals. And that's key. Like, if you've learned anything from this podcast, you need to know that understanding animals, animal behavior, and the way that animals move through landscapes and other things is what really helps you, you know, utilize the tactics. For me, I think, like, there's a couple uses for especially like trail cameras and other things. For me, I utilize trail cameras in the way that a biologist would use trail cameras. I don't necessarily need to find a certain animal. I want to understand the animals. And often I use them where it's legal or whatever, pretty much year round or even out of the season. Not to go, oh, here's a good hunting spot. I'm Using it to like, identify how animals utilize landscape, to learn about the animals, their movements and that thing. Because what I can understand about animals, and just a lot of this comes from, you know, being out there and watching and observing and seeing how they do certain things and correlating it to other factors, environment factors, different things. Right. But when you can associate tactics with the way that animals exist, then you can kind of find things that are repeatable and consistent, and it, it brings a lot of success. So I'll. I'll kind of identify also ways that we can partition this out for whatever you're hunting, because the tactic is the same and it doesn't matter if you're hunting mule deer, whitetails, elk, but what we're looking at when we grade it might be a little bit different. So let's, let's think about whether you're just listening. You're driving, you're listening. You don't have to have a map open. I'm just gonna go have my map kind of go through and describe some of this. So I've got my Onyx app open here. And we're going to think about. We're going to first look at these saddles. Okay. There's a couple ways to do it. Now. A lot of people like to throw down with what would be the 3D kind of map, which is great. You can see a lot of features on there. Like, you can see the terrain, you can see how the mountain lays out, kind of like you were there. I don't necessarily know if that feature, not that it hurts, but it's probably not the easiest way to identify certain benches and saddles because sometimes it's not as apparent, sometimes it's slight, Sometimes it's easy to miss when you're looking at all the, all the greenery, all the. The shape of the mountain, everything. Like, sometimes it's easy to miss these really apparent ones in another way. So the first thing that I do when I'm looking for terrain features is I turn on the feature that shows terrain. A topo map. It's the old school way of doing it, but it's actually a lot faster at identifying. I could even look at it in a 2D version and within seconds often identify a few terrain features. So the first one is the easiest to identify is gonna be that saddle. Often a saddle will have two high points, so like essentially a circle and a circle and then a low point. So it creates this hourglass shape. Seeing that hourglass shape, you could just pin it and go, saddle. Okay, you Those are easy to see, too, between, like, maybe on a mountain range, where you go, oh, here's a saddle goes between this, goes over this ridge, and there's a high point. There's the top. There's the top. Here's a lower spot. What's the lower elevation spot to get to another place? Now, the little bit harder one to find is when you have something like this on, like, a. Not a main ridge, like a finger ridge. Okay. And I kind of think of it like a saddle sometimes, or it could just be a bench. The place where I set that camera, that in the story, it was actually, I identified it super fast because there was a finger ridge coming down and a circle on it, and then it dropped off again. It was steep terrain, follow by this, like, flat spot. So it wasn't necessarily like a true saddle, but it saddled out on the bench and then dropped down again, so created a really identifiable terrain feature. Now, another way to identify these benches is you're looking, you see all these lines stacked, like, close topo, steep, whatever, and then it gaps out, maybe. Generally, I would look for these on a ridge, particularly these benches on a ridge. We can look at benches in other ways for bedding more on a face. But what we're looking for here and also for elk ridge bedding is. Is very popular. Like, they like those flat areas. So what I'm looking for quickly is I go, okay, here's the ridge coming down. Maybe I could do this in 3D a little bit and then have the topo on as well. Often I just kind of, in my first initial look, I get rid of the satellite imagery because it's just distracting. I'm just looking for terrain feature. We're talking about terrain here, and we're thinking about terrain in the way that elk or deer or whatever will utilize it for movement. If you think about. This is something that I learned as a kid. You know, animals like to go the easiest route. And it's very true. They will be in really rough, hard terrain. But. But if they can take a way that saves energy, they will. It's a survival situation for them. They're out there all day, every day. Think of them as in shape, right for the mountains. But if they can walk on a trail which uses less energy and they can walk more level, they'll do it same as us. If they can hit a old logging road to get from point A to point B, they'll do it. If they can go up a ridge and. And it's easier than the steep face on either side, they'll do it. If they're going to go from point A to point B and there's a low spot in the mountain, often they'll do it because it's easier walking. They're being efficient. We all do it. When we're traveling, we do the same thing. Unless it's like we've spotted something, we need to stock it, we need to go a certain way, go the best way, not the easy way. For the most part, we're traveling those same routes and ways as well. And so when we're looking at these train features for traveling, we're thinking about, okay, what's the most convenient way for these animals? And now how do we narrow down that spot so we can hone in on it either on our hunt or identify maybe potential areas where it'll concentrate animals if we want to kind of see it. Just test the theory is, is there elk, is there deer in this? Okay, let's, let's look at this travel corridor, this travel area, this easier route. So the topo is a good way to do