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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. So this week we're going to be diving back into that E scouting and what we're focusing on today is we're going to look at feeding areas. So what we're going to do is we're going to look at how to identify those preferred feeding spots based on our knowledge of the species of whatever we're hunting. So it could be deer, elk, whatever, it doesn't matter. We're just going to understand what's a feeding area. And then what we're going to do is once we can identify those feeding areas on our map, we're going to then look at maybe grading those areas. So we're just going to see which one is going to be more productive when there's so many areas that maybe look similar. So based on what we're looking at in the map, which of these is going to be our best chance at finding animals? And we're also going to look at a few layers that might assist in that goal and how to really narrow down the criteria to help put us on game sooner. So let's dive in, look at the maps and find some food. It really doesn't matter what you're hunting, you know, to find that continued success. I think the more often you're in game animals in animals, the more likely your chances of success and continued success are. Now, some hunts, you know, it's hard to find the animals in that can be the struggle. But you can't take what you don't find, right? It doesn't matter whether you're spot and Stalking or still hunting or whatever. If you, if you aren't finding the animals, you're just kind of out of luck, right? And there's a lot of hunts that I hear people come back like oh man, I didn't see anything. And, and believe it or not, I mean it has happened to me. You know, it does happen. But for the most part when I think of, you know, all the hunts that I've been on, guided, been a part of, I think one of the big contributing factors to the success is being able to find those animals. And really one of the things that I can hone in on is locating those food sources or the areas that animals are feeding. Especially animals that are very crepuscular. Mornings and evenings often. What are elk and deer doing? They're going or in feeding or coming from feed or going to feed of course too. They will feed at night, but those wee hours of the morning in the evening that like 30 minutes before sun up and 30 minutes after sunset are the times where they, you know, increase that activity of feeding. So I mean I'm just thinking of like pretty much every hunting story involves some form of focusing on food or, or looking in those areas or concentrating on it. You know, I think back, I mean so many especially mule deer hunts early season, especially when they're, when bucks are growing out like August. You know, one of one of my favorite types of hunts is August mule deer archery hunt, kind of high country type stuff. And there's a couple things that I know. So I know on those kind of hunts mule deer are you. So mule deer are browsers and we can, we'll talk about this kind of distinguation between different kinds of animals and just understanding the animal. But mule deer browsers. And so in that early season they're actually eating a few more forbs than they would other times a year. But they like that, you know, certain types of feed different times a year. But during the August season they're really cranking up the, the eating and it can be a really good place to focus on. So once I identify like there I went into one new area and I, you know, looking at the typical like sage country and there was these little like small mahogany trees growing and it was like every morning I noticed oh those little mahoganies these deer are eating the, the new buds off this mahogany. I actually didn't even realize that they ate that. But for some reason they liked this like mahogany brush stuff. And so I just started finding more and more places like that. And sure enough it's like, man, I could. I could put myself into deer and on deer in the mornings just by finding this right sage and other, like, other food within that. And. And once I found that, it was like putting me in deer right away. I had a good. This was a couple years. This two years ago, three years ago. I guess I was hunting with my mouth tab on this particular year. But it was like one of those where I went to the Zone. It's an area that I'd hunted before. And. And in the area that I had hunted before where we'd seen tons of bucks, there was no deer. It's like, man, we. Like, this was, you know, 10 years earlier. Me and my buddy went in there. I didn't have a tag. I just went with my buddy and like, we hunted in there a couple days and saw multiple, like, big, you know, 160 to 170 type bucks. And he ended up. We ended up sneaking in on this one buck that bedded in this, like, awesome aspen patch, just like scrubby alpine aspens. And he just sneaked in there, snuck in there. I. I sat back. This was like. This was actually probably longer than that ago. It was a while ago now. Man. Time flies actually, when you start thinking about it. I was thinking about what I was filming with, and I'm like, no, there's tapes in that camera. So we're talking a long time ago. So it was a ways between time periods that I'd hunted this particular area. Anyways, he. He snuck in and I was filming him and he just waited, did that whole be patient thing. Buck stands up, shoots the buck. Just like it was. It was one of those cool perspective things too, because he wasn't that far. He's probably 20 or 30 yards. But it looked like the. When the buck stood up, it looked like it was five feet in front of him because I was directly behind him on some old tape. You know, it was like. It was such a cool hunt. So I went and I'd hunted in this particular area, I guess, multiple times after that, but maybe not that spot. So I went back to that spot and just. There was like, no deer. There was some does nothing. Nothing too crazy. So. So I just kind of went back to that find. Like, maybe it was just, you know, it was a. It was a kind of a dry year and the type of food and forage that those deer want wasn't there. And maybe that's why they were there the first time they went in there. It was a really wet year. Everything was really green. And like a lot of good growth. And it just seemed like there was something missing. So I changed areas and went to this other spot and just, I mean, like the. The type of. I don't know if it was just maybe that particular spot in the mountain wasn't getting the water, whatever, but we went somewhere else and man, it was like it. It was an area that had kind of recovered from a burn real well. So there's like an edge of a burn. And then the old growth was still there. And that, that food source was tall. And there was like that same. That I'm talking about, like that mahogany brush and some bitter brush, big tall sage. And I just, I start glassing there three, four miles away. And just antlers everywhere. It's like a big bachelor group of bucks. I ended up sneaking in on them and getting close. Like just. I was hunting