Call of the Outdoors Episode 52: Late-Season Hunting Tactics & Opportunities

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Is taking a down feather from a duck, pheasant or turkey and what I do is I leave that. [00:00:06] Speaker B: Two years ago was the first time they saw a decrease in body weight as well as antler size. [00:00:11] Speaker C: I like getting lost. [00:00:13] Speaker B: That's good because you're good at it. [00:00:15] Speaker C: Hello and welcome to Call of the Outdoors, the podcast of the Pennsylvania Game Commission. It's hard to believe, but we're in the first week of deer season already and fall has gone by so fast and winter's coming quick. And that's what we're here today. We've got two special guests, Mr. Dave Mitchell, our deputy executive director, and Luke Johnson, who works in our shooting sports division. And we're going to talk about some late season opportunities. Talk about. We're going to talk about a whole bunch of stuff. Kind of going to deer camp today. So thanks for coming along. Thanks for being a conservationist and welcome to Call of the Outdoors. For Pennsylvania hunters and conservationists, our roots run deep. The episodes we bring to you on the Pennsylvania Game Commission's podcast, Call of the Outdoors will take a deep dive into exposing the incredible work being done by agency staff and partners, including statewide habitat projects, the science behind wildlife management, and what drives agency decisions. The Pennsylvania Game Commission's mission is twofold. To manage and protect wildlife and their habitats for not only current, but future generations, and to promote hunting and trapping in the Keystone State. Well, guys, can you believe that it's the first week of deer season already? It's crazy how fast the time goes. You look forward to it all year, but, you know, there's a whole lot of hunting season left, and that's why we're here today. But you know, Luke, you're new to the podcast and if you would tell the folks at Call the Outdoors a little bit about, introduce yourself, tell them a little bit about who you are, what you do, and how you got to the Pennsylvania Game Commission. [00:01:50] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. My name is Luke Johnson. I'm originally born and raised here in Pennsylvania in Marysville, just across the river from Harrisb, God's country, Perry county, born and raised. So my job here at the Pennsylvania Game Commission, I'm our range management coordinator. So I help with funding for our public ranges we have across the Commonwealth, as well as I manage our shooting Range Improvement program. That's a new initiative from the Game Commission this year where we're providing funding for sportsman's clubs to do range improvements or design new ranges. I started competitive shooting when I was 9 years old locally here at Harrisburg hunters and anglers shooting rimfire and center fire silhouette. And then once I got to high school, a couple friends of mine said, hey, do you realize that you can go to college to shoot? And I was like, no, I didn't. What do I need to do? And they're like, head over to Paul Meyer Sportsman's Club. They have a great junior rifle program. The coaches over there will take great care of you and send you on your way. So I went there, started shooting three, four nights a week at Paul Meyer, and I ended up getting a full ride scholarship to University of Alaska Fairbanks and spent four years at Alaska Fairbanks and shot on the NCAA rifle team up there a couple time All American and loved Alaska and found my way home. Spent a little couple of years in the industry like yourself, Matt, and found my way home with this job with the Pennsylvania Game Commission, so. [00:03:03] Speaker C: And we're proud to have you. And a lot of people don't realize how important shooting is to conservation. [00:03:08] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:03:09] Speaker C: And every bullet, every arrow that goes downrange, I mean, it provides funding throughout the country to conservation and the future of wildlife, future of hunting. And. And you know, obviously that's why you. We're lucky here at the Game Commission to have those resources and those ranges out there where we can provide that service to folks like Dave Mitchell to go out there and fire, because there's of anybody in our agency, I would say he puts more bullets downrange than most. [00:03:33] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. Every time I get stopped in the hallway, it's always gun questions. [00:03:38] Speaker C: And, and Dave, you're a returning guest, been on many times, but our deputy executive director. And just, just in case people are tuning the first time, just tell them a little bit about your career here. [00:03:48] Speaker B: Yeah, Matt, I started with the Game Commission all the way back in 1991 when I went into our Ross Schleffler School of Conservation and worked my way through the ranks as a game warden, land manager, up through regional director, and then deputy executive director of field operations. So 33 years and doesn't seem like, you know, we worked a day in our life. It's just awesome. [00:04:13] Speaker C: And you know, when you think about conservation and I've been in the house where you grew up in your dad's basement is full of Game Commission memorabilia. And, you know, that's the reason that we're probably all sitting here is because we were lucky enough to have parents or uncles or somebody that took us out and let us experience the woods for the first time. And every time this time of year, like, you know, Opening day was a couple days ago, and I still have that problem where I have trouble sleeping before opening day, even though I'm not. I mean, it's just born into us here, and that spark is what drives us every day for whether we're going hunting or to come to work. No doubt about it. [00:04:51] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. We didn't have the youth hunting opportunities when we were starting out. You had to be 12. And, you know, my dad and our family, they got together and they did deer drives and things like that, and, you know, I wasn't allowed to go along, so, like, I had to sit at home and wait to find out. And there were no cell phones, so, like, you didn't know if anybody got anything. And, you know, like, at the end of the day, you got to go and look at all the deer and everything that people killed. And it was, like, the highlight of my Thanksgiving break. You know, just the guys were hunting. I wasn't. I just couldn't wait for that opportunity to get out there, and I still feel that way today. [00:05:23] Speaker C: And this year was kind of cool for you because you went back and hunted with your de dad opening day back in your old stomping grounds. [00:05:28] Speaker B: I did, yeah. We got to. Got to go out and hunt together with my brother and my nephews and some of my friends, and it was really cool. You know, the longer. Longer time goes on, you know, you think about those opportunities to get together with family and friends, and it's not as important about what you kill, but, like, just the memories that you get to make sure. [00:05:46] Speaker C: Absolutely. That's what it's all about. And, you know, Luke, were you even born in 1991? [00:05:50] Speaker A: Nope. I was going to say, I'll show my age here. My. I was the last group of kids that had to wait till they were 12 years old. And, yep, I was the last group group. So it was kind of. I was always jealous of the kids that were a year younger than me because they all got to go hunting, and I had to wait till I was 12 years old, so. But same thing as, like, what Dave was saying being a kid. Dad and pap going up to the mountain and just waiting for that phone call of dad getting a deer or something like that. And luckily enough, they hunted a lot close to home in Perry county and stuff like that. So I'd get the phone call and get to go along and help them bring it out of the mountain. Like, that was awesome, being able to go along and bring it out of the mountain with him. And that got my Fire started as a young age and it's like Christmas morning every day, every year, rifle season starts to come out. Opener comes. The night before is always, always like Christmas morning, being able to hit the woods. [00:06:36] Speaker C: So Luke, I had to laugh Sunday. Luke's parents live close to me where they could at least hear if I shot a gun. And he texts me, he's like, are you sighting in your rifle? Like this is a couple days before deer season. He's like, a lot of gunfire going on down there. I'm like, no, it's not me. But if you listen to the valley this weekend, oh gosh, everybody was shooting their guns. I mean guys, you don't think the deer know what's coming? I mean like, especially ones that have had a few birthdays, but they like to stay away from us. I mean that's, you know, we're going to talk a little bit about that because so many folks out there think that like after opening day, deer season's over in gun season, that is. And you know, I think we're going to get into some tactics now. But let's talk about the season so far. Luke had a really cool experience. I know that you took advantage of that early muzzleloader season. Let's talk about that hunt up there. And you kind of got an extra little surpr. [00:07:28] Speaker A: Yeah, it was pretty cool. So I took advantage of the early muzzleloader season, went to Potter county with a couple friends of mine, was hunting Susquehannock State Forest. And last day of the Last Saturday, about 3:00, I had a very mature whitetail doe coming out across the ridge, harvested her. And when I went to tag her, she was ear tagged from the Pennsylvania Game Commission, which was really cool. So with her she was actually double ear tagged. She had silver deer, she had silver tags from Penn State from the fawn research study in 2014 and then gold ear tags from the 2015 Deer Density Survey. So when you get one, if anybody out there harvest is a ear tag deer, there's a number, there's a toll free number to call Penn State. They'll give you a call back really quick. Our guys up there are great. Called back and they had all the data on this whitetail, which was super cool. So in 2014 they tagged her during the fawn density during the fawn survival study. [00:08:22] Speaker C: And she was a fawn? [00:08:24] Speaker A: No, it was for the fawn survival study. So they aged her at a year and a half. So they estimated her being born in June of 2012. So she was a 12 and a half year old doe, roughly. [00:08:33] Speaker C: And one of those ones that has a nose about that long and lets, you know, lets everybody know that you're in the woods. [00:08:38] Speaker A: It was a, it was a fun drag out, we'll put it that way. And another really cool thing was that then she was captured again in 2021. And when I was talking and I gave him the GPS point from where I harvested her and it created a perfect center mark from all three capture sites of a mile and a half. [00:08:56] Speaker C: Wow. [00:08:57] Speaker A: That Doe, a 12 year old Doe, essentially lived in a mile and a half circle on state forest ground for 12 years of her life evading hunters in a very high haunted area. And she knew how to evade them. And it was just more luck than good