it. We've got our lines and we can see now on a bench, I start to look for ridges. If you aren't real familiar looking at a topo map like in 2D, throw the topo in 3D. Okay. So it shows you the lines and gives you those terrain features. I actually, on my map here, there's on the Onyx one, I can do a topo map in 3D and I can turn on what's called lidar. So this is high definition topography. So it just shades certain areas. I mean, there's paper maps that have that same almost 3D look. I think that that's probably the most efficient topo view is like a 3D map shaded with lighter because it allows you, if you aren't familiar with it, you can put it in 3D. You can kind of make the mountain look like a mountain to you. So you can, with a quick glance, identify a ridge, identify a valley. There's probably like a little water source or whatever. On a topo map, if you're looking 2D, just as a recap, if you aren't familiar, valleys always point up. So the topo, like a topo line is an elevation line. I guess it's always good to recap all the basics, but a topo line is an elevation line that pretty much is always at that elevation band. Always continues right now as it goes up the mountain, the closeness of the lines together show how steep it is. So the further Spread out there. The more mild the terrain, the closer they are together, the steeper it is because they're, they represent increments of change. So like often an index line might be every 200ft or whatever. It depends on what your maps are. So you could have a dark line at 400ft different or like 6400 and then another dark line at 6600 and then between that there's the lines would essentially this not dark lines would be a percentage of that showing you how much you're going in. Okay, so those. Yeah, I mean, I mean it just depends on how your map set up. Like some maps show it in. The next lines would be in like 50 foot increments or 25 foot increments, whatever, 100 foot increments. So we've got our map here. It shows the ranges. Oh yeah, I was saying valleys. So a valley to know if it's like, if you're just looking at a 2D map, you go, well, which way is this going? Is this a ridge? A ridge points down. So you go down ridges and up valley. So if it kind of makes an arrow and points toward a higher number, that's the valley. And if it's like, let's say kind of makes an arrow and points down to a lower number, that's a ridge. Just for those looking at maybe a 2D map. But now you can just flip it onto 3D on your e scouting and you can easily identify it. But it's good to, it's good to know these things like the understanding the basics. So we've got the ridges. Now we're looking for a place where it benches out. And so that might be an area where. And these can be often hard to see. So we can easily see a ridge. But now we're looking, we see. Okay, well in 3D sometimes maybe 3D is a good way to actually see a bench. Just doing it in the topo because you can visually see them sometimes. Sometimes they get a little bit missed. So we're looking for anywhere that, hey, maybe the train feature comes up. Maybe there's a circle on a ridge. That's an, that's a good indicator. That's like, like I said, where it creates, like makes this hump and creates a natural saddle within a ridge. Excellent train feature. Another one is where you might see those lines really gap out. Like it's really consistent. And then gets real gradual. So it's steep and then gradual and then steep again. That's a really good area of a bench. And and sometimes you'll see, you know, going up to that, like another valley goes up to that in a way, because it kind of carved out that bench over time. So those are. Those are good features to look at. There's other ways to do it with some tools. I actually just dove in. It's. This is on Onyx. They've got. It's called Terrain X. It's just in beta right now. This is like. I mean, and I've used it, been running it. It's actually got some really good features. So what this one does is it, like, allows you to analyze the terrain. And you'll see this on, you know, mapping software, where you can analyze the terrain in a few different ways. And this will also help you find these, like, hidden benches or hidden saddles. Sometimes they just aren't. They don't just stand out. You would think they would, but they don't. You know, you're looking at this map. You're looking at 3D mode. You're kind of cruising around. I'm looking at a place that, okay, I know for a fact it was a great travel corridor. And I'm looking at it just without the topo on in 2D. And I. It's not. It's not apparent. It's not. You see a lot of them. You know, you're like, okay, I think this is it. But there's other places you go. Okay, well, how flat is this area and why. Why does it matter how flat it is? It just kind of shows a change in terrain compared to the terrain around it. So this is gonna get a little technical here, but not really. We're just going here. So if you've got in your mapping software, this is like, for the Onyx elite membership. So I don't want to try to just talk to one specific group of people, but I do want to tell you of tools that kind of help this process. You can definitely just do it Topo and every software out there, I mean, you can jump into Topo. Okay. On this Terrain X feature, what I can do is I can essentially have it highlight a few different things. So I can go slope angle. So this is really good for, like, mountainous terrain where, hey, it's a steep area. And I am looking for potential benches, especially. Let's think we're elk hunting. I'm looking for a bench or even maybe not. This is getting a little bit out of what we're talking about for travel areas, but even, like, bedding areas for elk. So what I can do is I can take that slope angle, it'll start at 90 degrees straight cliff. So if I drug the bottom one up all the way to 90 degrees it would. In this particular one, it darkens everything that's not that feature. So 90 degree vertical cliffs would be shown. If I'm a rock climber, I could probably just bump it up to 90 degrees and find my rock climbing zone. Not looking for that. I'm looking for those more gradual areas. I'm looking for, let's say I'm in a real. Maybe I'm in a steep zone or a moderately steep zone. I can maybe drag top down 90 degrees down to 8 degrees. So it shows zero, which would be perfectly flat to 8 degrees. And it's now