← Live Wild with Remi Warren
Live Wild with Remi Warren
Ep. 244 | Wildfires Part 2 E-scout and hunt planning
00:45:50
In this episode, we explore how wildfires impact hunting strategies, focusing on post-fire planning, monitoring fires, and leveraging technology like Onyx for effective e-scouting. Learn how to adapt your hunt to fire-affected landscapes for better success.
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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. 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 m t n t o u g h dot 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. Summer's underway and this week we're going to be jumping into part two of our wildfire series. So last week we actually looked at how elk and deer are going to be using that burnt landscape, especially in their home range, and then how they act even during that wildfire. This week we're gonna take it a step further. We're gonna go into that post fire planning phase. We're gonna also look at tactics to use and how to monitor wildfires not just before the season, but during your season as well. Cause that's gonna transition into next week. Next week we're gonna be talking about the tactics and the things that we're gonna look at when there's a fire in your unit or a hunt that might be affected by smoke and other things during the season. So today we're gonna dive into the stuff that we're looking at post fire preseason, we're at planning and then some of the hunt strategies and e scouting strategies around that. So let's dive in and look at some of the ways that we can effectively hunt better post fire. So the first thing that we need to look at is we have to understand how to monitor a fire potentially in our area. Now, if you live in the area, right, you can often you'll know you see fire activity, you see smoke, you see other things. But some, sometimes a lot of these, you might even be in or near the area. It might not know what's going on on the other side of that mountain, or maybe you just missed that news cycle and the wind's blowing the other way. And you don't know a lot of people though. In a lot of hunts, people are traveling some long distances across the country, others fairly short distances, an hour, a couple hours. But you can't effectively plan for a fire if you didn't know that that fire is happening. So the first thing we need to do is understand how to monitor wild fires in our area and how to at least know what's going on. Because we, the whole point here is, let's say it's during summertime or during fire season, a fire happens in our unit. Okay, we maybe we made plans. You've already escouted, you've already got some areas that you want to check out. Well, how do we know how the area is affected? And that fire may, whether it's in where exactly we're hunting or not, may potentially draw us to that area or draw us away from that area. So what we really want to do is know, first off, is there a fire in my unit? There's a couple of ways to do that. There's like, now is the age of technology and that technology goes not just into hunting and mapping and all that stuff, but fire science as well. There's more tracking and more real time data on fires than there's ever been. And that's a really cool resource to have. I particularly just utilize my Onyx app for a lot of the fire data and that's pulling from a lot of this other public data that's out there. So if you're like, hey, I don't have Onyx, you should probably get it. I mean, I'm gonna be talking about a lot of the tactics and features and stuff to utilize that uses onnx because it's such a good resource and tool. And they have a lot of layers and other features that really help us understand how to look into these particular areas. And a lot of this E Scouting I'm gonna talk about is through that. Maybe use a different app or use something else. You can find ways around it, but it's just not as streamlined and convenient and there's definitely gonna be features that you won' so I am going to be talking about that today, but I will also talk about some of the places that this data can be found as well. So the first thing is like we'll all just talk in the Onyx app. One of the things that I have on at all times is active wildfire layer. And then if I'm like, maybe you've missed an active wildfire or something like that, I also have the wildfire layer on. So there's like the past wildfire layer. And what that'll do is it'll show previous wildfires and then the. The areas that it encompassed. So that's a good one to have while you're scouting. Maybe there was a fire. Maybe this data isn't particularly. Or this podcast, hey, there's no fire in my area this year, but there was last year. Right. So we're going to utilize a lot of the same scouting technique. You can use this for old burns or recent burns. This is just something to think about how fires affect your hunt and how we're going to utilize that strategy and planning for future hunts. So you can have that wildfire layer on. And then the active wildfire layer on Active Wildfires is gonna show you little icons of fires that are going on now. You can zoom in. You can click on that layer and it pulls up the information on where to go to access more information about that fire. So it'll have the estimated, like when it started, estimated size, percentage contained. Might even take you to the site as well that says, okay, there's closures in this area. This, that and the other thing. This is really important for understanding, you know, preseason where. Where is being burned. But this is really important too during the season to just know, okay, where can I access information if there is a fire going on nearby? So I'm gonna. We'll look at a couple other sites that. That have this data. There's quite a few