management, I think. [00:09:11] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And that's pretty awesome when you think about that and you think about how many hunting seasons a deer like that has seen. And you know, a lot of times we get discouraged and like, well, there's no deer around. Well, they're, they're living out there every day. They're just learning how to get around us and using that nose to their advantage and figuring out how to hide. And you know, all of us in here have probably walked by a buck of a lifetime in the woods. And it just let you walk by because they're smarter than we are and that, I mean, they're surviving out there in their house where they live every day. [00:09:42] Speaker B: Yeah. When you look at their survival rates from that deer forest study, like there's a lot of deer left after hunting season in our public lands. You know, like they're not killing all of them. People think, oh my God, all the deer are dead. They're not. They just adjust the pressure and you know, I think that's some of the things we're going to talk about today. [00:09:59] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. [00:09:59] Speaker B: I remember being a kid and thinking that like, you know, by, by the end of the opening day of deer season, like your season was over. Like you don't even have an opportunity to get anything. And there's nothing further from the truth. [00:10:09] Speaker C: Even, even more than that. At 9:30 in the morning, you're like, it's over. It's time to eat lunch and you know, go see what everybody else got. And like sometimes we forget, you know, we used to, I grew up hunting where like pressure was the biggest thing that we hunted. We didn't hunt deer being deer. And I think nowadays, you know, with all the options that we have to hunt deer, from beginning of archery season to the end of muzzle Loader season really need to revert our tactics a little bit back. And our mindset is to hunt deer, doing deer and what deer do every day. You know, no matter what you're out out there, the more you can learn about that species, whether it's deer, squirrels, turkeys, grouse, rabbits, the more you learn about that species and pay attention to their habits, the more animals you're going to see whether it's in range or out of range or whatever. But before we get started, so I got two of our folks here from the agency that are really into shooting. If you had to pick one caliber. Luke to deer hunt and just hunt everything, deer, bear, just an all round caliber, what would your caliber of choice be? [00:11:06] Speaker A: 7Mm 08. Since I've been 12 years old, I've been a 7mm 08 fan, especially now with the bullet selection. But there's great companies out there creating better bullets every day. And so it's kind of reviving the seven millimeter. And I, I love it. It's great all around for taking bear. I maybe a little bit underpowered for bear, but it's all about shot placement. I love my 7mm 08. [00:11:29] Speaker C: I'm a.28 caliber fan myself. The gentleman next to you doesn't own a.28 caliber, probably. [00:11:34] Speaker B: I do not. [00:11:36] Speaker C: How about you, what would you, what would you say? [00:11:37] Speaker B: I would tell you the same thing I told you last time. 270 Winchester. [00:11:40] Speaker C: I figured that. I mean that's. He grew up with a very famous outdoor writer. That like that was his, that was his rifle. [00:11:48] Speaker B: That was. And I'm sure if you looked at, you know, ballistics and the way cases are designed today for accuracy and efficiency, there are better choices. But you asked me what my choice is, that would be it. [00:11:58] Speaker C: I loved it. I love to ask everybody that. It's amazing the answers you get. You know, 3006 is obviously very, very common. And you know, when I grew up, if you didn't have a.30 06, you weren't a deer hunter. [00:12:07] Speaker B: I mean that's exactly Remington pump. 30 06. [00:12:11] Speaker C: Let him rip. [00:12:12] Speaker A: And what's funny is for popular. 270 is in Pennsylvan. That's one caliber I don't own. I don't own a. 27 caliber. So it's been 7mms or 30cals yet. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. One of these days it'll hang around. [00:12:26] Speaker C: With this guy for so long, you're gonna fill your gun safe up. I mean that's one of those things. But you know, we have we have over a week yet of rifle season in Pennsylvania. My favorite time to hunt is that last week of gun season. I think it's one of the best times to be out in the woods. You know, this year was a really different year. We had a drought, you know, and the rut wasn't as exposed as in our season across the country, not just in Pennsylvania. You know, food source was really weird this year. So let's talk about this next week and a half or so if folks have some time to get out there and some of the ways that you look, you know, things that you look for when you're heading out there and what we're excited about coming up here on the second week, if you want to hit on that. [00:13:10] Speaker A: I mainly look for travel routes, food sources and travel routes. I do a lot of. I do a lot of e scouting. Most of my hunting is up in the north central region. I do a lot of hunting in 2G with El, Cameron, Clearfield counties. So I do a lot of topo scouting and especially with newer hunting equipment coming out two, three years ago, I really got into saddle hunting. And I know a lot of people think about saddles mainly for, like, archery. But I love it for rifle season because I can take my two sticks with my platform and be able to move and be mobile to go out and find new areas and be able to get up just above that laurel so I can see what's moving around that laurel. Because if not, it's tough because you hear it coming. And a lot of the times, deer are very smart. By that time of year, they'll wind you. They'll be able to be able to wind you, and you're never going to get a look at it. So being able to be mobile and I do a lot of e scouting based off of topography and then putting some boots on the ground to see if there's food related to that topography. [00:14:05] Speaker C: Blake, what would you look for in topo? What's your favorite thing to look for? [00:14:08] Speaker A: I love hunting saddles. I love trying to find saddles, and I know a lot of other gu they're very similar to. But I love to be able to try to find a saddle along a travel corridor and pinch point them and see if. See what's rolling through there. [00:14:20] Speaker C: So just talk about. Let's talk about wind, especially in the northern part of the state. You know, when you look at thermals, a lot of people don't take that into consideration. Do you look at thermals or how the wind, you know, if it's calling for a westerly wind. You know, how do you take that topography, those mountains into consideration? [00:14:36] Speaker A: You have to, because if not those deer, they don't see too many people. So the minute they smell something different, they're out of there. So it's definitely watching your thermals and trying to find the most predominant, predominant condition that's happening. [00:14:50] Speaker C: Right. So we, Dave and I got to go to Ohio and spend some time with a real good friend of mine earlier in the year. And you know, he said if he had one thing to suggest or to recommend to anybody that's hunting mature bucks is number one elevation. And those bucks like to bed where they can see and hear and smell anything that's coming. He said they generally won't bury themselves in the thickest part unless the pressure's on. But they always using all those senses to stay alive. And I know even when we talked to Chris Rosenberry years ago, his biggest tip was elevation when it came to big bucks, because they're going to stay safe. They're going to go places where people don't like to get. And when you said about saddles and two sticks, there's the two stick saddle man right there. And the same reason we went up to 100 and did a little muzzleloader hunt. And you just got right above the. [00:15:43] Speaker B: Ground to see, yeah, two sticks just get above the laurels. And it really makes a huge difference. I mean it can change. It gives you probably almost 100% more visibility. [00:15:54] Speaker A: It's the same thing too. It essentially puts you at the same height as your ladder stands and you just being able to be more mobile than having the lug, a ladder stand around the mountain with every tree in. [00:16:03] Speaker C: Front of you for a good rest. [00:16:04] Speaker A: Yep. [00:16:05] Speaker C: You know, that's one of the things I see a lot of people with, with guns especially, they, you know, take two seconds to get some kind of a good rest. The other thing that drives me crazy, I see this on, and I've seen this on television for a long time and maybe we should talk about this with your rifle. If you are leaning a rifle on something to shoot, how many times you seen somebody lean the barrel of the rifle on there to take. Take rest? Let's talk about that. What happens when you do that? [00:16:28] Speaker A: So whenever you lean a barrel, so if you're not leaning it on your stock and you're leaning it on your barrel, what you're doing is creating pressure on your barrel, which number one, it changes your harmonics and also two, your barrel is not in Its original set point from where you zeroed. So 100 yards, and you have a little bit of pressure on, and you're pushing 3, 4 inches up, down, left, right, whatever way your pressure is coming. And that is something, too. And another thing that you see a lot of times, too, is guys will grab their barrel. Is that like they'll come in and they'll grab it to get. To try to get sturdy on it. And same thing, too. You grip pressure down on it. It's changing your complete harmonics. And even if your rifle's bedded, even if you went to a gunsmith and had it bedded or something like that, you're still creating pressure in there that can throw your shot off. [00:17:10] Speaker C: You want to shoot them off the forearm, I mean, is the bottom line. [00:17:13] Speaker B: Yeah. And actually, even that forearm, you should have, like, your hand between it and something hard or a glove or a hat if you're like, just don't lay your forearm on, like, the edge of the tree. Have something between. Or a rock or a rail on a blind or a tree stand or something like that. [00:17:32] Speaker C: I mean, those little tips right there might help somebody from success and not success, but, you know, especially, you know, today. And we'd have to face it like we see shooting houses everywhere. You drive up and down every highway in Pennsylvania, there's a box or a, you know, some kind of a manufactured blind, you know, and you take a youngster out there and you're not paying attention, they lean the barrel on the window and chances are it's not going to hit where they're aiming. [00:17:54] Speaker B: The best thing you can do is just get a little cloth bag, like a bean bag or, you know, something like that, and put that on that rail and use that as your front rest. I mean, that really doesn't weigh anything. You can throw it in your pack with you, and it gives you something to rest your gun on. [00:18:10] Speaker C: Coming up here on the last weekday, what would some. Something that