← Live Wild with Remi Warren
Live Wild with Remi Warren
Ep 234 | Spring Scouting
00:54:48
n this episode of the Live Wild Podcast, Remi breaks down why spring scouting can be one of the best ways to stack the odds in your favor—whether you’re holding a once-in-a-lifetime tag or trying to make the most of a general season hunt. He shares recent scouting stories (mule deer and elk) that highlight how early-season observations can help you identify mature animals, learn an area faster, and build a plan months before your opener. Remi also explains key movement patterns like migration vs. resident animals, “partial migration” (why some animals move and others stay), and how to use the “green wave” to understand where animals are feeding as conditions change. The goal: turn springtime visibility and limited resources into actionable intel you can apply later in summer scouting and into the fall hunt.
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
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. If you really want to utilize a lot of this information from the podcast in the field, one of the best ways to do that is to be physically ready for the hunt. And that's really why I've partnered with Mountain Tough. So if you aren't familiar with it, Mountain Tough is an online training app designed for hunters with a ton of added benefit. In addition to the fitness programs built for that backcountry hunting, you also get access to nutrition and recovery guides for on and off the mountain mental toughness training and this really great in app community that connects you with other mountain toughers and coaches. This app is packed with value to help you stay ready and right now Mountain Tough is giving our LiveWild listeners a free six week trial when they sign up for the monthly plan using code LIVEWILD. To get started in the journey, go to mountaintough.com that's MTN T-O-U G H.com when you're out there doing it the hard way, the right way, you need gear that shows up every time. That's why I trust yeti. Whether it's keeping meat cold for the trip home or your coffee hot before daylight, Yeti just flat works built tough, no shortcuts. Check out their full lineup@yeti.com and see why it's become a part of my system season after season. Welcome back to Live Wild Podcast, everyone. You know it's that time of year tag results are starting to filter out and a lot of people have already secured maybe a general tag or have their hunts planned, it's that time of year where we really start to form our plans for this upcoming season. So it doesn't matter whether you got a once in a lifetime tag in your pocket or maybe a general season tag that you just really want to make the most of. Scouting can be a great way to capitalize. So this week we're going to look at early season scouting or spring scouting and we're going to talk about why the spring might be a great time to get out what it means for visibility and animal concentrations and then how to foray what you've learned in the springtime to a season that might be months down the track or a completely different type of behavior going on when your season actually starts. So we're going to look at what it means to take what we've learned in the spring and bring that into the season. We're also going to talk about migrations and a partial migration or phenomenon where some animals stay and some animals leave. So we're going to look at that and what that means for your scouting, and then also how animals act in the spring following the green wave. We're going to talk about what that is and what that means to you as a hunter, and then when you find animals that may be sticking around, how to capitalize on that as well. But first, I want to share some stories, some anecdotes of some scouting, and then also talk about some recent weekend scouting that I did that has me building the puzzle for the season. I always think it's fun to within this podcast, dive into the things that are going on currently, as well as, you know, some of my plans and the way that I'm utilizing these tips and tactics that I'm sharing in kind of real time. So this past weekend I was actually out doing a little bit of scouting and I've got a friend that has a tag in an area. And so I was like, well, let's just get out and see what we can find. It's a mule deer tag. And, and then I've actually got an elk tag in the area and I've got some friends coming to, to hunt this September as well. So you think about, okay, well, it's, it's May right now, this particular area we're going to, we're going to plan on bow hunting the elk in September. My buddy's got a tag for mule deer in November. So, you know, okay, well, what are we learning now that we're going to utilize that much down the road? So the mule deer tag is kind of like, I'm looking at it separately than the elk tag. The mule deer tag, I'm looking at it as this is somebody that's looking for a really good buck. And so what I'm kind of putting feelers out there is can I turn up a buck that looks like it's going to have some serious potential, Something to think about, something you keep tabs on, something to investigate. This particular area has a couple of different types of, of deer that live in it there's resident. Well, I would say they're all resident deer. They all live within the area. However, some move up into a summer range, maybe even out of the unit in the summer and then move back in and, and then rut. Like later in November there's going to be deer that you don't see any other time of year except for during the rut and maybe this time of year or winter. And then there's going to be deer that hold into one canyon for an entire season. The best ones to scout would be the ones that hold into a canyon for the entire season. But a few years back I actually was. Was scouting. I didn't have a tag, but scouting for someone else as well. And so same area and it was like, I guess it would been probably the same time first part of May and seeing deer. Now you think about, okay, well what stages are the. The deer growth in? Right. Currently most the deer are nubs. Like you can tell the younger bucks, they're just, they're just starting to grow. What's that tell us? Not much. We don't know what that deer is going to look like. You know, there's still a lot of growth left. Whatever. Well, a few years back I was in this particular area just scouting, kind of figuring because. Because deer do move in and move out. You know, is there some deer in these like timbered areas that I'm not picking up, maybe don't know about, don't have time to really burn during the season, but maybe learn something about these particular deer. And so, you know, I'm in there, I'm seeing bucks and you would see a couple of different types. You'd see the ones that are little nubs and then you see, you know, deer that are already branched and at their ears and you go, okay, well I don't know what that deer is going to be particularly, but it's better than the rest. Right. It just gives you an idea and maybe you never see that deer again. So I'm in this, this one particular spot and. And I end up spotting a. A buck like that's growing out and all these other deer little nubs. And this deer is like probably like already 140 inch. 100 and well, maybe let's go. That's probably a little high, like 120. 