government sites, the nfic.gov that's kind of one that. That a lot of organizations will use to just that's like an interagency kind of thing. Gives you real time information on these fires, where it's going, wind conditions, ground conditions. These are things that you can monitor. You can pull that map up. Same kind of system as Onyx, just little fires. You can click on that, you can look at your area, your unit and say like, okay, here's some fires nearby. Another one that during the season can be helpful, beneficial is this fire.airnow.gov that shows you like the air quality and the smoke. There is like you can even go on NASA's site and they have like real time information on thermal like fires just based on satellite imagery and other stuff like that. And what it does, all these sites allow you to kind of stay apprised online for those regional forest fires. So another thing like, so let's say you've got fire in this area. It'll also show you you can go on, you know, your mapping software say like, okay, what, what type of land agencies probably involved? Is it blm? Is it Forest service, Is it state land? And then within there you can go and find more information. You know, do a little bit deeper dive on closures and other things. Sometimes though, like, it's better to get information from the fire sites than say going on to whatever local national forest website there is. That stuff's not really updated that often. Like sometimes you'll say closure and there will be like a little blog feed in there, but it's not as accurate as a lot of the fire, fire site stuff. So monitoring closure is a big thing, especially if you got scouting trips coming up or this is happening during your hunt. That's something to think about. And then, and then the other thing that's important is just saying like, okay, there is a fire here. So once you see, hey, there's an active wildfire in my area, okay, we're going to monitor it. We're going to, we're going to see what happens when it gets put out. You know, pay attention to closures and other things. Sometimes a fire will happen and there'll be closures long into the season. Sometimes there won't be any closure by the season, gets put out ahead of time and everything's open as it was. That just depends on how the fire burns, things that happen during the fire, other potential threats like, you know, erosion and all kinds of things, road closures, that kind of stuff. But once we know that there's a fire there, then we can say, okay, now, now we might have to, now we might have to, or might want to change our plans and strategies. So we're gonna now kind of dive into the e scouting portion of this and the things that we're gonna look for once we've known we've identified there's a fire. Okay, fire is over. It's before the season. What are some of the things that we should look for that might benefit us during the hunt? Some of the things that maybe we need to change our plans. What do we got to do to make the most use out of this fire? And this is also really good information, probably even better information for what happens if it burned last year, two years ago, three years ago, five to seven years ago. So that's where that previous wildfire layer comes into play. So everybody, like there's rarely a unit in the country that does not have some kind of. Had not had some kind of fire activity in the last 15 years. Everywhere out west has it, the severity and whatever depends. But you can utilize this to kind of start focusing on maybe some other areas to look into. Okay, so now we're gonna jump into the hunt planning portion. I'm actually just pulling up my phone and I'm gonna go through some of the layers that I'm using on my onyx maps that if you have it, you can use it as well. I have. So the elite membership allows you to have access to all these features. So that's something to think about. But once you understand like what we're going to be looking at here, then it'll help you better understand, okay, how am I e scouting and planning this out. So first one I'm going to do is that current conditions and I'm going to turn on the layer. Active wildfires. That one's always on for me. Another one during the season. This one is super beneficial is the smoke forecast. So what that shows you is how that smoke's traveling. Because that's gonna be like maybe there's not a fire in your area. Probably more hunts are ruined or made difficult. And this is something we're really gonna focus on next week. But I wanna tell you how to access it now. Cause we're kind of doing like the setup process this week. Smoke and forecast. So they're like, like I was talking last week, there's an area that I was hunting and there wasn't even fires near me. I. There was fires in Oregon. I can't remember if it was that. There was one maybe by the Blue Mountain or something. Like, I can't remember where it was at. It was a big fire in Oregon. And like most of the west was affected by a lot of times Oregon and California fires. There's areas that you're like, where's the fire? There's no fire within hundreds of miles and yet the visibility is absolute garbage because you can't see. And you've got this plan, you've got all these pins for glassing and scouting and long range, you know, spotting and yet you can't even see a couple hundred yards. That really affects the success of the hunt as somebody is a lot of tactics that you go in, you plan, you're like, okay, we're going to spot, we're going to call, we're going to do whatever. The smoke can be a really detrimental to visibility and your particular hunt. So understanding that smoke forecast during the hunt is huge because there might be a fire that's a long ways away but affecting the visibility where you're hunting. So the current conditions, we've got active wildfires on