you're out there like, you're thinking about? Because one thing, as humans, as predators, we're top of the food chain. We have ability to reason. You're looking at saddles and topos and wind directions, and we're all doing that, and we're trying to figure out that best situation to put ourselves in when we get up, you know, a couple hours before daylight. So do you have anything special you're looking at here later in the season? [00:18:35] Speaker B: I always, like, enjoy hunting. The second week of rifle season. Ever since I was the region director up in North Central, I Used to get together with some friends and we'd hunt up there. And I've actually noticed a change over the last few years. You know, when we had a split season, when antelop season came in on that middle Saturday, by the time you got up there the second week, the deer were pushed off the tops. They were pushed away from, like, the easier access. They were on those really steep side hills. But I. I've. The last few years, with the concurrent season starting on Saturday, I think the pressure drops off enough, at least where we are hunting, that the first year of that concurrent season, we went and hunted our traditional spots on those side hills, and we didn't really see all that much. When we came back up on the tops is where we ran into the deer. So, like, the. That additional time without a lot of hunting pressure on them, they get back to their more natural movements. And we usually focus on, you know, areas that have been recently logged. You know, so you have that young seedling, sapling growth, you know, like briar stickers, all that stuff. I mean, deer will be in there, feeding on that. Areas that were burned anywhere that, you know, there's not a lot of food up there. From a traditional agricultural sense, you know, you don't have cornfields and alfalfa fields and stuff that. So you have to hunt them on what they're eating naturally. So if there isn't a good acorn crop, if there's a good acorn crop that's easy to see, just walk in the woods and it's all rooted up or, you know, they're digging through the snow. But if you don't have acorns, and you have to focus on their native browse, and that generally comes from an area that's been disturbed from one way or another, either fire or, you know, a windstorm going through, or it's been logged. So if you find where the deer are eating, they're probably within a quarter mile of there. And then you just kind of like Luke was saying, you know, you gotta find the terrain. You gotta make that work to your advantage. But there's large areas up there that don't have a lot of deer in them. I mean, I don't think anybody that's spent time up there would argue with that. I know we have the ability to. When we're going on bear dens and stuff like that. You know, we'll be driving back some of those forest service roads to get to the. To get to the dens. And I mean, you can, you know, drive out across top of a mountain, you might go three miles without seeing a deer track. All of a sudden, you start seeing deer tracks in the snow, and then, boom, you hit a cut. And for the next half mile, there's deer tracks everywhere. And then you leave that cut, you'll have deer tracks maybe for a couple hundred yards, and you'll go a couple miles again. You know, maybe just seeing one random track or something like that. So you got to focus in on the habitat. You got to focus in on where the deer are feeding. You have a lot more deer there, and if there's more deer, you just have more opportunities to kill one. [00:21:06] Speaker C: Yeah, I look at, you know, and we hear it a lot of times about our deer herd, I think, you know, and just. Just my drive here this morning, I was talking to one of our folks that works in our bureau, and we were talking. He's like, what do you think about turkey population today from when you were a kid as far as hunting wise? And I'm not talking about overall population, but, like, when I grew up in the 80s, like, if you heard a turkey gobble, you kept it pretty sacred because we didn't have turkeys like we do today. I mean, I know we're in ebbs and flows. I mean, this past fall, for me, I've seen a lot of. I think we had a great hatch a couple years in a row. Lots of turkeys around. You know, it might not be the pinnacle where it was at one point in Pennsylvania, but I think we have more today. We definitely have more today than when. When I grew up in Pennsylvania in the late 80s. Early 80s. [00:21:52] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. My dad was like one of the first people I knew that was, like, a person who consistently killed turkeys. And he would take me hunting, and, I mean, there would be years where we didn't even hear a gobble. You know, take that to 10 or 15 years ago, where, like, every day you would go out, you would hear multiple turkeys gobbling. So there was definitely, you know, as that population was building, there were a lot less turkeys, but there were less turkey hunters, too. [00:22:17] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And is that the reason that when. Like when one flies off the roost coming to you and hits the ground, you dust him before he even gets. Gets to take a step. [00:22:27] Speaker B: They're in range, and they're goblins. Time to kill them. [00:22:29] Speaker C: I got you. [00:22:30] Speaker B: I'm not doing that video stuff. Nobody's paying me to watch all. You know, I'm not selling decoys or turkey calls. I'm just getting Ready to make some turkey nuggets. [00:22:39] Speaker A: I'm the same way. 35 yards. Bang. I don't need them to beat my decoys up. It's okay. [00:22:45] Speaker C: I learned that lesson real, real early in life. My very first fall turkey hunt. I. When I grew up, fall turkey hunting was, you know, archery season ended on 31 October, and then small game and fall. So fall turkey hunting is where we spend a lot of our time. That's where I learn language and. And that's where I got addicted to turkeys. And I was 12 years old, and we hunted all season. Finally ran into a flock of turkeys, like, towards the end of evening. And when you break them up, you know, this is before dog. Like, I was the dog. You know, we broke these turkeys up, and they start yelping, trying to get back together. It was still early enough before they went to roost. But they, you know, when they go up, they usually get away from danger. They go to trees. Well, this turkey sails off this point, just about lands right in front of us, and my dad just torches it, and. And I turn around. This was my turkey. He goes, never let them hit the ground. Like, when they're doing that. And I mean, learning real quick, like, if you want to. There's a difference between shooting them and looking at them, for sure. [00:23:41] Speaker A: Yep. [00:23:42] Speaker C: And Dave was pretty quick on the trigger last spring. That's why I said. And that wasn't too far from where you hunt in that part of the world. And the northern part of this, I was going to talk about. You took me one time early in my career here, which my career is only five years, but we went up north, and you go, come up here, and we're gonna. I'm gonna show you what habitat looks like and what we're doing up here. Were you still in the North Central at that time? [00:24:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I believe so. [00:24:08] Speaker C: And anyway, we bailed down, and it's the closest place. I mean, the next couple steps, I think I would have seen the devil, because it was. It was hell getting there. Matter of fact, like, I still have a little bit of PTSD about that part, that hunt. Long story short, Dave made a little loop and. And some deer bumped out through this bottom. Matter of fact, that morning, we saw four or five bucks. And this was the last week of gun season. And one of our good friends happened to miss one of those deer right in front of me, and he'll never live it down. And we had him on the podcast. Won't say any names, but Steve Ferreri missed a deer at 50 yards that anybody in this state would have been proud to put on his wall. And it was a great day hunting. We saw a lot of deer and just proof that like, like they're still out there. They're just staying away from us. [00:24:54] Speaker B: They are. And, you know, like, for one of the things I always used to try to do in rifle season is just pick a new spot on a map that I'd never been to and see if I can go in there and get into deer. And a friend of mine and I, we've done that, like, all over the state, and we've been fairly successful. And one way you can do that is deer don't like to be bothered. So if they're not being bothered close to roads, they'll be close to roads. But if there's a lot of hunting pressure, they're going to be far away from access points. So, you know, if you look at an area that's relatively difficult to get to and it can be close to a road, but maybe the only way to get there is you have to go straight up, straight up, like, you know, a couple hundred feet of elevation. And then you get on top of something, or maybe you need to put hip boots on and wade across a creek or, you know, there has to be a way that you can get, or, you know, private land. Deer don't like to be bothered. The more that they have people bothering them, the less likely that they're going to be there. So, you know, that can be a thing. Thick, nasty, clear cut, you know, that nobody wants to walk into. I mean, I remember one time in muzzleloader season, I went up on a local game lands, and I walked back and there was snow on the ground, and there were a lot of tracks at first, human tracks. And I kept going, and I got to the edge of a cut and there was only one set of tracks left. And he walked back that first clear cut. He dropped down a travel corridor, and I kept going out into the next cutting block. I bet I wasn't 200 yards past where his track stopped that I started picking up deer tracks. And it wasn't another 200 yards before I had a dose down in front of me that I shot. So they just, they find out where that pressure bubble is, and then they go just beyond that. And whatever reason creates that barrier, whether it's, you know, topography, whether it's some sort of a break like a stream or a river or just thickness or just distance from where you're walking from, if you find those areas and there's good habitat there. If you do that in the middle of wide open hardwood, you're probably not going to find anything. But if you have good habitat there, like that's where the deer are, especially late in the season. [00:26:57] Speaker C: And I would imagine deer, I mean, this is just a guess, but I'd imagine they're kind of like us. The older we get, like we become more homebody. [00:27:03] Speaker B: Right. [00:27:03] Speaker C: You know, and we stay closer to home and don't venture out as far because there are lots of reasons. But for deer, it's safety. I mean, they, they know it like the back of their hand. And if we walk home tonight and our house was somebody turned the couch and you know, we'd know something was wrong at the house and the deer the same way. I mean, every animal out there is for that matter. [00:27:23] Speaker B: Exactly. And they know where they're safe and they know where they're not. You know, like even take suburbia where deer live in