with the mouth tab, so I had to get super close. I didn't get a shot at any of them because the brush was so tall. But I was right in amongst them. 20 yards. They're feeding in the evening. And it's one of those things where it gives you a place to concentrate, gives you a place to find animals, whether it's elk, whether it's mule deer. Focusing on food sources. It's something that the animals are going to go to. I know like, there's times where I'm out with new area. Maybe it's like last year, a couple years ago, hunting with my brother and dad and we had early season mule deer tags, brand new area, never been in there. We all sit down and it's like I'm sitting on the mountain glass and we're all glassing and I'm picking out the deer, right? Because I'm. I can look at the mountain, see the food source and go, oh, that's good. And honestly, I spent a lot of time too before that hunt in that new area looking over my maps and identifying what would be maybe a productive spot for deer to be based on food sources. And sure enough, first morning out, that's where I'm glassing. That's where I'm turning up deer. And so it really is one of those places where if we understand that we can do some e scouting, we can highlight those areas and really focus our attention. It allows us to get into games sooner. So I think the first thing that we're going to have to do here is just identify what is a feeding area. And that really depends on the species. So what we first have to do is really look at what animal are we hunting and what is their preferred food source? And then where is that preferred food source? So if it's mule deer we're talking about that. Browse more. And if, if, if this is like, what we're really focusing on, this podcast is the E scouting portion of it. So you might have to do a little bit of additional research. Okay. But every, every area and species is a little bit different. I did on the outdoor class. If you, if you guys have outdoor class and you haven't seen my mule deer one, I, I really dive into the food sources in the time of. Just because my first mule deer course was really about understanding the animal and how to hunt mule deer that way. So looking at the way that the animal does something and then honing in on that tactic and you'll notice that theme throughout the podcast. Cause it's a way that is very successful at hunting when you really understand the animal. So if you're a guy out there, you're like, I need to know more about mule deer. Just, I've already got it on the outdoor class. Go there and you can listen to all the other stuff. And actually you can use, I think code Live Wild. It gives you like a pretty good discount on it if you, if you don't have that. So there's a little bit of plug for my online courses. But also I think it's a really good resource to go to that, that dives into this understanding the species a bit. So deer, particularly mule deer and white tail deer browsers. Right. Whitetails is even now if you're, you're a guy that's like, I'm maybe not a western hunter yet, or I hunt mostly whitetails. You guys probably already know this, right? Food source is huge, especially for the time of year. Right. You got different types of hardwoods that they, you know, like crop drops, like acorns and stuff like that. We, we don't have a lot of that out west, but we do in certain areas. And what the deer and things eat is just completely different in some areas. But for the most part, deer browsers. Okay. And then we can go over to elk and elk are grazers, so they, they really like that grass. Now is that saying that elk aren't gonna browse and deer aren't gonna graze? No. Like you will see elk hitting and hammering some willow. Right. Like they, they like that as much as they like anything else. And deer really love that as well. And then you'll also see deer in these grassy meadows feeding. But their primary food Source elk or browsers, they like that grass. Or, sorry, grazers, getting all tongue twisted over here, but elk or grazer, so they like that grass, like something that cattle would eat. And then deer browsers. So more of like the brush and shrubs. Something that, like, a goat would eat. You know, it's like if you're. If you aren't too familiar, if it's like if it's a goat, if a goat's gonna eat it, a deer will probably eat it. Kind of a good way to look at it. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna identify those feeding areas. Now, another very important and maybe often, I don't know if it's underlooked or overlooked, I don't know, or maybe it's looked at more than the other. Another major food source in certain areas is agriculture. That's especially true when it comes to whitetail hunting. But even for elk and deer, right. If you've got a pivot field at the base of a mountain, it's just a magnet for animals. And that's the facts. Right? You could go. You can pretty much go anywhere and find a field and go, yeah, there's animals that are going to hit this or are hitting it, whether it's at night, whether it's in the morning, whatever, especially elk. I mean, elk love those, those alfalfa fields and big grass fields like that. But deer hit them as well. So it's. It's a big food source and should not be something that we overlook when it comes thinking about hunting. Now, those are generally always on private property. Sometimes that private property allows hunters on it, sometimes it doesn't. But what we could be looking for is that is a feeding area. Okay. And then maybe there's places that they could go from that feeding area that we can hunt. And that's really something to think about. So we've got browse, we've got grays, and then we've just got, like that agriculture. Those are our feeding areas. So we're gonna have a certain set of criteria based on what we're hunting. What do these animals eat and is it available, and then how do we identify that on a map? Okay, so I'm actually gonna do like I did last week. It just helps me out a little bit. I'm gonna pull up my maps and then I can kind of go through some of the stuff while I do it. I just want it to also be where you can listen to this podcast, absorb the knowledge. You don't have to be like having an App open or anything like that. You could be driving and listen and understand. Because really, we're really focusing on feeding areas now. There is specific food sources certain times of year that maybe you understand and know about. And you're like, oh, okay. One that I talk about a lot that I didn't even really realize deer go crazy over is, like, September. I was hunting them. I think it was Montana the first time that I discovered this. And there is, you know, these little wet spots within kind of drier areas. And that particular year, there was just a ton of elderberry. And I looked in there, and I just see, like, deer on their hind legs trying to just hammer. They're just hammering this elderberry, and it kind of like light bulb situation going, huh? And I pulled out my map and found similar areas that had that same kind of, like, I think in that area, it was a pretty dry area. So it was like, on