and then we've got that smoke coverage as well as we get closer to the hunt. So like say the week before the hunt, maybe there's a fire going on or maybe there's not. I'm still monitoring that smoke and saying like, okay, how am I gonna, what's it gonna look like when I get out there? Is, is that smoke quality gonna be good? And that's where that Air now site comes in as well because it shows the air quality. You can even flip on the air quality on Onx if you want or you can go to Air now. That's something similar as where they're pulling this data from. It's public data. So you can go and say like, okay, like the visibility is going to be real bad because the smoke's real bad in here or it's not as clear, whatever. That's something that you're going to want to monitor during the seat, like prior to heading out and you might have to make some last minute plans or adjustments to your hunt. That's what we're going to talk about next week. But I want you to know how to access that stuff and get familiar learning some of these sites and other things. So pre hunt, whatever, as you're scouting, as you're looking into it, you can understand, hey, this is how it's going to affect me and this is how I can monitor these things. Okay. Another layer that we're really going to focus on this week, you can turn on that historic wildfires, that's in trees, crops and soil. So historic wildfires that'll show you any wildfires that might have been, you know, however old they are. And it shows you kind of the outline of that particular area. Now, one that's going to be really important when it comes to e scouting these current fires. We're going to turn on the thermal deer cover. Now, what that thermal cover is, is thermal cover provides that shade or traps heat in the winter when it comes to wildfires. And we talked last week about that home range and how that home range might be affected and that deer and elk will continue to use that same home range. They just adjust their patterns slightly in it. They don't necessarily get pushed way out. They just kind of adjust their patterns within that. That a thought that you hear me talk about very, very often in this podcast. Something that should be ingrained in your head is when you're scouting, when you're e scouting, when you're trying to figure out where animals are or where they're going to be, we always focus on the thing that's in lease supply. When a fire comes through, you know, it takes out immediate food sources. Yes. So food is going to be in lease supply, but as that fire progresses, it actually becomes like this massive nutrient rich area where food is kind of not really a factor with fire as much as you think it would be. Yeah, okay. Right. Immediately it wipes out stuff, but what comes back is actually a really higher source food. And I was reading some study, don't quote me on these numbers, but he was like, a lot of these areas after they've burned, depending on what was there before, might be 10 to 100 times more productive in the amount of available food to ungulates. So. So it's just like massive amounts of food. What is now in short supply is going to be cover. Especially when you're talking about earlier season hunts and late season hunts like summer range and winter range, that thermal cover is really important. In the summer, they need that shade to cool down. In the winter, they need that heat to trap that, like something to trap that heat. Something where they can kind of get out and get away from predators, get away from the sun, have some kind of COVID It's all part of that habitat system. So when that fire moves through, like especially early season, that thermal cover might start to disappear. Now, it depends what kind of country it is. And so one of the things that we're going to focus on is where is that thermal cover? So what we're going to do when we're kind of e scouting this is we're looking at, we're going to match up a few things here. Okay, so we're matching up where the fire is burned and you can use those sites as like, okay, here's the fire area, here's how it's burned, here's where that satellite imagery looks like we're going to say where was the thermal cover before? Because it was probably when we go back to the home range stuff, these are areas that they've used all along. Hey, they've, it's really shady here. This is that north slope. Whatever it's, it's thermal cover for that summer, summer range where it's like it's shaded, it's cool and here's some soft spots where it's keeping them warm and in the wintertime like providing good cover in the winter. So we've got both of those. You can also look at like, okay, like maybe that north facing slope in the summertime that's going to have better shade, more consistent all day shade, be a lot cooler. That's a really good option. Now in the, in the wintertime, you know those places that maybe trap some of that heat from the sun and keep, keep it a lot warmer. That's great too. One of the things you're going to want to consider as well is with a burn in the, on the winter range at least like as we get later in the season, that black ground actually kind of acts as something that attracts the sun and starts to melt the snow sooner. So one thing you'll notice is areas that have burned those will often burn off the snow a lot faster. It burns off the snow faster, it creates more food sources. So that's going to be a place that we can kind of focus on late season now we just need that cover nearby, that cover that's going to allow them to stay warm. Also late season you might see a lot of species actually out on those south facing slopes accessing that sun. So that's something to think about as well as like, okay, it burned here, maybe it was all forest. Okay, now it's a south facing slope that's accessing the