30 Minutes With Dan Infalt

In this episode of the Nine Finger Chronicles podcast, host Dan Johnson interviews hunting expert Dan Infalt about the importance of seeking advice from experienced hunters and the principles of hunting deer. They discuss the significance of looking at a person's hunting resume before taking their advice, the role of mentorship in improving hunting skills, and the importance of understanding big buck behavior. They also explore the key principles that apply to hunting whitetails in any location, such as focusing on bedding areas and understanding deer movement. Infalt shares his experiences and insights on timing, mistakes to avoid, and the importance of being mobile and adaptable in hunting strategies.

Takeaways:

• When seeking advice on hunting, it is important to consider the experience and track record of the person giving the advice.
• Mentorship and learning from experienced hunters can greatly improve hunting skills.
• Understanding big buck behavior and focusing on bedding areas are key principles that apply to hunting whitetails in any location.
• Timing is crucial in hunting, and hitting the right time and place can greatly increase the chances of success.
• Making mistakes is a part of hunting, but learning from them and making adjustments can lead to better outcomes.
• Being mobile and adaptable in hunting strategies can help catch big bucks by surprise and increase the chances of success.

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Dan Johnson (00:00.923)
All right, everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Nine Finger Chronicles podcast. I'm your host, Dan Johnson. And today we are joined by the Beastmaster himself, Mr. Dan Infault. Dan, how we doing?

Dan (00:13.368)
Good, how you doing?

Dan Johnson (00:14.688)
I'm doing good, man. How's the hunting beast product line doing?

Dan (00:21.528)
It's doing pretty good.

Dan Johnson (00:23.104)
Yeah, yeah, that's good. That's good. OK, well, we got 30 minutes today and we got season coming up here pretty soon. And we have, you know, on the content side that I'm a part of all the the content people put out, the podcast, the writings, the videos, all that stuff starts to ramp up right about now telling people, you know, everything that they should be doing this time of year. And I always find it interesting, like.

who should we be taking tips and tricks and tactics from? And so I want that to be our first question here and that is, who should we be taking advice from when learning about hunting deer?

Dan (01:05.72)
That's a good question because I really recently and you may have seen it got a lot of heat for posting something about that. I basically said that these young guys filming shouldn't be given tips. You know I've seen a bunch of videos come out like the you know five things you can do to shoot a boon and Crockett every year and the guy posting has never shot a three -year -old buck you know.

Dan Johnson (01:20.275)
Mm.

Dan (01:31.928)
And I think a lot of people just take it for granted that these people know what they're talking about, you know. I think you should probably look at somebody's resume before you ask advice. I mean, if they hunt on an 800 acre private ranch, they're probably not good for giving advice in public. You know, if they just hunt public, they're probably not good at habitat management, you know.

Dan Johnson (01:32.693)
Hahaha

Dan Johnson (01:37.737)
Yeah.

Dan (01:53.794)
but you should probably look at who you're talking to, who's talking. I mean a lot of these kids and young people and even people that are older that are getting into this are good speakers and they regurgitate things but they're gonna be off because they're not the actual person, you know, if they're copying, you know.

Dan Johnson (02:10.41)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you, back in the day, right, actually, we had a podcast a long time ago where we broke down your youth and your childhood and we talked about what it was like growing up and, know, think, correct me if I'm wrong, but you started hunting to feed the family, correct?

Dan (02:32.386)
Yeah, that would be true.

Dan Johnson (02:34.718)
Yeah, yeah, so just kind of from your perspective, who were some people that you looked up to when you started hunting, when you were looking for tips on how to become a better deer hunter? Was there anybody out there that inspired you or you took advice from?

Dan (02:57.378)
There wasn't much. Most of my friends didn't hunt like I did or I should say didn't put the time or effort into it that I did. But there was a point when I started killing better bucks that I got noticed. And then I started meeting people. And one person was a fellow named Todd Kuzmick. He was a neighbor up the street and he was a lot older than me. But me and him hit it off and he shot a lot of big bucks. And...

You know, I don't know if we kind of mentored each other, think, I had a lot of focus because of him. You know what I mean? You probably understand it if I say like, you know, little rivalry between friends. mean, you kind of want to do good to outdo him or at least do as good, you know, and there's a little back and forth there and I think that drives you to do better.

Dan Johnson (03:39.633)
yeah.

