Client Mistakes, Land Setup and Tactics

In this episode, Jon Teater (Whitetail Landscapes) and Rocky Burrus (SA Farm Management Service) discuss client mistakes, land setup and tactics. Jon explains the areas he works and client opportunities in the future. Rocky explains what clients are missing on their properties and where deer want to be. Jon discusses a recent client visit and how deer are setting up to pick off hunters as they access their treestands. Rocky explains where deer want to be and the benefits of terrain.

Rocky explains where he starts when he is designing a hunting property, and how to prioritize treestand locations and access opportunities. Rocky discusses how he reduces movement down his access trails. Rocky discusses how to pinch deer down in food plots and plants he utilizes to control movement and flow in food plots. Jon and Rocky discuss how to manage edges in and around food plots, to include screening and edge feathering.

Jon discusses habitat projects that move deer to other locations. Rocky explains the methods he uses to inventory deer and where to place trail cameras for maximum data collection. Rocky provides details on how to create more attractive scrape locations. Rocky discusses trail camera height and ideal setups to take most data information and impress your hunting buddies. Rocky and Jon discuss techniques for hanging trail cameras in bedding areas and Rocky ends with an incredible buck he killed during the late season.

[00:00:00] Welcome to Maximize Your Hunt, the podcast dedicated to those who want the most out of their hunting property. This podcast explores land management habitat improvement and hunting strategies that will help you maximize your time in the field. Follow along as industry professionals that live and breathe whitetail deer.

Share their secrets to success. The founder of Whitetail Landscapes, your host, John Tee.

Hi, I'm John Tiwa, the landscapes. This is Maximize Your Hunt. Welcome back everybody. I I wanted to give everybody a little bit of information on me, and what's going on this year with me is I'm traveling a lot to different client properties, across New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Ohio, you name it, in the Northeast and parts of the Midwest.

That's where I'm going. But I do a lot of my work [00:01:00] in New York and a lot of people have inquired, how far do you travel? I've traveled, out west. But I like to stay in the northern latitudes and I am taking clients in those areas. I know that's something that I don't necessarily talk about, but I am opening myself to traveling a little bit more.

I've been working quite a bit more even on the weekends, and I just wanna share that with everybody cuz I get inquiries all the time. Will you travel here or will you do this? Follow up with me because I am opening to, looking at new areas. I don't focus on the southern states.

Those are areas that I don't have as much knowledge in. Those eco regions are a lot different, but we have guys on the podcast that's where they're more, fluent and have more knowledge. And today we've got one of my favorite guests on Rocky Burs from S AFR Management, and he works in the south.

And, we're gonna talk about some different strategies and tactics that he's got going on in the field. So let me get him on the, Hey, Rocky, how are you doing? Hey, man. How's it going? Good. It's been a bit, man. What's going on in your world? I know you've been traveling a lot with clients. I've been following you.

[00:02:00] What's what's going on, man? Just, yeah, just trying to get things planned out for all these guys. Now that season's over and everybody's getting geared up to try to get 'em some kind of plan to move forward through the year and get ready for next season. Yeah, we've been on the road.

All the way into Virginia and I'm, I've been all over. Got two more to go see in the next couple days. Gonna be on the road again. Good. And I'm happy you're doing the Southern states cuz that's not where I belong. I gotta stay up north in the cold snow. It's we're, we got a snowstorm going on today up in New York and I'm excited because.

For whatever reason, I went out the other day and I just got covered in techs and sometimes this kind of suppresses the tech action up here in the north and that's what I'm hoping for. So let's talk a little bit about some of the things that you've been observing on these client properties.

You're going from client to client, and you're probably noticing a lot of mistakes, trends, issues, maybe give me some information on things that you're seeing in the. . The main thing that I'm noticing is a lot of [00:03:00] people are wanting to hold what they think they've got or are trying to gain more deer and hold deer.

You can go through these properties pretty easy and see a lot of the things that are missing and then the access issues, you see some of the access things that you can help 'em with changing and. , trying to see what their habits are and their complaints.

You it tells a story a lot of times on before I even walk these properties cuz you'll hear what they're complaining about and then you'll hear the way they do things and you like, I can answer a lot of questions, but let me, lemme, let's meet face-to-face. It makes it fun though to go in and actually have answers for a lot of people.