backyards, they're completely different when they're in somebody's backyard compared to when they're in that 50 acre woodlot behind those people's houses. Because they know dangers in that woodlot and nothing ever happens to them when they're bedded under the swingside. [00:27:41] Speaker C: Plus, they smell those people every day. [00:27:42] Speaker B: Yep. [00:27:43] Speaker C: And they know. I totally anecdotal, but I think deer can, I mean, when you talk about odor, what do they smell? You know, I worked in that business for a long time where you tried to curb the odor and, you know, neutralize scent. But I mean, obviously we're shedding. We're sitting here shedding skin cells as we speak. What does a deer smell? Does it associate gasoline with danger? Probably not, because, I mean, we're working on, you know, forest projects all the time and there's all kinds of motor oil or gasoline, diesel fuel, whatever out there. Obviously we're giving off that scent as a predator. But you know, the detection that they can probably smell, the magnitude in that area probably rises. Because if you have a deer living by your house, he smells you every day. But once you go past your yard into his house, he knows you're there. [00:28:28] Speaker B: Well, you can even tell the way deer act. Like if you're out on a UTV or something like that, doing chores or whatever, they'll just kind of let you drive by sometimes even, you know, bigger bucks, older deer. But then if you're acting sneaky and face it, hunters act sneaky. You know, like that gives them something in their mind. I don't know if they think back to wolves or mountain lions or whatever it is in their DNA that when things are sneaking around and trying to hide, that's a big bad problem. [00:28:58] Speaker C: So we should just drag our feet and. [00:29:00] Speaker B: Well, think about some people that you can't believe kill deer. Kill deer because they are just. They don't look like they are a threat. [00:29:08] Speaker A: Just spending time in the woods is being able to spend time in the woods. And I know we get into this conversation a lot in the office is that now with trail cameras becoming more and more prevalent, like I think a lot of us, and I get guilty of it too. The one property I was hunting this year, I went and ripped my trail cameras out of it because I was starting to rely on them too much and going like, oh, this buck isn't showing up. Where are all these does what's happening? Well, deer change their patterns and you can pattern deer. You, you can try to start patterning deer, but they're always going to go back to that habitat. And it's very tough to try to find that habitat without spending some time on the ground. And that's. I know we're in the rifle season here now, but that's part of the reason why I love turkey hunting is being out in the springtime of the year because you can find a lot of really good deer sign after the winter when you're out turkey hunter. And it's just a quick mental note of whether it's dropping a pin on onx going, hmm, I might want to check that out. This looks like a pretty solid archery spot or rifle spot or I bumped a couple deer in here. Like, let's kind of just keep that in the back of my brain and come back August, September and see what it's looking like. Are we starting to see some scrapes coming in? We seen rub lines starting to happen. End of September, beginning of October. What's the. What's the situation? And that's kind of everywhere. Rather, if you're hunting in our southern part of the state where you're hunting, hunting some smaller, smaller wood lots, some smaller plots, or you're hunting north central, northeast, northwest, where you. Some big country that you can get into up there. And I think going back, I always like to tell myself too, like, especially if it's like a struggling season, like I'm struggling to find a mature buck that I want to kill or something like that is get back to the basics. We've been. People have been deer hunting since the 1800s is just go back to the basics of spend. Just spend some time in the mountain. And I know it can be. It can be boring. I remember being 12, 13 years old and sitting with dad and it was like, sit down, shut up, sit down, shut up. We're going to wait this out. It's 10 degrees out and you're freezing. But it pays off just being able to spend some time in the mountain. And you learn a lot, too. Just by. Every time that I go into the mountain, I want to view it as a learning experience, even if I don't kill anything or harvest anything. I think that that too is a mentality that we've almost gotten away from, is some hunters, is we're hunters. [00:31:24] Speaker C: And I agree with you. And I don't want to get on the trail camera debacle because it's like, it's viral. But, like, we are relying on technology a lot of times and forgetting about what we have up here. And, you know, how many times does a deer walk by a trail camera and you don't. It doesn't take a picture of it. We don't know. [00:31:41] Speaker B: I mean, when we were in Ohio, I was in a stand and. And I saw three bucks that morning, and there was a cell cam on the plot. And I texted our host. I said, did you see this buck? I sent him a picture of it that walked by. He's like, no, I didn't get a picture of it. Then a good buck came by. And so out of those three bucks, only one of them was on that camera. And if you would have been waiting to see a big buck on camera there, you probably wouldn't have hunted it. And, I mean, that happened to me in archery season. I was trying to fill a doe tag and I went to a stand. I don't run cell cameras. And. And I was in the stand a half hour in the middle of the day, and I had two does and two fawns come by, and I killed one. And after I was done dealing with her, I pulled the SD card, and when I went home and checked it, there wasn't a deer on that camera in the previous week. But it just so happened that the hour that I was in the stand, a group of does came by and I was able to kill one. So if I would have been using trail camera data there, I would have crossed that stand off my list. But it's at a good spot, it's at a pinch point. And, you know, for whatever reason, either the camera didn't capture them or they didn't come by right in front of it. So don't get caught up in the fact, you know, like to be successful. The more time you spend in the woods, the higher your probability of success goes. [00:32:53] Speaker C: And you learn every day. [00:32:54] Speaker A: Yep. [00:32:54] Speaker B: And. And I believe the last day of the season, your odds of killing a deer. If you've hunted all season, your odds are higher on that last day, the last hour, than they are the first day. The first hour, because you've spent your whole season in an area that has deer that has, you know, good sign, it has a reason for you to be hunting there. And, you know, your odds are higher because you've spent all that other time without having success. So the likelihood of a deer coming by is much higher at the end of the season, that is in the beginning of it. And that's what I tell myself all the time, to keep myself motivated and going out into the stand. [00:33:28] Speaker C: Well, that's. That's the thing that, like we, so many folks, us included in Pennsylvania, we have that place we'd like to go. And it's hard to get yourself to go. I'm going to go try to find something else. And if I can encourage anybody, that would be. The thing is, like you said, I love that thing where you try to hunt a new area every year. Don't be scared to go look. And when you do it, obviously, we all want to sneak around, but just do it sensible. Use the wind to your advantage. Take your time. There's no rush out there. It's not a rush to get to the deer processor. It's because we're all. We're all fighting time in our busy lives. But enjoy yourself and learn. And it's amazing when you open up those horizons. You know, I always get nervous when I go to a stand that I have hung, and it's like, I gotta get up in the tree, I gotta get my bow. I gotta get ready, relax, enjoy yourself when you're out there. I think that's one of the biggest things. We live our lives in a bigger rush now, today than we've ever lived them. But let's talk about some other things. Let's talk about, you know, after this week. There's lots of opportunities through the winter that. That are. That's going on out there, whether it's deer, and we'll talk about some other stuff, but talk. Let's talk about late archery. And I know, Dave, you have a lot of experience. I know. Matter of fact, this is the first year in your life that you're have a buck tag outside of first archery season. [00:34:41] Speaker B: Not the first time in my life. It's the first time in a long time. I mean, I've. [00:34:44] Speaker C: You never killed a buck with a rifle, right? [00:34:46] Speaker B: No. Well, I really didn't hunt a lot in rifle season because of my job. I didn't have the opportunity. I've killed them in late archery season. [00:34:51] Speaker C: That's what I want to talk about. [00:34:52] Speaker B: I've carried them through to late archery. I mean, there's years that I haven't killed bucks, but it's the first time in a while that I carried a tag into rifle season. Yeah, but once again, the longer you hunt, the better your odds of success. As long as that deer's still alive and they become pretty. Like their stomach rules them in late December and January. I mean it really does. Like, if you can find where they're feeding at, like they'll probably be on. They'll be more daylight active in late archery season than they will be anytime, I'd even say during the rut because they have to feed, especially if it's cold. [00:35:30] Speaker C: So if you were a deer, you'd be dead a long time ago. Because like when we go, we could go for four hour trip. Like we've got to plan where we're going to stop and eat or what we're going to have on the. [00:35:42] Speaker B: I mean, he just asked me the other day why I carry my saddle platform, why I wire it to the back of my pack instead of putting in the slot that it's designed for. Because when I carry it in that slot that it's designed for crushes my cookies and my apples. [00:35:54] Speaker A: Yep. [00:35:56] Speaker B: So it's way more important for me to make sure that my snacks are safe than that I'm using my prac correctly. [00:36:02] Speaker C: What's your favorite deer season snack to carry with you? [00:36:06] Speaker B: Probably apples, actually. But after that, you know, homemade chocolate chip cookies are a close second. [00:36:13] Speaker C: How about you? [00:36:13] Speaker A: Weaver's bologna and cheese. That's my favorite. That is my number one deer tool is bologna and cheese. I cannot make it through the day without having a little bit of a snack in there. [00:36:21] Speaker B: There you go. [00:36:22] Speaker A: What about you, Matt? [00:36:24] Speaker C: Whatever I can find. I'm not okay. I like, I like take apples, I take cheese sticks or granola bars and. But I mean, bologna sandwiches, that's like, that's what I grew up on. [00:36:34] Speaker A: That's part of the. That's one of my favorite things too about when our rifle season comes in is because it's right after Thanksgiving. A cold turkey sandwich from your Thanksgiving turkey. That's left over