the north faces of these draws, at the tops of the draws where there might be a spring or something, you'd find these little wet spots of elderberry. And I just pulled out my map and, like, pinned eight or 10 of them. And sure enough, I go to all those spots, and I'm, like, turning up bucks. And before that, I was. There's a lot of area with no deer. And then it's like all of a sudden, bingo. This particular week, this particular time that's a good food source. Happened to be a good year for it, apparently. And the deer hammering it, and it was just like a deer magnet and got on buck after buck after buck because I was really looking for a, like, a really good buck. And, man, I probably just, with that little tactic, turned up over a hundred bucks, you know, and it's like, cool. I passed up a lot of them. I don't. You know, I don't know if that directly led me to the buck that I end up killing, but it got me into a lot of deer. And a lot of, like, allowed me to look over a lot of deer and actually probably keep the faith that, hey, I'm able to turn up some deer and some good deer. And getting into deer when even before was like, they were kind of few and far between in different places. Well, you just. You just found the right food source, lined that up on a map, and continued to find deer in different places. So there's. That's what we're talking about with the food is like, okay, what's the particular food source? And then how can we line that up with something on the map? So sometimes with food, there's a couple. There's a couple things to consider. Sometimes you might be in the field and it's like current conditions dictate what food source is the food source. Okay. So there's some years, like places that I hunted in New Mexico and let's say it was an easy one here. Bears, right? Fall bear hunt, Fall bears in New Mexico. And there's like oak brush everywhere. In many years, there's no acorns on that oak brush. But then some years there's a lot. So I was like, well, what are the bears hitting now? Or what even, you know, other species, what are they hitting now? Oh, well, there's a lot of acorns, so they're hitting those acorns. Okay, well, now I can focus on areas with good patches of acorns. But some years that's not available. Same thing. You could go, I'm just using bears as an example because they're. They've got like very specific food sources that most people can identify. In California, there's some years where it's like manzanita bear like bushes have a lot of berries and the bears just eat them up. They taste like. Actually are kind of good. They taste like a little sour apple candy. They're a little tart, like a little wet. But the bears love them. And some years, like if the wit, like you could get a late winter or whatever it is that they don't make those berries, it's not all the time. Some years are there everywhere. Some years there's a few. Some years it's only at certain elevations. And then just by being out in the field, you go, oh, look at this. At 8, 000ft there's manzanita berries. At 6,000, there's none. I don't know, maybe that's the weather thing, or maybe it's too cold up high or whatever, you know, maybe the thought was inverse. Doesn't really matter. But you're in the field and you go, oh, here's a food source that is out now this year. And okay, now I can start targeting that food source. But then there's just this broad sense of food sources where we can identify good feeding areas that we don't even need to be in the field. We can just say this is a feeding area based on these criteria. So I'm going to go through. We're going to do some things. We're going to think about it. First is a species specific. So we're going to look at. Okay, how are we identifying feeding areas. What does a feeding area look like on a map? So what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to. I'm going to dive in and we're going to look at a couple of different. I think the two examples that I'll use here are going to be just elk and mule deer. Okay. And I'll just think I'll just kind of go over a couple of the things that we can do when looking at our maps to help us identify some feeding areas. So there's a few different layers that we're going to use and then a few different things that we're going to look at. And I'll even. I'm using Onyx, so I'm going to talk about a few of the cool tools that are available on Onyx. Just because it's. I mean, pretty much most hunters have it. If you don't, you should get it because, I mean, there's just like endless scouting potential, really with it. It's a. It's a tool for hunters for. For e scouting and navigation, other things. Right. But I mean, there's just like some stuff that you look at the features and you go, oh, man, I wish I knew that sooner. I wish that was around whenever. It's like, there's some. There's some cool stuff. So we're going to dive in. So first I'm going to talk about. Let's first talk about topography, because I think that that can be an interesting thing to look at. And then we're going to talk about imagery. And, you know, last week we were talking about travel corridors. And I think topography was, you know, pretty, pretty high up there in our list of things that we're looking at. It was like, the way that we're looking at. It's easier to read in topography. I think with food sources, though, we're gonna kind of really switch our focus on imagery. But there's some ways that we can narrow down a couple of spots that we might be looking at. So one of the things we talked about last week was that orientation of the mountain. And even on, like, if I'm in Onyx, I can go in and use that. In the Elite tools, it's the terrain feature. But, I mean, you don't necessarily have to have that to do it. It just really highlights some of the things. You could even go, like, use your. Let's say, let's go 3D mode. I'll just do this way that you can do it. So what I'm talking about is highlighting different Aspects of slope. So maybe we want a south face or a north face, right? You can even go into 3D mode and then you can just set north up and everything. You're like, get a view of what you're looking at, like position yourself like you're looking straight north. Everything that would be facing you would be a south facing slope. And what you should notice on most, on the northern hemisphere, most south facing slopes be a little bit drier. So that might be your more open area naturally have fewer trees. Trees tend to take up a lot of water and so therefore they're often on the sides of the mountains that hold more water or the sides of the hills that hold more water. So often you'll get more openings in there. Now you can have, you absolutely can have timber on south facing slopes, on north facing slopes, you know, whatever. But generally like if you're going to find more open area, it'll probably be on that south facing slope. So if it was the slopes, if you're looking north, you're looking at south facing slopes and then vice versa. You can flip your angle around, you can go south and you'd be looking at north facing slopes. Now the reason that