130 inch, 4x4. Okay. He has a lot of growing to do. Every other deer is a pencil or you know, eye guards and beams and maybe just starting to branch. This deer's already a bifurcated four by four mule deer. And so you go, okay, within the growing season of when they start growing to when these bucks are probably gonna shed toward the end of August. The this deer has put on some serious antler growth way before these other deer. So this is probably a deer that I'm going to predict or project is going to turn out to be like that next level buck. In this particular spot was like very timbered, very hard to hunt. But in an area where traditionally like over the years guiding in this particular area we would. But we've killed like multiple 200 inch bucks in this particular type of country. And a lot of them it just felt like, damn, you just got lucky. Like I don't know. There was one buck that I saw one time, it was like a 240 inch buck and it just, you know, you see it and you're like well that was it. Last year actually I saw a buck in this kind of timbered country in that caliber, like an absolute tank of a buck run that 230, 240 inch mule deer. Like an absolute buck of a lifetime. Found him in the, in the thick timber. And you're like, it's just so hard to, to figure out those deer and, and whatever. So this particular deer that I found in the spring, I'm like, okay, that this is a buck that I'm assuming this buck is going to migrate up. It was toward the like where the most nutrients were for this time of year. And I end up, you know, like just cataloging that. I kept going and checking and you know, the rest of the season and into September and stuff. Hunting in and around this area. Never saw that buck again. Fast forward to the rut now. Conditions are kind of matching what was in that springtime. It was green. You know, they're, they're on their way back out of the winter range. I go back into this particular area, it's November now, snow on the ground, deer pushed out of the high country. And lo and behold, in that same canyon draw, I turn up that buck again. Now I knew it was the buck because of his eye guards. Like his eye guards were grown. And I had a lot of reference photos. And he also had like a split, I forgot to mention, but he did have like a split ear. And I'm like, that's the buck. And sure enough it's like 190 inch typical buck. So that buck like he's in that area. But I found that buck again in the spring and then found him again in the fall. I'VE done that multiple times with different animals or at least given me an idea of a place to start looking. So there's one of the biggest bulls that we ever killed in a general type area. I'm kind of just happened upon. I wasn't actually scouting for elk, but I was spring bear hunting. Similar deal where I'm like glassing and checking out and then sometimes I'll like, I'm just gonna go like scout out some new zone and checking out a different area. And I'm glassing up in this, this like, I guess like a blowdown kind of like blow down kind of thing. And sure enough, there's, there's a bull bedded there. I'm like, crap, dude. This bull. Every other elk I've seen is like just starting to grow. And this bull has like fronts of a Boone or bull. Like, where did this boy come from? So that year that was in my head. I went in there, I hunted that area like religiously to try to turn, like to try to kill this bull. I was, I was, I was like, this bull has been in here. It's the only place that I've seen this bull. Only time that I saw it was in the springtime. I went in there like archery season, beginning of rifle season. Never, never saw that bull again. So I'm like, okay, that this is, it's an area that they migrate. So this is clearly a bull that had moved in, moved back, and I'm, I'm hoping that he's going to move back in. So I continue to, you know, to, to really put some time into it. It's not a great area to like, not a lot of visibility. So that bull could have been in there. I feel like in the, in the September, you know, I, I hit it pretty hard in September when they're make a noise and never turn that bull up. So it wasn't a resident bull. This bull was just moving in, moving out. And turns out like the lack probably, I guess it was later in like almost toward the end of the season, elk are moving out. I'm sitting there glassing and I catch a bull. And now I'm assuming it was the same bull. I'm not like, I didn't, you know, know for 100% sure. But like I turn up a bull, I go, that is an absolute, like this bull's got like a 370 side Boone and Crockett like frame. And I go, I mean like it had the fronts like that match that bull that was growing like, like I said this bull was when I first saw it just growing out. And we went, we ended up shooting that bull and it was actually like, if it was normal, it was actually fairly narrow. So it was like a 350, almost 360 bull if it had just been a little wider. Boone and Crockett bull, I mean, just like a giant bull for the area and something that I turned up in the spring, an area where, you know, the elk had migrated or whatever, but, you know, caught it on the moving up and caught him, ended up catching him coming back, which is, it's really awesome to see, but also you gain so much knowledge when you're out and when you can start to turn some animals up. So this last weekend I was out and turned up a buck in an area where I thought not great mule deer country, but also in an area that can be fairly tough to hunt, like some more rugged country, and turned up a buck. Couldn't really tell anything about it. Just like, okay, heavy, starting to grow. But what I did notice about this buck is like this. I could tell by its body size and it's actually really, really good body condition. I was like, this is an old mature deer. So, okay, I'm in this canyon. I, I know that there's an old