Episode #143 - Welcome to the Lockdown!

Published: 2022-11-14
Episode page
Duration: 72 min

In this episode

asio-gear

• ASIO Gear announced an early Black Friday sale offering 40% off, described as the biggest discount the company has given. 12:23
• Terry wore ASIO Gear shooter gloves while hunting that day. 12:37

buck-harvest

• Wes Delks shot a good buck the night before the recording. 13:42
• Josh, a Whitetail Master Academy attendee, shot the biggest buck of his life that morning in Ohio. 13:51

cold-front

• Don was amazed at how fast deer switched from rut-driven running activity into an almost late-season winter feeding pattern once temperatures dropped. 10:37

day-job

• Terry reveals that Little Debbie is actually a customer of his at his day job. 31:22

decoy-hunting

• Alex Jones asks for input on using a DSD deer decoy after it seemed to cause more harm than good. 24:06

humor

• Don and Terry joke that Wes’s buck must have been the mythical ‘king buck.’ 14:42 (light moment)
• Terry jokes that 94% of deer hunters who pass gas in a tree stand think to themselves it sounded like a buck grunt. 22:53 (light moment)
• Don jokingly claims soup beans are his favorite deer hunting food. 23:12 (light moment)
• Don jokingly pitches trying to land a sponsorship from Little Debbie. 31:12 (light moment)

hunter-conflict

• Don and Terry agree that big deer make people do stupid things, citing an unusually high number of hunter-conflict complaints this season. 41:28
• Don says people are the worst part of everything in life, and deer hunting is no exception. 42:25

hunting-industry-criticism

• Robbie asks why so many famous hunters now cite November 6th and 7th as top hunting days, wondering if it’s a new trend. 29:26

hurricane

• Terry attributes the sudden cold front and snow to a hurricane that moved through the Midwest and East Coast. 7:49

kentucky-hunting

• Terry hunted his Kentucky home farm the same week and saw only one doe all night despite having abundant food and cover, unlike Don’s higher-deer-density ground. 7:22

lesters-feet

• Terry recorded a lengthy Lester’s Feet segment with Karen Ward about her daughters’ leukemia battle, which he released on YouTube earlier in the week. 1:52
• Lester’s Feet had its biggest month yet in October, distributing about $49,800 to help families, the largest monthly total so far. 48:23

lockdown-phase

• Don says the key during the lockdown phase is to catch a buck moving between does rather than trying to find him locked down with one. 15:57
• Don’s lockdown-phase approach is to hunt mornings near the downwind edge of bedding cover and hunt afternoons over food sources. 16:49

neighbor-relations

• Andrew asks how to handle neighboring outfitters placing stands near his property line so their wounded deer keep dying on his land. 34:11

nutri-crave

• A Nutri-Crave Corn plot forty yards from Don’s stand drew feeding deer alongside a nearby soybean plot, with does feeding like it was late season. 11:23

property-fencing

• Don says the trend of hunters building fences on property lines to block out bad neighbors is growing at an exponential rate across the Midwest. 37:09
• Jay Thielen asks how to screen neighboring hunters near his property line, since their high stand defeats attempts to block them visually. 35:09

property-leasing

• Terry says he is pulling away from leases and permission properties as he gets older, preferring land of his own that he can fully control. 27:25

property-privacy

• Alex Jones asks why Don and Terry never lease a piece of hunting property together. 23:50

public-land

• Don drove four hours to hunt a specific public-land buck, only to learn around 1 a.m. via text that someone else had already shot it that weekend. 4:17
• A young hunter, in only his second season of bow hunting, killed the nontypical buck Don had been tracking on public land. 5:37

rut-behavior

• Don witnessed a buck breed a doe for the first time in his hunting career, at about 20 yards on a newly permissioned property. 6:43
• Don filmed a buck chasing and grunting at a doe during the breeding encounter but did not capture the actual breeding on video. 6:57

scent-control

• Terry asks whether a strip of Miscanthus grass could block wind and scent for a listener’s bedding area near a property line. 39:24

scrape-hunting

• Terry says once the rut sets in, only small immature bucks keep checking scrapes while the better bucks shift to bedding cover or lockdown behavior. 15:17

soybean-plot

• Once snow stopped around 8 a.m., deer flooded a Real World Wildlife Products soybean plot in a steady parade all day for Don and his son-in-law. 9:01

sportsmanship

• Don says whenever someone kills a big deer he is always the first to congratulate them, and considers it a character flaw not to. 5:22

trail-cameras

• Don got zero trail-camera photos during midday on a dozen cameras across multiple properties for two or three days in early November, unusual for that time of year. 3:09
• Don had sent the young hunter every trail-camera photo he had of the buck taken throughout the summer. 5:16

