← Live Wild with Remi Warren
Live Wild with Remi Warren
Ep. 209 | Tracking pt. 1 - A buck at point blank range
00:57:52
In this conversation, Remi Warren shares his thrilling hunting experiences, emphasizing the importance of precision and patience in the art of shooting. He narrates a specific moment where he spots a buck and prepares for the shot, highlighting the excitement and focus required in hunting.
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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 podcast is brought to you by Mountain Tough and Yeti. Now for those that don't know, Mountain Tough is an online based training app that's designed for hunters to train you both mentally and physically for the mountains. So you can go on. And there's programs designed with workouts that are specifically made to get you ready for the things you're going to encounter out there in the wild. And while a lot of you probably know that their programs are designed to get you ready, they also have programs designed to keep you ready during the season. It really is a year round process to help you be the best you can be on the hunt. For me, a big part of the hunt actually comes after I get out of the field. It's that cooking process of wild game, whether back at camp or at home. And my Yeti cast iron skillet is one of my favorite ways to cook. I'm actually personally a big fan of cooking on cast iron, but it has to be high quality cast iron and there is a big difference. The Yeti cast iron skillets are actually made here in America in Wisconsin and they use that vintage casting method. So what that does is that it yields a hyper smooth finish and you get that non stick barrier. They're also a lot lighter than other cast irons, making them a lot easier to handle. Each skillet comes pre seasoned by hand so it's ready to use right out of the box. And there's four different sizes available ranging from 8 to 14 inches. I've been cooking on mine for a while and I highly recommend it to anyone. Welcome back to Live Wild Podcast everyone. You know mule deer is definitely on my mind. Mule deer and whitetails. I've just been really diving into deer hunting the past couple weeks because that's what that's what I've been doing. Last week I shared the story of a deer hunt that I did with my brother. Mule deer hunt up in the mountains and I kind of stopped the story at his buck. So this week I'm going to take it a little bit further and go into the story of my Buck. And one of the things that I also like to think about this time of year as the snow starts to fall, is a tactic where we hunt deer or elk or other animals by following tracks in the snow. So the art of tracking, what I'm going to be doing with the podcast over this week and next week is a two part series where we're going to first this week cover reading the tracks and just understanding the tracks on the ground themselves. And then next week we're going to dive into part two and look at the strategy of actually following that track and the hunt strategy when you're on a track. But before we do that, I want to share the story of my recent mule deer hunt and a buck I took at point blank. So last week's story kind of left off at my brother's deer and he took an incredible old mature buck, just an awesome deer and one that I was really glad we were able to get on. And it just, it worked out perfect. Think about it as like typical or your, I guess, quintessential mule deer hunt tactic. Everything. Spot the buck from afar, put him to bed, sneak into range, wait for him to stand, make a good shot. Everything about it was just absolutely textbook mule deer hunting. The kind that you think this when you're doing it, you're like, this is, this is mule deer hunting. But mule deer hunting takes many forms and hunting tactics take many forms. And sometimes you just have to use whatever tactic happens to work for the scenario. So after my brother got his buck, he had another day to hunt with him. We had another day to hunt together before he actually had to get back to work. And then I was going to be kind of hunting, I think a little bit solo and then a little bit with my buddy Ross as he kind of had to work as well. So the next day, my brother, before he left, we got another day to hunt together. We went out and just hiked into a new area, same MO he just got up super early, started hiking in the dark just to get gain a lot of that elevation because we were just in some pretty big mountains and the big climbs are what kill you with the short days. So you could see a buck a long ways away, but you might not have time to get there or not really have a good vantage when the sun comes up. So got up early, hiked in and spent a good portion of time getting into position. We got, I don't know, we probably as the sun started to come up, we were getting up into this basin that looked really good. So the Sun's starting to come up. We're glassing, and right off the bat, we spot a couple bucks. Like, up on this. Like, it was. It was probably even pre light. You could just see them because they were silhouetted, like, oh, I think that's a buck. So get out the spotters and wait for the sun to get a little bit lighter. And they're about, I don't know, probably 800, 900 yards away, maybe a thousand yards, something like that. And watch those. And there's happened to be a pocket of does, and there's like maybe two little three points or two by threes or four by three. So I don't even. Something like smaller bucks, but okay looking, you know, and not. Not shooters and some other does around, but right off the bat, right? Ooh, we're in deer. This looks good. And the country just looked really good. It was a little bit different than where we were at. A little more sagey in this particular spot. There's some burn in there. There's like a little bit of all kinds of habitat in this particular spot. And it looked really good. It looked really promising. So we end up glassing there and just picking up a lot of other groups of does, but no other bucks. And so we'd seen elk. I actually turned up a moose or two. And now we're going to hike up to the. A little bit higher on the ridge and just look into the kind of keep moving and glassing and get better vantages. And so we're moving up, and I am glassing into this really nice basin. And it looks really good. Just thinking, this should be. I'm actually kind of got up there first and was there by myself. And I'm thinking, this should be something. Should be in here. And then I glossed around, I moved around. I got settled into a good spot. I'm glassing, I'm looking, and I see something white on the hill. And I'm like, what is that? Is that a mountain goat? Like, I just caught it with my naked eye. It's probably, like, you know, under a mile, like, about three quarters of a mile away. And I'm like, dude, what the heck is that? And I throw up my binos. Like, I think that's a wolf, but I didn't really expect to see a wolf in this particular area. And it's pretty. I'm like, dude, is there somebody's. You know, it's. Now it's like in the trees. And I'm like, dude, is