mature deer in this canyon. I don't know what this buck's going to be, but it gives me a place to think about. So now what there's, there's a. I, I've got some scouting in, in my, that I'm going to be doing coming up. And one of the tags that I really want to do some justice on is just a general season mule deer tag, like a real big, big mountain area. And the hardest part about that is there's very few deer and it's like a super low density area. I've hunted that kind of stuff a lot. And one of the tactics that you know, that I'm going to employ this season is just putting in so much time outside of when this, when the season starts. I, you know, I'm going to get busy. It's going to get busy. And next week after next, I'm actually going to dive into a little bit more of like, for every species and different hunt, how I'm scouting it and what I'm going to do because I think there's a lot to learn from that. But this particular type of hunt this time of year, I'm going to be doing, you know, some, some more scouting this week in a, in a different area or a different place than last Weekend. This one will be for my tag. And, you know, I like, in this particular tag, you know, you'd be. There are good bucks, but there's just so hard to find. So what I'm going to be looking for is kind of like what I found last weekend is just like, identifiers that there's mature deer here. Because, one, it gives me kind of a place to focus on, two, it helps me. I'm going to start learning the area or maybe even exploring some new area. But it's a great time because I can cover a lot more country. I can see a lot more. Like this past weekend, I saw, I don't know, various groups of elk, no bulls, all cows, but which is great. And then, you know, quite a few pockets of mule deer. Mostly does a lot of calving, like, you know, fawning calving, like, a lot of the areas, like fawning calving areas. Whereas I know many of those bucks have probably started pushing up a little bit higher. But, hey, I still found a buck. In this kind of similar country, there's an older, mature buck. So what that's telling me is that saying, like, well, I think that most the other bucks have probably pushed off, pushed up. It was, you know, there was younger bucks, which the younger bucks often kind of hang out and maybe don't move. And then this. This one particular old mature buck. So I'm going to. This is a potential buck that I could say, okay, hey, I think that this buck's going to stay here based on kind of something. Now, it might not, but it. But it definitely gives me an idea or a clue that this deer maybe didn't move off with the rest of them. And I can kind of see what this buck grows out into or at least attempt to find that buck again. And it gives me an idea of where, you know, where potential bucks living. It just gives me some starting points for the season. And also, hey, it's fun to just get out. But what I'm doing is I'm. I'm cataloging, I'm learning, and I'm just really breaking down, you know, some stuff for the season at a good time of year to do it. So I think that there is something to be said for getting out in the spring and looking around and really potentially learning now. I think one of the things that I wanted to do today is talk about how animals move and some of the things that you might expect to find, because the hardest part is going, okay, I'm going out in May to look around. Maybe what I see can help me during the hunt. Maybe it won't. Maybe it'll screw me up. I'll find something I think is really good. And that animal isn't there during the season time. But what we're going to talk about is how animals move during the spring, what some of the advantages to looking around right now and then how we might be able to kind of put the pieces into place to find those animals later on in the season. Before we dive into some of the tips and tactics, I just want to mention an incredible support of this podcast. Montana Knife Company. You know, I got to go to last month, I got to go to their grand opening and I mentioned that and their new facility in Missoula there, and it was awesome to see. But also we get to see some of the benefits of this new facility because they're able, they're doing everything 100%, you know, in house. They're able to turn things out faster and just have more control of every process because it's all in one place. And they kind of expanded that footprint from what they were doing before. I noticed that they have a few more knives in stock, and that's going to be the benefit of what you see from the new facility. We all get to reap the benefits of it. One of the knives that I see in stock right now is their ultra knives, which are carbon fiber handle. That is your. I don't know. That's, that's my favorite backcountry. It's lightweight. I, I like that solid handle. So you can get a lot of different versions in that. It's, it's. I don't know, it feels so great in your hand. Like, that's the knife that I took on my Northwest Territories mountain caribou hunt. It was, you know, essentially a 1012 day backpack hunt. I had that knife with me, ended up taking a wolf and a caribou. And like, that knife is just, it's so handy. It's like great for that kind of country too, where it's wet all the time. You know, I like having that, that solid handle, that solid carbon, carbon fiber handle. And it's a great knife. And it previously is a knife that very difficult to get your hands on. One. Well, they put a lot of time into making sure that they could have some in stock. So you can go to their website now, montanaknifecompany.com and, and you could pick one up today. So that's a great one. And there's also a lot of other great stuff on their site and new stuff continually in stock. So if you haven't checked out their site recently, check it out. If you happen to be going through Missoula, they've got their store there with a black rifle coffee shop in there. Swing by, say, hey, check out what they got in the store as well. So I think you guys will enjoy that. And thank you, Montana Knife company for your support of this podcast. But also just thank you for the inspiration you. You give to me personally, just seeing what's possible with bringing American manufacturing back and seeing that, hey, you can make a quality product and something that is designed for hunters and for hunting. So thank you guys. So when we're talking about early season scouting, go well, why early there? Look, if you, if you've only, and I've talked about this before on the podcast, but sometimes separating out your time, you might not have