sun. That's something that's going to attract animals because it's going to be warmer and help them survive that. So every, there's, there's differences within the type of COVID and terrain that was burned. But what we're going to do, looking at scouting is we're going to start to overlay a lot of different information and pinpoint places within their potential home ranges, places that they've used before that still have what they need. And that's how we're going to narrow down these spots to pinpoint where the animals are most likely going to be concentrated. So the last layer that I, the last thing that I'm going to use quite frequently after a burn is in my Onyx app is I'm just going to click on the part where you go like the base maps, where you go like 2D map, 3D map, satellite hybrid Topo. If you've got the elite membership, you can choose recent imagery. So this is really good for planning. Like, let's say there's a fire right now in your unit. It's been put out and you've got plenty of time to escout. Okay, here's the process that I'm going through to say like, where are some places that I'm focused on? Maybe you've got, maybe you've already kind of escouted it, hunted the area, e scouted, whatever. You've got an idea of where you want to hunt, that's great. If not, it's okay too because you'll still want to check some of this stuff. Especially if there was like a recent fire. Maybe you were like hunting this part of the area and the fire was over here. Maybe these are things that you just want to investigate and say like, oh, is this worth looking into? Or just stay where I'm at? Both are, both are good options. So what I'm going to look for is I'm going to, I'm going to, gonna put everything together and then we're gonna start peeling things away, investigating a little bit and pinpointing some really good spots to focus on. So this scenario, let's say it burned, it got put out. And we've got kind of this general area that we're, we're gonna start showing. So I've got all those layers on. I'm looking at that thermal cover. I'm looking at the, the outline of the fire and where it went. Now remember, the best habitat is going to be that island refuge that what they call patchy mosaic, where there's pieces that are intact near pieces that were burned. What you're going to find during your hunt is that that burned stuff, the thing that's in lease supply is the COVID but it has a lot of food. So what you're going to find is a lot of burns really get utilized for feed during the night because the animals feel really exposed out in that open dep on. You know, there's just like not a lot around they, they. So they're really going to utilize that burn in those puscular moments, that early morning and late evening time frame, potentially during the night. Then there's. They're going to utilize the available cover that's around in that patchy mosaic part to kind of have that cover, have that safety net and then also have that shade or whatever that they need, need, need to survive. Now, depending on how it burns, sometimes like you'll get big timber that burned these big swash swaths of it in migration areas. Animals will have to move through this stuff and then they kind of think that they're hidden because there's trees and other things. But we're just talking about these home range areas where we've got habitats and we can focus on that. You will find animals out in these burns, but we're gonna like, focus on places where they can get shade and cover, especially if it's earlier season and then maybe some of that thermal and feed later season. So the thing in lease supply is what we're going to focus on so we can turn on this more recent imagery. You might have to wait a little bit after the fire, but there's, you know, you're going to turn on that recent imagery and what you can do in there is we've got thermal cover layer on. We've got that wildfire, like where it burned. Now it'll show like the outline of the fire and then we can turn on that recent imagery within that. And within that recent imagery, we should be able to see, okay, like, here's a patch that didn't burn. Here's a canyon that didn't burn. The detail isn't as much on this. We talked about this recent imagery option, looking for current water sources as you get on like a hunt, early season or in arid areas. That's really good to see. Like, once something burns that green sands out, you don't need high detail. Say like, oh, here was a creek and along this creek it survived. There's like, it must have been a really wet area. There's these patches and springs that survived around here. Sometimes I found like wallows and other water sources in fires or post fire because I go, everything burned except this, like island of wet. Okay, well that, that's something that we can now focus on. That's an area that has water, it now has cover and it's within an area that they're probably already using. Oh, okay, here's the edge. And we can also look at like, okay, here's the edge of the fire area. Now the edge of the fire area on the Map. It's not showing every little piece that burned. It's just showing like the perimeter. So we can scan some of these perimeters and go, okay, there's ton of COVID here. Oh, it burned, like into this. And there's cover on both sides. Oh, it burned this canyon, not that canyon, within that fire perimeter. So we're looking for those pieces where there's intact habitat next to this new nutrient dense buffet area. And these are going to be places that we're going to start dropping pins on. Now the other thing that we can look at is we can say, okay, here is some thermal cover areas. In the past, those are going to be places that animals were utilizing in that home range before this burn happened. With the data that's been provided, we know that animals