these might be important, let's think about the species that we're hunting, right? So say we've got an elk hunt and we're in very timbered country. Well, if I look at those south facing slopes, I might find more grass because they're grazers. So there might be here in this particular south facing boat. Oh look, there's a little bit of more open area. It's grassy now, maybe it's fully timbered. But the density of timber on that south face might even be less. Or maybe we've got, you know, a species of tree that just tends to be more spaced out. So on one spot we've got more lodge pole where it likes that, more wet terrain. But hey, there's a little bit of a drier face here. It's got some, I don't know, ponderosa pines, which are larger maybe you have, and they often allow a little bit more light through and let a little more grass grow in there. So elk feeding areas don't have to be open meadows. Okay? Elk can feed in the timber absolutely fine in the places where there's good graze for them. And that's a, that's a great thing to think about. Now maybe the exact opposite happens. We're mule deer hunting. It's like arid country, okay? Like high desert. And we go, okay, well all these south faces Are like the moonscape. They've got grass on them but nothing else. Well, it's great for elk, maybe grazers, but maybe not for browsers. So maybe we flip the script. We're like, let's go, let's look at these north faces where they're brushier. Because remember, mule deer are browsers and they want that brushy stuff. Now of course, there could be, you know, depending on how high up the mountain you are or whatever. I'm not saying that you aren't going to find mule deer on south facing slopes. That's not true. But what I am saying is like depending on where you're at and the type of terrain that you're looking at, we need to kind of narrow down, okay, where are the better food sources. And when I'm looking at maps, generally you could pull up a map. Most of the country is like, wow, there's a lot of country here. It's probably all. There's animals throughout it and there absolutely is. But if we're taking that shotgun approach, we're probably gonna have shotgun results. Like we might get a few here and there, but it's not going to be as concentrated. So we're just taking like a precision approach and we're really trying to narrow down the places where, where we have higher likelihood of continually getting into animals is what I like to do. One thing that I talk about all the time should sound like a broken record is I. When if I'm looking at an area that has a lot of something, I try to find the thing that's in lease supply. Okay, so something that they like that's in lease supply. In that story of the deer and the elderberry, there wasn't a lot of them where we're at. And there's only certain kind of places that held it. It was in the least supply. The deer liked it and it just concentrated the deer there. Yes, there were deer other places, but that was a place where it concentrated and happened to concentrate bucks. So how do we figure that out from the comfort of our home while looking at our map? Well, we can, we can analyze what the animals have and then really look at the type of terrain feature that it is. So we're going to be switching on our satellite imagery because our satellite imagery is going to tell us a lot about what the landscape looks like. Okay, so I've got some satellite imagery up here. I'm looking. Let's go, let's go with mule deer. I'm looking at it. I'm actually looking directly north and so look, here's what I'm talking about too. I'm looking north at this mountain. This is a random mountain. I'm actually. I'll tell you what state I'm in. I'm in Nevada. This is a random mountain that I just kind of zoomed to. And within, I'm looking north. And on this north looking north mountain. So there' some south face. I can tell the ones that are like more south face because they've got this drier, open kind of stuff. Okay. But on the other side, there's other ridges on there that would essentially act like, I guess they'd be west faces that are very similar to north faces. Very thick, like as thick as could be. And then within that, there's little draws within that that open back up again. And so what we've got here is, you know, like, any side of the mountain can have all of these things. But here, okay, I've got one valley. Okay, that looks good. And then I've got a mix of larger, like, cover trees, which, you know, more mature trees, probably not great for brows. But then mixed in that, I've got sage. And then these are really like different colors. So I've got like the blue sage, and then I've got that like, darker bitter brush. And in this fringe habitat, I go, okay, this is on that wetter. This is actually on the western side of a ridge within here. And I immediately can identify this as good feed because I look at the other side and I go, okay, well, there's some more grassy open stuff. That's if we're out looking at elk, maybe I'd think about that as a food source. But for these deer, I'm like, I see these little pockets and benches, and now I even find this, you know, the spot where the mountain comes down, it kind of benches off. So that's telling me that's an area that is going to be holding, like, as the snow melts, water settles there and you're gonna get more brush. When you get more brush, you might get more browse. And then on the edges of these things, that's where you start to get that new growth. That's the things that deer like. They like that new growth. So they don't want the stuff that's already fully matured. They want the stuff that's coming up, the stuff that they can reach as well. So there's a lot of, like, good feet in here, it looks like. Actually, now I'm zooming in, I'm like, oh, I can see some Actually from the satellite imagery where it had burned in the past. So it must have been a spotchy burn. I bet you this was actually all timbered at one point. And now within this, I've got some good growth. It's probably. I don't even know how old it would be now. You know, like, decent age to it because it looks pretty healthy. So it was at one point probably more heavily timbered, like everything else. And within these same zones, like these zones that would be just completely treed out or like junipers and whatever, I've got feed habitat. Okay. So it's opened it up to really good deer feed. And this is a place that I can focus on. So the. The next question that I would ask myself with any of this, the criteria of, like, how are you going to grade this? Is like, how available is what I'm looking at. Is this exact thing everywhere? Well, if it is, okay, well, we've got good habitat. We've got a lot of feed, We've got a lot of maybe bedding. We've got a lot of good habitat. So that's saying that, yes, deer can be in here. They've got habitat. How do we know that this is better than maybe somewhere else that looks similar? And what we're going to now kind of think about is how available. Now we're going to look at how available is everything else. So what I mean by everything else, all the other