all the time in the world during the season to dedicate to the season. You might not have all the time right before the season, but as you spread things out, maybe you can get a weekend or a little bit of time away to start to learn the area. Every bit of knowledge that you have about where you're hunting gives you clues to where to go when you have that tag. The better you know a place, the more successful you're gonna be. And I can't stress that enough, right. I've talked multiple many times of saying, look, you're a lot better off hunting one place five times than five places once. Now, it, you know, obviously it depends on the type of tag and what you got going on, but it really is beneficial to have knowledge. I would say that, like most areas that people are very successful, they're successful because they have knowledge in that area. Now, you can know the area, you can know the animal. Combine those two, it's an unstoppable force. But that's why, like, in particular areas, a lot of, like in, let's say, limited entry areas, right? That's an area that you make at the tag one time in your life because it's hard to draw. There's a potential for really great stuff, taking the best bull or buck of your lifetime, for sure. Now, realistically, the guys that probably take some of the best stuff are guys that are able to put in a lot of time scouting. There's the people that get lucky and then there's the guys that hire guides, and the guides are successful on that stuff because they're in there year after year putting in in time, right? Big animals take time, and that's that's pretty much the fact of the matter. I mean, it's. I say that too, and then it's like some of the best animals I've ever taken personally have been more of just like time in the field and things working out right. Like sometimes maybe more of an act of God than anything. But, like, consistently, the people that put in the time generally reap the benefit and reward from it. And anytime that you can get out in the field and put some time into where you're hunting or even just put time into learning about particular animals that you're hunting, provides value during the season. Because the season is only so long. And any experience that you can get outside of that is really just starting to stack the deck into your favor. I like the fact of going out early for a few different reasons. One of them is they like the time of year. In the springtime, animals are out more like winter into springtime. They're. They're just out more, they're visible more. There's less foliage on the trees and brush and other stuff. There's a lot less resources, really, because, I mean, there's that green up. But not everywhere has the right resources. So they might actually be a little more concentrated. They're going to be out more and there's more visibility to actually turn them up. If you think about the difference between a mule deer in October and a mule deer in in May, they're spending almost all their time in cover later on, and they're spending almost all their time kind of in the open earlier in the season. So you have a lot more longer days, a lot more time to actually spot something. And then you don't necessarily have that, like, same summer heat where they go in and seek as much cover. So they're actually like animals, elk, deer, other animals quite visible during the springtime. So the downside is antlered animals are still growing and they aren't really going to show you too much of what they got. Unless it's something maybe real exceptional that's kind of outpacing everything else. You aren't really going to tell exactly what it's going to be. So there's that downside. Now you've got your horned animals like sheep and mountain goats, where, hey, yeah, you can eat pretty much. They're going to be growing a few months of whatever, but you're really going to be able to tell what their potential is now. So horned animals is different than your antlered animals. But one thing that it is going to help you do is start to distinguish potential areas, it's going to start to distinguish potential places where maybe they frequent more. It's also going to tell you it's a good time of year to actually just get eyes on more, more animals and really start to learn an area. So one of the things that you might see this time of year is animals will migrate. Now the reason that they, they migrate is because they're, they're getting the best resources in the best places. There's a couple of different kinds of migrations, or at least what I'm going to be talking about. So there's some animals that do very big migrations, like herds of deer in Wyoming, they put collars on them and like these things are traveling hundreds of miles. California actually has some really big deer migrations as well, like long distances. You know, elk will do the same where it's like, hey, they might be in like areas where it's a real high altitude area and they'll be all up in this big high altitude area. And then they move down. Like they'll live the majority of the year at 7 to, I don't know, 7 to 10,000ft, let's call it. And then they just. There's too much snow for them to winter there. So they push down to areas that are 2,3000ft, spend the winter and then move back up. There's a lot of, of different herds as well that might just be. So that's like there's some big migrations like that and then there's other migrations where the entire thing kind of happens with any unit. I'm not necessarily saying it's a migration, but they move from one point of an area or mountain to, to another. It's like they live up in the higher reaches of the mountain during the summer, and then in the winter they're kind of down in the valley and then they make their way back up. So animals move. Now there's also some animals within different areas and the same areas that might not ever leave one small canyon for the entire year. There's deer that I have found in the summer and found that same deer in the spring and that same deer in the winter and that same deer in the fall. There's some area deer that like live off of a particular little. I mean, some deer that live on private land and pretty much never leave within that zone of private land. Now when I'm talking this, I'm talking mule deer, Western, western animals, whitetails I assume, do the same thing, you know, and then it's like the Rut kicks on and they start doing big laps and going to a lot of different places. But the thing is, animals move, but they also have certain areas that they like because of familiarity or the resources that are potentially