trespassing

• Don says he’s sick of dealing with trespassers and spotlighters this season. 28:05
• Terry is trying to figure out how to hunt a big buck he saw pictured on a permission property without getting shot at, run off, or ambushed by trespassers. 43:02

weather-swing

• Don experienced a rapid weather swing, going from 80 degrees on Thursday to 20 degrees and snow by Saturday morning within about thirty-six hours. 1:18

whitetail-master-academy

• Don got strong listener feedback favoring a woodsmanship section in the Whitetail Master Academy and may add it. 46:15

wind-behavior

• A consulting client named Todd in Kentucky has such a large ridge that wind swirls off it, prompting him to place a wind sock in the middle of a field to study it. 21:29

wind-prediction

• Rick from Greensburg, PA asks how to better predict wind behavior at specific stand locations so he stops wasting hunting time. 19:09

wish-wagon

• The Ward sisters are running a Christmas project called the Wish Wagon, collecting gifts to bring to families in the hospital over the holidays. 49:45

youth-hunting

• Terry says he respects hunters who start their kids trapping small game instead of shooting deer right out of the gate. 46:01

Deer activity

• unnamed buck (harvest) 5:43
• unnamed buck (sighting) 6:43
• unnamed buck (sighting) 7:27
• unnamed buck (harvest) 13:42
• unnamed buck (harvest) 13:51
• unnamed buck (harvest) 14:29
• unnamed buck (trail-camera) 42:58

Listener questions

Question: Rick from Greensburg, PA asks how to better predict wind behavior at specific stand locations so he stops wasting hunting time. 19:09 — asked by Rick

• Answer: Don says you must learn how wind behaves at each specific stand location relative to your home reference point, since terrain can make it act opposite of forecasts. 19:52
• Answer: Don adds that learning wind is a never-ending process requiring continual data-gathering as you add new stands and properties. 21:55

Question: Alex Jones asks for input on using a DSD deer decoy after it seemed to cause more harm than good. 24:06 — asked by Alex Jones

• Answer: Don says his experience with decoys has been almost entirely negative, spooking far more bucks than it attracts. 24:23
• Answer: Don notes decoys work better out west where deer rely more on eyesight, but not in the Midwest where deer rely on scent. 25:55

Question: Alex Jones asks why Don and Terry never lease a piece of hunting property together. 23:50 — asked by Alex Jones

• Answer: Terry explains they keep some hunting arrangements private because listeners have followed and tracked their locations before. 26:32

Question: Andrew asks how to handle neighboring outfitters placing stands near his property line so their wounded deer keep dying on his land. 34:11 — asked by Andrew

• Answer: Don says the response depends on the situation: cooperative neighbors managing for quality deer can work together, but neighbors doing nothing for deer while sitting on the line are a different problem, sometimes solved with a boundary fence. 36:05

Question: Jay Thielen asks how to screen neighboring hunters near his property line, since their high stand defeats attempts to block them visually. 35:09 — asked by Jay Thielen

• Answer: Don points to boundary fencing as an increasingly common solution for shutting out bad neighboring hunters. 37:09

Question: Robbie asks why so many famous hunters now cite November 6th and 7th as top hunting days, wondering if it’s a new trend. 29:26 — asked by Robbie

• Answer: Don says few people entering the hunting industry share firsthand-gained information, instead just rehashing what others, including him, have already said. 30:08

Question: Terry asks whether a strip of Miscanthus grass could block wind and scent for a listener’s bedding area near a property line. 39:24

• Answer: Don admits he cannot answer whether Miscanthus fully blocks wind and scent. 39:31
• Answer: Don suggests testing it with milkweed to observe how wind reacts against a Miscanthus stand. 39:45

A rapid weather swing brought Don from 80 degrees to 20 degrees and snow within about thirty-six hours, which he and Terry attributed to a hurricane moving through the Midwest and East Coast. Don described deer switching almost instantly from rut-driven running to a late-season-style feeding pattern, flooding a Real World Wildlife Products soybean plot and a nearby Nutri-Crave Corn plot once the snow stopped. He also recounted witnessing a buck breed a doe for the first time in his hunting career, and losing a public-land buck he’d been tracking to a young hunter in his second bow season, whom Don still congratulated. Terry, by contrast, saw only one doe all night on his Kentucky farm. Listener questions covered predicting stand-specific wind, negative experiences with deer decoys, and handling neighboring outfitters or bad neighbors through boundary fencing. Lester’s Feet distributed about $49,800 in October, its biggest month yet.

Unofficial fan project. AI-synthesized from public episodes; may contain errors.