Maybe I've been doing it a long time and just finally gotten stumped to where they're just, okay I might need another eye on this. So it just, it makes you feel good when you finally get to see these properties and have some really cool answers for 'em. Yeah that's great.

One thing that came up the other day, so I was cutting timber with my partner. We had a client and we were putting in bedding areas and we're sitting there and we're [00:04:00] creating oh, trails are coordinating an area. And I don't typically, when I'm doing my design layout, I don't create like sneak trails all the way in a batting area.

I create. Around a bedding area and then directly through a vet area. That's typically my design philosophy and one of these areas that we're connecting the dots to we observed as normal, deer bedding on the hillside, watching the hunters come into an area. So we went in there and destroyed that bedding area, moved it back.

They're still wanted, they're inclined to be in those areas, but. This whole visual advantage and observation point that deer sit on these ledges and edges and look into the access points is what kills a lot of the hunts that I see. And I'm sure you're seeing the same thing. And that seems to be probably one of the more obvious things that, that I notice when I'm meeting with clients and just letting them know they're getting picked off before the honeymoon starts.

So that's usually a. . Yeah, I see that. I see a lot of guys that they'll say they just stay out and just I stay out of this. I call this my sanctuary. I call, and all that's great in, in a [00:05:00] sense, but you have to know. , in my opinion, you really have to know where these deer are bedding with what you have now.

And if you don't really know where they're bedding, I'm not really sure how you would hunt 'em properly because that's huge. Cuz once you know where they're betting, you know how they are surviving. . And if you, if once you pick that apart, you can trap 'em, you can build your success around that.

But until you go in and you actually lay eyes on, Hey, here's a buck bed, look at this now look, kneel down with me. Look at what he's looking at. He sees you every single time you pull up to the parking lot oh my goodness. Yeah. And then, but that stuff's not seen unless you go out.

and know what you're looking for. And I think that's where it helps maybe to have, guys like us that are seeing it state after state. Finding those butt beds and where they really wanna be. And it's something that is majestic when you find those butt beds because when you're there, you're just like you said.

Now it makes sense why I can't kill him [00:06:00] because you get his picture all the time and then when you hunt, he never shows. It's because he knows how you hunt and we're creatures of habit and we always take the same paths and we do the same things and they know. So it just, it's finding those things really helps.

Yeah, and I totally agree with almost everything you said there. The one thing I'm gonna add to, when we're doing layout with these client properties, it's such a difference between going from a, a map that I've drawn out to the actual implementation and then creating kind of these isolated bedding areas and picking those really specific locations to co-locate there and giving them the visual advantage.

I think the property we're just working on, we were tying, we basically took an acre area and cut it into these minute chunks. We created walls of cover, good flow between their good access for maintenance and support work, and then isolated bedding area in these small little pockets adjacent to all those.

And it's just fine tuning it. So the flow and movements correct, but these mature bucks are gonna want to be [00:07:00] in specific areas. And if you can't diagnose those, You're gonna have a hard time trying to figure out the setup. And obviously to hunt those areas becomes even more complicated if you don't understand where they originate.

And in my case, I'm creating those areas as are you. You're creating those opportunities for the bucks to reside in those areas. And then I'm creating the flow of movement through there. Again, maybe they're not huntable areas, and again, if. They aren't huntable, they end up being a sanctuary, so to speak.

So it's trying to decide how you're gonna go after these deers. So here's my question to you, tips, tricks and access. And that's something that I think you focus on a lot. I hear guys putting up fences and using hay bells and. I was thinking about this the other day when we were kids. I remember hunting deer behind big hay bells and they'd make hay bell blinds.

This is in early two thousands. I'm a young kid in my twenties and making these hay bell blinds and then using hay bells to, isolate and. Tie you into a tree stand location. We're doing stuff like that a long time ago. Even working and going down into trenches [00:08:00] and deep ravines and stream beds and using those for access points.

What are the tr tips and tricks that you're noticing on the properties that you're designing and setting up? What are some access tips that you have? I. To go in. I'll study Jim Ward a lot and I don't know if you know who he is, but he does, he's the guy that I've implemented the traps and building, building just a system, like a trail system and bedding system that Deere get caught up in waste too much time in and fall for your trap basically, is what I keep calling it with him.

But what. I'm not gonna put myself with him, but what I've seen him do and what some of the things that I've done is literally just try to go in and use the terrain to your advantage. Obviously, right from the beginning, trying to figure out how can I slip in these areas? Once you've identified where you're really placing deer or where a deer wanna be, then you can really.