somebody hiking over there with their dog? You know, just making sure. I mean, we're a ways back, right? I know it's a wolf, but I got to get the scope on it. So I get my spotter out and it pops out of the trees. And sure enough, it's a big like, we'll call it gray but white. I'm gonna call it white. I mean, it's like a very light colored white wolf. Working through this, like part where the sun had burned off the snow. And then it pops into the snow and it's just cruising. By the time I picked it back up, it was about a mile and a quarter away at this point. And it's not running from anything. It's just like nose to the ground on a trail, moving. And I get the. My mag view out and pop it on the scope and video and it's pretty awesome. Is it big wolf? And I think like, okay, well, that's where I was hoping to see some deer, but wolf just went through there. And it's, you know, to get to where I could shoot. It's not like I can just run over there and get a shot. He's. He's cruising and so, and I did, I did have a wolf tag in my pocket. So I'm like, well, dang, man, that would be cool. But just, I mean, there's no catching up to. I've followed wolf tracks before and they led miles and miles and miles away. You know, you never know. But just not like that's about as fresh as it gets. We watch him make it. Maybe I could have caught up to it, but by the time I got up there, it would have been a ways. This is a good elevation climb and, you know, probably at this point, a mile and a half away and a lot of elevation. But I thought, well, maybe we'll work. We'll work our way that way for the rest of the day. So we end up working our way up the mountain. We get different positions and glassing. And one thing we're noticing is the sun's, you know, as a. Now the sun's out and it's been cold, but now the sun's out, it's actually pretty warm. Starting to really heat up the hillside. And we're catching the deer moving from the north faces and they're popping over and betting on these south faces, the deer rear watching, moved over. Now we're looking back into the south facing. We're picking up deer in the burn and in the shadow and in the trees. Lots of does, no other bucks, but we've kind of got a pattern. Now we know what they're doing. They're out feeding in the morning, then they're moving into bed in the evening and then probably popping back over and sorry, moving to bed in the middle of the day and then popping back over in the evening. So we get up and we're just going to start picking apart the mountains and start looking for deer. So we climb up to the very kind of highest part of the ridge. Another maybe, I don't know, a thousand vertical feet. We've probably gone up, I don't know, thousands, maybe 700 more vertical feet, something like that get up there. And also I kind of want to thought well maybe we can get into that position where maybe we'll pick up that wolf. Maybe stopped or did something silly. Glassing for the majority of the day. Saw does saw some small bucks in different places, different pockets, you know, kept turning up deer. When you think you'd see everything, you'd all go, oh geez, there's a deer bedded over there. There's a deer that's up, there's an elk, there's a moose. There was, we were sitting there glassing and we're like man, I think we've seen everything. And I look over to the right and I'm like there's an elk and it's only like 600 yards away. I was like how do we miss an elk, right? And then I look a little bit to the right of that elk and there's a bull moose bedded there. Like well, we clearly aren't seeing everything. So we end up deciding we're going to go up to where that moose is, maybe get some cool close up video, look into the basin where the wolf went and maybe glass some new country from up there because we're pretty close to that. And this is a lot later in the day now but we wanted to look into some good bedding areas with the good vantage while we had it. So we're moving up there and then we hear we actually had spotted different hunters all over and we hear a shot. I wouldn't say it's close but it wasn't far like down below us. And a decent amount of time passes and so we're now, we're now working down like down the ridge to go up the ridge. And as we do that, this buck, I'm assuming it got shot at by whoever was shooting like a good four point buck, like a solid definite shooter buck comes just hauling ass by. I drop down, get on him and he's Moving, and he's just running. He's probably like 200 yards, but he was going down the mountain. Just, nope, no good clean shot. He pops back up. I range, he's within range. He's like 400 yards. I set my scope, and I'm just waiting for him to stop. I asked the guy that was with me filming. I'm like, you on him? And he's like, yeah, but. And then just as he stops, like, he quarters away and starts walking in. And I just didn't feel. It was just like a rushed. It just didn't seem like an ethical shot. Like, it was moving. Well, it wasn't an ethical shot. I didn't shoot. And he went over the ridge. So we run over, try to pick him up again, Never turn him up. I think he just ducked into the timber and disappeared. Spend the rest of the day glassing and never turn up any other bucks. So we hike out in the dark. The next day, we kind of change the strategy and just try to go into a completely new area. Hike in. Kind of a slow day. You know, honestly, we saw a lot of deer first thing in the morning. A lot of young bucks, a lot of hunters. We kind of decided to hunt, like, a little bit closer to. Instead of bombing up to the top. Like, starting lower seemed like kind of a mistake because there's just dudes everywhere. And we could have. I mean, I. There was some deer that younger deer that could have shot or whatever, but, you know, kind of a slow day. And then went up into this pocket that was. We decided, like, okay, we're get off the beaten path again. Get up high. Got up high. But I think we were just too far at this point. Like, too much snow. Deer had moved out of the area we were in and saw, like, maybe a couple does and one small buck, and that was it. So slow day. So now it is the last day of the season. We're pulling out all the stops. My buddy Ross can go in with us. And so we decide we're going to go into this other spot that we've been thinking about going into and give it kind of the last day, ditch effort. So. So we're going in. Same deal. Like, get in there way, way deep. Like, started many hours before sunlight. It's like, just do it again. Do everything that we've been doing again. So we get in, get in, go up the canyon, start climbing up the hillside. And just as it's starting to get light, like, a buck crosses in front of us. And it looked like a. Like, A good buck. But it's pretty dark so we just sit there and we're like we're gonna hunker down and wait. It was like it walks right in front of us at maybe shit like very close. You know, it's not, it's like pre legal shooting light and we're just climbing up the mountain. We hear something like, can see it barely and like what the heck is that? I think it's a buck and it