Dan Johnson (03:50.708)
Yeah, yeah. And I've, I've had a little bit of that, back in the day where, know, I know a guy who he was out there, he was going to go hunt and the storm, a storm was rolling in. And I said, I didn't want to get wet, but because he was going to go out, I was going to go out and, and maybe, maybe we found success back then. Maybe we didn't, but it it was, it was kind of cool having like

someone to motivate you in a way that, I guess competition wise, I guess you could say. yeah. Okay, so as you started learning how to hunt, right, was there a moment for you where, and I don't wanna say learning how to hunt deer, I wanna talk about learning big buck behavior, okay?

Was there something or a specific sit or a year that everything kinda clicked or was it just a 10 year period where you gained a ton of information?

Dan (05:02.228)
You know at first it was a period of time where I gained information, but there was a rapid spot so I would say in that like Early to to mid 80s I was starting to kill a lot of the better bucks and You know drawing a little attention and starting to figure out that

If I wanted to kill them I had to get close to bedding or wouldn't see them in daylight. I started to see them coming out of the thick and realized you have to be closer. I didn't have anybody to tell me not to. So then as I started getting better what happened, the big changing point for me was one buck grew a really big rack and I really wanted to kill it. So it was like constantly in my mind on how to do this and it took me

Dan Johnson (05:27.273)
Yep. Right.

Dan Johnson (05:34.096)
Mm

Dan (05:53.976)
three or four years to kill the thing. got all its sheds and everything. And I started in the end just racking my brain of where this thing could be bedded because I had learned about getting close to bedding. And after the season, kind of looking for sheds and looking at the terrain and finding the bedding areas and stuff and starting to put two and two together, I started to focus on the bedding areas. And then my plan that actually killed him was I knew he stayed in a square mile block.

Dan Johnson (05:57.289)
Mm

Dan (06:23.498)
So I literally found every bedding area in that block and just devised a plan that just keep hunting them, each one of them, until I killed the buck. And in my younger days, I mean, I made a lot of mistakes, but I had a lot of chances at that buck. Started learning some things. then I eventually ended up killing them with a shotgun, not a bow. But I crawled up on his bedding area and threw a rock into a bedding area where there was a car, like an old dump, you know, that was brushed in.

Dan Johnson (06:50.281)
Mm -hmm. Yep.

Dan (06:51.368)
and he jumped out and I shot him. that period, that three or four years that I was hunting that deer taught me the most. Put me in the right direction. Kind of made me focus on a direction to go.

Dan Johnson (07:06.1)
Yeah. Okay. So, you know, we're here like going back to content again and you know, whether it's a I'm just going to stick with podcasting because that's what I know. I'm from Iowa. I talk to a lot of Midwestern guys. Okay. I know there's guys who listen in the south or maybe they listen to some southern type podcasts to completely different environments, maybe out even in Western

Nebraska or South Dakota, whitetails are doing different things out there. What are some principles that a guy can take with him to any location in the United States to hunt whitetails?

Dan (07:50.838)
I think really it revolves around bedding. You no matter where you go, if you can figure out where the bedding is, I think you are going to, like you said, you alluded to, you are going to have difficulties in some areas. Like you get in the South where it's really...

vast swamps and everything's green all the time. can be hard, but you can still figure a mountain to kill them. And there's plenty of people using beef methods in the south that are killing big bucks. It is harder though. Even up here, I mean, you get into the Midwest and it's a lot easier if it's broken up and farmed and a lot of it's open and the deer are limited to where they can go than it is in big woods. But you can still do it once you know the principles. Anywhere.

Dan Johnson (08:07.305)
Mm

Dan Johnson (08:14.845)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Johnson (08:29.172)
Yeah, yeah. Was there an environment, because you grew up in Wisconsin and started, I guess, gaining recognition in Wisconsin, correct? Okay, so did you ever go to a different state or a different region of the United States where maybe deer hunting was a little different and ever struggle there?

Dan (08:55.669)
I don't want to say I actually struggled. I think the hardest one for me was like Michigan's UP, but it's more a matter of number of big bucks, know finding them. Actually when I first left Wisconsin I was pretty apprehensive as a young guy I went to Iowa and I was shocked at how easy it was there. know because it's fairly difficult here where it's wooded and you know.

Dan Johnson (09:13.097)
Mm

Dan Johnson (09:16.649)
Hahaha

Yep, yep.

Dan (09:21.206)
But for me, it actually was an eye -opener how easy it was to go to other places and hunt. And I've killed bucks in many states, especially in my younger days.

Dan Johnson (09:32.98)
Yeah. Yeah. And so it wasn't necessarily that you struggled. It was something that you you couldn't locate the caliber of deer that you wanted.