Fine tune,[00:09:00] everything. I like to find the access first myself. It's kinda like finding the deer stand spot and then building the food plot around it. I like to build, I like to find how can I access this area and with. with the winds that deer use. This area. I think that's where people make the biggest mistake is they're all so caught up in what, when can I hunt this area?

And it's not necessarily as important as what wind would the deer use this area the most? And when you find that wind, now you go and say, how can I get here with that wind in play and then in those access trails? A lot of times when we hinge 'em, We'll, I'll hinge those maybe a little tall and make some blocks and stuff to where you can slip in and get up in the stand and nothing can really see you plant some screen, whatever it takes.

And then sometimes you hear people saying the deer used the trail that I made. So we've gone in and I've seen Jim Moore do it. They lay pallets Double pallets in the trail system that you go to the stand [00:10:00] and it deters deer or walk in that trail. When two pallets are stacked side by side, they just don't like walking on 'em, so they avoid that trail cuz you've got it walled in with your hinging.

and then even, if it's like dropping down in a valley and you've got it hinged up. Even if you're worried about deer entering the trail where you drop in the valley, then I've even seen it where they put gates up. Just whatever it takes to you could br put you a piece of brush that you move every time, even though you might not wanna be touching a whole ton of stuff when you're dealing with these real maturity.

I just, I've even used what we, I don't know, y'all might call it snow fencing. I don't know, but I. Go through and just get pallets and put fence posts in 'em and ba basically build a pallet fence. Yep. Down in, down an area that you don't want deer to. They will jump the, that pallet fence like it's nothing.

But if you have a gap in that, and it's quite obvious that gap's there and maybe even hinge a few tops over onto the [00:11:00] pallet fence. So it makes it seem taller and all. They'll just walk through the gap and those are, , manipulations to, cuz a lot of times sometimes that's really open ground or something and you can't find the trees to hint or you can't.

So you have to go out and try to invent a way to funnel deer and keep them from going in areas that you have to access. Yeah. And then these are all good points. And one thing you mentioned is Jim Ward and Jim Ward is on our podcast Now, Rocky, I don't think you and I had talked about that.

Oh yeah. He joined our group and he's just started contributing and he'll have more. But like some of the tactics that you're talking about that he's employed and it sounds like you're employing some of your own kind of strategies. Mine's typically Ben, I try to find. And I would suggest anybody do does this right?

Go on the streets, try to find as much old woven wire fence or snow fence or anything you can get. People are throwing stuff out all the time and it's just a fair opportunity to get free, free material and utilize it in these examples of pinching deer down, using it for screening. I've seen people for screenings, they.[00:12:00]

A screening out run grapevine through the screening, right? It creates a nice shield. Sometimes it'll take old Christmas trees. All sorts of things. Junk material, garbage. I've seen almost anything you could think about to create screening. I like to create walls and this weekend, I was cutting on Sunday, but Saturday I cut in the morning on my own property and I'm basically creating like these long walls that are very impenetrable, that the deer just, they do not like to travel down these tight corridors that they can't jump in and out of.

And as much as I wanna put fencing down there, I need access into those areas for working. Sometimes I'll create a very dense, and a pinch point, or like even on hillside, down a strip in the center, I'll put really dense vegetation all the way up to the, the shrub or any low loing trees on the edges.

And they have a tendency not to move through that switch grass. Switchgrass to me is typically a barrier in shield. I'm using that species to limit deer move. There's a lot of ways to do that. You can use Ms. Gagra Ms. Gant Chais as an example for screening as [00:13:00] well. And obviously to create, these walls and walls of cover can be created in a lot of different ways.

We had a podcast with Jim Warren. That's the only reason I bring that up again, to limit their movement and li limit their visual advantage. I'll probably talk about this more in maybe another podcast, but hillside bedding and I'm doing a lot in different properties. Hillside bedding is how to give 'em the visual advantage but limit them and thinking about how to segment hillsides.

And that's been really like an evolving thing for me. And my partner who does a lot of the the work. Let's talk a little bit more about any other access things that you've been thinking through recently. Not just like barriers and shield, through field edges and things of that nature.