things that were needed for animals to survive, we need bedding, we need security, we need habitat, we need water. So now if I'm looking at this and I go, oh, this looks like a good feeding area. Now I can flip on some layers and look. Okay, you know, whether I. On the satellite imagery or just topo imagery, Is there water here? Is there some springs located in here? Oh, okay, there is. So there's things that are needed for habitat. If I find some areas, it's like there's not really those other things. Oh, it all open. Okay, it's got. Let's go to switch to elk. Right? They like the big grays. And we go, oh, well, it's a million miles of grays. Yeah, they could be in that. And they will be. Right. But it's not helping us pinpoint. So where's a good spot where there's the grays? Next to the COVID next to the water, where it's all. It's a microhabitat. It could be within a mile. You know, animals can move pretty easy. They can go up and down the mountain. But is it There is there some things like distinguishing features that make it a little bit different now maybe there's something like, hey, can we find. We were looking in an area where it's very timbered and we're looking for something that's in least supply, which might be food. There's plenty of COVID not as much food. Okay. There it's easy to pinpoint, you know, openings or maybe some south faces where it's like the timber is more sparse. You know that. That's one thing. What's another thing? Well, just like I just mentioned, only because I was looking at this map and I noticed this particular thing burns. So I'm actually just gonna turn on my. That layer for what I'm looking at now. So you can look at current burns or pass burns. So the one thing that I'm gonna do, the layer that I use, this is in onyx is the trees, crops and soil. So here's some ways that I can find and grade those feeding areas. So we're talking about finding like high percentage feeding areas. So I'm going to switch over to thinking about, well, I'm just going to throw up this historic wildfire real quick just to. For my particular example, what I was looking at, I got this turned on. Look at this particular wildfire was 2017, it looks like. So, yeah, I mean that's a, you know, a perfect time for this stuff to have time to grow back almost 10 years and provide some good browse for deer. Wasn't taken over by cheatgrass, which is good for mule deer. You know, that's a big problem for meal deer. Thing will burn, you'll fill with grass and then, you know, you get wild horses or whatever coming in, eating everything and not allowing the productive browse to grow back. Big problem, meal deer habitat. But this is like this has it. This has the browse. So sweet. We're in, we're in deer, right? And there's a lot of other places that don't have that. Now let's say we're switching over to elk and the same thing. Like maybe it's a timbered area. Well, I'm gonna go, I'm just gonna go more into the Rocky Mountains here. Randomly dive and we'll go into Colorado. So I'm just diving into some random place in Colorado. I don't know if it's a general area. I don't know if it's a unit. I don't know anything about it. I'm just diving in. I don't really care. This is just for Example sake. So I've got this particular area in Colorado, and it looks like I've got a fire from 2018 in here. I've got 20, 20 fire, some recent stuff. I'm zooming in on the country, and it looks like around this heavily timbered, big timbered country, I've got big meadows in the valleys, and then I've got some, you know, burn areas. Some places where there's like, big timber country, burns open up a lot of graze for elk. It's just like essentially a massive meadow everywhere. And often, you know, populations of animals do explode around those, depending on how the fire is burned, because you still need that other habitat. But here we've got fire, we've got burned. We've got, you know, opened it up for elk country and that more open stuff. Okay, we've got a lot of grass. And this to me looks like a great place to say, oh, here's some feed. Okay, so now we've got a timbered area that has a burn. And we go, okay, now here's some feed. What are some other things that might provide feed for elk or. And. Or deer? And we can look at these, you know, a couple different, different times, different ways, but going back to that trees, crops and soil layer. Big one in timber country, especially if there's like logging roads and other things thinning and timber cuts. So, you know, you go, okay, well, what's one elk food source that would have grass? Well, meadows and stuff like that have it. But, you know, oftentimes elk will definitely use those things. But if you're just banking on that's going to be your spot to hunt in that timbered country, you might have been better off finding something where there's a little bit more security and protection for those animals, maybe a little less attention. And timber cuts can be. And thinning can be a great one. That's where, you know, I've got this layer on and I've got a different area and it's showing me, oh, here's an area that's heavily timbered, and it shows me an area where, hey, they've cut out. And look, it's on a. Happens to be a timbered area on a south face where it's getting good sun. I would imagine there's good grass there. And in this particular spot that I'm looking at, I can probably mark that as a. As a highly likely spot that elk are going to be. And around it here, there's looks like some new thinnings where they've gone in, and they've cut out some trees. And so I can go look at those south faces and say, oh, okay, this was all timber. There's a lot of timber around. Foods in lease supply. Now here's some. Here's a potential feeding area within good cover that probably is a little harder to hunt. And I could almost guarantee that there will be elk in that. So what I'm doing is I'm looking at the different layers and then understanding, okay, well, here's some food sources. Now, we can also do this just visually as well. We're using. Remember, we're using the satellite imagery to help identify food sources. And we can zoom in pretty deep and get some pretty good detail and understand, hey, this is what's in this area. So I actually like to do it in both 2D and 3D. Sometimes it's kind of nice to fly around the mountain. See the way that the mountain lays out. You can look at a mountain go, okay, here's ridges. Here's the tops. You know, up in these tops of these basins, we've got more open area. Maybe there's some burn. Maybe there's some. Whatever I'm looking at, I like doing this because I'm dropping pins all over the place. This is just. I don't know. I gotta go research this spot. This looks like a cool place, but, Yeah, I mean, we've got. We've got all these things that we can look at. So, you know, this particular spot that I'm looking at, it's very steep. There's a lot of, like, rocky terrain. Okay. So I go, okay, well, this is. This is where the satellite image comes out. Are they eating rocks? No, they are not. Okay, well, out of all this country, I can start to eliminate some of this