highlighting these. Okay, well when I look at this area that I map on my, on my test map, here's what's highlighted in that. Roads essentially. Yep, that makes sense. They're pretty flat. And then there's ridges, there's a couple ridges that are actually real gradual ridges. Man, that's telling me that that actually might be a really good travel corridor. Because I look on the other sides and I could say, oh, okay, like on the. Here's a ridge, it's light, so it's a 0 to 10 degree ridge and it goes all the way to the bottom. It's a long ridge. Now I could, I'm looking at my little saddle here and that little saddle that I dropped a camera on is in that. I could even bump it down if I want. Even more like flat spot. And I hit 5 degrees and the only place that on this entire mountain there's a couple main ridges where there's some 5 degree. And then out of this area where I put that camera, the only 5 degree little spot is right at that little is a ridge comes down, it bumped back up. It's just this anomaly in the mountain. It's this flat spot where it connects two different areas. And it's a tiny little zone and it's really actually kind of hard to see. If I was out there just on my own, without maps, I don't know if I could find this, you know, unless I looked upon it like, wow, this is weird. It's steep terrain. And now there's this like on this ridge, this little flat spot, it almost makes it dip, to be honest. And because of that it created the low spot that the animals utilized to go between two areas and his travel corridor. Bingo. Now I can also do, and I hope that people are kind of keeping up with this. And if you don't get this. It's okay. This is just an additional tool. So I'm putting this back 0 to 12 degrees. So what that's showing me is what this is leaving is it's darkened everything else around it. I'm gonna just focus on this other ridge. Cause I think there's another ridge here that I didn't even really consider. It's kind of a couple miles away from where I was at, but. But now I'll probably consider it. So I've got this ridge and I go, oh, okay, this is a. This is a gradual ridge, right? This could be a potentially good. It's a long, good ridge. It's not narrowing it down. But this could be a good potential bedding area for elk based on a few other factors. So I got this. This 0 to 10 degree ridge. And now I'm going to see, well, how steep is it on the other side? So I'll bump it up and go from the bottom up and starts to lose it at around 30 degrees, which, you know, is a pretty good dropper slope. So I go, oh, well, okay, this ridge. This ridge could be pretty good, right? Compared to the relative terrain around really flattens out. The ridge almost acts as a bench. And then within this ridge, there's some. I drop it in 0 to 8 degree benches within this. Okay. It's interesting because I'm taking this giant area, thousands, millions of acres within a unit, and I'm highlighting a few things that I know that animals use. Oh, okay, look, I just found another awesome little bench, like, sadly, kind of bench. Just like I had where I have that camera. I've got top of the mountain, drops down. I never identified this before, but this slope angle really helped. I dropped it to zero to 8 degrees. And there's one spot that's shining within this good particular point in the mountain. I'm actually just going. While I'm talking and doing this podcast, I'm dropping waypoints and saying this looks like a sweet spot. So that's another feature that you can use. And then you can also utilize a similar shading where it shows you, like, slope aspects. So I can click north and it just highlights everything that would be a north slope or highlights everything that would be a south slope or northwest slope. And honestly, you know, when you're looking at a map, especially when you're going in 3D mode or whatever, you could. You could orient. Okay, the map north up and you got like a paper map is kind of easier to say, okay, what's the orientation of the slope? We're talking about slope aspect. So that's the direction that the slope is facing. So if you're standing, depending on the slope, what direction are you facing? So a south facing slope means the face of that is like if you're on it, it's looking south, the mountain is looking south. South facing slopes, just as kind of a recap are often the ones that gain more sun exposure. The sun moves, rises in the east, sets in the west, moves across the sky. And so everything that's facing south actually in the northern hemisphere gets that sun and becomes that drier side. The north face is often on a mountain. The wetter side, it's got, it's got more moisture, more shade. It's the shaded side of the mountain. So when you think about bedding and north face is, is good for bedding. When you think about, depending on what they're eating, elk, south faces are good for that. And then you kind of also can add in like south, west and western aspects for feeding. Or south, south and west seem to be the southeast side you get more often feed the southwest side you kind of get a little more bedding. And then as we move toward the north, you know, you get more bedding. Is the west often, you know, depending on, often gets a little more shade depending on how that actual mountain's laid out. Because sometimes you get shadow from other parts of the mountain. So it also depends on which direction the mountain's going. That's a lot. It's a lot of information. But we're going to make it simple here and we're going to dive into now ways that we can grade the slope. So. Oh, and then another tool features like an elevation band, if you've got that. But you know, so if you're like, hey, I want to find a bench within the top third of the mountain, you can kind of, you know, highlight that as well. These are all just tools of, hey, I've got mapping software, I've got, you know, how do I utilize it in the best way because this is designed for hunting, you know, you aren't going to go on. Well, I don't know, maybe I don't think like Google Earth has those, those features. I haven't used it for this kind of stuff because I like to drop pins and use onyx and take it in the field. That's why I use it. But you know, utilizing those train features and stuff like that, that can be a huge added benefit to finding these secret little. Okay. Like identifying from home where animals might move through that