Maybe just establishing a field with corn. What are things, what are some other things that you have a tendency to employ with your clients? . Of course you're tall crops like corn and sorghum and different products like that. Egyptian weed, all those, I use that in my food plot technology type.

Design. And those all become access screens if you need 'em, or,[00:14:00] great ways to compartmentalize the different plots and make 'em hold more groups of those and just make 'em more. daylight movement, I've taken and used those screens to, to basically take one huge field and make three out of it.

And that is all visible from the stand, and that can all, you cut brakes and those screens and those deer just funnel through 'em. I don't know, I just have a great pleasure with doing my best to control the movement and I found that. . This may be shocking to you, but a lot of people may think this is crazy, but after the crops have come in, I've found that you can literally cut these gaps in the screen and stuff and take a tiller or take a disc and just grab that.

that gap and direct the travel of deer with the tiller. Just one pass through the, till up your crop, but the dirt, I don't know what it is about fresh dirt. And you've seen [00:15:00] it, I know. If you planted food plots and you actually had to work ground. Yep. It's amazing the tracks that are in the day you plant, the day after you plant.

So I've tr I've made these trail systems on these big fields, these big ag fields that we. Have a hard time getting pictures. We've made these trail systems down and pinch 'em all down through a bow spot or something and then run a scrape tree with a camera or whatever and just really just amazed by how single foul line the deer will be walking anytime they're traveling out of the food pot or in the food pot.

They just walk that. and it's just money every time. And same with turkeys. They'll just walk right down the dirt. It can be lush clover everywhere. They'll walk the dirt anytime they're on the move. So it's pretty neat to To just control the movement like that with all that screening and access.

Yeah that's great. I've got a separate question for you, and this is actually something we talked to Jim about when he was on the podcast, and I want your opinion on this, creating. I guess barriers on the edge of your food plots. A lot of [00:16:00] people, we were talking about what I call parallel edge feathering, basically, essentially your edge feathering, instead of dropping trees out into your good soil, dropping them down the line or in parallel or parallel to the the field edge.

And we're talking about creating screening, and then we're talking about the porosity or like the transparency, the ability for deer to see through that or jump through that and. A lot of times, and I'm gonna give my opinion on this real quick, I've been doing it in sections, so a section of like 30 yards, then a space, 30 yards in a space.

Now that would coalesce or like correlate with maybe the trail movement. And like you were talking earlier about sending 'em through a bridge gap or what have you, through some screening, how do you what's your opinion on the properties that you work on with the edges? How do you work those edges?

They're limiting, maybe visual, or they're eliminating access. What do you have a tendency to do on either your own property or client properties? I personally do not like the deer to be able to see the whole field from the woods. Okay. If we're trying to. , if I'm trying, see, I deal with a lot of [00:17:00] gun hunters and a lot of the gun hunters like sitting in these nice condo blinds in the heat and watch the food plots.

As well as I do, we're dealing with 20% of the deer's diet, not 80, like in the timber. And then you're dealing with. , probably I would, without knowing the true numbers, but I would say maybe 10% at the most of the daylight movement of a mature deer, and you're talking, that's where people really enjoy sitting and watching deer and all that.

So when it comes to the field, I can't let. These big mature bucks cruise downwind into the field and just gaze the field the whole time and feel safe and feel like they know everything's going on. So I like to try to either screen, I'll feather the edge like you're talking about, the timber, depending on the terrain, sometimes these fields are up on top and they try to drop off and when that.

The visual's not really there until he gets up to the close to the edge. So then I'll hinge that, I'll feather that edge and stack my doze. [00:18:00] I, my, the biggest thing I feel like is you really just the screening and all that and not letting 'em see everything causes him to wanna see in the food plots, in my opinion, and make 'em work the food plots.

Cuz when they get in my food plots, it's not always just, I pop in and I can see 150 yards. Like I'm trying to. Make it where I need to travel the food plot to get out of the food plot. Even like my screenings will be, I got a gap, two gaps on the left side, and when they enter those gaps, my opposite side gap is definitely not dead across from it.

I put it on down the field. Sure. And then, so then that deer has to actually. Enter the field, see who's in it, nobody's in it that he's caring for. In order for him to leave, he has to travel my field and gives me way more chances of looking at him and getting a chance to decide if I'm gonna take him or get a shot.