to. That is awesome. [00:36:45] Speaker C: All right, we're talking about turkeys way too much. Let's go back to that late season archery stuff. [00:36:50] Speaker B: Yeah. So, you know, like, if it's cold, deer will tend to be like, they want that solar heat, they want that they want to be in the sun, whether that's where they're feeding at, whether that's where they're betting at. And even if they're living like on a north slope, they'll still get somewhere that they can catch the sun. Maybe it's a little knob, maybe it's a bench. That's at least what I found. Even, like, they'll bet on the sunny side of a fence row instead of on the other side of it. And they'll feed on. If it's an area that has ag crops, they'll be in that spilled grain or they'll be on a south facing hillside where the snow's melted off the grass or clover or whatever might be there. Same thing. Like, if you can find a spot where there's acorns. Like I just checked a trail camera the other day and have several bucks on it. It's an area that had scarlet oaks earlier in the year, and there was a lot of deer activity in there. But when I went in to check the camera, I saw where the deer were digging in among the rocks and everything. So there must have been acorns that were not easy pickings back in October. And now those deer are digging through to find those remnant acorns that are there. So if you can find especially red oaks. Yeah, right. Scarlet oaks are red oak. Yeah, they're. Because the white oaks will germinate in the fall and they kind of lose their palatability a little bit. But those red oaks don't germinate until the spring. So that's, you know, scarlet, black pin, red oaks, any of those in that family, they'll. They'll remain viable all winter. So the deer will. Will dig for those. And I mean, that's a real hotbed. If you can find a spot that, that has acorn still into December and January. Definite spot to hunt. Same thing like those clear cuts. Another, another area that has like a lot of browse. You know, if it's really thick and nasty, you don't have to be inside it, you know, because a lot of them have skid trails on, you know, where the. They hauled the logs out of them. Or you could be on the edge, you know, you set up where, where deer are gonna be moving. And the best Part about late season is there's snow. [00:38:45] Speaker C: Right. [00:38:45] Speaker B: So like they leave sign where they're at and where they've been. So you can use that to your advantage as well. [00:38:50] Speaker C: Even just like you said, you're getting out in the woods when they're moving around. You know, what I've noticed later season is deer don't move as much. You know, they're conserving a lot more energy. [00:38:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:59] Speaker C: And you know, if you find areas where they're. Yeah. They are like concentrated. And the other thing is, is like you don't have. Evenings are the best, in my opinion. I mean, later in the year. [00:39:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Afternoons even, you know, like, I've seen a lot of deer moving, you know, in the. In the. And like when the sun's highest in the day, you know, so 1:00 in the afternoon, 12:00, like dead noon, they'll be out feeding and they're not as active, you know, overnight when it's. When it's colder because it's the exact opposite of the early season. You know, they'll move more at night because it's cooler, so that helps them thermoregulate. But in the winter when it's really cold at night, they'll move more during the day because, you know, it might only be 30 degrees instead of 10 or something like that. [00:39:44] Speaker C: And you think about that sunny aspect. You think about you have a dog at home, you know, where's the first place that dog looks for to lay down? Sunspot, sunspot on the floor, you know, and it's just animal. I mean, think about us taking a nap. Like, you get that sun coming through a window and it's hitting you like you all of a sudden, you know, I'm just guessing. It's just like they definitely. If you had to live outside your whole life, you would definitely try to get to that warm spot. And when it's cold out. [00:40:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:40:10] Speaker B: And the other. Another cool thing about that late season is, you know, a lot of your do fawns, once they reach a certain weight, I forget what it is. Might be £80 or something like that, you know, they'll start to come into estrus. So you can have some phenomenal. Like, you know, you can see a dofan with four or five bucks chasing her. Like it's November 11th, you know, in the first week of January. So you have some of that activity going on as well. But, like, it's not something that you can count on, you know. You know that the first week in November, bucks are going to be searching and seeking and stuff like that there. It's more of a happenstance. But I mean, when you find that, I mean, it can be really, really interesting and good hunting as well. [00:40:48] Speaker C: And especially in areas, you know, like we are, we have to be realistic today. I mean, some of our areas, the deer population is through the roof. And you know, that, that estrus cycle is changed. I mean, that's one of the reasons I think we saw, I mean, lots of reasons the rut this year, I mean, it happened, it happens every year, but I think we're seeing like a year of there wasn't a ton of mass. Water was a big issue out there. You know, we don't have that here in Pennsylvania because of spring seeps and things like that. There's water everywhere, but water's so key. You know, we've been in a drought for a long time this year. And I think, I think all those factors played into why we're hearing from like, you know, it's amazing when you read on social media, well, they rut this the rut this crank in here. But it takes one hot dough to make it look like it's the most magical day in the world. [00:41:35] Speaker B: And if you look at temperature, you know, like, I like to hunt on those, you know, when you have temperature drops. The Sundays, the best cold fronts that rolled through this fall, like the best day to hunt were a couple of the Sundays that we couldn't hunt. You know, like my trailhood camera activity, those days just like went through the roof and there was nothing you could, you know, you couldn't be in a stand those days. And it's just. There's nothing you can do about that. I mean, it could have fallen on Saturday and, and everybody would have been talking about how great the season was because they would have been like, you know, those first two Saturdays in November. But it just so happened that it was at least where I lived. It was those two Sundays in November is when we really had that good weather condition. [00:42:14] Speaker C: Frost. [00:42:14] Speaker B: Frost. [00:42:15] Speaker C: I remember those days. [00:42:16] Speaker B: They were great days that, you know, had a lot of deer activity, but you just couldn't hunt them. So. [00:42:21] Speaker C: So we, you know, we have another very unique late season opportunity with flintlocks. The only person, only state in the country where you can use a flintlock. And I know both of you guys are really into that. Let's, let's talk about flintlock. I mean, a lot of tactics like you late season archery, but let's talk about the weapon itself because I'm sure you've shot a million of them. [00:42:41] Speaker A: That's. This is my favorite time of the year. And especially I really started hunting when I was at college because I would come home for Christmas time. I couldn't Right. Tail hunt during our archery or. And there's no whitetails in Alaska. So I always loved coming home to whitetail hunt. And I didn't have enough time to practice with my compound. So I wasn't. I was like, I don't really want to take my compound out. Plus two. It's normally cold. It's not fun with all the layers on trying to get your bow drawed back. So I was like. I started getting into flintlock hunting then for this late season because that was the opportunity I had to hunt and I have not looked back since. It is an amazing time of year to be in the mountain. And what's really unique too, is your antler tag turns into an antlerless tag anywhere in the state. So you spend some time in the mountain and you're into some deer. You can shoot a buck or doe when you're hunting with your flintlock, which is really unique too. So it's. The juice is worth the squeeze, in my opinion, when you're out there with a flintlock. [00:43:30] Speaker C: So let's say. Let's say you have a new hunter that wants to go get a flintlock. And what's some of the best advice you can give? Because it's not like shooting a gun. No. There is some tactics and I know both of you are really proficient with it and spend a lot of time with them, unfortunately. [00:43:44] Speaker A: Right. Unfortunately. Since we are one of the last states to host a flintlock season, there's not too many flintlocks out on the market. Traditions still making them. Thompson center used to make a lot. I own three Thompson center flintlocks. I love them. So you can still find them used on the mar out there on the market. [00:44:02] Speaker B: But Lyman. [00:44:03] Speaker A: Lyman. Well, Lyman's no longer in business, but. [00:44:05] Speaker B: You can still find some Lyman's. [00:44:07] Speaker A: I've had a deer. [00:44:09] Speaker C: I remember. Remember those. [00:44:10] Speaker A: Yep. I've had a deer stalker as well. The biggest thing with a flintlock, if you want to get somebody new involved with it, is teaching follow through. Because with having that delay of having to have a flash in the pan, to have your pan powder go off to ignite the barrel, to ignite your powder charge in your barrel. It's sometimes if you have them tuned up. Mine, I keep my barrel powder and my pan powder dry. It's like shooting a rifle. You can have them very much be similar to shooting a rifle, but being able to take some time and have a solid rest. Shooting a flintlock offhand is a very, very challenging skill, but being able to take the time, spend some time on the range with it, and figure out which loads work best. There's so many bullet choices out there and everything like that, but I'm still using maxi hunters. It's a maxi ball, essentially a round ball. I'm using a maxi ball with 90 grains of 2F and then 4F for my pan powder. And the another thing too, is a tip for a new hunter, too, is a lot of people think that they need to load that pan with a bunch of pan powder where you don't. Because when you load it up with a bunch of pan powder, you're going to have a bigger flash, which in return makes you want to jump. Because that flash is probably once you overcome that flash and right here in front of your shooting eye, it kind of helps. You can become a more proficient once you get used to that. [00:45:34] Speaker C: So we had, when I was back in. A long time ago, Thompson center was one of our partners, and they. We did a day with them. And this is when encores first came out. So they brought some flintlocks along. And I'll never forget Eddie Salter, who, a lot of people that might be listening here, if you're into turkeys, know the turkey man, Eddie Salter, he shot it and it was, you know, and he liked, like, let his hands up and he goes, I