moves off. So we just hunker down, wait for it to get light, start glassing. There's does around. I think that buck was just cruising so. So we're thinking well maybe we can try to locate this buck again. But the odds are we aren't going to find it because it probably caught our wind and blew out once it went over the ridge. So we, we get up to the top, start glassing, turning up deer and you know, nothing I don't. I mean we saw a buck like a smaller three point off in the distance but nothing great. And so we end up like working over to like this last part of the mountain in glassing and we split up and we start glassing and it's about that point where like I said yesterday, everything was dumping in. So we see these does coming over the mountain with a small little buck and it goes over and they go on to the shaded side to bed. And so we're glassing that warmer south face and everything's now moving. It's like mid morning, everything's moving over to the other side. So we're deciding. I'm like let's make a little bit of coffee. And then we're going to start. We're going to work up to where those last deer went over and just kind of keep working up the mountain glassing and see what we can find. I moved down to do one last glass and sure enough catch a good mature buck moving up the mountain at like 800, 900 yards away. I, I get, get him in the scope. I'm thinking like maybe we can move in for 400 yards and but he's like he's on, he's on a mission. And it's a good mature buck. Very similar to the one my brother shot. Like big heavy antlers, real tall. I think he was a three by four or maybe a small four point crabby on one side but like just a solid mature buck and he's cruising and he actually goes up like up the mountain, hits this pocket and starts working across this through this burn like he's Gonna go over to bed. And he kinda. It's weird because he kinda starts to trot like, it's like he either sees something or he looks like he's on a mission and disappears out of sight. So we gather up our stuff and start moving up the mountain. We get to where those other deer had gone over to bed and. And just in case they're in this little. There's like a basin at the top. In case they're in that basin. We crawl up. There's like this little knob kind of cliffs that we kind of shimmy through. This little spot in the cliffs pop up, and it's like the absolute perfect sniper station. Like, we can see this whole thing. We're within a couple hundred yards. And as we're going up, Ross spots some deer up behind where that buck was moving in the timber. It's definitely. It's just does. But there's so much trees and stuff. Anything could be in there. So we get set up. Now we're sitting there and waiting, and I actually let out a few grunts and bleats just to see if maybe I could draw anything or pop anything up out of the timber. And we'd seen where the bucket crossed in the snow. So it's about now. It's like probably noon. It's hot. And we saw the deer up back behind in that little pocket. And so it's definitely starting to get warm. And my thought was this. I was like, okay, before the snow starts to melt off, I'm going to go check those tracks and just see. Because, like, we're thinking maybe the deer went up with those. Does it make sense he saw the. Does he start to follow him, went up there? I don't know. Or we could be waiting here forever. All day. It's the last day we got, you know, however many hours from noon till dark, and that's it. We could sit here and wait, and that buck could be 20 miles away in the direction we aren't even looking. So I decide I'm gonna go up there, get on his tracks and see if we can suss out what he's doing. If it's like, if it looks good, I'm gonna follow the tracks. I left my pack there. Ross held back to glass, and I went up to go investigate the track. So I move up to where I'd seen his tracks go across the hillside, get over there. And there's definitely a lot of other tracks in there. And there's a buck track going up with some does into where we saw Those does, but it looks like a smaller buck track. Doesn't look like a solid, mature buck. So I walked to where I definitely saw the track go across. And sure enough, that track's going across and didn't go up to where those does were. So now I decide, all right, I'm gonna follow this track and see what happens. So start following the track through the snow. It wraps around the mountain, goes through into the timber, goes into the shaded pocket where it might look like some bedding. I just start following the track, peeling off, glassing, stepping, glassing, going slow, going quiet. I don't have a pack on. I have everything's ready. I'm ready to for some close quarters shooting. So, you know, like scope turned back, you know, everything's set for close range. Moving through their gun and rifle in hand, moving through the timber, trying to get the wind the best I can. And so I end up going to this spot where the track leads to this little bench. And it looks like a good bedding spot. And it starts dropping down, and there's a bed there. And then there's kind of tracks moving all over. So what I was thinking, what I was thinking was the buck either hit a doe bed in there, got it up. So now, like, I could see the buck track, but at this point it's more soft, like powder stuff. So you can't see what tracks which. But I can definitely see that there was a bed, a deer bedded. But I also don't know if it was. Did this buck just run into a bed, start sniffing around and then move off? Was it. Did it run into a doe? What? And then there's tracks kind of moving all over, around that bed. So it definitely did something there. And then as I'm check investigating, I see a set of tracks that goes off very fresh off to the left. So it's a single set of tracks, very fresh. You know, I can tell the way that the snow is and everything. This is a fresh. Is a very fresh track. So, like, this has got to be his track. So I'm gonna follow it. So I start following it, and it drops down into the timber again, where that snow is a little bit wetter. And I can see that it's a buck track. So I'm like, I'm on a buck track. I was following the buck track that I saw on a buck track. It's moving into a good bedding spot. So I'm following it down, eyes peeled, glassing, just glassing, closed, glassing far anywhere that I can see. And I actually started filming and I'm like, okay, I'm explaining what I'm doing while I'm doing it and I go, this is where if this deer is bedded, you know, being the rut, they could be cruising. But we've been, I've been watching deer at this time of day go to bed. If this deer's bedded, he's going to be bedded right up here. The reason for it being was the fact that the wind was coming down the hill, it was shaded and that buck could just be sitting watching his back trail. Like if he's here, he's probably within 150 yards of where I'm at right now. It was my just assumption. About 20 steps later I get to this point where I can I get into the gully and I'm going to be able to start looking up to where I think the buck would be bedded. I come around, I