So that those little things I try to do on my field edges. But the feathered edge stuff, you just [00:19:00] stacking those dough right behind that and basically, anybody that kind of knows a little bit about bedding areas, They, it's like a layered effect. And you have your doze and then the back, the next layer will be your bucks.

And on an ideal, platform, but, so if I pull my doze all the way up to my food, then it opens up that back layer that they might have occupied for my bucks, and so then they're getting there that much earlier to these food sources. , all that just helps. Tremendously as far as how early, that's what I do for myself and to find success for myself.

I'm just stacking my, do as tight as I can to my food and making sure my ex, my entrance is, is on the opposite of what they would catch. So I know where I, they should be, and I know where my win can never hit, and I know where they should be able to visually see and not see, and that's how I use 'em for access.

So you create probably some dead zones around your [00:20:00] access points and how do you diagnose those and is it really related to where the deer naturally want to be? You enhance. Your, they're areas of interest, they're focal points, and then you lead them. Obviously it's a slaughter or lead 'em to a food source or lead 'em into a transition area.

We've talked about the traps with you, the buck trap. That was a really popular pod podcast episode if anybody had listened to that, that I thought that was a really good one. But these access and dead zones, you're starting to lose property as a result of that, and you obviously can't leverage every single inch.

What's your philosophy there? Because I, I try to make dead zones and I do them just based on the natural state of things. There could be a house as an example, that creates kinda a barrier or obviously because the human activity limited interest. I'm leveraging as much of those, I guess areas similar to that and just bouncing off those to build like my access points.

Sometimes train features will allow that. What are you diagnosing when you're looking at the landscapes, from that perspective? For sure when I'm on a property, if I can notice [00:21:00] the actual. Places that they wanna be, that I'm not always, almost never trying to take 'em out of those areas.

I'm trying to figure out how I can get around and not disturb and kill 'em from those situations where they already have felt comfortable, but, . There are situations, like you said earlier, that where a deer is watching you or a deer is not necessarily watching you but knows how to stay alive by betting where he is and he sees the access that you've already got or the main access that you can even have, and those deer need to be displaced.

But you, I just really feel like. , a lot of the properties I walk on just don't have the bedding. Like they just don't have it. And they, for one thing the clients really don't maybe know how to find the bedding. And so when we find some, they're shocked to where they are and they're like, oh my gosh, they can see us from here, or whatever.

But then I was like, yeah, there's people that [00:22:00] access through the middle. There's people that access on the tops of the ridges. There's all kinds of ways they access. But when I'm done with the plan, , almost always, we've cut their stands in half. The access is you can have all this access to maintain and enjoy your property, but when we're getting close to deer season and when things are need to silent down and the, and let the deer move in and all that, then their access is always just tippy toed in from the corners or whatever.

However, I can try to design it I just, I found some of the biggest deer even for myself that will be in places like you're talking like even where you feel like there, you should be safe, like by the houses up by the road. Just. Places like that cuz they've learned that people drive right by 'em and go hunting every day and never even looking there.

And they just, I've killed the biggest buck with my bow, probably 30 yards off of Main Road because he, and it was by our front gate, but I just got lucky and put a camera in [00:23:00] that corner and caught a picture and slipped in there at 1130 that night and killed him the next. And it was the wildest deal, but that was still today the biggest Tennessee buck with the bow.

I killed him at seven yards. It, he just came in there in a bed right against the road. It was the wildest thing. But Jim will say on a lot of his stuff, those bigger deer aren't necessarily in their primary bedding till eight or eight 30 at the earliest. So when you see that I.

you're really dealing with two stages of betting. And that's where you gotta pay attention. That's why I think the screening, the on the plots and all this stuff helps because the least amount of ways they can catch you on your access the better. Yeah. No, a lot of good information in there if people are paying attention to Exactly.

Rocky's saying, You've gotta be a little bit more nimble. And I've worked on properties where we've gone with mults and they, it was too thick. We made it less dense. And then we worked with the existing vegetation and improved the bedding to move these dairy deer out of these obvious [00:24:00] areas.

Like you're talking about buy houses by roads where they have advantages. They know that they're safe in those locations, but giving them more kind of opportunities in other areas and amplifying their interest in that property. We just worked on that. We did mulch. A mulching project on that in concert, but managing the existing vegetation will pull deer out of those area, other areas.