you might not catch just by being out there or just, you know, maybe just looking at a satellite image of a map. You probably aren't going to find these things. So flipping on the topo, analyzing the terrain, really beneficial ways to find these. These places that we're looking for. Okay, so now we're going to dive into kind of the. The grading aspect of it. What do I mean by grading the terrain? So you could have a saddle that isn't animals they've never crossed through, or very rarely, you could have a saddle that daily, twice a day, animals are going through. You could have a bench, you could have an area. You could be in an area where there's 15 ridges. And for some reason they cross the face of this one ridge, the other part of this ridge, but they never really hit the bench that you're on. And there can be a bench that's like, gets used daily, multiple times a day. Okay, well, why is that? And there is a reason, and there is some logical thinking to it. So what we're going to do is we're going to think about travel. So we're thinking. We're looking at. I'm going to take bedding off the table for the most part right now, because benches are great for finding elk bedding. Keep that in your mind. But what we're going to talk about now is not bedding areas. We're talking about travel routes. Okay. So we're, we're thinking about large areas. And so why would we focus on travel routes or. Or preferred travel areas? Well, it's taking a larger portion of terrain, an entire micro habitat, I guess. Right. Something that has everything. Food, water cover, big canyon and narrowing the animals that might be moving through that to a specific spot. Whitetail hunters, we're calling it a pinch point. And what that does is it allows us to focus on certain areas where we're highly likely to interact or encounter animals. Okay. And we'll talk about how we can utilize that in the field here after we identify it. So we're talking about travel routes. What does a travel route entail? It means coming from and going to. Okay. Why would an animal need to travel? Well, there's quite a few things it could be going to water, could be going to bedding area, could be going to a feeding area in the rut. It could be looking for, for elk, cows, for mule deer does. It could be, I mean, escaping predators. It could be looking to like it's got a bad wind and doesn't feel safe. It could just be, I mean, like, you think about, like, do they just wander around? I don't know. Right. Like, it seems like they're always going to or from something. Maybe they're just traveling country to get to or from somewhere else. When we're talking about our travel routes, not always are. Sometimes we focus in so small that we go like, oh, here's a feeding area here and then a bench and then another bedding area over here. And it's like on the same ridge. And yet the elk are moving. They could easily have fed in that area, but they're over in the, you know, a mile away, feeding there, moving through that same travel route and bedding a mile away on the other. On the other side. And there's going to be some fact. I didn't like why they're in a certain place. But what we're doing with the travel routes is we're trying to narrow down those. Okay. Big canyon to small spot where we might encounter the animals. Okay. So I kind of identified seven indicators that we're going to consider, and these are things that we're going to think about as we correlate it to whatever we're hunting. Coming from, going to. So we're going to first ask the question. Coming from, going to. Okay, we're looking at the map. We've got this whole area open. And I've identified on this map, I've dropped pins on saddles and benches, travel routes, because what. So I've got like, let's say a main ridge, and then I've got some finger ridges coming off that. And each one of those finger ridges maybe has a little bit of habitat, something different, some feedback, whatever. So are they always going to go up and over the top of the mountain? Absolutely not. A lot of times they stay within the basin or, you know, the face. We'll just call it the face, where it's got all these different ridges and they might be going from one area to the next. Maybe we got feed over here on this ridge and then bedding four or five ridges over. How are we gonna choke down, you know, maybe a mile from top to bottom, like a mile swath into a place where they're highly likely to cross through to kind of just give us a focus point. So we've identified a, like, in. Within the steep terrain, this more bench area. It's like easier walking to get over to maybe potentially where they're going to bed. So we're going to. We're going to look at and say, like, what are they going to. Okay. And we Might not know that right away. And this is where now we're kind of switching on our map from topo to like probably 3D, maybe hybrid or maybe satellite. We've already, we've already dropped pins on our, our potential travel routes. Now we're kind of looking at this objectively and thinking like, what do they got? What are we looking for? Okay, so here's going to be some of the things that we're going to think of grading. And when I'm talking about grading, it's like, hey, let's say you're a teacher and you got a paper. And it's like, okay, you kind of get points for this and that. And then there's some things that are just going to de. Qualify the area as being good. And we'll look at that starting out. So think about it as like, we haven't really been looking at the satellite imagery, so maybe now we've. We've marked those places and now we're going to look at it really objectively. So we're thinking about travel routes, where they going from into. And this can change based on what we start to learn off of potential spots. So we've got a bunch of places marked up. Now we're going to look at a wide view and go like, okay, what are we hunting? Let's say it's elk. Okay, it's elk. And we know that they like to feed. They like to feed in the grass. Is there some feeding areas? Okay, here's some feeding areas within this zone that I'm looking at. Okay. And then is it open or is there maybe some potential bedding areas? Okay, well, elk in the mornings, go feed to bed. Pretty much all animals do that. Feed to bed. So they're going feed to bed, feed to bed. So they're often doing that mornings and evenings. So we're going to look at this