peek around the tree and sure enough there's a buck bedded. And he's not far. I mean like sub 15 yards, under 15 yards. I see the buck, there's a really thick pines and I can see him there. And he just starts to stand up. As he stands up, I slowly put the rifle up. I've got the crosshairs right on him. He's kind of like looking because he can just barely see something. I've got a good shot and just put it right on his shoulder. Boom. Shoot. And he runs over the ridge. I run up and boom, he's right there. I actually shot one more time. Just I knew he was going over but I wasn't about to let him take a plunge and slide all the way to the bottom. So I just make sure that I anchored him there and buck down. I mean it was awesome because it was one of those where everything worked out right. But also I thought it was pretty cool to. I like to hunt with my rifle. Like I'm bow hunting. To shoot a buck at top pin bow range with a rifle is like something that doesn't happen very often. And I think too probably because like the way that people hunt or whatever. But it was just so fun to be tight quarters, close quarters, stalking a buck, tracking a buck in the snow and then shoot a buck. I saw when the buck, I mean this was, everything happened very fast. So. But when the buck, you know, I saw the buck as he got up, I was like, I see the back forks, he's a four point whatever. And then it is, you know, antlers. I was like 100% positive. I was shooting it like a, you know, a buck. I wasn't, you know, I didn't think it was a doe or anything. I could definitely see his antlers pretty good. When I got to the buck, it wasn't the buck that I'd seen cross the hillside. However, I wasn't like, I shot the wrong buck. I just shot a different buck. That's what I was joking. I was like, we have three hours left of the hunt. I got a buck at 15 yards away, a nice three by four. I'm absolutely shooting this buck. Like, no matter what I was shooting that buck, even if I seen that buck, whatever, that was one of the better bucks we'd seen since outside my brother's buck. It was another nice buck aside from the one that we were originally getting on the track. And so I was stoked. It was awesome. Last day. We've got a few hours left in the hunt, and to follow tracks and shoot a deer at 15, probably less than 15 yards was just epic. It was just so cool. So went back and got Ross, and we went back in there, and I think what had happened, what we hadn't sorted out is the deer that was bedded. And I guess I didn't even really think this in my head when I saw the bed. I don't know why, because it wasn't like I could just see the actual print there. You know, I could just see the tracks because of the way that that snow was. I think that that other deer was a bedded buck. It was this. The other buck came, got this buck up. They probably did a little skirt around each other thing, and then they split off different directions. I did find that that other buck went down, and I didn't actually make it to that track before seeing this other single track move off. So it must have just got on that other buck, which, hey, the. The buck I was originally on could have just kept cruising and maybe would have never run into him. I don't know. But it worked out. It worked out great. And to. To track a buck in the snow and to take a buck at close range like that was just a really fun way to. To hunt a deer and. And get on. Deer tracking like that in that thick cover can be very exciting. Like, every tree that you look behind, you feel like the buck could be right here. And you know that at the end of that trail, there's a deer there. You just have to play your cards right to get in position for a shot. And it worked out where on this particular trip Played my cards right and ended up getting to pack a nice buck off the mountain that day. So I think one of the fun things about any kind of hunt is there's so many different forms of hunting technique and strategy. And some hunts you utilize all different forms. I think that to be a very successful hunter, being versed in many different forms of hunting, can lead to success in so many different ways in. In different environments, in different situations, right? One morning you could be glassing, and then you could be tracking. You could be tracking, and then you could be glassing. You could be still hunting, stand hunting. You can be doing all kinds of different hunting tactics. Sometimes on a particular hunt, you might be doing multiple different types of tactics. I think tracking is one that in some areas of the country, not done hardly at all. In other areas of the country, it's a primary or in the world, a primary method for hunting. So what tracking is, is essentially following the trail or track of the animal to where the animal is. And the philosophy behind it is the animal you're looking for lies at the end of this track somewhere. Every time you intersect a track, if you could follow it like the entire way, at some point the animal is going to be standing in that track. Now, the difficulty or the ease of being able to do that depends on how that track is, is laid on the ground. There's a couple of different types of environments that you're going to find tracks in. One's dry ground, meaning it's dry, and then the other one would be snow. Snow is the best for tracking because really kind of anybody can follow a track in the snow. And you have a lot of opportunity to be able to tell the age, to tell a lot of different things about that particular track. But I did want to talk about tracking in a way where somebody that might be in a different kind of environment or something else might also be able to utilize this method. And also tracking can happen after the shot. What we're talking about here is primarily analyzing tracking for pursuing an animal that hasn't been shot. But the tracking also takes place for a lot of hunts after a shot's been taken as well. I've been fortunate enough to get to hunt a lot of places around the world. And one of the places that I'd spent a lot or good amount of time in my earlier years was it was in Africa. And, you know, being over there and watching how, like, there, there's people that have been using track, like, they don't have binoculars, don't have optics, they're in dry ground, but it's like dirt type ground. It leaves good prints and tracks in the dirt. And those guys, for as long as, I mean forever, have been hunting by means of tracking. And it's an absolute skill. When you watch somebody that understands the way that animals move and can read sign on the ground and the tracks and other things, it's pretty incredible. And fortunately, I always try to pick up a few things wherever I'm at. And that was one of the things that I never did a lot of especially dry ground tracking growing up, Although there was places where I think they would have been beneficial, Especially in some of that arid mule deer country. Turn up a track and you go, oh, there's some good tracks here. And you never thought. Never thought about following them or probably didn't have the skill base to