And the question is, do you take the cover away in those other areas or do you make it too thick? Do you limit their, interest in those areas? And a lot of it depends on, are you using it for screening? What is its purpose in the landscape? And you're gonna have to define that. I wanna bounce over to data observation, cause that's another piece where you excel at is taking data.

And we're talking about land setup, access, all these other things, but getting data and trail camera tricks, you're good at that. That's what you've taught your clients to do and that's what you've used to build your success. Like we just talked about the deer you killed, by your house.

So get into some of the details of some trail camera tricks that you've been using, are suggesting with your clients that people would benefit from. I. [00:25:00] I, I'm a firm believer in creating opportunity when it comes to pictures and getting photos of deer, and I don't, I normally never.

I used to do this, I used to set cameras up on field edges, and I used to set cameras up on random scrapes I find in the woods, and I used to set scrapes up, different things. I used to just set cameras up where I thought I would catch a deer, and now I've gotten down to where. I get in these areas that, with the cell cameras, I really feel like that's a huge help because I can get into these bed areas that I know deer in and I can set up if I haven't already gone in and just naturally built this crazy good trap that, that deer or bedding in here, and the only way they can travel is through this camera.

Those become almost easy and getting those deers pretty easy. But when it comes to. say, if you just let me hunt one of your [00:26:00] properties and I was gonna go in and tell you some tricks, how I get pictures, I would have to go in and try to find where I can find a decent little heavy trail system that two or three trails maybe hit together and stuff.

And then I would go in and try to create this mock scrape. that I hang Cedar limbs almost always in. If it's early and I'm setting up, cuz I set up a lot of cameras on a lot of properties. So if it's too early and it's too warm, I'll do oak limbs and there is something internally. wrong with these deer.

When they see a limb pointing to the ground, they go straight to it to straight. So I just have noticed that from hunting some of the pine country and we have these storms and it breaks pine limbs and we'll have a pine limb fall outta the tree and just wedge on a limb on a, just a dead limb, and it'll be pointing straight to the ground and.

instantly. There'll be a scrape under it the next time I see it. And I noticed it two or three times. So then I started [00:27:00] copying that with the cedar limbs because it's visual. Like our woods aren't full of cedars. If your woods were full of cedars, maybe I would go with the oak limb, cuz it'd be a big brown patch in the middle of the green, but it would, I think you have to have something obviously that's holding. holding its leaves like a evergreen or cypress, a cedar, and even the oaks that hold their leaves. And I zip tie those things chest high and I do this oversized scrape and I don't either urinate in it or leave it myself.

I just don't, I don't necessarily buy all the stuff on the, on online. You could buy that stuff. It works too. It works the same, but. Those. I almost do that on every single camera I put out, and you might think I'm crazy, but if it's a single trail, I'll have a scrape on it because I want the buck pictures.

I don't really care for a buck to walk by my camera at 20 yards. and I don't get his picture. So if he sees that limb though, it's pulling him just to, just [00:28:00] out of his normal routine enough, it's almost like a corn pile. I mean it, he will have to hit it is something in their system. They cannot pass it.

They'll smell it, they'll hit it, or at least check the ground and I'll get their picture. . That's one huge thing that I always do with my cameras, and it really helps me keeping tabs on the bucks, especially when they enter the areas, my traps and stuff. I'll have a scrape right in the middle of that trap and it'll be a bed area trap.

So I know when he is in the bed area and if I, you can pay attention to the time of day that he hits these cameras. If they cross your food plot and hit one of your scrapes. and it's eight o'clock in the morning. You can bet he's vetted very close. Rocky. Rocky, I got a question with you about your actual trail camera.

So the ability to track these dear to either social zones or some type of scrape hub. , but like what, are they high, are they low? It probably depends on the location. Specifically our north South, like people have a tendency to, get [00:29:00] tied up in, in that, that type of information.

I know one thing I'll say in the north, because sometime in November our winds really shift. We get hard north or northwest winds, my cameras are generally facing south, typically southeast, if that's the ideal state. And so that, that will determine. Trail cameras, location, but at the same point, I gotta get data.

So sometimes I'm thinking about creating trail systems in order to get that data in concert with the camera and the time of year that they're using. So that's getting really specific for some people. What about you? What are things like those specific things, are you setting up high or low, pitch of the camera, those just basic things.