stuff. Now I get into this other spot where it's like, oh, it's very timbered. Are they eating maybe something in the timber? I don't know. I mean, there's some stuff they're eating, but they probably need some a little more. And then I pop over two more ridges, and there's, like, a little meadow in one and a burn on the other side. Okay, this is cool. That's. That's. There's some elk feed there. Okay. I can just see this visually. I don't need any other layers other than just, like, looking at it visually. Now I'm in another spot here where I'm looking at it visually, and it looks like it burned. But I look at the ground cover, and when this is. This is on, I see, like, it's got the mosaic pattern burn, which we really like as hunters, where it burned some and then left some cover. That's a great. That's great. Like it generally put nutrients back in the soil, didn't scar the soil. It allows things to grow back. And then there's live trees and cover around. That's real good habitat for pretty much elk and deer. And I look at this and I go, okay, I zoom in and I'm like, man, it's pretty green. But then I see like leaves turning. And what's that telling me? Well, that's probably not grass. That's some kind of browse. Probably not grass. Like, the color is showing me that this. I could probably pull up the. I can actually pull up the date of this. You can satellite imagery and go, oh, is this summer fall? In the fall, grass is yellow, not green most places. And then these other shrubs and things. This is all good browse. So I look at this, I'm looking in an area and I go, this is a cool looking country. Do I think it's an ideal elk country? No, not really. I don't think that, like, there's open areas, but I don't think it's really ideal for elk. I think it's more ideal for deer. But then I go, you know, a little further down the mountain and I see, hey, here's some spots that open up. It's got that yellow or you actually even up higher here, go up toward the top. It's like, hey, it's got this ridge with some yellow in there this time of year. Oh, that's. That's probably some good elk grays. Okay, now I can start pinning that because I'm just visually looking at it like I'd be on the mountain and go, okay, where's some good food sources? Where's some good cover? Now, of course, El can be in this other stuff, right this, there's like some oaky brush stuff too. Maybe, maybe that's some oak brush that. That holds some elk. But I want that other browse around it so I know that they can pop in and pop out. And now I can start to identify that as a feeding area. And this is a potential maybe secondary feeding area and start to build out my plan. But there's a lot of great looking country in here. I'm just flying around going, okay with thinking of elk hunting in my mind, and I look at this mountain, I go, dang, dude, I really want to hunt this. Actually, I don't even know where I am off to Zoom out of it. But I'm looking at it going, this looks awesome. But then I start to analyze and go, I don't know, I mean like, there's a lot of rock on this face. It's pretty steep, which is fine. I don't mind steep. But you know, it doesn't really look like ideal feed in here. And then as I start to get to the top and move back into the range, I. Okay, now I'm into a burn. And I look at that burn and I'm like, just without even pulling up the layer of how old the burn is, I can tell that it's probably past its prime for, for good elk habitat. But then there's like another spot where it looks like, you know, there's live trees and maybe I should even pull up the burns. But I don't really need to because I can go, okay, now there's this backside that's really heavily timbered. And on the edge of that, I bet you this was a more fresh burn because I got some grass. I can see some kind of charred trees in there. And I. But I do see that it's been regrowing. Oh, this zoomed in. There's a lot of deadfall, but it looks good. So I go, okay, well this, this particular side. Now I'm looking. Yeah, this would be like a south facing slope here. It's a little bit drier. Maybe didn't get all that brush. There's good cover right there. And I can see like, I can visually see a couple springs in here too, where it's like brighter green in, in the draw here. Using that says, okay, there's different plants where there's different water sources. That is, it tells me that there's water there and then there's feed here and then cover on the other side. Just by using 3D mode. Satellite imagery scrolling around, I can, I, I can really identify a lot of things now. You're getting a lot of information today. But I think that it's all things that just start giving people information, that things start clicking. Say it was a mule deer and I'm like, hey, it's September. Hey, maybe I can find those like wet spots. This is how I did it when I was like, oh, let's find some more elderberries. Just put it in 3D mode. Flew around the unit like a, an imaginary helicopter. And I highlighted all these little wet spot areas. Ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. All these little heads of springs and it dang near every one of them. There's thick green browse and happened to be elderberries at that time. And I bet you whether it was elderberries or not, they liked that browse. Whatever was in there, it was dry that time of year. So the water provided more browse than other places. And it was just really good deer habitat for the conditions for that time of year. So here's what I would do. I'd grade that. If I'm. Mule deer hunting is a high percentage area. And then I go over here and go, okay, well, here's a. Here's a good feeding area within the timber. It's in limited supply. That's good. Now maybe I'm looking at an area that's a huge burn. I go, it's all feed. Okay, well, some of it's going to be a little bit better than others. Here's a spot in a big burn where it's more patchy mosaic. It's got, you know, some fringe habitat. Okay. It's got cover. And look, there's big creeks going down dang near every one of these draws. Maybe I'll start focusing on this particular portion of the feedback. Feed everywhere. Maybe now I'm going to start looking at habitat because there's feed everywhere. But it's really allowing me to pinpoint a few places and narrow down large area to smaller area where there's a high likelihood that I'm going to encounter animals. There's a couple other things that I'd like to highlight as far as when we're grading an area and what. What would be productive? You know, topography does play a big. If it's all. If it's all equal. Okay, let's say I was recently. Last year, I was hunting in an area where there's a lot of burns is winter range. I was hunting elk grass everywhere. I mean, realistically, like, the whole unit was feed for elk, not for deer. If I had a deer tag in there, I could narrow it down to a lot fewer places. And in some ways, you're like, you know, you just wish there's more good deer habitat across the west. Like, I really think a big problem for mule deer right now is habitat loss. Like, it's just fires and then invasive in a lot