Dan (09:45.804)
Well, kinda. I mean, I could figure out the bedding and stuff from, you know, looking at the terrain and basing it on what I've learned in the past. One of the big differences was, like, Wisconsin's got so much cover, one of the things I had to learn was that when you got to Iowa, just because something didn't have much cover didn't mean there wasn't big bucks there. That lack of cover and still having big bucks.

Dan Johnson (09:47.826)
Okay.

Dan (10:08.866)
would put those bucks in a spot that wouldn't hold a jackrabbit back home. You know what I mean? It wouldn't be an adequate cover. But they're just going to be in the best cover that they have available. So the best cover there might be different than the best cover here. But once you figure that out, it's not so bad. The biggest downfall was in Wisconsin, a lot of these big bucks that I kill, I figure them out in winter. So if I went down to one of these other states and spent a week scouting in January or February or when their season ends,

Dan Johnson (10:12.745)
Yeah. Yep.

Dan (10:39.024)
Then came back and then went down there for hunting season and hunted I would do way better than I do doing two weeks hunting So, you know that week of scouting and early season would really be beneficial even if it was a weekend Just walking through the bedding areas looking at exactly how to come up because a lot of times you go to lose out -of -state hunts and I'll get into a spot and I'd get in there and figure out what I did wrong and Now it's blown

Dan Johnson (10:47.487)
Gotcha.

Dan (11:06.626)
But if I come back the next year, I'll have luck. Because now I know the bedding area, you know what mean?

Dan Johnson (11:10.548)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All right. I'm to ask a question. It may sound dumb or very simple to someone who has as much experience as you and I do. Okay. But for someone who's brand new, they may not, they may not know this. What does a bedding area need in order to have deer feel comfortable in it?

Dan (11:40.478)
That's a good question. It has to have an escape for sure. I mean you can take the best looking cover in the world and it in the middle of an open field and they're going to bed there. I mean they might in some terrains like say Iowa where there's nothing else there but in a lot of places they need a you know if they have places available that have a good escape they're going to use that. So they want a good escape. They're not going to bed on a point that goes out into a lake where they have to swim across the lake to get away from you. They're going to have an escape route. That's a big one.

Dan Johnson (11:59.848)
Mm

Dan (12:09.896)
Some of the other things they need is they need to be able to monitor danger coming. the reason they like points is they watch for the danger coming down the point. You know, they know where it's going to come from. They usually, a big buck will have a setup where you can kind of smell, or hear from every direction. And that's a big part of what will differ his beds from the random beds you find all over the place.

he'll be on a point or a feature or a bench or something where you got a thermal rise and a wind over the top or you know in flat land he'll be on an edge where you can see out over an opening but he has thick tis back and wind to his back so he can smell the thickness in case there's a coyote coming or whatever and he can see the opening from just inside the brush or from coming so he'll be right on that edge

you know, or he'll get in something so thick that you have to go through it to get to him and you're going to make noise. But there's always a factor where he's going to be able to determine that you're coming and it's going to be a good one. And then the biggest factor is probably that he's going to be someplace where nobody really goes.

That's the biggest thing with me killing big bucks Is I generally I find some place where people rarely go and rarely hunt now nowadays You can't find any place where nobody goes I mean they might shed hunt through their walk through there every now and then But the places where people rarely go and don't look at it as a hunting spot are generally the spots where I find those really big bucks and pretty much I want to say if you look at the deer I've shot between

two and a half and three and a half you know where there's still really good bucks but they're younger when you look at those bucks most of those came from rut most of them came from a second a third sit or a good funnel but when you get into the bucks that are older than four that I shot which I've got a couple dozen now right so when you get into those bucks in that age range on public land almost all of them like 80 percent are the first sit I ever sat that spot

Dan (14:11.16)
And that's not by accident because I'm not always sitting in spot I never sat. And then maybe another 10%, so if you go to 90 % or maybe even more than 90, it was the second sit or the first sit of the year. Then it's almost 100%.

Dan Johnson (14:31.594)
Yeah. Okay. So I mean, we have two things here. have deer. These big mature deer like to go and find a bedding area where people do not go. Okay. Does that also mean that they will sacrifice certain parts of cover to avoid human intrusion? And so that the bedding area, like let's say I go on a scouting mission and I may overlook this deer's particular bedding area.

because he's been kicked out from somewhere else.

Dan (15:05.591)
I don't think they're not looking at a spot, I mean I don't think they're looking at a spot that's got bad cover. So you gotta, if you're looking at a spot where nobody goes, you gotta kinda find a spot that has the cover they need where people don't go.