follow them, especially. You know what I've learned over the years of the way that you can look at tracks on the ground and see the sheen of it, and understanding the gait of an animal on that dry ground to kind of figure out where the track's gone. We can talk a little bit about some of that stuff, but primarily this week, I'm talking about tracking in the snow because it's something that kind of anybody can start doing, and it can be a very effective method for finding a variety of game animals. The trouble is, you need snow. I've hunted animals a lot of different species by tracking in the snow, Primarily mule deer, A lot of whitetails, A lot of elk, even mountain lions. And I've even honestly found bears this way, fall bears by just cutting tracks and following the track or seeing the track. So it can be an effective way, but you need snow on the ground for the most part. So what I want to look at this week, we're going to be kind of step one. And that's the track itself, because understanding the track that you're looking at is going to kind of determine your success in tracking. Like I said, without wolf. Right. I've followed wolf tracks in fairly fresh snow and, you know, picked him up after 10, 12 miles. You're like, okay, it's dark now, and now I got to walk back and didn't even. This animal never even slowed down. Like, he's just probably plotting along, right? Spent all day on the track. Now you could catch it in the right time and the right whatever, and it'd be 500 yards from where he started. But, you know, just understanding and identifying that track is going to be step one. So in the snow, especially, you know, depending on the type of snow we're going to talk about looking at, maybe even just let's start real basic, like the difference in the type of track that you're looking for. So one of the things that, like with deer, I'm looking for a large track and then I'm looking also for those dew claws in the back. So it's like, I think this is kind of one of those things you kind of learn as a kid. But you know, buck track is a certain size and then has those two little dots behind and that's its back foot and it's that the dew claws from that back foot. One thing that's always good to do is you can start to look at tracks whenever you see them and kind of start to separate them out from the other track. Oh, this is a bull track, this is a buck track. A bull elk track is going to be a lot more wide than a cow elk track. So a cow elk track is more, let's call it like arrowhead triangular shaped. And a bull elk track is more square shaped. Definitely a good way to distinguish the two is side by side, you know, and depending on the, the snow or whatever, you can, you can really see like that shape a lot better. When, when you've got like good snow or mud to kind of identify the two, you'll see one's a lot more narrow. Whereas like a bull tracks almost as long as it is wide. A cow track's a lot more narrow across it. It's kind of a one way, one way to distinguish the two apart. So the next step, like once we go, okay, we've identified the track, Is it a wolf track? Is it a mountain lion track? What is the track? I'll tell you a quick way, like a lot of times one of the tracks that always gets confused is a mountain lion track. Sometimes just fun being in the snow and be like, well, what track is this? So the best way to identify a cat track from a dog track, of course the claws is one, cats generally don't. You don't see their claws in the print unless they got them out killing something, I guess. But if you can think about the way that a dog track sits, it's just kind of side of our knowledge the way that a dog tracks it. You know, four toes, the two middle ones are set further up than the two outer ones. And on a dog track you could between the, let's say the first toe and the second toe and then the third toe and the fourth toe. Between the two you could draw an X right between those and it will not hit the pad. So if it makes an X, X's out, it is not a cat track. You can draw that and it won't hit the pad behind it. A cat track, the way that the toes line up, if you were to put a line between the bottom, like the first toe and the, like the first two, between the first two and between the last two, it would intersect the pad. Cat track, just a little, just in case, like on. On dry ground, sometimes you go, oh, you see one or two. Find two cat tracks in a row. Because sometimes the way that dogs walk or whatever you can. Anything can make a. I've had people be like, I found a cat track. And it's like, that's somebody's boot track, right? Like, anything can kind of make a cat track once, but a couple times it's got to be verified. But that's. That's a good way to kind of identify, like mountain lion track and then bear tracks look like bear tracks. But I think that just, you know, identifying the tracks and learning what the tracks look like. Step one. Okay, am I following a big, mature buck? Once you've seen a lot of tracks and paid attention, like maybe you shoot a deer and it's in the snow or in the dirt, look at the track of that animal that you're chasing and start to build out a memory of, like, what a certain track looks like. Now there are going to be times where even in the snow, you aren't actually seeing the print itself, but just seeing the evidence of the print. So that's kind of something that we're going to talk about as well. But the next thing that we're going to do is once we've identified the track that we're going to follow, buck track, bull track, whatever it is, now we really have to successfully track. We have to understand the age of that track. What does it look like? How old is it? What are the environmentals around? So snow tracking is ideal because you can often start a baseline by when it snowed. Sometimes let's say it was snowing that night, stopped around morning time. Okay, sweet. We know that every track that we see that looks pretty fresh or like that we see can be attributed to when that snow stopped. That's easy. There's a lot of times where it'll snow and it's like, it snowed all night. It stops in the morning. I now switch from probably, maybe a glassing strategy to just trying to cut tracks, cut the right track and follow it. Because I know the age of that particular track now? Maybe it snowed three, four days ago, five days ago, whatever. Now we can start to determine, well, how old is the particular track based on the environmentals. Okay. When it gets really cold, snow starts to get fluffier and the tracks don't look like imprints anymore. They look like pushes through the snow. The best way to determine what a track might look like now is to compare it to what your tracks look like now. So that's a. This is a pretty common strategy that I use is like, how old is this track? Okay, well, what do my tracks look like? Because what you'll do is, especially in snow that's been there for three or four days, you'll come upon a track and you'll look in it and you go, dude, I can see the print of this buck track. This looks like a good buck. I should probably follow this