and think going from, coming from, going to, coming from feed, going to bed, coming from bed. In their evening, going to feed, reverse. Okay. Could also be coming from water, going to bed, coming from feed, going to water. It could be during the rut and saying like coming from wallow, going to bed, coming from wallow, going to feed. Whatever this is. We're going to start to think about these things. Okay, it could be mule deer, could be going from feed, coming from feed, going to bed. Same thing. Right? So we're just going to think about that now. We're going to look at these indicators to consider. The first one is the ease of walking and is it doable or Is it tough terrain? Remember, the first thing we're going to look at is we want an area that creates ease of walking. So what's the terrain look like around it? Okay, we can. We can think about that, but I think first and be like, is this even passable? On the tops of ridges, you might find a saddle. And you look at it with the three, you've marked it, you go, oh, here's a saddle between two mountains. And you realize that it's like, dang near a cliff. Unless we're hunting mountain goats or sheep or something like that. Even then, like, you know, I don't know. It's probably not. I mean, for mountain goats, yeah, it would make sense. But for elk and deer, all right. They aren't going to scale the cliffs. Okay. Even if it creates a saddle. Some saddles aren't easier, they're harder. So instead they'll go around the base, and they'll go all the way around the base of that. There's a cliff kind of face. So we can identify that, you know, based on looking at the satellite imagery. Oh, it's real rocky. It's like an avalanche chute or a scree slide. Sheep and goats will do it. Elk sometimes do it, deer sometimes do it. But for the most part, like, if it looks nearly impassable, it's probably. We can just scratch it off the list right away. Not a good one. Not. Not one that we're going to consider for what we're looking for. We're looking for high percentage travel corridors. Okay. So now. Now we can either agree that, yeah, this is. This is just not a good spot for them to go through. There's easier ways to get around, or it is a good spot for them to go through. Cool. They could be in this particular habitat, the head of this canyon. Okay. If they want to get to this next canyon over here, they've got a steep drop coming down, and then they've got this little flat spot and they got another steep drop. What's the easiest way? The flat spot. It's the lowest spot in the mountain. So they're in here. We expect them to go to the other side. Back and forth. Okay. This. Okay, let's give it a point for that. Now we're also going to look at the orientation of the. The slope or the hill, or not the slope, but the face of the. The slope. So is it north face, south face, east, west? Here's the. I think people get hung up on this. Like, which one should I be looking for? It depends. You can find animals on within every one of these. Because a mountain has nearly like, even on. Let's say we're on the. I'm just gonna go with this, this, this mountain that I'm looking at right now. I think it goes pretty dang near east, west. Put my north up. Okay. It actually doesn't. It goes. The main ridge is going like, I guess, like southeast, southwest. Okay. So within that, on the side that I'm looking at, there is a. So like off the other side of that main ridge, when I look at that, pretty well tempered a lot and a lot of north face. Okay. But even over there, there's south face because there's other ridges coming off and there's some south face on it and then there's some north face. So like, being on which side of the mountain should I be on? Both sides of the mountain can have pretty much every direction of face. And like, how is that even possible? I don't know just how. How it is. So you can. You can literally have south faces on. On you like whatever the mountain is. And you can have a north face on over here and you can have, you know, a southwest little pocket here. Because the ridges go down, they turn the. The streams go one way. I've got one draw going down, like pretty much perfectly north, south, and then another one and then three more that come in going like southwest, southwest, you know what. So whatever. So what we're looking at though is like, what is the orientation of this? Well, we're saying like within this zone. What are we thinking of coming from, going to. Is there a lot of feed here? Is there not a lot of feed here? If there's not a lot of feed, but there is some. Well, maybe we can hone in on that feed zone. And then there's a lot of bedding. So they could kind of go anywhere to bed. But maybe there's an area where it's more intermixed, where there's like a lot of feed, not as much bed. Okay, well, we're going to go from this feed to this bed and mostly identifying that based on the. The face of like which way the. The mountain's facing or the particular side of that other ridge. So we've got all this other habitat. I know this can kind of sound confusing, especially when I'm looking at it and you aren't. But I don't even know if. If looking at it makes a difference, to be honest, because what we're looking at is. We're just identifying. Okay, is this a good Kind of orientation for whatever I'm hunting. Are they going to be able to utilize this habitat in a good way? Because I look at one side of the mountain, I go, okay, I know that there's elk on both sides of this mountain. That's just how it is. Like, there's. There's elk on both sides, probably more elk. You know, there's like a timbered side, a little more timber side, a little more open side. I'm looking at them a little more open side because I'm focusing on feed to bed. Okay. But that doesn't mean that I can't be on the other side looking for feed to bed. In fact, the other side, where there's less feed, I might be able to, well, think about two different things. Okay. I can look at this side and I can say, oh, I've got a saddle going from one side to the other. So this is where the orientation is going to play in. I got a saddle. This side has way more feed. The other side has way more bed. Oh, that. That might be a point of from and to. They're going from this side to that side. There's more of this on that side, more of this on the other side. More options. Why would an elk or deer want more