continue to use that same home range. Maybe they're just using different, different parts and pieces of it. So if we have that thermal cover area, we have that fire area and now we can look at that recent imagery. Is there any of those thermal cover areas that were not burned? Those are going to be like ideal spots that I would think to start focusing on. These are areas that they're probably already using, depending on when your season is. And so we're going to like start pinpointing those things. We're going to start pinpointing areas of the edges of these burns, areas within. Like, sometimes you'll see a burn and you'll see this island of habitat within the middle of this big burn. It's like burn, burn, burn, burn, burn. One canyon didn't get hit. Perfect. That's really going to highlight some places for us to start focusing on. So we're going to start pinning all these little places, these places with island habitat, with microhabitat maybe. It's like, you look at it, it's like it looks like the scape of the moon. Yet this particular area had some bigger trees. A lot of those bigger trees are intact. There's some springs and other things in there. There's some green, like bright green strips within this. Okay, now we can highlight that stuff and have a place to go that's like a sea of refuge within a bigger overarching burn. Because these are going to be places that are going to attract animals that were already in that area back into those areas and they're going to start holding and utilizing those areas more. That also gives them that access to this new growth. And they're going to probably primarily be hitting that new growth nighttime, early morning, evenings, like those crepuscular hours. So this gives us places to focus our morning glasses on our evening glass and then also some potential cover areas. It also shows us some places that are going to narrow down like a large area to a small area by focusing on the thing that might be in lease supply. So the next step that I'm going to take from there also is within this burn, where are some really good vantages that I can get in glass across this burn. Late season can be like elk, primarily in deer. Late season glassing in these burns can be really good because we don't necessarily need as much like, especially in areas that are cold, maybe we don't need as much cover. Maybe we need places where these animals are trying to access sun in an area that was previously forested. This could be a really good way to look over a lot of country and find animals that are bedded. Trying to utilize that warmer dirt and that southern exposure that used to be treed in and now is probably going to be burnt off, have green grass or new growth, and provide access to sun embedding. So it depends on when we're hunting, how we're going to utilize this, this new information. But one of the things that I like to do is find good glassing manages where I can cover a lot of that country. Successful hunting often comes down to covering country. Whether it's elk, whether it's deer, whether it's on foot, whether it's with your glass. I always say let your eyes do the walking. You can cover a lot more ground glassing than you can still hunting. That's just the name of the game. So if now you can glass a lot of country very effectively and fairly quickly in some ways you can get to these vantages and you can scan so much country when you're sitting there glassing some of these burns. Don't discount all. Everything you can see, you can cover it a lot faster than you probably used to be able to. So you can cover like find glassing, manage glassing, manage glassing, manage. You can get there in that first morning or evening time when they're mostly going to be moving through this, and you'll have a lot more likelihood of turning something up because visibility is so accessible now. Another thing that I want to talk about is one of the things that we can look for. So we've, we've looked at those unburned patches. You're going to find areas that are going to have new growth. So one of the things that I want to talk about is we're going to find areas that have new growth sooner. Not all burns are the same. Some burns like in, in forested areas, let's say it's all like lodgepole and it's just burned. Those get really hot a lot of the time and they've scorched the earth. They've like killed everything underneath. Those areas also don't have a lot of understory growth because they've been blocking out the sun for a long. And they may not have like a system of tuberous root plants or woody shrubs or grasses. Like a lot of times under there it's just a few maybe like bear grass or certain things that are not necessarily a high nutrient level. And those areas might take a really long time to grow back. But you might have these wetter areas within that or on the edges that have an opening, have grass, have survived. What you're going to see is you're going to see the regrowth happen near current growth, the first regrowth. The places where there's more access to seed blowing into it. Like the soil is probably primed. It just needs the seed. It needs maybe that like aspen root system to start popping up. It needs that like edge of the mahogany and other things or sage to start regrowing. So the places where there already is some kind of growth is going to be the first and best regrowth. Now in areas that were maybe it's a completely different area. It's that prairie sage type country. When that burns, the grasses regrow really fast or a lot faster than timbered country because it, it's in an area where there was more sunlight and more actual grass anyways. So it's going to, it's going to sprout back sooner. You're going to be more productive. Live in a fresh burn in a place that had fewer trees than a place that