available. So these deer that migrate, one of the reasons they migrate is because of the resources they want for the herd to survive and for their sustainability, they need to spread out the resources and have the best of wherever they're at. So they move to a place that's the best for summer forage, summer antler growth, maybe protection from predators, whatever. And then they move to a winter range that has everything they need to survive that winter with the best condition. And then they move and continually, you know, graze on different stuff. Now there's going to be deer that are migrating and they're going through areas where there's going to be little pockets of deer that aren't going with the rest of them. They're staying here. Maybe they stay there the whole year and that's their little zone. So it's like, well, why is there a partial migration or even within a unit? Why are there areas where right now I could go out and scout and I might find deer that are down in the, essentially the valley bottoms and those deer are going to stay there the whole season. And then there's other deer that are, were there, they shed their antlers, you know, mid mountain, whatever, and now they're up at the highest reaches pushing at the snow line. Why is it? Well, I think there's a couple of theories out there. One of them is that the herd just kind of diversifies itself, right? Where some have survived and it's like that's survival for them. They've stayed in this particular area and then they continue to survive. Another part migrates and then that's how they've continued to survive. And by spreading out the way that they do things, they're able to not overeat resources, they're able to diversify. And if something catastrophic happened, the whole population wouldn't get one wiped out. If, you know, those animals got blocked by a super early snowstorm and couldn't make it out of the high country and snowed in and all died, whatever, okay, well they're going to be okay. But if there's a migrating herd and some resident ones, whatever, like there's, it kind of keeps the herd going and moving and healthy. So it's good to have those particular things. So one thing that we will talk about in the springtime, whether it's a big migration or a Short migration, small migration. We have what we like to call the green wave. And what that is, is it's the green up the fresh, the most nutrient plant is right when it's starting to grow. It's that, that spring growth that really kickstarts everything and they can build the best body condition. When you talk about bucks and bulls and growing antlers, it takes as much for them to grow antlers as it does for a doe or a cow elk to, to grow a baby. So they're putting so much into that antler growth. And then when it comes to the females of the herd, they're actually building up because they need that energy for growing a baby later on in the season. So they really need to take advantage of what's available. Now when it comes to migration animals, there's this cost benefit analysis that the animals aren't doing, they're just habituated to it. But what's happening is the stay and go kind of factor. When to leave, when to go, when to stay is really a survival tactic because if they go and they, you know, the act of moving burns a lot of energy, but it needs to be beneficial. So they need that like, higher nutrient to make it beneficial to actually move. So what you get is what we like to call the green wave, where it's, it follows that snow melt, it gets that green up, that first new green growth, the animals eat it, they eat it, they eat it and then as that starts to go away, then they start to move to kind of continually chase the most nutrient rich stuff. And then they end up in their summer range, their area or where they're going to be. They eat, eat, eat. They bulk up during the summer, okay, and then now fall starts to hit, things start to change up higher, snow starts to fall, things start to freeze up, and then they kind of go back in a reverse order. Do, do, do, all the way back to their winter range where they're gonna have more mild weather and, and survive the winter. Animals do that on a big scale, long distances and a small scale where it's just this particular mountain and they're going like, okay, they go here, they go up the mountain. Now they might not, this might not be like so defined as, oh, the top of the mountain. It's just wherever the highest concentration of what they need is. So it could be top third of the mountain, it could be this particular basin, it could be whatever. But they're moving from one area to another. One of the things that I've found over the years in areas that have you know, a couple different kinds of migration, plus resident deer or resident elk that stay all year round is there's certain areas that have more resources and the spring, what you can do is you can kind of figure out, okay, well, where are these resources, where is this green wave, like where are they moving? And oftentimes they kind of follow it up and follow it back within a general area because it has whatever particular resources that are needed kind of on both ends. So springtime scouting can be effective in areas where elk and deer might be moving in and out of. Because what it is, is it's kind of mirroring what it might look like later on in the season. Now that can be very weather dependent. There can be a lot of different factors, but it definitely can be a prime indicator of where some places you might want to concentrate. The spring is a great time to do that because like we say, the resource a little more limited, the animals will be out more. And you can kind of get scouting for a different time of year in now when, when it's not season and you don't have a tag burning a hole in your pocket. You can, you can start to learn the area, learn some paths and patterns and start to, to make note of that for something for a tag that you might have later on. Now another, another thing that you might want to say is like, well, okay, now how do you decide whether it's a migration area or a resident area? How do we, how do we know these things? Well, a couple of those things you just kind of have to know through doing research on the area. And you know, for the most part there's information on every unit out there. Right? Because if they didn't know these things, it would be very hard for them to issue tags to understand like how this herd's made up, what these animals do. The whole management process wouldn't make any sense if we didn't understand the animals in the area. People