buck track, right? And look around like, oh, yeah, I see it's printing here. This looks pretty fresh. I can see it really good. But then you look at your tracks and your tracks are falling in, caving in because the snow got cold. And those fresh tracks were made and froze when the snow is wet. And then now your track is kind of falling in. You can't even see a defined print from your foot. So you know, oh, okay, well, this track here is actually old. My current tracks are kind of in the fluffy snow. And so if it were a new track, it wouldn't look like it does right here. Even though you look at it and you can see it real. Well, it's real defined. It's probably an older track from a couple of days ago when that snow was wet and when it fell between now and the maybe the temperature dropped, clouds cleared, the snow got a lot colder and lighter and now falls different. Or maybe it started to warm up and it's the exact opposite. You see these fallen in cave and tracks, you're like, oh, here's all these pockmarks in the snow. Looks like I can now you see a little bull track and it's the exact opposite. Now it's super wet and all your tracks are leaving. You can see every detail of every part of your boot in the track. Yet this track that you're looking at from this particular elk or whatever have you is not very well defined. Compare it to your current tracks is one of the best ways to identify it. And then the next thing is to kind of say, okay, what are the conditions of that particular snow? Is it frozen? Is it soft, is it filled in, is it not? And then what I like to do is one of the things that I'll do to kind of determine what is a more fresh track is touch it, how does it break, how does it feel? What do the edges of it look like? When you're looking at tracks on the ground, whether it's dry ground, whether it's snow, the edges actually tell you a lot, maybe even more about the track. And what I mean by that is like, stamp in the ground, use your trick, whatever, make a track. And look the way that it drags through that top layer of snow, it parts it and it's crumbly. It hasn't frozen over yet, or it hasn't crusted over or, okay, this part, everything else has a certain sheen to it, but this part has a different sheen. The way that the ground looks and the way that things look different, the kind of shine to it is a real good way to kind of distinguish the age of a track. On dry ground, especially in the mornings, when you get down low and you look at it, a fresh track actually starts to look kind of shiny. It has this sheen because it's been pressed down and the ground hasn't really had a chance to kind of loosen back up yet. So it kind of has this. This little bit of shine on the grass, on everything else, especially first thing in the morning, but the same in the snow. So you can see, like, okay, this is broken and soft. Where I intersected that buck track, where it started to go around the bed, I could see the bed. I could see that, you know, like. Like I said, in this particular spot, everything else the sun had been hitting. So the tracks were very defined. It was. It was wet. You could see the footprint really well. Once it got into this other part of the ridge, everything was fluffy and really cold there, and it was just powdery again. And so in that powder, it was just pock marks. But I could see what led me to that track that I follow was like, this is a very fresh track as it drags over. Because of my initial assumption was maybe it hit an old track and was sniffing around an old dough bed or an old bed. And so in that I could see the drag over the snow, and it just kind of crumpled in where it just, like, looked like somebody just put powdered sugar on a pancake. Right when that fresh powdered sugar hits the pancake, it's very fluffy and nice and light and doesn't look old yet, I guess is the best way to say. Like, you can tell when powdered Sugar has been sitting on something for a long time. Same with a track in the snow. So I followed that track because it was a very fresh track. I knew that it had been made within probably two hours, which is the time frame of when that buck would have gone through there. And so. And it was absolutely right because there was a deer right there at the end of that track pretty close by. So, you know, understanding, like, the way that that track looks makes a big difference in dry ground. One of the things that you can think about is, you know, sometimes you might have a track in dry ground, but it's not dry. It could be wet. It could be muddy. What's it look like on the edges of that? Has it dried out as the sun started to hit it? What are the environmentals like? Think about, what is the weather doing right now and how is it going to age? Whatever you're looking at, has the sun been baking this particular area? Is it going to start to melt it away? Is it frozen in the bottom of it? Is it muddy in the bottom? How old and how long will it take those environmentals to change what you're looking at? It's a little bit of a sleuthing thing. You got to look at it, and you got to ask yourself the question, okay, when do I think this was made? Okay, let's say I was like, okay, this is fresh. I bet it was this morning. Okay, okay, well, what happened between this morning and now? Is it sunny? Okay, cool. It's sunny. The sun baking on where this track is? Yep, sun's baking on this track. Okay. Is there. Is it slushy bottom, or is it, like a frozen track in the snow in the bottom? It's still pretty frozen. Okay, well, maybe it was made, you know, earlier than that and froze, and now it's starting to break down. Like, just. You kind of just want to start to think about the. The time period when you think it might be, and then what environmentals maybe would change that? The way that that track looks in the ground from when it was laid and when it is now. I've seen a lot of people intersect a track and be like, oh, I'm gonna follow this track. It's, like, really deep into the dirt, and you look at it and you go, that track is probably a month old because it was made whenever this ground was really wet and could really put an imprint in, try to kick the ground. Now we aren't leaving tracks. It's hard to leave a track right now. So that track is older. But, hey, maybe it rained and whatever. And it's starting to make this track where it's like a light misting of wet or whatever, you got dew, whatever. And it might make this track look fresh, but it's actually in fact an old track. So understanding the age of the track is very important. One way to tell if a track's fresh or not is to see an animal in it and then it disappear into the timber. I knew that I was getting on a fresh buck track because I saw the buck and I knew the exact time that an animal was standing in that track. Sometimes tracking can be an effective tactic after you've lost an animal that you knew was there in the first place. Especially in western big game hunting in places where maybe you're hunting mountain whitetails in certain areas. You know, going out and targeting deer and tracks right after fresh snow is a