Dan Johnson (15:21.897)
Mm

Dan (15:22.232)
So I mean that could be between two parking lots along the road, that could be across the river that nobody wants to cross, it could be in hill country in an area where nobody really gets more than two ridges back into giant forests. But it's going to be a place where people rarely go, but it's also going to have the ingredients they need. Which means you can eliminate a lot of ground pretty quick. So a lot of the public land by me, I can eliminate 90 % of it right off the bat as people go there.

Dan Johnson (15:42.249)
Okay.

Dan (15:49.528)
and can take that 10 % and then I can eliminate over half of that 10 % by it doesn't have the cover that needs to hold a mature buck. It doesn't have the features. I they're not going to be in the featureless, just open tamaracks or something like that. They're going to have some sort of land feature that holds them, you know.

Dan Johnson (16:00.841)
Gotcha.

Dan Johnson (16:07.828)
Yeah, absolutely. All right, so you located deer and like this is where I think.

people, this is my opinion, in all the interviews that I've done on guys who have hunted public land, they do the scouting, right? They go in there, they find it. They're like, man, this is a spot. Maybe he even found the bed or the rubs or the scrap line and he found the escape route, everything that we've already talked about. He goes in there, he sets up and no deer show up. And he maybe does this a couple times, no deer show up.

What is this dude doing wrong?

Dan (16:51.416)
timing. It's all about timing and even then there's a little luck on your hand. So you look at me and everybody looks at the deer I kill and they think I'm so successful but they don't see all the hunts you do that you don't kill one. Which are a lot. It's the majority more majority of the time you don't get one and I've got it down to a science of timing.

Dan Johnson (17:07.988)
Yeah. Yep.

Dan (17:14.846)
And I've done some really intense studies. I've put trail cameras in bedding areas and stuff for years and monitored when deer bedded or when they didn't and stuff. And I really look at a bedding area when I go into it. So when I go in there in the spring, a lot of guys are, one of the common things they'll say to me is like,

where you're going in or you're kicking a deer out. Usually I'm not. The deer aren't even there in the spring. It's not even where they bed at that time frame. Which it really doesn't matter that much anyways because if a coyote ran through there, right? But my point is, is that you're not looking at sign right now. When you see those worn out beds, you're looking at beds from the past. You know, they're usually bedding in a whole different area in winter. You're wintering by food or, you know, in farm fields or something, you know. They're not always where, you know, they could be in the same spot, but it's not likely.

So when you're looking at these bedding areas, you're looking at the past sign and you're trying to be a detective and figure out when was this deer here because it's repetitive. What the cameras show and what my observations show and what my hunting shows is that if you see a deer a certain buck in an area about October 1st, you pretty much bet that that's when he's going to be there again next year.

there's a timing thing with these bedding areas. And even my best bedding areas would have a really peak time. Sometimes I have multiples, but I would see a two week window in a lot of them. If you didn't hit that two week window, your odds are pretty low. For instance, would, you know,

One particular bed, I had a lot of bucks bedding there and year round you'd get deer there. So the bed would get used constantly or the beds. But I had a camera on the primary bed and it showed a few of the other beds in the background. And the target buck would come in and bed there. if you went outside of this, you know, I don't remember what the exact date was, it was early October. So was the first two weeks of October that he was bedding there.

Dan (19:13.336)
If you went in that two week period, he bedded there seven different times in two weeks. I mean, that's almost 50 -50 odds, depending on how and when he was bedded there. But if you get outside of that two week period, he bedded in that bed three times in the whole year. Now, I seen a camera study where they had almost identical results, and you could look at the results of when the deer moved there and stuff. And their thing was the deer bedded there, you know,

Dan Johnson (19:31.73)
Okay.

Dan (19:45.028)
12 times in a year, but what they didn't tell you is six of them were in that two -week period. You know, like what are your odds of killing the deer in a, you know, you know, when he only beds there 12 times in a whole year. So it's really about timing, hitting that timing correct. So when I go into bedding area, I'm really looking at the rubs, trying to age them. I'm looking at the tracks. I'm looking at the cover. When is this cover here? When is it not here? You know, what is this sign telling me? And for instance,

Dan Johnson (19:50.227)
Yeah, that's great.

Dan (20:13.784)
I think this is since I talked to you last. Two years ago I shot a Target buck. was a, I believe it was a seven and a half year old buck based on the pictures I had for several years. But that buck I was having a really hard time killing it because it lived in a cattail marsh where I couldn't get at it. You know, it would always bed in this cattail marsh and there's no trees and the cattails are 10 feet tall and...