that live in those areas often know. Biologists know there's public information about every unit out there within the state, websites and other things just to kind of start to understand the area. So that I think is key to understanding, okay, well, where's my tag at? What kind of area am I looking at? When is my tag? And we can say, okay, well, when is my tag? And what might be a good time when I'm learning in May, how am I going to start to put that into effect for September, October, November? So we're going to look for not only animals because they're going to be More visible, and we can start to learn that. What you'll start to see is maybe you're going to start to see, oh, here's an area that's holding a lot of deer. Deer or does. Sorry, let's say we're going to talk about deer for now. Like, here's an area that's holding a lot of does. Those does are going to be in areas that are actually very vital to the survival of dropping fawns. So there's probably going to be good forage there. It's going to be somewhere like, they probably aren't going to be moving a lot after they start to drop those fawns. They'll probably be kind of in that area. Those are probably resident deer, and they're going to stay within that zone. Nice thing about resident deer is even if you don't see bucks, you're concentrating on an area that's going to probably hold does. It's going to be a nursery. And those nurseries are places that hold does that attract the bucks later in the season as we get into the rut. So that's something to think about. Same thing with elk. Cow elk. And it's like, okay, this area is holding a lot of cow. Elk. They're dropping fawns or calves. Sorry. You know, this might be a place that, hey, I've got a September hunt. Okay, this is an area that's holding elk now as the season starts to progress. Yeah, maybe they're going to move a little bit away from there. But it's telling you that these are elk that probably hang out and live in this area this time of year. They're probably going to be elk that are going to be in this area later on. Maybe they'll move up a little bit more into the summer. But, hey, this is an area to kind of start between here and maybe somewhere higher up on the mountain. Focus for that September archery season. So we're building out a lot of clues for what our season might look like later on. If you got a rut hunt and you're out scouting and it's like, well, what are some other signs that we can look for? We can start to look for rubs. We can start to look for sign of old rutting behavior. Rubs for meal, rubs for mule deer, rubs for elk. If you're hunting within those seasons, if you're hunting later season, maybe it's an area where it's going to be more migration. So, hey, we go up, we're following that green wave. We found some bulls. We found A bachelor group of bulls, they're growing out, like, sweet. What do we do? Like, these bulls are going to continue moving. They're going to kind of push out of that area. So then we can say, okay, it's a later season. Maybe we're hoping on that kind of reverse pushback, depending on weather. This is an area that has held bulls. It's an area where the elk clearly moved through. I now have knowledge of how the elk move in this area. This is an area that I can come back to and focus on later in the season. Maybe it's a November rifle elk hunt, and with the right amount of weather, elk will kind of filter in and push back into these areas that we found in the spring. And so by looking at what we're finding in the spring, early scouting and the fact that animals are out, they're easier to see, and we can learn a lot of information in a time of year that's outside of the season. We can then look at how are we going to utilize this later on. And it depends on when our season is, what tag we might have, and then what can we learn now, like, what are some indications of when they're in this particular area and start to build out that story. The more you do that, the more you get used to building out that story, the more likely you are to be able to utilize what you learn now and bring that into success three, four months down the track. So one of the other things that I wanted to talk about as well is I think it's important to kind of. And sometimes you just have to spend more time in a particular area. But if we've got an area where, hey, we're out in the springtime, we find an animal or a concentration of animals and go like, oh, I think that this might be. Now this is. This can be one of those hard things where you're like, well, is this. Sometimes there'll be animals that are resident animals and animals that are going to be pushing through an area in the exact same place at the exact same time. And those. Those deer are going to keep going and a couple of them are going to stay here. How do you decide that? Well, that can be hard. One of the things that I look for is if there's like an anomaly in what you're seeing. So let's say I'm in an area I'm scouting and it's maybe. And I found a pocket of deer, and it's like, yeah, this is a really good area. It's all does. It's A nursery. This is where they're holding their deer. It's nursery. And I see, like, does and baby bucks, little bucks, you know, you'll see some little bucks. And then I just see this one buck. It's like, that's a mature old deer. It's grown out way more than the other deer. And it's very likely, like, it's maybe by himself. It's not doing the, like, you know, it's what. Whatever. It's. It's just. It's just hanging out. You go, that deer probably lives and breathes and dies in this canyon. Because if. If within the same kind of unit, if I go up in the mountain and start to chase that green, it's like, okay, bachelor groups of back bucks. Bachelor groups of bucks, okay, that those bucks are probably pushing toward a certain sum range. This buck probably lives. This other buck probably lives in this canyon year round. And that. Or within, like, this. I mean, not that canyon, but like this particular zone year round. And so what I would do is I would now start to build out a plan of, like, going back and seeing if I can, I guess, technically, like, verify that can I find this deer again? Can I, you know, maybe utilize what I've seen there to try to continue to turn this buck up. A couple other, like, things that you'll. You'll go is like, maybe you're in an area where, hey, it's just a resident deer herd deer population. That's the best. Like, there's. There's a lot of places where, yeah, those deer don't really migrate. A lot of. A lot of, like, it's. They're within this