great way to get on deer. I've hunted a lot of whitetails that way. It's actually, it's one of my favorite ways to hunt in the wintertime because it's just, you know that at the end of whatever you're following there is what you're looking for. Unless, I mean, I've had friends like, dude, I tracked an elk all day and walked up on a moose, right? Like that happens. But if you're following the right kind of track in the right way, at the end of that, you know that whatever you're looking for is there. And if you play your cards right and make the right steps, I guess, no pun intended. Tracking. A tracking pun that I wasn't expecting. If you make the right steps, then what you're looking for will be at the end of that trail. And that's the kind of fun and exciting part of it. And sometimes the exciting part is like saying, like, I'm on a mature buck track. What's this thing going to look like? Is it going to be a monster two by three or is he going to be this giant non. Typical of my dreams. You don't know until you. You get to the end of the rainbow. But sometimes you can. You can be surprised, sometimes not. But it's a really fun way to hunt. And then the other thing that I look at is kind of understanding what is the animal doing. So this is going to be. This is really going to play into next week is once we see the track, once we understand how old the track is, understanding what that animal is doing based on the track. So here's a couple of the options, right? We've got bedding. You can see the bed, the bed's going to be, especially in the snow, it's going to be like the body shape. I was tracking a bull with some clients a few years back. I was up ahead and I walk back to the guy and I'm like, this bull is a, is a good six by six that we're tracking. And the guy's like, bullshit. You can't tell that by the track. And I was like, I absolutely can. And we walk up another 20 yards to where I was and I could see where the bull had laid down. And it was a perfect imprint of like this six point bull antler in the snow. It was epic. Like it was one of the coolest things. Like, look. And then there was another bed over here. And I was like, and he's with a five point, you know, like both bulls had had their heads down and it was pretty cool. But saying like, okay, are they bedded? Okay, if they're bedded, that, that gives you an idea. Okay, are they walking, are they running, are they meandering, are they feeding? And what does this track tell you about what they're doing where you're intersecting it? So one of the ways, obviously bedding. You're going to see the bed of the animal where it was laying down in the snow. It's pretty apparent. That's why we're talking about snow tracking. It's a great place to start. In dry ground, it might just be matted down grass or what have you. Running is going to be a completely different gait for that animal. You know, mule deer, you're going to see that stoating, that two together, two together, big distances between. In whitetails you might see that running where it's, you know, more dirt kicked up in it or the way that, that gates change with the front foot and the back foot changing. Same with elk. You know, the distance in between and the way that that track's hitting the ground and meandering, like sometimes you'll see, a lot of times the meandering is, is when they're feeding where it's a straight line and then maybe you come to something where hey, maybe start to feed and you see it start to kind of go all over the place. A couple years back I was guiding and we watched some elk go over into this basin and we got up there, got on the tracks, and then the tracks turned to slow, split off, started to meander, and you could see where they started to feed. You'd see, okay, some snow removed here and some snow removed here, and they Went from a straight line to spread out. Okay, well, based on the time that we walked into here and now they're starting to spread out. I told my hunter, I was like, let's get ready, let's lock and load. Because this, these elk are going to be within 2 to 300 yards of where we're at right now. Because they would have stopped and slowed and started to spread out and feed. It's that time they're, they're in this thing. I start to say that we pop over and sure enough, here's a couple cows feeding here and there and we end up shooting a really nice six point bull. All because we understood the level of attention, when to slow down, how to hunt that. Right. Based on what that track was telling us. So are they feeding with, with deer and rutting? Okay. Are they intersecting other tracks and getting distracted with does and other things? Because what that track's telling you now is going to kind of determine our course of action on the hunt. If I, if I see a buck track that runs into a bunch of doe tracks, I see he's got him up and he started to stir him around. I believe it's a fairly fresh track. I know that he's going to have spent time here. So the time what we're doing on the track is we're going, what time do I think it was made? How far do I think this animal is going? What's he encountering in route? And then I'm cutting that clock back to say how close am I getting to him? What kind of strategy should I now employ if I think that he's hit some does and he's probably pushing him around and maybe I look and I go like, oh, there's an open hillside over there and it's going down there. I'm going to back out, I'm going to try to get vantage of there and glass into that pocket and I'm going to look for deer and deer movement moving around and then get back on the track. If not because it's telling me a certain something. If it's, maybe they're feeding, I'm like, okay, I'm going to really slow down and start looking. Because I think that based on the time that I started following this track when the snow was, I think that I'm probably pretty close to it, you know, maybe 30 minutes behind it. And maybe if they're stopped and spread out and feeding, I bet you they're within that still feeding. If it's the right time of day or maybe they're you know, moving and looking for a better. Maybe it's bedded and then now there's sun where that bed is and I can go, I bet you this animal, this was his first bed. It got up and re bedded in the shade. Where's the nearest, next bit of shade? I can now really start to pay attention and have a different level of attention moving in on that particular track. Because the thing about tracking is it's a little bit of a timing game too, where I'm moving in and I need to cover ground in a certain amount of time because that animal's. That animal's just cruising sometimes to something from something what have you to get somewhere to do something, who knows what. And, and so if I, if I treat every second like he's just right around the corner, I might never, ever get to where that animal is. If I start to understand where that animal is going to do something like bed down and be still. And then I start to know, okay, now is where I have to pay a hyper level of attention and find that deer, elk, before it sees me. Where do I do