was heavily timbered. And that's just how that growth is going to rehab. And now in a lot of places where there's wetter areas and you've got that access to some things that are still alive now, things like fireweed are going to start popping up in that timbered country. And that's all really good forage for mule deer especially, can be great forage for elk as well. And then you're also going to get, get those like neighboring grasses spreading really quick. So you're going to get that green up later in the season. You're going to get better regrowth. That salad bar is going to be nutrient dense sooner, closer to those places where there's something that survived. So new Growth springs out faster from existing growth and then also springs out faster as like there was less timber. So in an area that was already almost primarily grass and shrubbery, that's going to regrow really fast, like maybe within. You know, sometimes it depends on the weather that's preceded the fire. So that's one thing that we're going to want to monitor as well is like let's say there's a fire now. Hey, let's just track some of the, like go back and look at the weather. Hey, yeah, there was rain a few days, maybe there was snow as you get like later in the season. Okay, cool. This is all going to create green up in those areas. Like areas where is more sage, more open, more grassy terrain. Let's say it burned now and then we've got water and snow and other things before the season that's going to create green up right, right here and now you're going to see those benefits almost immediately. Like a month or so later you're going to start to see green up and other things start popping up and attracting animals to it. It might not look like much to us to our eye because it's not tall grass, but it's very nutrient dense regrowth that's happening on these places and that can happen a lot sooner in places where there's fewer, fewer trees, fewer timber. Now as we start to look out a year or two later, maybe there's a burn a couple years ago. These are these, this is when that salad bar is really starting to pop in a lot of places. We can identify those areas. We can find the places they're going to start to regrow. We can look at, start going through different imagery. What did it look like in the spring? You find a, a fairly recent burn a couple years. Does it just look like this vibrant green? Okay, well now we know that this is a productive area. It started to regrow and it probably has that salad bar effect that's going to attract a lot of animals and be like this massive food plot. So these are ways that we can look at fires, previous fires and current conditions. We're going to line all these things up and we're going to start highlighting areas. Then we're also going to think about glassing vantages and utilizing that openness to help us spot animals in, in a shorter amount of time and cover way more country with our glass. One of the other things that I, I like to look for as well is any potential massive disturbances that happen during a fire. There's this one Place that I was planning on hunting. There was a fire, you know, in the summertime. And. And one of the things. So I like had hunted it before. I'd hiked in from this one canyon side. I go and I'm like hiking in and I drop down the canyon, climb up the other side. And here's like, it was like a side by side park. There was no roads there before. And what had happened was to fight the fire, they bulldozed in a road to create like a fire break. Now technically the person wasn't supposed to be parked in there, but the forest service didn't have time to put up gates or signs or whatever. So whether they knew or didn't know, I don't know, remains to be seen. Like maybe they just didn't care. But like they had driven down to this part that took me like most of the morning to hike into. Now there was like this new disturbance, a new road that was put in that someone was utilizing. And I felt like I just wasted a lot of time hiking here because, hey, there's somebody here. I would have never driven down that even knowing that it was open. But I might have maybe just said, hey, I'll just like hunt this other side. Because there is these new disturbances. Things change during a fire. And a lot of the other changes that you might see are a lot of. A lot of roads may end up getting closed, which I am a big proponent of. Because the animals are in this kind of fragile state now. There are immediately weakened resources. They're more concentrated, they're more. They're more vulnerable to predation, they're more vulnerable to hunters because of the added visibility. There's a lot of things going against them. In areas where there's lots of roads, they have trouble getting away. One of the things that I look for in a fire is because the first part of a season or an opening or whatever people utilize, they're going to be around those roads. And animals do see that increase in traffic and that does start to displace them to places that are more remote. I prefer to start in the places that are more remote and further away from the roads if possible. Some areas there just seems to be roads all over. But one of the things I'm looking for on that newer, more recent satellite imagery is like, is there this like new road that's not on that was just like bulldozed in. Where was a lot of traffic? A lot of times you're going to see that on the edges of these things. Things. And that doesn't even mean a bad thing sometimes. These are places like, yeah, they just cut fire line. They just pushed in fire line. I've seen deer and elk standing in that fire line because it. It stopped the fire. And you get really good growth within there. And then, like, walking those areas and other things can be very productive. A couple