of places, Wild horses and other things. Just like, loss of habitat is tough loss of winter range. But elk have actually thrived in a lot of places where you get that inverse, like the habitat type flips and there's more grays than browse. And, you know, they can survive in a little bit different kind of conditions. So in this particular elk hunt There was like food everywhere. So all being equal, what's another quantifier? Well, topography and availability of bedding and then this closeness of microhabitats. So, you know, every food could be everywhere. But maybe, you know, maybe there is a decent. Like there's food and cover and water. Like they've got it all everywhere. How do we decide? Well, now I'm going to start looking at topography and I'm going to be like, well, what about safety? How can they over the area? How can they look out for things? And this is going to dive a little bit into bedding, but okay, can they sit up on this hill and see everything that's coming with the wind at their backs? If they can do that, if I can find that like topographical feature of like, this is a good spot where they can overlook, where they can feel safe, everything else being equal, then I'm going to hone in on those spots. What's a little bit different in that area? There's a lot of flat. So maybe I look for areas where it's like more mountainous within that, or maybe it's really mountainous. Maybe I can look for areas where they can see forever. Right. Like whatever is just a little bit different within that. All things being equal, what gives the animals a little bit of an advantage for survival. And if I can highlight that on the map, then I can highlight where the animals are and I can get in there, you know, prove it out. Boots on the ground. But it's really going to give me a detailed plan when I go into the hunt, pre hunt, like just pulling up my maps and looking at it. Now another thing that I look at when I'm kind of scoring an area is the access to getting in and out of it. And oftentimes if I think there's. Or is it like, is it something that's not even easily glassable? Right. Honestly, you know, we talk a lot about glassing and finding those glassing advantages. If you can glass an area, you can cover a lot of country. But areas that have what you need that aren't real glassable or kind of, you gotta go to three different points to look out, look it over. Often hold animals with less pressure areas that are a little bit harder to get to. So I often score those, like less traffic areas a little bit higher. If I've got a trail going right through something versus the exact same feed bed, whatever situation where I had, you know, boony bash through some deadfall, gonna choose probably I would think that, like, for me, I'm Like I'll go the deadfall zone because I'm probably just going to get into animals that aren't getting as pressured as much. If I'm in like a general area, maybe I go. He's maybe not even as ideal of habitat, but I'm getting away like from people a little bit. It's a little bit harder to hunt, so therefore I can maybe see fewer animals. But I, I know that it's still good and I'm going to have more opportunity to hunt animals that are unpressured. When I'm like looking at maybe a harder to hunt area. So those are some of the criteria that I'm looking at of, you know, food, how available is it, what's the animal that I'm hunting. Focusing on those other factors, kind of grading that habitat relative to the other habitats everywhere else in the unit. Think about it too. Like, maybe everything kind of looks the same, but this one particular draw has something that the others don't. That's something I'm going to highlight. Give it one per. Like, if you can tip the scales of 1, 2% in your favor, there's always going to be that like, and there's probably something they like here. I'm looking in an area that looks beautiful but looks perfect. But also I'm like, there's a lot of rock and hard to navigate areas which animals are definitely in, right. But they're definitely lower numbers of them there. So if I'm like, I'm trying to get into numbers, I would maybe skip over this area. If I'm trying to get away from people, I'd maybe go in this area. Me personally, I'd probably go in this area. But you know, I'm looking at it going like it's good habitat, but it's not the best compared to a couple other spots that are a little bit different than this. So that's what I'm looking at. And then, you know, then we can kind of take that and grade it compared to other areas around there. When I talk about grading, I'm like, is there a slight advantage to this particular spot over the other particular spot? And E scouting allows us to do that very well and very fast and very efficiently. You know, to go through a unit and hike through and drive around and look at all this stuff. Like it might take years of gathering intel and sometimes that intel might not even be current. So we can use different layers. We can like mostly satellite imagery and 3D to scroll around and really highlight good feeding areas for the animal that we're hunting and start to build out that calculated approach of like, okay, where's a good spot that looks good? And then if it all kind of starts to look the same, what's something that has a little bit different factor? I'll give you an example of that little bit different factor. I was e scouting a place that I had never hunted in Nevada. Early season mule deer. Right. I'm flying through it. It all looks good. However, I noticed, like, on the tops of certain ridges, it was just this, like, more vibrant blue color on the satellite imagery. What's that telling me? Like, more like a healthier sage habitat, maybe even more mature sage habitat. And then there's like, clearly a burn on the fringes. So I thought, well, here's a good thing. That that mature sage is there. It provides cover and protection and also food sources as mixed colors in on the edges, which is telling me good brows. And then it edges into that burn where, hey, maybe some more nutrients are in there. And it looks like, you know, that edge of it where I can start to see sparse things popping up. That's younger growth. So that's really good food sources. I focus on that. And sure enough, in an area that was, like, actually kind of hard to find deer, those places that I identified based on that color from e. Scouting led me to, like, buck after buck after buck. So that's a way that we look at it. There are a couple other tools in here that I will mention. You know, for those of you that are also using onyx, let me. I'm gonna pop it up real quick. Okay. So I'm going back to trees, crops, and soil, because I think these are some of the best. And there's some very interesting ones in here. I'll mention this thermal deer cover, even though I think it's primarily for bedding, it kind of just shows you, like, maybe we. Maybe we'll go over bedding areas because that's like the next big thing. It shows you, like the kind of like a heat map, in a way, shows you the areas. I've got it where it's turned on. So everything that's not good covers