that? When do I do that? Well, that's what we're gonna do by what's that track doing and what's it telling me about where I should be looking and how close am I starting to get? Once that maybe you're on a track and it starts to look fresher, you start to see like I did with that. It was like, okay, this deer definitely got up out of its bed and these are very fresh tracks and they're not running. So we didn't spook it. He's probably just moved off and embedded into this other pocket where you can watch his back trail. Sure enough, come around the corner, Boom, There's a buck 15 yards. And we have. I got the buck in the fridge, been eating him for dinner. And I got this finished cleaning up the antlers here. So looking at them right now as I tell this story, so that. That's kind of the. The benefit of understanding tracks, tracking and what those tracks might be telling you. I hope you guys enjoyed that podcast. So next week we're going to dive into that methodology portion of the hunt and the tracks, and I think that that's going to be pretty beneficial as well. Just how when you're following the track, what are some of the courses of action we're going to take and how we're going to get on that animal and get that shot, and so that's what we're going to dive into. Next week. One of the other things that I want to mention before we go, an incredible supporter of this podcast, Vortex Optics. I've been using their stuff for, I mean, about as long as I can, I guess. As long as they've been around, as long as I've known about them, I've been using a lot of their stuff. And they're not just binoculars, rangefinders, spotting scopes, rifle scopes. Got incredible rifle scopes. One of the things, though, that I think probably, I don't know, originally drew me to Vortex Optics. Is there VIP warranty. I'd had a lot of different optics in the past, and I just. I'd had so much trouble when things went wrong. And I got a pair of Vortex. Oh, I got a spotting scope and binoculars and stuff. And I'd had fairly early on when I had my spotter, I was like, you know, it's one of those things, you invest a lot of money in your optics. And I had. Was glassing, just scouting. And I drove over the dang thing. Like, I'm very good about not doing stupid things like that. And just nobody's. Nobody's immune. And I was like, this sucks. I'm gonna try it. Well, VIP warranty, we'll see. You know, I didn't really know. And I'm not kidding you. Like, within. Within a very short amount of time they had, you know, this is. This was a long time ago, but that's probably 10 years, way more than 10, I don't know, 10 years ago, something like that. Like, within a very short amount of time, that thing came back in absolute working order. They just gave me a new one. I mean, they're like, here's a brand new one. You know, thanks. It's like, what? This isn't crazy. I mean, and they're like, hopefully it, you know, makes it in time for your next hunt. I mean, nobody, Nobody. This was not like, you know, this wasn't like a buddy, buddy deal kind of thing. This was just standard customer service that everybody gets. And I was like, wow, that's legit. And, you know, honestly, I've had friends that have used the warranty. I've had to use the warranty on other stuff. Just stuff happens. But just to know, like, the peace of mind of, hey, I'm buying a piece of gear, and they warranty it. It's pretty awesome to know. And to be honest, too, I mean, I know guys, like, I'm not saying this is. I don't know. I'm not speaking for the company. This is just me speaking for me and just experiences that I've had or other people I know. I had a buddy that messed up there and they're like, dude, I'm going on a hunt. And they like, they like expedited the fixing of it, got it back to him. You know, they take a lot of pride in that VIP warranty and it's a very unique selling feature. In my opinion of having a high quality piece of gear and knowing that it's got just this kind of unconditional warranty is pretty crazy. You know, I mean, there's. I was touring their, their facility a while back and there they had like a case of some of the things and it was like one of them, it was like a range finder guy was practicing in his yard and ran it over at the lawnmower, right? And I'm like, dude, if you're warrantying, like sometimes, like, I mean, I've, I've done some stuff, right? Like, stuff happens and you're like, that's pretty cool that they, that they take that kind of pride in their stuff and look after their customers in that way. So I think that that's just something to talk about with Vortex, you know, and what makes their optics, you know, it's great glass and great product, but also just the company itself and the way that they look after their customers is pretty awesome. So some of you guys are interested, you know, think about looking at some Vortex stuff. I do have as we're coming into the Christmas buying season. I've got, I've got some of their stuff still in our store. We don't have a lot of inventory, but we do have some. So if you're looking at some, looking for a spotter or whatever, we should have a lot more stuff in there before this holiday season too. I know it's like mid season and also kind of going into that time where maybe somebody's getting something for themselves as a gift or a gift for someone else. What have you Consider, you can always check out my store, Remy Warren.com or wherever you whatever, Wherever sells for pretty much everywhere sells Vortex. So. And then the other thing I just want to say is thank you guys so much for all the support, all the, you know, for those of you that subscribe to our YouTube channel or even just bought some hats and shirts and stuff from my day six Arrow company. We've got a lot of awesome response on our banquet hat that I was mentioning. We got some really great shirts and other things. And if you're like, hey, I don't need arrows or broadheads right now. We also, I mean we've been working around the clock. If you've got orders for arrows in. Remember these are all like custom built arrows for the, for the fletched and everything part. So somebody is hand building these arrows to your exact specifications and so we're cranking those out. And thank you guys so much. I mean I just can't say thanks enough for the support from everyone. And broadheads are packaging ready ship we've been working in, whatever all the guys have been just hammering away so. And it's during hunting season too so everybody's like, I know, just been making sure to get, get orders done and ready and out as fast as possible. So thank you guys so much, we appreciate that. If you guys don't already head over to our Day 6 YouTube channel, Day 6 Instagram, if you guys Facebook page, whatever, if you do social media and enjoy that kind of content. We're constantly pumping new stuff out over there as well. And as this next year, you know, starts to ramp up, we've got a lot of cool projects and stuff on the Day six side as well. So check that out and our website, day6gear.com I'm just going to say until next week. Track on. We'll catch you guys later. Sam.