years ago, like, there was an area just like that, and it was a late hunt. It was like, no, no. It was end of October. I was set up glassing with my dad, and this bull just starts screaming down below. It's like bugling. So I started bugling back. I had. We had this, like, epic day that was like chasing a elk in September. And they were really utilizing this thicker cover and the edge of this, like, burn line in. In where it had been tore up by a bulldozer because there was a lot of growth in there. And also there's, like, trees and stuff knocked down. And I think. Think they were eating a lot of the lichen off of, like, the old man's beard that was growing on the trees. There's a lot of nutrients in that. So those are some of the other things you can see is, like, where they've cut down a lot of trees. Sometimes they. They cut this big swath and then push it over and that survives. It doesn't burn. And then the stuff on the other side burns. But the stuff that they've knocked down can be very nutrient dense, Especially grape browse for deer in that timbered country where they're really hammering the lichens and the other stuff that are green growing on these trees or the new tips that were way too tall for these animals to reach those. Those can be areas to focus on as well. And like, really good food sources post fire or after. There's been some kind of intervention or disturbance within that area. But how, depending on how soon the fire was, like, a lot of animals might get displaced just because of that disturbance. Hey, here's this really good ridge that used to hold animals. And for the last month, there's been crews bulldozing and working and camping and doing okay. It might be a place, depending on how soon the fire was to think of. Like, okay, I'm going to look in other places because they've probably been disturbed from this area, not just because of the fire, but because of the heavy activity involved with the fire during that timeframe. Really, fires, depending on where you're at, you need to look at it a little bit differently. But if we have all those different layers on, we can find those Glassing vantages, we can find that patchy mosaic. We can find the refuges of habitat within their home range that they're already using, and then pinpoint those places. Whether the fire was this year, a couple years ago, five, 10 years ago, we can utilize the benefits of that fire to pinpoint places that are going to be productive for hunting. And I know there's been hunts that I've had and I see like, oh, there's a fire going on. And you go, man, this could really suck. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it blasts out these massive swaths and it makes it very difficult that first year. But a few years down the road, things start to catch back up. The population start to boom again. And where you've got these really good isolated habitats, you can find some incredible hunting. So fires are. Fires can be a bad thing, but they are not the worst thing. And they can be a really great thing for populations and hunting. I've hunted a lot of burns in the past. Focus on a lot of older burns, new burns. I, I've, I've taken deer in a burn that happened that same year, you know, like late season on the winter range, where they're just hitting that green up and that stuff that's been burnt off because of the black soil. And it's like, why are they even in here? Well, they're in here because of that extra nutrient. And then you find a few pieces of COVID within that and you kind of find yourself a honey hole to say, and you can really glass and cover that country effectively. So by utilizing this kind of information, I think that you can take something that maybe seems like, ah, this isn't so good and flip the script and say, okay, now I have some place to concentrate. I have a place that might be beneficial after post fire and focus on those areas this coming season. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed that podcast. So next week we're going to look at that during the season tactics and what to do when you get smoked out. Some of the ways you can change your hunt strategy based on. On current fire. So this is all we just talked about, ways to plan when there's been a fire. Now we're going to talk about ways to plan when there's a fire, because you're going to notice that a lot of areas, there might be certain closures, other things you got to make. You got to make plans change quickly, especially in that September timeframe. This is mostly for early hunts and then how smoke from fires around might affect your hunt strategy. So we're going to Talk about different strategies to use when there's fires going around or negative impacts off of a fire. Most of it's going to be like stuff that was a ways away from where you're at. But like the smoke and the visibility thing. We're going to talk about how we're changing up our tactics during that and then how to, like, continue to monitor while we're in there and then some of the best practices. Because one of the things that we want to. I want to stress more than anything is there are people putting their lives on the line to put these fires out. It doesn't matter whether you have a tag or what have you there. You need to respect the boundaries that exist, let these people do their job, not become a problem. I know everybody thinks like, oh, I'm not the problem. Somebody's always the problem. Like, there's a camp somewhere that it like deters or detracts from things that people need to do. So there's restrictions in place and there will be restrictions in place when there's fires going on. Absolutely need to respect those restrictions. But also how can we maybe salvage or hunt other areas, ways that we can change and things to look out for during the season. If that