Cause I think if people wonder what you're doing well, , I'm bad about wanting a real pretty picture . So I do set too many cameras. I just posted something, it's not a week ago about this as I, I'm put, I'm bad about it myself, but I do put too many cameras right in their face and I have, my big deer, they, the.[00:30:00]

The ones that are okay with it, I get their pictures multiple times and it's not a big deal, but there's always a one big deer or two big deer that are like roams or really shy or they just all have different personalities. So they'll shy away from him. They'll get, you'll get one picture of him.

You'll be like I don't know where he went, but it's because he knows to dodge that negative read. He read that camera as being something negative to him. I've had really good success putting them almost like six inches off the ground, shooting up under those scrape limbs, shooting out into the open area.

And they almost never look down and it has a lot to do in my opinion. It has a lot to do with their eyesight is they have a different type pupil than we do, and they see blurry high and. So I will put cameras. If it's out in the open and I can't get cover or scr, it's not under a scrape, I will put 'em up high, six to seven foot highs I can reach, and try to angle 'em down.[00:31:00]

And the only issue with that is, , when you go show your buddies the pictures, he doesn't look as big. So , when you do it down low, he looks extra big. So sometimes I'll stick with the low ones, but we don't have the snow like you guys might you or you guys do have and all that. So it kinda, those little different, if you're in a bottom you might wanna think about it flooding, there's all kinds of reasons why I do different levels, but, if you wanted, I did this one whole year, as I said, I'm not gonna hang a camera.

Under six foot, and I did a whole year of that. And you'd be surprised, I probably caught 10 or 10 or more deer bucks on that property than I did the year before. And I feel like it was because of that. And I know for a fact. I had maybe three deer in the entire season that even looked up at the camera.

And I know multiple people walked by cameras that never had a clue that the camera was there. So when you hang 'em high, it is [00:32:00] probably the best move, in my opinion to take the total stress of cameras and people in your intrusion out. A lot of my bed area cameras are, I just don't like them knowing that I was in there.

So I'll usually do them high, but the ones that are out in travel corridors and scrape lines and different things where I think deer traveling, I'll. I'm guilty of putting them right in their face. . Yeah. No, and I am very similar to you and Perry. Perry's been on this, right? You've talked to Perry.

We've been on together. They do the same thing on the jury farms, right? They've got 'em right in their face. And then I do like the idea of having them, slightly elevated in the bedding areas. Those are typically soak cameras are gonna be there for some time. So I'm actually I employ the same strateg as you.

That's interesting. Yeah. All right, so we're getting towards the end of our time. Anything else you want to add today? Great information anything personally with you that's going on that's important? Oh, just that I shot that monster buck finally. Oh, did you see [00:33:00] him at the end? I did. Yes, I did.

I did. , how many bucks? Oh, you were like, we had the call and it's, it was like, oh, it seasons tough. You had already killed a couples studs, and then you're like and then you shoot the monster. And I'm like, oh my goodness. It's, you're not, you don't surprise me.

It's, You're well, I finally caught out the old eight year old band , I tell you, it was it was cool to finally pull it off with him, but hated that he only had four points, . That had to be the biggest four point buck I have ever seen. Period. And actually probably the picture we should use for this podcast, so folks can see that thing is just incredible.

That is incredible. I tell you, you would be surprised how many people have talked to me about a four point . Yeah. . I had somebody call me today and he said, man, I saw that Monster four point. You shut, that thing was massive. That was awesome. Buck. I'm like, I never would've thought I'd have these conversations, but I did

But he may or may not be the new standing record at [00:34:00] four point, but I guarantee he's in the top two or three. So he's pretty impressive. But yeah. Yeah. You don't shoot a four point like that every day. That's, that was an incredible deer. Yeah. Congratulations on that. I saw that post and yeah, we'll probably use that as the pictorial for this thing.

And, and I'm sure that was a, a. We'll we'll save that for our next podcast. We'll talk about, more client work that you're doing and a little bit more about some of the hunting tactic strategies that, that you got going on. And I'm interested to see what deer you're planning for next year, cuz I know you're always thinking ahead.

Oh yeah, I got it. Few you? Yeah, absolutely. All right brother. It was good talking to you. Good catching up. It's been a bit for us we will talk again soon. Thanks for being. Yeah. God bless. Thanks, man. See you, Rocky. Bye.

Maximize your hunt is a production of whitetail landscapes. For more information on how John Teeter and his team of experts can help you maximize your hunt, check out whitetail landscapes.com.[00:35:00]

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