Dan Johnson (20:34.655)
Mm

Dan (20:39.032)
How do you, you know, I was trying to find openings and stuff and it just bothered me and I kept working and working and working and I kept going out there. And one spring I stumbled onto this little high spot that I actually knew was there and had walked across before but I never really documented in my brain the significance. But I got up there and there was a patch. You know what, when I say a high spot I want to say it was 20, 30 feet long and about 15, 20 feet wide.

about a foot higher than the cattails which were underwater. And it was all grass, but one edge of it right up against the cattails was a strip of willow brush. And that willow brush, typically around here, loses its leaves in early October, and it's just bare wide open. So I go into that willow brush and it is just rubbed like crazy. big sign, big limbs broken off and stuff, and just, there had to be...

Dan Johnson (21:24.06)
Okay. Yep.

Dan (21:36.792)
75 beds in there around that backside and all this rubbing and I'm looking at that and I'm like, okay What's the timing here? He is not bedding there in the open sun You know after early October and he's bedding here when he has hard antlers. He's rubbing these trees You know if you think of it's common sense, but people just don't use their brain, you know, it's So that deer was a pretty short window when that deer had to be there So I was thinking, you know, this is a spot that I need to get to right away early in the season

Dan Johnson (21:40.041)
Okay.

Dan (22:07.222)
And the first time I sat there was the first time I had a wind coming out of there that was right and brisk.

Dan Johnson (22:12.266)
Yeah.

Dan (22:16.504)
I had some does blow it on me. And then what I did is I stayed out of there for the whole entire year then instead of screw it up. I did give it a try again the next day, but I had that, I think I had that buck coming in. I heard him coming out of the willow brush when the doe was spooked. And I had one of those does that just sat there and blew for 15 minutes, you know? Right, so the next year when I went in there, I did the same thing, but I waited one year. And the only thing different was the does didn't show up and he came right up out of that bedding area straight to me and I killed him.

Dan Johnson (22:35.109)
I hate those ladies

Dan (22:46.516)
It was because I figured out that timing. But the timing is a huge thing.

Dan Johnson (22:49.47)
Yeah, that's very important. Yeah. All right. Now got, I got a question for you here. You go in, you locate a buck. Like, or let's say the sign tells you I need to be right here in this tree on this wind and you're creeping into your stand and he busts you. And I mean a hard, he sees you, he smells you and maybe even in here's you.

and he takes off like a bat out of hell. How much time in your opinion does it take for a deer to rebound to get back into that area and feel comfortable again?

Dan (23:30.136)
If this is bedding area, I've never seen one come back after that.

I've always given it a hunt the next day just in case, but I've never seen one come back to that same bed after being really hard bumped. Soft bumps are different. I've seen them come back the next day. But if you hard bump them where they really freak out, I think they lose all trust in that bed in there.

Dan Johnson (23:36.093)
Like I.

Dan Johnson (23:42.602)
Hard bumped. Yep.

Dan Johnson (23:54.161)
Okay, okay. And then what do you do if let's say you say, I want to kill that buck right there. What do you do to make an adjustment to a new location?

Dan (24:06.69)
Well, I've always, when I'm hunting a certain buck, I've always got a lot of bedding areas in mind. I hunt every day, and I'm never hunting the same spot twice usually. So I've got a whole bunch of areas in my mind. But when I kick that buck up out of his bed, that day immediately I'm moving. I'm figuring out where I think he's going. They generally don't go a long ways. Try to figure out where I think he'd come out. There's been an occasion where I have seen him after busting him in another spot.

It's not often, but generally I can get back on them. And for me, busting them out of a spot isn't bad. It's one less spotty can be. So now, you know, the next day you got fewer spots. And then if you hunt another spot, you got fewer spots. know, that's one thing about bed hunting. When you get, you know, 50 yards from a buck's bedding area and you get your scent in there, and I don't care what you're doing to stop your scent, you're getting scent in there. And if you do,

Dan Johnson (24:47.006)
Okay.

Dan Johnson (24:53.577)
Gotcha.

Dan (25:05.432)
That buck is going to know you were there and they do not tolerate scent around their safe area. It's not like where you walk through a cornfield, set up a camera and the buck keeps coming by your camera even though you walk to it. They're expecting human scent there. They don't expect human scent by the bedding area. That freaks them out. It's the equivalent of if you lived in the woods and you walked out in your back 40 and saw a bear track in your yard, you'd be like, crap, there's a bear track here. But if you went in your house and your open window, there's tracks going into the house, you'd freak out.