mountain. They're going to be kind of on this mountain. So what we find this time of year is, well, hey, we can start to pick out deer, elk that are growing substantially more than us. It just gives you a little bit of a head start. And then from there, we can then start to keep tabs on those animals. Now, they might move up the mountain, they might move different canyons, but it really starts to allow us to say, like, here's something that might have potential. Let's keep tabs on this and then keep coming back as we get near to the season. Go back into the summertime. I really love summer scouting because it's like they're. The bucks. And bulls are more visible that time of year because their antlers, they aren't like, necessarily tucked. Like, they do go into cover, get out of the sun and all that. But mornings and evenings, they're bachelored up you can compare a lot of them together. Often they're bachelored in similar age classes. You can really see what they've grown, and, you know, they're feeding pretty hard mornings, and even, like, they're on a very good feeding pattern. So they can be findable. You can see what they actually are, and you can keep tabs on them. But by going out in the springtime, we can start to say, okay, like, here's some idea of what we're looking for. And then we can take that little bit of knowledge into the next stage, summer scouting. And then from there we can then, once they've shed their velvet, maybe push that into scouting for the season. But we have an idea of where particular animal might live. That's especially true if we're trying to find that next level, that next level buck, that next level bull. We've got a limited entry tag, and we're like, we really want to turn something really good up. Okay, how do we do that? We need to put in time. Do we just put in time during the season, or can we find time outside of the season to really start to build a story? We find the resident animals. Now we have a place that we can continue to look at, continue to watch, and then we can hone in on that one particular animal. So I like, that's the best case scenario when you're springtime scouting. If you can find an animal in spring, you're like, oh, this one's one to watch. This one's one to keep an eye out for. And it gives you an idea of an area to kind of continue to look. Now maybe you're in that area. Like, I can't find him again. I don't think that he. I don't think he's 120 miles away. I think that he's somewhere within this mountain. But at least we have an idea of where to start our search. And then we can kind of go, okay, well, where's the next logical step this. This bucker bull might be, continue to try to. To get eyes on and to find that particular animal. I have a friend that killed a absolute hammer of a mule deer buck. He saw it once, like, ear, like, kind of similar story. What I was saying earlier, where I'm like, this is. This was. He found it in the springtime. He didn't know if it was like, a lot of the deer in this area migrate out. This deer very well could. Could have migrated out. He just continued to watch that same area. I think he put in like 100 and some odd days, if I remember right. And what an. And then he ended up turning it back up, I guess it would have been. Yeah, in September when the season was open. And he'd only seen it like he'd seen it a few times in the summer or in the spring, started in the spring, saw it one more time in the summer, and then one time in September and got it killed. It was a monster buck. Right. But of that time, he spent all his time in one particular spot. Now he had the time like he, he was there all the time. I guess I don't know how it worked out, but it was just so many days. Maybe it was over. Maybe he'd seen it the year prior, put in time and then went back the next year. I think that's what it was. But I remember it was like a hundred and some odd days of like pretty much the same glass advantage, looking into the same zone. But that buck did come back. Like it was an area that that buck liked, whether he knew nothing about that buck, where that buck went or anything other than that. But he'd found it early, was paying attention to it, had seen it a couple other times, and then ended up getting that, that buck killed. And now obviously that's like the extreme use case, but when, when you're in an area where you can find a deer that like, hey, I think this deer is living somewhere in this area, it really helps you pinpoint where to focus your attention, where to spend your time and potentially where to take that animal. So I am very excited, a little like just thing that I want to share with everyone on my Day six journey. For those of you that have been following that story. I'm the owner of Day Six Arrow and Broadhead company and we're really doing some exciting things. We've got some exciting stuff in the works. This last week we just announced that we launched. All of our broad heads are now our blades are in Magnacut steel. So if you aren't familiar with Magnacut steel, you might have heard it from like some really high end knives. It's a tool steel that has some properties that I think are very valuable for, for hunting application. So when you look at other steels, right there's this, I guess like three categories. There's strength or durability, there's edge retention and then there's like corrosion resistance. So you've got your strength, which would be I think very important. So like when you're talking about steel, you don't want it too. Like you don't want it to chip or break when it hits bone. You need it to be strong enough where it can. It's more malleable than just like snap in half. So you need. You need strength. Edge retention is really important because with a broadhead, right, it might need to cut through, like, hide hair, bone. Still a clean cut through the vitals, and then hopefully still be sharp to exit out the other side. So you get two holes. What happens when the edge isn't super sharp or it dulls on the initial cut is it goes in and doesn't cut as cleanly through the vitals, which causes less hemorrhaging, less blood. So you might be like, oh, you use a broadhead and you go, dude, I got terrible blood trail. Because probably it didn't. Wasn't as sharp as it could be and caused that hemorrhaging. So blade and edge retention is very important. And then I think one that probably doesn't get talked about enough is corrosion resistance. When you get rust on a blade, it. What it does is it can. It's not just like a physical blemish. It's a. It's. It's actually starting to corrode the strength