options? Safety, because the wind is a factor. Okay. So actually, the next thing we're going to say is, like, maybe a predominant wind. It's a little harder to. To gauge. You know, sometimes you don't know which way, but you can think about thermals. Okay. Updrafts and downdrafts. You can also think about prevailing wind. Like, is it normally coming from the south here, the west, the east, what's often the wind? And we can open up a wind calendar in here. I'm looking at this area. It's like, all right, I've got a wind calendar. And you can get it to update. You can go and look at wind charts. You can look at whatever and just see, like, what's average. You know, we don't. We aren't going to be right 100% of the time. Mountains changes all the time. But what's like the average wind? Okay, well, now we can start to extrapolate. Okay. This is a better betting zone because of the way that the wind's going. They're going to move over through this saddle to that safety. Or they might go, hey, they're just going to stay on this side and go across here. So now I'm looking for a good bench that they might travel through, because here's A good bedding area over here. Okay, so number three was like, vegetation. We're looking at open vegetation, closed vegetation, bedding, feeding. Maybe preferred habitat in a way, for vegetation. We're looking at mule deer. And you go, ooh, a lot of timber, but here's a good pocket of sage. Yeah, that's a good indicator. Right. Feeding. Feeding area. Now, the next thing I also identify. Say we'll call it, like, number four or five, whatever. Water. All right. Is there a watering area? We're looking at like, we're really grading the habitat in a way, saying, like, from and to. Oh, there's water here. I'm identifying different things that they might need. And then what I'm doing is I'm going to be like, okay, here's the best habitat. Now here's some of the better pinch points. Another thing that I look at the surrounding pitch. So let's say we've got everything in an elk needs. Water, food, bedding area over here. But we're in a pretty steep mountain range. It's like, whoa, it's steep. All right, this one is probably the best for grading travel corridors in saddles and ridges. If everything else is harder to walk. And there's one like bench that's easier. One saddle that's easier. Maybe you've got steep, steep, followed by more gradual valley. Which way they're going to take. They're going to take the easier route more often than not now, not every time, but more often than not. We're playing the odds here. We're saying where out of all this terrain is the most likely to narrow it down. Now, there could be terrain that it doesn't have that, like, hey, I'm in more gradual terrain. Well, maybe you aren't going to have as tight of pinch points. Okay. So we won't be able to narrow it down as much, but within that zone. Okay, this is steep. We come from this real steep. Oh, here's a valley that comes up, and this little. This little valley leads right to this bench. Bingo. We found a feeding area, an easy walking area to. An easy walking area to get to. The other area is a natural travel corridor. Okay. And then the other thing that I'm looking at is, does, like, this particular bench or saddle that I've identified open up to new habitat? Like, is there everything an animal needs in this area? Is there a reason that it could travel between these two? What does it open it up to? Does it open it up to kind of like wasteland, garbage terrain? Yeah, it's like, oh, it Just goes over to this giant sunny side. No reason for anything to bed here. Not good feed. Or does it go into maybe some other good habitat, other good terrain? That's another good reason for animals to move back and forth. It's got good terrain, good terrain. They use that to go between preferred habitats, going back and forth and then another. And then the last kind of indicator that I'm looking at is they like to walk into the wind. The to and from. What's the predominant wind or what might they be doing that time of day? Okay, well, let's see if it's a feeding area and they like to walk into the wind and the thermals are still dropping first thing in the morning. Okay. Once the sun comes up, starts heating it up, the thermals start to go up. But in the morning, initially they're kind of like first dropping and then they're rising. So think about that in a way of like, hey, maybe they're moving at dark, they're moving up into the wind and then they're going to drop down into bedding as the thermals are heating up. Okay, now we're going back to orientation of the hill. What side's going to get the most sun first? The south side. But they're probably going to go bed on the north side. So is there an area where they can walk into drop? Maybe they've got like a ridge. They cross a saddle or not even a saddle. They're using a bench. Okay. They're feeding over here in this lower spot. Now they're walking up the hill, walking up as the, you know, thermals are still dropping and they get to this little easy place to walk. They've hit this top of the ridge. They have two options. They can keep going straight up that ridge toward the main ridge like it's a finger ridge, or they can start dropping down toward bedding. Well, now they've. Okay, what side have they come over onto? They've come over onto a side that would be south facing, which is hitting more sun. Now that thermal's blasting up to them. Which way are they gonna go? They're probably gonna drop down into that, right? They're gonna drop down into that and then they're gonna walk up into the north face on the other side. For betting, boom, we found a high percentage area. Let's mark it. Okay, now we're going to mark that because we, we, we've built out our story. We've kind of said what are they going coming from into. Have we identified a lower point or an easier Place for them to walk. And that matches this story. It's the same for every animal. We just say, what's the story? Where are they going? What are they going to? How's the day planning out? How's it building out? What's the safest route for them to take? What's the most convenient? Boom. I'm at my house and I just dropped a pin on where high likelihood elk are using. Now I can go into the field with this and verify that or gives me a good place to start. So let's look at how we're going to utilize this in the field. Okay, well, let's