never want to shoot one of them flinch rocks again. That's exactly. And that it takes time. I mean, you have to spend time with it. And I know that you spend a lot of time on the range and hunting with your flintlock. [00:46:06] Speaker B: Yeah. I just keep telling myself, aim, aim, aim, aim, aim. Like, that's what you need to do. You just got to keep that front sight on your target as you're squeezing it off. And really the best thing that can happen is you get a flash in the pan or two, because that'll tell you if you're still aiming or if you're. If you're, you know, wobbling off or flinching. [00:46:24] Speaker C: So is that what you're talking about? Follow through? Yeah, just keep. Keep aiming. [00:46:28] Speaker A: Yeah, keep aiming. [00:46:29] Speaker C: Similar to shooting a bow. [00:46:30] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Like shooting bows. [00:46:32] Speaker C: Follow through. I mean. [00:46:33] Speaker B: Yeah, try to keep the pin on the target. Try to keep the front sight on the target no matter what happens. And if you do that, I mean, it's where your bullet or your arrow Is going to go. [00:46:41] Speaker A: One thing that's helped me, too, is that I have one of the ones that I. My. One that I majority hunt with is a TC Hawken that has a set trigger. So having the two. Having the two triggers in it, if somebody's not familiar with what set triggers are. So your firearm has two triggers. You pull the back one, and what that does is it lightens the poundage on your front one down to about an ounce or two. So it's essentially a hair trigger you hear people talk about. That's really helped me a lot too, because I can aim. And then as I just lay my finger down on it, the gun's going off. So you're not thinking about it as. But it's also. That's. That takes a lot of practice, too, to have a set trigger as well. And another tip, too, that I learned from a couple of the older guys that I started flintlock hunting with is in order to keep your pan dry, like, if you go out on a really. And a lot of people think, oh, just because it's not raining, I can keep it dry. But the humidity in the air, too, will really affect the temperature on your lock. It's taking a down feather from a duck, pheasant, turkey. And what I do is I leave that there in my pan so that it helps keep the moisture out of my pan and away from my barrel powder as well. Where you'll hear guys like, they'll leave like a toothpick or something like that in there. Where you got to be really careful with a toothpick, because if that toothpick breaks off in your flash hole, you're done. It's. You gotta. You got an issue where you got to try to get that out where. With the down feather is that all you need to do is just. You just go. And it takes. It falls right out. You shut the pan and all, and you can shoot with it. So. [00:48:06] Speaker C: And check your wind direction. [00:48:08] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And check wind. [00:48:10] Speaker B: I'll have to remember that. [00:48:12] Speaker C: That's a good one. You learn something new every day. [00:48:14] Speaker B: Learn something new every day. I'll take that on now when his. [00:48:16] Speaker C: When his flintlock misfires. [00:48:17] Speaker A: Yeah, it's gonna be bifold. [00:48:18] Speaker C: You're gonna have a desk full of down feathers. [00:48:21] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:48:23] Speaker C: You know, another thing we have this year, too, you know, obviously, you know, when you look at whitetail deer, CWD's a, you know, a thing that's that. That every state's battling and we're on the front lines with it every day. And you know, lots of regs out there, lots of rules, lots of people. We're asking people to do many things because we're trying to get ahead of it in a lot of places. And we have six wildlife management units that have an extended antlerless rifle season this year. And, you know, it's great opportunity. And in those areas we really need folks to go out there. We need to get the herd to a manageable level to try to battle this disease. [00:48:59] Speaker B: Absolutely. It's, you know, last year they looked at, they had harvest goals. We didn't meet them in those management units. So we, we were able to extend those seasons. And a couple weeks of hunting with a rifle after Christmas is, you know, hopefully people take advantage of it. You know, I know last year in one of the units, we had that when it was first discovered up here just north of Harrisburg. And from talking to the folks in that region, it was really well received. A lot of people went out and hunted and enjoyed it. And there were no issues between the guys hunting with rifles and the muzzleloader hunters and stuff. So hopefully we can see that working across the state there in those management units and people get out and get an opportunity. [00:49:41] Speaker C: Just to explain that goal. It's one more antlerless deer per square mile, 640 acres is what our goal is. It's not scorched earth, you know, like, we're not trying to eliminate them. We're trying to bring that herd down to a manageable level. And we feel it like one more animal per 640 acres is what we're trying to achieve. And that's why it's so important that we report those harvests. It's important that people participate in the headband collection. And it's just, it's going to be an ongoing battle through our lifetime with cwd, meaning there's no cure. It's out there and we're trying to figure it out the best possible way. And that's our responsibility as the agency. [00:50:20] Speaker B: Right. We want lower deer numbers. So CWD doesn't spread as much. We want lower deer numbers. So, you know, the habitat for deer and everything else can be good as well. Like if we're, uh, hunt. If you walk into an area that some trees have been cut and you walk over to a stump and instead of having, you know, a whole bunch of shoots growing up there, maybe, you know, 6, 8, 10 foot higher or higher, it's. It looks like the head of a broom or there's nothing growing where it's all eaten off, where you're getting no regeneration at all. You probably have too many deer because that's negatively affecting your habitat. You know, stump sprouts should be one of the first things. Within two years, they should be, you know, 8 or 10 foot high. And if they're not, you probably have too many deer. If you walk into an area that, you know, has little saplings grown that are the size of pencils and they're only knee high because they're constantly. You look at the tips of them and there's no bud and they're all great, you know, browsed off. You probably have too many deer, and it's hard to say how many that is. But when you can't get trees to regenerate that, that not only affects your deer numbers, but it affects grouse. It affects everything. You know, that and your future forest. You know, we want oak tree trees there in the future. We don't want just birch trees. Like, we want things that are good for wildlife. So in addition to your disease spreading, when deer numbers are high, it can actually hurt things for the present and for the future. [00:51:47] Speaker C: When you look at, you know, we had that conversation with our friends in Ohio, where the county south of where we were at, ehd, came through a couple years ago, really, really, really bad. I mean, the whole county was affected. And that's the way EHD is. And if you look in their record books, he said, when that came through three years after that, that county led the state of Ohio in Ohio big buck records. And mainly because the forest got a chance to grow and the deer weights get up and they got bigger antlers and they were just healthier. [00:52:24] Speaker B: We were listening to a podcast on the way back, and I forget what it is, but it's like for every additional 10 pounds of doe weight, I think a buck gain, you know, will have 8 inches more of gross. Spoon and Crockett score. So, like, where your deer are in check with their habitat, where they're not negatively impacting it, where they're able to reach their full potential, antlers are nothing more than just an extension of your skeleton. So if that deer is able to get to its maximum and like maximum body size, its antlers in turn are going to be larger. And back when our deer numbers were low, you know, 15 years ago, we had that here. But over time, we've seen a decrease. If you listen at the commission meetings, there's someone who comes in who talks about the Kinzuk Cooperative Deer management area up there. And I think two years ago was the first Time, they saw a decrease in body weight as well as antler size. So that would show that, you know, the deer numbers are probably too high up there. And I think that you're seeing that across a lot of. A lot of the state. Like, I see it where I hunt. I know I do. Like around my house, a mature buck there is field dressing. 140 pounds. They should be bigger than that. [00:53:37] Speaker C: Yep. When you look at. You look at. And I'm not trying to compare states, but you look at Alabama, and, you know, we've been down there. [00:53:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:53:44] Speaker C: And you know, they're way out of whack. [00:53:46] Speaker B: Yeah. And tons of deer. [00:53:47] Speaker C: And they went from 30 years ago, where a mature buck was 150 inches, to where, like, they don't see a deer that big anymore because they have too many deer and they can't get people to shoot does on their. And, you know, like. And that's some of the problems that we look at here. And I'm guilty of it. And so many hunters are guilty of it. Like, you're. You don't want to shoot that doe because there might be a buck behind it. But for. For whitetail deer, it's important that we all try to. At least if we haven't shot a doe or harvest a dough, we need to all try to do that for the future of the sport. For when we're not here anymore. [00:54:23] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. And, you know, in addition to the habitat, like, when we were out in Ohio, our host was talking about even just like, social stress. You know, when you have a whole bunch of deer in an area, that can affect them. Just sort of like how people are. There's a certain number of people that you're comfortable being around. And if you get shoved in a room with a lot of people, you may have anxiety and dear. We don't know how they think or what they do. But when food resources are at a premium, it causes them to move more during the day to be able to get that food, to be the first to the food. You don't know what that does. But if you have a healthy number of deer, your habitat's healthy, it reduces the spread of disease, and it allows you to have bigger racks as well. [00:55:12] Speaker C: Absolutely. Bigger racks isn't all we're looking for. [00:55:16] Speaker B: It's not. But I mean, people like them. [00:55:18] Speaker C: Sure. [00:55:18] Speaker A: And if you look healthier deer in general. [00:55:20] Speaker B: Healthier deer in general, you can have 40 pounds of meat from a doe or 60 pounds of meat. Like, why wouldn't you have more? Like, if it's nice and fat and, you know, good quality. Like, if you're a meat hunter, you would want to have the best quality meat you can have. You know, when you're skinning that dough