Dan Johnson (25:18.889)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dan (25:35.48)
your windows start getting locked, right? It's the same thing. mean, you get into a bedding area, you're gonna bump that deer out and you're gonna give him fewer and fewer spots to bed. as long as you aren't pushing them onto a neighboring property, as long as you got room to hunt them, you know, eventually you're gonna get your crack. He's gonna run out of spots.

Dan Johnson (25:55.497)
Yeah. Okay. Have you ever, have you ever failed because even though you were narrowing down the bedding areas and maybe you saw the buck or maybe you didn't see the buck, you were just going to the wrong spot every, every time and you missed an opportunity at a deer because not necessarily because you were doing something wrong just because the buck decided to go somewhere else that day.

Dan (26:23.736)
Well that's the majority of the time. That's most of the time. You know, I'm generally hunting five, six deer a year and killing one. know, so you're going to have, most of the time you're going to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time. It's a matter of timing. It's not just the timing of hitting the bed right. It's a little bit of luck too. He's got to feel like bedding there that day too, because they don't bed in the same spots every day.

Dan Johnson (26:26.803)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Johnson (26:32.017)
Okay. Yeah.

Dan (26:51.946)
But there's going to be time periods when they bed in a spot more than others.

Dan Johnson (26:57.939)
Yeah. So last year for me, I found a stand location right over this crit crossing and I was like, dude, this is a money spot. This is a money spot. So I sat there and the wind was being a little funky in there and I went and hunted it anyway. All right. Have you, do you ever as accomplished as you are and as you have been?

Do you ever catch yourself making mistakes anymore?

Dan (27:31.064)
Well sure, I mean everybody makes mistakes, if you say you don't you're lying. But I make less. I think what I do is I consciously think about my mistakes when they happen and try to make sure they don't happen again. You start to learn to always set up downhill because regardless of the wind, when it gets calm in the evening the thermal is going to drop downhill. Even if it's a slight hill. You start looking at the openings and not getting too close because know the wind is going to toilet bowl in there and you want to be just off of that opening.

where the opening is really tempting because you can shoot for the average or the new hunter. So you start to learn some of those things and you start to advance and you start to make less and less mistakes. hunting is really a series of mistakes and one day you get it right.

Dan Johnson (28:17.993)
Yeah. If you were going to challenge the people who are listening to this episode right now to do one thing differently or try one thing this upcoming season, what would that be?

Dan (28:31.544)
If they want to be more successful, think the best thing they could try is to not hunt the same tree twice. Keep moving. Stay mobile. I would say a guy, he's got your average guy and an average plan on how he's going to hunt the woods, if he put up a a topo map of the property and threw a dart at it every day and hunted wherever that dart landed, he'd probably do better.

Dan Johnson (28:38.559)
Okay. Okay.

Dan Johnson (28:55.529)
Think so.

Dan (28:56.738)
Catching those monster bucks by surprise is the only way you kill them. And most of these guys are going on, they're putting a camera there, then they're coming back and they got their scent around the camera. Cameras I use for locating deer, I don't put them where I'm killing the deer. You start getting your scent into those areas, start educating them. Like I said before, when you start looking at the breakdowns of my hunts, which I'm really a numbers guy, I of figure that stuff out.

I hunt the same spots over and over again. You know, I go to the same tree that I had luck in before quite a bit. Or you run out of trees to hunt, you know what I mean? There's only so many bedding areas, right? But yet, the mature bucks, the six and seven year olds that I shoot, almost always come from the very first time I set a tree. That being mobile, catching them by surprise, going someplace where you've never ran into a person before, they don't expect you. They're not gonna come swinging downwind, they're not gonna listen to see if you're...

Dan Johnson (29:37.577)
Right, right.

Dan (29:56.098)
coming into this area, you know, that's not to say they don't move through those areas that you hunt over and over again, but they start to learn where you're at and they start to monitor if you're there before you, without you even knowing it, you know, catching them off guard is the biggest thing.

Dan Johnson (30:11.625)
Yeah, absolutely. I, first time in, best time in, that's when I've killed my best year, is in that same, those same situations. So, Dan, man, I really appreciate you taking time out of your day to do this. Thank you very much for dropping a little knowledge on us tonight and good luck this upcoming season, man.

Dan (30:31.874)
Sure, good luck everybody.

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