say we're scouting. This could give us a place to drop down and go. Like, hey, are there elk in this area? Okay, well, man, I just found a lot of sign here. A lot of old sign. Maybe. Okay, it doesn't really matter. Maybe I'm not looking for new sign because I'm. I'm scouting it out. Maybe I'm looking for. Maybe I'm summertime, like place that I was just in. I'm like, it's springtime, there was elk there. You know, resident cow, elk. That's great. But that doesn't do me. I'm like, does. Is this also a place that they're using in September? So I look around, man, there's a lot of torn up trees in that north face just on the other side that they're crossing through. Okay, sweet. Well, I know that they hit this during the rut. They're probably falling cows pushing them. They're doing the same thing in. In a way. Okay, this is a place that I could start my hunt. Maybe I'm on the hunt. They go. It's real timbered area. I'm trying to. I'm having trouble. Elk or quiet. Maybe it's a rifle hunt that's even almost harder sometimes is a scenario where elk are moving through. Boom. I've got a good game trail going right over here and fresh sign on it. I know there's elk in the area. I know they're using this and I know that I found an area that I can narrow it down to. Okay, now I can start to figure out where are they? We don't know maybe how far they're going. Maybe they're walking a mile and they're hitting this pinch point walking another mile. That's absolutely possible. It doesn't matter because we've narrowed it down and know like elk at some point are moving through here. It could be in the dark, whatever. But we know that there's elk in that area now we can start to hunt it in many times. I'll use these like travel routes As a good place to start to call from, Especially if I'm thinking it's a feed to bed travel route. So what I'll do is I'll get, I mean, I've got an example of a couple years ago, Found one of these, drop in and that's where I'd start to call from every morning. And sure enough, Yep. Oh, there's oak down below me. Boom, I've got a play. Or they've already crossed and they're headed toward bedding. Boom, I've got a play. Perfect. I'm in this giant area. And now I've narrowed down based on my mapping and my e scouting area where I can start my hunt from. And I'm getting to more elk sooner as opposed to just willy nilly through the unit calling on every single ridge where, okay, maybe I, maybe I get a call back, maybe I don't. But I know that, hey, this is an area that they're highly likely to travel through. They aren't doing it every day, but it's. Maybe they're doing a little bit more whatever further down. But it's giving me a starting point and getting me into animals sooner. There's a prime example, even just for mule deer hunting. There's a place that I identified. Feeding area, bedding area, Kind of like this perfect saddle. So what did I do start my morning? I would start glassing. And now there was a lot of other areas that they could go has giant area. I'm looking over a couple miles. Mule deer often aren't as patternable as elk. But you know, every once in a while There'd be deer within this particular spot. So what I could glass from anywhere I chose to glass pretty close to that saddle just below it. Why would I do that? Well, it's an area that narrows down the movement. So if one decides to take that saddle, I can make a quick play. So I sit there and glass everything and continually check below me. And sure enough, you know, I would start my day glassing. Every day there's. And over the course of a season doing that, multiple opportunities on deer just using that saddle. I mean, I, I, some of them I just pass up because it wasn't what I was looking for. But then there was one. One day, it was actually in the evening, I'm sitting there glassing and peek up and here comes a beautiful 170 inch mule deer buck. And I'VE got it on lock. I'm already above him. I'm already in position. I move to the little tree, he works out, and I make my shot. So I utilize that saddle in a practical way to be successful while I was just glassing other stuff anyway. So these travel corridors and travel routes can really help you get into animals and kind of narrow down places to look. And by grading it and saying, like, okay, well, I've got a particular area and it has a saddle and it has this bench. Is that a place that animals will travel through? Well, maybe. Right. But I can go. I can look at, analyze multiple places like this, and I can pick the ones and rate the ones that have the most things. Right. Okay. Lined up with the wind feeding area. Go to bedding water, Go to bedding water, Go to feeding whatever it is. Maybe I got one side of the mountain doesn't have much water, but has a lot of feed, and another side that has a lot of water. Okay, well, now what's the easiest way to get between the two? Okay, now I can start. Okay, what's the wind going to be doing in there? Which way? What's a good time that they might be moving to that? Right. So you think about, like, the way that animals move. You think, like, sometimes they make these circuits. Why do they make these circuits? Well, it's because it lines up with all these factors, right? So in the morning, they go up and over and through the saddle, and then in the evening, they circle around because they want to hit water. They circle around the mountain and come in from the other side. Oh, why'd they do that? Well, because the wind's better for their approach for that. So that's why they move that way. So we're looking at it, we're analyzing it, and we're saying, what's the highest likelihood? Spots. And then those are the places that we're focusing on, based on the time of day and whatever, to figure out where the animals are within the particular habitat. Man, I hope you guys really enjoyed that podcast. You know, I think one of the things that is easy to do is just kind of get overwhelmed with the information, whether you've been doing it a long time or not. I think that, you know, maybe you've been elk hunting for a long time. You think? I don't really understand how to effectively escout or what I'm looking at on a map. And honestly, it takes time between. So, you know, like, getting out in the field, understanding the animals, even just thinking about this as a concept and the more that you do it, the more that you look at it, the