off and there's an inch and a half of fat across her back, you know that that's probably going to be some really good eating. Conversely, you know, if there's hardly any fat on it, you know that it's struggling to. [00:55:50] Speaker C: It's a good hamburger. [00:55:51] Speaker B: It's a good hamburger. Yeah, exactly. [00:55:53] Speaker C: Well, if you look at just in the last few years, you know, you and Facebook, Instagram, you know, look at, look at some of the big buck stuff that, you know, some of our retailers across the state, you know, there's one just north of Harrisburg, Baker's archery, that, you know, 10, 15 years ago, a 90 inch deer would have led their entry list of six, 700 people. And you know, this year they got a deer over 200 inches. It's. Well, that wasn't in the contest, but it's definitely in that Boone and Crockett range. We've got some nice ones. I mean, the wall behind us, I mean, it's just like Pennsylvania. Did you ever think that we'd be here in Pennsylvania when you were growing up? [00:56:32] Speaker B: Oh, my God, no. I mean, it was big news. If somebody killed an eight point. [00:56:36] Speaker C: Right? [00:56:36] Speaker B: Like just an eight point, you drove. [00:56:37] Speaker C: It around and half halfway rotted out of the, you know, in the back of your truck to brag about it a little bit as an eight. [00:56:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:56:43] Speaker A: Even on the shorter time frame for myself, like even I started hunting two years ago. Yeah. Pretty much mid 2000. Started hunting and it was still a big deal that if somebody got an eight point, it was still like you started seeing the change of getting healthier habitat and stuff like that. And then it's like all of a sudden now it's a great time to be a Pennsylvania deer hunter. It is an amazing time now because growing up it was like, all right, awesome. Like there's a six point, there's an eight point. And now as you get older, it's like, man, I'm seeing tens, I'm seeing bigger eights. Like, it's pretty awesome out there to see what we're starting to grow for deer. [00:57:21] Speaker C: And as a hunter, I, I think we all need to take this into consideration. Let's say our buddy down the road shoots a six point or a five point illegal buck. [00:57:28] Speaker A: Yep. [00:57:29] Speaker C: We should never shame anybody on anything because. [00:57:31] Speaker A: No, absolutely not. [00:57:32] Speaker C: We've all started there. Number one I mean, I can. I probably talk for him if it had three inches of spikes. When I was growing up, torching it, you got excited. I mean, and. And that's how it was. And like, I see that out there where, like, hey, should have let him go another year. Let it be your trophy. And congratulate our fellow hunters. We all do need to work together a little better across. Across the country, not just in Pennsylvania. [00:57:56] Speaker A: I've killed some. I've killed some pretty decent bucks. Nothing. Nothing crazy like up like it's up here. But one of my favorite bucks is a half rack three. Three point. I shot with my flintlock. Like that's still one of my coolest deer I've ever killed. Was one of those half rack three points. It was just the story behind it, how he came in the whole way. The whole hunt plan played out that day. That's. To me, that's what hunting's about, is having those memories. To be able to sit around a campfire session and tell hunting stories. That's what gets people excited. Because eventually it's going to come a time where we're all going to have to pass it on or we're going to have to pass this hunting tradition along. And nobody's going to really care about how much bones hanging off the wall. It's going to be the stories and your tactics and how to become and pass it along. [00:58:40] Speaker C: And what you're going to eat at deer camp, what you're going to eat at deer camp. [00:58:43] Speaker B: Like, you should never take your ideals and try to push them. Other people. Everybody has their own reason. Like Matt and I have a really good friend. His main goal is to fill the freezer. And you want to talk about not letting things have a chance. When he identifies it as a legal deer, it's getting shot at. And it's actually a very low stress way to hunt because, you know, whether it's a button buck, a doe, five point. I mean, if it's a legal deer, he shoots it, he takes it home. And you know, when his freezer is full, then he's done. And. And there's nothing wrong with that. [00:59:14] Speaker C: Everybody, to each their own. I mean, it's like turkeys. I get into this, you know, people, the way they want to hunt them or decoys or, you know, I don't care how you do it. We're all in the same boat. You know, we're all. We're all, as Waddell would say, and I'm name dropping a brotherhood and a sisterhood. And it's important that we encourage each other and be happy for that person, excited for that person. You know, if they're excited about it and they're happy with it, you know, never downplay it either. You know, I was. You know, I'm not worried about that. Whatever. Go hunting to enjoy it and learn something. Every day you go out there and further your skills that we're never too old to learn. We learn all the time. You learn something today about putting a down feather in your. In your pan, and if it makes your powder wet, I'm gonna laugh the next year. [01:00:03] Speaker B: Plucking a chicken. [01:00:07] Speaker C: So let's say you are. You've had a great year, and, you know, you filled maybe an extra antler tag. You know, one of the things that we're so lucky to have in Pennsylvania is a way to donate to are deer to, you know, to help folks that are less fortunate. And that's the Hunter Sharing the Harvest program. And we're really excited to be partners with them and try to help them. I don't want to leave this podcast without talking about that. [01:00:30] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. If you go on their website and look, you know, you can pick your county, and it'll tell you where there's a participating processor. And I always try to donate at least one deer a year to the. To the Hush program, if I'm able to, if I'm successful. And it's a great way for hunters to share venison. I saw a number last year. I forget what it was. Over £200,000. [01:00:52] Speaker C: It's pretty amazing. [01:00:54] Speaker B: It was crazy, the amount of. Or maybe that was meals. [01:00:57] Speaker C: I think it was 100 tons of venison. [01:01:00] Speaker B: Yeah, it was crazy, the amount of response that the Pennsylvania Huntershire and Harvest program had. I wish I had those numbers in front of me. John Plowman would, you know, be upset at us. But we strongly encourage everybody, and, you know, as a partnership with them, it doesn't cost hunters anything to drop their deer off. You go to a participating process, or you fill out your form, you give it to them, and you can leave. And that deer will get ground up. It'll get given to one of the local food banks there, and it'll provide some protein for families in need. And that's a great thing for hunters in general to give back to their community and, you know, share the wealth a little bit. [01:01:43] Speaker C: Plus, venison's pretty darn good. And I think it's important that we. There's a bigger. There's a bigger picture right here. And if you have the opportunity to encourage anybody to use that program or get involved with that program to help, you know, as hunters. When you look at the broad stroke of population here in Pennsylvania, 13 million people and, you know, roughly a million people that do partake in conservation and hunting, I think it's important to show how good hunting is not just conservation, but, you know, in the communities. As you travel to other states, you know, you don't see that as much. And we're very fortunate here in Pennsylvania to have that tradition, to have that in our bloodstream, to be honest with you. [01:02:26] Speaker B: If you go to. [01:02:26] Speaker C: I'm proud of this black and black and red check. [01:02:29] Speaker B: If you go to a small town diner right now and sit there and just listen to the conversation, everybody's talking about deer hunting. [01:02:35] Speaker C: Yep. [01:02:36] Speaker B: Like, they are. Like you can find. I was just out the other morning for breakfast with my wife and there was a. Two couples sitting in the corner and the two guys were. I could tell them they were talking about where they were going deer hunting at and what deer they were seeing. And like, it's, it's a heritage. It's. It's great to be a Pennsylvanian because of our hunting heritage. [01:02:55] Speaker C: Absolutely, absolutely. In the industry that, you know, the firearms industry, especially Pennsylvania, is such an important state, whether it's the hunting accessories, archery, firearms, because we, I mean, how many, how many ranges do we have now? Public shooting ranges, public ranges. [01:03:13] Speaker A: We are on 40 game lands, so we're on 40 different state game lands. And then we have 66 different types of ranges, and that's broken down into rifle ranges, pistol ranges, shotgun patterning stations, and then archery ranges. [01:03:26] Speaker C: And we're going to do a podcast separately on that sometime because we're expanding that as well. And, you know, our ranges are gorgeous. I mean, they're beautiful. And, you know, we're opening those opportunities to folks to go out. Maybe they don't hunt and maybe they just like to target shoot. You know, most hunters, obviously, you know, we shoot our guns in or our bows, you know, before the season. But some people, like Dave, he shoots every month of the year somewhere, he's burning gunpowder somewhere. And, you know, it's also good to keep up on your skill. I mean, I get to where I'm pressed annually and sometimes I just go and make sure my gun's zeroed. And if I do miss a deer, it's my fault because I didn't spend enough time with that gun. I mean, turkey's the same way. I mean, patterning your gun is good to See where your shot's hitting. But it's also good to shoot that shotgun and become one with it more and more on an annual basis. So let's talk about some other opportunities. We talked about deer a whole lot, and, I mean, obviously whitetails are good, but there's a whole lot of other things we can do throughout the winter months, you know, from this second week of deer season through the end of the year, even into, you know, the month of February, there's other opportunities out there. And I know that you probably partake in a lot of them. [01:04:37] Speaker B: Well, I know that, you know, we started to increase the amount of our Christmastime pheasant stockings, which was hugely popular. You know, a lot of our game lands are managed for quality native habitats. So those fields are standing up. You know, even if we get snow, there's. There's good habitat in there, and. And we have several stockings. I think there might be three of them that occur in. In the later seasons there. So it's the opportunity when. When people are off of work, when kids are out of school, that they can go out and chase some pheasants, which is really good. Squirrel hunting, you know, runs through February, which is a great time to. You want to practice your marksmanship skill, get a.22, and