darkened out. And then those patches of, like, thermal cover, good shade are high, like, stick out really easy. So you go, oh, okay, there's some bedding here. But also that could just show you in an area like, hey, maybe I've got a lot of feed. I could use that thermal cover to say, where's bedding nearby? I might also use it for certain species, say, like, where's food Sources for whitetail hunters on here, there's even like acorn producing oaks. And then you can go like deciduous versus coniferous trees. And then you've got, you got the fires and stuff in there. Here's one that I, for mule deer find pretty handy in like the high desert country is this young aspen forest. And I have, I actually went through a few places that I know. Like, I'm like, let's see how well this works. A few places that I've hunted where I know like just deer in these young aspen forests, Deer and elk in that high desert kind of stuff where that's your like terrain feature. Old, like old aspen forests don't have as much benefit. But these like younger aspen forests, they're kind of like a colony really. They provide not only shade, but really a key food source. Deer and elk both utilize aspens. And so in places where there aren't a lot of them, they can be that magnet, that percentage difference that draws you into particular habitat. I don't know how many like areas that I found where I go, oh, there's like not very many of them. And I find this like young aspen patch. And I can almost with certainty guarantee that I'm, I'm going to find deer and elk there. So I flipped that on and I just verified it in a couple other places too, which I like to do sometimes. I like to use a feature and verify it with things that I know in the real world. So I go like, oh, yep, yeah, that. And it highlighted some. Like I was looking, I was just scouting on here. I flipped it on, it got aspen, birch or poplar. You can kind of select all. I just select all of them and it highlight them. And these are little tiny spots kind of in where you wouldn't expect it. And it just highlighted all those little spots. And I was like, yup, okay. I mean, I don't know how it does it. I really no clue, but it does and it works. So, you know, like in a new area, I'll flip on those kind of features and say, hey, is there anything like that in here? Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. Maybe, maybe there's some that it detects and doesn't detect too. I don't know. But you know, for the most part, like I'll flip that on and go, okay, boom. And I'll just drop a pin on it. Hey, here's it. Here's a good spot to look or to check. I mean, like my wife's bowl last year was just all the bulls were around these aspen patches, embedding in them and feeding on them and eating the grass around them and doing their thing. It's like. It. It's a way that you can kind of pinpoint a certain food source or certain thing that they like and identify it and then find animals at those places based off of essentially E Scouting from wherever you're at. Well, I hope you guys have been enjoying this podcast. You know, diving into this E Scouting is such an amazing tactic to know, and also it touches so many other, you know, opportunities to learn about wildlife and the way that I think about hunting and understanding the animal and food sources and just kind of really looking at the picture as a whole, because I think if you continually listen to this podcast, hopefully it starts to build out how some things start to connect. So I might have done a podcast in the past about feeding areas, and now we're relating it to exact, you know, things like layers that you can click on on a E Scouting map or when you're out in the field, like, oh, that popped in my head, I noticed, as I'm struggling. But I certainly find certain animals in certain areas. What is it about it? And how can I find other places like that? Oh, they're eating this particular thing. Let me jump back on my Onyx app and see, you know, if I can find other places like that. So I think that it helps really narrow down and build a bigger picture, because the biggest thing is to be consistently successful. If you kind of understand all the things and how they all work together, you can continually, like, get on animals, you know, make better stocks, make better plays, and find more success. And that's just the goal that I have with this podcast, is just make you guys more successful. So I always appreciate the feedback and the, you know, the success photos and the stories that you guys have, because that stuff, I really enjoy that. So if you guys have been enjoying this, you know, let me know. Another thing that I. I want to do as well is because I am talking about using the Onyx app. And I mean, I use it because it's like, it's the best there is for this kind of stuff, in my opinion. And so, you know, if you're out there and you're like, you don't have it, I want. I worked out a deal with them to be able to get you guys a discount on it. So you guys can always use code livewild and get 20% off a new Onyx membership, or if you've got, like, a base membership, you can go in, upgrade to the elite membership. You get some gear deals and other things. And there's just few other features like that, the beta of the Terrain X kind of thing and some of the other. There's a couple other layers in all the different states and stuff like that. So you can use that. You just got to do it not in the app, but on their website or you can go to my website and I think I've got a link on there where it sends you to the site where you can do that. So if you've got. If you do it through like Apple or Google, you just end that subscription on your phone, but go to the website and get the subscription. So just a way to do it if you're thinking about upgrading or whatever, because I'm talking about it, but I want to give you guys a deal on it as well, because that is what I'm using. And if it's not what you're using or whatever, you can still utilize my tips and tactics. You know, just maybe you won't have the exact tool that I was talking about. So I try to talk to you about it in a way where, hey, anybody can do it. But that's the easiest way of, like, the way that I do it is be able to utilize a few of those tools like the burns and the, the different. Like that Aspen, like, dude who, who even. I don't know who thought about that, but they should pat themselves on the back because it's like a. I haven't even publicly talked about that particular feature of that one because it is a little bit of a. A good way to find some sneaky spots, I guess, like some, some good honey holes, which is cool. Like you got to keep a few of those under your hat every once in a while. But if you guys are interested in that, that's available to you. Thank you, Onyx, for doing that. For the listeners of the podcast. I always appreciate when companies are like, hey, we love your podcast. Let's help people get something a little bit cheaper, discount on it, or whatever. So thank you guys for doing that. I'm just gonna say, until next week, feed on, we'll catch you guys later. It.