of that edge and dulls the edge. So on impact, what you'll get is you'll get little chips in the. In the edge itself, and then those chips cause the blade to be dull. You don't get as clean cuts. You get not as good a blood trails. You get not as good a penetration. You just a lot of problems. So what you'll get with, like, a lot of value steels is the fact that, like, pretty much most of the steels out there are good in two areas, but not three areas. Like, in the past, it's been. You would have like, okay, it's good at edge retention, and it's good at strength or durability, but it's not good in corrosion. So you get that rust or you're like, it's stainless. It's really good at being not corrosive. It has really good edge retention, but it's not as durable as something else. Magnacut was invented for this specific purpose where it's actually good at all three. Like, it's high in all three of those categories. Edge retention, durability, and corrosion resistance. Or essentially like calling it rust proof. That's where Magnacut comes in. And you go, well, shouldn't everyone use Magnacut? And I was like, yes, but we are actually the world's first broadhead manufacturer to sell and make a Magnacut blade broadhead so we've replaced all the blades on our Evo series, our Evos, our Evo X and our Evo CS's with Magnacut. I think this is a huge step. You, you know, we're, we're doing what we want to do is we want to do things the right way. And essentially, you know, like our prices are currently staying the same even though we're using better materials. I think like you go, well, is it really necessary? And I say yes. Like we strive at making the best product out there for the application of hunting. You know, we aren't in it to build something that goes like, hey, I mean, look, I don't want to throw anyone under the bus, but there's a lot of companies out there that use lower grade steels, value steels and selling it as a premium product. And to me that's, I'm like, look, we have, we're making the best, we're standing behind that and so we're going to use the best. This is a steel that mostly, you know, is used on knives that get passed down for generations. You go, well, a broadhead's a little more. You shoot it, you shoot it through and it's like, you may recover it. You may, maybe you won't. You probably will recover it. Like it's, it's pretty good to find the arrow, you know, most of the time, I mean I recover most of them. One, you know, we're getting with the durability factor being high, you know, edge retention high, whatever, these are definitely something you can reuse. But the other thing is a broadhead is the one thing that is, that is your point of contact with that animal. You've spent countless hours in the field, like scouting, putting in the time, hunting. The price of tags is insane, right? You've got certain gear and you want to perform. The one touch point of that animal is your arrow or your like if you're rifling your bullet, that should be where you put the most focus. And you might as well have a product that is built superior. We make all of these in America. We do our manufacturing here in America. You. The reason people other companies are not using Magnacut is because you can't get Magnacut in China. And that's a fact. Like we're doing the manufacturing here in America. We're using the best materials. Our ferrules are the best materials, our blades are the best material and we're doing it because we can. So that just launched. If you are interested in buying the best, go to my website day6gear.com check out our evo series Broadheads. They are now the world's first Magnacut Broadheads. If you aren't on our email list, sign up for my email list there because next week I have a very in the world of archery and the Day Six Arrow Company. I have a pretty big, I guess launch coming up. This like being Magnacut was something that we were moving to and we've, and actually if you've received some in the past, we just didn't tell people but we, you've been getting magnacut but we want to make sure we fully had everything transitioned before we announced it. And coming up we have something that this was kind of a stepping stone to something that I think is pretty incredible and something that we've been working on for a while. So that's coming next week. I'm going to, we're going to talk about it on the podcast but, but also get the email, get on my email list of the Day 6 email list just so you don't miss out because we're going to be launching something next week. So the MagnaCut launch has happened. If you guys are interested in buying literally the best fixed blade broadhead out there. Nothing is even close at this point. Like I'm very proud of our team and what Day 6 has built because we've built the absolute best. So if you're into a high quality product, pretty much, I mean the price point isn't crazy compared to what else is out there. But what you're getting with this for that price point is absolutely insane. No one else is doing it and we're doing it because we can like it's a little bit of a flex with our American manufacturing and just our, our goal to build the best. So that's my shameless plug for my own company of saying if you aren't shooting this, you're shooting an inferior product. And I can say that with confidence. So head over to day6gear.com check it out. Thank you guys so much for the support. It's been awesome. And man, the reception on the Magnacut launch has been really cool because it just goes to show that there, there's been people that have been saying like, well, why, why, why don't they, you know, if you can, if you can build the best, you might as well. And, and that's something that we've been striving to do and I'm really, really proud of what we've done. So thank you guys so much, all the support out there. I really appreciate it. Thank you guys for supporting this podcast. Thank you. For those of you that head over to our website, RemyWarren.com and do your gear shopping there. It helps us out and keeps things like this podcast and other things going. You know, I value the fact that we can give you guys free information and free, free entertainment in the films and the other things that we do. And that's possible because of the support that we get from listeners like you, honestly. So the old was that was it like PBS brought to you by listeners like you? Thank you guys. And thank you for the companies as well that also help bring this podcast to life. So thank you guys so much. And until next week, I'm going to say spring forward. Catch you guys later. Sam.