go hunt some squirrels. Not only does that help you become a better shooter, but it helps you become a better hunter because, like, they don't want to get shot either, so. [01:05:26] Speaker C: And they're tough in the wintertime. [01:05:27] Speaker B: They are tough in the winter. [01:05:28] Speaker A: They're hardy, very hearty. [01:05:30] Speaker B: Yeah, but you can see them out there. You know, they're moving around and stuff like that. So squirrel hunting is great. Waterfowl opportunities. You know, we were just talking with John about waterfowl. You know, ducks and geese. They're. Especially now that you're getting some cold weather, those birds will be getting pushed through. [01:05:44] Speaker C: And like Middle Creek or Pymatooning, we have some opportunities there for waterfowl. I know. You know, I'm not a waterfowler and work for a huge waterfowl company. I've done it a couple times, but I've spent a couple days at Middle Creek. That was fun. And you're sitting in a blind and you're talking and identifying ducks, and, I mean, it can be more than just like blood squirting out of your eyes. You can go out there and have a lot of fun. Waterfowl is great because you can talk to each other. You can, you know, mess with each other. [01:06:07] Speaker B: And the other thing is you know, we do have a late dove season and we have those managed dove fields. And I have talked to a few people. They'll probably get mad at me for saying this on the podcast, but they said that the dove hunting is better in the late season than it is in the early season because there's nobody there. All that spilled grain is still in some of those fields. You know, those sunflower fields, fields have been manipulated and doves are, you know, there's a lot of new doves in here because they've pushed down because of the weather. And I've talked to several people that go out and kill limits of doves. [01:06:37] Speaker C: If you get serious about people that are serious about dove hunting, especially in the south, you know, here in PA, we get a mad rush opening three days and then people forget about it because fall happens. But the, like folks in the south, dove hunting goes till the end of season. You know, some. Some of the, those places have different zones that open up different times a year. In the wintertime is the best time for them to enjoy dove season. And I mean, you want to test your wing shot when it's 30 degrees outside and you're freezing, but it's pretty full. You're right. I mean, 100%. Your buddies are going to be mad at you on that one. [01:07:09] Speaker B: And the other thing that people should consider too is predator hunting. You know, like, it's a great time to be hunting foxes and coyotes. So there's a lot of like hunting, trapping and trapping. Yeah, absolutely. Trapping as well. [01:07:22] Speaker C: Trappings kind of was my vice when I was traveling all over the place and I'd come home around the holidays and I would trap up until we started traveling for shows. And you really want to become better with nature. Try to get a coyote to stick his foot in a little pan and try to. Because they're smart, they got you, and they know when you're there. To me, trapping is one of the most ultimate ways to learn. I just one of my good friends that, that I started in the business with Tom Miranda. I'm name dropping again, but I just, I've been watching Tom social media. He's been in Maine for like two weeks running a trap line because that's how he got started. He started a trap line, he went to the up, got hired by the state of South Dakota to be the government trapper, and that's how he started in television. But he's getting back to his roots and man, it looked like he was having fun. They were, they were trapping, you know, fishers and martins and, like, boxes. And it was just cool to watch him get back to his roots. [01:08:14] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. And if you're a good trapper, you're a good woodsman. [01:08:17] Speaker C: Absolutely. [01:08:17] Speaker B: Like, you have to learn how, you know, those animals use the terrain, how they use, like, the breaks in the habitat. And like you said, you got to get them to put their foot in that one little tiny area. Like, walking by at 10 yards doesn't help you. Like, in archery season, you'd love to have that deer at 10 yards. But, like, when you're trying. Trying to trap something, it needs to put its foot on that. [01:08:39] Speaker A: Beyond the X. [01:08:39] Speaker B: Beyond the X. Yeah. So. [01:08:41] Speaker C: And, you know, there's lots of resources out there. Trapping is one of those things, too, where you can get around a lot of old timers. You know, I've been to the. The trapping store here, close to Harrisburg, and, you know, Johnson's furs is iconic. I've been there. When people bring ginseng in. And, like, I learn a lot of stuff that you hear about, I hear my grandfather talked about, but never really. And you try to get some secrets from one of those old timers, you might as well forget it because they're not going to talk. And that's special to me because that's how I grew up. My dad and my grandpa wouldn't tell each other where they saw deer, turkeys. I mean, it was their best friends. But that stuff was graveyard secret. They were taking it to the grave with them. [01:09:20] Speaker B: Well, and if you think about how things have evolved, I mean, not to take it in a different way, but, you know, between cell cameras and. And having mapping software on your phone, like, there are no secrets anymore. Like, when Matt, when you and I grew up, everything was kind of like you had to befriend somebody who'd give you little tidbits of information. Now you can go look at it on YouTube or, you know, you used to have to be able to read a map and figure things out. Even just like, where public land is now, you can just pull up on X or one of those things on your phone and. Or on our website or on our website. And not only is that on there, but, like, the timber harvester on there. In the years that they were on, like, the learning curve has been drastically reduced. So the. The excuse of I don't have somewhere to hunt, like, you just don't want to spend a little bit of time to figure it out because, like, you used to have to order maps. Like, you had to fill out a Paper form and send it to like the USGS to get a topo map. And now you just download an application on your phone and boom, you can have a map of anywhere in the country with all the data that you could possibly want on it. So it's so much easier to find places to hunt and to be. Our managed dove fields are on there. Like if you click on on our website and look, it'll show you where every managed dove field is. [01:10:35] Speaker A: So in pheasant stocking fields and everything. [01:10:37] Speaker B: Yeah, stocking fields. The age of clear cuts. You know, you can get on there and you can see, you know, you can find a five year old clear cut as a spot to go and look. I mean there's layers that show where the oak trees are. So you know, you can walk in there and see a, there's acorns. So there's a lot of technology out there that can help you and reduce your learning curve if you're willing to do it. [01:10:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:10:56] Speaker C: When you think about not too long ago, I mean I can remember and really how I got started in the outdoors industry, I remember going to a seminar in Hershey, Pennsylvania when Ben Rogers Lee came to town, who was five time world champion turkey caller. And there wasn't many turkey hunters back then. And you know, he feels South Hanover School auditorium up with 300 people that were there to hear what he had to say and how to call up a turkey or how to use a mouth call. And you know, I was fortunate to grow up in that where I traveled around the country doing those seminars to crowds from, you know, 100 to 500 plus people. Nowadays you try to go do a seminar, it doesn't happen like that because the information is at your fingertips nowadays. [01:11:39] Speaker B: Or you'll go live on Facebook. Didn't Mark tell you that he can get 25,000 people if he goes live on Facebook? [01:11:45] Speaker C: Right. And he's, you know, Marjorie, and we just had him on a couple weeks ago and you know, that's exactly right. He did the same thing. And now that information stream is there, the technology is there and you know, I know many nights I go home and look at on X and try to figure out, you know, exactly where I think I should be or what property is here or try to look for new places to hunt. And that's all part of it. That's all fun. [01:12:08] Speaker B: Oh, it is. But like you can look at on X and I'm gonna call Dave out here. Dave Gustafson, our other deputy. I saw his ONX thing where he Was showing me where he was bear hunting. And he has the drives laid out with lines, and he gives the people, like, he sends that shape file to them, and he says, okay, you're here. You stay on this line. So you know how back in the day, you'd get in a drive and everybody be crossing each other, and there'd be somebody behind you and be like, turn into a total cluster until you did it for, like, 10 years to have everybody figured out. Now you can just open up your phone and look at it, and you're on the third line down. And as long as you keep your blue dot on that line, like, you don't get lost and you don't mess. [01:12:50] Speaker C: Fun out of this stuff. I like getting lost. [01:12:53] Speaker B: That's good because you're good at it. [01:12:55] Speaker C: I am. Well, guys, thank you so much for coming along. Do you have any last bit of advice for our folks that are heading out here the second week or later in the season? And something from the heart Pennsylvania deer hunters. [01:13:09] Speaker A: Make sure you shoot straight and have a great rest of the season. [01:13:12] Speaker B: My advice would just be to get out and hunt, because sitting at home watching your computer, waiting for something to walk by on your cell cam, you want to be there before he walks by. You don't want to have a picture of him and then go like. That's something that I think a lot of people have been doing since technology has become what it is. Like they're waiting to see something and then reacting to it. Get out there and hunt. Hunt like you hunted before you had cameras, before you had data. And you'd be. You'd be amazed at what will happen. And like I said, you know, the last day, the last hour of the season, your odds are the highest. So get out there, have a good time, put your time in. And there's never a bad time to be in Pennsylvania's woods. [01:13:54] Speaker C: And don't forget your snacks. Snacks. [01:13:55] Speaker B: Don't forget your snacks. [01:13:56] Speaker C: There you go. There you go. [01:13:57] Speaker B: You're good to go. [01:13:58] Speaker C: Thank you, gentlemen. You guys have a great holiday season and looking forward to hearing the stories from the rest of deer season and through the winter. And before we know it will be up at the sports show. And then turkey season will be here. [01:14:09] Speaker A: Absolutely. [01:14:10] Speaker C: You got your mossy. Oh, and ready to go? [01:14:12] Speaker A: We're ready to go. [01:14:13] Speaker C: Thank you, guys. [01:14:14] Speaker A: Thanks, Matt.