wildfire season extends into your hunt that September, October, depends on where you're at in the country. Sometimes fire season's late, like in the Southwest. In that, like later season, that's when fire season happens. So these are all really good tools to have and know and how we might change our hunt strategies and tactics based on that. Another thing that I want to mention before we go, I, I'm, I talked about Onyx a lot. You know, one of the things that they do for our podcast listeners is they give you guys a discount. Because I'm, I'm like, I'm talking about it. I want to make sure that people can have access to it. So we do have a discount code. Just use code LIVEWILD. I think you get like 20 off on that. If you don't have that. If you're like, I can't find these tools, you can just upgrade to that elite membership and you got to do it on their site. So I know, know some people have, have it through the App Store. You can just upgrade through the site and then that's where you get your discount. It doesn't work through the App Store or whatever. Just so if you're looking to utilize that. And then one of the other things that I wanted to mention this week as well, we've got a lot of awesome hunt videos coming out in the near future. So if you aren't subscribed to my YouTube channel, check it out. We've got a wolf and caribou hunt coming up. We've got. We're going to be starting elk month next month. I've got some incredible bow hunts for elk. We're going to just really, I'm going to really put out a lot of stuff to just pump you guys up. So as we get closer to the season, you're going to start to see an increase of our, what we like to call our, like, hunt films or our bigger hunt films for the year. So a lot of incredible hunts that you've seen and heard stories about, the podcast, previous podcast, A lot of those films are going to start coming out here. So just prepping you guys. If you, you know, flip that on or whatever, subscribe, you'll probably see it, see it sooner. So if you're interested in that. And then as a reminder, we're getting close to the season. If you need arrows, if you need broadheads, if you need any of that kind of stuff, our day six, day six gear.com are my arrow and broadhead company. We've got. We're going to be cranking away on that stuff. You know, make sure to, especially with arrows. I'm just going to encourage people. We've seen such an influx in demand that if you're a current customer, you're like, hey, I'm going to just start thinking ahead. Make that reorder now. Because as we get closer to the season, you know, it's. It's a, it's a small team for the most part. We want to make sure that we can deliver everything in time. And as we get close to the season, a lot of people. Wait, wait, don't wait. If you are like, I need more air. I'm gonna need more arrows. I've got. I might need more arrows. Go on now. Or if you're like, I'm gonna switch it, go now. Now's the good time to do it. Also, our verse broadheads, you know, have been incredibly like people have. There's already been people who've been hunting with them. Like, incredible feedback we've got from them. We're gonna be dropping a few of our, like, a few more runs once we get it built up. The one thing that I've said is like, if you haven't gone on and said, notify me when they come back, you need to do that because they, honestly, they will probably be sold out to that list first. So just going on the website, you might not be able to get access to them. And we are offering them to people who have previously bought first. So if you already got them, you're like, hey, I wanted some more for the season. You're gonna have first access anytime we re release. And those that have been waiting, we did that pre order. Those are going to start shipping here pretty soon. So keep your eyes out for that. You know, we've got those coming and then we've also we're hoping to get those practice heads out fairly soon. The one thing we're going to do with those practice heads is like if you bought. I think we're just going to limit it starting out to people that already have the broad heads and try to limit the number just so we can keep up. You know, we got caught a little off guard. This is a new product for us. This is our first launch. I just appreciate the support and thank you guys so much. We are, the guys are working around the clock like trying to get stuff built and we're just switching everything over to, to be able to try to keep up. And I thank you guys for, for the support. And those that have been patient waiting and those that want in, make sure to go to our website like go like you're going to purchase and say notify me when it's available. We also have our Evos available. I mean that's our tried and true. That's a broadhead. I've hunted with more than any other broadhead, had more success with that broadhead. That's our fixed point blade broadhead. And honestly, like if you're a somebody that shoots fixed blade or you're like, hey, I shoot mechanicals. Try the Evo. You might be surprised how well those things fly. Like very awesome ballistically. Incredible penetration. There was a John Lusk did a Lusk test online with the Evo. And I mean you can, you can go see the kind of penetration that those brought it. That's what they're designed for. I don't, I don't think there's a broadhead in my opinion on the market that penetrates better, especially for hunting situation circumstances. It is, it was a broadhead designed for elk hunting, but it works great for everything else. So those are some things to check out. And I'm going to say until next week. What am I going to say? What's Smokey the Bear say? He says only you can prevent a forest fire. There you go. I don't know. Only you can scout a forest fire. Catch you guys later. Sam.