easier it is. I think of it like this is like, you know, a surgeon can look at an X ray and identify things immediately, right? It's just like, boom, it's second nature. A stockbroker can look at charts and really realize what the market's doing based on the charts. But if you don't have that information, when you look at it, it just like, all looks the same. It all looks confusing. It's hard to, like, what are we looking at? Right? So at first it's, it's just this learning curve of getting familiar with it, looking at it, putting in the time, right? And then getting out in the field and adjusting it accordingly. And at some point you start to look at it and you go, oh, okay. Like, I mean, I, I don't, like, I. I talk about topics that I think are pretty advanced and hard, but whether you're just starting out or have been doing it forever, I think it's super beneficial because it's all the things that I do and not to, I don't know, like, say it in a way where, you know, it's going to take some time. Like, you look at it and hopefully these concepts make sense. Once you understand the concepts, then you can kind of go through and start to learn it for yourself. As you learn it for yourself, it becomes easier to identify these things. Like, it's very easy for me to pull out a map. I can look in a new area and in a matter of very short amount of time identify where animals are going to be. And to be 100% honest, it's very, very accurate. Like, scarily accurate. I can go into areas I've never been and people have hunted their whole life and probably be in the animals just as fast. And that's. It's a really cool technique to develop. You know, I've hunted a lot of places that, you know, might be the first time that I'm hunting it. A lot of different species, a lot of different areas, a lot of different habitat types. And yet I always go back because I understand the animals and how to read a map. And by combining those two things, it's a blueprint of where to start looking. And, you know, more often than not, 75% of the time, what you've identified on the map, when you figure it out, ends up being right. A lot of my hunts start this way, and a lot of the success is attributed to the things that I see on the map. So don't get Frustrated with it. Like, just dive in. And sometimes people get overwhelmed. Like, oh, there's so much to look at. I don't know. It all looks good. It does all look good. That's. That's why we start to kind of really, what looks better? Which ones is a little bit better? 1% better, 2% better. Because it's just increasing your odds of that being the right spot. And of course, anything can be anywhere, really. I mean, you could pick a spot that's not as good and that just happens to be the spot they like, because there's a game trail there and you didn't know about it. Or there's a really productive wallow or water hole. Right? Yeah, that happens. But what we can do is we can start to understand, identify those areas, pick the better areas, and really start to find places where we're going to run into what we're looking for sooner. And that's the name of the game. I've got five days to hunt. I want to be in animals every day. How do I do that? How do I prepare for that? This is that. This is the how. So something to think about. Another thing I want to mention, too, a great supporters podcast. Montana Knife Company. I'm sure you guys are familiar with their products and they've got a ton of awesome knives out there. You know, they even made my Elkhorn Skinner knife, which hopefully will come back. We'll get some of those as it gets closer to season. But, you know, one of the things about them is you can't always get a knife when you want it. They do drops. And so if you're on their emails, get on their emails. But another thing I've noticed is right now there's a lot of great knives actually in stock. So they've got a pretty good. They've been continually trying to build those core knives in stock. So some of the Stonewall Skinners are in there. I see some flat tails in there. One that I've been. Oh, they've got. They actually got mini speedgoats in there. All right. Actually, I thought this was going to be. Oh, that one's sold out. They got one color of the mini speaker, so those might be gone by the time this goes, but I might actually order this right now. That's a great knife. One of the ones that I've been using, and I see that there's some in here is the last week I was doing a lot of cooking butcher stuff. So often I'll, you know, freeze some things and whatever, but I got this Boning butcher knife. Their boning butcher knife is the, I think it's a 6 inch one. It's the smaller one, man. Is it awesome. So if you're thinking about, hey, I've got a hunting knife, but I want a good processing knife, their boning butcher knife is, is awesome. And there's some available now because I think if you wait until the hunting season when you're like, oh, I got an animal, I want one of their butcher knives not going to be available. So, you know, I don't know how many are left. It doesn't give me quantities or anything, but I actually got one. I, I picked one of these ones up last week, about a week and a half ago, and just been slicing and dicing with it. I had some stuff that I froze because sometimes when you're processing, it's just better to break it up into, into different parts or whatever and then do it later. So I, I did a bunch of processing this last week. Like, like two days of sausage making and all that stuff. Sausage make, I made what I make. I made a ton of jerky, jerky chorizo, summer sausage, breakfast sausage, linked breakfast sausage. All this stuff takes time. So I often try to, like, wait till I got enough meat grind batches and then do it maybe one time. So it's like I dirtied up the sausage stuffer once and, you know, or whatever. But yeah, I, I, I picked that up because I knew I was going to be doing a lot of butchering and I'm stoked to use it, you know, breaking down for the rest of this year and into the future. So solid choice. That one's available. There's some chef knives in here too, so it's cool to see this kind of stuff. I mean, now is the time of year where maybe there's a little bit more inventory in a way, something to think about. So you guys can head over to montanaknifecompany.com check that out. I'm just gonna say until next week. Map on. Catch you guys later.